In Memoriam

Today is a rather special anniversary. My great ancestor died thirteen years ago this day. We do not forget him. He always had room in his heart for causes, of which one was the College of Wyverns. He made it a point to donate a classroom or something equivalent to every one of the College's campuses.

A funny thought came to me. He would have been vastly entertained by the god-daughter, and she by him. I can just imagine the two of them. They sound very much alike in some ways. Both of them also share this ability to remind me that I have a conscience. Unfortunately, that kind of meeting can only take place in my mind now.

And you know something else? He would have been a hundred years old this month.

Mundane Aspects Of Daily Life

Get up early get up early oh why on earth it's only four o'clock thirsty thirsty slowly carefully can't wake anyone else up and drink and why can't I taste anything oh it's only water and not wine this is a negative miracle back to bed back to bed...

It's six o'clock really yes it's six o'clock she wakes me up by sitting on my legs until I am sure I exist and there is a weight at one end of me and surely that's the load-bearing end and not the loaded end brush those furry teeth I am sure were not furry after I brushed them after dinner last night but furry now and don't forget to shave you'll be late no I won't it is seven twenty am and I will just about make it why were you up so late last night I was finishing up some work for a student it's always the students isn't it no no no sometimes it's just me...

Walk fast walk fast heh not so bad for an old man oh please you're not old yes I am my feet are hey they are not killing me after all and here we are on the first shift of the invilating day and we give out five sheets of paper someone snorts is that all young people these days can't write for peanuts and I think to myself well obviously young people in those days also and hey this is an extraordinary batch you might be surprised...

Oh here they are filing in looking apprehensive and some bored and and some just looking forward to it and you have to check their pencilcases just in case they are smuggling explosives I always feel kind of silly doing this and already she puts up her hand and wants more paper and I think to myself might as well give her more she's capable of using it anyway and she looks morose and she looks chirpy and she over there looks as if the sky has grown another eye...

And he gives me that mischievous smile I have known for years and he gives me that manic smile I have known as well and he looks all business and he is going to say the pledge and the other he over there is just waiting to respond to the examination questions you can see it in the way he handles his pencilcase...

There is only so much you can do in five minutes but some people are very good at using their five minutes gently now do not disturb do not break the slender thread of consciousness of concentration of critical appraisal oh my goodness they chose that poem of all things the winter syntax of a monkey crossing the river it all blurs together...

Breakfast noodles new crop of dynamic powerful super overachieving chili padi sliced thin each one is a ring of fire that erupts several times over your continental palate by the time you finish you realise that today is a hell of a day and all of it is exciting and yet isn't this what a day is supposed to be...

Back into the fray recharged it is so long and yet it is only the first paper and this huge group is already almost almost almost already done and you collect the papers amused at how it is in this age of nuclear energy and HDTV people still tie scripts with string as if intricately they tie the knots of their lives in the tapestry of the fates and here you are even more amused that you are genuflecting or something on your knees at the front of the great hall like a monastic ascetic and you wonder if anyone notices the...

It is the end of the day someone noticed well it wasn't that bad a day for being on your knees and aware that without prayer nothing really can be done and even then you have to believe else what do you think will happen?

Daylight 04

I've spent more than a decade at my current workplace. It's a somewhat more permanent temporary home than most. Much of that is due to the people – colleagues, adjunct staff, other adults; most of all, the students who pass through the millrace. Some people treat the job as just a job; this is to be expected, because to some people, it really is. Some people draw a solid line between professional and personal lives, which is ethically ideal to them.

I think that's not possible. It is unethical to have teacher-student relationships which do not partake of the personal. There. I've said it. This is because the profession and calling of the teacher are inextricable from the ministry of caring. Teaching, the art of shaping a contrary mind, is by nature intensely personal. It isn't like engineering, in which no person-person interface needs to be deployed, and in which humans need not communicate directly.

