After the famous Mas Selemat escape and a string of other events, Ministry of Home Affairs has done it again.

What annoyed me was not the fact that it has happened again but what the Minister has to say regarding this event. What it means is perfectly summed up here.

With the pay he is drawing (which many people, like myself, can only dream of getting), I am sure he can do a better job than to blame everyone but himself for this kind of screw ups. In another place, we can be assured that he will have either resigned or been sack. It seems like Ministers don’t have the word “resign” in their dictionaries in Singapore.

The Singapore government is rather screwed up. Suffice to say, it is still doing a relatively good job compared to other countries.

Tags: singapore

According to Eric, this is the last year where I’ll be a teenager because this is the last year where my age has the suffix “-teen” in it. And it so happens that my lunar birthday is today as well. What a coincidence which, again, according to Eric occurs once every nineteen years.

Had a drink just now and even though I am far from being drunk, I can feel the drowsiness seeping in. I need to hit the sack soon.

Mr Wong, Miss Lim and gang gave me a wallet for my birthday and the design turned out to be an imitation/parody of the Intel logo. Real nerdy. Thanks a lot guys!

And it just so happens that the soundtrack for a game I ordered arrived today. Another coincidence. I will probably write more about the game next time.

On a totally unrelated note, a good read about National Service of which we are all compelled to serve.

Tags: birthday, national service, the world ends with you

First of all, read this.

After I read this last Saturday, I was both stressed and at the same time disgusted. Stressed because these kind of “high flyers” are going to be competing with me for all the stuff that I am wanting to apply for and because I am reminded of the competition I face (for our excellent local universities). Disgusted because these “high flyers” claim that they are worried for their places in so-and-so and so they go all the way to Volunteer Street and volunteer themselves for services to spice up their C.V. How practical. If they are worried, what of the rest of us?

In case you were wondering, I will admit, honestly, that I don’t have “passion” for volunteering and basically everything you see in my “C.V.” was done because either I wanted to or because I was interested in them.

More reading materials: link & link

Inflation projected at 5% for the first half of next year.

I never thought I would see this kind of inflation figure in Singapore.

And the Minister says “buy cheaper products!”

Tags: singapore

Catherine Lim, a rather famous Singapore author, now has a site with all her writings posted and archived.

A great read for everyone who is concerned about Singapore.

Not your usual bread-and-butter post!

Tags: singapore

GlobalIssues.org is a pretty good site with very well sourced articles managed by a single soul alone. Do check it out.

Useful for GP, KI and for general knowledge. We are too well fed to know of much of the suffering the world is submerged in.

There is something interesting with one of the headline articles in today’s papers. You can look it up under the title “$6.3b solar plant to be set up in S’pore by 2010″.

Anyway. the first thing of note is this paragraph which made me laugh when I read it. A quirky sense of humour, no doubt.

That means that the future is looking bright for Singapore’s ambition to become a shining light in the global marker for solar and other clean energy.

When I looked at this paragraph and the article title, I can’t help laughing.

And the second pick comes from someone who has studied too much. The journalist quoted the units “gigawatt” and “megawatt” wrongly as “Gw” and “Mw” respectively. According to some organization that governs the SI units:

This SI unit is named after James Watt. As for all SI units whose names are derived from the proper name of a person, the first letter of its symbol is uppercase (W). But when an SI unit is spelled out, it should always be written in lowercase (watt), unless it begins a sentence or is the name “degree Celsius”.

Basically, it should be “GW” and “MW” instead!

Alright, I was just bored.

The Singapore government likes to do the weirdest of things, like erecting an ERP gantry outside someone’s condominium!

Anyway, I think I made a comment recently that might have hurt someone else’s feelings. It was made out of an attempt to make a joke, but it went awry and it was misinterpreted. I am ashamed of it and I apologise. For those of you who do not know what is going on, don’t bother.

This leads me to my other point: what of those jokes directed at yours truly? It seems like there is a trend for me to be the joking subject of many situations. I just take them on and don’t really bother thinking about them. I used to be very affected and was too sensitive in the past but due to the efforts (I don’t even know if these efforts are for the good or for the bad) of certain individuals, I’ve grown to just shake them off after a laugh. But it is precisely this attitude that the jokes are sometimes overboard and I do get affected by them, just that I do not show them.

I’m not pointing fingers at anyone. I’m just trying to say that please be considerate to me as well when you make some passing remarks. I’m fine with them most of the time but you could say I am somewhat a rather sensitive person. I think that my personality type shows that as well, somewhat.

An ESFJ who has developed in a less than ideal way may be prone to being quite insecure, and focus all of their attention on pleasing others. He or she might also be very controling, or overly sensitive, imagining bad intentions when there weren’t any.

So here ends one of the rare personal posts I’ve made in a while.

