On This Day

En Yeow's latest post warrants a visit. What a novel way to think about your birthday!

My interest is piqued and I did on search on my birthday at wikipedia as well and came up with these :

22 July - on this day :

* Gregor Mendel, the Austrian geneticist was born;
* Gustav Ludwig Hertz, physicist and Nobel laureate was born;
* so was fashion designer Oscar de la Renta.

- Sadam Hussein's 2 sons Uday and Qusay died.

* mathematicians remember it as the Pi Approximation Day, which is the day the earth completes 2 astronomical units of its annual orbit. On this day the total length of Earth's orbit, divided by the length already traveled, equals π. (source: wikipedia)
* Wiley Post becomes first person to fly solo around the world traveling 15,596 miles in 7 days, 18 hours and 45 minutes;
* 1942 - Holocaust: The systematic deportation of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto begins.
* 2005 - Microsoft releases the final name for its next-gen operating system, Longhorn. The name will be "Windows Vista".

Why not do a search for your birthday?

Thinking about the news

I hope you have been reading the newspapers cos there are several significant happenings recently. Such as :

1) Dec 2 hanging of Australian-Vietnamese Ngyuen for drug trafficking. Justin has written a thoughtful post about the 2 points of view surrounding this issue. Will Singapore-Australia diplomatic relations be severely affected by this? Do you think Singapore should re-consider its stance on capital punishment?

2) Satisfaction survey of bus commuters reveal people are still vastly unhappy about the long waiting time for public buses and infrequent services. The same 2 complaints were revealed in a similar study 2 years ago. Nothing has changed, it appears. So do survey for what?

3) The multi-million dollar plan to transform East Coast Park (ECP) into a major entertainment centre. Some people are crying for the government to stop the nonsense and leave ECP the way it is. Do we need another mini-Sentosa or theme park? Remember how Chinatown is 'transformed' and now becomes another sterile, artificial tourist trap?

4) Local men can now choose a Vietnamese bride by going to a matchmaking agency who brings in virgin girls from Vietnam for potential customers to view in a showcase. The girls have 14 days in Singapore to 'catch' a customer, failing which they have to return to Vietnam, husband-less. What does this say about the status of women? About Singapore men? About the matchmaking agency?

What do you think about these events?

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On a separate note, some comments for the following people:

EnYeow: My comments didn't show up in your last 2 posts. Please check your coding.
Victor: The flash animation takes forever to load and when it does, the song just goes on and on. I am unable to post on your tagboard while the song is playing.
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Question: Who plays tennis in this class? We should have a game or two soon!
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Holiday in Malaysia

I thought I could perhaps be lazy, and not post the photos from my recent short holiday. But Uni just wouldn't stop nagging so here they are. See if you can guess where this place is.


This was what I saw outside my room every morning.

And here's my angel in the garden.

Early morning walk:

My experimentation with the Macro function of my camera:

Someone came to visit :

If you still don't know where this is, maybe this will help.
So where did Mdm Sng go for her holiday?

Pit Stop

This week's going to be a busy week for me cos:
- have just been totally overwhelmed by the amount of work I need to do before I go for my longer trip in Dec;
- there are several farewell treats for colleagues (some of your teachers are leaving if you still don't know);
- a wedding to attend (Mr Ha's);
- Sitec exhibition (just drew up my To Buy list this morning);
- textbooks & new uniform to buy for my daughter.

So I'll do a quick review of what's happening in the F41 blogosphere :
* Most of you have started your blogs and that's made me really really happy :).
* I especially like Letty's blog, because of the lovely pictures and thoughtful posts. I'll give an award to Uni for his indefatigable effort in updating his blog and writing his essays as well. Also another award to Justin for the gentlemanly touch in his blog. Li Hua gets my vote for being the "Gushiest" blog! See how she gushes over Daniel Radcliffe and the other hunks in her life. Song Ying wins the Chattiest Blog Award (can you talk more in English class too? :) ).
* I'm still missing some people, whom I won't publicly 'shame' here but can some of you help do some 'butt-kicking' and get your friends to hop on the bandwagon soon? If they don't have computers at home, be a good friend la and invite them to your house to use your computer.

By the way, we have been cited in another blog. Isn't it exciting to be 'discovered' by other people? I'm sure there are other teachers who are doing this blogging thing with their students so I don't know why I'm being singled out. But know this ah -- if I'm going down, I'm taking you all with me! Muah ha ha ha.....(ok ok, just joking. Seriously, nothing will happen if we don't do anything silly. Mdm Sng will protect you like a mother hen.)

