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30 January 2011:

I am a strong believer in retribution.

信佛者應該都會相信報應吧。我也一樣。
接下來我想說的,肯定會成為我的業障。但我不管,我還是要照說無誤。你可以說我是全世界的不孝子,我也無所謂。

我的老爸在這一世中做了太多壞事。他死了之後,肯定會下地獄。我相信老天有眼,不會放過他。我相信老天自有他的方法,肯定能夠好好地處置他。


29 January 2011:

I saw a bit of the Humanities Workshop today.

I wasn't there for the SS part, but I reached around 1130 for EHist part. Actually, it was only for parents, but because of the timings and that, so I decided to go there and wait. Two teachers were explaining: Ms Veronica Tan and Mr Malcolm Tan.

Ms Tan is a senior teacher; her presentation and all was very clear and to the point. However, the latter wasn't as good. Mr Tan seemed to forget that he was talking to parents. So with a booming voice and vigorous hand gestures, it looked more like he was fighting or arguing with someone, and not talking.

I think the worst part was when he sat on a table, with parents right in front. There was the teachers' chair to sit on. Seriously, that was very bad. Well, it seems that this isn't the first of what he has done since he came to CCHMS. He did benefit students, one at least, but his cons have outweighed his pros, I feel.

I know this is very mean, but I am glad I am not under him. My History hasn't been very good; I am not confident of it improving under his guidance. So, thankfully, I have Mr. Yazeed. I think his expertise his confirmed by the fact that he is the HOD, and it can be seen.

好了,今天就到這裡。我還得去趕兩篇作文,已經拖了兩三個星期了。再這樣,補習老師不發飈才怪。下個禮拜是農曆新年,在這裡祝大家新年快樂。


26 January 2011:

Today is reminiscence day, at least for me.

For those of you who saw me, I was emo-ing during duty (which by right nobody should be seeing me) and wushu. I don't know why, but I keep on thinking about my seniors, be it in wushu or council. It has been a while since they have left the school, but I still can't stop thinking about them.

I was once a Sec1 councillor. My Section Leader was once JY and V. They were always patient and caring for us. Today during duty I was thinking about the time when JY and V would walk around supervising us while we were doing duty. At that time, our first duty was human wall.

Basically, it is to block people form entering the parade square after William Tell Overture was played, then block them for being late for flag-raising.

My first green form went to a guy named R, who was three years older than us. Naturally, we were quite "intimidated", although the funny thing was that they were rather cooperative in retrospect. It's been more than a year now, and I have done all the duties. (How is that relevant??)

Today's duty was new block patrol, which meant patrolling the new block during flag-raising. Which was why, I said earlier that by right no one should be able to see me. I was patrolling the fourth floor today when I saw the place where I first did duty.

Now, the place has been blocked due to construction. Previously, there was a stairs and the entrance to the technical block opposite each other. Every time flag-raising ended, we would use the stairs to reach the concourse, if there was full-board meeting.

Soon, that space will become a linkway (or rather on top of it). It's only one year, and things have changed so much. Now, my section leader is HQ and SK, and there are new members. Very soon, this whole cycle will repeat itself, and there will be even more people in Section3.

During lessons, I was rather fine, not being distracted by all these thoughts. But physics waas very boring, with Kinematics. Somehow, when it got to wushu, I began thinking about the past again, remembering who used to be in Taichi with me.

當時,我的太極簡直是差到不行。第一年,教練都不敢讓我參加比賽,要我多練習。當時,我練的是24式太極,比較簡單的那種。沒想到現在,竟然是比賽過後,而且換了套路,改練42式了。

今年練太極的人非常少:中一有一個,中二兩個(是半途「轉行」練起太極),中三四個(包括我),中四根本沒有。所以,一直以來,教練沒有很注重太極。太極的訓練也一直很輕鬆。換言之,大多數的時間都不是在練。

最近才來了一個新的太極教練,是在武坊教的。可是,她今天沒來。我們由「頭」帶領,做了套路。做著做著,我突然想起以前的太極的人。當時,前一「輩」的有三個,個個都很好。他們現在已經是畢業了,今天也是拿到高等學院的分佈成績。

雖然當時沒有跟他們聊太多,因為不是很熟,不過至少有對彼此微笑過。光陰荏苒,同樣的,幾個月后,又是全新的開始。


24 January 2011:

Today, another boring forensic post for you.

