PSLE Past And Present, Parents And The Future

I took my PSLE at a time when it was just an exam at the end of primary six. Sure, there was pressure to do well and get in a 'better' school.  My form teacher, who at that time, taught us practically everything except language, was concerned more about maths and science. She gave us extra tests with questions from 'external sources', probably a tuition centre. There were some kids in my class who were enrolled in supplementary classes outside school and they seemed to better off for it. I think the general thinking at that time was that tuition was for kids who needed help. So most of us led rather casual lives filled with police and thief, TV and idling about, once homework was done. 

I didn't do exceptionally well at PSLE nor terribly badly, 237. I simply progressed up the education track, entering the Express stream in a neighbourhood secondary school. (I did move from Jurong to Yishun, so I lost all my primary school friends and had to do the awkward start over. Damn the cheaper HDB flat in a newer new town.) The secondary school I went to wasn't spectacular when it came to grades. I remember my form teacher singling out those who scored 230 or more, lined us up in front of the class, as if we were going to be executed by firing squad, and told the rest to look us up for help. Phew. It was a bit of an ego boost, perhaps a premature estimation of our talents.  I wonder how the rest felt. The kids with 229 scores would have been raging inside. 

Last Friday PSLE scores for 42,000 kids were released. Two of them were for a niece of a friend, and the other the daughter of a colleague, both girls. The friend's niece did pretty well in the preliminary examinations and expected to repeat her scores in the crucial final hurdle. She didn't. Her lower scores caused her much anguish and suffering. Tears were bursting from said girl's face and wetting her mum's comforting midsection. Inconsolable. She was afraid she wouldn't get into the school of her liking. That her friends would leave her behind, abandoned in some godforsaken neighbourhood institution with gangsters and hoodlums. Her grandfather perpetuated her fears of impending doom by saying it was over for her. My friend, in his quirky offbeat way at making the situation better, said that her life will never be the same again and scouted for a list of neighbourhood schools she could aim for. The family is giving her time to recover, keeping an eye out for drugs, needles and baked goods.

My colleague's daughter had a very different experience. The kid went to a much sought after 'good school'. She was smart/talented/savvy enough to join the Gifted Education Programme (GEP) at primary 4 and she excelled in the project based learning structure and non-standard content. In primary 6, she took some sort of entrance examination for a 'good secondary school' and received conditional approval for placement. All she needed to do was to hit a certain PSLE score. Ultimately she got in. What was interesting was that my colleague's daughter was more worried about her friends making it to the same school. She would miss them terribly. Her mum explained that the GEP had created a learning environment that encouraged sharing and leveraging each others' strength to get the job done. This team had grown close and splitting them up would be a traumatic start to adolescence.

My colleague's daughter did well enough to surprise the other parents waiting for their kids' results. They congratulated my colleague who was taken aback at the attention she now garnered, wanted or otherwise. 

In all battles, not everyone can be a winner. Even the consistent ones. So there were kids that failed to meet expectations and were met instead by the surprised glares and obvious whispers. And these kids are just 12. Competition is such that everyone is ranked in a hierarchy of winners. Although we want to be cool about, that grades are not important and kids should have fun, reality bites when it is crunch time. These kids come to be judged by a three digit number. In the centre of the stress-filled donut that is primary school life are the parents. That whole thing about kids living their parents' dreams, it's true. I asked my colleague what was HER PSLE score when she got back into the office. She had taken a week off during PSLE week to be there for her kid. I am sure other concerned parents did the same. These days, parents send their kids to extra classes, sit by them doing the extra homework, and help them colour print their project work in the office. When i grew up, parents only cared when 1) money was concerned and 2) when the teacher them up. Hah!

My colleague was asked by a kiasu parent of a another girl in the same good school why she wasn't sending her daughter to the 'best school' (apparently this is RGS), my colleague, to my immense satisfaction, replied that this other school was closer to home, just 15 minutes away by bus. 

