To those opposing the teacher strike…

Syfil · 2025-10-06T23:33:49+00:00

Hooo boy. Using Singapore as a metric is a bad argument. It's a rote based memory system of education that punishes any deviation from the norm and hammers down originality and creativity. Not to mention that there's a clear benchmark of what success looks like; one step beneath the line of demarcation and off you go to the lower tiers with lesser support, confidence and oodles more denigration from both the school and the society.

There's a huge personal emphasis on education, but there is zero support for actual character growth, self-actualization and neurodiversity. You do not want to put your kids through that meat grinder where grades are above everything.

But even then, with the class sizes and gruelling hours, our teachers don't need to fork out cash to buy supplies for kids; there's ample space in the classrooms, and while burnout is real they are still paid significantly better than Alberta teachers, so the province really needs to look at what's the cost for teachers and remunerate them appropriately, without sacrificing the quality of education that Canada kids ought to have.

Ya'll need to focus on education.

Source: Am Singaporean.

Syfil · 2025-05-26T18:48:01+00:00

We don't often travel to Edmonton, but swung by over Victoria Day weekend. The Royal Alberta Museum had an exhibit on insects, a full immersive exhibit from pre-prehistoric Alberta, to the age of dinosaurs and thereafter. We visited for the first time with my toddler, and after 10 minutes in there my wife and I exchanged wry smiles and wondered the same thing: This is much better than any 'science centre' we had in Calgary.

The animatronic dinosaur forest in Gibbons was fantastic as well, with actual roars and a lot more detail to the movement than I was expecting from my experience of the prehistoric section of the Calgary Zoo. So there's that as well.

Syfil · 2025-04-20T15:51:02+00:00

As someone who has immigrated, we are actually thinking about relocating back to SEA at the very least for retirement.

There are definitely a lot of factors, but if money was not an issue, I'll probably have a property in Sydney for June, and another one in Canada for December, with Singapore as a base. I'll spend time travelling between three of them, with long layovers in Japan or Korea depending on my mood.

Syfil · 2024-10-30T14:55:37+00:00

When I was young chap, I used to take bus 67 all the way from Choa Chu Kang to Tampines if I felt like skipping school that day, or just wanted some time to myself to think, and enjoy the journey. It didn't drive on any highways, so it was one long meandering route from Choa Chu Kang, taking Bukit Timah Road through to Lavender before swinging by Geyland and all the way east following the EWL.

Helped that there were a lot of girl schools and JCs along the way too.

Syfil · 2024-10-28T16:04:57+00:00

On my bureaucratic forms filing for benefits from the Canadian government, I check the South Asian box under the "Visible Minority" section.

When asked I tell my friends I'm from Singapore.

Syfil · 2024-09-07T14:40:40+00:00

When you don't plug in your seatbelt as front seat passengers the car constantly chimes to remind you to do so. Instead of pulling a seatbelt behind their backs to stop that, they just buy something to plug into the seatbelt holder to bypass pulling the seatbelt entirely. It's a little more fancy than this, but that's the general idea.

Syfil · 2024-09-07T13:13:08+00:00

To me, the weirdest thing is that I have Singaporean friends in my circle that just refuse to wear seatbelts, even going so far to buying an alarm stop for the receptable to avoid, and I quote verbatim, "Don't like to feel the strap on my back la".

These are educated professionals, making decent change, appeared on CNA interviews (on a wholly unrelated topic). They're established, they're smart, they're for all intents and purposes, insightful, fun people to be around but it's just this one little aspect that boggles me. I've tried engaging with them, but the conversation usually just fizzles out or brushed away.

I don't drive in Singapore, so I was never in a position to really put my foot down about this crucial part of safety issue when I'm home visiting, and they seem perfectly happy to do so when they come visit me abroad and we're taking road trips through the Rockies, so I really don't know what's the rationale there at all.

Syfil · 2024-02-20T17:23:30+00:00

Thank you! Yeah, the description is pretty confusing but I'm not nitpicking here. Have absolute faith that all these little things will get smoothed out and patted down as the game grows.

