General elections polling day

On the 7th of may, it was polling day for the general elections 2011 for Singapore. The results starting coming in at 10pm where everything was counted. It was an exciting time seeing results of opposition winning seats in the parliament. However, there were some things that were quite saddening to see, an example is like Lina Chiam losing to Sitoh Yih Pin in the potong pasir SMC, she lost by a mere 114 votes- 0.8% to Sitoh Yih Pin, I believe that she should have won as she has Chiam See Tong as her husband and he can give her advice on what to do and what to say in the parliament so it is actually okay if she takes his place in the SMC. With Chiam See Tong losing in the Bishan-Toa Payoh GRC, it was sad that we lost a political veteran in the parliament as Chiam See Tong is one of the most respected politician in Singapore's history of politics other than MM Lee. It was good to see that Mr Low Thia Khiang's double gamble paid off and that he has won the first GRC in many years, I hope that Mr Low Thia Khiang's team will carry out what they said they will do as said in the rallies and not take over the job from PAP yet do nothing. All in all, I think that this shows that the PAP will have to change themselves in order to garner votes from Singapore citizens in the next elections as Singaporeans are starting to learn that PAP is not as good as they say so and that Singaporeans are starting to think carefully about they decisions in voting.

General Elections (Nominations Day)

On the 27th of April, after my training, I straight away searched for the news for nominations day. Apparently, I was very surprised all GRCs and SMCs were contested except for the Tanjong Pagar GRC. It was the first time since independecent that almost all GRCs and all SMCs were contested in the elections. I also heard the news about George Yeo vs-ing the workers party A team where it is a strong fight and that George Yeo may lose his seat. I think from the nominations day, I think that PAP's stranglehold on Singapore is dropping as from the previous election. In the previous elections, almost half of all the GRCs were walkovers and thus the PAP kept their place as ruling government easily. Whereas, in this elections, Singapore is starting to mature up as more opposition parties are fighting with PAP with concrete plans on what to do after they win the elections, not like the previous elections where some of the opposition parties just opposed for the sake of opposing. In this elections, the ones who caught my attention were Nicole Seah and Tin Pei Ling, those were the 2 young stars of the general elections 2011. Tin Pei Ling had a negative image and Nicole Seah was well-liked by everyone. It is good to see that more young people are involved in politics as sooner or later when the older generation is gone, the younger generation would have to take over their place and that Singapore would be ruled by the younger generation in a matter of years.

National Schools Dragonboat Competition

The competition is exactly 2 weeks after the NSCC competitions and it is a one day event. There are a total of 4 events per division in this competition. 20 crew 500m, 20 crew 250m, 10 crew 500m and 10 crew 250m. Before the competition started, we were all quite nervous and scared of the SJI/ACSI winning us in the competition for both the C div and the B div. When the first race ( heats) started, the B div boys conserved their energy yet got first in the 20 crew 500m. It was a moralising start as we knew that we were capable of winning ACSi/SJI. After the heats, all boats progressed to the finals in the 500m event.. The first finals for the C division was the 10 crew 500m. Surprisingly we thrashed ACSI and SJI in the 10 crew event by over 7 seconds which was actually alot, that was our first gold medal. In the next race, the 20 men 500m event, we were quite scared to lose to other schools in that event as in the 20 crew 500m event, we had to put sec ones into the boat as we had not enough people to race. We thrashed again by over 7 seconds in the 20men 500m event which was again a surprising result to us resulting in our 2nd gold medal. The B div crew did not get so good results as they got gold for the 20men 500m and silver for the 10men 500m. Before the 250m events came, the rain came, there was lightning and thus the organisers decided to postpone the event to the 8th of July, we were quite sure that we would be able to get a clean sweep of gold medals for the C division team as we lost to the A division 20men boat in 250m by only a mere 4 seconds. Till the 8th of July, the dragonboat title is still within our reach.

NSCC

The National Schools Canoeing Championship is over. It was an exciting yet sad 4 days as we progressed through the heats, the semi-finals and lastly the finals. The whole B and C div were doing well in the heats, with all boats going into at least semi-finals, it was a good start for the first 2 days. However, in the semi-finals, things started to go bad. Some of the boats who were supposed to get into the finals were kicked out and that decreased our chances for getting the title for the B and C div. Me and my partner got into straight-finals and did not even need to go through semi-finals. On the last day, the finals, things were the worst, the boats who were supposed to get gold got 2nd/3rd/4th. In the C division team, almost everyone got silver for one event and no one got a gold medal. The C division team lost to SJI by 9 points and if the person who was supposed to get double gold got double gold, we would have won the title. It was a painful experience as we actually only lost by a little bit to SJI despite training quite hard in the past year and a half. For the B div boys, they lost by 3 points to ACSI, if one of the boats who lost to ACSI by 1sec in an event won ACSI, they would have gotten gold and thus win the title. Both divisions lost to the rivals schools by a fraction of a hair length and thus it was saddening that we lost despite training hard. However, we improved tremendously from the year before as we lost by a few points rather than losing by 30 over points. After the competition, the team just went to eat dinner together and watched the movie Rio to celebrate our improvement from the previous year.

