Still somewhat upset at the irregular regularity at which items in my own apartment go missing…

Nevertheless, I’m not going to let that spoil my day. Because today, I am bond free!

Technically, though, but still – it’s good to be free! *makes whale sounds*

I wrote about this before when I received my first 13th month payment and I was confused about what it entailed exactly.

It’s time to kill this beast, as with other beasts that have stalked and skulked around our society menacingly and unnecessarily.

To help us in doing so, please read this post which clarifies the idea of the payment of salaries i.e. one is paid consistently for all days of work, so the 13th month payment is an entitlement and not a privilege.

For comparison, this is what the Ministry of Manpower has to say about it:

The Annual Wage Supplement (AWS) is commonly known as the 13th month payment. It is a single annual payment to employees that supplements the total amount of annual wage earned by them.

Payment of AWS depends on the contractual agreement between the employer and the employee i.e. whether it is provided for in the employment contract or collective agreement.

If it is not stipulated in the employment contract, AWS payment is subject to negotiation and mutual agreement between the employer and employee, or the trade union representing the employee.

That’s why some people have been short-changed by their employers or have been unfairly conditioned into believing the ’13th month payment’ is a bonus.

A long time ago, a friend asked why we write ‘Absent with Apologies’ on minutes.

“If it were me, I’d write it as ‘Absent with Glee’ instead,” she said, “because I’d much rather be absent from a meeting than in it!”

Thenceforth, I decided that if I were to ever run a company or an organisation, my first mandate would be to instruct my minute-taking minions to only ever write ‘Absent with Glee’ instead of ‘Absent with Apologies’.

Otherwise, they’d find themselves the next ones listed under the ‘Absent with Apologies’ column at the next meeting.

*

‘Absent with Apologies’ makes sense, because it’s much more polite than just being plain ‘Absent’.

But I’ve been absent from this space with both apologies and some degree of glee, because I’ve been busy, mainly with work.

On that note, I thought I’d share with everyone something that transpired in the classroom today – this is one of those things that has resulted in my absence.

If I can refer you to the picture above again, you can see I’ve listed out some principles for good idea design, especially ideas involving getting human beings to carry out things you want them to do.

I decided to write this down today because:

• I found myself repeating stuff I had said before yet again because the kids hadn’t really understood what I was telling them. Or perhaps what I was telling wasn’t making sense.
• This is something I’ve been thinking about for a while, and I think this is one of the easiest ways to understand what makes ideas work.

For those of you without image suppork, what is written on the board in the pig-ture is as follows:

Mr Laremy’s Principles for GI = EE.

1. Human beings are animals (piglets) – regulations/processes are needed (DON’T ASSUME THEY WILL DO IT).
2. Human beings are like currents – they follow the path of least resistance (MAKE IT EASY FOR THEM TO DO IT).

From (1) and (2): [Create] INCENTIVE [for them to do what you want them to do].

If you [yourself] won’t carry out the idea, don’t suggest it!

I hope there’s some kind of ‘meta’ element to this i.e. I hope what I wrote on the board fulfills those two principles.

In any case, the juxtaposition of the student and the ideas on the board is quite unfortunate, but you have it on good authority that this is her default look… LOL.

Colleagues,

The projectors in these rooms are not working well:

…

We have raised the matter to [redacted] to help us resolve the problem as the vendor is not co-operating with us.

I felt like clicking on ‘Reply to All’ and sending this image to everyone:

Unfortunately, I was worried my point would’ve been lost. So I did this instead:

In other news, I’m thinking of setting up a Tumblr called “Things I Wish I Could Say In Public But Can’t Because Of The Need to Be Socially Appropriate”.

For obvious reasons, I can’t provide you with a sampling of the fare that can be on offer. However, if this Tumblr is indeed created, it definitely wasn’t me.

In other, other news: WAR PIGS! (Or their contemporaries, FIRE PIGS!)

tldr: Study literature if you enjoy reading fiction texts. The benefits – growing intellectually, emotionally and having career options for the future.

–

Someone asked me this on Formspring and I thought the answer was worthy of a longer reply.

Just to clarify, I’m using literature and language here generically unless I state otherwise, because I think what I have to say is applicable to any language e.g. French and consequently, the literature of that language i.e. French.

1. For the higher-order thinking skills of analysis and evaluation in a familiar setting.
   Here, I’m assuming that you like reading and you want to practice thinking critically as a means of personal development. If you don’t, this doesn’t apply to you.