Yes, this seems to be the only thing I can talk about, can I? Well yeah, basically I am most passionate about this so if you are reading my blog, you'll get this quite a lot.

Today, there was no assembly for the Sec3s, so I had one hour to do anything I wanted. The plan for studying failed, when I realised that everyone I asked wanted to go home, or had to do the CNY decoration thingy. So, after wasting time walking around almost the whole school, I went to the library.

My pattern for going to the library is always the same; I always have the same old call numbers to look for, because the books there are about forensics, or typography, etc ... Once in a while then I while head to the fiction section.

My pattern was broken today: I found an exciting book. Written by Alex Josey, it was published in 2009, "Cold-Blooded Murders". Naturally, because of its relation to forensics, I picked it up. In it, there were two cases that was very controversial last time in Singapore.

The first one was about Sunny Ang, and how he plotted to kill his girlfriend (that's what he claims, who knows if there is real love). He did it to get insurance payouts, which was all planned carefully by him. As of now, I have not read till the end, but already, circumstantial evidence points to him.

Well, again, forensics comes into place. I knew it, there surely must be an element of forensics in crime books. Although the transcripts between witnesses and lawyers were rather long, it was after all a crime book, or rather about the court proceedings.

This case was very special then because it was the first case that related to murder without a body. Previously, all cases dealt with had a body, so at least an examination of the body could be done to find out cause of death, which in turn could be used to prove someone guilty.

In this case, the victim died by drowning (I suppose?). The suspect had been on a skin-diving trip with her to Palau Dua. She dived in first; he claims to have something wrong with his equipment, so he tried to fix it first. Before it was done, he realised that she was underwater for too long.

Tugging at the 'shot' rope was no use. The body was never found although a green flipper found severely cut was found. This was the difficult part on the prosecutors. How were they able to prove that this guy actually killed her when all they had was a green flipper?

Circumstantial evidence could be used, but the defence counsel could find something to rebut it rather easily. The only thing that could be examined was the green flipper, which was done by a Singaporean chemist. At that time, a forensics person was called a chemist. LOL

I have not finished the book, so that's basically what I know. However, this book reaffirms my feelings towards defence lawyers. I do not want to outright-edly accuse that they are lying, but they have been known to twist and distort facts to their advantage. Is that really law?

I think Six Thinking Hats apply more to law.

Six Thinking Hats is a method developed by Edward de Bono. People using this method will have to list out everything that is related, whether or not the information is critical of themselves.

That seems to be better, isn't it? If people were only concerned with pointing beneficial points about their party, would the discussion ever lead anywhere? So, thankfullly, there was still the judges and that. (The defence lawyer even tried to bribe the witness, though, obviously, he denied it.)

This has been another long post. If your eyes are not tired, my hands are. So that's all for now, I shall finish this book ASAP, not forgetting homework. ):


23 January 2011:

I saw a mum beating her 4yo son publicly just now.

It was during my tuition when I went to the toilet and saw the scene. The son seemed to be misbehaving, so the mum gave him a smack. This made me think of a new controversial book by Amy Chua.

I first heard of it on the radio, when Melanie Olivero was giving a book review. It rather surprised me because she ended with 'This is one book I am not recommending to others.' So, I went to find out more. Turns out Amy Chua wrote a book about 'Tiger Mums', what her parenting style was like.

She would be very strict with her children, forbidding them from going to a sleepover, and making them having all kinds of lessons. All this in an American society (she is living in America). No wonder the book attracted so many people when it was published.

