Our Times (II)
Not too long ago I attended a stay-cation with some friends at a hotel. There was this one evening where we spontaneously decided to go for a swim after dinner. It was close to 8pm and there were only 2 others at the pool. The pool had parts of darkness interspersed with some night lighting. Under an early night sky with some stars visible, the four of us played in the water in a way which made me think we were otters.
The previous night we had also played a card game in which the loser of each round had to have their feet tickled for 5 seconds.
I'm currently working as a research assistant to the research arm of a primary school. Yes, I was a little surprised a primary school would have such a division, but apparently some primary schools are richer than others.
I do like the job. I manage my own time, and there are a nice variety of tasks to keep me occupied. There's the research component which takes up the bulk of my workload, and here I'm quite glad I'm given a lot of freedom to write what I want. And on occasion I'm called to do some 'field work' - to write minutes for meetings, to help out in certain activities, to record data from students and teachers. As much as I like theoretical work, I enjoy being deployed to the field too. I guess it's partly because I like observing things, and also because being out there where the action is helps me see how I'm making a real contribution to the programme I'm supporting.
I still remember on my first trip down to the school, a student not too much taller than my waist level bowed and greeted me and asked if there was anything he could do to help me (I was wearing a visitor pass then). He wasn't wearing a tie. Later on in the day, I witnessed a male teacher hauling two students up onto a small stage in the canteen. He had the rest of the class gathered around the stage (the class, I think, was doing some cleaning activity in the area). And then he began viciously scolding the two students. "Why are you sweating so much? Tell me why? Do you see the rest of your classmates sweating? TELL ME!" Perhaps the two kids were indeed fooling around, but the amount of vitriol I sensed in his voice (the entire canteen had become silent by then) made me feel like he was venting all his life's frustration on the kids, and adding a dose of maliciousness to boot. These are the times we live in.
In other news, AlphaGo just went 2-0 up over Lee Sedol, presumably a great Go player. I'm all for AlphaGo winning; or rather, I don't see anything bad with that. It can only be a good thing.
The previous night we had also played a card game in which the loser of each round had to have their feet tickled for 5 seconds.
I'm currently working as a research assistant to the research arm of a primary school. Yes, I was a little surprised a primary school would have such a division, but apparently some primary schools are richer than others.
I do like the job. I manage my own time, and there are a nice variety of tasks to keep me occupied. There's the research component which takes up the bulk of my workload, and here I'm quite glad I'm given a lot of freedom to write what I want. And on occasion I'm called to do some 'field work' - to write minutes for meetings, to help out in certain activities, to record data from students and teachers. As much as I like theoretical work, I enjoy being deployed to the field too. I guess it's partly because I like observing things, and also because being out there where the action is helps me see how I'm making a real contribution to the programme I'm supporting.
I still remember on my first trip down to the school, a student not too much taller than my waist level bowed and greeted me and asked if there was anything he could do to help me (I was wearing a visitor pass then). He wasn't wearing a tie. Later on in the day, I witnessed a male teacher hauling two students up onto a small stage in the canteen. He had the rest of the class gathered around the stage (the class, I think, was doing some cleaning activity in the area). And then he began viciously scolding the two students. "Why are you sweating so much? Tell me why? Do you see the rest of your classmates sweating? TELL ME!" Perhaps the two kids were indeed fooling around, but the amount of vitriol I sensed in his voice (the entire canteen had become silent by then) made me feel like he was venting all his life's frustration on the kids, and adding a dose of maliciousness to boot. These are the times we live in.
In other news, AlphaGo just went 2-0 up over Lee Sedol, presumably a great Go player. I'm all for AlphaGo winning; or rather, I don't see anything bad with that. It can only be a good thing.
1 Comments:
Glad that you like what you are doing....you might want to explore MINDEF/MCYS for other research work too...dad
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