Sensei Michael

Another story from the Mistress’s Child series. It was another of those long banquets that her father liked to invite prominent people to. The Mistress’s Child had never liked them, preferring to spend the time with her ailing mother. She never felt like she was part of the family, though she sat at the family table. All around, the talk was on the family business, on the happenings within her father’s family, of the successes of her brother. Nobody talked about her mother, not even her father. Nobody talked about the small textile factory she had been assigned to manage by her father. And so she was caught by surprise when the Businessman came by and asked her what she thought about the family business. The table suddenly became quiet. Mistress’s Child had learnt by then to be very careful with her words. She still remembered the slap she got from her father. “As usual, father, I will listen to my brother, and follow his wishes in the family business.” What the Businessman said shock...

When I first started teaching more than 13 years ago, I remember parents complaining to me that Singapore Mathematics is more a test of the child's language abilities than his mathematical abilities. I must admit that what he said has more than a grain of truth. The two word problems below illustrate how a single preposition can make a world of a difference in the solution. Ravi has 20 balloons. He wants to share them with 4 of his friends. How many balloons will each of them get? Ravi shares the balloons with 4 of his friends, resulting in 5 persons sharing the balloons. The Mathematical statement should be 20 ÷ 5 = 4. Each of them gets 4 balloons. Ravi has 20 balloons. He wants to share them among 4 of his friends. How many balloons will each of them get? A simple switch of prepositions has changed the scenario. Ravi is not sharing in the balloons, he is sharing them among his 4 friends. The Mathematical statement should be 20 ÷ 4 = 5. Each of his friends gets 5 balloons. As a te...

Another story from the Mistress’s Child series. The entire household at the rented house was caught unprepared by the arrival of an unexpected visitor – the Brother. Alfred, the oldest, most dignified, and calmest person amidst the household, was the one who welcomed him, quickly giving instructions to get Little Mistress over. The Mistress was still sick in bed, and it would not be good for her to have her sickness aggravated by a meeting with Young Master. The Mistress’s Child rushed over from the factory, where she had been supervising the workers. What business has her elder brother in her house, she wondered. He had vowed never to recognise the legitimacy of the place, as part of the family, and refused to even acknowledge the presence of the place within the family. Why was he there? “Let’s make it quick. I’m a busy man, and my father has a meeting with me later.” She could feel the edge as he placed extra stress on the phrase “my father”. “Due to the economic conditions, we hav...

Another story in the Mistress’s Child series. It was another of those days when Alfred was at the Mansion, sipping tea with his old friends working there. He was there on an errand for the Old Master, who would not be back till the afternoon. All employees of the Old Master, however, were instructed to only take the designated Mansion Ferry Coach that took a designated route around the various places it would stop at. Because the coach stopped at the Mistress’ place in the morning, Alfred hopped on to the coach, amidst great unhappiness with his Little Mistress. She had wanted him to finish off some work in the morning before going, but hiring another coach in the afternoon was out of the question, with the household expenses being cut further. While happy to see him there, his old friends really questioned how he could be away from his work for an entire morning. He could have done so much with his time, rather than sipping tea with them. “So you guys are jealous that I’m here sippin...

My wife and I took on a translation job recently (we translated a Chinese novel into English). As usual, she did the first translation draft, while I polish up the prose (some Chinese concepts and words do not translate well to English, so prose changes are necessary in such changes). In the process of translation, she encountered many cases of the use of  lie , which has also confused my pupils in the past. I had to keep making changes when editing her translation. Now, when are all the  lie ,  lay ,  lied  and  laid  used? The hurdle to cross in understanding how it all works lies (yea, a pun) in this one very important concept -  lie  and  lay  are words which are homographs within of themselves. When  lie  is used to mean "tell something untruthful deliberately", both the simple past and the past participle form is  lied . Johnny has lied before to his mother and he lied again to her yesterday. Yes, he lies. When  lie  is used to mean "relax on one side of the body...

