I have moved to mokyingren.com :)

Date: 14th March 2009

Time: 1.30pm

Format: Forum with 2 other guest speakers Mr Oon Jin Teik (CEO, SSC), Mr Choo Wee Khiang

Number of students: 40

Location: Lecture Theatre

Materials: Powerpoint

I rushed down to ACS in Dinah’s van after the NIE biathlon to give this talk at ACS. Met Mr Oon and Mr Choo, and an ACS teacher Suzanne (I think) at their staff canteen. Very nice. Well, Mr Oon kept introducing me as “the triathlete” I think he is referring to all my newspaper reports recently. haha.

Mr Oon’s talk was about how there can be very nasty things going on behind the scenes like embezzling of money. He talks about ethics and sports. Mr Choo focused on the foreign talent scheme, because he is the pioneer of the scheme as he was the president the table tennis association when Singapore brought in Li Jia Wei. He did very well saying the pros and cons of the scheme, and not being overly biased. For me, I threw them many topics. Starting from how SIngpaore supports its atheltes by various schemes like SPEX, and I contrasted with China, and the training methods in CHina and how it may or may not be applied to Singapore due to our differences in population. Also touched on the FTS, touched on the sports school. Also discussed about politic in sports, and role of youths in sports. the main point though was the mindset that many of us have that is difficult to change – the mind set that sports have no future in the way singapore does things. Academics is still most important. Until the day when MOE and SSC can work together, to encourage higher standards of training such as through better school timetable, can we then progress further in sports. UNiversities must also work hand in hand to allow flexible curriculum to allow courses to be spread over a longer period of time to allow atheltes to handle their training too. Of course, I talked about much more in the talk and it was great experience.