Wei Kiat's Blog

Yio Chu Kang, Singapore, August 31 (Inapplicable News Agency) -- Anti-riot police was almost called in when crowds of AJC students invaded the lobby of the Yio Chu Kang MRT station. As the rain falls outside the station incessantly, the number of AJC students 'camping' at the lobby increases because the trains keep coming in. To prevent the the students from blocking the way of fellow communters, the station master sounded a never heard before announcement which read: "Your attention please, the station is crowded, if you're not taking the train, please leave the station. Thank you." The familiar female voice was heard not once, not twice, but five times before the crowd start dispersing.

Anti-riot police almost called in
According to the Singapore law, any assembly of more than 4 or 5 people is considered as illegal gathering. When questioned by the our reporter, the station master said:" Wah lao eh, these students ar, dunno why so scared of rain one, keep staying here and block other passengers, I was going to call the riot police before than finally disperse!" Which of course reminded us of last year's incident whereby riot police was called in to 'break up' a four persons protest outside the CPF building.

Before any cries of NPNT (No Picture No Talk), we would like to assure the readers that our reporter did managed to capture the crowd on camera. Please note that the reporter did not stay with the crowd for long as he proceed to the school right after taking the picture, braving strong winds and heavy rain.

(Inapplicable News Agency)

The typical parents of a typical child living in Singapore often and endlessly repeat this phrase, "Boy/girl, you must work hard now. Study hard then go to the University. Then can become lawyer, doctor or join the PAP. Earn a lot of money live a comfortable life. Not like us, work so hard only barely managed to make ends meet."

Lets explore. This kind of talk shouldn't even exists in the first place. You are given a life, and it belongs to you. You are not a money making machine. You are a living, breathing human, with your own unique sets of talents, interests and passions, although you may or may not know it.

Working hard now does not equal to the ability to earn more money later on either. If that is the case, there will be no poor in Singapore. There will be no rich either, since everyone will be earning the same "high" salary. What does a "elite" student do? He follows through the education, PSLE, Olevel, Alevel, University. Despite some differences in course taken by individuals, everyone are essentially doing the same thing. Given the will to work hard, students can easily make their way up to the University, whether they are a dumbhead or a smartass.

Made it to the University successfully. Ok. So what? Does the fact that you made it to the University equates to the ability to undertake jobs such as lawyers, doctors and politicans? Sure, the job may seem simple. Cut up a few patients, wipe their asses, talk crap infront of people, and you earn yourself big bucks. That is your parents' definition of "Study hard now, enjoy life later." Singaporeans, being singaporeans, paid more attention to money then to their own life and the extend they went to in order to screw it up. Becoming an lawyer, a politican, or a doctor is no easy task. Great responsibilities are needed. Decisions have to be made, and a wrong decision can cause great mishap. The same with doing any other high-paying job. The higher the wages, the greater the responsibilites. How can someone who only knows how to memorise textbooks handle all that responsiblities? How does all that endless worries, important decisions, responsiblities equate happiness and enjoyment of life? The truth is, they can't. That is why even when the number of Singaporeans going to the University in on the rise, the number of people occupying high paying jobs are still roughly the same.

You heard it on the news. Many University graduates had a hard time finding full time jobs. Sometimes they couldn't even find a stable job, and had to keep switching. Most of them lost their goals after their University education. They are stuck. "So I've finished University. My life is supposed to be good now? I will be earning a few thousands per month?" The answer they discovered too late was a big "NO." They have not found their purpose in life. Many, as a last resort, went back to the MOE to become teachers as a last resort, since the only thing they are cut out to do is to live with the textbooks. There is no coincident that the quality of teachers in Singapore is deproving. The public has eyes to see.

On the other hand, how about starting to enjoy life now? Try out as many different things as possible. Live everyday to the fullest. Discover your purpose in life, and what you are good at. Do it. Follow your passion. Be different from the rest. And if develope your passion enough such that it is able to feed it, the better. Making money by doing things you like brings in much more happiness than doing things you are not actually cut out to do.

You do not need education to enjoy life. It is to help you achieve, you give you a sense of satisfaction. It is certainly not a goal, nor your dictator.

Just for fun I recently asked Erin, “Now that the kids are in summer school, don’t you think it’s about time you went out and got yourself a job? I hate seeing you wallow in unemployment for so long.”

She smiled and said, “Wow. I have been unemployed a really long time. That’s weird… I like it!”

Neither of us have had jobs since the ’90s (my only job was in 1992), so we’ve been self-employed for quite a while. In our household it’s a running joke for one of us to say to the other, “Maybe you should get a job, derelict!”

It’s like the scene in The Three Stooges where Moe tells Curly to get a job, and Curly backs away, saying, “No, please… not that! Anything but that!”

It’s funny that when people reach a certain age, such as after graduating college, they assume it’s time to go out and get a job. But like many things the masses do, just because everyone does it doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. In fact, if you’re reasonably intelligent, getting a job is one of the worst things you can do to support yourself. There are far better ways to make a living than selling yourself into indentured servitude.

Here are some reasons you should do everything in your power to avoid getting a job:

1. Income for dummies.

Getting a job and trading your time for money may seem like a good idea. There’s only one problem with it. It’s stupid! It’s the stupidest way you can possibly generate income! This is truly income for dummies.

Why is getting a job so dumb? Because you only get paid when you’re working. Don’t you see a problem with that, or have you been so thoroughly brainwashed into thinking it’s reasonable and intelligent to only earn income when you’re working? Have you never considered that it might be better to be paid even when you’re not working? Who taught you that you could only earn income while working? Some other brainwashed employee perhaps?

Don’t you think your life would be much easier if you got paid while you were eating, sleeping, and playing with the kids too? Why not get paid 24/7? Get paid whether you work or not. Don’t your plants grow even when you aren’t tending to them? Why not your bank account?

Who cares how many hours you work? Only a handful of people on this entire planet care how much time you spend at the office. Most of us won’t even notice whether you work 6 hours a week or 60. But if you have something of value to provide that matters to us, a number of us will be happy to pull out our wallets and pay you for it. We don’t care about your time — we only care enough to pay for the value we receive. Do you really care how long it took me to write this article? Would you pay me twice as much if it took me 6 hours vs. only 3?

Non-dummies often start out on the traditional income for dummies path. So don’t feel bad if you’re just now realizing you’ve been suckered. Non-dummies eventually realize that trading time for money is indeed extremely dumb and that there must be a better way. And of course there is a better way. The key is to de-couple your value from your time.

Smart people build systems that generate income 24/7, especially passive income. This can include starting a business, building a web site, becoming an investor, or generating royalty income from creative work. The system delivers the ongoing value to people and generates income from it, and once it’s in motion, it runs continuously whether you tend to it or not. From that moment on, the bulk of your time can be invested in increasing your income (by refining your system or spawning new ones) instead of merely maintaining your income.

This web site is an example of such a system. At the time of this writing, it generates about $9000 a month in income for me, and it isn’t my only income stream either. I write each article just once (fixed time investment), and people can extract value from them year after year. The web server delivers the value, and other systems (most of which I didn’t even build and don’t even understand) collect income and deposit it automatically into my bank account. It’s not perfectly passive, but I love writing and would do it for free anyway. But of course it cost me a lot of money to launch this business, right? Um, yeah, $9 is an awful lot these days (to register the domain name). Everything after that was profit.

Sure it takes some upfront time and effort to design and implement your own income-generating systems. But you don’t have to reinvent the wheel — feel free to use existing systems like ad networks and affiliate programs. Once you get going, you won’t have to work so many hours to support yourself. Wouldn’t it be nice to be out having dinner with your spouse, knowing that while you’re eating, you’re earning money? If you want to keep working long hours because you enjoy it, go right ahead. If you want to sit around doing nothing, feel free. As long as your system continues delivering value to others, you’ll keep getting paid whether you’re working or not.

Your local bookstore is filled with books containing workable systems others have already designed, tested, and debugged. Nobody is born knowing how to start a business or generate investment income, but you can easily learn it. How long it takes you to figure it out is irrelevant because the time is going to pass anyway. You might as well emerge at some future point as the owner of income-generating systems as opposed to a lifelong wage slave. This isn’t all or nothing. If your system only generates a few hundred dollars a month, that’s a significant step in the right direction.

2. Limited experience.

You might think it’s important to get a job to gain experience. But that’s like saying you should play golf to get experience playing golf. You gain experience from living, regardless of whether you have a job or not. A job only gives you experience at that job, but you gain ”experience” doing just about anything, so that’s no real benefit at all. Sit around doing nothing for a couple years, and you can call yourself an experienced meditator, philosopher, or politician.