Upcoming competition

The season for sport competitions have arrived and mine is only a week away. It is the National Junior Canoeing Championships and it shows you where you are standing amidst all the schools as most schools will participate in it, it is not the official competitions for school agaisnt schools but it is still very important. I am racing with 5 other people but only one(I think) is strong. The strong person is from ACSI and I literally do not have a chance against winning him. I have checked up on the four others and I think personally think I can win them and go into finals as they are weaker than me (in my opinion). My seniors told me not to be complacent but i am actually just predicting on whether I can get into finals or not. I still have a week to train for this competition and I believe that if I try to train very hard this week and not idle during training, I should be able to cut my 500 meters timing by a few seconds and it might help me alot in the competition this week. I hope I am able to get into finals without going to semi-finals, I guess I might need alot and alot of luck!

Mubarak's Stepdown

I feel that mubarak's stepdown in egypt was a necessity as Mubarak had been in power in egypt for an extremely long time, when he was in power, the people of egypt had poor living standards as the government was extremely corrupted  and spent little or no money improving the welfare of its citizens. However, Mubarak's leave caused several riots i nthe world, asking their leaders to step down, as they would be thinking"Since they can riot until the leader step down, why cant we?", that caused the outbreak of many riots asking their leaders to step down, including the current and most up to date one on Libya. Libya's situation however, was much worse than egypt's one as the anti-government protestors used fire powers including machine trying to overthrow the current libyan government. I believe that the leaders, if they know that they are corrupted, and after eating the taxpayer's money for so long, they should already have their full on getting money and should just step down for the country to proceed further, it is literally a robbing of money from the taxpayers as their money is not earnt the correct way.

Term 1

I felt that for Term 1 LA, I did not study hard enough for the test and did not follow the writing tips given by Ms Huang. I felt that I could do much more for my LA exam as I did not read, read tips, or even revise on good description prior to the exam. Although I was sick and that gave headache during the exam, I felt that I could have done much better if I was more hard working on the whole. For overall performance, I felt that my weaker subjects like Math and Chinese has improved tremendously from last year and my science and LA deproved. I think I did not pay enough attention during class for science and that led to my downfall for science, I could have revised more about atoms and that would easily boost me a few more grades. i have not gotten bake my IH results but it seems to me that the whole class did extremely badly for it as Ms Yeo pointed it out during class today, I just hope that I can get decent results as it is my strongest subject and I did studied quite alot for it

Anyone who is guilty and watch this and does nothing

In public transports, in MRTs, I have seen alot of situations where old men and women board the bus and do not get a seat. In mrts, alot of people pretend to be asleep just so they do not get ranted at by the commuters to give up their seat. It is very obvious that they are just pretending to sleep as their eyes peer open once in a while, checking whether there were any old people are around. The next time I get a seat in an MRT or bus, I will not hesitate to give it up to an old folk when he/she gets up the public transport

Racism in my life

My mother was born in malaysia and every once in a while in the school holidays, we go back to malaysia to visit some of her relatives. Racism is not so evident in Singapore as the government's move of racial harmony has worked well. Whereas in malaysia, racism is even supported by the government there. The government give priority to malays in everything in Malaysia. In order for a chinese to get into a top university in Malaysia, they have to be the cream of the crop whereas malays can just stride in without any good grades at all. Although the government is clearly giving alot of priority to the malays, they still complain that the chinese are still having the edge over them and the government helps them more. This kind of racism will bring malaysia down as malaysia will not be able to cultivate smart people to help malaysia and her economy. If racism like this continues, Malaysia will not be able to progress much. Even in the government, racism is evident. In some political parties, they only allow malays to join in to their parties and not allow any of the chinese take any cabinet position.
All in all I think the government should act like singapore and give equality to all races.