That's not to say that a teacher cannot keep a professional distance or make professional decisions. But it is true, by the nature of things, that these actions must be explained in professional terms with full awareness of the personal considerations which might develop from them or which are intrinsic to them. And so I have to say that I cannot be a friend to my students until they graduate, while being friendly and encouraging and knowing that I have invested emotionally in them. I am de facto a friend, but I cannot advertise it or even demonstrate it at times. That will have to wait.

It is sad to be unable to return what I have so often been granted by the grace of my students. But I try to compensate for it, and I hope that sometimes it comes close.

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Here is my fourth decade, which has just passed on.

I became a head very much against my own will at the end of 1996. 1997 then, for me, was traumatic and vastly irritating. I attempted to climb down at the end of the year and was told that I shouldn't, as I was doing a good job. It is interesting to see what that translates to in the minds of men. It was in that year that I was told to keep a professional distance from my colleagues, to spend time with the 'right people', and to increase my exposure in the 'right ways'. I felt that these were some sort of pseudo-Confucian-Buddhist instructions and ignored them.

My personal ethics, of course, made things awkward. I never took any of the staff I appraised out for a meal, whether singly or in groups. I gave them all presents, each and every one, every year. I pushed for bonuses and rewards whenever they deserved it. I ran the largest department in the country, doing all the paperwork and writing endless position papers. And I hated every minute of it. It was all about administration, you see, and that's not my gift. And so, a quick digression.

The gift of administration is the talent for instinctively seeking and finding the best possible way to simplify the job for other people. An excellent administrator makes life easier while achieving or surpassing the required objectives. An effective administrator achieves or surpasses the objectives, but might not make life easier. An exacting administrator makes life hard enough so that the objectives will be achieved at the very least. And an egregious administrator makes the work harder than it has to be and is unclear about exactly what the objectives are. I was effective, but not better than that. I don't have much of the gift, if at all.

I earned my Master's degree in 1999 and did lots of amazing and wonderful things (well, looking back , I can see how they weren't really that great, but they seemed that way to me) for the next five years. At the end of 2004, my time was up. I returned to the ranks of the teachers, no longer a head of the game. 2005 was the happiest year of my life in the school.

For two years now, I have been largely policy-free, largely administration-free. I have worked with true gems of colleagues, brilliant diamonds and resilient sapphires, tough jades and lustrous pearls. I caught up with my professional life, while (I hope) remaining an asset to the place in which I live and work and have my being.

Most importantly, I continue to find more time for students. My brain is at their service while it still contains enough connections to be of use. Of course, I will continue to infuriate people. I cannot help it; we are enjoined not to conform to the pattern of this world. And perhaps, those of you who read this will see me with kinder eyes, understanding that the pattern can indeed be broken, and I have done that in at least one way through the gifts I've been given.

You who have your own gifts, your vast and unexplored worlds of talent, break the pattern in your own way. And someday if you should be in a tavern in Marrakesh or Dublin, lift a glass to my memory – if that memory was kind to you.

Daylight 03

Take an equilateral triangle and inscribe within it a circle such that this circle touches all three sides tangentially. You now have something which seems to belong to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, that latest (and some say last) of Mdm Rowling's money-spinning novels. But this isn't what I think of when I see that symbol. The truth is that for more than 20 years, I've been sealing my letters with that sigil.

That sigil, the circle in a triangle, symbolises many things to me. It is Alpha and Omega; it is the Delta which is Change; it is the Three which is One. And I'm sure it must be a pretty common shape, a diagram found in many mathematics texts. It was in my third decade, from my 21st year to my 30th, that this sign became even more important, more significant (if you will) to me.

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Here is my third decade.

1988 brought with it my release from official duties. It was also the year in which I was threatened with statelessness, despite having served the state faithfully and well. In order to stay here, I gave up my birthright to the Islands of the Blessed. I was told, however, that if I really wanted to return, to remember that the right conferred by birth was immutable.

