Carol singing at Christmas.

Singapore is a noisy city - but there is one kind of noise that is curiously absent: carol singing at Christmas.

When I grew up in England, there was a tradition of carol singing at Christmas. Young boys and girls would actually go from house to house, singing carols, at the doors to the homes of strangers, as a means of celebrating Christmas and bringing something beautiful into being.

On occasion, I was one such carol singer. I did so for several years, in the run up to The Year That My Voice Broke. When it did, I stopped singing carols - but until that dreaded moment, I had a treble voice. I used to revel in reaching the highest of notes with ease and in expressing the most exquisitely complex of classical music with deftness. However, it was not to last...when my voice broke, I never sang in public again.

Anyway, I remember one Christmas, in particular, when I would have been about 11 years old, going from house to house, in Wimbledon, with a single other boy and an adult in supervision, singing at the doors of people's homes. I really enjoyed it - and from the smiles, I still remember, of those strangers, looking down at us, as we stood in their doorways, they really enjoyed it too. They seemed to think we were sweet.

It is Christmas, in Singapore, but I don't hear any carol singers going from door to door. I haven't seen one since 1999. There is not that singing tradition here. It is a pity because carol singing always added some unique colour to Christmas, I felt - especially for the singers themselves, for whom it was a chance to express the art within them.

It begins in the schools, in Singapore. There is not the tradition of school choirs. Or should I say, not in the way that I knew it, in England. I have heard a school "choir" here in Singapore - and it was quite the most dreadful noise I have ever heard. None of the kids could sing - and I mean NONE. They were out of tune, raucous, discordant and very irritating. (I could name the school in question, if anyone doubts it, but out of kindness, I do not at this time). It was clear to me, that these children did not grow up singing. They did not learn to sing as primary kids (it was a secondary school) - and so had not acquired the rudiments of holding a tune. Either that, or they were naturally a truly tuneless bunch. Perhaps music is not the common gift of all, around here.

So, I find it strange that Christmas has come, but the carol singers are basically absent. It seems to me that Singaporeans are missing one of the ingredients of a memorable Christmas. More than that, though, in not having a tradition in which school kids are commonly taught to sing, they are missing a vital ingredient of a vital culture. From my point of view, no matter how many classical performances are put on at the Esplanade, if the general population are not singers, then Singapore doesn't really understand music - for it is not in the people themselves.

Another issue is the quality of the choirs that do exist. From what I have heard, they are really not any good. Contrast this with the situation in England, in which the choirs of some good schools were SO good that they received recording contracts and had their music distributed professionally. Musically speaking, it is a totally different world.

Perhaps one day, there will be wandering carol singers at Christmas and school choirs which can really, really sing, in ironically named SINGapore...but it may be many years to come and would require a change of attitude towards cultural pursuits. People here would have to think that the outcome is worthwhile, for them to pursue it at a national level. Unfortunately, the only question on their minds will be, not how can we make Singapore a more wholistic culture, but how can we make money out of a population that appreciates music and can sing? If the powers-that-be can't see the money in a singing population, then SINGapore will never become a nation of singers.

Personally, I see this issue as more about the depth of life that is lived. Those times I went carol singing as a child were immensely enjoyable for me. I still remember them well. Shouldn't all children have the opportunity for such memories? Shouldn't all children have the chance to learn to enjoy expressing themselves musically?

The big question is why don't local children have the ability to sing on the level I remember from my childhood in England? What is missing here, in Singapore? Why can't SINGapore sing? Why is Singapore culturally so muted? (In a literal sense, in this case.) It is not necessary for economic success that one should also have cultural failure. Yet, looking around, one would almost come to believe that it was. Singapore can thrive economically AND culturally...there need only be the will to ALLOW it to be so.

Good luck, SINGapore.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.)

Bravery and the young.

This evening I saw something unexpected on my estate.

As I wandered down to the shops, I noted, in the dark, an object in the road with three security guards standing about two to three metres from it.

At first, I thought that the darkness that I saw, on the road, was a part of a car and surmised that a crash had occurred. As my eyes adjusted, somewhat, to the gloom, I saw something else: a small "bin" with an attached lid, laying down on the floor. About half a metre away was a snake.

A snake? On my estate? Oh dear...

I carried on with my shopping trip, as the three chattering men waited, rather naively I thought, for the snake to oblige them by crawling into the bin. To aid it on its way, one of them shone a torch on it, perhaps hoping that it would flee from the light, into the darkness of the bin.

Half an hour later, I returned from my shopping to find a much larger crowd gathered than before. In addition to the three security guards, there were about four estate residents including a couple of "aunties" and a teenage boy.

One of the guards now had a snake catching device. It was a pole of unwieldy length - about four or five metres by the look of it. At the end of it, was a loop of wire, which the guard was trying to place around the snake's body. He wasn't having much success. Time after time he moved the loop across the snake, and each time he failed to hook it.