The problem with getting experience from a job is that you usually just repeat the same limited experience over and over. You learn a lot in the beginning and then stagnate. This forces you to miss other experiences that would be much more valuable. And if your limited skill set ever becomes obsolete, then your experience won’t be worth squat. In fact, ask yourself what the experience you’re gaining right now will be worth in 20-30 years. Will your job even exist then?

Consider this. Which experience would you rather gain? The knowledge of how to do a specific job really well — one that you can only monetize by trading your time for money – or the knowledge of how to enjoy financial abundance for the rest of your life without ever needing a job again? Now I don’t know about you, but I’d rather have the latter experience. That seems a lot more useful in the real world, wouldn’t you say?

3. Lifelong domestication.

Getting a job is like enrolling in a human domestication program. You learn how to be a good pet.

Look around you. Really look. What do you see? Are these the surroundings of a free human being? Or are you living in a cage for unconscious animals? Have you fallen in love with the color beige?

How’s your obedience training coming along? Does your master reward your good behavior? Do you get disciplined if you fail to obey your master’s commands?

Is there any spark of free will left inside you? Or has your conditioning made you a pet for life?

Humans are not meant to be raised in cages. You poor thing…

4. Too many mouths to feed.

Employee income is the most heavily taxed there is. In the USA you can expect that about half your salary will go to taxes. The tax system is designed to disguise how much you’re really giving up because some of those taxes are paid by your employer, and some are deducted from your paycheck. But you can bet that from your employer’s perspective, all of those taxes are considered part of your pay, as well as any other compensation you receive such as benefits. Even the rent for the office space you consume is considered, so you must generate that much more value to cover it. You might feel supported by your corporate environment, but keep in mind that you’re the one paying for it.

Another chunk of your income goes to owners and investors. That’s a lot of mouths to feed.

It isn’t hard to understand why employees pay the most in taxes relative to their income. After all, who has more control over the tax system? Business owners and investors or employees?

You only get paid a fraction of the real value you generate. Your real salary may be more than triple what you’re paid, but most of that money you’ll never see. It goes straight into other people’s pockets.

What a generous person you are!

5. Way too risky.

Many employees believe getting a job is the safest and most secure way to support themselves.

Morons.

Social conditioning is amazing. It’s so good it can even make people believe the exact opposite of the truth.

Does putting yourself in a position where someone else can turn off all your income just by saying two words (”You’re fired”) sound like a safe and secure situation to you? Does having only one income stream honestly sound more secure than having 10?

The idea that a job is the most secure way to generate income is just silly. You can’t have security if you don’t have control, and employees have the least control of anyone. If you’re an employee, then your real job title should be professional gambler.

6. Having an evil bovine master.

When you run into an idiot in the entrepreneurial world, you can turn around and head the other way. When you run into an idiot in the corporate world, you have to turn around and say, “Sorry, boss.”

Did you know that the word boss comes from the Dutch word baas, which historically means master? Another meaning of the word boss is “a cow or bovine.” And in many video games, the boss is the evil dude that you have to kill at the end of a level.

So if your boss is really your evil bovine master, then what does that make you? Nothing but a turd in the herd.

Who’s your daddy?

7. Begging for money.

When you want to increase your income, do you have to sit up and beg your master for more money? Does it feel good to be thrown some extra Scooby Snacks now and then?

Or are you free to decide how much you get paid without needing anyone’s permission but your own?

If you have a business and one customer says “no” to you, you simply say “next.”

8. An inbred social life.

Many people treat their jobs as their primary social outlet. They hang out with the same people working in the same field. Such incestuous relations are social dead ends. An exciting day includes deep conversations about the company’s switch from Sparkletts to Arrowhead, the delay of Microsoft’s latest operating system, and the unexpected delivery of more Bic pens. Consider what it would be like to go outside and talk to strangers. Ooooh… scary! Better stay inside where it’s safe.

If one of your co-slaves gets sold to another master, do you lose a friend? If you work in a male-dominated field, does that mean you never get to talk to women above the rank of receptionist? Why not decide for yourself whom to socialize with instead of letting your master decide for you? Believe it or not, there are locations on this planet where free people congregate. Just be wary of those jobless folk — they’re a crazy bunch!

9. Loss of freedom.

It takes a lot of effort to tame a human being into an employee. The first thing you have to do is break the human’s independent will. A good way to do this is to give them a weighty policy manual filled with nonsensical rules and regulations. This leads the new employee to become more obedient, fearing that s/he could be disciplined at any minute for something incomprehensible. Thus, the employee will likely conclude it’s safest to simply obey the master’s commands without question. Stir in some office politics for good measure, and we’ve got a freshly minted mind slave.

As part of their obedience training, employees must be taught how to dress, talk, move, and so on. We can’t very well have employees thinking for themselves, now can we? That would ruin everything.

God forbid you should put a plant on your desk when it’s against the company policy. Oh no, it’s the end of the world! Cindy has a plant on her desk! Summon the enforcers! Send Cindy back for another round of sterility training!

Free human beings think such rules and regulations are silly of course. The only policy they need is: “Be smart. Be nice. Do what you love. Have fun.”

10. Becoming a coward.

Have you noticed that employed people have an almost endless capacity to whine about problems at their companies? But they don’t really want solutions – they just want to vent and make excuses why it’s all someone else’s fault. It’s as if getting a job somehow drains all the free will out of people and turns them into spineless cowards. If you can’t call your boss a jerk now and then without fear of getting fired, you’re no longer free. You’ve become your master’s property.

When you work around cowards all day long, don’t you think it’s going to rub off on you? Of course it will. It’s only a matter of time before you sacrifice the noblest parts of your humanity on the altar of fear: first courage… then honesty… then honor and integrity… and finally your independent will. You sold your humanity for nothing but an illusion. And now your greatest fear is discovering the truth of what you’ve become.

I don’t care how badly you’ve been beaten down. It is never too late to regain your courage. Never!

Still want a job?

If you’re currently a well-conditioned, well-behaved employee, your most likely reaction to the above will be defensiveness. It’s all part of the conditioning. But consider that if the above didn’t have a grain of truth to it, you wouldn’t have an emotional reaction at all. This is only a reminder of what you already know. You can deny your cage all you want, but the cage is still there. Perhaps this all happened so gradually that you never noticed it until now… like a lobster enjoying a nice warm bath.

If any of this makes you mad, that’s a step in the right direction. Anger is a higher level of consciousness than apathy, so it’s a lot better than being numb all the time. Any emotion — even confusion — is better than apathy. If you work through your feelings instead of repressing them, you’ll soon emerge on the doorstep of courage. And when that happens, you’ll have the will to actually do something about your situation and start living like the powerful human being you were meant to be instead of the domesticated pet you’ve been trained to be.

Happily jobless

What’s the alternative to getting a job? The alternative is to remain happily jobless for life and to generate income through other means. Realize that you earn income by providing value — not time – so find a way to provide your best value to others, and charge a fair price for it. One of the simplest and most accessible ways is to start your own business. Whatever work you’d otherwise do via employment, find a way to provide that same value directly to those who will benefit most from it. It takes a bit more time to get going, but your freedom is easily worth the initial investment of time and energy. Then you can buy your own Scooby Snacks for a change.

And of course everything you learn along the way, you can share with others to generate even more value. So even your mistakes can be monetized.

One of the greatest fears you’ll confront is that you may not have any real value to offer others. Maybe being an employee and getting paid by the hour is the best you can do. Maybe you just aren’t worth that much. That line of thinking is all just part of your conditioning. It’s absolute nonsense. As you begin to dump such brainwashing, you’ll soon recognize that you have the ability to provide enormous value to others and that people will gladly pay you for it. There’s only one thing that prevents you from seeing this truth — fear.

All you really need is the courage to be yourself. Your real value is rooted in who you are, not what you do. The only thing you need actually do is express your real self to the world. You’ve been told all sort of lies as to why you can’t do that. But you’ll never know true happiness and fulfillment until you summon the courage to do it anyway.

The next time someone says to you, “Get a job,” I suggest you reply as Curly did: ”No, please… not that! Anything but that!” Then poke him right in the eyes.

You already know deep down that getting a job isn’t what you want. So don’t let anyone try to tell you otherwise. Learn to trust your inner wisdom, even if the whole world says you’re wrong and foolish for doing so. Years from now you’ll look back and realize it was one of the best decisions you ever made.

From http://www.stevepavlina.com
Who says University Cert = More money in the future?

Hello Friends,

I just want to share with you a terrible experience we had when we traded-in my mother-in law cellphone at the CYBER JIN Pte Ltd (Lucky Plaza #B1-81,near 7-eleven) this weekend.

The story goes like this; my Mom wanted to trade-in her old cellphone to buy a brand new N70. We accompanied her to the Lucky Plaza hoping we could get a good bargain. Then we found this store that agreed to buy my Mom's cellphone for $220 and would charge us only $550 (net) for an N70 under the condition that we do both transactions (buy and sell) with them. So far, this store offers us the best bargain compared to other stores from the rest of the building. We agreed to their transaction proposal as we were then in a bit of a hurry (she was only a tourist and would stay in Singapore for only 4-days). However, when we were about to pay, the salesman suddenly told us "Why do you want an N70? This is a very bad phone. In fact this is one of the most problematic phones of Nokia." He immediately caught our attention and in fact gained our trust (imagine a salesman telling you that a product you are about to buy from him is not worth the money you are paying it for). He then proceeded to make his presentation about why we should not buy an N70 and even said "If you really want it I can sell it to you but please know that we've heard a lot of complains about it".

Afterwards, he brought out an N6280, which he said was by far a better phone than the N70 at almost the same price (he even gave another short presentation of its advantages). Of course, since he already gained our trust, we found his presentation very convincing. We bargained for the phone and he said "I can give it to you at just $555 (net)".

After being impressed by a convincing presentation, my Mom agreed to trade-in her old cellphone for $220, and buys the brand new N6280 for $555(This means that she just would have to shell out another $335). We told the salesman that we would pay by Nets and we gave him our card. While paying, he tried to sell to us a 64Mb mini-SD Card for $20. We said we did not want it (as my mother wouldn't use it anyway). We proceeded with the transaction, got our phone and asked for the receipt.The salesman said that the Nets certificate would be our receipt. Should we encounter any problem, we just look for him and he would be happy to assist us. Since we are in a hurry, we took our phone and nets certificate and left. While we were leaving, he handed us the 64Mb mini-SD Card and said "Take this as a free gift from me".

After a long day of sight seeing and a little shopping, we finally got home and my mom finally had her first chance to test her new cellphone. To her surprise, the supposedly brand-new cellphone had contact numbers (some even had photo-contacts) of some people in its phone memory (meaning it was used and wasn't brand new!). We then checked the phone's serial number (IMEI#) and again to our dismay, we found out that the phone's IMEI# doesn't match the IMEI# listed in the box. We did a research to see what other things the salesman tricked us into believing and we found out that the 64Mb SD Card that he was trying to sell us for $20 was in fact part of the phone's original package (some other things listed as part of the original package as seen from brochures were also missing). Not just that, we checked the Nets certificate, and learned that he charged $355 instead of just $335 (so sneaky, we didn't even notice!). Worst of all, we found that the price of the N6280 from neighboring stores is just $450(net) while he sold it to us for a total of $575! (Including the extra $20 we did not notice that he charged us through Nets).

Imagine how disappointed my Mom would be after knowing that she bought a cellphone that is not just $100+ overpriced but is also isn't brand new as we were made to believe (plus the fact that some of the components from the original package were removed and the that salesman charged more than what we had agreed).

The next day, we went back to the store to complain and get a refund. The salesman said that he couldn't give us a refund. What he can do is to buy the cellphone we bought from him a day ago for $575, and give us ONLY $300 (does he think we're that stupid!!!)... We did not agree and insisted a REFUND; during our discussion one of his colleagues shouted, "Give them a new box so that they would leave!!!" (He's so rude!) I don't know how stupid these people think we are if all we came for was to get a new box.... I told them that if they wouldn't refund our money, we would report this matter to the police. They just gave an insulting grim and said "Go ahead, we'll see you in court" and then one of them lit a cigarette (inside the shop), and smoked in front of us and along the hallways of the mall (while wearing that insulting smile) as if telling us that he is not scared of the police. In fact, he can smoke in a "No Smoking Zone".

While we were leaving (to complain to the police) we came across an Indian couple who owns souvenir shop nearby and told us that this (our incident)happens almost every week. The Indian lady said that this store always gets complains from tourists but are always able to get away with it because tourists usually would just go away. She also said that this store avoids (if they can) giving receipts to unsuspecting customers to cover their fraudulent transactions. She suggested that if we can, we should complain these people to the authorities because they make Singapore look bad. We went to the security department of Lucky Plaza and the security people helped us contact the police. The Lucky Plaza security people also admitted that this always happens but it's just not their jurisdiction so they really cannot do anything about these incidents other than making a report to the police. The security people also advised that it is illegal for a store not to issue a proper receipt detailing all transactions to a customer. This means that the Nets certificate that we have (although having the store name and address) is not a valid receipt after all.

The police came, talked to us and told us to wait for them at the security counter of the mall while they went to the store and talked to these people. We told the police that we want a refund because we were cheated and do not trust these people or any of their products anymore.

We also reported that the store did not issue a proper receipt. The police went to the store, talked to the manager and came back to tell us that the manager's suggestion was to give us a new N6280 (one that matches the IMEI of box and the unit!!!) so that all of these would be settled. We told the police that we want a refund and we don't want to do any business with them. Then, the Police suggested that we file our complaints to CASE, because they are not the right person for these kinds of situations.

As of now, we are gathering all evidence we can that could help when we file our complaint to CASE. We are hoping that the Nets certificate that we have will suffice as one of our evidences. We are no longer interested of the refund, what we want now is to teach these crooks a lesson so that they will stop cheating other people.

Let this email be a warning to you and your friends. Always check a product very well (research if possible) before buying and always make sure you get a 'detailed receipt' of all your transactions.

Never fall prey on these predators waiting for unsuspecting customers.

You are our students so of course we will not sue you to court for
damanging the reputation of the college and staff. Please read the news
paper on what has happened to Dr Chee and you should learn to be
responsible and not to take things for granted.

And later..

I was informed that instead of removing your blogs, which you have agreed,
you have not shifted it to another site. I did not take discipline action
previously as I thought you will honour your words and are regretful of
your action. I would want you to take immediate action to remove all those
damaging messages from the blogs. This is my last warning and I will not
hesitate to take further action if you still insist of keeping them .

My response..

The entries were not removed individually because it can be hard to locate and find entries regarding AJC since my blog was setup very long ago and contained many entries. Instead of deleting them, I limited my blog to only displaying the latest 25 posts -- none of which were the about the negative things about AJC. As an additional step, I also disabled my blog's archive. This makes the entries in question inaccessible, among with my other unrelated entries. I did all these on the very same day which you called me to the office.

All the blogs under my name (or i am invited to post on) can be viewed at my user's profile here: http://www.blogger.com/profile/3861556 and none contains any of the entries in question. I would like to add that I am currently so caught up with school work and working with SPH on some projects regarding The Wicked (for the new SPH website called Straits Times Online Mobile Print launching on June 15) that I have little time to blog (as seen from the short 1 sentence blog entries that I now post), and certainly could not afford the time copy and paste each blog entries regarding ajc (I couldn't even track them all to delete them one by one) to another blog and act like a fool.

Physics Topics Left:
Gravitation
Physics of Fluid
All the Electricity and Magnet Topics (Detailed breakdown later)

Maths Topics Left:
All

Computing Topics Left:
All

Just told my mum about the school asking students to pay $2 for a $1800 clock as a farewell contribution to the school. I did not even tell her that student's opinion were not asked and students had no say over what was bought with that $2.

But my mum's reply was simple.
"Siao!".

Finally, a good move by AJC: End all lessons earlier for 2 weeks leading to the prelim.

Although RJC has been doing this (school ends earlier than other JCs everyday) since eons before, it is always good to see my school catching up with a top-notched insitution.

It really shows AJC's resolve to be the best, like what the banner that was hung a few months back proclaimed: "AJC is simply the best".

Click to enlarge


From http://inapplicable.blogspot.com/

"Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning."

- Bill Gates

Funny what riches and success such piece of wisdom had brought to Bill Gates.

And funny how VP Tay threatened to expel me for being unhappy about AJC.

There was this econ teacher who was from NYGH and enjoys wearing an NUS jacket around, speculatively because she could not affort a proper jacket.

She has very eccentric traits, which is listed below:
1) Ask student to do tutorial for topic B and hand in even before topic B was taught.
2) Hand out a very detailed lesson schedule at the start of each term, found herself unable to follow the schedule and ended up scheduling "make-up" lessons to make up for her incompetence and lack of flexiblity.
3) Say things like "I already planned 3 econ lessons next week. And we won't miss the lesson on thursday because I'll be giving all of you a make up lesson.
4) Scold some guys during the singing of national anthem for "dancing" when it is apparantly not true.
5) Holds timed practise twice a week, in an attempt to overuse and demean the phrase "timed practise" to mean "tutorial which you do in school during my lesson without my help".