Cross country

Before the day of cross country, I was extremely enthusiastic about the event, in order to save up energy for it, I drank recovery drinks after my training on tuesday so that I would have enough energy. All my canoeing friends were also excited about it and they were also aiming to get at least top 20 places. I, was not quite confident myself about what placing I would get as i thought there were alot of people in the level that could beat me. Thus I was only aiming to get top 20 or even worse. On cross country day, I drank half a can of red bull to fuel my run as I didn't have breakfast. At the starting line, I was extremely nervous, there were alot of competitors whom i thought would easily win me. The horn blew, all the competitors starting running. There were alot of runners who ran extremely fast at the start- actually most of the runners. As I reached the clock tower, my friends told me that I was one of the last of the competitive group. Then, I gave up hopes of getting Top 20 but continued to push on at that pace. after doing about 2.4km, I caught up to quite a number of people but thought that I still was not doing well enough for Top 20. I could feel my pace get a little faster each time and my stamina gave me the edge over other competitors. As I was reaching the final 400meters, I saw my canoeing captain about 200meters, i tried to chase him by sprinting, as I reached the 100 meter mark, he finished but I continued to sprint, trying to clock my best timing. Competitive runners had a card that indicated their class and register number, once we passed it to the teacher, we got our placing. Once I passed the finishing line, I handed over the card to the teacher and got the Top 50 keychain, I didnt expect to get another card but a person passed me this card which said "Sec 2 6th" I was surprised as I thought many people were in front of me. I was extremely elated and tired as I pushed very hard during the run. It was a gruelling run but it was extremely worth it, I had improved from 55th position to 6th position which was a 49 position improve from last year. My timing was 14:48 for 3.6km and I think that it was a good timing as my fastest 2.4 then was only 10:30. i think the key to winning races is mental stamina and endurance as your mind is only one not tired at all during a race.

Billie Holiday's song: Strange Fruit

Southern trees bear strange fruit,

Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,

Black body swinging in the Southern breeze,

Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Pastoral scene of the gallant South,

The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,

Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh,

Then the sudden smell of burning flesh!

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,

For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,

For the sun to rot, for the tree to drop,

Here is a strange and bitter crop.

[edit]

I think the message that Billie holiday is trying to convey is how the Black people were treated in the south and shows how they got lynched by the whites just so that they were Black. Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees would have meant that the strange fruit were black dead bodies as the whites killed the blacks by hanging the bodies on trees. Pastoral scene of the gallant south is some what an irony as in the south, discrimination was extremely severe and the whole scene of the whites lynching blacks was totally not a gallant act. "Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh, then the sudden smell of burning flesh" is that Billie wants to show the audience how jarring it is as suddenly from fresh and pretty flowers come burnt corpses and Black negro's dying. I think all in all strange fruit/crop basically meant that it was the black people's bodies as crows eat dead bodies and not fruits so that "fruit" should be referring to the dead bodies of the Blacks who were lynched by the whites.

Prejudice

Prejudice is a form of bias that occurs all around the same. e.g. A student made a bad first imrepssion on a teacher. Now, the teacher always find faults in that particular student just because he/she has made a bad first impression. i think prejudice happens i nthe natural state of a human's mind as one usually rely on their own knowledge of that particular person to judge whether he or she is a good/bad person. I think prejudice is based on one's own mind on how to judge people. Some people like to give others another chance and will not judge the person based on first impression and thus will not be prejudiced agaisnt that person, whereas unforgiving people will think that the first impression is all that matters and that if you are bad, you are bad and if you are good, you are good. That is how i think prejudice works and what it is about.

Compromise

I think that a compromise is a mutual consent between two parties, causing them to reach a concession where both parties are happy. I believe a compromise is when both parties give in to each other and not one party sacrifises everything he has-that is not a compromise. A negatiation to compromise happens when both parties are unhappy or dissatisfied at that certain thing which concerns both of the parties and it affects both of them thus both parties try to reach a concession and a compromise. i believe that if the whole world tries to compromise with each other and not be selfish, the world can become a much better place as people will be willing to give and take which I think is the essence of compromisation. Although that will never ever happen to the world, we can start doing it in classes so that less quarrels will happen and in general students will be happy as nothing as bad as not compromising will happen to them.

Burning mississippi

I think what the movie is telling us about is that how racism affected countries like USA and how bad it was. The movie tells us why the white people hated the black people and that why the did so many things just to get rid of them. I think racism is a very bad practise for anyone on earth as we all live in the same world and that we must compromise with each other in order to live peacefully. I believe that everyone in the world is equal no matter what skin colour or whatsoever as we are all in one earth and that we should not and we do not even have the rights to harm another race just because they are black. Burning mississippi is a movie that let us think about why racism was done that much during then and also somehow is telling us the consequences of racism and why did people do it just for the sake of different skin colour.

Picture description

It was a cloudless and cooling late morning.  Wind blew occasionally , forcing the disshevelled shrubs and trees to rustle. Waves crashed onto the shoreline one by one continuously and retracting back, bringing back with them everything that they came upon. The sky was a clear blue, a much lighter colour than the sea, causing a contrast of blue between the sea and the sky, like two different worlds. The beach was a place that seemed so still, but instead it was bustling with activity in many ways that are hard to be seen.