Archive for October, 2009
What I’m Doing Now
Writing this.
Printing notes.
Smsing a dozen people.
Asking someone about some assignment.
Fending off a moody dad.
Answering questions from mom.
Chatting with a couple of people.
Running out of time.
Listening to I Want You (She’s So Heavy).
Uploading photos.
Packing my bag.
Phew, and since I started writing, I’ve finished the printing of notes and uploading of photos. Just a few more to go.
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One More Month
Time Flies Like A…
One more month. One more month before the reading week and the thing we know as the exams. Things really move fast. Yet, looking ahead, in the month ahead, I’ve got three lab reports to put together, one project, one individual report, a few random assignments, some tutorials, and two presentations. And if I was to be strict with my work, I’ve got lots of editing to do and one more short story to complete. And I don’t yet have any idea about the short story.
But you know, it’s going to be over in a month. Some things just have the ability to be good and bad at the same time.
BooksActually Has Moved
Yes, they’ve shifted to No. 86 Club Street and put up some photos. [via flickr] I need to make it a point to go down one day. First, I need to drag someone along with me. No, first, I need to trick someone to drag along with me.
Beatles Boost
On a bright note, my Beatles Stereo Box should arrive this week. I think that’ll give me something of a boost in the days to come.
Writers Festival
Here are the events I’m registered for the Singapore Writers Festival:
24 Oct 2009, 11:00 am
Meet the Author: Wena Poon
24 Oct 2009, 1:30 pm
Meet the Author: O Thiam Chin
28 Oct 2009, 7:00 pm
Discovering New Writers, Finding New Readers: An International Perspective
31 Oct 2009, 2:00 pm
Point of View: New Singapore Writing
01 Nov 2009, 3:00 pm
Evolution: The Curious Case of Books
01 Nov 2009, 5:00 pm
Dissecting the Merlion
I get the feeling I won’t be attending all of them because… well, there’s just too much to do and things like to crop up when you don’t want them to. But I’ll try.
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Say You Want An Evolution
Dinosaurs!
A newly discovered species of pterosaur/pterodactyl has been named Darwinopterus, and appears to be evidence of rapid, modular evolution. [via ScienceDaily] It has the head features of more advanced pterodactyls, and yet a body resembling the more primitive ones. And Dr. Unwin explains all of this much better than I ever could in the article:
‘The geological age of Darwinopterus and bizarre combination of advanced and primitive features reveal a great deal about the evolution of advanced pterosaurs from their primitive ancestors. First, it was quick, with lots of big changes concentrated into a short period of time. Second, whole groups of features (termed modules by the researchers) that form important structures such as the skull, the neck, or the tail, seem to have evolved together. But, as Darwinopterus shows, not all these modules changed at the same time. The head and neck evolved first, followed later by the body, tail, wings and legs. It seems that natural selection was acting on and changing entire modules and not, as would normally be expected, just on single features such as the shape of the snout, or the form of a tooth. This supports the controversial idea of a relatively rapid “modular” form of evolution.’
On a side note, when I was young, I always thought I would do paleontology one day. Or natural history. That was not to be. |:
Vegetarian
On the other hand, a vegetarian spider has been found. First of its kind. [via National Geographic News] It has been named Bagheera kiplingi after the panther in The Jungle Book. Newly discovered species always make me happy. Unless they are subterranean arachnids that have been waiting since the dawn of time to eat our brains and wipe out the earth, of course.
Cards
Yesterday, I took a bunch of photos, five of them, and gave them to five friends. I wrote some stuff on the back, in the way that I always do, and just gave it to them out of the blue. I imagine it must have surprised them, but it was surprising to me too, that I did something so randomly and so whimsically. Maybe it’s the season. There are months of the year where I appear to be more serious and times of the year when I happen to be more quirky, maybe, and this is one of those quirky times.
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PSLE Math
The day before, one of my friends posed the following mathematical problem to me:
Jim bought some chocolates and gave half of it to Ken. Ken bought some sweets and gave half of it to Jim. Jim ate 12 sweets and Ken ate 18 chocolates. The ratio of Jim’s sweets to chocolates became 1:7 and the ratio of Ken’s sweets to chocolates became 1:4. How many sweets did Ken buy?