There are many facets to the state of PSLE that I can't quite fathom. There's the affiliation between primary and secondary schools - one doesn't need to score that high to get  into an affiliated school by a good margin in some cases. There's the different kinds of GEP offered in the 'good schools' - arts, music, language and even sports. So a school could pick a kid great at tennis and not his studies in the hopes of athletic glory for the alma mater. No wonder parents are forking out the dollars and forcing their kids to be 'well-rounded' aka forced to play the piano or be thrown into a pool with sharks. It's an exit strategy. 

With stress and competition, the human psyche inevitably turns on its defences. Being better than the next guy is often the only way some kids and adults see their value in society. That could mean being fitter, stronger, richer, louder. In Singapore it clearly starts early. Some question why we need to put our kids through all this madness. Other parents want more from schools and teachers. It's a strange cycle of demand and expectations. If we relaxed our methods, would Singapore's first world status be in jeopardy? If we made things tougher, will kids turn into robots with no social skills and an adult tendency to hate their parents because they didn't get to climb enough trees as kids? I don't know.

I wish all the PSLE kids good luck with their futures. Be assured that nothing, absolutely nothing, has been cast in stone yet. No one will care about those three digits when you reach Secondary 2, when you apply for a job, when you fall in love, when you shoot a rifle, when you're at the A&E with a broken arm, when you lose a loved one, when you're at the top of the Eiffel Tower or Mt Kilimanjaro, when you have kids. Not even you will care. Just breathe, and move forward. 

My 3 Best Moments In Spain

A colleague asked me on my first day of work after my holiday in Spain what was my best moment there. I needed to think about this. The answer didn't come so easily as one would imagine. The fact that I was away from work for two whole weeks was a good moment already. That I was in Spain for that time was a blessing.

I started to recall the moments I had my jaw drop. You know, in utter amazement. Then the answer, well it happened more than once, so answers came to me.

1. The Aqueducts of Segovia. When you make your trip to Segovia from Madrid, a town a hundred miles or so away, you need to take a train then a bus. The two buses services, numbers 11 and 12, pull up outside the Renfe train station and wait for tourists to pour out. To the ordinary traveler, it's the middle of nowhere. You see a train line, an impressive building and these two long buses stationary yet breathing among grassland, some grazing cows and highlands yonder framed in bright blue sky. It was unreal for city dwellers like me.

The bus situation is cute. The drivers patiently manage each passenger with a 'Hola' and process payment. Cash is fine and there is change given. Everyone waits. The twinned services then pull away together, like siblings holding hands going to school, at the appointed timing towards the little town. And like siblings in a school, each has to go his own way. Service 11 goes to the Aqueducto. (I'm sure the buses meet up again soon enough).

There's an inadvertently impressive thing that happens when you're on the bus towards this ancient landmark. The bus route meanders around a short hill before the magnificence of the 2000 year old feat of Roman engineering is revealed. It just takes your breath away. My jaw dropped, still in the bus. I staggered out of the bus mouth agape and staring, bewildered and excited.

I had to touch the rock to make sure it was real. It was. The whole thing just beautiful and untouched. I'm so glad no war, earthquake or exuberant teenagers made a dent in the structure. The Segovians whose lives live out amidst this glory would shed buckets if any rock fell out of place.

(The sooner you book your train tickets, the cheaper they are. There's a fortress castle and a huge cathedral in Segovia too. So it'll be a day trip well spent. Make sure you know when the last train out to Madrid and which bus timing gets you there to catch it. Else you'll need to get a room for the night. Which may not be a bad thing.)

2. Picasso's early works. When you ask an average Joe about Pablo Picasso's paintings, more often not the reply would relate to his Cubist works, those unreal angular works of art that so enraptured our imagination. Well it was pleasant to find out he was more, way more, prolific.

