Botak Jones latest promotion takes the cake.

The staff at Botak Jones should beware however, of parents haggling for marks for an “upgrade”.

Anybody out there who is a parent, if your kids want to paint the bedroom, as a favor to me, let them do it. It’ll be OK. Don’t worry about resale value of the house. (Page 30)

The brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people. (Page 73)

- The Last Lecture

i’ve decided to read avariciously again now that my new job situation allows time for that and many other work-life activities.

i’ve also decided to conciously mull over what i’ve read and record my musings on my virtual shelf at goodreads.com.

we are only given one life to lead, but we can experience and be enriched from a myriad of lives by journeying within the covers of books. mort, a recurring character in terry prachett discworld series describes visiting death’s library. the never ending sky reaching shelves contains row of books that are actually self-contained spirits of the dead. all mort had to do was open the covers to uncover their mortal days. if i remembered correctly, the spirits that inhabit the books carried their own voice like an audio book.

morbid as it maybe, a conventional library or a personal collection of books isn’t far off from death’s library. authors spend years and even life times to distill the most poignant alchemy of their experiences and imagination.

its therapeutic to write and catharic to read.

view full set here.

two weeks ago, i made the most of international museum day’s free entrance to the major nhb museums and did a museum crawl with xh beginning with the national museum of singapore, singapore art museum at 8Q.

the usual $10 admission to this singapore history gallery was also waived that day. this was my second trip there but i believe that i’ll never manage to cover every exhibit even after my nth’s visit.

one reason is that there is a myriad of exhibits and the other is there you can choose to take the personal path or the events path or switch between the two paths at the various junctions.

a picture that i did not notice on my first trip was a photograph of the museum in its early years.

the facade has not changed much over the centuries. according to wikipedia, “its history dates back to 1849 when it was started as a section of a library at Singapore Institution. After several relocations, the Museum was relocated to its permanent site at Stamford Road at the Museum Planning Area in 1887.“

in 2009, it still does not look a day older. in fact i think its more white washed.

the insides however are unrecognisable. the name change from singapore history museum to national museum of singapore is already a telling change in its direction. no longer will history be the only discipline explored in this public institution but the foray will be multi-pronged and multi-directional. the coalescing of history, art and contemporary culture is evident in its displays and public programmes.

a decade ago, the haut cauture of christian lacroix would not have found its way into its walls.

in fact, the static diorama detailing what was considered to be the milestones of singapore’s founding and development were the main feature of the museum as i remembered it.

in my recent massive spring cleaning exercise, it was my good fortune to have uncovered the full collection of the diorama in postcards.

check out the european haut couture a century ago in this diorama.

i think its time i took a hiatus from the whinging and whining about how miserable things can be for a change.

when was the last time you had this much fun at a museum?

gardens, galleries and museums are my favorite venues in melbourne, not really because of its authority as a storehouse of capital culture but rather because of how tastefully accessible they are to a public.

i’ve always been interested in museology even without knowing the word. after been through some vigorous academic training in that area, i can better appreciate the development of the national museum of singapore and place its standing on a broad spectrum of museums in capital cities.

upon my return to singapore, i’m pleased to be able to visit a national museum that engages all stratas of society and one that does its share of the interrogation of historicity in its postcolonial present, in a postcolonial city. gone are the days where a national museum gazes at the periphery as a cabinet of curiosity and panders to the glory of an uncontested pedestal.

i’m also quite happy to see new daring of the old dame in crossing the genre of its exhibits. the present block buster exhibit – children’s season seems to be more ‘at home’ in an art museum than a national museum. kids were everywhere, shattering the once staid golden decorum that a museum is supposed to carry at all times.

more pictures here.

its been a roller coaster ride since the start of the year, and it doesn’t seem to let up any time soon. without the pillars of support in my life, i would have already crumbled.

i need time off and to just try to arrive at a healthy equilibrium. its very unhealthy right now.

so, you wouldn’t be hearing from me anytime soon. i’m going underground, leaving you with this.

‘What makes a good teacher?’ – Creative subversion’

Professor Debra Myhill, from Exeter University, took a similar line. She argued that while good subject knowledge and intellectual ability were both important, they were not “sufficient” to be a good teacher.

The crucial ingredient, she argued, was a teacher’s ability to reflect on his or her own performance and then to change it.

She too argued for a healthy scepticism towards national policy initiatives.

Indeed she advocated that a good teacher should go in for “creative subversion”.

By this, she meant that teachers should neither passively comply with government initiatives, nor should they point blank refuse to implement them.

Instead they should “adapt them creatively”.

BBC News