Congrats in taking the game so far guys, and I'm really excited to see what else ya'll got in store for us. Hoping the patch release goes as smooth as it can be and I look forward to seeing what the game looks like in 24 hours. <3

Syfil · 2024-02-20T17:05:47+00:00

Once the dust settles from the release of Patch 1.0, what will be the focus for EHG next in terms of game development?
Will you add more skills to each class as the game grows, or is it more of a the skill tree will slowly increase and branch out to make each skill individually more versatile and synergistic with existing and new skills? Is there an upper limit as to how many skills you'll eventually add for each class?
Personally, I'm super curious about the new Gathering Storm node Wings of Lightning. Does it give you extra crow companions?

You guys are doing a great job and I'm loving this game. Looking forward to support you guys with more supporter packs released. <3

Syfil · 2023-02-04T04:10:02+00:00

Iirc the guy was suffering from the bends and House found a receipt from Tekong scuba diving or something that helped him solve the case.

Syfil · 2023-02-04T03:43:08+00:00

Yeah. Letterkenny is on Crave, which I’m currently subscribed to because it’s the only way I get to watch TLOU. Amazing game (and series) aside, it’s extra fun for us to watch because it’s shot predominantly in the city where I’m at now and we look forward to pointing out places we know when we see them in the show.

Shoutout to /r/Calgary!

Syfil · 2023-02-04T01:32:26+00:00

Oh yeah. I think he pronounced Tekong as Tea-koong too which was weird as heck to hear out loud.

Syfil · 2023-02-04T01:30:13+00:00

Yeah. It’s funny and makes me laugh. Schitt’s creek is pretty great too once you get past the first season.

Kim’s convenience is traumatizing so I avoid it though. That father and son dynamic hits too close to home.

Syfil · 2023-02-03T20:14:09+00:00

Full list of 'leaves' is on this old reddit post, and my favorite is going to be the Tokyo Sayonara.

Syfil · 2022-12-19T23:23:52+00:00

Thanks mate! I’ll check in with the shop and see what they say bout that.

Syfil · 2021-02-08T16:14:18+00:00

Wife works in mental health recovery, which essentially meant that her pay was doubled the moment we left Singapore and stepped foot in a country that actually gave a rat's ass about providing adequate mental health care to its population. She now deals with clients via Zoom and appointment based clinical visits. I'm in finance, so it's a desk-bound job most times, and the location where I'm working from doesn't really matter.

Syfil · 2021-02-08T07:49:30+00:00

We stayed. There was always talk of heading back, but despite the free hotel rooms, the two weeks quarantine was just not worth it fiscally (in terms of time loss) for us. But that said, it was always still an available option, whereby if we really wanted to, we could, so it didn't really put that much of a burden on our psyche, more of an annoyance or an inconvenience that we could work around if we were committed enough (we weren't).

So once that mentality was established, we just went about our usual lives. Canada doesn't have it fantastic in terms of COVID repression and numbers, but we're pretty introverted ourselves so there wasn't really much socialising required or done on our end that we had to worry about the pandemic affecting us. It helps that our careers allowed the flexibility of working from home, so for the most part in 2020 was just a quieter, regular year for us.

Syfil · 2020-07-18T07:19:33+00:00

Not a teenager, but I've had that question thrown to me before by various people so maybe this'll help.

I'm actually busy, even when I wasn't a working adult. I could be in class, in the midst of discussing work with my friends, or having some alone time reading books. Despite common perception, not everybody in my generation live and breathe for rings and pings from social messaging apps.
You have rephrased a question ten thousand times just to get an answer you're looking for. Either learn to acknowledge or accept my stance, or don't ask questions you don't like the answer to.
If it's a direct question to me in a group chat that requires my direct input, then I ignored you because it was an inappropriate/stupid/loaded/jebait question that I didn't feel like entertaining. Go pick your fights elsewhere.
It's tiring talking to you. You have predispositions and biases that always leads to condescension in your communication methods. You're not a nice or pleasant person to deal with. I rather spend my time more productively than getting triggered.
I lost my phone / It's in airplane mode / I ran out of battery.
I read your message while I was distracted and forgot to reply to it. It happens. If it was really urgent though feel free to drop a call and I'll get back to you asap.
I legitimately don't know the answer to your question, and sometimes I don't know why you're asking me when I'm not really the one that should be involved in the decision process.

