Watched an ad for Singapore's Brainiest Kid. Was completely disgusted when the camera focused on parents sitting in the audience and punching their fists in jubilation when their kids got the right answer. It's disgusting. Singaporean parents are so pathetically kiasu they want their kids to be the smartest in everything. Because it reflects well on them. Insecurity, I tell you. It's like the poor kid is a racehorse that you train up and he/she comes in first in the race, giving you glory and prestige. It's friggin pathetic. PLEASE. And it's so sad to see all those tiny bespectacled kids stressing themselves out, furrowing their brows, trying to get the right answer because SOOOO much depends on it. Like if they didn't get the right answer, the world would stop spinning and it would ALL be their fault. And their parents would be disgraced. And the minute they reached home, they would be disciplined for not completing enough assessment books. And not having enough tuition. And the parents would lament that they didn't get a good enough tuition teacher, that they shouldn't have hired that incompetent high school grad, that they should have bought the assessment book certified by MOE instead of that dodgy Australian one (I mean, only people who can't make it in Singapore go to Australian universities right?). Bloody pathetic.

If you haven't already noticed. That was a rant. I haven't had a good rant in a while. Thought today was as good a day as any.

But, in all seriousness, I'm worried about the types of people that we are producing. We, the up and coming generation of future leaders (as all good politicians, nay, as all good political speechwriters cum spin doctors would put it), are the next batch of parents. Some of us are already parents. I don't think we realise it enough but we have an incredible impact on the young 'uns we will be bringing to this world. In my local context, I know that my kids will be growing up in a world of I'm-so-smart-I-can-whoop-your-ass-in-algebra-and-quantum-physics-and-I'm-not-even-in-secondary-school-so-there.

Sigh, maybe I'll just get a dog.