the new PM's speech is 3hr and 20mins! wow! he really can talk for a long time huh?

anyway i did not watch it. its not that i'm not interested, just dun feel like watching it. my mum and dad are complaining in the living room that ALL the tv channels are showing the rally only! no other programmes! haha! anyway i hid in my little room surfing the net.

overheard that there are a number of new policies coming up, and one of the most talked about topics is the extension of maternity leave from 8 weeks to 12 weeks. i think this is a good idea as new borns need more care from their mothers and also there is longer time for the family to make necessary arrangements before the mother returns for work. although it may not encourage increase in births directly, but certainly it will make more people happy.

one interesting new policy is the adoption of 5 day week for civil servants including teachers and army. seriously speaking, i thought most (if not all) are commenting that civil servants "underwork and overpaid"? so with the new policy, won't they be "SEVERLY underwork and EXCESSIVELY overpaid"? hmmm.. i dunno the details about this, whether there is any pay cut for this move or not.. or maybe the government is simply trying to compensate the 15% paycut implemented previously by the reduction in working hours? no matter what, this move will certainly encourage more people to join the public sector.. which literally means that people like me who dun have a good honours degree can really forget about joining it in the future...

regarding education, the new PM acknowledged that the children nowadays are having a heavy workload and he suggested that syllabus to be cut. in my personal opinion, its not that the syllabus is too much for the children to handle. in my time, my syllabus covers much more than what the kids learn nowadays yet i and my peers manage to survive. in fact, its the addition of too many "irrelevant" skills/topics/subjects that take up too much of the childrens' time. eg why is there a need to learn abracus? for solving mental sums faster? computing lessons? is there such a need to spoil the eyes of the children further? till now i still dun understand the rational of "broadbase" learning. yes i agree that if the education is broadbase the student will have more choices in the future. however, they dun realise that the student's learning time frame is limited. so if the student spend alot of time to learn abit of everything, where is he/she going to find the time to specialise in something? by then it will really be too late... one good example is the 2 years common engineering adopted by ntu 3 years ago. i'm glad i dun fall into these "guinea pigs" catagory. look at them now. if you ask them what have they learnt most will tell you that they learnt nothing as what they learn is too general. so whats the use with broadbase learning as the "extra" things you learn that are not related to your course will almost 100% not going to be used! that translate to a waste of time and opportunity to specialise in your chosen field. finally these leaders of the school wake up their mind and change back to the old syllabus of 1 yr common engineering from this year onwards.. thank God for that man... if not our universities will produce more jack of all trades and masters of none..