The kids need to learn how to listen

After the funeral in the morning, I kept my commitment to a bunch of school kids from various schools gathered at the Chung Ling High School in Penang. I guess I should have learned from my previous experience with a primary school kids in Parit Buntar. They are restless and can't sit and listen for long periods of time.

I was totally disoriented when the moment I started talking, the kids started talking amongst themselves. That really got to me. Shhhh, and they quieted down. But not for long. Soon they are buzzying away again. I asked whether they could understand my English. Yesssss, the yelled. By then, I was no longer in the proper frame of mind to inspire and be inspired. After one hour, I said we should stop. And I asked if they had any questions. Happily, one or two asked some questions, which I didn't quite have the answers to.

After the talk, my son said "dad, not bad lah". But we know better. According to my kids this is normal. Jillian told me that in her School, even if the speaker speaks in Mandarin, the kids will listen for one or two minutes and then start talking amongst themselves. Fortunately, quite a number of students responded to my questions during my presentation. Typically, everyone will keep quiet. Even my nephews who study in Singapore say it's the same over there. Nobody will want to response to questions from the speaker. So I guess I should be grateful.

Later, my brother-in-law who has four school friends who are now headmasters say the problem is these kids take part in these activities because of the 10% allocated for co-curriculum. They join the activities just to get the points.

So, back to the drawing board if we want to reach out to the students in schools.

The Long Goodbyes

A couple of weeks ago I finished reading Mitch Albom's "The Five People you Meet in Heaven" and "Tuesdays with Morrie". Both are about dying. The book on Morrie Schwartz was also turned into a TV movie and I think it was called "The long goodbye". It's about a professor who was dying of Lou Gehrig's disease which is medically referred to as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). What is it? It is a slow death, where you eventually lost total control of all the muscles in your body. The last organ to go is the lungs - it will collapse and suffocate you. But Morrie chose to let the world experience his "pain", to let people learn how to deal with dying, so that they can start learning how to live. He was interviewed by Ted Koppel three times on national TV. And his former favourite student, Mitch, visited him every tuesday (flying in from Chicago to Washington everytime) to write a final thesis. Each week they talked about life (marriage, the world, feeling sorry for yourself, family, emotions ... and of course about death). Morrie's medical bill was huge but the advance from the book Mitch wrote helped to pay the bills.

And as they say, the only sure thing in life are taxes and death. We know we all want to stay alive. We want to prolong life even when we know the diseases are going to get you, eventually. Cancer. Anyone of you had never had a family member die from cancer? My mom died from a brain tumour, but she lived a long life (81 years, I think). My eldest sister died from cancer which spread from the gall (age 67). Another sister is fighting stomach cancer with chemo (now finished) and Qigong. My father-in-law died of lung cancer (from years of smoking when he was younger, aged 83). Just heard that a cousin-in-law is going through chemo AND radiotherapy for brain tumour and it is driving him crazy (and everyone else around him). The costs are even crazier. A single dose of chemo at Mt Miriam Hospital is RM500. And if you are stage four, the chemo can be everyday. First they try to operate. That will put you back 60,000 to 70,000 ringgit at a private hospital (blood-suckers, aren't they?). And whether they can remove every bit of the tumour or not, you still need chemo and radio-therapy, just in case. Most of the time, the battle was lost before it started - the doctor may tell you the success rate is like less than 30%. Why do we still do it? Because we want to prolong life.

But that's only cancer. What about dementia and alzhiemer? The old people's diseases, we always say that. These diseases just suck the life out of you, and leave you bedridden (for years!), unable to eat (patients eventually have to be fed liquids through tubes stuck into the nose), and you are totally oblivious to everything that goes on around you. But we still have to prolong life - only there is no quality of life. We always joke about it : "oh no, I'm getting alzhiemer!", whenever we forget stuff or don't remember names. When do you really know when it's coming? Can we stop it dead in it's track?

Shall I go on? Diabetes, stroke, kidney failure, heart attack ... They are the "rich man's" diseases. We put too many toxins in our bodies. Don't believe them when they tell you "don't worry, it's a safe level, approved by the government and the WHO and the FDA". Yes, they are all foodgrade poisons. Classic oxymoron.

1933-2009
Goodbye, Ah Poh.
I hope the 5 people you meet in heaven bring back the memories.

Keep a pet to achieve zero waste

I must say they learn really fast. For many of them, it was the first time they were introduced to the idea of zero waste. One of them told me during lunch that all this while they were under the impression that recycling is what they should do to reach sustainable development.

After lunch, one of the students started to collect the chicken bones from the plates. I asked her whether she was going to feed the cats. I wanted to start a discussion about how the action of "encouraging" the cats will make the cats bolder and they will start jumping on the table and all that. But then she changed my perspective completely.

She said "yes", and then added : "this is zero waste", pointing the cat coming for the bones. And it gave me a jolt. Hey, yes, that's what we used to do back in the good old days. Keep a dog or some chicken or cat and all your leftovers are gobbled up, including all the bones. Nothing goes into the garbage bin.

And I started thinking, "perhaps this should be part of the sustainability agenda". Instead of looking at the cats (and dogs, and there many at the hostels) as the problem, we should look at it as an opportunity. I saw how they girls loved the cats. When we first came down to eat lunch, there were at least 8 or 9 cats all ready to jump on the tables. One of the girls made some sound and all the cats zoomed in on her. One of the other girls had gone back to her room and came back with some friskies. When we were eating I suddenly realised that the cats were nowhere near our tables (except for one or two manja ones). The girls used the friskies to distract the cats so we could eat in peace.

So, I said to the ladies. Hey, this should be integrated into their Eco-Desa Saujana Project. Sustainable development is not just about the ecology and the economy; or recycling and organic garden. Human development is a key component. One of the things we have talked about in the people-centred agenda is defining and developing a set of values of the "sustainable person". Caring for pets and animals is definitely one of them. Of course, we would have to have some programme for neutering (Hey, Vivian, hear this?) to control the population.

Me in action, talking about "Choosing a Greener Lifestyle" to the Saujana ladies. The hostel is 100% ladies only. These are volunteers for their Eco project.

The Eco-Desa Saujana is an experimental project to turn the whole hostel "sustainable" (so to speak) and the students have been arranging talks to help them better understand the issues and concepts. (My Airbook is making one helluva a racket now; the fan is spinning very noisily and this machine is only one year old; am afraid it will crash anytime now). Next talk will be to all the first year students of Saujana on 3rd July to introduce ideas to them. Some of the students told me that before they entered USM, they had never even taught or heard about sustainability. The Schools are not doing much to prepare our young (but this may be changing - am going to Chung Ling High School Penang for similar talk this saturday 20th June).

After my talk I sat down to chat while waiting for lunch to be ready. The next item they brought up to me was a total surprise. Husna posed the issue of what can they do to reduce or remove the environmental impact of sanitary napkins. Ah, but I quite quick on my feet, even when sitting down. And I remembered my conversation with Leh, our lecturer specialising on paper. She talked about developing an environmentally friendly "pampers". And I said, hey, this is something USM should also pursue under our APEX agenda. Research on environmentally friendly sanitary pads. I also encouraged them to agitate the companies and even government agencies to ask them to develop products which all the green ladies would like to use. This could be the next "white coffin".