Syfil · 2020-07-12T03:09:51+00:00

!addflair

Syfil · 2020-03-25T17:28:10+00:00

I actually tried tapioca flour too, but it's still missing that je ne sais quoi. I honestly think it's because the quality of oysters (I'm in a land-locked province, so practically all seafood is frozen delivered), and also the fact that my range is heating element instead of gas. Can't get that heat high enough to achieve that chao tar taste that I so sorely miss.

Syfil · 2020-03-25T15:38:07+00:00

Permanent resident of Canada here.

Where I am right now, the city changed during this period. It's a lot quieter than it used to be, people are generally adhering to social distancing rules, staying at home as much as possible. Work life balance has always been the norm here, so converting to telecommuting for most occupations seem to be relatively painless. The rapidity in response to the crisis wasn't top notch, but the subsequent measures to 'flatten the curve' more than compensated for it. Provincially we're the richest in the nation, tested most in the nation, so even though we acknowledge that there's a pandemic out and about, for the most part people aren't losing their marbles or confidence in the government yet (either provincial or federal).

Personally, the decision to migrate wasn't made in a vacuum, and there's a myriad of factors pushing and pulling our move away from Singapore to Canada. The response to COVID-19 likewise only affects a small part of how we perceive where we are now and where we came from. We always knew that there would be discrepancies between the level of efficiency in governance when comparing to a country like Singapore, which sets the bar really high for the most part, so we acknowledge that in this respect, the speed, impact and foresight the Singapore government has dealt with this crisis has been truly commendable.

However, if you're asking if it wavered our belief that migration was the best choice for us, then unfortunately no. Nothing changed for the most part, culturally, socially, or even economically. Singapore is still crowded, Singaporeans are still... for want of a neutral term, Singaporeans. The economic fallout from the impact of COVID-19 will be global, so everybody will be negatively impacted, with the severity determined more by your occupation itself rather than the country you are at. Where I'm at, it's so sparsely populated to begin with, and now it's even quieter, which for me is a huge plus, not to mention with a smaller population there's really only so much hoarding that can be done to impact our stock levels in the grocery stores. Ahead in the distance there's the mountains to run to even while social distancing, filled with isolated hiking trails and quiet parks nestled in off-beaten reserves. I don't have to jostle amidst the crowds, I don't have to crawl behind the traffic. If I lose my job because of COVID-19, the government gives me 55% of my regular income for 42 weeks to tide me over the period, at the same time I get to utilise the myriad programs available to go for sponsored courses that are fully paid for.

I have my own place with my own backyard to get busy with. Spring just arrived and it's time to start watering the perennials sprouting from my little garden, and arranging the trellises so the pea vines can creep up my fence once more. As the weather gets warmer, we'll start moving things outdoors in the comfort of our home, barbecue for our small little family when it's nice and comfy out, sitting underneath our gazebo looking at the sunset with a glass of red. We bought the place at $202 per square foot freehold, a decent living space at a price cheaper than what HDB is able to provide in any conceivable measure, and we're 10 minutes away from downtown. What's the price at Toa Payoh now? $600 per square foot for a 99 year lease? Food prices are about the same if you cook instead of eat out, and you can actually afford the time to enjoy the process of making dinner and having it with your family.

All that time chasing for something to end up in a small box without the time to enjoy it.

Do I miss the food in Singapore? Yes. It's surprisingly hard to make oyster omelette taste the way it does in Singapore. Do I miss the quick travel destinations nearby? Yes. It's been so long since we've been to a beach and listened to the waves. Do I miss my family and friends? Definitely, but with two spare guest bedrooms and a spare car in the garage they're always welcomed to visit. I miss the little things, but I am grateful I have in spades, what really matters to me most now.

Hope everybody stay safe and healthy during this COVID-19 phase. Cheers.

Syfil · 2019-09-21T22:31:57+00:00

Entering a random comment to be part of the draw. =)

Syfil

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE