In my opinion, in a nutshell, what we did today for CIP doesn’t make economic sense –but the lessons we have learnt today are truly priceless.
Why do I say that?
Think about it, the bus fare (air-con coach) to and from school easily costs $80. That’s to bring 27 students out of a class of 41 to collect old clothes and newspapers from 7 blocks of HDB flats. Economically that isn’t sound. Based on my previous recycling projects, the return for 10 kg of newspapers is usually SGD$1. Old clothes fetch a slightly higher price, but depending on their condition, maybe $10 per kg?
So thinking out loud, today did we succeed in collecting 80 kg of newspapers, some bags of old clothes notwithstanding (yes, yes, including the red Levi’s briefs ZT’s group got from block 172)? How many kilos of that went into the wrong guy’s truck? Did we ‘break even’ ? I have my reservations.
But to be sure, it’s taught us a few lessons. We have seen two grown-up men quarrel with each other for stuff that you guys would consider as ‘junk’ – which makes you wonder, doesn’t it? As the saying goes, “There’s money in muck”.
We’ve seen how the ‘rogue’ driver was so afraid of opening up his truck, and just returning us our fair share of the collection - for fear of losing his job perhaps? His boss would certainly have not been pleased. How would he feed his family? How many of us aspire to well-paying jobs that would ensure us financial security and job stability?
Assuredly, we’ve also witnessed first-hand the avaricious and opportunistic nature of Man. How, knowing fully well (‘cos it says so on the flyer we sent out) that our school would be making a collection from 1-5 pm today, they (the bad guys) deliberately got their people to lie in wait for us and basically ‘harvest’ the lot that our boys put their time and hard work into collecting.
We’ve also witnessed the guy’s reaction: to deny everything and say that we INTENDED to give him the stuff. Such is human nature. [Mr Eio: how much IS the stuff worth anyway?? – but if they can get away with it, they certainly will resort to all the lying and cheating just to achieve their ends and to make the profit from unsuspecting victims such as schoolchildren]
And worse still, the guy had the nerve to try to cheat me, by showing me Teacher Q’s handphone number. How he got that is simple. Teacher Q had smelt a rat. Had instructed students to snap pictures of the vehicle and its contents. The guy wasn’t happy. Forced him to give his handphone no. (very clever). Fortunately I called Teacher Q and asked him about this guy. My suspicions were confirmed. It’s clearly a case of willful misrepresentation (with an intention to mislead others), fraud and even – as the Principal and my colleague call it - theft. The stuff was rightfully ours, but by unjust and unscrupulous means they had deceived us into giving it to them.
Nevertheless, as the ‘resident’ collection contractor, they do operate there, so technically it’s their ‘turf’. But we had a special arrangement with a non-profit institution of public character (IPC), I believe – and what’s more, this is meant to be a school project. Armed with full knowledge of our activities, this ‘resident’ collection contractor called in his reserves, swooped in and basically ‘cashed-in’ on us to supply them the labour without them paying us a cent for it – getting our students to do the work for them. It’s revolting, to say the least.
BUT it does happen. It happened in the past too, when I was involved with another collection at Clementi for an NUS group to raise funds for our Youth Expedition Project.
Hopefully, your comments and your reflections, together with whatever footage you guys have captured of the ugly scene, will prevent future occurrences of this episode again. In your responses, please, as the memory of the scene is freshly imprinted on your minds, write down the location, the words/dialogue, the gestures and/or any mannerism this guy made to cause you to believe that he was the ‘rightful’ collector of the stuff meant for BT.
The truth will out. You hold the key to its unlocking.
We shall not be conveniently made use of by others and we shall not go quietly.
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4 comments:
Heyy. we need to spice up this blog a bit more.like tweaky tweaky with the template and make it hot! yea. well anyway yesterday was crazy. What happened was,we gave the newspapers to the wrong guy,lets call this b**ch StinkBalding. So we gave the newspapers plus other stuffs to stinkbalding, and that pimp just took it when it wasnt his in the first place. So then everything was still fine, till our other newspaper dude came, lets call him, shawty. So shawty got real peed that we gave our collections to stinky, So when stinky came back, oh we got it on now. We at first gave some newspapers to him, accidentally. Then we realized stinky was the wrong dude, so then we started the battle. Sir and teacher Q confronted stinky about our situation, but that b*tch wouldnt give it back! cause he thought he's sooo good. But he just scared thas all. So he drove his truck away, i tried to stop it, but i got pulled away. So stinky tried running away. Thas when we really wanted to fight. Like really wanna snap his ding dong off. And he started calling his other newspaper friend. he reall gangster and started smoking. But he's small enough. i can break him. Then my man shawty came back and we started "talking". Then teacher Q called the police since this was getting heated up. See the thing is, stinky didnt wanna give our stuff back cause he's a bi**h. By this time, half our class surrounded him, and we didnt look happy. i swear i was ready to fight that pimp right there and then. So then he got reaaaal scared, i saw his face. Plus he started sweating, which only added to his stink. So then our bus came, our bus driver looks like that french guy form the pink panther. except with lesser teeth. Then we had to go. Real sad since we all wanted to have a go at that stinky. So we left. It was an unfair advantage, teacher Q and shawty vs. stinky and gangsta. So thas basically what happened. It was real fun. Splendid fun.
sad case...
too bad i was not there, i mean u guyz did out number that chap so why not just make a fool out of him instead of trying to confront him full forced?
but i guess it was a fine choice lor...i was just rotting in front of a counter at work...stupid prior commitments...
and i can't blog either, this acct i am using was made via randomness.but it needs some sprucing up for sure.
as for physic lessons...i think it can be made better if made your own note and presentation slides or even modify them to your style... i am not saying much just that i think each person's style of teaching and blending their note with what they say are differnet and it affects the students. [as for me, i dunno what i am talking about]
ok, cheers Mr Eio!
Yo Leroy
totally agree. But sometimes a balance must be sought between over-perfection and practicality.
Over-perfection means everything u leave ur signature on it, but becomes obsessive. Also to me, it's too proud to say that i can produce all my lesson resources by myself. Sometimes i rather 'borrow' lesson resources from others, which i feel are more appropriate than my own, thus giving them credit for their work.
Over-Practicality means anything goes, so long as it works. But this would mean nothing is your work and only the key performance indicators matter, e.g. every student must get x no. of assignments (doesn't matter where the notes come from), of which y no. must be graded and complete z no. of chapters of syllabus by a certain time, regardless of whether everyone can keep up or not. Confusing? These are decisions we as teachers must make every day.
Nevertheless thanks for the input, and i will try to 'spice' up the lessons accordingly. FYI, tmr and thurs u guys got e-learning, i still must go back and teach sec 4 & 5's so no rest for me! heh.
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