Yours Toothfully by Dr Chan Joon Yee

So what’s new? The STI soared past the 3000 mark, the economy is roaring ahead with numbers that are supposed to make us feel good. How much of that good news is going to translate into more money in the pockets of ordinary folks like you and me? Anyone who has been around long enough to find life getting tougher year after year will know that the big picture is only for the big guys.

For those little guys like us who take the bus and MT, bus fares will go up 2 cents to 71 cents. For train fares, it is up 3 cents to either 71 cents or 76 cents. But “transfer penalties” will be removed and because of that commuters who make transfers when they travel will save some money. The plain facts are:

1. Bus and trains fares will go up.
2. Some commuters used to be fortunate enough to make a single trip to their destination without transfers.
3. Some commuters have no choice but to make transfers because of the way the bus and train routes are fixed.

Strangely, we read about such things in the news: “Depending on the decision, you can save money or you can end up paying a bit more, but for the benefit of faster travelling time,” said PTC chairman Gerard Ee.

Let’s leave the scholarly language aside. But what did Mr Ee mean by “Depending on the decision”?. How often does one make the decision to transfer from bus to train, train to bus, bus to bus to save money?

Who on earth would choose to make multiple time-consuming transfers if he can get a nice window seat from the start to the end of his journey? In practical terms, those who have no choice but to live with the inconvenience of transfers will now pay less for their inconvenience. The lucky ones who have direct services now have to pay more for their convenience. Passengers don’t win. The unlucky ones who still need to transfer have nothing to cheer about.

But even more confounding, are the headlines that say: Public transport fares to go down by 2.5% . If I had written an essay like that for my General Paper, I’m sure I would have failed. Our journalists seem to be trying to pass a very different kind of examination.

Finally, let’s observe a minute’s silence for a final year dental student who jumped to her death from a flat at Telok Blangah. Wait a minute. is one minute of silence good enough? Or should we either maintain silence forever or twist the headlines on issues that don’t look too good on a report card.

Another impressive panel of “experts” was formed to help boost the economy. More enlightening advice to increase productivity. More “new” policies in the pipeline to control the flow of foreign workers. They decided that wine is good. Too much wine is bad. So what’s the plan? Increase foreign worker’s levy and keep the workers; the longer the better. Now why didn’t I think of that?

Strange world. Strange people. When billions are lost, people keep quiet. When there’s not going to be any football (don’t ask me which league, which match. I don’t watch football at all), you get angry protests from the public. This is my Singapore. The big and serious issues are discussed in hushed tones at the local coffeeshops. The petty ones get good and loud airing everywhere. Why? Because politically sensitive issues are downplayed by the media? Because football is a “safe topic” to complain about? But seriously, recreation is important.

You must either be very weird or very lucky to love your work. Even if you enjoy your work, you don’t want to be struggling to make ends meet when you’re in your 50s or 60s. But that is what’s happening in our society. Apart from a certain group of highly privileged people, we are all stressed out and struggling with all the hungry foreigners ready to take our jobs (even dentists are not safe).

At a dinner, a colleague of mine (Chinese man) joked that he wanted to send his children to India to study dentistry and then let them come back as “Indian dentists” since the chances of them getting into NUS are virtually NIL. We were put through a difficult and expensive course of study only to have foreigners coming in the “easy way”. We might as well raise our kids cheaply in a foreign country and then bring them back through the wide open doors on our shores if graduates who had gone through a much easier path (more holidays, less homework, lower school fees) are acccepted here.

Pass me another glass of wine. We might as well talk about football. Something’s got to give and drinking won’t always work. For me, it’s travel. It’s as important to me as football is to some guys. My Australian friend Lindsey who was beer-starved on an oil rig in Brunei once said that he needs beer more than he needs his wife.

Of course I wouldn’t risk the integrity of my skull by saying that, but people like my father simply cannot do without his daily yam cha sessions with his pals. Approaching 80 and after winning a battle against lymphoma 5 years ago, he is no longer worried about the big and small issues in life. He still does a bit of accounting every now and then, but sitting down with friends over a cup of tea and some tim sum is probably the most enjoyable thing for him. He doesn’t worry about whether his tim sum sessions earn him anything. He has a life and is living it as fully as he knows how.

In contrast, there are many young and stingy workholics who panic at the loss of $2 and they want to make every gathering with friends count. How many insurance policies can I sell? How many MLM downlines can I get from this outing? Which is why some people ask me what I stand to gain from my travels. How irritating. Of course I gain tremendously from these trips, but not in monetary terms. How do I explain that? Even Confucius can’t explain the four seasons to a grasshopper. Very often, I have to find excuses or highlight possibilities of finding treasures to justify a trip.

For many educated Singaporeans, a holiday means more than shopping, sleeping, watching trees grow, paint dry and catching up with the in-laws. For me, a trip without challenges and discoveries is a wasted trip. Not a real holiday.

I’m not a lazy person by any definition. In fact, I think I’m certifiably overworked and deserving of some reward. People who think I’m not working hard enough are just self-centered, inconsiderate and ignorant bozos. With so many tight and sometimes humanly impossible schedules, something’s got to give. I need to pick up my backpack and hit the dusty trails, write a story, take some nice pictures as much as football fans need to watch the World Cup, Father needs his tim sum and Lindsey needs his beer.

