Wei Kiat's Blog

 

Am most proud of this. 

LOL and behold!



Yep. Thay tiny little thing over there is AJC's legendary new purchase, a digital clock that cost its entire JC2 population S$1850. Lets look at some of its features:

1) Accurate up to 1 minute.
2) 2 blinking dots that blinks every second.
3) Can see the time at night in case exams were conducted after 7pm.
4) Brillant Red Colour
5) Flown in from Sweden

WOW! Nothing a S$18 bedside digital alarm clock can't provide, with the exception of the lack of need to change batteries regularly.


A bedside digital alarm clock costing approx 1/100 the price of AJC's new clock

AJC believes in recycling, and our old wise clock which was contributed by the 1993 batch in the hall had been shifted one level down, to our canteen.



It literally pays to be in a school that cares so much for the students' welfare.
There are many students who don't own a watch or a handphone to tell time. Really!

Update:
Someone from IJC, after taking a look at the photo of our 1.8K clock commented:

eh... my sch, every cls got this 1.8k clock, + 4 in library, 3 in canteen, 2 in hall, 4 in staff room, 1 in each LT .....

lol, this is a joke in my sch man.. spending 1,8k for one bloody clock, which is all over my sch ...

According to reliable sources, IJC has 62 similar clocks.

Discuss:
http://ajtalk.boardsxp.com/topic.56.html
http://www.spug.net/forums/showthread.php?t=86904&page=1&pp=15
http://sgforums.com/?action=thread_display&thread_id=212770

AJC acquired School Distinction Award! It won the staff well-being award for excellent welfare provided to its teachers! It is a miracle that such a fantastic JC like AJC did not get the School Excellency Award for its various efforts and trouble to ensure the best kind of welfare for it teachers.

Also, the School Distinction Award is seriously flawed.

The School Distinction Award (SDA) recognises high achieving schools with exemplary school processes and practices, and that are on their way to achieving the SEA.

SDA Winners 2006
1. Gongshang Primary School
2. Fairfield Methodist Secondary School
3. Methodist Girls’ School
4. Anderson Junior College

WTH?

The principal today told us that when AJC receives all these awards, the students in AJC, people like me benefited as well. Strangely I don't feel any better. While awards like these seemingly indicate which are the better schools, a look at the list will tell you that there are much better schools than those four winning the SDA.

Besides, each SDA given to any school lasts for five years, and depending how you look at it, good schools cannot get SDA this year because they had already gotten it in any of the last five years. This throws up vacancy for AJC to join in.

What matters ultimately to a student, is not the number of awards the school receieved, but the quality of education, the friendliness of the staff, efficency of teaching and welfare of students. While the P said that the awards are all about its students, AJC won an award for Well-Being of Staff. Instead if relying on all these inaccurate awards given by MOE which didn't who w even study as a student in the school, graduating students who are thinking of coming to AJC should instead communicate first hand with students who are actually studying in their school of choice, listen to those precious advises and feedbacks.

My advise to all students thinking of coming to AJC is this:
If you don't mind working hard getting good results, regardless of welfare facilities, canteen food, safety and hygience, AJC is your best choice if you couldn't get into the Big Five.

If you like me, prefer happiness, good food, welfare, safety and hygience over your results, go somewhere else. Please.

Why do people seek education?
This account may not be accurate. There is also overuse of absolute terms.

Education, in a sense, is a process that facilitates the passing down of knowledge, from one generation to the next. Knowledge and education is not unique to mankind. In the animal kingdom, living beings pass down valuable experiences to their offsprings. Their offprings were educated with information regarding hunting techniques, poisonouse plants to avoid etc. In their case, such knowledge is neccessary to ensure survival.

Human, with its vast lump of muscle in the skull, featured the ability to generate more and more complex knowledge and wisdom that may be totally detached from its basic purpose of ensuring survival. Knowledge in human beings had in fact surpassed its fundamental role, and plays an active part in upgrading the living conditions and helping to understand the world.

Education allows individuals who are motivated and curious, to satisfy their new-found need to seek knowledge. Such individuals left deep impact in our hearts, even when they are as dead as the dodo. Albert Estein and Thomas Edison are examples of names that found a household status due to those individuals' ability to seek knowledge, gain understanding, and benefit mankind.

Compared to their days, there are more and more "well-educated" individuals in the world. Yet the meaning of education then and now had undergone a massive transformation. While knowledge seekers in the past actively seek new knowledge and learn from experiences of their forefathers, knowledge seekers now do nothing but repeatitively copy and paste static data from one generation to the next.

In today's society, education no longer implies the pursue of knowledge for reasons similar to the past. Curiousity that drives educational had gave way to money, greed and selfishness. The educated masses now seek knowledge in order to attain the status of being an "educated" individual, which can heighten the chance of him of her landing on a well paid job, increasing that individual's standard of living as a result. Compare this to the past where knowledge seekers like Marie Curie seek knowledge to save lifes, giving up her own in the process. Today's education simply implies selfishness of the individual and encapsulates the "greed factor".

While individuals nowadays still use the old meaning of education to explain away their greed and to provide an excuse for their selfishness, this is merely an illusion brought about by further selfishness; lying to oneself to provide an excuse for the wrong doing of oneself.

We see teachers, lawyers, doctors, engineers and other high paying occupations. Grab one out from the crowd, and make them ask themselves whether they enter such a profession in order to sincerely help people; to benefit others, or simply because they want to make their own live a materatistic one.

This selfishness has its consequences. Rare individuals who seek education truly for the sake of benefiting others are often displaced by individuals who are strongly motivated by their own greed. As a result, the handful of individuals who could have made a difference were not given a chance to do so.

When we compare scientists then and now, signifcant discoveries and experiments had steeply dwindled. No present scientist can be as impactful or as insightful as those in the past. No present scientist could attain household status for their names.

Passion is in fact out for lunch.

There is an update to the blog entry, "Safety Issues in AJC"

Click here to read.

