Two Million Minutes

Overheard an interview with Bob Compton on public radio this morning, about a relatively new documentary that's making the rounds in U.S. schools and educational arenas. The documentary is called Two Million Minutes -- that's approximately 4 years, or the amount of time a student spents in high school.

Eighteen months in the making, the film chronicles the lives of six high school students in three countries: the United States, India, and China. Observing the various pressures and priorities of these students, their schools, and their families provides insight into the changing nature of competition in the knowledge economy.

The documentary was conceived by Compton, the executive producer, while he travelled throughout India and Southeast Asia in 2005 and 2006. Compton, a venture capitalist and entrepreneur saw dramatic differences in the educational attitudes and experiences between cultures, and decided to make this film as a wakeup call for Americans, putting half a million dollars of his own money into the project.

The film highlights what Asians have already known for a long time, but is only beginning to enter the average American psyche. The fact is that the Indians and Chinese place a lot of emphasis on education as a means to secure good jobs and opportunities, while the Americans see education as a growing phase in becoming well-rounded individuals. And because of these cultural differences and attitudes toward education, the film argues that the Indians and Chinese are more likely to succeed in this 21st century global economy than their American counterparts.

This observation itself is not new, Thomas Friedman wrote a chapter or two about this educational disparity in his book The World is Flat. In it, he talked about how Asian students were doing way more complex math and science curriculum than their American counterparts. What is new, I think, is that Compton's film is generating a lot more attention among educators in part because of his efforts at raising the awareness to schools and the popular media.

I've not seen the documentary myself, but I'm tempted to order the DVD online. The film trailer and related interviews are available on Youtube. There's also a blog where one can read more about this subject matter.

Mother's Day Presents

Y.M. woke up this morning to a small bunch of home-made gifts that the kids made for their mother.

An exact hand-shape decoration from O. designed on a plastic lapel pin.

A paper flower in red, white, and blue with B.'s face on it.

Y.M. as a princess, drawn by O.

Book and Notebook

I haven't been blogging all that much lately, partly because there hasn't been much to blog about and partly because I've been doing other things in my (somewhat limited) free time. I've been catching up on some reading, and have also been toying with my recently purchased notebook.

On reading: I've just finished a book by Leinad Zeraus called Daemon. The term daemon has been so overused these days that it's hackneyed. Readers familiar with Philip Pullman's trilogy of novels His Dark Materials will know a daemon as the external representation or manifestation of a person's soul. In computing terminology however, a daemon is an operating system background process (particularly of the Unix flavor). It is often regarded as a short form for "disk and execution monitor".

Although Zeraus' book was well received, I didn't think it was all that great. It started out as something really promising -- a murder mystery based on a highly complex automated script, or daemon, written by a deranged individual that triggers specific real-world events to occur. The early part of the book on MMORPGs, rootkits, and computer viruses were interesting, and were clearly written by someone who's been in the business long enough to know the stuff. But as the story dragged on, it became apparent that the book was more science fiction than reality -- a novel that's begging to be Hollywood-ized so that the author can cash in his chips. There were also loose ends in the story that never saw closure (a second novel from the author perhaps?), and the thing I hate most in books, and movies for that matter -- the "bad guys" win at the end.

In truth, I've not seen a good novel with a computing backdrop since Cliff Stoll's 1990 book called The Cuckoo's Egg.

At any rate, I'm starting on Jhumpa Lahiri's Unaccustomed Earth after this, and if it's anything like her debut novel, Interpreter of Maladies, I think I shall enjoy this one.

On the notebook: I bought a 15.4" Intel Core 2 Duo HP Pavilion about a week or so back. For about $800, this is half the price of what we paid for our 4-year old Dell Inspiron. Plus the Inspiron has only a fraction of the CPU performance and RAM/harddrive capacity. This is where I'm constantly at awe with Moore's Law. We continue to witness inflation in gas/petrol, food, and other consumer goods -- yet digital tech products continue to fall in price whilst at the same time improve with each version.

The HP is running 32-bit Windows Vista SP1 and so far I haven't had much to complain about. I've been removing the crapware on the system, and installing software I need for my work. User Account Control was a bit of a pain in the neck, but I've gotten used to it and decided not to disable it. The other surprise was the disk defragmentation tool's lack of any visual cue -- but it began to make sense after reading more about it. This is an example of a feature where less is more, disk defragmentation should rightly be a task that's best handled in the background. Uhm ... like a daemon, but the normal kind.

Teochew Png Kueh

Guest blogger: Y.M.

Last Saturday, Stef had a craving for Png Kueh and so we decided to make it that afternoon. The recipe was adapted from Kuali.com's Amy Beh. We used my grandma's plastic mould to shape the kueh. As the mould was larger than the recommended size, we made 4 times the filling and 2 times the pastry dough. We also added a larger portion of mushrooms and dried shrimps than what was specified.

Multi-Classing

This was culled from the Dungeons & Dragons Facebook group, designed like one of those motivational (or de-motivational) posters.

Everybody Wants To Rule The World

Another one of my all-time favorite songs from an all-time favorite band fronted by Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith.

Everybody Wants to Rule the World is a song originally written by Roland Orzabal, Ian Stanley and Chris Hughes of the British band Tears for Fears. It was the band's ninth single release in the United Kingdom (the third taken from their second LP Songs from the Big Chair) and seventh UK Top 25 chart hit, peaking at #2 in April 1985. In the USA, it was the lead single from the album and gave the band their first ever Billboard Hot 100 #1 hit on June 8, 1985, remaining there for two weeks. The song has since become the pinnacle of Tears for Fears' chart success, its endurance allowing it to accumulate over two million radio broadcasts by 1994, according to BMI.

If you listen carefully, one of the ingredients that makes this song special is the unique rock shuffle that carries it. The offbeat triplet hi-hat pattern is tricky to play over a bass drum-oriented shuffle. Drummer Manny Elias made an amazing debut with this record. The song inspired a generation of young drummers, and made them spend countless hours practicing in their band rooms. :)

Childhood Snacks

A few nights ago, dinner table conversation turned to the topic of snacks that we used to eat when we were kids. It was quite uncanny that Y.M. and I enjoyed the same snacks even though we were in different primary schools, although on hindsight there wasn't that many varieties of snacks back then anyway.

Back in my primary school tuckshop, the snack stall had a 3-foot high blue wooden gate in front of it, no doubt to stop young prying hands from snatching them without paying. The stall was carefully guarded by an elderly man and his son who, if memory serves, was skinny and tall (perhaps 6-foot tall) and had binoculars for glasses. We had to lean against the gate, show our pocket money, and point at the snack(s) we wanted before it was handed to us -- no self-service here.

At any rate, let's list out the snacks I vaguely remember:

1. Kaka - the default snack for me. Costs 20¢ back then. Usually had a small toy inside it.
2. Twisties - also 20¢, came in either a green or red packaging.
3. Charlie Chickadee - who can forget that commercial jingle that goes something like "Me and Charlie Chickadee .... ".
   
4. Jack 'n Jill BBQ Potato Chips - expensive stuff, 40¢. We only bought that when we had saved enough pocket money.
5. Mamee - a snack that's really dried instant noodles and came with a small sachet of seasoning. The packaging had a blue monster that looked like it was taken from a Jim Henson show.
6. Chinese-made white chocolate wafer wrapped in red/silver foil packaging. Usually 10¢ or 15¢. Don't remember the name.
7. Japanese-made chocolate-centered wafer that's a perfect square (approx. 6cm x 6cm). Comes with a good-quality sticker about the same size usually depicting some Japanese cartoon character. Also around 20¢.

What snacks do you remember from your childhood?