Elite Schools

Today, my classmates and I had a Language arts lesson, where we went through an article about elite schools. The main point of the lesson, was to teach us to analyse the reliability of an essay. In the end, we had to deem the article as unreliable, because the author did not provide sufficient evidence to back up her claims. One example was where she mentioned that almost all of her schools head prefects were Gifted Education Programme pupils. She did not even provide the names and years in order to sufficiently support what she said.


However, even though the article is not a reliable article, I still do feel that there were some relevant learning points. She mentioned that it is not necessary for parents to move next to the school or go to the school to do voluntary work so as to get their children into elite schools. I believe that if a student works hard, he will still be able to do well, get awards and go into a good secondary school. Singapore's education system is based on meritocracy. As long as the child has the heart to learn, and gets a good grade or score, he could probably get himself into better schools as he moves up from different levels of education.

A point which I do not hold the same view as her, is that schools call the parents of students with poor grades, so as to kick them out. I do not think that that is the case. When schools call parents, they want to understand the situation better, so as to be able to cooperate with them to bring the students grades up. They will not give their students up like that so easily.

Merchant of Venice Characters

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Fruit Festival

Not long ago, I went to a fruit festival organized by the Jurong Resident’s Committee, where the guest of honour was the member-of-parliament of the Jurong Group Representative  Constituency. The fruit festival was held at an open area in Bukit Batok. I went to the fruit festival with my family and aunt, who had bought the tickets from her neighbor.

When reached the venue of the fruit festival, I immediately spotted huge basketfuls of durians on in a corner. Later, it was announced that each table (comprising of 10 people each) would receive 9 durians, of many different grades and species. Not only that, there would be mangosteens , rambutans and longans. I have always heard of durian as the ‘King of Fruits’ but it was at the festival that I heard my mother mention that mangosteen was the ‘Queen of Fruits’.  I had never known about this fact before the festival. My mother then further explained that it is regarded as the ‘Queen of Fruits’ because many people like to eat it, as well as people usually like to eat both durians and mangosteens together. When  I asked why, she said that many considered durians to be heaty, and thus something cooling must go with it in order to balance it out. A very popular choice then, is the mangosteen.

When we finally got the fruits, everyone immediately sucked their teeth into the durians. There were many different types of durians given, according to my mother, but I could only differentiate them using the colour of their ‘meat’. I greatly preffered the orange ‘meat’ over the yellow counterpart, because I felt the orange ‘meat’ was sweeter. Later on, I started to eat the mangosteens and longans. However, I did not really take a fancy for rambutans, which was what many others liked.

While I was eating a mangosteen, the Guest of Honour suddenly came around, and started talking to the people at my table,  and we all took a photo together. He did the same for all the other tables too. All the residents were all delighted when he came round their table. It must have been tough for him to go round over 60 tables and take photos with everyone of them!

I feel that it is good that he came down on such an event, because by doing so, he can interact with the residents and let the residents have some happy times with him, which may build their trust in him.

Derelict Land

Recently while I was at home, looking through my IH textbook, trying to find information to complete my assignment, when I came across an interesting fact about derelict land. They explained derelict land as something like a once arable land that had been destroyed, mostly due to activities by Man. The mentioned about forest fires, as well as mining activities, together with poor farming activities, where farmers grow many crops on the same plot of land over and over again with a short period of time, depleting its nutrients. The mining activities however, lead to more serious consequences. When mining is done, huge massive holes are dug in the ground so as to            dig up all the minerals that were underground. After these mines were abandoned, the holes were not filled up.

If a land was made derelict by farming activities, all that needs to be done is to fertilise the soil with fertilisers. However if the land is made derelict by farming activities, heaps of soil need to be brought in to cover up the massive holes

 I feel that it is very inconsiderate for these people to destroy the land, because of the fact that it takes a lot of time to reclaim the land. Especially these farmers have the responsibility of taking care of their own land. Once the land is not arable anymore, they will shift to another plot of land, and destroy even more land and make more land derelict. For mining activities, the damage they do is not so easy, and takes a lot of money and effort to fix. If they want to do mining, they should do farming on perhaps mountains instead, since the land there is not really suitable for farming in the first place due to the slopes, which may cause soil erosion.

All in all, I feel that those who have damaged the land are very inconsiderate, and should learn to put themselves in the shoes of other people.

Land Reclamation

Recently during our Integrated Humanities lessons, we have been learning a lot about land reclamation. From there, I learnt that Singapore’s constant land reclamation activities has been creating some arguments and rivalry between Malaysia and Singapore. Both sides are probably not very happy with each other.

On 1997, Malaysia had banned the sale of sand to Singapore. This was an obvious sign of Malaysia disapproval of Singapore’s land reclamation. However Singapore remained insistent, and started importing sand from Indonesia instead. This move obviously angered Malaysia.

In the year 2003, Malaysia submitted a scientific report to Singapore, showing how Singapore’s land reclamation activities had affected their ecosystem, and wanted Singapore to stop. Singapore however, still did not stop reclaiming more land, and ignored the report.