It is no wonder, that I do not look at NUS as a possible University choice.

From our nextdoor neighbour, KingHuang

I had another refreshing dose of early morning bullshit during assembly today. This time, it was from a representative of the AJC student council (SC). When this representative (a 'she', I think.) stood in front of me, I waited in eager anticipation like a good AJC student I was, for whatever earth-shattering news that she was about to break to the students below her. It turned out that the AJC SC had made a momentous decision! The small group of students that 'represented' the AJC student population had unilaterally gone ahead with a purchase of a clock as a gift for the school and they were kind enough to inform the students today that this little gesture of appreciation to the school cost s$1800!

Did the school really require a clock that cost 1.8K? Was it because the school was recently under heavy attack by vandals and hence, needed a clock resistant to vandalism? Let us put the questionable usefulness of an extremely expensive clock in AJC aside. The real issue was the fact that the SC ordered that clock without first consulting the student population they served and they expected us to fork out money to pay for their ‘wise’ purchase. What happened to their promise of representing the students of AJC? Sure, they helped us express our feverish love and respect for our beloved school extremely well with that costly gesture. However, they lacked the professional courtesy to seek our opinions before executing their grand plan which happened to involve us in the financial issues. This was very unbecoming of a small minority of student ‘leaders’ that branded themselves the student council.

I seriously doubted the collective wisdom of the AJC SC. There was no question that the latest decision by the ‘voice of the student body’ was not a move to win popularity from the people they served. Only one question remained in my mind as I left the assembly grounds: if AJC was democratic enough to let the students vote for various individuals to join the SC and ‘lead’ the school, can the same system of elections that brought the SC to power be used to bring about the fall of the same SC that abused their powers?

C = Councillor
P = Principal

C: The JC2s are graduating soon!
P: Oh no, we haven't got them to contribute to the school yet. The $1988 collected during the Family Day was too little!
C: Er ok. So what do you suggest then?
P: Maybe we can get the JC2s to buy something for the school? Something useful? Since we are so starved of funds to buy anything for the school, may as well get students to do it.
C: I see. So what do you suggest?
P: Let me take a walk around the school and see what we need. You too, take this time to discuss with the students and come up with something.

P walked out of her offices and looked at the fountain. "We already have a fountain. There are fishes inside and the water is sea green," she thought to herself, and scrolled to the canteen. "Hm.. The GP Head of Department said that we have a First - World tuckshop. I'm sure the canteen don't need anything else," she mumbled. The P climbed up the stairs and entered the hall. "How come the walls of the hall so empty one? Only got 2 photo and a wall clock. Somemore the wall clock we haven't change it in 20 years. Maybe time to get a new one. Hmm..."

The next day, C and P met again.
C: I know! We can raise some money to borrow an out of service double decker bus from SBS like what one other JC did. We can use the bus for students to chit chat and enjoy themselves in an aircon environment. Currently there are so many students abusing the reading room that nobody is able to study there!"
P: "Errrr.... That sounds good. BUT! Listen to me! We need a clock! Lets buy a clock. And instead of buying a $1.80 clock, we buy a $1800 clock. Then we can show off to visitors we are so rich that we can affort to spend so much on something as redundant and useless as a clock. I want a clock. Go buy it.
C: But..
p: No buts! I want a clock. Go and buy it. I know what is best for the school. I have many years of experience. I know what we need. We need a $1800 clock.
C: Ok..

So now. Every JC2 students in AJC have to chip in $2 to help AJC buy a clock.

Today during the assembly a lone councillor appeared after we were all dismissed from flag raising, and called the JC2s back to speak to us about making a "contribution" to the school.

We were all shocked to discover that those funky councillors had already ordered a clock causing 1.8K to hand it in the hall. And we were to pay for it. The student masses were not consulted regarding this matter at all, only asked to pay.

I thought councillors exist as a bridge between students and teachers?

And what is this nosense? Giving AJC a clock? A clock is a clock, whether it cause $1.80 or $1800. What more can you expect out of a clock? A very poor choice.

And to top it off, to "give clock" in Chinese means attending funeral wake.

Bye bye AJC. You have been cursed by the funky student population.

Refurnishing the gym, replacing all the rusty equipments (which roughly = to all the equipments), upgrading our library, having more air-con study areas are no doubt much better way to spend that money.

Oh wait! VP Tay told me that when we have a suggestion, we suggest it through proper channels and not write it on our blog. Well, dear councillor, is it possible to return the clock you already ordered from god knows what country, and start asking students what we want to give to the school? There were students forum held annually? So what of it? Each year the forum deals with the same issue, and each year the same issue appears. Is there a fear of resolving issues, so that when there are no issues left the councillors are out of work? The decision for the purchasing of a $1800, which involves every JC2s paying for it, was made solely without consultation to the student population paying for it. Nobody heard of the plan, until today when the councillor say (the gist of it), "We need to contribute to the school. We ordered a $1800 clock from donno what country. You all pay the money. I am JC1 so I no nid pay." Such is how the honourable Student Councillors work. And with reference to this post, where the is the ability for students to make feedbacks and suggestions? I guess when this was announced, the P wasn't there to call the shots.

And how does having a $1800 clock benefit the student, when it is nothing but a device to tell time. Most, if not everyone already owns a digital watch, and there are cheap plastic wall clock lying around that serves the same purpose.

Are the authorites or councillors living in medival times, where waistwatches were unheard off and people have to rely on the clock tower at their town hall for the time?

Is "So that students taking the exam can view the time in the hall" a good reason to buy a $1800 clock to hang it on the wall in the hall when a clock already exists. Does it have any advance features? Maybe the clock can play music? Set alarm? Play video? Fly around and stick itself onto Nathan picture?

Such is the bullshit that goes on and on and on with our student councillors and they seem obivious of it. And VP Tay is worrying about expelling students who "tarnish" the school reputation when the SC can go on and do silly things like this. Good. We have a SC. So what of it? The election process involves them making a fool of themselves during flag raising and who made a more lasting impression wins. There is no talk of plans for the school, policies to follow, just cosplay (of power puff girls) and plain clowning.

Mediacorp currently has a TV show for this kind of people every monday at 8pm on channel 8. We don't need them in SC.

A picture speak words.

Am too sian to study... so spent whole day working on this template.
How do you find it? More features may be coming soon!

Feel free to comment or tag by pressing the "Speak" button.

Lost love,
is nothing but fleeting memories,
of joy, fun and laughter,
or sorrow, agony and tears.

What was now becomes the past,
who was a dear becomes just a girl,
the lovely hair and its smell,
distanced and floated away.

How and where can I find,
a girl that's as good as her?
Yet is it my fault she's gone?
Or the work of a weak-willed jove?

What's past is past,
what's gone is gone.
I've gained nothing but memories.
Memories so sweet they will stay for life.

No photos for the time being :( MD camera sent for repair.

Went to http://0705student.blogspot.com/2006/08/correction.html just now.

They are talking about how the facilities page on AJC website did not reflect the truth. Here, at Wei Kiat's Blog, I believe in truth and I shall let you all have it.

Click here to see the AJC school facilities page

Classrooms with LAN points, visualisers & LCD projectors

The principal recently announced that they are trying to get a visualiser for each classroom by the end of THIS year. So where are the visualisers the school website is talking about? Only some classrooms has visualisers. On the other hand, all classrooms are still using those old fashion transparency projectors. It was not mentioned on the school website.

Science laboratories with life science equipment

I seriously think the description of "life science" equipment is vague. The closest things I've seen that are related to "life" after walking and looking into all the science labs in school are those electrical "Mozzie traps". On the other hand, as a physics student, I've always been plagued by unstable and rusty retort stands and clamps, making it hard to do any experiment accurately.

6 computer laboratories

Lets see. Room 1312, 1322, 1321, 213, 212 are computer rooms. Thats 5. There is also an additional room, 211, that only contains around 10 computers.

800-seater auditorium with AV room

On top of those proper auditorum seats, there were actually 2 rows of classroom chairs hidden at the back, to allow for more seating capacity and less walking space at the back. Also, those classroom chairs are not elevated, and students sitting there are blocked and cannot see the stage at all.

Study benches located strategically

Nothing much to say about this, except that the benches are mostly scattered about the school where there are space: outside toilet, outside auditorum, etc

Library & media resource centre housing a rich variety of materials & PCs

I don't remember seeing a "media resource center". Also, there are very few fiction books in the library. Most are just dictionaries, textbooks and reference books. Is that variety?