Generally, people were critical of it, arguing whether her parenting style would be too strict. After all, Americans are more lax in their parenting style. They are more tolerant of their children ... which is probably why there are so many spoilt brats in America.

I'm not saying that Asian kids are all very obdient and that. But when you compare American and Asian kids, you really can see the obvious difference. Asian kids were mostly brought up in a very strict environment. Only till now that the parenting style has laxed a little due to western influence.

What do you think? Are parents in Asia really too strict?


22 January 2011:

Just met with one of my parents' long time friends and his family.

It's been a yearly thing to meet up with Uncle O. From the dinner that we had at Li Fun, I also learnt of something. (For things to make sense to you, Uncle O currently lives in Australia, coming back once in a while.)

Uncle O was remarking at the different attitudes taken by the Singapore and Australian government. He mentioned the case of saving water. In Australia, the government pays to encourage its people to save water. When you buy water-saving equipment, the government pays you a portion of the cost.

In Singapore, things are not the case. (Of course, there has been nothing about water saving.) The government fines people when they do something wrong. No wonder there is a shirt stating that 'Singapore is a fine city.'

Comparing the two measures taken, I would seem to think that the measure by Australia might have worked better. (If there are more reasons to why Sing Gov is doing this, I do not know it.) People generally feel better getting incentives for doing things that do not harm themselves, instead of getting fined when they do something wrong.

I feel that, in the long term, perhaps the Australian method may work better. Well, who knows? Singaporeans have been so accustomed to the fine method, maybe if there is a change, they might not even be happy.


21 January 2011:

The thing with mother tongue, again.

Somewhere last year, the issue of mother tongue was brought to light when Education Minister "hinted" that the weightage of mother tongue will be reduced in PSLE. This time, mother tongue has again came into the news, luckily not in a controversy.

The report for mother tongue education came out on 18th, and on the 19th it was reported in the papers. Generally, anything relating mother tongue has garnered quite a lot of interest, so I suppose this one too. One of the issues they plan to tackle is to let students learn something more relevant to their daily life.

For example, 伫立 is a rather expressive way of saying stand. This is a phrase in S3 Higher Chinese. If you were to go out and poll people who frequently speak Chinese in Singapore, how many will really use this phrase? No doubt, by learning it, students are improving their vocabulary, but their motive of learning will be different.

To the students, they will learn it just to get good results during the 'O' Levels. I believe, sadly, that is what quite a number of students are doing. After the 'O' Levels, they will 把東西還給老師, or rather wipe it off their mind. Then, their is no purpose of learning Chinese.

That's why, it's a good thing that the ministry is now trying to change it to make it more relating to daily life. This way, students will be less likely to "return" these knowledge to their teachers once they have graduated, because they will still use most of the phrases.

Another good thing about the change was that students would have to learn typing in Chinese a few years later. If I'm not wrong, it will even be tested in the exams. Putting aside the trouble it would take to test students, I feel that it is rather relevant.

The mode of communication is switching from snail mail to e-mail. In fact, it already has a long time ago. Hence, it would be good that students can at least learn how to type Chinese, so that they can apply it next time.


On a sidenote, the recent demographic shows that dialect speaking is on the drop in Singaporean households. Needless to explain, this is the result of MM Lee's Speak Chinese Campaign, that started many years ago.

Personally, I don't really agree with the firmness of this campaign. Although it was good foresight to slowly cut down on dialects and generalise with Mandarin, but this has led to a generation of non-dialect speakers (almost all).

There are plenty of times when I encounter shocked stallholders because I use dialect to converse with them. This is a pretty good gauge of how many teenagers (or kids) still know how to speak dialect. Then, there are the ones (the kids or teenagers, I mean) that only, or rather, selectively learn the vulgarities of a dialect.

Vulgarities are, after all, part of the whole language (or rather dialect). It's no use trying to cover it up, and reveal the "good-looking" part of the dialect. Sooner or later, it will spread, and people will know.