   Now, you can derive these skills from studies in almost any discipline. The advantage of deriving these skills while doing literature is that you get to derive these skills in a domain you are comfortable with and enjoy i.e. fictional texts, drama and/or verse.

   Having said that, I must say that literature consists of a whole range of genres and periods. Not everyone is comfortable in learning higher-order skills in texts from ‘strange’ genres or older periods.

   For example, I only really started understanding what literature was about when I started doing contemporary texts in my last two years of university.

2. For the humanity!
   All aspects of literature deal with the study of human beings – the ways human beings think, the ways we interact with other people, and our motivations for doing these things.

   I think this is very important in anyone’s education – it provides perspective and (hopefully) reduces chances for conflict between human beings.

   If your question is: But how does it benefit me?, then this is my answer: life is not about you.

   Life is learning about other people which in turn helps you – you learn to reflect on your actions, you learn how to communicate to reduce miscommunication, etc.

   And that helps you be a better person so that you can be a better person to other people.

   Once more, most humanities/social science courses offer this perspective, so choose literature as the vehicle to help your growth only if you like reading fiction texts.

3. For the future, because that’s what we’re all working toward.
   Besides degrees or careers in education or the arts, the sensitivity to language and language use provides good training for degrees or careers in:
   • law,
   • the media,
   • public relations,
   • advertising and
   • marketing,

   to name a few industries that are not commonly associated with learning literature.

   Why?

   Success in these degrees/careers depend very heavily on communication skills, and one very important aspect of these skills – put simply – is knowing what word to use at a certain point in time and why you have to use that particular word at that point in time instead of another word.

   Again, you don’t have to do literature to gain these skills if you have a good command of the language, so it really boils down to personal preference.

Have a question for me? Head over to my Formspring page to post your query.

~

This award encourages employees to adopt best practices at work in order to achieve a work-life balance. The criteria for this award are as follows:

1. 8-8-8
   Employee actively makes spending an equal amount of time at work, engaging in leisure and getting sufficient rest (i.e. 8 hours each, hence 8-8-8) one of their Key Performance Indicators.
2. Fastest Finger First.
   Employee is consistently one of the first to ‘clock out’ from work after the stipulated working time.
3. 80-20 Rules!
   Employee consistently innovates new ways to achieve the greatest output with the least amount of effort.

The aftermath:

As though I had never been there at all!

I wonder if anyone else sees the irony in this.

Read them first, bad English and all, before coming back here:

• 13th month bonus?
• 13th month bonus is a bullsh*t

Actually, they all say the same thing (with some variations) so the summary here:

• We are paid according to the British system of accounting i.e. based on 28 days of work (one week has seven days; therefore four weeks has 28 days).
• Since our salary comes in monthly, we have 12 payments in one year.
• But one year has 52 weeks. 52 divided by four is 13.
• So the 13th month is something that is entitled to us. However, we have been conditioned into believing that it’s a ‘bonus’.

Hmmm. Any thoughts on this from anyone?

1. Roads = traffic = exhaust fumes = global warming. This probably increases exponentially during traffic jams which occur during the morning and evening rush hours. Why are they rush hours? Because the bulk of the people are commuting to work/school. Why are we still commuting to work/school en masse when technology empowers us to work at disparate locations?
2. Warm temperatures in SG = increase in usage of air-conditioning = increase in electricity generation = increase in both fuels burnt (at power station’s end) and machines working (compressors and the like) = increase in output of heat = increase in temperatures in SG = global warming. Is air-conditioning the only way to reduce temperatures in SG, and on a macro level, the world?

It seems to me that both of these ‘problems’ are caused by sociological factors.

1. People, especially Singaporeans, place great value on ‘showing your face’. So be it for work or for school, the indicator people still stick to in order to measure work carried out or amount learnt is physical attendance. Perhaps this entails a paradigm shift: if we can harness the power of technology to delegate work or conduct lessons, we reduce the need for people to ‘show their faces’. Though it might mean an increase in computing power,  electricity generation, etc. which might also contribute to global warming. But at least there aren’t traffic jams, right?
2. For reasons that I still cannot fathom, we still stick to ‘Western’ dress codes of suits, jackets, long-sleeved shirts, tailored pants, etc. to go to work. Why? It doesn’t make sense to do so especially in our weather. Logically, we should be wearing clothes that aren’t so warm but we aren’t. Inadvertently, this artifically increases our dependence on air-conditioning. So will this blind embrace of ‘Western’ culture secretly be our undoing (and because I cannot resist it: what has happened to our Asian values??? LOL.)?

Your thoughts/comments?