Tags: singapore

The Straits Times “Letters to the Editor” template. Use the template below to compose your letter. The publication of your letter is guaranteed! All you need to do is to fill in the blanks. What could be simpler.

—————————-

Dear Editor of the Straits Times,

I fully agree with the govt’s stand on ______________.

The Singapore govt has led Singapore to become one of the most successful nations in the world. This would not have been possible without the leadership provided by the govt since independence.

Mr. __________, in a letter to your forum dated ________, said that we should allow more freedom and more political space in the area of_____________________. He also suggested that__________.

I do not agree with him at all. Singapore’s political situation is unique and to take a more liberal stand regarding____________ would be playing right into the hands of Singapore’s enemies.

We are very fortunate to have the PAP govt to lead the country through_____________. Without the PAP, Singapore would still be a fishing village.

To Quote the Hon BG___________, Minister of ____________, Who stated….”_________________________”. I agree with the Hon BG___________ 100%.

We are lucky that we have people like him who are loyal and committed to Singapore.

Had he decided to go into the private sector, he would be earning a lot more. However, he was willing to make considerable sacrifices in order to be given the opportunity to lead Singapore.

Let us not be mislead by people like __________ who claim that Singaporeans have no political freedom. The fact that free and fair elections are held every few years shows that the country is democratic.

Ideas such as those proposed by ______________ should be nipped at the bud. To allow such ideas to take hold would cause the country to fall apart.

Singapore is my home and I have 100% faith in the govt to lead us through________________.

Let us all rally behind the govt. They have the interests of all Singaporeans at heart.

TAN TU LAN.

- Source: http://www.sgforums.com/?action=thread_display&thread_id=286045
Note: The original source include some… eyesore content. Don’t say you haven’t been warned!

1. The PAP and the people - A Great Affective Divide - Catherine Lim
2. LRWC’s report on Singapore’s judiciary and legal profession
3. Keep377a.com vs Repeal377a.com

I will put off commenting on these stuff for now. Too lazy to type and express myself.

Tags: singapore

Let’s take a trip down memory lane for a start. I remember six years ago, I was stumped by a few Mathematics questions during my PSLE and the then innocent me came home crying over the questions. Fast forward to six years later, the candidates are still facing the same problems as indicated by a letter to the Strait’s Times today from a parent, lamenting about the difficult Mathematics questions and question the necessity of such questions. It’s the time of the year again when parents debate about the PSLE.

I don’t even know where to begin to talk about this. Firstly the parent questions the objectives of such questions. These questions that were “unheard of and never seen before” are meant to test the application of knowledge in “new and novel ways”. I’m pretty sure this objective is included in the syllabus objectives of most of the subjects administered by the Singapore Examinations and Assessment Board (SEAB). Head over to their website and you can see them.

I have seen such questions not only during PSLE but also during my O Level days and I still see them coming up from time to time in the A Levels papers, especially for our batch which is the guinea pig batch for the new A Levels Syllabus. I’ve seen questions in the specimen papers of several subjects including Mathematics and Physics that were unheard of and still, we need to tackle them and apply what we know to solve them. I, frankly, do not see many O Levels and A Levels parents writing to complain of such questions. Perhaps this is partly due to students learning to deal with it and not “lamenting” to their parents about such questions.

Pure rote learning has no role in the fast moving society. I’m not sure how someone who has an encyclopedia-like knowledge can be of use. Our examinations are recognised by other education institutes, including several USA universities who acknowledge our A Level certificates. To keep up with the times, we have to move away from pure recall questions. Sometimes, I wonder if this is fortunate or unfortunate for students like us. Besides, these kind of questions can help to differentiate stronger students from weaker students though I’m sure there are not as many questions that “kill” as seem to be inferred by the parent’s letter. So, basically, the point of such questions is to keep up with the times!

Secondly, so what if there are difficult questions? If the whole cohort is slaughtered by these questions, then there are no grounds to be worried about. Everyone will have their absolute scores shifted by roughly the same amount and in the end, the relative scores still stay the same. FYI, SEAB does not use absolute scores for grading. They use what is normally termed a “bell curve” or what A Level students probably call “Normal Distribution” to do the assignment of grades. What this means is that students who fall above a certain percentile are awarded grades. Say, if all the students of Singapore scored a zero for that question, their percentiles would certainly not change much! If the parent had understood this and still written in to complain, I can only say I smell the Kiasu spirit at work again.

To end off, let me reiterate: the questions are used to keep up with the times. I don’t see many O Level and A Level parents complaining about these kind of things and it’s the usual Kiasu parents of Primary School children that are so worried that they keep writing in every year to debate about the PSLE so much so that it has almost become an annual event. Take a deep breath and calm down!

Tags: singapore