The VP had repeatitively stressed that AJC is safe, and that safety of the students were taken into considerations before executing programmes or accepting the suggestions from students. Lets look at how safe AJC really is.

1) Falling From The Sky




These photos were taken in the Reading Room today. As you can see, the grill is on the verge of falling off. Suppose both sides of the grill gave way at the same time. Won't AJC have to hospitalise some students?

Also, in the library, ceiling panels and the interior supports had concaved. You can see it for yourself from the third storey of the library. The OM hired some contractors to take a look at it during the Sept holidays when I was in the library, and according to their loud exchange, I can conclude that it is indeed true.

On the morning of 28 Sept 2006, the lamp covers of one of the lamp post at AJC Square, the assembly ground in AJC, fell suddenly and shattered on the ground.





2) Fire!
During a fire drill exercise held this year, students were praised for being able to evacuate in 7 minutes. This may sound little, but in 7 minutes fire can cause alot of damage. Also, after the drill, Ms Leong remarked that she received the feedback that the narrow and rusty (seems to be temporary but actually used permanantly) metal stairs which is the only route of escape for many students caused heavy congestion in the area during evacuation.



She promised infront of the whole school that she will look into it. It is now nearly three months later and the antique stairs is still there. What if fire broke out?

3) Water cooler


This water cooler is located outside the school hall, and was in this state throughout the entire period when the JC1s were having orientation in the hall. According to the OM, they cleaned out the water storage tank and algae accumlated there. Since orientation activities induce thirst and this water cooler was nearest to the hall where orientation was held, I suspected that more than 50% of the JC1s drank this before I noticed it and report it to AJC authority.

All filter covers on water coolers in AJC had since been replaced with opaque ones so as to "prevent exposure to sunlight and prevent algae growth."

4) Auditorum Gallery




The auditorum gallery seems to be added as an after thought. It is badly positioned and cramped, offering little walking space. When making your way to your seat, you must ensure perfect balance and at the same time not step on anyone's feet. Many students have complaint that if one loses a balance, he or she will definitely tumble down the gallery and fall off the third storey. This is due to the steepness of the gallery, which gives students this impression.

Email me if you have other safety concerns and would like to see it here.
This entry serves to alert AJCians of possible hazards in AJC and create an awareness in readers to actively avoid this areas to ensure their own safety when in AJC.

This is an annoucement to all teachers, please assemble at outside the PE department now.

5 minutes later...

I repeat, this is an annoucement to all teachers, please assemble at outside the PE department now.

Students in the canteen were laughing away, mocking at the announcement.

I saw teachers rushing towards the PE dept and busy putting on their ties at the same time. The person who made this announcement is none other than our honourable VP Tay.

She wield incredible power!

And what happened at PE Dept? Do they have no other better place to meet all the teachers?

As usual, the school did not explain anything happening inside the school to the students. Even when SCGS accidentally killed the 7 Kois in their ponds, the students were all informed. In AJC, students know nothing about what is going on in their schools except for tutorials and lectures, and this way of doing things virtually guarantees the lack of profound attachment to the school in each of the students studying in AJC.

The Elvin in my class, whom I also lovingly refers to as the "harddrive" struck a particular nerve in me today that made me extremely unhappy with him. For example, while I was napping at the back of the classroom during Maths tutorial, he woke me up just to ask me what is my grade for paper 2. Couldn't he have at least waited until I'm awake? And anyone who knows me will know that Maths is currently my weakest subject, and waking me from my sweet dreams to remind me of my nightmare don't exactly help to create a positive impression of him on me this morning.

Ignoring him, I took our my GBA which I am currently using to read the ebook "The World is Flat", and he started saying things like, "Why use GBA? Why not buy PSP. The screen bigger mah! Nicer!" Although I know that Papa harddrive drives a branded vehicle and wears tuxedo to work, elvin the harddrive should not attempt to assume others are as rich as him. This boils down to one of my reasons for calling him a harddrive: He lives in his own casing.

So I replied, "This one screen also big enough!" and he questioned me about the number of colours GBA screen can display. And just for the record, GBA graphics is limited by its processing power, not its screen. I told him that GBA even has a TV Tuner, that allows you to watch TV on the GBA. He queried if the screen is black and white, and won't TV be pixelated on such a small screen? First time I've heard of a black and white GBA screen, or that a higher resolution image when displayed at a lower resolution will cause pixelation.

I had it. I yelled, "Elvin! I know you have no brains! But can you please try to make use of it before saying stupid things?"

Whole day today, like the constant tick of a grandfather clock, he bugged me about my results, and at the same time hao lian his. He is viewing me as his academic rival. What better rival for a mugger like him to chose, than Tay Wei Kiat who is more well-known for his ability to slack than his The Wicked, and also his terrible misfortune of having a terrible diarrhea that lasted the entire first week of prelims which deprives him of his sleep totally. Elvin has got no guts. I still trashed him in everything other than maths neverthless.

For computing, he scored 63.6%, which is 0.5% more than me, the supposely computer expert. As I had explained earlier, I screwed up my paper one by getting 59/120 due to my bad diarrhea, lack of study and sleep. I reclaimed my terrible grade by Paper 2 when I had recovered from my ordeal partially, and claimed an 80% by just studying for 2 hours. Elvin, on the other hand, studied extensively for more than one week for computing alone. I have no idea what he is trying to be hao lian about. His inability to learn?

Mr Kho even decided to not include the coursework grades into the Prelim final grades, so that I will not get an A for computing without studying for paper 1 and being sick throughout. Since my coursework is lightyears better than his, I thrashed him completely overall.

He even tried to hao lian the fact that he lost to Kai Yang, another computing pro by 1 mark, not taking into account that Kai Yang never really studied for Paper 2 while Elvin spent weeks studying for it.