That's all for now. Keep blogging & have fun!

Think about this #1

My camera's charging and I'm too lazy to upload my photos and talk about my Malaysia trip now. So I shall blog about an entry from Joyce's blog.

About the Malay man who had died while retrieving his fish trap. The same man who was an expert scuba-diver and who had once saved someone from drowning. How and why could this happen? Joyce pondered about the frailties of life and honestly, I felt the same way too when I read this news. And also news about the family in southern Thailand who were brutally gunned down (adults, children and all) by terrorists because the father decided to quit the group.

There are 2 ways to live one's life, 2 ways to look at life, both exemplified by the 2 poems I'll share with you below:

Poem 1: Solitude (by Ella Wheeler Wilcox)
Rejoice, and men will seek you;
Grieve, and they turn and go.
They want full measure of all your pleasure,
But they do not need your woe.
Be glad, and your friends are many;
Be sad, and you lose them all, --
There are none to decline your nectared wine,
But alone you must drink life's gall.

Poem 2: If I Can Stop One Heart from Breaking (by Emily Dickinson)
If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one faintin robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.

* * * *
I believe Mr Abdul Khalid Talib lived his life the second way. May he rest in peace.

I believe you can choose to live your life in solitude, like Poem #1, and see life as thankless, vanity of vanities and a curse in which we must live out. Or you can choose not to live it in vain. What do you think?

She did it!

I'm back from my short holiday (details in another post coming up).

But first, let me boast a little about my daughter's latest exploit. I am very encouraged by your positive responses to my P1 exam results. I try very very hard not to be the typical kiasu parent, but believe me it is very hard to stay away from the maddening crowd in Singapore.

Anyway, the reason I'm delirious now is because my daughter has just completed her very first Sudoku puzzle!!

Yes yes yes! Thunderous applause please! It is a kid's version - 4 x 4 grid for a start, which will get progressively more challenging. But I am bullish about her logical thinking skills. Because 2 days ago, she cracked a Mastermind code in 4 steps. You should have seen my jaw drop when she coolly placed all the correct coloured pegs on the game board. Bravo! Encore! Pass me the champagne!

So, who cares about her SA2 results? I think she's got potential. Just you wait and see...

Sobering numbers

Seeing as this class is full of maths whizs, I assume you love numbers and such.

Here's a look at the sobering truth behind numbers in real life. Click this. The blogger is a Singaporean doctor working in the U.K. Her blogs are really good.

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Another truth about numbers -- my daughter's P1 SA2 results. All bands 2 & 3. She wasn't streamed to the best class in P2 where they channel all the maths hot shots to. Am I disappointed?? Nah. She's talented in other ways, like art (which unfortunately won't help her make a living in Singapore but I'll worry about that later).

At the Meet the Parents session at her school yesterday, I heard a parent asking another parent the overall % score for her child. For heaven's sake, why must parents do inane things like that? Sigh....

Survey #1

OK, students of F41, I found a sampling of these questions from another blog and thought I'll invite you all to answer these questions so that we get to know one another even better. Please post the answers on your blog. I'll do mine here:

Please list, as honestly as you can:

1) 5 things I plan to do before I die
* serve as a humanitarian aid worker in a 3rd world country
* be famous
* visit Europe
* learn to play another musical instrument besides the guitar
* blog in Chinese!

2) 5 things I can do well
* write (in English)
* play most racket games
* make friends
* entertain my daughter
* play Boggle

3) 5 things I cannot do well
* play an instrument by ear
* public speaking
* cook
* jog
* be patient with idiotic people

4) 5 things that attract me to other people
* my frankness
* my easy-going nature
* can talk about almost anything under the sun
* my love of food
* sense of humour

5) 5 things I say most often
* Shit
* Wa lao
* Excuse me?
* What the fish?
* You love me or not? (to my daughter, not my husband!)

6) 5 celebrity crushes
* Jude Law
* Robbie Williams
* Pierce Brosnan
* Srichapan Paradorn (Thai tennis player)
* Andre Agassi

It's now your turn. I'll check everyday for your entries!

Flurry of Blogs!