Yet another story from the Mistress’s Child series. The Butler had a  wonderful day out  drinking (tea of course) with his friends at the Mansion. As he opened the main door of the rented house and entered, he saw the Mistress’s Child holding on to a letter, her fingers trembling as she read. He sensed that something was wrong. “Are you alright, Little Mistress?” “Alfred…it’s a letter from my father. He…he’s inviting me to the Mansion for lunch…” The Butler could sense the fear from the girl. She had not forgotten how she was treated during her  last visit to the Mansion . “Maybe I shouldn’t go. Maybe I should just tell my father that I’ve fallen sick, maybe…” “Little Mistress,” the Butler interrupted her, “May I say something?” The pale but beautiful face of the girl before him looked in surprise. She was probably expecting him to just agree with her. She nodded, “Please do, Alfred.” “Your father is about the same age as me,” the elderly man had a glimmer in his eye as he spoke, “It ...

Recently, I received a mail from one of my Chinese colleagues (in English of course) stating that I said something  will  be done when in fact I said nothing of that sort. I corrected her, telling her that I did say something  can  be done, so if she had said something  may  be done she'd be correct too. But I cannot accept the  will  in the statement. This is also a common problem in Singapore too, where many pupils either did not listen when English was being taught, or else the teacher who taught them did not take the effort to correct their mistakes. In my 7 years of teaching, I kept getting pupils who would ask, "Mr Chan, can I go to the toilet?" I know my American friends are going to be laughing away - to you, the toilet is the part you sit on (we Singaporeans will say the "toilet bowl"...yucks). But since the pavement is for cars in the States (it's for pedestrians in Singapore), I will not correct my pupils on that. Context and culture should be all...

Another story from the Mistress’s Child series. It was a rare day off from work for the Butler, and he met up with some of his friends who happened to get their day off from work at the Mansion. They arranged to meet up at one of the best tea-houses in town. The good thing about working for the Businessman – he paid his servants handsomely, though not as well when compared to some other businessmen in town. “I heard that you are getting new horses for the Mansion!” The Butler exclaimed as he winked at his friends. “Yeah, the new breeds.” The reply came grumpily. “Hey, you guys are so lucky! I could do with some of these horses at my Mistress’ place!” He chortled. It was all he could say, so envious was he of the new horses they are getting. “Come on!” The three replied in unison, “You are only looking at all the good things we have! Look – do you know how difficult it is to clear the manure of these horses? And look at the effort we need just to get the special horse feed for these br...

A migration from a platform to another is no easy task for someone with limited technical skills in SQL, even if he is IT-savvy. In fact, I argue that the IT-savvy guy is the person who wastes lots of time trying to get things done his way, while the non-IT guy will simply hire the correct guy to do it. With little time on my hands, I decided to pay a small some for the correct guy. CMS2CMS recently published a post " Quite and Painless CMS Switchover " (it must have been a typo in my comment to them, since they quoted it - the English teacher in me nearly died!), after getting feedback from me for this useful service. For just USD29.00, I got a painless migration of all my data from Joomla (which I still could not figure out how best to use) to WordPress (the platform I have been using since 2006). I am also amazed at their business model. The amount of work needed by a human pair of hands is minimal, and everything is done via their web platform. I just need to put in their...

Introduction I write this article in response to a lesson that I taught my pupils on homonyms. I happened to mention that there are other  homo -s and mentioned a homophone. They got all confused, and so I started an impromptu lesson on something I picked up during Linguistics lessons in teacher's college. Homonyms Homonyms are words that sound alike but have different meanings. Words like  fair  (to be equal) and  fair  (a fun event you go to) are homonyms. They sound the same but their spelling may or may not be different, and their meanings are definitely different. Other homonyms include  bear  (the animal) and  bear  (to put up with something). Homophones Homophones are a subset of homonyms. Since they're a subset, they're also homonyms as well. Homophones sound alike but have different spelling and meanings. So both meanings of  fair  quoted for homonyms cannot fall under homophones. Words like  pair (double) and  pare  (peel) are homophones. Other homophones include ...