Lets turn and look at physics. According to Elvin, he got 30+ for MCQ and 40 for Paper 2. Thats not bad for a harddrive. Considering that he is as mug or even more mug than the rest of my classmates, that is really a miracle for him to score so low. And he still kept bragging about the fact that he may be getting C for physics. On the other hand, I only touch physics once last year, and once this year. Those who knows me will know I am the exact opposite of Elvin. And due to my diarrhea, I badly screwed up my MCQ, getting only 38 because of 7 careless mistakes! There are only 4 questions I seriously have no idea how to do. For paper 2 I was able to compose myself better and score a 53/90, which is quite an achievement. I don't go around mentioning this feat to anyone other than a few closer classmates. And elvin? Advertising his grades to the whole world to bring joy and laughter to the world by giving the world something to laugh at.

KNNCCB. Return to your casing, Elvin. Life is better there.

When Singaporean teenager, Tay Wei Kiat developed the online puzzle game called “The Wicked Game”, little did he know that a small idea like this can expand to the level it is today. What started as a online game within the SIngapore gaming community has developed a cult status emcompassing Myanmar, China and even the United STates, Germany and Ireland. With such a huge following, this teenager was approached by M1 to create the same brainteaser game on mobile phone that consists of SMS quizzes emulating the online puzzle game. With such exposure, imagine the revenue he can get from additional sms traffic and having his game on various channels will definitely give him the right exposure to venture into his own business in online and mobile games.

Yes, I do admit that this arena is already very competitive but he is already a few steps ahead with his affiliation with MobileOne and the expansion of his online game all over the world. And this is just the begining of M1’s effort to encourage talented young individuals to develop local content that will appeal to their peers. More contests and goodies to come

Another interesting observation on mobile games is how life can easily be easily affiliated into games

Link

 
 
 

There are only 2 guys who appear in one of the above photos. Of the two guys, the one without a specs is me. 

Back to school, day two.

Our respectable Mr Lim suffered from some coughing and sore throat, and he still explain to us every single questions in detail, making sure understand everything. Compare and constrast with that teacher who is well and didn't even teach properly. I am touched by Mr Lim. His coughing is quite bad.

I got back quite a number of papers, so here are some updates:

Computing Paper 1: 49%
Computing Paper 2: 80%
Overall: 63%

Maths Paper 1: 31%

Physics Paper 1: 38/60
Physics Paper 2: 53/90

Nothing much happened today, except that I saw a pest control van and its uniformed workers running about the school at 7am this morning. Maybe to catch more rats?

I apologise for grammarical and spelling errors, as well as various unintended typos which may hinder your understanding of this article. As my regular readers would no doubt be aware, I don't give a damn about such things as it hinders my flow of thought when writing. However, this piece of writing should be coherent enough to be understood. Enjoy.

Today's experience in AJC was effectively kick start by marking our uniform with those cute little rain drops that commited suicide from their respective clouds as soon as the morning assembly finishes. Although the weather was looking overcast and there were signs that a rain was coming, AJC authorities in their respective air-con rooms simply could not observe and predict the weather, resulting in students rushing for shelther immediately when the flag raising ended, much like teenagers chasing after their favourite but apparently worthless idols. Many students even got wet. Compare this to The Chinese High School, where the PE teachers and DM will patrol the flag raising area every morning before it starts to look at the weather and determine if a rain is going to happen. Of course, no rain occurs during or immediately after a flag raising, and nobody got wet. Of course, it can be save to assume that with AJC's mission of "To challenge our students to develop to their full potential and become responsible citizens, ready to face the changing world.", all our bodies should be challenged and able to face the changing weather, which is part and parcel of the world around us.

First lesson was physics, and I was glad because I respect my physics teacher. However, a funny thing happened. Mr Lim went to pick up his water bottle when we were busy doing group discussion, and VP Tay dropped in to make some observations. She of course gave everyone the smile that she had practise for 20 years, much like the practised smile of PM Lee, warming the students' heart and making feel loved. There can be only two Mrs Tay in my life (My mother and my future wife), so I don't want to handle warmth from another Mrs Tay and therefore turn my head away as soon as she started smiling.

General Paper lecture today was a blast. It was kick started by a general paper with a queer way of speech, and ended by another teacher who articlate every single world just like Microsoft Sam, Micrsoft's Text to Speech Engine. We were shown various mistakes made my our seniors in 2005, which seems to cover up for the fact that marking for a paper held two weeks ago has not yet completed. Since mistakes made my our seniors is certainly mistakes made by us, I listened attentively. Also worthly to take note was this male GP teacher whom I do not know his name. When he saw that not a lot of students had setttled down and took out their pencil case, he yelled, "HAVE YOU HEARD OF THE INVENTION CALLED A PEN?" I thought this remark was exceptionally funny, although the tone implied that he was more of a lion than a clown. Someone obviously felt tickled enough to laugh out loud, and the teacher immediately snapped back, "Who did that?" Of course, nobody dared to admit, and that poor soul was saved. I find the teachers' reaction to the laughter totally strange and rude. If you are tickled by a comedian and laughed, will be snap right back at you? There is a lesson to be learnt. Think twice before laughing at teachers' joke. They are lions, not clowns or comedians. They can crack jokes but can't stand the laughter that follows. It is therefore important to master the skill of secret laughing and not laugh out loud.

Finally, back to more serious stuffs, another teacher showed us some mistakes in quotations and phrasing made by students. Those students are mad! Their brain's logic and their pretendious command of the English Language is even worst than my sister. At least my sister will not throw in any quotations she know as long as the quotation contains one word that occurs in the essay topic title. And my secondary school sister would certainly not invent phrases such as "become a darker cycle of an even darker night." How such a phrase make sense to the creator, I have no idea. But I do have an advise for GP wannabe's whose command of the language involves randomly generating, memorising, and using all the wrong phrases in the wrong context: Fuck off.

I've never memorised any popular quotation, I don't read the newspaper everyday, and I don't use difficult english words. All I have on my hands are varied sentence structure, being concious of making my sentences and paragraphs flow right and easily, and therefore making things easy to read. Of course my grammar and vocabulary can be improve upon, but just writing simple and logical sentence won me a top 7% in GP during the common test. I'm sure that if AJCians drop all the booklets or lists of quotations they are memorising and practise writing more, they will sooner or later find their own unique writing stuff which they are comfortable with, and henceforth making writing a coherent and logical essay that can be easily understood as simple as drinking water.

During today's GP lesson, I did find some error being made by the teachers. Although being just a lowly student, I'm in no position to point out those mistakes least I'm wrong, but I felt that it would be nice to express my opinions here. My English standard sucks, but I feel is adequate enough for me to be aware of some very obvious errors. The first is regarding the topic I had chosen for my Prelim, "Is competition a catalyst to innovation." It is obvious that this question requires the candidate to touch upon how competition can speed up or increase the number of innovation. However, how the screen, the teacher wrote "The issue is whether competition is causes innovation and not about other cause." I quoted this sentence word by word. Not only did he made a wrong interpretation of the question which seems to be set by him, he also had grammar more terrible than mine.

Another mistake was when one of the teacher mentioned that it is important to make your essay as clear as possible, and she wants the students to achieve that by using short sentences. That is wrong. Short sentence is not enough. It disrupts the flow of an essay. It leaves the reader panting for air. It makes it hard to convey ideas. I mean ideas that are complex. It also reduces the need to use proper connectives. It makes the essay sounds as if it was written by a three-year-old. Am I right?

After school, I went to eat sushi with my girlfriend to celebrate the end of Prelims. On the mrt, she told me about her physics teacher, who managed to finish going through the 30 MCQ questions within one hour. Contrast this with Mr Lim who went through only around 10 questions in an hour. Any authority of AJC may conclude that my gf's physics teacher is a better one because of his ability to teach fast. Here is how he taught his class:

1) Flashes solution to question 1.
2) If donno, ask him.
3) Flashes solution to next question.
4) Repeat step 2.

He did not went through every single question, and rather rushes through everything. In the end, his inapproiate explaination also made my girlfriend so blurred that she learnt nothing in that 1 hour. Talk about efficency of the teachers. 1 hour go through 30 questions sounds good on paper but serves nothing but to waste students' time. There is no quality here. As a result I had to re-teach many of the mistakes my gf made using knowledge I learnt during Mr Lim's fruitful lesson. Worst, when my girlfriend tried to show me how her physics teachers teaches how to solve those questions, it is obvious that he is merely working backwards from the answer, and not teaching students how to approach such questions.

And on a lighter note, when my classmate went to the school's library to borrow a book, he was shocked to disover a sign that read "JC2s cannot borrow books after 25 Sept". How fitting it is to feel disowned by your own school when you just came back to it after the prelims.

Going back to school is indeed fun. Especially a school as fantastic and as exciting as AJC, with such efficent teachers.

And remember, Anderson Junior College is among the approximately 2/3 of Singapore Schools that won the School Distinction Award.

And according to an ex-ajcian who left after the first 3 months, reasons for AJC winning that award includes:
1)principal knows how to put up good show
2)MOE is blind

These two points seems to be mutually inclusive, and please be aware I am not responsible for the above two points because I just copied and paste it from the MSN chat window.

The above was censored because it was too mean.

During Teachers Day, we saw all the teachers smiling happily, especially those who were ex-students of AJC.

A member of AJC non teaching stuff left AJC this year, and this is what he has to say,

Another day at work...gotta clear all the ... before I officially leave the school... Some teachers at AJC been asking me when I'm going...but mostly encouraged the decision...LOL!

JJC was in the news for some awards they had received. Then she showed this modern looking shop in JJC called the T-Break. Wow.

Compare and constrast with Good News Cafe. The stall itself is modern looking, but it is just a stall, not a shop. And students had to queue on a slope which is often wet and which is actually a pathway for students to access the canteen. Colour wolf lurks, trying to get a feel of girls' body by queueing or walking through there.

In terms of design, AJC is simply fantastic. The fact we never get any award in recent years only meant that the MOE community are to blind to notice AJC to reward us accordingly.

Right?

Gunz Online

Gunz online, an RPG style online shooter is something that had replaced maths and physics on my mind in hours after the end of the last examination paper. Going into the game as a noob is terrible, as in the process of getting used to the game or the controls, you would have been killed a few hundred times already and people around you will be leveling without you knowing what is going on.

However, I can't do much regarding that as the only way you are ever going to learn the game is by embracing it and feeling all its thorns. But fret not, below are various pointers to help you get your first 100 kills easily and quickly. Some tips are cheap. Others are quick. Most are dirty.

Be the hunter
If are playing in non team based games, always remember to be the hunter. It is preferable in my opinion to go for larger and more open maps, which more players killing each other. When you see a bunch of players engaged with one another, attempting to stop each other's heartbeat, start shooting in their direction. Since they are already busy taking damage from each other, they are pretty easy to kill. No fear of them shooting you too, especially when they are very occupied and obessed with killing each other. I got many double (killing those 2 souls) and triple kills this way. Get yours now!

Don't value life
Although dying is a pretty sad thing in real life, it is a good thing to go through in Gunz, provided you are below level 20 (After level 20, getting killed will cost you experience points). Look at it this way: Dying will respawn you in 5 seconds, giving you renewed health and ammos, ready for the next shoot out. You even get 5 seconds to scratch your butt, or dig your nose if you are so inclined. And you never lose a thing.

Avoid one on one combat
Since you are pretty much a noob, avoid at all cost a 1on1 combat with other players. Chances are they are more skilled than you and you ended up as a sacrifice lamb for them to gain experience. When chased by any player, always try to lead him to other areas on the map where the fighting is heavy. Soon, your would be killer will be distracted or engaged with other players, and you just conveniently pick him off from a safe spot. When looking for servers to join, try to look for 1 with at least 5 or more players.

Grenade
Be careful when using these. Just like fire, it can be your best friend or your worst enemy. Always aim properly before you throw, and make sure not to run towards your own grenade. These are very effective in indoor areas as players have very few places to seek shelter. However, bear it mind that grenade can bounce of walls and the one you threw may just bounce right back to you.

Fast weapon
With weak aiming and mastery compared to other players, always use a ranged weapon that has fast firing rate. This allows you to fire quickly and inflict heavy and constant damage. Imagine using a shotgun with such slow firing rate, and missing every single hit. You will be dead the next minute. When your aiming is weak, use fast weapons for higher success.

Jumping, tumbling
With this game, it is very important to constantly move around so as not to make yourself an easy target for other players. Who is easier to shoot than idiot standing still in the game.

Meelee
Switch to meelee if you are close with your enemy, and just slash. Preferably, use the secondary attack of the meelee weapon you are holding, which when executed successfully will stunt your enemy temporary. Then whip out your gun and shower his head with bullets. One more kill!

Thats all for the basic tips to get your first kill. Have fun!

And here is my 100 kills.

Has been playing Gunz Online the past few days ever since the end of the prelims which in literal sense means that the "lims" are coming. I checked with my friend, a certain Lim if his family had any intention of coming anywhere but he said no. They are infact going to Genting Highland tomorrow because he is from RJC and their definition of Self-Directed Learning is totally unlike ours. AJC defines SDL as stripping teachers of their duty to mark and teach to students, and while RJC's definition of SDL is simply to allocate more times for students to study on their own. AJC and RJC is 5 ranks apart.

Also occupying me is the anime, Ouran High Host club, which was recommended by a happening classmate who is a girl but prefered to be known as a guy. Do not confuse this classmate with the ugly and bitchiful "ghost" in my class, if there is such a word as "bitchiful". No other words surfice to describe that ghost properly, and the double 7th month in lunar calender this month serves nothing to to exert so much influence on AJC that another ghost by the name of WeiXue came in to AJC this year.

All in all, I intend to slack all the way until the end of next week, before I start to seriously prepare for maths which is currently my weakest subject.

For now, to quote honourable PM Lee, "its all fun and games."

 
 
 
  

http://sgforums.com/?action=thread_display&thread_id=208812

Ajcians, do your part for a greater purpose! Go there and defend our reputation!

 
 
 
  

 
 
 
  

Indeed.

Holy shit.

Proud product of AJC.

And to think AJC actually asked Youtube to take down his videos...
AJC controls the foreign media!

Later AJC sue Youtube how?

Everything sucks.. life sucks...

YOU SUCK!

 
 
 
  

Today marks the end of prelims. And when a person is happy, everything around that person seems happy too.

In order to mark the end of prelims, a bird marked my nose with its produce by standing on a fan blowing at me at the coffee shop and then producing its poo which got fired towards me by the unrelenting blades of the fan. What a great way to mark the end of the prelims.

And shit, I just discovered that I burned the wrong files of a game I'm going to play, so cannot play liao :(.

Too bad so sad.

Btw I just vacummed my keyboard for more serious blogging next time.

Paper 1: 33%
Paper 2: 40%
Coursework: 27%

Score for paper 1 = 49%
Score for coursework estimate: 90%
Score in Paper 2 required to get overall A = x
(.49)(.33) + (.27)(.9) + (x)(.40) = 70
X roughly = 70%.

If I got A today, computing still A. Diarrhea is nothing.

I have a word with the police. What you are doing here is very dangerous, can cause innocent to be injured, there can be a stampede, there can be unnesessary accident! Our reporters can be injured and the activist can be injured! Don't use this tactic! Don't crowd (or is it clown?) around us. We will hold you responsible for any accident and injury! Don't use this tactic! We have the power to arrest! We will follow you to the police station!

Wow. I didn't know taking a walk with a bunch of people can injure people and cause of stampede.

To the person who shouted all that, Don't use this tactic!



We must thank the police for protecting the protestors when they are sleeping! Last thing we want is the protestors getting robbed while they are sleeping and as a result has even more things to protest about!

Thank you police officers for protecting Dr Chee.

Computing today. Just discovered that because of my diarrhea, I barely scored 49 for last weeks computer paper 1. What shit. And I thought I can easily trash elvin without studying. Now I'm last in class for paper 1.

Woot. There's always a first time.

 

LOL 

 

Still waiting for more puzzle pieces=D 

  

In between reporting on breakfast talks and plenary sessions attended by international finance bigwigs, British journalist Philip Thornton will also be checking out cars.

To be precise, he will be studying how the Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) system affects road traffic here.

The economics correspondent for the London newspaper, The Independent, is here to cover the International Monetary Fund-World Bank meetings.

But a colleague back home from the motoring section gave him another assignment, 'to write about the road toll system in Singapore', he tells Insight with a laugh.

It's a story London is interested in. In 2003, the city adopted the Singapore-style charging system for cars entering the city centre. Now, it is debating whether to expand the pay-to-drive area, says Mr Thornton.

The efficient transport infrastructure here is one of among many shining attributes about Singapore that foreigners often cite when asked to share their perceptions of the Lion City.

It has been no different for those attending the IMF-World Bank meetings, like Mr Thornton.

But then, the more than 23,000 people expected here for the meetings are no ordinary tourists. His report, for example, will appear in a reputable newspaper with reach.

-- Straits Times, 16 Sept 2006,
'Singapore, through foreign eyes'

VS

Singapore police bar World Bank poverty protesters

By Philip Thornton in Singapore

The World Bank is accused of colluding with an "authoritarian" regime after scores of poverty campaigners were detained, interrogated or deported by police as they tried to get the financial institution's annual meetings.

Leaders of bodies such as Action Aid condemned the bank's decision to continue the meetings despite what they called a "blatant violation" of their rights.

The Singapore authorities have deported an activist who had been accredited by the Bank and the International Monetary Fund, which is also holding its meetings in the Asian city-state.

Action Aid International named her as Maria Clare Soares, the Brazilian representative, of ActionAid Americas. So far, 28 members of campaign bodies have been barred from entering Singapore.

Iara Pietrocovsky, an academic and a representative of the Brazilian Networking of Integration of Peoples, was let in the country after being detained for several hours.

She said "We were interrogated about our intentions and if we intended to participate in any protests. The policemen were polite but didn't explain why we were detained."

Sandra Krawitz, a media officer at ActionAid USA, said she had a catalogue of incidents where accredited activists had been detained and repeatedly interrogated. "It is just mind-boggling that we should be treated this way," she said. "People are being treated as common thugs. That's not acceptable." She accused Paul Wolfowitz, the president of the World Bank, of "paying lip service" to freedom of speech. "He does have the power to say enough is enough and stop the meetings and to say something more loudly and make sure people are treated as professionals," she said. "The World Bank, Singapore and the International Monetary Fund need to apologise. We need Singapore to come its senses and open their arms to people who are trying to serve the poorest people in the world."

Another activist, Roberto Bissio, of Social Watch, used a meeting between campaign groups of Wolfowitz to accuse the president of giving in to the Singapore government. He said five people had been deported and others had been barred. "People who have been accreditation, their accreditation has been withdrawn," he said.

"Under these conditions, how can we talk about good governance when the basic rules of the host country are being so blatantly violated. The integrity of these meetings is in question. How many NGOs have to be deported? What does it take?"

Mr Wolfowitz said he shared their concerns and said he had raised his concerns at meetings with the President and Prime Minister of Singapore. "Enormous damage has been done and a lot of damage to Singapore is self-inflicted," he said. "They could have been a showcase to the world of development and I do ask whether it has to be so authoritarian."

Mr Bissio pressed him to postpone the meetings in protests but Mr Wolfowitz said "I don't think that's feasible otherwise I would consider it."

Between 30 and 40 activists, who said they were members of the Global Campaign for Action Against Poverty, walked out of the meeting in protest.

No wonder there need to be restriction over foreign media.

Mainstream media is the best!

  

How I missed the wonderful ambience in AJC. The air-coned indoors which are awefully cold, and the wonderful outdoors which are awefully hot.

At home, I can't get used to the real "room temperature".

poor little boys crying and sobbing

poor thing

Where did this piece of imagination come from?

ut the contents are unfortunately worse than garbage.

and too bad that you can't block me, perhaps you can only with blogger beta, but your readership will drop if you use restriction

Sorry, I can just delete all comments you made.
In order words, you have no say. I don't mind you coming to this blog, since it is all "garbage content" according to you, I trust that you won't be tempted to read it right?

my dear girl, you should really reconsider who you are with, because you may just be with a person who will not appreciate you, since he does not even appreciate the school he is in.

My dear told me that she did not one such a undignified and vuglarities shouting girl to call her your "dear girl". You are a disgrace.

you are reproducing works from political sites, and your blog is not registered as a political blog.

I won't say much, except that you obviously don't know what this is all about. Having political contents does not warrant this blog a political blog. Read the guidelines carefully. And for your information, the government has adopted a "lighter touch". Posting racist remarks is another matter all together. Obviously you do not know the difference between racisism and politics so stop pretending.

it goes a long way... almost all the well-known schools have such clocks. I believe that we should buy plasma TVs to be put in the school. It definately impress people at the basics. Perhaps next year we should contribute it to the school as a farewell gift, and we won't squeal like some people into giving a small gift to the school, which spent so much on us.

The school don't spend on us. MOE did. MOE money comes from tax payers' money. The school only decides what to do with all that money, and looking at the state AJC is in, you can't say that they are managing the funds effectively. Do I have to be grateful to AJC just because it is spending tax payers' money? Look at other JCs. The students get more and better welfare and facilities with tax payers' money. As an example, do you know how many branches of Good News Cafe already exist in other JCs before coming to AJC? We are not even the first school to get a cafe. RJC even has a Subway within its school compound. Don't tell me RJC has more money because of its alumni etc. AJC has an alumni too! An alumni crying with joy over the meagre $1998 raised during Family Day, which was the amount left after deducting the cost of hiring Uncle Ringo. We cannot say other people have better things because they have stuffs like alumni to fund the school. We must look at ourselves and ask why we are unable to produce alumni members like theirs.

Must I be grateful for alumni that takes money from AJC students and turn it over to AJC graduates, instead of the other way round? Must I be grateful to AJC just because it spends money? What the hell is wrong with your thinking?

What matters most to a school is the kind of education it provides. I'm grateful to my primary school. I'm grateful to my secondary school. But AJC?

And having a clock that well-known schools have does not make AJC a well-known school. It takes more than a 1.8K white elephant to make a school "well-known". Where are your brains?

if you want to attract my attention, go and do a good deed by cutting your jugular with a razor. It will really save the world from a menance.

I wonder who is trying to attract attention here, coming and swearing your lungs out.

i am here doing some good deeds in my free time to knock some sense into the puny little empty skulls of you all.

Knocking us your definition of sense won't help. As we can see from all your comments and arguements, your "sense" isn't logical. If this is a court, or a debate, you would have lose already. It is our good will that you are still able to vandalise my blog.

And who on earth would want to learn "sense" from a person who swears. Stop wasting your efforts. Before trying to fix others, please fix yourself.

If we were to learn your definition of sense, we would have turned into crazy bitches like you going around and spamming at people's blog, thinking of yourself as a "hero" and scolding and swearing at people whose opinions differ from you. If you want people around you to agree with you, by all means become the next prime minister or migrate to some communist state. Singapore has no place for you and so do my blog.

Mr Patrick Lim, physics subject head has this to say to people like you, "Why do you critise other people, when you are full of mistakes yourself?" If you want to be grateful to AJC, follow his advise.

On a final note, I did not critise AJC, but rather write about things that are happening inside AJC. There were never mention of opinions and ideas such as AJC suck and so forth except for entries posted earlier this year, which I've since announce I don't stand by them anymore. Find me an entry in recent months where I explicitly says that AJC is not a good school. There are none. I merely reported what happened. By labelling facts regarding AJC as critisism and ungratefulness, you are admiting to something we did not even admit.

You are admiting AJC sucks.
Not us.

Imagine the feelings of the 80 odd visitors who are not AJCians who visit my blog regularly when they read your swearing and illogical accusation. Imagine the reputational damage you have done to AJC by your own conduct.

Me, Hoi, KingHuang, Zombie, carried ourselves with dignity and pride when carrying ourselves in public eyes. You, on the other hand, destroyed the reputation of AJCians as being civilised individuals.

I've got readers emailing me asking who on earth are you and why such ill-mannered, childish and illogical girl can exist in AJC.

You are not only admiting AJC sucks.
You are proving it yourself.
Not us.

To any matured mind, mentioning flaws and mistakes in organisations or schools is a perfectly normal thing; no schools are perfect. On the other hand, here you are, showing what sort of individual exist in your beloved AJC.

If I am a parent, I won't mind sending my children to a school that waste money to buy an item with limited use. After all, its only money. If the school is good, I'll still send them there. However, if I know that individuals from a particular school behaves like you, I would certainly not send my kids there. What a bad company.

Always, think twice before writing. And for your information, there is an MOE clause which says that students who damages their school's reputation can be expelled. This rule was put in place to punish those who behaves badly in public, such as smoking, swearing, fighting in school uniform or when as a representive from the school.

Look at what you are doing.

If I'm grateful to AJC, I won't carry myself the way you do, and in public eyes. Are you really grateful? Why do you have to tarnish the reputation of the school you are so grateful to?

And if you are unable to respond to any rebutals to your points other than your meaningless swearing and no solid facts, go ahead and start a blog, so as to entertain yourself there, away from public, away from tarnishing the school's reputation by your conduct.

You see, over the past few weeks, me and hoihoi are able to successfully rebut all your points. You, on the other hand, did not even once defended your own arguements, but carry on ranting. And oh, don't give me the crap excuse that you can't be bothered to rebut etc. The fact is, you can't. And why is that so?

Because you are plain wrong.

PS:

and you cant track me down, because my ip is private

Do you know what an IP address is and why it exist? The IP address is used by servers to communicate with your computer whenever you are online. Without an IP address, the servers don't know where to send information to, and you won't be able to use the net.

If you lay fiber optics (you don't connect to any service provider in Singapore) to your house, or have a T1 connection, then you have a private IP. Then again, private IPs are the most easy to trace IP addresses because in actual fact, a private IP means that the IP address can only belong to you, only you and not other people can have that IP address. Looking at a private IP is like looking at your home address. In that case, why am I unable to track you?

Your misconception of what a private IP is shows nothing but the fact that you are a big fat liar.

If you want to lie, at least lie smartly.

Stop disgracing yourself. I know you are thick skinned, but randomly generating lies and nonsense won't help.

And just in case you are wondering, encouraging indirectly your stream of spams serves nothing but to help me better identify if you are pretending to be someone you are not, and whether you are someone I know in real life. Social manipulation is something I'm born with, even my girlfriend admits it when she see how I deal with certain people whom I do not wish to disclose. Do you think that your continued insults are allowed for any other purposes than helping me identify and know more about you?

To summarise, in this erm, lengthly post, I've exposed you as a liar, a cheat who is confrontational (to quote our dear PM Lee) and an individual who actively tarnishes AJC's reputation.

Your credibility had already been shattered. But not today.

Right from day 1.

Singapore’s ‘Martyr,’ Chee Soon Juan
July/August 2006

By Hugo Restall

Striding into the Chinese restaurant of Singapore’s historic Fullerton Hotel, Chee Soon Juan hardly looks like a dangerous revolutionary. Casually dressed in a blue shirt with a gold pen clipped to the pocket, he could pass as just another mild-mannered, apolitical Singaporean. Smiling, he courteously apologizes for being late—even though it is only two minutes after the appointed time.

Nevertheless, according to prosecutors, this same man is not only a criminal, but a repeat offender. The opposition party leader has just come from a pre-trial conference at the courthouse, where he faces eight counts of speaking in public without a permit. He has already served numerous prison terms for this and other political offenses, including eight days in March for denying the independence of the judiciary. He expects to go to jail again later this year.

Mr. Chee does not seem too perturbed about this, but it drives Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong up the wall. Asked about his government’s persecution of the opposition during a trip to New Zealand last month, Mr. Lee launched into a tirade of abuse against Mr. Chee. “He’s a liar, he’s a cheat, he’s deceitful, he’s confrontational, it’s a destructive form of politics designed not to win elections in Singapore but to impress foreign supporters and make himself out to be a martyr,” Mr. Lee ranted. “He’s deliberately going against the rules because he says, ‘I’m like Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi. I want to be a martyr.’”

Coming at the end of a trip in which the prime minister essentially got a free ride on human rights from his hosts—New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark didn’t even raise the issue—this outburst showed a lack of self-control and acumen. Former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, the man who many believe still runs Singapore and who is the current prime minister’s father, has said much the same things about Mr. Chee—“a political gangster, a liar and a cheat”—but that was at home, and in the heat of an election campaign.

Mr. Chee smiles when it’s suggested that he must be doing something right. “Every time he says something stupid like that, I think to myself, the worst thing to happen would be to be ignored. That would mean we’re not making any headway,” he agrees.

But one charge made by the government does stick: Mr. Chee is not terribly concerned about election results. Which is just as well, because his Singapore Democratic Party did not do very well in the May 6 polls. It would be foolish, he suggests, for an opposition party in Singapore to pin its hopes on gaining one, or perhaps two, seats in parliament. He is aiming for a much bigger goal: bringing down the city-state’s one-party system of government. His weapon is a campaign of civil disobedience against laws designed to curtail democratic freedoms.

“You don’t vote out a dictatorship,” he says. “And basically that’s what Singapore is, albeit a very sophisticated one. It’s not possible for us to effect change just through the ballot box. They’ve got control of everything else around us.” Instead what’s needed is a coalition of civil society and political society coming together and demanding change—a color revolution for Singapore.

So far Mr. Chee doesn’t seem to be getting much, if any traction. While many Singaporeans don’t particularly like the PAP’s arrogant style of government, the ruling party has succeeded in depoliticizing the population to the extent that anybody who presses them to take action to make a change is regarded with resentment. And in a climate of fear—Mr. Chee lost his job as a psychology lecturer at the national university soon after entering opposition politics—a reluctance to get involved is hardly surprising.