Wireless network at selected locations within college

I tried a few times, but my laptop still couldn't connect to the wlan.

Weight room

When were the weights purchased? All the handles are extremely rusty. Is there plan to replace them with new ones? I see none, despite students bringing out the issue many times since when I first joined AJC.

Dance studio & special rooms for various CCAs

Truth is, those rooms are only big enough to store equipments, and not to hold the CCA session inside. Some CCAs do not have a room. AJC website make it seems as if all CCAs has their own room. Maybe change this to "Special storerooms for some CCAs"?

College messaging system for enhanced communication

I don't see any example of this. Announcements are made daily by studens and VP Tay during morning assemblies. Is that enhanced communication? In Chinese High, we have an electronic message board system, making all morning announcements obselete. And we never talk about "enhanced communication".

Camera surveillance system for better security

The OM recently shifted the camera in my class to point only at the box where the air-cons remotes are kept. What security? Enough said.

There you have it. The truth in AJC.

Some basic Dos and Don'ts in AJC

1) Despite the fact that the annual canteen survey mentions a tamil stall, there are NO tamil stall in AJC so don't expect there to be one.

2) Learn how to use a chopstick. Some stalls don't provide forks and spoons.

3) Do not walk pass the non-teaching staff room, or go too near to the guard house. They smoke and endanger your health.

4) Have a sharp eye for details. The "school suggestion notice boards" are constantly playing hide and seek with you.

5) Do not expect to be able to leave school early. The Early Leaving form is always available, but the authorities who can sign it are often not available.

6) Learn lips reading. The TVs located around the school shows channel news asia every morning, but there is no sound.

7) Bring a portable fan. If possible, bring a portable air-con. Like Singapore, the climate in AJC never changes.

8) Be prepared to wash your skirt/trousers anytime. You may need to sit on the auditorum floor during weekly assemblies.

9) Learn to ignore the bird droppings on the canteen table. They mean no harm.

10) Some floor toilets flush like fountains. Learn to hop around to prevent the water and urine from reaching your shoe.

11) If the toilet lights switch on suddenly when you enter, do not be alarmed. Some toilets were actually armed with motion sensors.

12) Expect the unexpected. The national flag may be redesigned during flag raising.

13) The water fountain at the front pouch has water as green as the sea. Do not drink.

14) Make yourself immune to the morning sun every thursday. The principal has a story to tell.

15) Do not say bad things about the school. The VP may expel you.

16) Sometimes the principal may go absent for a few days. Learn to get over the heartbeak.

Yesterday I went to JE to meet up with the M1 guy who's always late, to get back my contract, give him 2 copies of my photocopied NRIC (so that he can borrow from ah long?) and discussed some final details with him.

Then wheee.... Guess who I saw? I saw the old man on Singapore Gaga! The one who has the supernatural ability to juggle 2 tennis balls, create noise on the harmonic and a tempo using his feets on cogs. He was very sweaty, and apparently thinks of himself as an air-con, giving off moisture so that the air becomes more damp and carry away the heat.

And then, I met her.

Amanda! Long time no see. Then went to Westmall for dinner. She's vegetarian. No choice ma. She's taller than I last remember, and looks cuter too(donno why I feel that way). Then she kept commenting I looked very old. Ga..

And finally, yesterday, I broke my Lor Mee eating record. I ate Lor Mee for breakfast, lunch and dinner yesterday. 3 Cheers!

I happily entered the school toilet, the one at the ohana.

I happily entered the toilet cubicle, the one that has a working door and a floor toilet that sprays like a fountain whenever you flush it.

I closed the door and hung my bag on the hanger and turned around to pee. Then an evil aura came, and with a bang, my bag dropped on the toilet floor.

Took out my Hi-MD. The screen is cracked.

*&^*&*U@#$(*@&*&(*^*&(

Took a photo of the Auditorum doors at the third level.

 
Fictional caption: "In case of fire, the auditorum is definitely not an exit." 

 

Transcript: "Hello to any choir members especially my sweet superman, take care ya, and enjoy singing"

This (love message?) was scribbled on a table just outside the choir room. Photo heavily edited because the pencil marking was very unclear. 

 

The flag bearer for today's assembly made a blunder today, pulling up a Singapore Flag hung upside down. What he got for this trouble was scolding from teachers and jeering from a few concerned students. 

  

I listened to PM's rally with great interest on the day it was broadcasted over the TV. Then today our principal repeated his speech word by word, hindered by nothing except for the sounding of the school bell.

She talked about the internet, where we shouldn't believe in things the internet says, and should always ask questions when in doubt. Then she talk about people lying on their blogs, and how there is no right or wrong on the internet.

Then she say it is wrong to post racist remarks on the internet and such people can be arrested.

Talk about biting your own words.

 

Saw this in an NON-AIRCON room. Apparently, over the years, AJC had decided to REDUCE the number of rooms using Air-Con, converting once air-coned classrooms to regular ones, while other JCs are moving in the opposite direction.

I took a closer look at the ruin air-con, and noticed that there is a green light. 

 
  

Recently, as the story goes, a bunch of AJCians had been making their rounds to different classes and breaking the neck of of the visualisers. When I heard of this, I was suddenly reminded about what happened last friday.

Everyone left, so I was alone in my homeroom at around 1.55. I know some other classes are going to use our homeroom at around 2+, so when so JC1 students turned up in my class, I started packing up to give up my homeroom. Then one bunch of them, around 5 pretty tall JC1 guys crowded around the visualiser, switched on the projector, and started clowning around with it. I never give it much thought as I left my homeroom as I thought they were setting up the visualiser for their teacher.

Then on monday, the visualiser in my homeroom is missing.

And on tuesday, the prinicpal told us about some students going around breaking the neck of visualisers. Must be those students I encountered. They are a loud and rude gang, and 2 of them owns acer laptops. Most use dark coloured sling bags. That is as much as I remember.

Those bastards. If AJC had inculcated a sense of belonging to our homeroom in us, my friends would have join hands to catch those bastards. But no! Homeroom don't belong to us, so I couldn't care less to help.

The most help I gave was to inform a teacher that those vandalisers are JC1 students.

SUGGESTION
(P)PRONUNCIATION KEY
(sg-jschn, s-js-) n.
+The act of suggesting.
+ Something suggested: We ordered the shrimp, a suggestion of the waiter.
+The sequential process by which one thought or mental image leads to another.
+ A psychological process by which an idea is induced in or adopted by another without argument, command, or coercion. An idea or response so induced.
+ A hint or trace: just a suggestion of makeup; the first suggestion of trouble ahead.
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SUGGESTION
(sg-jschn, s-js-) n. Implanting of an idea in the mind of another by a word or act so as to influence conduct or physicalcondition.
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Main Entry: SUGGESTION
Function: noun 1 A
:
the act or process of suggesting B
:
something suggested 2
:
an entry onthe record of a fact or circumstance (as the death or insolvency of a party) material to a case and essential for the court in making its determination reference to a party's death in a pleadingwas not the equivalent of a formal suggestion of death on the record Kissic v. Liberty Nat'l Life Insurance Company, 641 So. Second 250 (1994)
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Main Entry: SUGGESTION
Pronunciation: s(g)-'jes-chn, -'jesh- Function: noun 1 A
:
the act or process of impressingsomething (as an idea, attitude, or desired action) upon the mind of another suggestion in response to propaganda Psychological Abstracts B
:
the processby which a physical or mental state is influenced by a thought or idea the power of suggestion 2
:
something impressed upon the mind by suggestion theposthypnotic carrying out of suggestions held in the unconscious G. S. Blum
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SUGGESTION

n 1: an idea that is suggested; "the picnic was her suggestion" 2: a proposal offered for acceptance or rejection; "it was a suggestion we couldn't refuse" [syn: proposition, proffer] 3: a just detectable amount; "he speaks French with a trace of an accent" [syn: trace, hint] 4: persuasion formulated as a suggestion [syn: prompting] 5: the sequential mental process in which one thought leads to another by association 6: the act of inducing hypnosis [syn: hypnotism, mesmerism]

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SUGGESTION

suggestion: in CancerWEB's On-line Medical Dictionary

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I have no idea how many times the prinicpal used the word "suggestion" today, repeating the idea constantly that "this and this" are all done because of the students' suggestion.

Library opening hour was extended slightly. Reading room closes abit later. All these were done (according to the principal) because of students' suggestion. (She spent 10 minutes bragging about it.) All these sounded very good, as if students are finally speaking up and the school is listening to students' suggestion, if not for the fact that these things were done in all other junior colleges automatically by their school authorities without any need for suggestion.

While other JCs already know what their students want and acted on it, ours only act on "suggestion".

The idea of students running their own school completely isn't so far off.

It is perfectly ironical for teachers to constantly teach students the wrong meaning and definition of irony, but that is precisely what teachers in my beloved Junior College are doing now.

According to them, irony means "Expected outcome is different from intended result."

Any students who had taken literature before would laugh at such a sloppy and childish definition.

1) There are many kinds of irony, including dramatic irony, socratic irony, etc. It is pointless and wrong to use a "one size fit all" method for such a profound word. The meaning of dramatic and socratic irony is very different.

2) If just expected outcome being different from intended result is irony, then irony took place all the time! I can study hard for my test, and still flunk it, and that is irony. I can stack playing cards on top of one another, expecting them to stay erected, but when the whole stack fell it is also called irony.

So lets examine what I dug from dictionary.com.

IRONY
(P)PRONUNCIATION KEY
(r-n, r-) n. pl. ironies
+ The use of words to express something different from and often opposite to their literal meaning. An expression or utterance marked by a deliberate contrast between apparent and intended meaning. A literary style employing such contrasts for humorous or rhetorical effect. See Synonyms at wit1.
+ Incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs: Hyde noted the irony of Ireland's copying the nation she most hated (Richard Kain).An occurrence, result, or circumstance notable for such incongruity. See Usage Note at ironic.
+ Dramatic irony.
+ Socratic irony.[French ironie, from Old French, from Latin rna, from Greek eirneia, feigned ignorance, from eirn,dissembler, probably from eirein, to say. See wer-5 in Indo-European Roots.]
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IRONY

n 1: witty language used to convey insults or scorn; "he used sarcasm to upset his opponent"; "irony is wasted on the stupid"; "Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own"--Johathan Swift [syn: sarcasm, satire, caustic remark] 2: incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs; "the irony of Ireland's copying the nation she most hated" 3: a trope that involves incongruity between what is expected and what occurs

---

IRONY

irony: in CancerWEB's On-line Medical Dictionary

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When I was in The Chinese High School, english teachers already taught us the meaning and use of irony, oxymoron, and paradox. And they did a better job, even though being secondary school students at that time, we were much more dimmer than now.

Prehaps the phrase "graduating to AJC" is an irony.

Again the make-up.

This week and next, AJCians are supposed to have a shortened timetable so that we can have more time to study at home. Then some teachers start asking students to stay back for "make-ups".

My sympathy goes to students of this particular econs teacher, who would give out tutorials for topics she had not even teach and expect students to complete them. Now all her students were called up for "make-up" tutorials.

Make-up for what?

As usual me and my gf were sitting at the canteen this morning. And this morning, she had a truckload of complains about her physics teachers to tell me about.

Her physics teacher, the one who had earned reputation from the students as the "Old Man" or the "Kungfu Master", seems probably better at kungfu than physics. When students ask him how to do so and so question in the prelim papers, he would take a look at the paper, then at the student (presumely to see how gullible the student was), then he would exclaim, "Why are you doing this? You should be doing TYS!" After which, he would walk off without another word and leave the student to his or her own misery.

When the Old Man made mistakes while teaching in class that was so obvious that even the weaker students in his class noticed it and tried to correct him, he would just ignore and pretend not to hear. Only when the brightest in class could not take the Old Man's foolry and pointed out the mistake to him, the mistake Old Man made will suddenly struck him like a thunderbolt and Old Man will proceed to praise that particular student.

When some students encountered problems while setting up some experimental equipments, he would walk over, seemingly to help. However, if he fails to notice what was wrong with the setup, Old Man will just walk away, without another word.

Presumely his ability to walk away from the questions of students had its roots from all the Kung Fu he mastered.

Having said all these, my girlfriend looked at me questioningly, as if expecting me to give her a reason as to why Old Man acts this way.

"This is AJC," I said, and my girlfriend nodded slowly in resignation.

I know many friends from different JCs who all seem to have the same complain about their school: "Canteen too small!"

Being a typical AJCians who believed in everything that the school say, I found myself to be a very fortunate person when one of the teachers commented that AJC's canteen is a "first-world tuckshop". Certainly that made the school's canteen comparable with those in countries like United States? I believed this teacher wholeheartedly, as she often stress that "The newspaper is a fountain of knowledge", and therefore I did not doubt her knowledge and experiences.

Imagine my surprise, when I showed my friend from CJC a photo of the canteen in my school and he exclaimed, "WAH!? And I always thought that CJC canteen damn small."

I should not question what those in authority say, should I? So I took out a penknife and point it at the throat of my friend, acusing him of slander.

AJC teachers are always right.

When the universe was young, terrorists were cowards, and ERP were still not constructed, life was much simpler. Little kiddies of that time often love to sleep by asking their lovely mums to recite to them a bed time story, so that they could sleep. Of course, all stories are useful and carry insightful meanings. Stories such as golilocks and and the three bears teach you not to anyhow eat food that is lying around unattented as it may be some bear's lunch. Stories like Cinderalla talks about how tight security at the ball can be easily compromised by a fairy-god mother.

Now, this is the 21st century. Terrorists had become bolder and ERP were built. Those who were so used to bedtime stories had already outgrown them. Yet, far out in the unchartered backwaters of Chingapore, the principal of XJC, Ms Teason had just returned from an unexplained absent. She was away from school for 2 weeks without informing fellow students of XJC, so at the meantime, Yat P.V, the vice-principal of the school prided herself in occupying the place where Ms Teason stood during morning assemblies when she was still around.

Two weeks after the day where Ms Teason stopped appearing in school for two weeks, she appeared suddenly with a story to share with all. As students of XJC were mainly still half-awake (minus those busy rushing to the school gate so as not to be late), Ms Teason decided to share her story with her students, in order to wake her students up. Although her act achieved the opposite effect, ladies and gentlemen, I'm proud to present to you her waketime story.

"Police siren sounded outside my hotel, which caused my heart to thump and my soul to fly. After all, I've always been controlled by Yat P.V and unable to do much for you, my fellow students. Therefore, it comes as no surprise, if the Singaporean police had flew to Britain where I was staying these 2 weeks to drag me back to MOE for a tongue lashing by Tharma. You all may wonder why I leave Singapore for Britain so suddenly. That is because I'm hiding from loan shark.

Anyway, the police did turn up, and when I hear their footsteps just outside on the corridor, I rushed into the shower and stripped all my clothes off and pretended to be bathing. Trust me, my body isn't a good sight, and when all those cute police officers came rushing in, blood gushed out from their nose as fast as current in China Sea. It was later when I discovered that the blood gushed out from their mouth, not their nose.

Anyway, when all of them were lying lifeless on the floor of my lovely hotel room, I used my iron fist and broke the window of my hotel, jumping down and using my umbrella as a parachute like what they do in the cartoons. Interestingly, because I am living in my dreamworld and not caring about my students all these time, reality turned its back on me and physics was out for dinner, so I was able to float my way down to the ground slowly.

It was at this time when i suddenly though of Yat P.V and her various ideas and preaching I have endured during the times I was in the office. That was why my favourite spot is the area outside the office. Anyway, I distinctly remember Yat P.V telling me that just like in a real world where if you pretend not to see someone you don't like by closing your eyes so that that someone will also not see you, it is prefectly alright to delete newton and estein from my brain so that their laws no longer worked on it. I tried clearing my mind of what little I know about things, and slowly but surely, the world blanked out on me. Then, I tried to visualised my favourite spot in my whole life, the spot outside the office in XJC. Soon, colours returned, and I found myself standing in the pouch of XJC. I then quickly rush here to give you all my story."

And with that, Ms Teason walked of in search of some clothes to put on.

When a roadsweeper earnt enough for him to buy a new $200 sofa for himself, he rejoices, treating the sofa like a piece of treasure. Whenever his friends who are more well-to-do visit him and critised the design and the lack of comfort that sofa can offer, he defends his beloved sofa willingly, making a mockery out of himself in front of others.

Many parents of neighbourhood school students had told them that going to the University is the best way to secure a job with high wages and to live a comfortable life. Since the most direct route to University seems to be JC, they worked very very hard for their olevels

Many neighbourhood students worked hard and put in lots of effort to gain entry to a school like AJC. To them, it is their treasure clove, their stepping stone and the platform to their future. Having worked very hard to enter AJC, they love AJC from the bottom of their heart.

They took up s-paper, take 4 subjects, thinking that it would warrant a chance of getting scholarships. Going to University is their ultimate goal in life. It is as if that by going to a university, a higher standard of living can be guranteed and they must do all they can to achieve it. So they mugged.

The world doesn't work this way. Many who happily took s-paper had dropped them because they simply lack the intellect to take them. Some still held fast to their 4th subjects, refusing to drop it, causing AJC to be one of the few JCs with 3 subs students getting more As than the supposely stronger students who took 4 subjects. Getting a prestiguous scholarship here is almost unheard of, yet people still mug blindly.

For many, all their mugging paid off, and they are able to contribute to the unbelievable high ranking of AJC. They happily moved on to University, pondering what faculty to chose. To me, University is a place for individuals to further their understanding of their interest. To them, University is a place where they study the subject they scored the best for during Alevels. Others chose faculty based on the wages that they can get if they work in that field. Like elvin, who totally lacks the intellect or the ability to do any programming(he memorises source codes!) and wanting to study Computer Engineering in University because of the high pay, they have no passion, no real interest in their "specialised" field. Even when you get the certificate, it is a meaningless one. Nobody wants you.

When they enter the workforce, and even if they are able to find jobs related to what they studied in the University, they are just another bunch of sad Singaporeans struggling to their jobs everyday so as to earn money. In their lifetime, they can never accomplish anything, or achieve any sense of satisfaction. Working is about money.

For others, because many fields are highly competitive and studying for the sake of studying won't allow an individual to be distinct from others. An employer would prefer passionate employees as they could definitely do a better job than those educated in that particular field for the prospect of salary. Also, without passion for job, that individual is as easily replaceable as an office chair; a faceless person in a company who is not unique in any sense, as there are always others who were educated similarly by the same educational system. They are virtual clones of one another. When company wants to do a budget cut, those are the first to go.

Unaware of all these implications, life in AJC goes on as usual, with students still struggling with fmaths for the sake of "scholarships" that never came, girls continue flirting around and getting retained and our generally despised ex-councillor president still holding her head high.

Wake up.

When my maths teacher first handed me a piece of revision schedule she intended to follow for this term, I was overjoyed.
When we managed to progress faster than other classes and finish the syllabus early and she gave us a worksheet entitled "Revision Exercise 1", I was excited.
Soon, "Revision Exercise 2" was given out, and these 2 revision exercises covers the first few topics of last year's syllabus.

Then suddenly, she stopped. Past year's AJC Prelim papers were given to us to do. My mind suddenly feel so screwed. The difference in knowledge required to do the rev exercise and that to attempt the prelim papers is very large. Luckily I was following my own revision schedule which has nothing to do with the school's or my brain will be tossed and turned as if it was riding the waves of a tsunami.

I'm better off studying oscillation for physics.

When I say "make-up" I certainly didn't mean those things that vain girls pour on their face to make themselves look prettier. I refer to "filling in of the gap made by something that is absent."

Looking at the term, Make-up Lecture, I would interpret it to mean that some lecture sessions were cancelled previously and additional lectures have to be held to make up the the "missing" lectures.

No. Here, anything held outside the regular time table are refered to as "make-up". Since lessons were not lost in the first place, what are these lessons "making-up" for?

I wonder.

When I first started schooling, teachers were very queer beings. Sometimes, they laugh along with you, sometimes, they make you laugh. At other times, they even buy candies for you. But if you behave badly, they will scold you until you cry.

In primary school, i was told that in order to show respect the teachers, we must bow our head whenever we sees one. Being a teacher is a good career choice in Singapore. You get students to worship you whereever you go, and get paid even after retirement. Anyway, as a primary school student, the concept of respecting a teacher is a curious one. Teachers were people who are wiser, more matured and older than I am, therefore I must bow to them to show "respect". No question asked.

When i went into the glorious The Chinese High School, i was practically treated to having the best teachers in Singapore. By then I am matured enough to understand that even teachers have their fault, and teachers are just human like us. To make us respect them, there must be a logical and proper reason. Being a teacher as an occupation no longers warrant respect from students. The teacher has to earn it. Teachers in TCHS are loving, caring human who truly and seriously care for each and very student. They even went out of the way to ensure that students develope properly and healthy, not just in terms of academic results and physical performance, but also mental health. Simple, workable stress and time management were taught by teachers using their own personal experiences. Teachers tell jokes to relieve students' stress. Teachers have a very clear goal about what they want to do and how to achieve it. Every single teacher has their own distinct style that works. Every single teachers in TCHS commanded my respect and i bowed to every single one of them willingly. I respect them from the bottom of my heart, the dept of my soul. So did 2000 other students.

When I first came to AJC, I bow to teachers, more out of habit than of respect. Then, I slowly dropped the habit. For me to respect teachers, they must exhibit distinct qualities that geniuely shows that they care for the students and actively seek to understand them. Teachers must also be commited to teach and educate the students under their care. I came here and missed the teachers in AJC immediately. I did not mean that AJC teachers are bad or lousy. It is just that they do not go all the way out to reach out to the students. AJC's push on SDL where some teachers refused to teach students because any student with questions can always ask their classmate as there is bound to be someone in class who knows how to solve any particular question further lower the respect I had for some teachers. As a student, it certainly does not make sense to come to school for so many hours each day just to ask my classmates questions. What are teachers for?

Although this seems to be paint a negative picture on teachers in AJC, I must stress that there are many teachers who are good as well. The sad thing is that they are a minority, not a majority.

Mr Patrick Lim, my physics teacher who was recently appointed the physics head of subject, is one teacher i fully respect. He is able to bring across physics concept easily, and cares for everyone in class. However, I am unsure how to let my respect for him show. On many occasions I share the same MRT with him on the way to school. I tried greeting him politely once but he gave me a very stunted look and didn't say anything. Perhaps he wishes to keep a low profile. Prehaps he did not think that he managed to command respect from students from the bottom of their heart. Great people are like that sometimes.

Last year, when it seems that the school was going to change our physics teacher, Mr Lim appeared very sad during our last tutorial lesson, although he tried his best not to show it. He mentioned a few times to treasure classmates in our physics group because that was the last time we will be together in such an arrangement. It was lucky he was not posted to teach other classes. Prehaps an act of god. I don't know.

Unlike teachers who senselessly extend lessons into student's break, Mr Lim teachers quickly, efficently, and straight to the point, allowing us to understand difficult concepts in very short time and release us early for breaks because he know that the queue during breaks in AJC canteen is hellish.

Even when short on time, Mr Lim picks up his teaching pace, but ensures that everyone understand the concepts before continuing. This is unlike other teachers who on the constrain of time will just try to rush through everything without bothering to care if the students understand anything. As long as the teacher taught what he was there to teach, he had done his job. This is the mentality of many teachers here.

I hereby salute to Mr Lim, and wishes him good health and smooth career.

Thank you Mr Lim.

 
UFO ALERT! Nah. This is actually the "stair-case" design of the audi's ceiling. 

 
A nice, packed Auditorum. Students were actually seated comfortably on the floor at both ends of the auditorum. Behind me are rows of classroom chairs that gurantees anyone siting there is unable to see the stage at all. 

Being a good boy who felt guilty at skipping too many GP remedial lectures which i felt were quite useless, I turned up today. As it turns out, the GP dept had teaching summary skills in mind, and since summary is one of the item that nobody in AJC seem to exel at, I eagerly read through the lecture notes to see what was in store.

 
I donno about others, but these points are really obvious to me and it certainly doesn't require a remedial lecture to teach that to students. Maybe other AJCians didn't know that you have to "write the answer down" for summary, and that "when you cannot do a word for word paraphrase, you do a phrase". Maybe that is why I got 54 marks for GP Common Test and became top 7% in GP without even trying. 

 
Nagging; scolding; psychological blackmail; Confucianism.
You name it, GP has it. 

I shall never go to another GP Remedial Lecture again.

 
I was driven off the note by its insistent nagging.
Also, the 1mark = 2min rule does not make sense. I'm afraid some AJCians may go ahead and happily take 2minutes to do those 1 mark question, while happily allocating 16 minutes for their AQ(You have to analyse the compre passages for 8 marks and write around 2 pages) or Summary. An impossible task. The department is teaching wrong things! Also, I distinctly remember some other teachers who taught summary skills at some other lectures talking about 30min for summary. Contradiction. 

The concept of homeroom in AJC is a curious one. AJC constantly reminds students of the fact that AJC is one of the few JCs in Singapore that provides homeroom for the students, ignoring the fact that there are still classes without homerooms.

The word, "homeroom" is made up of two very simple words with complex concept. However, to put in simply, the homeroom assigned to a class means that that room is that class's "home", where students belonging to that class can use the room and its facilities freely. This is the case for JCs in Singapore that has the homeroom system. This situation, however, is not true for AJC.

In AJC, homeroom refers to the room where most of your tutorial take place in. For example, further maths, general paper and physics tutorials all take place in this room, so AJC tells us its our "homeroom". Yet, other students or teachers can actually book our room as well, and use our "home" without our permission. Imagine returning home one day and discovering that the town council had re-alocated some other family to live in your house. Fantastic feeling isn't it? With feelings like this hovering in our mind, AJC is trying to instill school spirit. How can school spirit come about with no sense of belonging?

In schools like HCI, they adapted a "class bench" system, where there is a wide area of benches and chairs with each bench assign to each class. Classmates would gather there to study and do work, while interaction with students from other classes are easy with them only a bench away. While not as impressive as the "homeroom" system, it goes a long way to instill a sense of belonging in the students there, as the bench really belongs to them. In AJC, "homeroom" is just a name. I visited my HCI friend quite recently, and after wandering around, he brought me to his class bench to chitchat, pointing to the particular bench that belongs to him and his class with pride. Even if my friend from HCI were to come and visit me in AJC, I wouldn't bring him to my homeroom or introduce it to him with pride. The reason is simple. Chances are some other classes are using the room. Secondly, we are not supposed to use the air-con.

When we were first given this homeroom at the beginning of this year, I thought I had finally discover the good of AJC. Our room is well located, near the canteen and toilet, faciliting easy access to food and easy answer to nature's call. Better still, the room used to be a computer room, until AJC decided to do away with the computers and give the system admin an easier job. It seems that there is an unwritten rule that all computer rooms are air-coned. My homeroom, which is actually an ex-computer room is no exception.

The problem lies in the usage of the air-con. While the auditorum and the LTs have their air-con on throughout the entire school hour regardless or whether there are students or teachers inside, we were told strictly by the school's operational manager that the air-con is not supposed to be on unless there is a teacher inside. We, being sensible students, would gladly abide to his orders, if not for the fact that our windows are blocked by container classrooms and there is no fan in the room. We had to endure the heat and be baked alive if we want to use our homeroom when no teachers are around. AJC claims to value students' feedback, so when we brought up the matter to the OM nicely, he spoke to us nicely, "You are not supposed to use your homeroom when there is no lesson." Well. That explains it.

According to him, whenever our subject teachers want to teach us in our homeroom, they have to make their way down to the general office, withdraw the key to the tiny container that stores the air-con remotes, come to our homeroom to teach us, and return the key when the lesson is over. Strangely none of our teachers did that before. I think they did not even know such a procedure exists.

Anyway, the OM came for a "routine" check again today (he even when as far as moving the fake security camera from the back of the class to point directly to the container) and discovered the container storing the air-con remotes is opened. So he locked up the remotes and asked my class leader to remember to off the air-con when we leave.

 
  

 
Lagger Chee sleeping peacefully. 

Today the OM came to our class, and our suay Jia Cheng was caught eating in class.

"I give you a choice. Either you volunteer yourself (for CWO), or I force you to do it."

Warning to all. Beware of the Obi-kuek Master. Do not cross his path!

More from the "religionist" Gohhye, http://gohhye.blogspot.com/2006/08/point.html

Only gullible Chinese would believe in such "incredible" stories.(Just like the stories shown on incredible tales = total crap)

Why did he find offense in Chinese believing such "incredible" stories, when he is a chinese too? I don't even watch Incredible tales. Lol! Watching = Believing? Then Gohhye believes as well since he must have watched it. Commerials also count!
Wait! What about tales of your holy person with the initial J and Virgin Mary. You mean Gohhye believe in that and critised people for believing in ghost? Lol.

these stories show how ghosts possess people. and how undead rise from the dead. bla bla...
but anyone who really see them???
and there are sooo many scientific explanation for them....

Ya lor. Cannot believe my great great great great great great great great great great great great great great grandma raise from dead. Must believe your holy person with the initial J did just that.

No one had seen what an atom, or electron, or neutron, or proton, or positron, or negitron, or quarks(theorical building blocks of the above-mentioned objects), yet we believe and study them. Have you seen your holy J in person?

dont tell me all of you are soooo gullible to believe that the moon is eaten by the dog when an eclipse happens???

Yesterday's science is today's supersition yes? The way I see it, Estein theory of relativity is going to be replaced in the next 100 year or so. Then our grandsons will be laughing at first. Hell. I'm going to be laughed at by my son because there are more than 9 planets in solar system, yet i only learn 9 in my textbk.

Wake up!!!! Be someone.... Dont Be superstitious and believe these grandmother stories and folktales.

The word "folktales" (if such a word really exists), originates from the native english speakers.

NOTE: I'm not here to offend/defend any religion. I am a FREE THINKER. However, Gohhye's uncalled-for and meaningless overgeneralisation + insult and mockery of long established tradition should not be tolerated.

My personal take on religion is that those are early man's way of trying to find explaination to occurrences and events that took place around them using their limited knowledge. As time goes, human gained more knowledged of their surroundings and a more sensible and reasonable model, called science is created. This made religions seems redundant, however there are still many things that cannot be explained by science. Also, unlike some hardcore mugger like gohhye believe, scientific knowledge is not absolute. It changes as human's understanding of the world around them changes.

Take for example, our lovely formula, F=MA, by Newton, which states that force is a product the mass of a body and its rate of change of velocitiy. By equating this equation to gravitational force, we are able to predict acceleration by using mass. This worked well in Newton's time, when people are still blind to the world outside Earth.

When scientists later try to estimate the rate of expansion of universe using F=MA, they failed. The result of the calculation did not tally with the observation. The M required for universe to expand at the observed A is simply much higher than the mass of the total universe. Scientists then use the existence of "dark matters" (physic's "ghost") to add mass to the universe so that the value of A tally with the obervsation. No scientist had seen any dark matter, because in theory, it does not reflect light but has nothing but mass. This is human's understanding of science today. Isn't it akin to human imagining the existence of heaven and hell because they could not account for and could not explain what happen at death?

In a recent scientific magazine I've read, a physicist is trying to get his theory of F=M(A^2)/X accepted, where X = A naught (a calculated universal constant). Using his forumla, it is then possible to account for the mass and acceleration of universe, without believing in "ghosts" (the dark matter that cannot be seen).

What was today's science (dark matter) would be tomorrow's supersition. Our children, if they ever have the attitude of gohhye, will laugh back at us for believing in dark matter. (Although i highly doubt that muggers or AJCians at large are interested enough in things other than ALevel to do an in-dept research into it like what i did.)

So Gohhye, Shut That Anus In Your Face.

Thank you.

http://gohhye.blogspot.com/2006/08/7th-month-crap.html

Our fellow harddrive classmate posted an entry saying how stupid Hungry Ghost Festival is. Although I agree with him only to a small extend, I certainly do not agree with the various reasons put forth by the harddrive in my class.

dont understand why all these chinese people burn things which are made of paper.
create air pollution and land pollution with all the smoke and ash respectively.

Can I start burning plastic? Or maybe start my own steel furnance?

And they all BELIEVE that ghost are "scary"....
what mentality they have???
total 0.

Lets see you say embrace the ghost in our class happily.

where in this world got ghost????
they are just spirits with no physical form only.

Spirit with no physical form not called ghost? Er? You you denied their existence then shiftly aknowledged it?

ai ya... waste so much money to burn. What A Waste Of Cash..
why not we burn SIngapore Notes or draw on some rough paper s$1000000000000000 for them.
these designers and shop owners are totally scammers. Bluff peoplé money one!!!

Do they actually hire designers for this one? Why stop at s$1000000000000000? Why not s$100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000? Wait. Do they use Singapore notes down there?

But hor, their range are so wide, for all walks of the dead.
Got X-box, PS2... all the crap.

Interesting phrase. "All walks of the dead."
x-box, PS2 is crap? You don't play them? You mean when you are dead and you play x-box = crap and when you are alive you play x-box = fun?

However, design all CMI and all made of paper.
And so expensive. one credit card cost $50 bucks.
i still prefer to save the money for my own coffin.

Then you want burn something make of diamond? Saving $50 bucks for your coffin? Well. Maybe your coffin is make of paper (harddrive box)

the chairs in front of stage have nobody as they claim that those are for the "Good Brothers"
But i think the seats are to close to the stage.( cannot see and sound too loud)

Smart observations. It is good that these getai are so thoughtful for their audiences. AJC has no such thoughts for their poor students. My neck still aching from the National Day "Concert".

Last but not least. auctions held at some community centres.
dont know which idiot would bid for them.
all like gold-plated, imported from China one.
Scammer!!!

Then import from INDIA? AMERICA?

ps: join me in clearing up the estate of these junk.ty!!!!

No wonder you hate Hungry Ghost Festival! You are a road sweeper!