With that, I entered the university life. I hated much of it. Although I finally got myself the paper of an education (majoring in applied and theoretical alchemy, in numeromancy and homuncular intelligence), I hated the lack-of-education I was really receiving. I was fortunate to find mentors there, and some like-minded associates. In the end writing, reading and debating saved me. I was a terrible student the rest of the time, an incandescent speaker when moved (would you believe Best Speaker at the Inter-Faculty Debates?), a wicked writer when necessary.

I have been told that poor grades are the sign of a defective character. I think that is true in one sense; those who see defects are those who are limited by the necessity for grading. I have been told that if you are a bad student, it is a moral failing and shows lack of determination, industry and conscientiousness. Well, I am unrepentant. I learned a lot more by hacking the mainframe and failing my project than by submitting anything on time. I did my best for what I liked; I passed what I didn't. I aced Human Resource Management and scraped a bare pass in Math. And I hung out at the concert hall, the library, the museum and the computer centre.

I now know that a lot of it was arrogance. I was very happy to project the image of intellectual rebel. Challenged by a good friend on this point, I spent sleepless nights realising I was not really one. And so I enterprised in my heart that I would return to my God-given gifts and spend a lot more time doing useful stuff. That meant studying hard and preparing, once more, to be a teacher – a plain, ordinary but dedicated young person.

It was at the end of my final year that I got sidetracked. Oddly impressed by my ability with practical work, two senior professors offered me a job as a researcher. It was a good experience, and I ended it having learnt much from my co-workers and supervisors. After completing my contract, I entered the National Educational Institute.

This was a funny time. I remember being filled with cold irritation during my entrance interview. The lead interviewer had been asking increasingly personal questions which I had rebuffed. Finally, she asked, "Are you trying to tell us that your father is Professor X?" (Well, no, but I'm not going to bandy my father's name around, so 'X' will have to do for now.)

I was furiously calm. I said, "No, I've been trying not to tell you that, especially since it's on my application form. I'm afraid I didn't have much choice when it came to picking a father. Is that all?" A year later, in July 1992, I emerged with 4As and 3Bs, the best grades I had ever obtained in any examination since my sad attempts at a secondary education.

My first traineeship posting was to a wonderful government secondary school. I learnt a lot from the very dedicated mentors I had in that school. Then I was posted to a convent. How awkward! My limited experience had not prepared me for the next 33 months. I remember spending a lot of time trying to be a good teacher. Eventually, I decided I was a bad man, got married, and left the convent. My principal encouraged me to begin working on a Master's degree before I left – the last time a principal would ever do this for me.

I changed schools in 1996. Little was I to know that my homecoming would be fraught with all kinds of trouble. From a simple teacher trying to do his best, I was nominated for a headship in August that year. I finally sipped from the poisoned chalice in November. It was the end of the third decade, and the end of my life. Or at least, a large chunk of the good part of it.

Daylight 02

The rollercoaster period from 11 to 20 is always the most turbulent and out-of-control time in anyone's life. I spent it learning that the world could be a very cruel place, a wonderful place, a place of abandonment and desire, a place to weave webs and to be entrapped in the snares of others. I learnt too many things, and yet, perhaps too few.

It was in this age that the Moorcock Introductory became real to me. What I call the Moorcock Introductory is found in books written by Michael Moorcock, one of the pioneers of the New Wave SF movement. It reads like this:

In those days there were oceans of light and cities in the skies and wild flying beasts of bronze. There were herds of crimson cattle that roared and were taller than castles. There were shrill, viridian things that haunted bleak rivers. It was a time of gods manifesting themselves upon our world in all her aspects; a time of giants who walked on water; of mindless sprites and misshapen creatures who could be summoned by an ill-considered thought but driven away only on pain of some fearful sacrifice; of magics, phantasms, unstable nature, impossible events, insane paradoxes, dreams come true, dreams gone awry, of nightmares assuming reality.

It was a rich time and a dark time.

And so it was that I began and ended my second decade, immersed in learning that the world which seemed real was not at all the world which really existed.

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Here is my second decade.

