CIP at St. Luke's old folks home

It is founder's day today and our school have prepared a CIP visit to an old folks home at Hougang. The purpose of this CIP visit is to commemerate our founder Tan Kah Kee's great contribution to the society.

When we first arrived there, we started interacting with the elderly. I found many of them rather friendly. After that, we played some ball games with them as a form of exercise. With the elderly being seated in a circle, we tok turns to walk around to pass balls to them and with them passing it back to us. Right after that, we were placed around the elderly and soon started an interesting game of passing the balls around. When the music is playing, the elderly would pass the balls around in a clock-wise direction. And when the music stops, they are not supposed to pass the balls anymore. Those elderly with the balls in their hands would have to perform for us. One of the elderly there was called to sing for us. At first she declined politely with the excuse of not being able to sing well. However, after some 'begging', she finally decided to comply. She DID sing very well!

After this short exercise, many of my classmates started to perform. Kevin Mak was the first to perform with a display of his wushu skills. Being accompanied with music, his performance was enhanced and many of the old folks enjoyed it very much. Following next was the duo guitar performance by Marc and Roy. They even sang to the music! But that is not the only musical performance we have. Our very own violonist, Darryl , went up to perform next. After a few bars of playing, he soon caught the attention of the elderly who were full of praises for him. Last but not least, we have a performance by Kurt. He, being a gymnast, showed off his impressive gymnastic skills. I am sure the elderly enjoyed the backflips and the hand stands he did.

Now, it is time for some hands-on for the elderly---origami folding! We gathered the elderly into various tables and passed them some origami paper. Then, the students would gather at the different tables to teach them how to fold boats, bats and even hearts. Some of the elderly were even better than us, making inflatable balls and cranes! During the course of these activities, some of our classmates went around distributing stickers to the elderly.

Finally, we settled down to a relaxing of Bingo. Each of the elderly were given a piece of laminated sheet with numbers on it. We then went around explaining how to play this game. Once they understood, we commenced the game. The person-in-charge turned the wheel and our friend Kevin Yong shouted out the number in both english and chinese. I am sure that many of the elderly enjoyed this relaxing game.

After this game, we returned back to school, waving goodbye to the elderly. I hope that this act of us can make them feel better.

Care of the elderly:)
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One-Dollar Gambler

One-Dollar Gambler

I have one dollar to bet on number 13
One dollar for a loaf of bread
With a piece of ham, sandwiched between two slices of tomato.
One dollar for a hot milk tea
Before work time starts.
One dollar for some paper and ink
And some knowledge for a blind man.
One dollar each morning,
One dollar each night and for each brick I laid.
But, I bet one dollar. The counter closed
The next day number 13 appeared
In the middle of my drowsy eyes
On top of my nose
Or somewhere in between the hollowness
Of my empty hands.
I now have zero dollars to bet
Zero dollars for bread, tea, paper, ink and bricks!
Zero dollars, again, for number 13.

by Phan Thi Nam Mai


Recently, I came across this poem on gambing on the internet. This poem shows how gambling is so addictive such that the persona did not know how to prioritise. He could have used that one-dollar for many things that are beneficial to him such as buying a slice of sandwich to fill his stomach or a cup of warm milk. Instead, he decides to use the one-dollar to gamble, and hopefully, he can win and get a fortune. This further shows how addictive gambling is such that one addicted to it can forget all about the basic neccesities one needs and instead spend the money on gambling.

This led me to think if the setting up of the gambling den is such a good idea after all. The main purpose of setting up the gambling den in Singapore is to boost tourism in Singapore as well as to provide more jobs for those who have been retrenched during the economic downturn. However, despite all these advantages, there is a risk of our Singaporean to being addicted to gambling. This would cause many families to be destroyed as the gambler would be so addicted that he would gamble the family's savings away. More importantly, this would give rise to more people who have no money to turn to loan sharks. This would cause a rise of loan sharks which the government do not wat to happen.

However, looking from another point of view, all of these addiction can be prevented if everyone had some self-constrain. It is okay to gamble, but when one realises he has already crossed the line to the extent that he is harming his family, he should stop. It would be okay to gamble if one can prioritise. Basic neccessities should always come first before gambling.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chbjc-XDKLw

The Arrival

Recently, I read a graphic novel titled " The Arrival". This book is extremely interesting as it is a graphic novel. Now, Let me try to explain the story. This story is separated into 5 parts.

Part 1: A man, whom I presume is the protagonist of the story, has woken up and is packing his luggage. He is about to leave his family. His family has breakfast and the man sets off on his journey. The picture then zooms out to see many monsters in his town. He then boards the train, leaving his wife and daughter crying.

Part 2: The man eats something and looks out of the window. The picture zooms out and and we realise that the man is actually on a ship.We then see many different kinds of cloud which means alot of time has pass. The picture also shows many people have also boarded the ship to escape from that town.Soon, they arrive at the city. They see many strange creatures and buidings there. However, it seemed much more peaceful than their town.The people then alight and queue up to enter the new city. The custom officers there checked his eyes, his mouth, his ears, his heartbeat before allowing him to enter. We then see the man looking out of another window and the picture zoom out to see that he was in a kind of machine that would fly him of to another place. We also see that many other people are flying there too. He alights and reaches a whole new place.He sees many wierd creatures and food and characters. He is lost. he suddenly finds some directions on the floor and he looked at his book. There are many symbols on it. A man comes and asked him a few questions. He drew a bed on his book and asked the man to bring him there. He reached the place and he payed some money for a nights stay.He experiments with the things there and found a strange creature lying on his bed. Another window is seen and we can see that many people are living in that place as well. Lastly, the picture zooms out and we can see how big the city is.

Part 3: This part starts off with the man waking up and seeing that creature on his bed again. He seemed very scared. He then washes up and sets off to find directons for something. He wanted to take another form of transport somewhere else.He meets a girl and asks her how to get a ticket on board the machine.The helpful girl then helped him obtain a ticket and they board the machine. They sit together and the girl starts talking about why she arrived on this island. The girl was captured by a man who took her book, locked it up and forced her to do work for him. She worked day and night wothout any rest with other girls. Every night, she was locked up in a room. Once, she found a spade and pried the door open. She then took back her book and escaped on a train to the island. They have arrived and the girl bid the protagonist farewell. The man looked around for something to eat. He drew a loaf of bread on his book and showed it to the shopkeeper. However, he did not ubderstand and brought him several other food instead. He and his son even let the protagonist try some of it. The son even offered to bring the man back home.On the boat, the man saw a tail similar to the tail of the creature attacking his town. However, it turned out to be the young boy's pet. The shopkeeper than explained why they came to this island. It appeared back in their town. giants have been using machines to suck up their people.The father and son were lucky enough to find a place to hide and only came up when the giants were gone. Another man found them and gave them directions to escape. The man and son found a boat there and they sailed all the way to this island. When they reached to shopkeeper's house, his wife took the ingredients and prepared food for them.The family then played an instrument each after the meal. The protagonist instead taught the young boy how to make origami. The shopkeeper's family then gave a pot to the protagonist as a gift.

Part 4: The protagonist wakes up and prepares breakfast for himself and his pet. He then goes around finding a job but to no avail. Then, he sees a man putting up posters and offers to help him.However, in the end, he realises he have put it up the wrong way. Next, he does a post job. And later, a job of making ceramic. He sees an old man and the man tells him why he came to this island.When he was young, he went to war but they did not win and his wife was killed. Feeling sad, he came to this island.

Part 5: The man writes a letter to his family.After many months, his family returns a letter informing him that they would be going over to that island.The man was very happy and the family reunited and they lived happily ever after.

Follow up on Japan's ban on blue-fin tuna

It is a wonderfully good news that the ban on the blue-fin tuna was not implemented on Japan. The proposal for the ban, put forward by Monaco and supported by the United States and the European Union, was crushed by 68 votes against with 20 in favour and 30 abstentions at the meeting on Thursday.

This is very good as I really like eating Japan's sushi. YAY!!!!!!!!!



from sraits times

CITES

In a recent article from The Straits Times, I have noticed a section telling us what CITES is and how it works. I found it rather interesting and wanted to share it with you. CITES is an acronym for the Convention on International Trade in Endangered species of wild fauna and flora. It was signed in 1973 by 80 countries. The species of animals under CITES is split into three parts, according to the degree of protection they require.

Appendix 1: This level of protection is the most strict and of highest level. It includes animal species which are threatened with extinction, and thus bans are implemented to prevent them from being killed. Some of the animals under this appendix include tigers, great apes and many different plants.

Appendix 2: This appendix includes creatures that are not faceing with extinction, but rather in which trade must be controlled to prevent further dwindling in their species. Some animals under this category include whales, corcodiles and sharks.

Appendix 3: It contains about 300 different species. It requires" international cooperation" to control the sales and trades.

Along with this small section on CITES, I have noticed a larger section of article on how Japan plans to fight for its intake of blue-fin tuna as its numbers are reducing greatly. CITES are now deciding if they should impose a ban on consumption of blue-fin . However, since the Japanese enjoy eating and are proud of their sashimi, it would not be easy for them to impose the ban.

Geography field trip ( pictures)

A poster teaching us what to do in a thunderstorm to prevent ourselves from getting electrocuted.














A sunshine recorder used for calculating the daily or hourly sunshine














A barograph used to calculate the barometric pressure
















My groupmate Zhennan busily copying down notes for the ACE project later!

Geography field trip

Geography Field Trip to Changi Airport:

On the fifteen of March, our Geography teacher brought us to changi airport to learn more about the

work of a meteorologist. After some talk and discussion between the person-in-charge and him, we were on our way to the MET office to observe how they work. We split our roles among our group members before setting off.

The trip inside the office started off with a briefing about what MET is all about. We learnt that MET is responsible for monitoring the weather conditions in Singapore, to monitor the haze in Singapore and also to record and document the climate change in Singapore. Through a powerpoint presentation, we also learnt tha processes taken by the MET to collect data about the climate. The first step is data collection. This is done by various satellites to capture the pictures of the earth to check to weather. Next, the data is processed and analysed in computers by the staff working in MET. Lastly, it is delivered to different areas like tourism and recreation, agriculture, transport,etc as these weather may affect them. We also learnt about another place called the Upper Air Observatory (UAO). At this place, balloons carrying machines to collect the data are released into the sky. These observation data are used for charting, forecasting, climatological data collection and research. When the balloons reach a certain height, it would burst and no more data would be collected. Then, the observers would know to take the previous reading. The process is carried out twice everyday, 0730 and 1800. Next, I was introduced to another instrument which I had never seen before --- the weather radar. It is a very large intrument that stands above ground with legs. On the top, there is a sphereical object. After some answering from the forecaster, I was amazed that the spherical object actually had a diameter of 8 meters! The presenter than showed us an amazing video. It was a video on a very big storm that happened in 2001. This is a very rare storm that only happens once in every 100-400 years! The storm was travelling from the sea towards Singapore. The storm behaved like a typhoon as it had an eye. However, once it reached shore, the storm started to die down. After a Q&A session with the forecaster, we realised that the storm needed alot of moisture for it ti sustain. Therefore, when it reached shore, it lost much of its moisture and started to die down. Lastly, the presenter also showed us a video on how we should prevent being electrocuted during a thunderstorm.

After the presentation, the person-in-charge brought us around to see the various equipments used by them to collect data. Firstly, we saw a barograph which records pressure. Next, we saw a rain guage. It was very advanced and unlike those we see in school. I even saw a sunshine recorder for the first time. It looked like a really large marble with a piece of paper under it. Moving on, we saw many different graphs for many different things, like a telphi graph and a regional wave model. Lastly, we held an Q&A session with the forecaster, with him answering all queries we had.

What I have learnt:

From this field trip, I have learnt much more about insruments that collect weather data as well as more of what MET does for Singapore. Not only that, I have learnt various life skills like how to prevent myself from being electrocuted in a thunder storm. When the sky turns grey, it is best to hurry or find shelter as a thunder storm is approaching. When it starts to pour, do not seek shelter under a tall, isolated tree as you may ge shocked too. Instead, find shelter under small clumps of trees. Also, stop swimming or carry out any activities during a thunderstorm. Do not use any electrical appliances as well, especially telephones with cords. When your hairs stand up, a lightning might be about to hit you. Immediately crouch down on the balls of your feet and try to make yourself as small as possible, like curling into a ball or something.