I feel that the policy (is it called a policy?) should be loosened slightly. Although there has been a gradual loosening over the past few years, I still feel that the grip on dialects is still too strong.


18 January 2011:

It’s been two weeks since I started Sec3.

Mr. Soon the level master gave his level master talk recently, or as he called it, “Level Master’s Dictate”. It was quite realistic, the facts he laid down for us. I know I sound a bit arrogant saying that it’s easy to have 0 retentions, but I think our cohort seems quite okay.
Browsing through FB, I already saw two posts saying that they were looking forward to the next day of Sec4 Year1. I feel pretty much the same, slightly different from last year. Last year, I wasn’t that enthusiastic towards going to school the next day, for most of the time.

But so far, it seems quite okay. The homework isn’t really that overwhelming, although I know it’s probably a shortlived phase. Still my “willingness” towards going back the next day and meeting my class is quite high. (I don’t really know how to phrase this.)

Okay, time for me to get started on the persuasive essay, after dragging it for so long.


13 January 2011:

Are leaders born or bred?

That was what Mr. Goh, our vice principal asked. The student leader seminar was real awesome, with different people going up on stage presenting what they experienced through organising various events.

I was rather happy with what I said: “No negative energy.” That was also what I said during the trip in one of the reflection seesions. The logic is simple: negative energy will make you and your team be depressed, and things won’t get solved as fast.

Okay, this post isn’t just gonna be about this, because it would be more of a 訓話 then a post to share my thoughts on this.

Yes, I am next gonna rant. Okay maybe not since I have no mood to rant.


11 January 2011:

I know I was supposed to post something yesterday,

but apparently I didn't really have the mood to. Anyways, so this post is gonna be mega long about camp and orientation.

First the camp. Camp was organised by Trekkers, which was the company of Kenji. Which made it super awesome. All the trainers there was very superb in teaching and entertaining us. There was lots of fun throughout the whole camp, especially during the campfire. Our class finally broke the ice by having all the games.

Although there were people that didn't bothered to do anything. I understand that people sometimes just wanna eye power, but at least provide some encouragement? Just standing there doing nothing (not even cheering) doesn't help at all, it just makes people irritated. And when you wanna give excuses, could you please give non-lame excuses?

"Oh, my hand is injured." Yeah, it's just wiping a tent canvas with a cloth. And what do you know! The next moment, you're picking up a cloth! Wow, some celebration is needed! A person with an injured hand is picking up a cloth!

The rest of the class generally tried to bond each other, except the few that didn't even wanna do anything but watch. Well, let's see how things go then.



Okay, the next part of this post shall be about orientation. This year's orientation is very different from last year's, so the experience was different too.

Last year's orientation was held before school opened, so all the Sec1s didn't know each other (except previous schoolmates or classmates), and hence they tended to be less noisy. Having known each other for a week, they have generally found friends, and their "true colours" start to show. The Sec1s were "rebellious". They were not following of orders, and once in a while we really must be firm on them.

The sad thing was that I was not able to make them more used to the opposite gender. It's always that "transition period", where they laugh and giggle when a boy has to touch a girl's hand, even if it's just for a game. And it's also when no matter how you "blow wind blow", the boys and girls seem to have a boundary between each other. Never mind, I know they'll "grow out of it".

Sadly, the whole process was rather disorganised. The Sec1, and even us, received mixed signals sometimes, leading to confusion. Luckily, there wasn't lost souls, or not that I knew about it. Hopefully, today's orientation procedures will be better than yesterday.

And so that ends my mega long post. I pity your eyes.


6 January 2011:

Of change and chinese.

Today's post is really a mixed post.

Firstly, the change. This has been very evident, and I am very irritated by it. The whole group changed. It is supposed to be a group; it's now becoming a clique. Nothing against cliques, but the context just isn't right. It's becoming worse and worse.

Personally, I attribute that to bad leadership. I don't believe that followers will do that if the leader did not initiate something like that.