Today several people have started up their blogs, probably remembering my deadline of 20 Nov! I am glad to see more activity and I really hope blogging will grow on you and you will continue to do it even after you've left secondary school.

Tobie's & En Yeow's blogs have got photos on them, which makes their blogs quite nice aesthetically. A picture says a thousand words, no?

I will be out of action from 19-21 Nov cos I'm off to Malaysia with some friends. These are people whom I met in my NUS days and were in the same church as me. I hope to take some cool pictures and post them on this blog. If you don't see any eventually, it's probably because Mdm Sng turns out really ugly in the photos and she's a rather vain teacher so cannot embarrass herself in front of her students.

Do remind your friends who haven't started their blogs to do so soon. I am waiting!!!

How to spend your afternoons

OK, I know you still have Biology lessons this week although I'm not sure how long the 'torture' is going to last (how many days this week?). So I'm suggesting a de-stress activity that anyone of you can enjoy.

After your Biology class, take bus 65 to Orchard Road and go to Wheelock Place.

Then let your breath be taken away by the incredibly beautiful photos of Yann Arthus-Bertrand lining the walkways of Wheelock Place, all the way to Paragon.
It doesn't matter if you are not the artistic, sentimental, or creative sort. I seriously don't think any human being can look at the photos and not be enthralled by the sheer beauty of nature and humanity.

If you have a camera with you, take a shot of your favourite pic and write/blog about how the photo has moved you.

I'm going to take a second stroll there, this time with my camera.

"Mouse Loves Big Rice"

That is the literal translation of the lao shu ai da mi song that my daughter is now crazy over. Turns out that her school has taught her certain dance steps to the song and she can't wait to show them to me.

So last night I bought her the CD. And from 10.30 pm to 11.00 pm, we listened to the original, ballad, acoustic, dance, extended dance, club, extended club and karaoke versions of the same song. Yes, I'm not kidding.

That's not the worst part. She wanted me to dance with her. So, with the curtains drawn (in case students from the next block caught Mdm Sng dancing!), we danced ourselves silly. She taught me some steps and I improvised some.

It was a great time of bonding, although I felt quite silly initially. She was so obsessed with Guo Mei Mei now she slept with the CD cover next to her.

So now you know, Mdm Sng is quite capable of doing strange things in her house. I hope you'll still respect me.

The Ball Has Started Rolling....

So first off the blocks (blog) is Yew Ngee. Everyone clap!!!

Thank you Nacrasis (what exactly does it mean?) for your enthusiasm. Please check out his blog and give him a hard time (I'm just joking). Actually, lets be really civil and gracious and give good input to one another's blogs and you'll experience what it's like to rise above all the childish bitching you see in many teenagers' blogs and have mature, thought-provoking discussions. I have faith that the students of F41 can do that.

From time to time, I would refer you to good blogs that I've come across. Remember what I said about good input? Garbage in, garbage out, that's another of my mantra. So feed your mind with good stuff and you will be able to produce good stuff.

Meanwhile, I patiently wait for the rest of you to jump in the bandwagon to start our journey towards Blogland.

Young or Old

I found this poem, which I thought encapsulates what I really should be thinking about, rather than to be so fearful of yet another year and consequently triggering another franctic trip to Sasa to stock up on anti-aging cream. For you students, do remind yourself of this too:

HOW OLD ARE YOU?

Age is a quality of mind.
If you have left your dreams behind,
If hope is cold,
If you no longer look ahead,
If your ambitions' fires are dead --
Then you are old.
But if from whom life you take the best,
If in life you keep the jest,
If love you hold;
No matter how the years go by,
No matter how the birthdays fly --
You are not old.

H.S. Fritsch

Step in and write!

This blog is meant for me to not only keep in touch with my students, but having recently discovered the joy of blogging (I have a personal blog elsewhere in cyberspace), I would like to encourage my students to embrace this new facet of writing, of leaving traces of yourself, your life, thoughts and inspirations in the virtual world and share them with others.

Not too long ago, certain students in other schools have been chastised by their school for flaming their teachers in their blogs. I would like to believe that my students are above such juvenile antics. Hence I would like you to take the time to write meaningful entries in your blog. What you write reflects the kind of person you are. So you are the best person to decide how you want people to see you.

F41 students: please remember to SMS/email me your blog URL (include your real name as well) so that I can visit your blog and leave comments in there.

I hope you will have as great an experience blogging as I have. Write away folks!