Endoh’s Dungeon

My niece came back from school on Friday with tears and sulking for the rest of the day. After a little pressure, she began to told me how her teacher labelled her as “lazy”. I asked if it was anything to do with late homeworks, she said no. Apparently, what triggered the teacher off was her ink-printed name on her assignments.

Basically, I bought her a self-inking printing kit and taught her how to use it much earlier, when school started for a short while. She brought back all her books, because her teacher has requested for all pages to be identified by their names and class. There were 5 books, each with more than 100 pages. Gosh, I can’t even imagine myself writing my name on more than 100 pages as an adult, what about a kid? So I bought the printing kit from Popular bookstore, on my way back from my Sunday service one day.

Read more »

I have never written on Mas Selamat, but I began to see why his escape has made such a big mockery out of Singapore. Due to past work experiences in Civil Service, I actually felt I shouldn’t be commenting so much because a part of my heart goes out to that poor prison warden. Very little guessing needed on how this escape will affect his career by using the Court clerk as an example, in the case whereby a convict was given extra strokes of the cane.

How many times do we have to be told to look into the past? Very ironically, this has become the trademark of our country. In a way, I have to agree that “accidents” DO happen, and WILL happen. For the case of Mas Selamat, the incident wouldn’t have taken place if he was locked up in isolation and restricted in access. And why shouldn’t a terrorist suspect be held in a maximum security facility, even if it’s meant to be rehabilitative?

Read more »

So much so for our education and free world, that such incidents are happening again and again. I guess it’s not going to stop anytime soon.

Sometimes, I wonder what is wrong with our education system as a whole regardless of our country of origin. Even in Singapore, such an incident occurred several years ago. In Australia, there was even a girl who was gang-raped by 5 teens, who were nothing more than 17 years old when the crime was committed. If there’s anything that needs fixing other than terrorism, it gonna be our social values and respect towards another human.

Read more »

Just when I finished writing about how smoking may not be the root factor for cancer development based on 3 independent studies (even with a totally anticipated denial), yet another “healthy tip” was busted last Friday. This time, it’s the ever-popular recommendation of drinking 8 glasses of water a day being found to be anything… but close to the truth.

We heard it all, from our days as a toddler to our days as a student. Even as we grow, we actually hear these advices from professional health “specialists”. What or who does it take to debunk a professional myth? Well, as the saying goes, “it takes one to know another”. Hence, it takes another professional to bust a professional myth since uneducated advices seemed more real than anything else. The next time anyone goes screaming at their loved ones or children to down 8 glasses of water a day for health sake, you could be the one to contribute to their bad health afterall.

Read more »

Recently, I have been reading quite a bit of complaints on taxi drivers and I realised the trend has changed. What used to be a mere complaint, developed into a trend of “public disgracing” by posting up their license plates. No doubt the scenarios in many complaints are stale by now, I began to wonder if some of these people are actually barking up the wrong tree?

Take a road-trip back 10 years ago, we hardly hear of such complaints. Perhaps at that time, Singaporeans do not have any means of expressing themselves. Given forums & blogs now, we may have found a voice finally. How we use that voice, is another matter altogether. Are taxi drivers the evil behind all these complaints? Have our taxi drivers all gone rogue?

Read more »