Mothers' Day :) 2010

It's Mother's Day, so I should talk about my mom!

After years of it buried in my memory, this Chinese nursery song rhymes in my head..

天下的妈妈都是一样的 哦~ 天下的妈妈都是一样的 ♫

My mom has done a lot for me. Not forgetting the pain she went through to bring me into the world. Many of you will think about the pain of being in labour. My grandmother told me, I was born by Caesarian section. Her pain didn't end there. She went through post-natal depression after giving birth to me. Because of that, my grandparents advised her to return to her own home in KL; grandpa took care of me when I was a baby. I was in Taiping then.

My mother is the most understanding person I've ever met in my life. She knows my preference. One day, during breakfast..

My father bought food he deemed appropriate. My appetite dropped, because that's not the kind of food I would want for breakfast. I showed my refusal, so my father wondered what happened. My mom stepped in, and said to my father, "Sigh, you don't even understand him."

After I graduated from high school, it was time for college. Before college started, my father attempted to send me to TARC. After visiting the campus I knew that was not the place for me. I wasn't convinced of the quality, yet my father was adamant because it would save him money. Guess what? My mom was the person who really talked to me, seek my opinion and interceded for me, talking my father through it. Thanks to her, I had the opportunity to study A level at HELP University College, surrounded by high achievers.

I love her food. Maybe I'm getting used to her cooking style. She feeds me till I'm satiated.

Every morning she wakes me up gently :)

Maybe it's a good opportunity to mention my mom's mom as well.

She's in her old age now. And yet she still takes care of household chores herself. A very dedicated person who also upholds traditional values.

A mother's love never ends. On the day my mom got married, tears flowed from her eyes. I wasn't born, I just know it from an old photo.

On a biological note, what defines your mother?

Your mother:

• concieves and gives birth to you.
• provides you mitochondria, powerhouses in your cells.
• provides you the maternal half of your genome.
• feeds you with her milk.

Advances in bioscience makes it possible to segregate these biological roles, so you can have more than one biological mother. Not forgetting about your mother's most important role: taking care of you and watching you grow too.

Happy Mothers' Day.

Happy Mothers' Day

To all mothers and mothers to be: Happy Mothers' Day!

What I did on Mothers' Day last year? I was brought into Planetshakers City Church!

A Pree-TEE birthday surprise!

A nasty birthday surprise was mounted for Tee Yee Hooi at the night of 7 May 2010.



More pictures coming soon!

Our Learning Cultures

Having read a story of how procrastinating, last minute and everything came crashing down here is making me feeling compelled to hit out at our learning style. I showed that entry to one of my close uni friend and described this as "Malaysian culture".

I am hitting out at our culture in education. Let's talk about it, right from the start.

In primary school, when I was a kid, all I did in classroom was copying whatever teacher writes into my exercise book. I wasn't taught to think whatsoever. Why things can be right in one way or wrong in the other, I wasn't told. I was taught to memorize what is right.

Fast forward to PMR, the middle school public exam in Malaysia; and also SPM, the junior secondary school public exam. Many went to tuition centres as additional supplement to regular classes in school. You may not understand what your teachers are saying in class. Or your teachers are irresponsible people. Or you need additional support, and learn at a slower pace. Whatever your reason is that's fine. Worse still, there isn't enough time to cover the entire syllabus in school. I can even tell you right now this is so prevalent in language subjects that your class teacher can't provide enough to meet the expectations of the examinations.

To pass or score a distinction in your examinations various parties have come up with goodies to support you. Education is such a good business in Malaysia, eh? You go and ask a tip-off of questions. The tution centres attempt to predict examination questions based on previous patterns. Questions can even be spotted. The whole point is, you get your predictions right, you answer the questions well, then a distinction is in your hand, as simple as that. I can recall that my teacher gave me questions from the question pool to practise, when I sat for the actual paper, some of the questions appeared word for word.

Some of you can't cope with the learning, yet you want to score, so you resorted to rote learning. Memorizing the questions asked, and the answers for them. Why an answer is the correct answer, you don't know. Since secondary school I realized, the rote learning approach wouldn't work, it's just soooo important to know the underlying reason the answer is chosen for a question, we must always make our effort to find out. That is why I always emphasise understanding of what you are doing.

The practise of predicting what questions will appear, and memorizing the expected answer for a question, creates a bad culture. Students aren't trained to make an effort to understand what they've learnt. Then they forget everything you've learnt.

