G is for Gary

His lone call for students to get together and 'fight' for their 'rights' looks doomed to fail. ~The Electric New Paper

G is for Gary; G is also for gallant, gutsy and gritty, all of which are the "qualities" exuded by the Great Gary - only that he is impertinently gallant, irrationally gutsy and impetuously gritty.

This is an unprecedented case whereby I dedicate two posts in my blog to a same person. No, not even Gim Aik the Egg nor Amoi the Great have the honour. But, for these two extraordinary persons, their posts were dedicated to them as a tribute out of sincerity. This one, however, is posted because of sheer indignation.

Just in case you can't recall, the Gary I'm referring to is also know as GG the braggart, as mentioned in one of my earlier posts (I Work Miracles - Thursday, June 16, 2005). After the motivation talk which didn't go well, Gary has been busy formulating his next publicity stunt. This time, he has made it to the newspapers! Come on, a standing ovation for Gary, please!

Protest at NTU? What for?
Most students ignore undergrad's call to fight for their rights.
HIS lone call for students to get together and 'fight' for their 'rights' looks doomed to fail.
By Ong Rui Lin and Nicole Na
24 March 2006

HIS lone call for students to get together and 'fight' for their 'rights' looks doomed to fail.

Many of his peers at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) feel the issues he raised are minor and they simply don't care.

Second-year engineering student Gary Goh sent an e-mail to 8,000 NTU students on Monday.

It read: 'Stand up and fight for your consumer rights or you will be given low-quality education for your years here.'

His grouses include allegedly poor living conditions in several halls, 'a computing school that is still using Windows 95', the recent fee hikes, engineering lecturers who are said to speak poor English, and a change in the hostel room allocation system.

When contacted, NTU did not comment on these issues, but said it would 'engage' the student and address his concerns.

Mr Goh thinks the quality of teaching of some of the foreign lecturers is not up to par. But he gave no evidence to support this claim. He declined to be interviewed by The New Paper.

About a dozen students had e-mailed him, indicating interest, The Straits Times quoted Mr Goh as saying.

APPEAL
Some students The New Paper spoke to did not care to read his impassioned appeal in detail. Others did not even open the mail. None felt there would be any large-scale reaction.

Said Mr Darren Tan, 22: 'Hostel conditions vary across halls, so not that many people are unhappy.'

Mr Goh alleged that students object to the scrapping of a system which gave priority in hostel lodging to students with more points in co-curricular activities. The new hall admission scheme does not do this.

But, said another student, Mr Danny Tan, 23: 'It is not like they took it out without considering the consequences.'

Though Mr Goh, an Asean scholar from Penang, does not have to pay tuition fees, he is also not happy about last month's fee hike.

Other students agree that the fee hike was too sudden, but were 'resigned to the fact' that such changes will be made from time to time.

One of Mr Goh's main peeves is the communication skills of some lecturers. He wrote in his e-mail: 'What if my lecturer is a Nobel prize winner who (says) something that I cannot understand, do I learn from him?'

But others feel that it is not a new issue.

And communications student Medha Lim, 23, did not blame the lecturers in question, as 'English is their second language'.

Even those students who agreed with Mr Goh's comments were not prepared to support his call for action.

Miss Lim added: 'It came out brash, like he was ranting.'

Mr Tan Woon Lea felt he was 'trying to hide behind the computer screen' by organising his protest via e-mail.

Mr Danny Tan felt it was his way of trying to attract wider attention. 'The way Gary went about it is rude and wrong,' he said. 'People will forget about it soon enough.'

NTU said students are 'strongly encouraged' to use formal feedback forms and meet the management, 'rather than send out spam e-mails'.

The NTU spokesman added: 'In this case, we will certainly engage the student to address the concerns that he has raised.'

Mr Tan Woon Lea summed it up, saying: 'Singaporean students will not bother and foreign students are too busy studying. We are all apathetic.'

(Source: The New Electric Paper)

Oh God, he must have been smoking pot! Spamming 8,000 email accounts and trying to instigate a "large-scale protest"... What was he thinking? His I-am-holier-than-thou attitude was more than irritating, and now, he has proven beyond doubt that he is a foolishly foolish fool. (Sorry for being redundant.) Although Gary might be a pitiful attention-craving guy, what he has done is frankly surprising and despiteful.

I'm not going to help him spread the email by posting the contents on my blog. Instead, you can read it here.

For those who're interested in reading various comments on the brouhaha, kindly visit the following blogs.

• Moronic Gary, by Gim Aik the Egg
• Gary the Great, by Spock
• Analysing Gary's Email, by Putu
  

Don't expect much from his email, though. It's basically sick crap and rotten English. (He acknowledged the latter.) There's one major grammatical error in almost every sentence.

Since I'm hardly aware of the situation in NTU, it's judgmental for me to comment on his action. But, I guess it is fair for me to say that Gary is totally a brash brat. Staging a protest like his French counterparts? If only he's capable enough to lead the students. Dude, no one can stand his insolent behaviour. Can't he just do things through proper means instead of throwing tantrum and jumping into something rash like this?

Alright, enough said. To sum it all, he's an imbecile.

Oh great, he's going to stage a protest against me after this.