I took a few minutes to work it out. (Basically, starting with Jim’s current sweets as x and chocolates as 7x, you can work out all of the numbers in terms of x, and I eventually got the relationship x + 12 = (7x – 18)/4. That’ll eventually give you x = 22 and a final answer of 68.)
Figuring that it was a primary school question, I asked about it. She’s been teaching tuition.
In the evening, my mom was reading the Chinese newspaper, and I took a peek at it. The article about the PSLE examinations caught my attention. It seemed that, like with every other year’s there was some complaining about the difficulty of papers. This year, the main problem appeared to be the Math paper, and I looked and it happened to be this question.
I only scanned through the paper briefly, but it did seem to say that a bunch of teachers had found the question difficult, in that they couldn’t figure it out in a reasonable time. (I believe the article said that it took a couple of days.) Then in yesterday’s Today, I saw a similar comment in the letters page (or forum, or whatever they’d like to call it), that some teachers didn’t think it was really, uhm, shall we say, doable.
Which I wanted to mention because it seemed fairly surprising. Hullabaloo aside, it didn’t really seem to be all that challenging, now, did it? That is, of course, making no comment on whether or not it was of an appropriate difficulty for primary school students and whether or not they had the means to do it comfortably. (Primary school students, as I recall, know no algebra, but draw the bar chart thing I think they call a model.) I just found it slightly surprising.
Of course, I might have misread all of it and they meant the other parts of the paper, but in that case I don’t know why the Chinese paper would highlight this particular problem (it was on Channel NewsAsia too!) and even provide solutions. It doesn’t appear to go beyond basic algebra.
I’m sure I just misunderstood everything that’s been said so far and they were merely making points on how it was difficult for primary school students specifically (and not everyone in general). And apart from that, I think this has all been blown a little out of proportion. I’ve seen comments on breaking the spirits of young students, and it being of an exaggerated difficulty such that it stumps even adults. I don’t believe any of this is the case and it’s a little sad that we’re talking about any of this at all.
Though, let’s see what question next year’s paper throws up.
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Shop ‘n’ Save Wars
Shop ‘n’ Save
There is a Shop ‘n’ Save near where I live that will give you stamps proportional to the amount that you spend. You can collect these stamps for rebates. I’m not sure if it’s a company-wide initiative, but it happens here. And that’s all that matters for this story.
Outside the Shop ‘n’ Save, you’ll find two, maybe three middle-aged women. They are like harpies waiting to prey on your innocent soul, because if you went in and bought a few things, they’d besiege and badger you. They have their eyes on your stamps. You’ll never see it coming until it’s too late. You’ll never be prepared to put up a fight. The only thing you can do is to let your legs take over and run. Run and don’t look back.
Recently, these stamp-muggers have become somewhat more emboldened, or perhaps more jealous. They’ve taken to competing with one another. They snatch stamps out of one another’s hands and whine like little children when an innocent Shop ‘n’ Save customer hands his or her stamps to one mugger but not the other. You promised! they exclaim. These stamps were supposed to be mine! Gimme that!
So if ever you enter a Shop ‘n’ Save, wanting to buy some mineral water and cigarettes, and the cashier hands you rebate stamps after you make your payment, take a good look outside. Watch for the stamp-muggers.
Shipped!
My Beatles Stereo Box Set has shipped and will be arriving, I suspect, next week or the week after. Yay.
Motherwell Football Club
Frazer Boyle has legally changed his name to that of his favourite football club, and will now be addressed as Mr. Motherwell Football Club. [via ESPNsoccernet (Right at the bottom)]
Dinosaur
Archaeopteryx was less bird and more dinosaur. Rawr. [via Scientific American]
Ma Jian
Did I already say that Ma Jian will be at the Singapore Writers Festival? [via Singapore Writers Festival] I guess saying it again wouldn’t hurt.
And it’s Monday again. Here’s to a rollicking week ahead.
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