Gosh, I hope they don’t learn English like this.

Tags: japanese

Gosh, if this came true, it would be the sweetest from 天元突破 グレンラガン.

For those who know what I am talking about, enjoy the art. For those who don’t, just appreciate the nicely drawn art by someone else. (I definitely did not draw this – I can’t draw to save my life!)

Tags: tengen toppa gurren lagann

Lo! It’s finally here. (Please do not misinterpret this as a statement of anticipation.) The red enlistment notice.

Date: 9 Jan 2008
To: Basic Military Training Centre School 2

So on Jan 9 next year, I will begin my two year exodus from civilian life. Has anyone gotten their letters yet?

Tags: personality, quiz

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tags: singapore

Stories

Vocals: Hitomi
Lyrics: Kuroishi Hitomi
Composition: Kuroishi Hitomi

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: code geass, japanese, lyrics

For some of us, at least for me, we can’t listen to songs with lyrics when trying to memorise facts of which Economics is the worst culprit of them all. The lyrics just distract me from memorising. So, I turn to acoustic music, that is music without lyrics, that usually come in the form of soundtracks.

My interests in soundtracks can be traced back to the Lord of the Rings soundtrack which I have already written to death here. For those who want to know though, the third Return of the King Complete Recordings is going to be released in the midst of our A-Levels on November 6. For some kind souls who have spare cash, please consider a Christmas gift for me with all three complete recordings

So far, there has only been five “entertainment” (mixture of movies, TV Show and anime) that has wow’d me with their soundtracks:
– Lord of the Rings (duh!)
– Lost
– Eureka seveN
– Death Note
– Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann

Of course, there is also the once in a while song or two that sounds good but these are my top five in no order. As again, here are some of my selected songs for your listening pleasure. A mix of upbeat, majestic and soft music.

Well, in case you were wondering about the seemingly music themed entries nowadays, let’s just say that I’m in this mood right now to write these kind of posts.

Tags: death note, eureka seven, Lord of the Rings, lost, soundtracks, tengen toppa gurren lagann

I have been tracking my mobile phone usage statistics since the start of this year and i thought perhaps it’s time to publish a three-quarter report! I shall comment on the general trend and account for them!

First up: talk time. This includes any voice calls and video calls.

There is a general decreasing trend in the number of minutes I spend on the phone. I account this for my increasingly isolation from the WORLD into my own little corner of the universe. Jokes aside, I don’t usually make much calls anyway so this trend doesn’t really mean much. It might spike up again any time soon. Anyway, the huge spike during May was due to the organizing of VICOMP which took up a lot of my time and energy.

There is a general stable trend in the SMS usage hovering around the upper end of 300. That’s a good sign though because I can keep to my free SMS limit. The spike during May is of the same origin as above. The high count in January is probably an after-effect of the December holidays.

And that’s the end of the report. If you are bored, here is the excel file used.

Tags: Mobile Phones, statistics

If you have noticed, URLs to all the pages have now been stripped of the directory “wordpress” in them, including the home page. I thought the URLs look prettier without the word in them.

Anyway, redirections are in place to redirect the old links to their new links. While I expect this redirection to be permanent, please do update your bookmarks, if any, to point to the main page without the “wordpress” directory.

Technical details follow:
I haven’t figured out how to do any redirections for URLs pointing to “wordpress/” to redirect to “/”. (I’m currently hard-coding it into a “index.php” file under “/wordpress”.) Any ideas to edit the following “.htaccess” residing under “/wordpress” would be welcome.

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /wordpress/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule (.*) /$1 [L,R]
</IfModule>

Tags: Wordpress

Bus Fares have risen again and while this does not really concern me, for a few more years at least, I do feel the agony of many. It seems like these hikes have become an annual event. (Speaking of annual events, I’ve not been to Kusu Island for a kind of yearly pilgrimage for good luck. Perhaps I could make a trip there one of these days.)

Then again, today’s article says that rising costs have forced bus operators to raise fares so as to prevent a degradation of services. Some claim that the listed companies are only out for their profits but then again, did they consider if government operated firm is going to be better (Economic students, use your theory here! ) in terms of cost. I am not that worried that the government will provide substandard service though seeing that we are such an efficient country.

Singaporeans just like to complain. Haven’t they realized that we have pretty good transport systems here in Singapore? Sure, though the waiting times for the trains or buses can be long at times and they can be rather filled, the bus rides are still generally comfortable and we get to our destinations in a wheeze. There are so many bus routes that it is virtually possible to get to anywhere from everywhere without the need to walk much. In fact, I think we probably have one of the best and extensive transport system for a country of our size.

Of course, some might argue that this is because owning a car in Singapore is like getting a two-storey bungalow in some parts of Australia. Well, I have nothing to counter this and frankly, I would have to agree that to restrict the number of cars on the road, we need a good transport system.

Some still insist that our transport cost is high. Why not look at Hong Kong? They are in very much the same situation as us yet their transport system is so much more costlier than ours. I could have sworn I topped up my Octopus card about thrice during my stay in Hong Kong and I didn’t really travel that much.

So, after reading through my ramblings, what’s my point? My point is this: stop complaining and just be glad you have what you have. If you miss that bus or train just stay annoyed for a maximum of five minutes before realizing that there isn’t much to be annoyed about.

Tags: singapore