Another story from the Mistress's Child series. The entire household was abuzz with the news – the Businessman had proclaimed that he welcomed feedback on the running of the business from the entire household. This was what the Mistress’s Child had been waiting all along. She had seen so many problems with the household as she grew up, and had learnt so much during her years of helping to run the family business. She set about drafting down the many ideas she had, to show to her father. Her Butler had seen her write out the words painstakingly upon the parchment, and was worried. “Little Mistress, don’t you think you should get your elder brother to say something? I did not hear anything from the other household of him saying anything to your father.” “Oh Alfred, Alfred, you are just so full of worries! I know my father has never asked for any ideas from us in his whole life as a businessman, but we can trust him. Don’t worry!” She smiled at her Butler. She looked very pretty when...

The saga of the  Mistress’ Child  continues. “Welcome back, Little Mistress,” the familiar voice of the Butler called out to her as the Mistress’s Child returned from another of her walks around the tiny house. It might be small, but as long as her mother lay within, it was hers to maintain in as good a condition as possible. “What is it, Alfred?” She saw the frown on the Butler’s face. One thing she really liked about the Butler – he was a person very true with his feelings. “Your dress is so old, Little Mistress. Why don’t you go over to the Swedish store to get some new ones? I think Mistress would be happy to see you in new dresses.” “You know the rules, Alfred,” the Mistress’ Child replied with a smile, “My aunt has already placed a ban on the purchase of anything from the Swedish store. She claims that the local stores are as good, and buying from these stores would be cheaper since the sourcing is done by the purchasing staff at the Mansion.” “Little Mistress,” the Butler’s frow...

Another story from the Mistress's Child series. Her aunt has promised to get her a lovely dinner gown that she had been eyeing for a long time. She knew it would make her so much prettier, and she had promised the Prince that she would wear a nice gown to the party over the weekend. She just found out that her aunt has decided she would not buy that expensive gown for her. The reason? Her brother decided he would not need that new suit she would buy for him, and did not want to buy it. And if she was not getting anything for the brother, the Mistress’s Child would not get anything as well. Or at least that was what the messenger from her aunt said. Like her father, her aunt had gone back on her word. And now she, too, had to go back on her word to the Prince and wear her hand-me-down dress. She hated parties. They always made her look bad at the parties. It was barely a month before the Prince's party, before it was another of those days when parties were held at the Mansion o...

This was one of my older stories that span a serial, enjoyed by many readers. I shall reproduce the stories slowly on these pages. Welcome to the story of the Mistress's Child . There was once a man who married a woman. She gave birth to his firstborn, and the man was happy watching the firstborn grow up. The firstborn was a naturally cautious boy, stable and dependable, and he began early to assume family responsibilities. It was tough for the family at first, but life got better as the boy grew up and started running the family business. Unfortunately, like many men, his thoughts began to wander as money began to flow into his pockets and he started to court this other woman. His wife and son did not object when he announced he’s taking in a mistress. This woman gave birth to his second child, and the whole family rejoiced in this cute girl, fresh, charming and active. She was so different from her elder brother. Anyone crazy enough to try to juggle two women and two families, ho...

Back in the days when I was doing my PSLE, we simply took the total of our 4 subjects and add them together, for a total maximum part of 420 (English 110, Chinese 110, Mathematics 100 and Science 100). I scored 389 back in those days, putting me squaring among the top 10% of the national cohort. In Singapore, where the PSLE is used to rank a student for his choice of secondary schools, such a simple method soon had its issues, especially if the cohort is very strong or very weak, or the paper very simple or very hard. When students cluster around certain grades, it makes it difficult for the school to sieve them out (which, again, is the real reason for the PSLE). In order to avoid the clustering, and allow the entire cohort to resemble more of a bell curve, a transformed score is used instead of the raw score for each subject. Explaining exactly what the transformed score is would belong to a statistics lecture (which I am not qualified to give, even though I do a lot of data analyses...