The teenage boy looked at the efforts of the adults with some curiosity and seemingly an opinion of his own. After a couple of more minutes watching the guard trying to catch the snake, the boy stepped forward, suddenly, towards the slippery one, reached out with his right hand, picked it up by the tail and dropped it, head first, into the bin.

Interestingly, the guards were not heard to either applaud or thank him -perhaps they felt a little embarrassed at the teenage boy's rather deft solution, given their ineffective half hour of deliberations (or more, for I only noted them after they had been standing watching the snake for a time unknown).

It was a characterful moment, to see the boy act so. However, I do wonder if this spirit of courage in him, might not lead him to harm one day. I hope he evaluates situations carefully before acting so bravely, each time, he feels called to do so.

I must say, however, that his decisiveness was impressive to watch! Well done to the boy, in question (he looked about 16 to 18).

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.)

The myth of the brand name school.

In Singapore, there is the widely held belief that a big name school confers a successful life on its graduates. However, is this true?



If we were to do an experiment, we would select a group of people for whom all differences are controlled except for the one of school choice and then see what happens to the outcome of their lives. Fortunately, for my argument, this experiment has already been done. It is called a family I have heard about.



Now, this family is a model Singaporean family, in certain ways. There are several siblings in the family - the exact number wasn't revealed to me in the telling, but from the way the family was spoken of, the number cannot be any less than three and seemed to be more. All the siblings, but one, went to "big name schools". One of them, however - the black sheep of the family, if you will - didn't thrive in primary school and ended up in ITE (or "tech school"). Now, international readers should understand that ITE provides a practically oriented technical education and is, in Singaporean terms, conventionally thought suitable for those of lesser ability. It is not held in high respect in Singapore and seems, to an outsider, at least, to be looked down upon, by many (who have a University background, usually).



The siblings of this ITE trained young man, all went on to University, all "succeeded" in their educations, in the conventionally expected sense. However, many years later, something very, very strange has happened. One person in the family has truly succeeded in real life - all the others have failed.



Yes. That is right - the ITE trained sibling has become a great success and all his University educated siblings are leading mediocre careers of no distinction. The ITE trained sibling earns far more than his brothers - and, in fact, not infrequently, they approach him for money. How he deals with that, I don't know. Yet, it seems to me that there is something very informative about this family tale. It says to me that it is not the school you go to, nor the education you receive that truly determines your success in life - it is who you are, as a person.



The ITE trained sibling had the right set of attitudes, spirit and other qualities of mind, to prove himself of great value in the workplace. His employers found him very capable and so promoted him rapidly. Indeed, without revealing too much about him, he was made the YOUNGEST manager in his field, at a large company, that they have ever appointed. Yet, he only had a secondary education and never secured a degree. His degree holding brothers did not have the right attitudes, spirit and qualities, were not held in high esteem by their employers and have not done well in their careers - despite holding degrees from "big name schools".



This example upends the whole means by which Singaporeans like to measure their fellow citizens: by their education. It is not the education that counts - it is who you are, as this family have learnt. Here, the one with ostensibly the poorest education, is leading the most successful life. What does that say about the Singaporean obsession with education? Is it misplaced? Have they overlooked more important characteristics that determine whether or not someone will succeed?



It would be easy, on paper, to underestimate the ITE trained sibling. It would be easy to dismiss him as "not having a degree" - but there is an employer in Singapore, who is very glad to have given this particular person a chance to show what they can do. Many employers would not have done that. Yet, this ITE trained sibling is not only the star of his family, but is a star of his company...all because someone looked beyond what he had to offer on paper, and saw what he had to offer in person.



I cannot help but feel that Singapore, in general, would be better off, if employers were all as his is: if they took the time to see each individual as they are, rather than just examined whether they came from a "big name school". Perhaps, then, they would make better hiring decisions. You see sometimes it is not the name of the school that is big - it is the nature of the person themselves. I, personally, would much rather hire a big person, than a big school.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.)

The perils of online plagiarism.

To write is to be read and, often, quoted. However, in the modern world, that "quotation" can take the form of out and out plagiarism.

Not infrequently, I have noticed odd searches arriving on my blog. They are odd because the searcher clearly knows the contents of the post they are searching for, since they are using a long quotation of the post, as a search term. Now, I find this strange. We don't live in an oral tradition in which people have great memories for what they hear, and pass on large chunks of words verbatim to each other, for later recall. We live in a written culture. So, rather than be impressed by people's memories when I see wholesale quotation of my blog, I think it is much more likely to be an indicator that they have seen its contents written down somewhere other than on my blog. The question is: where?