People have been warning. I have no right to say anything, and I don't want to get "into trouble" just because I warn some out of goodwill.

I really don't want some of them to turn out being this kind of people. Or at least not in this way.

Then, chinese. The Sec3s are taking their Higher Chinese paper this year, for the actual 'O' Level. Over the years, my standard has been dropping. Now that there's a new teacher, I hope that I can improve on my Chinese, so that I can pass this round.


4 January 2011:

I am, and will continue, to live under a tyranny rule.

tyranny /ˈtɪrəni/
-noun.
1.  arbitrary or unrestrained exercise of power; despotic abuse of authority. 2. the government or rule of a tyrant or absolute ruler. 3. a state ruled by a tyrant or absolute ruler. 4. oppressive or unjustly severe government on the part of any ruler. 5. undue severity or hardness. 6. a tyrannical act or proceeding.


There is a tyrant in my house. Everyday, or almost everyday, I will face punishments to the effect of sense 5. There is really no other word to describe it anymore.

It has not been easy: 13 years of tyranny. There are cases where tyrannies rebel against their leader.

I feel a need to do so. It would be an awakening point for everybody.


3 January 2011:

Had a small discussion with my tuition teacher yesterday.

She was telling me about a case where a man was killed by having a truck go over his neck becuase he did not want to give up his land. This, if you don't know by now, happened in China.

After a while, the man was ruled to have died from a traffic accident, and not murder.

My teacher was saying that if my languages were better than my sciences, I should be a lawyer. I wasn't too supportive of that motion.

I seriously don't believe that lawyers do help in upholding justice. They just show how the legal system has flaws and loopholes and use them to help their clients evade punishment.

Which is why I want to be a forensic pathologist, where everything uses Science. Science doesn't lie.

Of course, it's not as if every lawyer is lying or what, but I'm sure most of them bend the facts at one point.

Put it bluntly, I feel that lawyers are people engaged to help you reduce, or remove your deserved punishment.

In today's newspaper, the CJ called for lawyers to consider whether or not to appeal, when there was obviously no use of doing so.

The lawyers claim it's because the clients want to, but I believe they just want financial gain. My dad once told me, "Lawyers, win or lose, also get money."

True enough, win or lose, their clients still have to pay for their legal fees. Some beg and borrow just to pay, yet lawyers out there are "cheating" them of their money.

In China, forensics = nothing. Thankfully, here is Singapore.


2 January 2011:

Outside my aircon's cooling unit, a family has made its nest there.

The dad came first a few months ago. Then he brought his wife, and they stayed there for a few weeks before the first egg came.

Then the eldest hatched. He was an ugly sight at first, but gradually his feathers became nicer and nicer. It's been a while since I saw him, and I don't think he's coming back.

The second came, and left too. (he looked better than his brother / sister.)

Now the mother just laid an egg. The third one. :) I wonder how many more will be hatched?


1 January 2011:

It's the start of the new year, now look back.

It's 1 Jan 2011. The start of a new year, or rather a new decade. While people were fretting about the bug in the iOS affecting people using iPhones, look back and thinking of the things you've screwed up. Then don't do it again!

What are your new year resolutions?



aboutme.

From Singapore. 20 years of age. Blogs as and when inspiration comes, in British English (and Singlish), Traditional Chinese and (hopefully) Russian. Not a lifestyle blogger, expect posts to be serious, dull or even obscure. I enjoy comedy, in particular British humour.



interests.

[more or less in order] medicine | forensics | theatre | modern world history | typography (including style and grammar) | visual design | Taiji | Chinese language and literature | Mandarin pop (and singing) | Apple products.



typography.

PT Serif for main text and links. Ubuntu Condensed for dates, post titles and sidebar headings. Both fonts from Google Web Fonts.



credits.

singzeon. by Sing Zeon is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Licence. Pictures used here either come from my Instagram (instagram.com/singzeon) or Google image search. For the latter, I do not own those pictures.



quote.

Hard to love. 認真你就輸了。