Spoon feeding is so prevalent, all we need to do was just waiting for the answer, without making the effort to find the answer. It's because the answer is there, and only one answer is accepted. So, looking at students' assignments, all you see is the same thing, written in the same style of language. Lack of personal touch.

With spoon feeding also came plagarism. Rampant plagarism. Copy and paste from the Internet is the culture, no referencing, no stating sources of information whatsoever. To my dismay, universities allow these to happen!

That is why my degree transfer juniors said to me, the learning effort requirements jump out at them when they arrive here in Australia. To do your assignment, lecturers can only tell you, at most, how to find information needed. They don't give you a fish but teach you how to fish. Plagarism is taken so seriously.

What difference does a degree from Monash Malaysia and Monash Clayton campus make? Both degrees are granted from the same university so arguably they are equivalent. But until I tell you that these graduates are exposed to learning cultures in their respective countries, you come to understand why graduate attributes differ.

One last thing, procrastination is in each of our DNA, it's the devil so you should delete that from your genes RIGHT NOW.

Biopolymath

In this world advent with technology, we are enjoying the convenience it brought along with it, not to mention technology speeds us up much faster, our presence can also be felt, like us conferred the ability of partial omnipresence.

Thanks to technology, we understand the world much faster, with less effort, less resource. Tasks that took weeks to accomplish can now be done in a matter of hours; biology, the very essence of our well-being, the very processes that sustain us, can now be probed in greater detail, greater complexity uncovered, and I realize things may not be what it appeared to be. So many parts make up a whole system, individuals may not contribute much as a whole, yet they are part of a system, the system is critically dependent on each of the parts. All individuals are part of the whole, that's so true in the spiritual dimension, we are all part of Christ. In our physical world, this applies to the universe, our Solar system, the earth, the community, organs in our bodies, cells, to the atomic level.

Bioscience is an interesting field, you can ask a variety of questions and use a variety of approach to answer them, be it physics, chemistry, mathematics, computer science, information science or economics. I enjoy doing biochemistry, that's a good start for a researcher-wannabe, but the training is just the beginning. Bioscience comprises a lot of '-logies', study of a particular field of interest, some are called as '-ics' ie. genetics. The age of information explosion propels us to study bio in the system as a whole approach, needless to say now we are in the '-omics' age. Things, when put together that make us to be ourselves, are called our '-ome' ie. genome, proteome, phenome.

So many things are interrelated, interconnected, interdependent. Connections are not lose but intimate, they can't do without each other, calling the need to painting the picture as a whole. Gone are the days we confine ourselves to our knowledge territory, with little interactions to the world around. We will still need specialists, at the same time having the need to appreciate knowledge outside our primary interests, calling for our understanding beyond traditional boundaries. As more answers are given, so are more questions raised. Humans are naturally curious, as we progress, we may not be able to keep up with the pace. Questions need to be answered before they are even posed, we need tools today to answer the questions of tomorrow. It means going out of our comfort zone, this calls for a new way of thinking and a new mindset.

To answer the call, again in the modern age, we need polymaths.

Doses of words

Everyday, when I open my Twitter, I can't run away from these words

• fml - very common in rants!
• wtf
• f*ck - either with full or alternative spelling, or with a poly-K tail

OK, I teach you enough of bad words. Common sense tells you not to aim those words at people, so you should know by now. I am fine with those words, exposure has made me grow tolerant of them.

Twitter doesn't censor those words so you are free to use them in any context (implied). The unwritten rule is never aim them at real people with emotions.

But you are cursing your own life, your circumstances, or even yourself. You have said the words yourself so you hold the authority. Yes, you have the authority to curse yourself.

Now, I tell you. Every word said holds an authority. So your curses can be powerful, believe it or not. The moment you curse you are emitting negative energy. These words can become self-fulfilling prophecy.

I don't say these words out of my mouth but they're jammed in my thoughts.

So, you ask me unfollow those people is it? They are not churchies, I know. Some of them achieved like above average exposure but they are just like ordinary people out there. Your nature is to curse whenever things come your way and you don't like it. To make me unfollow these people is still a hard decision to make.

I am not stopping you from cursing. But for your own sake refrain from it. You are prophesying into the soil which you plant your crops.

My birthday at UL28: more pictures

I truly had a memorable birthday celebration at Urban Life 28 with my urbies!


It was me and the couple.


Jia Ren, leader of our daughter group!

At first, Jia Ren and I were one group. Then the group reached a size, underwent mitosis and Jia Ren become the "nucleus" of the daughter group haha.


Mari kita tembak-menembak!


Juen is so cute right?


Ee-li or you can refer as Ellie.

Thanks guys!