In Barcelona we went to the Picasso museum. It was well worth the few hours staring and admiring his works.   He started drawing simple things like his surroundings and the people around him. He drew marvellous creations of the coastline and boats. What caught my eye was his works as a young teenager. At 13 or 14 he drew his father and mother. The realism and quality of the brushstrokes is astounding. At the same I was struggling to sketch an apple, what more apply colour to people's faces. At 15 he presented 'The First Communion' and at 16 he exhibited 'Science and Charity'. Mind blown.

Science and Charity, painted when Picasso was 16.
Image from http://www.pablo-ruiz-picasso.net

What I learned about artists when I toured the museum was they practised sketching and testing colours and strokes before they rendered their final artwork. Like me you might have the impression that artists just kept adding on and on to a canvas, with the final vision somehow taking shape over time. No, even Pablo sketched and sketched many time before.

Barcelona Rooftops, painted in 1903.
Image from http://www.wikiart.org/en/pablo-picasso

There was a Blue phase among the European painters. It lasted for about a decade in the early 20th century. Picasso was also caught up in the melancholy of the times and rendered some of pieces in the gloomy hues of the era. I loved a Blue painting of Barcelona rooftops at dusk. I stood there enjoying it, sucked into the encroaching darkness, subtle beauty and fine blends of navy, turquoise and azure against darkening brown walls.

(The Picasso Museum http://www.museupicasso.bcn.cat/en/ is located near the Gothic quarter of Barcelona. Old 3-4 storey buildings broken up by narrow cobblestone streets. Nearest metro station is Jaume, which is closest to the big Barcelona Cathedral as well).

3. Sunset at Granada. I love sunsets. I love how the hues in the sky change from blues and yellow to oranges, pinks and purples. The way the clouds splatter across, breaking the colours down or reflecting the sun's rays for impact. I like how the beauty unravels in minutes, that if taking your eyes away for a few seconds you'd miss an incandescent pink flare streaking across like a flung feather boa. It's a spectacle that plays out daily if you're lucky.

And it does in Granada. We were there primarily to see Alhambra, the palace of the Muslim kings. Yes, there was a time when Spain was conquered by the Moors from North Africa. They ruled most of the Iberian peninsula for about 600 years before the Christians managed to get their act together and booted them back. Granada famously didn't fight back - the King surrendered. What's interesting is that this happened in 1492, the same year Christopher Columbus founded America. Our night-time-tour-around-Granada-on-Segways guide told us that the Spanish forces that took Granada did so for the immense wealth the king had. They Christian reconquerers (reconquistadors) were out of money from all the wars they were fighting and the Queen at the time couldn't outright support an oceanic expedition. So occupying Granada unscathed was the deal made wih the Muslim King and his wealth help fund Columbus' voyage across the Atlantic. (She also told us that Granada water comes from the melting snow in the mountains. Very tasty.)

I so so recommend the Segway tours. The device is so easy to operate and fun to ride on. We were climbing the slopes of Granada streets with ease. We did the tight paths and tiny nooks and crannies. It was so so fun. And during the 2 hour plus evening tour we made our way up to Mirador San Nicolas. Lots of people gather here to enjoy the view of Granada, the Alhambra light up, the view of the Sierra Nevada mountains and the gorgeous sunset. It is stunning. All the city's lights were sparkling like they were candles. The sky was a magnificent deep blue accented by yellows and vermillion. Just enthralling.

Yes the Alhambra palace and fortress were great. Ancient architecture, Muslim motifs, pretty gardens. A must go indeed. After a while, it got a little tiring. Maybe I needed a guide to regale me with stories but we did it unaided. But man that sunset. I wish we spent another night or two there, to figure out the town and other places.

(The Segway tour I did is run by Play Granada www.playgranada.com and it cost 30 euro. The office is just off Plaza Neuvo near the tourism office. It starts at 6pm and ends at about 830pm. Nice people from many places. Damn fun!)