Why is all this oppression necessary in a peaceful and prosperous country like Singapore where citizens otherwise enjoy so many freedoms? Mr. Chee has his own theory that the answer lies with strongman Lee Kuan Yew himself: “Why is he still so afraid? I honestly think that through the years he has accumulated enough skeletons in his closet that he knows that when he is gone, his son and the generations after him will have a price to pay. If we had parliamentary debates where the opposition could pry and ask questions, I think he is actually afraid of something like that.”

That raises the question of whether Singapore deserves its reputation for squeaky-clean government. A scandal involving the country’s biggest charity, the National Kidney Foundation, erupted in 2004 when it turned out that its Chief Executive T.T. Durai was not only drawing a $357,000 annual salary, but the charity was paying for his first-class flights, maintenance on his Mercedes, and gold-plated fixtures in his private office bathroom.

The scandal was a gift for the opposition, which naturally raised questions about why the government didn’t do a better job of supervising the highly secretive NKF, whose patron was the wife of former Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong (she called Mr. Durai’s salary “peanuts”). But it had wider implications too. The government controls huge pools of public money in the Central Provident Fund and the Government of Singapore Investment Corp., both of which are highly nontransparent. It also controls spending on the public housing most Singaporeans live in, and openly uses the funds for refurbishing apartment blocks as a bribe for districts that vote for the ruling party. Singaporeans have no way of knowing whether officials are abusing their trust as Mr. Durai did.

It gets worse. Mr. Durai’s abuses only came to light because he sued the Straits Times newspaper for libel over an article detailing some of his perks. Why was Mr. Durai so confident he could win a libel suit when the allegations against him were true? Because he had done it before. The NKF won a libel case in 1998 against defendants who alleged it had paid for first-class flights for Mr. Durai. This time, however, he was up against a major bulwark of the regime, Singapore Press Holdings; its lawyers uncovered the truth.

Singaporean officials have a remarkable record of success in winning libel suits against their critics. The question then is, how many other libel suits have Singapore’s great and good wrongly won, resulting in the cover-up of real misdeeds? And are libel suits deliberately used as a tool to suppress questioning voices?

The bottling up of dissent conceals pressures and prevents conflicts from being resolved. For instance, extreme sensitivity over the issue of race relations means that the persistence of discrimination is a taboo topic. Yet according to Mr. Chee it is a problem that should be debated so that it can be better resolved. “The harder they press now, the stronger will be the reaction when he’s no longer around,” he says of Lee Kuan Yew.

The paternalism of the PAP also rankles, especially since foreigners get more consideration than locals. The World Bank and International Monetary Fund will hold their annual meeting in Singapore this fall, and have been trying to convince the authorities to allow the usual demonstrations to take place. The likely result is that international NGO groups will be given a designated area to scream and shout. “So we have a situation here where locals don’t have the right to protest in their own country, while foreigners are able to do that,” Mr. Chee marvels. Likewise, Singaporeans can’t organize freely into unions to negotiate wages; instead a National Wages Council sets salaries with input from the corporate sector, including foreign chambers of commerce.

All these tensions will erupt when strongman Lee Kuan Yew dies. Mr. Chee notes that the ruling party is so insecure that Singapore’s founder has been unable to step back from front-line politics. The PAP still needs the fear he inspires in order to keep the population in line. Power may have officially passed to his son, Lee Hsien Loong, but even supporters privately admit that the new prime minister doesn’t inspire confidence.

During the election, Prime Minister Lee made what should have been a routine attack on multiparty democracy: “Suppose you had 10, 15, 20 opposition members in parliament. Instead of spending my time thinking what is the right policy for Singapore, I’m going to spend all my time thinking what’s the right way to fix them, to buy my supporters’ votes, how can I solve this week’s problem and forget about next year’s challenges?” But of course the ominous phrases “buy votes” and “fix them” stuck out. That is the kind of mistake, Mr. Chee suggests, Lee Sr. would not make.

“He’s got a kind of intelligence that would serve you very well when you put a problem in front of him,” he says of the prime minister. “But when it comes to administration or political leadership, when you really need to be media savvy and motivate people, I think he is very lacking in that area. And his father senses it as well.”

However, the elder Mr. Lee’s death—he is now 82—is a necessary but not sufficient condition for change. Another big factor is how civil society is able to use new technologies to bypass PAP control over information and free speech. The government has tried to stifle political filmmaking, blogging and podcasting. Singapore Rebel, a 2004 film about Mr. Chee by independent artist Martyn See, was banned but is widely available on the Internet.

Meanwhile, pressure for Singapore to remain competitive in the region has sparked debate about the government’s dominant role in the economy. Can a top-down approach promote creativity and independent thinking? The need for transparency and accountability also means that Singapore will have to change. That is the source of Mr. Chee’s optimism in the face of all his setbacks: “I realize that Singapore is not at that level yet. But we’ve got to start somewhere. And I’m prepared to see this out, in the sense that in the next five, 10, 15 years, time is on our side. We need to continue to organize and educate and encourage. And it will come.”

He doesn’t dwell on his personal tribulations, but mentions in passing selling his self-published books on the street. That is his primary source of income to feed his family, along with the occasional grant. As to the charge of wanting to be a martyr, once he started dissenting, he found it impossible to stop in good conscience. “The more you got involved, the more you found out what they’re capable of, it steels you, so you say, ‘No, I will not back down.’ It makes you more determined.”

Perhaps it’s in his genes. One of Mr. Chee’s daughters is old enough that she had to be told that her father was going to prison. She stood up before her class and announced, “My papa is in jail, but he didn’t do anything wrong. People have just been unfair to him.” Mr. Restall is editor of the REVIEW.

 
 

Marked by waves of loud roaring from their modified engines, these bikers came and illegally parked their bikes to attend a wedding at my void deck.

For more photos:
http://thewicked.sgblogging.com/gallery/bikers/