Ah! I just found my favourite redundant news headline for the year 2009.

“Teaching of Chinese language must match students’ ability”, says Education Minister

And my award to the most intelligence-insulting one goes to:

“THE property tax of HDB flats is being raised next year partly to avoid having to introduce a bigger increase later should home prices continue to rise, said Acting Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts Lui Tuck Yew.”

Yes. 2009 is coming to an end and boy am I glad that the end of 2009 looks nothing like the beginning. I should have seen a bad year coming when my climbing boots broke at Island Peak base camp, ruining my attempt to scale the 6189m Himalayan peak in record time. Bad omen? I’m not superstitious, but I certainly want 2010 to start off well. Maybe I should set another goal on my Chinese New Year trip to Vietnam and Guangxi.

Business wise, 2009 has been one of the worst years in recent history. Thankfully, it’s coming to an end and business over the last couple of weeks has been exceptionally good. I don’t think I can survive another 2009. An old friend of mine gave me a timely reminder.

She said: “If you are in a valley, it just means there must a peak somewhere, right? That’s my limited mountain-climbing theory for you. Climb on, Adventurer..”

Yes, I’ll climb on.

Many years ago, when I was new to the internet, I pissed a certain bureaucrat off in an online forum by describing Singapore’s closure of Singapore’s Chinese medium schools as a stupid mistake and the Singapore’s so-called bilingual scheme as dong bu cheng, xi bu jiu. Not surprisingly, Mr Bureaucrat expressed shock at my audacity in challenging the unquestionable wisdom from the top.

I’m sure that if it was a letter I had written to the press, I would have been villified by representatives from every department of the civil service and the editor would have closed the topic just as I started to pen my first reply. Thanks to the internet, I had more supporters than enemies, all coming from the general public.

Fast forward 15 years and it’s now my turn to be shocked when I read the following article:

SINGAPORE - As a child, he was much more comfortable speaking to his friends in English than in Mandarin. Not surprisingly, Mr Vincent Ng, who comes from an English-speaking family, found Mandarin language lessons in school to be quite a chore.

Ms Adele Sim, a 29-year-old media executive, pointed out that it was easier to learn a second language through pop culture and television, as was the case when she picked up Japanese a few years ago. “I learned because I liked it, not because it was compulsory,” she said.

I must say that an admission of error from our elderly statesman is something most unusual and perhaps quite welcome to many of us. Unfortunately, I believe that the real mistake is not being recognised. There is ting xie in Chinese. There is also spelling in English. What is so mad about all that?

If the teaching of Chinese the traditional way has been so “mad” and ineffective, then why are so many of our Chinese-educated friends so proficient in the language? Just look at the teaching of English in our primary schools. Is it not boring and punishing? Is it not madness? Primary 1 students already have to do comprehension and understand grammatical rules like verb agreement. And the comprehension passages are mostly about Ali visiting his grandmother and helping her with the chores. No wizards and dragons, no magical spells, no laser weapons, alien transformations and buildings blowing up. How do these kids ever learn English then?

Ask a senior of mine who is now earnestly learning the Thai language. What keeps his interest? Are his Thai language books illustrated with bikini babes? Are the books scented with aromas from his favourite food? Most of all, does he need any of these attractions (or distractions) to keep him focussed on learning the language when he is so interested and involved with Thai temple activities?

What about my TCM course? It’s a totally different philosophy from the conventional anatomy and physiology I’ve studied throughout the years. Now I must shut down a lot of my memory banks and tune in to the new frequency of TCM. Eye problems, treat the liver. Bone problems, treat the kidneys. Muscle weakness treat the spleen. Insomnia treat the heart. 324 points, 12 meridians …. not “madness”? How bad can a little ting xie be? Why why would I put up with this madness? Because I want to learn about alternative remedies to benefit myself, my family and my patients.

The whole problem with kids not being interested in Chinese lies with the issue of options and distractions. In the good old days of Chinese medium schools, all science and art subjects were taught in Chinese. The students not only learned Chinese from their Chinese language class, they also learned it in Biology and Geography. They didn’t just have to do ting xie. They had to remember what Chinese characters are used in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s name.

What happens when you shut down Chinese schools. What happens when you teach all the science and arts subjects in English? Does one learn English only from English class? Of course not. We also learn English from Biology class, Math class, Physics class, Chemistry class, Geography class … then there is Chinese. Is it so difficult to see that the problem doesn’t just lie in the madness of ting xie? The students don’t need Chinese to help them understand Physics and Chemistry. The lonely subject of Chinese becomes just an optional distraction.

Yes, one cannot master 2 or more languages at the same level. But I believe that many people out there can be decently proficient in 2 languages. Check out some of the MBBS doctors who are also TCM practitioners. They couldn’t have passed their MBBS without being good at English. They also couldn’t have passed their TCM course conducted in Chinese without being good at Chinese. How did they do it? In exactly the same way we learn the English language. By studying not just “pure” Chinese language, but practical subjects in Chinese. Maybe we should just forget about teaching “pure” English and “pure” Chinese. Maybe we should just teach the “important” subjects in these languages and students pick up the languages “naturally”.