However, in the year 2007, Malaysia had complained to Singapore about the land reclamation activities, saying they had narrowed the Straits of Johor, causing a flood to occur that year. 17 people were killed in the flooding, while 100000 people were evacuated. In that same year, Indonesia banned sand exports to Singapore as well.

Personally though, I feel that Malaysia’s claims are totally uncalled for. Singapore’s land reclamations take place mostly in the South, while the Straits of Johor are in the north. By right, the Straits of Johor should not have narrowed. However, it is a fact that Singapore’s land reclamation activities is causing a lot of unhappiness.

This land reclamation not only worsens Singapore’s relation with other countries, it also affects the environment. There has reportedly been a case of soil erosion in the West Coast Park, which may bring huge problems for the marine environment.

However, I still feel that Singapore’s land reclamation activities should continue. I believe that the land reclaimed will bring Singapore a lot of benefits too, and that some arguments with Malaysia are unavoidable sacrifices. On top of that, Singapore and Malaysia are already not on good terms, and land reclamation probably did not affect Malaysia much, just that Malaysia is reading too much in that matter, and that they are just simply trying to find trouble for Singapore. Whatever it is though, Singapore should try to explain with Malaysia, so as to try to less the rift that has been caused.

China’s censorship programme

Many of you probably know of China’s censorship policy, where many ‘undesired’ websites deemed by the government are censored. Many of these websites, are websites that might stir the minds of Chinese citizens to go against the government. They might also contain negative information about them. The main purpose of this censorship policy is to prevent its own citizens from stirring up a revolt against the government. One such website that is blocked is Facebook, along with many other social networking websites.

You would also know that recently, search-engine  Google was forced to leave its business in China, because of its insistency in the refusal of censoring its search results. This shows how serious the Chinese government was in  its censorship policy. Many people have probably called Google silly because of it refusing a simple request, making it having to leave the biggest internet market in the world.

My feelings are that the Chinese government is both wrong and correct in its censorship policy. I think that it might have had good intentions. By censoring all these negative things, it will prevent people from revolting, and possibly maintain peace. However if the governments did  do anything wrong, why would they need to hide anything? Also, by censoring information, they are restricting the freedom of their citizens, not letting them do whatever they want. Everyone in the own world should have their own freedom, and view whatever they want to do. I feel that in order to properly promote peace amongst the people, they should make their own government anti-corrupt, instead of forcing people to believe what is not true. This way, there would be nothing that any websites can talk about them. Like the saying goes: prevention is better than cure.

I feel that there is no right or wrong as to whether Google should leave China. By not practicing censorship, they are upholding their own company values, as well as telling China that the world does not really approve of her censorship policy. However, it is also understandable if they want to stay in China. China has the greatest number of netizens in the world. It is definitely a great opportunity and place for companies to invest in, due to the big number of consumers they are facing.

Why nuclear power will eventually dominate the world

Many of us probably by now, know of the Fukushima Earthquake that took place in April 2011, and the nuclear disaster which followed. The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant was a nuclear disaster that struck fear into the Japanese and in my opinion, far more dangerous than the earthquake itself. It even brought attention to its neighbours. That was all due to the fact that the plant had been severely damaged, causing radioactivity to leak out from their containments, and spread out into the open ocean and Japan. Up to today, the disaster is still not yet over, and radioactivity is still leaking from the reactors at an uncontrollable rate. Many of the spent fuel rods that were used in the reactors have burnt, release massive amounts of decades of radioactivity into the air. This event was one which was second to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, which occurred decades ago.

All these nuclear disasters have greatly discouraged many countries from setting up their own nuclear power plants. Many of them fear the dire consequences of not handling the plants properly. Even Germany after the incident, has decided to shut down many of its old nuclear power plants, for safety precautions. However, nuclear energy is not something that can be easily said no to. Nuclear energy is regarded as a green form of energy, whose waste if properly disposed, cause very minimal environmental effects. The power generated from these radioactive materials are also immense, and contributed to 10% of Japan’s total power consumption. If not properly handled though, the environmental effects are dire.

Some reasons why nuclear power is attractive, is because of oil, a very un-environmental friendly fuel running out in less than 40 years’ time. Thus, the world needs to find alternatives to get energy. There is coal too, but it is a ‘dirty’ fuel, and causes environmental impacts too.

There are other green forms of energy, like geothermal, wind and solar. However, there are disadvantages to using these. Geothermal energy can only be harnessed provided the country has strong waves in the region , which are obviously very limited. Wind energy can also only be used provided the country has a lot of wind. Solar energy can also only be used if the country receives a lot of sunlight. Additionally, the output from solar energy is very low, and cannot really power many appliances. Nuclear power however, can be generated anywhere, and have high outputs of energy, and is also green(if its waste is properly disposed of). With oil running out, and other green technologies have relatively low outputs and practicality, one day, nuclear energy will dominate the world, with it being the most attractive. I only hope then, the containment technologies will be much more advanced, and thus prevent a second Chernobyl or Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster from occurring yet again.