Sometimes, someone copies and pastes my entire article to another site, usually a forum. This, whether they know it or not, is an act of plagiarism, for it is in breach of copyright. Usually, they copy the entire article. However, courtesy would require that they only quote a few lines, then link to the blog. Generally, they don't do that. Often, they don't even link to the blog at all. I have even seen a blog post of mine CREDITED to someone else, before. I wrote to the owner of the site and they neither replied to me, nor changed the attribution. So, there is little respect out there for the origin of written work, these days.

On other occasions, not knowing of any forum in which my article has been posted I wonder at the source of a quotation. I surmise that someone, somewhere, has turned my post into an essay for some school project, or something of the kind. It seems likely that they have written down my posts word for word and handed them as their own work. This, in the age of the internet, is a foolish thing to do. You see, a teacher, reading a work that is unusually coherent or polished, for a particular student will do what I have often seen done: type a fair sized quotation into Google and search for it. That will bring them to my blog and the true source of the article.

Today, for instance, two different people quoted my article on Lee Kuan Yew and Assortative Mating, one quote being twenty-four words long: "a graduate is just someone who has conformed to an education system long enough to actually be given a piece of paper by it". Such a quote is a little too long for many people to remember, directly, so it is probably from an "essay". The fact that two different people searched for the same quote tells me that there is likely to be one new source of this awareness - and that it is probably not my blog, otherwise they would be searching directly for that.

Teachers, in particular, should stand against this kind of plagiarism. The internet is a wonderful tool for allowing everyone broad access to knowledge, but it can also make some students very lazy: they can just cut and paste someone else's thoughts and avoid thinking, altogether. All a teacher has to do to fight this is to use search engines to find the original source of an essay or quotation. Students should be taught to attribute all their work. If they quote someone, they should state who they are quoting and give the source. This is common academic courtesy and also allows the context of a particular thought to be understood, which gives insight into the true significance of the remark/essay they have quoted.

I think this practice is becoming increasingly commonplace, because I have noticed this kind of quotation of my work, in search engines, quite a lot over the past couple of years. If my work had been attributed, the searcher would not have had to search in that way - thus the fact that they are, is an indication there is unattributed imitation of my written work, going on. This is kind of sad, given the consistent, long-term effort needed to create this blog and its 950 posts.

Creators of any kind, should not be predated upon. Their work should be respected and credited at all times. To do otherwise, is to discourage the very act of creation - which ultimately impoverishes and weakens the culture, for all.

So, the next time you see a remark, or an idea, in a student's essay (or indeed a fully-formed adult's work) - just Google it and see who was really the author of that idea. Then, I suggest you confront the culprit and instruct them in how they should go about respecting the authors of any future works, they refer to.

Thanks.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.)

A computer password like no other.

It is the little things that we do, that reveal, at times, the complexities of what goes on within us. There are signs and signals of inner life, in the merest of things that we do.

Today, I found out something quite curious. Ainan has his own laptop computer, which he rather enjoys surfing the internet on, or, indeed, playing computer games with, usually in the company of his brother, Fintan. Today, Ainan thought to show me his password. It was 48 characters long, consisting of a seemingly random assortment of letters and numbers. It was not a word. It was not any recognizable set of characters...it was just a long string of unexpectedness.

Now, I found myself somewhat amused that he should choose such a long character string for his computer. He had done so, partly, as a game with his brother Fintan. Up until a couple of days ago, Fintan had known the password to Ainan's computer (only 12 digits long)...but, as a bit of fun, Ainan decided to change it to something that Fintan, five, would not be likely to follow. Hence the string of letters and digits of no sense at all. Ainan saw a certain hilarity in it.

The funny thing is, of course, not the joke that Ainan himself perceives - but that Ainan finds it no trouble to recall such a long string of alphanumeric rubbish.

Now, if there were only a use in this world, for the memory of alphanumeric rubbish...apart from unbreakable passwords, of course!

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.)

The secret hideout of Ben 10.

The best thing about being a father, is coming to understand the perspective of one's children. They see a world that is no longer there, for adults - and it is beautiful to catch glimpses of how they see things.

Yesterday, we took the family to a friend's party. A few minutes after leaving, as we were walking down the road in a search for a taxi, Tiarnan, two, pointed at a low-lying apartment block largely hidden by trees.

"Ben 10 lives there.", he told us, in seeming confidence.

We looked at the hidden apartment block with new found awe. There was the home of the fabled Ben 10.

It was difficult to see why Ben 10 should live there, other than that it was a little secluded, set back from the street and obscured by trees. Perhaps these factors led Tiarnan to conclude that the great Ben 10, Mr. Shapeshifting Alien, himself, would choose to live there.

It was a wonderful moment - especially seeing Tiarnan's utter confidence that Ben 10 was, indeed, secretly resident in a Singaporean apartment block, no doubt between filming engagements of his incredible adventures.

Sweet.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.)