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

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

Sorry for the recent lack of posts. I was very lazy and reluctant to write any more. I already have a draft entry titled “Day 2: The Tour of San Francisco” sitting there for a few days. I’ll try to get it done ASAP

Singapore strives to be a “Medical hub” of Asia but with the following going on, I think we’re going to be a more of “Law-follower hub” more than anything else.

In a nutshell, for those who don’t understand Mandarin:

From the news clip: “After the delivery of her boy-girl twins, the woman lost a lot of blood and needed more blood transfusion. The doctor told the family that there was not enough blood in the hospital. If they need more blood, they must seek the approval from HIGHER authorities. The husband gathered about 200 friends and relatives to the National Blood Center the next morning at around 8:50 am to donate blood. The glass door was locked and the staff behind the glass door told the desperate husband that it’s not opening time yet and ‘Cannot Talk‘. The woman died later that evening.”

Source: http://the-upperroom.com/?p=144

This is just horrible.

I was about to rant today but decided otherwise. Instead, I’ll post about some interesting stuff on the net.

First off, Darth Vader being an ass:

Pollution in Singapore?

Here’s a really sleek phone, looks as good as or even better than the overhyped iPhone: Nokia 8600

Some random articles:

• Porny stuff in classrooms
• Music Getting Louder
• Wildlife flocking back after the Chernobyl Disaster

I saw this reported today in The Straits Times and on a blog by a fellow Singaporean: ODEX is seeking legal action against those who download anime.

From a scan of the letter posted at the blog, it was evident that bittorrent was the source of the evidence against the downloader. I reckon that ODEX must have done one of the following:

• By getting the ISPs to monitor and sniff the Internet traffic of some of their high traffic volume subscribers, they probably analyzed the traffic data and from there deduced that the traffic was some bittorrent traffic transmitting anime content. In this case, Transport Encryption of your torrent traffic might help.
• I think it is more probable that ODEX participated as one of the “downloaders” of the anime files they accused the downloaders of downloading. When the clients of the downloaders “sent” a piece of the data to ODEX, they took this as a cue that you are downloading or have downloaded said infringing file and mark you down. In this case, Peerguardian (manifesting in Azureus as Safepeer might help.

I must emphasize that the “solutions” I have suggested above might and are not guaranteed to work. Of course even though I believe that there are certainly ways to defeat these organizations, there is no foolproof way – this is analogous to the ongoing fight between the hackers and the so-called security consultants.

As for myself, I have hardly been downloading any anime for a long time and though I do download some other stuff occasionally, I think I’ll have to cover my tracks better in the future. You might want to check out that post I linked to. There is an interesting debate going on in the comments of that post.

Anyway, tomorrow is SAT. I’ve tried out some practice tests and I am not even amused at how the test is administered. Some of the answers to the questions are pretty, in my opinion, subjective. As a guidebook says, the SAT does not test you on their so-called “critical thinking and reasoning skills”, it merely tests you on how well you take the SAT. That being said, I hope I don’t get tangled up in the SAT tomorrow. I’m pretty weak at those language sections.

While reading the papers this morning (YES! I do read, Mr. Kan!), some reports really drove the point of Singapore being really vulnerable up my head. Turn 360 degrees and take a look at how our neighboring countries. They aren’t exactly as friendly as they seem. If you are a foreigner who likes to blast the government for various policies, I suggest you take a look at these articles first: Read the rest of this entry »

I managed to obtain a rip of the first DVD of the Death Note anime. The quality of the episodes are superb. Pity that there aren’t any subtitles. But anyway, I managed to rip the creditless opening and ending for those who want them.

You can find the opening here and the ending here.

The video is encoded in H.264 and the audio is in AC3. If you have problems viewing them, try installing the Combined Community Codec Pack.

And a warning to those who download anime off the net in Singapore. I quote:

The government wants to clamp down on animation downloads effective… this year. Happy New Year. The figures passed down stated that my beloved motherland has 230,000 animation downloaders. We are the top in the world by population percentage, at, uh, 5%? Canada only has 20,000 more households, and yet they have a lot more maple trees than us.