Bye Bye Back Trouble, Hopefully Forever

I have a chronic back problem. It's been there a while, about 13 years now. First time it happened was when I bent down to turn on a printer in the office (my first job out of uni). When I stood upright, I felt a funny twinge in my lower back. By lunchtime I couldn't really walk properly. My colleague had to wheel me out on an office chair, down the cargo lift to her car. The doctor gave me an injection and the pain went away. Over the years, there have been varying degrees of incidence. Each time I ended in a doctor's office because of my back, the attending physician would ask me if I felt anything down my legs, to assess if a spinal disc is out of place. They'd lift my legs up till my hamstrings stretched out and ask if there was abnormal pain. There was never any so no one really bothered going further with other treatments. I carry a bag of painkillers with me. Tramadol makes you feel floaty. 

I did write a post after I ended up in hospital after an episode. First time it was that serious. The doc prescribed an MRI then and that conclusively identified the problem - spinal discs with bits of excessive bone growth (called spurs) pinching on nerves. Not slipped discs thank goodness. The doctors also said surgery would be too risky. They prescribed meds and 2 months with a physio. I went back to work after a week of lying down with a wraparound tummy brace. It was awful. The twinges of pain came back now and then. The physiotherapy really helped. 

Between then and now, I would have about one bad episode every 8-9 months. One hip would be higher than the other. I'd hobble to my sinseh for a course correction. He'd pull and adjust my bones into their correct alignment after a few quick acupuncture pricks to loosen the hamstrings and nerves. Usually his fingers did magic and his advice bust my ego. Sometimes my back didn't get better for a while. 

I have been at yoga for the last 7 years. Generally I think it helped my back. Sometimes it didn't. It was a strange dichotomy of actions and outcomes. I do not regret the time I put in but today I am not entirely certain the exercises I did on the mat were right for me. 

About half a year ago, I met with a uni mate for lunch. We met on the street once and decided we'd have lunch soon after. Over lunch she introduced me to a physiotherapy clinic near my office. Literally 100m from my buildings from door. I pondered for a while and figured I should finally set things right. The painkillers, sinseh and yoga wasn't quite fixing the problem. So I walked into City Physiotherapy one evening and made an appointment. No looking back. 

It's been sensational. Ms Karine Rogers has been the spinal soothing angel I've been waiting for, assigned to my rescue. The first thing Karine did was take out a blank sheet of paper and started asking questions. When did it start? What were you doing then? What exercises I did? What exercises made my back feel good? What yoga poses caused pain? Which didn't? How did I sit in the office? How's the chair? Did I walk around much throughout the day? Did it hurt when I bent forward? How about backwards and sideways? She corroborated what she inferred from the MRI scans, that I have trouble bending forwards and to the right. She taught me stretches that helped loosen my hamstrings and butt muscles. She taught me McKinsey exercises to help move my discs in the right direction, to alleviate the pinching. She would use her elbow and work the muscles around my spinal cord to loosen things up. I feel awesome after 45mins of pulling, pushing, massages and stretching. I look forward to going to these sessions.

At each session, Karine would ask if there was a time when I didn't feel any pain. It was a strange question. One usually remembers pain when it strikes, not when it doesn't. I, almost every day, would feel something. It wasn't always pain. It's usually a sensation, a feeling of something out of place. Today, I answered yes. Some time last week, I remember thinking about my back and voila! No pain. No sensation. 

The physiotherapy is working. My sessions are down from once a week, then twice a month and now once a month. It's feels good to know that I can sort my back out before it comes anywhere near snapping. Real good. 

I have one more session in December. It might be the last. Last of the best things I did this year. 

I told Karine and the receptionists one time that they should be proud of themselves because they are literally ridding the world of pain. And I mean literally. 

So I am not afraid to say I endorse City Osteopathy & Physiotherapy. They are located at 80 Robinson Road #17-01. Tel 6222 2451. They have another office in Turf City I think. Website http://www.cityosteophysio.com My first appt cost $150, subsequent ones $120.