MR. IAN, SIR

Ok guys...I know y'all very well brunged up...with manners up to your eyebrows and all...but do you mind NOT calling me "Mr. Ian" or "Sir"? Not that I don't appreciate your regard--I really really do--or that I'm trying to be hip or young, or whatever, by asking you to drop the formalities...

1stly, "Mr Ian" is incorrect. (We're all trying to improve our English, right?) We don't say "Mr Issac" or "Mr Kelvin", right?

2ndly, you're creating barriers with the "Mr" and the "Sir". If you really must have a barrier (baffles me, why?) then it'd have to be "Mr Ng" ;(

3rdly, you have to take a firm definite step into the fellowship of contemporary learning. It's egalitarian (classless). I choose to use the word "fellowship" because that's how I would like it to be. Kill the classroom structure: Think of a group of friends having a good yumcha at a mamak and talking till..well..bandaraya comes around, or something. No body's anybody and every body's somebody, ok? (OMG! That was a clever line! Copyright (c) Ian Ng, ok?) You have to take that step because that's the prevailing system where you're heading---those White majority countries. Might as well practise now.

And at a psychological level, using expressions of hierarchy--"Mr", "Sir", et. all--slows down your thinking. Cut through all that and go direct. Confucius he say, "I die odi."

Deal or No Deal?