Odex underlined that this sounded like a serious effort on the part of the authorities, who are sick of catching little mama-shops selling pirated batteries. Japanese animation presents a fine opportunity to round up more bodies because there are few legalities to work with (Odex holds most of the licenses for titles in my motherland). They have spoken with the authorities, and I quote, the police have ‘techniques to handle certain things’.

On the other hand, I quote again, ‘it’s not going to look good if the students are caught’. It will not be nice if the local No. 1 tabloid has a 15-page exclusive on 16-year-olds jumping off 20-storey buildings in an attempt to shake off hardened plainclothes raiders. So Odex, in a nice way, is giving us a heads up and telling us to stay down.

As for myself, I hardly download anything beside Death Note these days.

Lastly, Death Note inspired Music Video:

The hasty stroke goes oft astray.

Digital Life reported today that the broadband prices for Singapore are likely to drop and speed to be further increased with competitions from 3.5G and Wireless@SG. The slowest broadband plan (512 kbps) is already less than $30. (It was $50+ in the past.) The article also claims that we will have up to 10 gbps (Gigabits per second) access by 2012.

A good sign. We’ve been paying first world prices for lousy speed and service for what seems like aeons. But, we might want to look beyond the promised speed upgrades.

Honestly, even if you get the recent Starhub 100 mbps plan, you will not see your pages load in less than one second. Why? Because the speed quoted is the maximum speed you can attain, not the required speed they are obliged to serve you. Don’t forget that most of the sites we frequent, including this blog, are hosted on foreign soils. It is not very possible to reach up to those speeds unless you are visiting some local sites.

Take this speed test site for example. Try testing with a Singapore server and another server in say USA. You can truly see the speed difference.

On a side note, today is the last “free” day before school restarts for 2007. Hope this will be another great school year.

And can the anonymous author of this comment please identify yourself? I’ve absolutely no idea who you might be.

P.S.: I’ve heard some feedback that I’ve been writing stuff that’s too technical lately… Well, there isn’t much to say of myself so I turned to other stuff. Perhaps it’s time to change perspective again…

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.

Been a while since I ranted on Mobile Phones but wait, I saw a whole page advertisement at the back of Straits Times main paper today by Nokia advertising three products that is from Nokia’s branch of “music phones” with their music editions of phones (the other branch being the “internet edition” phones): the N70 Music Edition, N73 Music Edition and N91 8GB.

Nokia seem to be liking to bundle “special editions” of their phones these days. Among all these, I’d say N70 Music Edition is probably not worth getting. N73 is good for its camera while N91 is good for its Wi-Fi and the huge 8GB hard drive. But alas, I think it would be better off getting N95 next time when it’s released for the same price.

Starhub has unveiled its 100 mbps broadband service yesterday, albeit at a pretty bad time, but nonetheless being the first provider to bring 100 mbps to consumers in Singapore. They’ve also upgraded their existing customers speed.

I’ve been using Singnet ever since I’ve started getting an internet connection. I wonder why I still stuck with them even after so much has happened. They ought to learn a few things from their rivals. Instead of overpricing their subscriptions and coming up with new connections that are faster and cheaper , why not take the starhub route and upgrade existing customers’ speed? Imagine how many happy customers that would make! Or are they only concerned about their profits? Look around any local forums and you can see a lot of Singnet users complaining.

In other news, someone has hacked his way Nokia Lifeblog to enable for WordPress. Since I haven’t exactly found any mobile blogging application to my tastes, I guess I will try this out for a while.

P.S.: I was typing this post when my internet connection went down again and I couldn’t access the site. For those of you who have the same problem, proxy servers will save your life.

Tags: Mobile Phones, MoBlog

The Taiwan Earthquake that happened last night disrupted the internet access in Singapore and Asia-Pacific.

Access to foreign sites were either very slow or not possible. Things seem to have been improving now since I’m typing this post here. Some self-centered Singaporean over at this forum have, as expected, started complaining all sorts of things about how they can’t play their on-line games or access their favourite sites. Please. Think about how the casualties of the earthquake instead.

It’s interesting to see how a disruption of the internet connection can cause us. We’re too dependant on technology it seems.