I completed my primary education as the eldest sibling of three. At this time, looking at myself with 'sober judgement', I realised that I was the least prepossessing of the three, and that apart from a treacherously well-trained mind, I was probably the least intelligent as well. This was not a cause for discontent or envy, but it did affect my positioning. If you are unsure of your raw talent or ability to charm, you had better develop what talent you have.

And so I did. I took up the study of the life sciences and everything else I could study which I was certain the education system wouldn't provide in timely fashion. I began to read a dozen books or more a week; sometimes, that many a day. My mother complained that reading in dim light would ruin my eyes; I countered by saying that dim light never hurt anyone's eyes but strong light had been known to blind.

But my motivation was not to crush my 'rivals', although it might have seemed so. My motivation was something people still find hard to understand: each of us has rare abilities, although perhaps not granted in large measure – mine was the ability to process information in large chunks and come up with something useful. It was like playing with derivatives on the intellectual stock market. My favourite poem was Eliot's Prufrock:

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous...

The year was 1979, and I was making myself into a one-man think-tank.

The 1980s began with me entering secondary school. Life was turned on its head in many ways. Chess players who had been serious rivals in primary school at the inter-school tournaments were now classmates and team-mates. Old rivalries were shelved and new ones made. And in that year, Dad decided we would all go back to the fenlands for a long break. My education never really recovered from that. Already weird, disjointed, and self-motivated in eccentric ways, it became even more incompatible with the national education system.

I remember my brother producing little bound volumes on the pre-revolution Russian monarchy and other abstruse topics. He was only nine. I was discovering miniatures wargaming and the delights of building your own computer. I took up courses in self-defence (with weapons and without), economics, pottery, metalworking; I was forced also to play rugby in the dead of winter and shower in ice-cold water afterwards. It was a lunatic time. After a year had passed, I had gained 10 cm of height and about 22 kg of mass. It was amazing.

Returning to Singapore was really traumatic. It was no longer possible for me to use my brain in its most natural way; rather, I had to work at compartmentalising knowledge and presenting it for the sake of examinations. This was not wholly bad – it taught me self-discipline and gave me the capacity to endure self-abuse. I spent a lot more time in church, and worked hard at reading through the Bible and what other people thought about it. These were fruitful years; I learnt that if you trained under conditions of firm discipline and a heavy load, you could learn a kind of dangerous single-mindedness which had many useful applications.

1984 came, and with it the dawning realisation that Orwell had been right about the philosophy and technology, but not the history. It was pretty obvious that Orwell's world was with us, but that enough good things remained for it not to be that obvious. I enjoyed the 1980s because I transited my adolescence in those years, but like many exciting and interesting feats of daring and bare survival, it is not something I would do again.

I became a pawn of the state on 17 December 1985. For the next few years, I learned all I could about modern warfare as a private soldier and then a specialist. Dad had sown the seeds in my first decade with his never-ending supply of West Point manuals and wargaming materials. Now they bore odd fruit. I began to help people simulate actual war, I learned skills of distraction, deception, and diversion. If I hadn't become a teacher, I might have tried to sign up for the long-term military plan.

My second decade ended while I was still in the armed forces. It was a wonderful time. People think that being in the military means loss of comfort and freedom. I think that's only true if you go in with false expectations. It can mean, as it did to me, independence and learning how to stand up for what is right under extreme pressure. It means learning how to reject a cigarette or sell a Bible while not looking like a total wuss. And at the end of it, it meant self-respect and personal bearing that nobody could take away.

It also meant that I emerged libertarian in political philosophy and a free-trader in economic philosophy. What a decade!

Daylight 01

It is the moment of the greatest fatigue of all my first forty years; it is the moment of exultation in which I am reminded that forty is both a period and the end of tribulation, a period and the end to youth. I am not old today. I am older than young, but not old. This is the beginning of my prime.

Frequently, my heart sings with Harry Belafonte, "Come, Mr Tally-man, tally me banana / Daylight come and I wanna go home..." This world is a temporal and temporary lodging; it is not my eternal home. But there are still bananas to pluck, stacks to build, renegade overseers to chastise and reproach. I am only a humble banana-man.

"This is my story, this is my song, praising my Saviour all the day long."

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Here is my first decade.

I was born in a little university town in East Anglia, a former swamp and breeding-place for odd fish and flies. The nearest water source was a muddy rivulet so shallow that it could be navigated by anything waterborne piloted by a man with a pole. I had odd neighbours – the man who blew things up and picked glass out of his own flesh for decades, the man who rewrote the history of time. It inured me to the awe of things intellectual. I was a year old. I would eventually return for a small slice of my education.

My brother was born some years later. I distinctly recall asking my father, "When will he be old enough to play with?" My father, with characteristic wisdom, replied, "Do you really want him to be old enough?" My father was the youngest in his family. I always wondered what he really meant by that, and was never brave enough to ask. My brother was the bright one, and also the noisy one. This has always been true.

When I was six and a bit, I went to school. Before that, desultory attempts had been made to entrench my backside in a playschool or other medieval torture-house. I defeated all such attempts by the simple device of falling ill and spreading plagues around each time I went. I ended up being largely home-schooled, which was true even when I got to high school.

Education had always been highly-regarded in my family. My venerable grand-aunties were trained pharmacists; grandfather was a scholar and a physician who could diagnose just by observation and acute listening (both to the patient and to the patient's body). My other grandparents were teachers with radical pedagogical methods; I will never forget my maternal grandfather's teaching machines and shelves of books all designed to help a person teach himself, and my maternal grandmother was able to infuse the word 'learn' (as in 'you WILL learn') with such trenchant force that neurons automatically aligned in military order when she spoke. It was a given that everyone ought to go to university, and I (naïve and very young) didn't realise how unusual that was.

I suffered in my first year at school. I had a second language, Mandarin, that nobody spoke – at home, we had many Chinese dialects, Malay, English, but none of that peculiarly harsh administrative tongue. I failed in the first semester and got an A in every final examination thereafter till the end of primary school. My granduncle the savant laughed and said, "Right now, three-quarters of all the people can't speak Mandarin at all; I can't do it myself. But when I'm done, 80% will speak some of it."

I was ten years old when they decided they would sell the land. It was terrible to see the broken hulk of the house, the devastation and ruin that followed as my childhood self-destructed. I have photos. I seldom look at them. They are taking too long to fade. It was the year that my father bought me my first encyclopaedia, a small five-volume set that seemed enormous. I treasured it then, and still do although it is now somewhat out of date. I began to study alchemy, and learnt the Mendeleevian model of the elements by heart. And it was then that I knew I would teach it some day.

My sister was born that year, early and purplish-red. Mother was fine one evening, helping with the preparations for Lunar New Year celebrations. That night, she was taken away while I lay sleeping. Dad told me to get back to sleep; everything was OK and Mum was off to the hospital. I woke and went to school, and after school my grandfather accosted me with the news that I had a sister. It was the year that I saw Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher drag the unwilling Harrison Ford into battle against the Death Star. It was a great year. And I was only ten.

The Alexandrian Key

It is said that the Great Library at Alexandria...

• was the largest collection of learning of its time or any time before it


• was one of many libraries all established in cities called Alexandria


• was indexed by complex cryptography because it was so large


• was razed by a truly literate conqueror


• was a threat to world peace


• was a necessary evil


• was

Egypt is a mysterious land. God works in mysterious ways.

Celebrant: Open the gates of your heart. This is the morning. The blood of the sun is within us and the light of the dawn covers the land with its heat.

Congregation: This is the eye of the day.

Celebrant: Open the gates of your breast. This is the morning. The breath of the sun is upon us and the light of the dawn brings life.

Congregation: Behold the eye of the day.

Celebrant: Open the gates of your mouth. This is the morning. The word of the sun is upon us and the light of the dawn calls us to praise the Ancient of Days.

Congregation: Praise the Ancient of Days!

All: For the sun has He set as a light from dawn to dusk and as an arbiter of season and sign, of promise and of hope.