A couple of decades ago, our parents learn that in order to secure a comfortable life in the future, their kids would need to get that piece of paper qualification. The higher the level, the better it is. A couple of decades later, those very same people holding onto their precious paper qualification find out for themselves that the promises were mythical in nature. So what happened?

The world had evolved. From a handful of graduates in the past to potentially producing over 12500 graduates every year locally (see stats). 'O' level certificates were the norm in the past but increasingly, a bachelor's degree is the new norm. In order to excel in the paper chase nowadays would require at least an honour's degree, preferably first class. But even so, we could have hundreds of first class honours graduate each year, what sets you apart from them? This is where your paper qualification / grades fail.

Given the determination and hard work, most people would be able to score A's in exams. Singapore is very adapted in producing straight A's students. We have a thriving underground economy in the form of tuition that caters to our nation's hunger for the grades and desire for that piece of carbon sheet. We can train our students to handle all kinds of pen and paper or even verbal assessment, yet we have little to show for in terms of outstanding researchers or writers etc.

If grades were a measurement of one's future successes, it is a very poor measurement tool. Increasingly, people realise that grades were not so important at all. For example, to get a research attachment, you may not need A's for your sciences but you will definitely need experience in research skills and show strong interest and passion in research. To get a scholarship, the fellow who show strong leadership potential in school is in a better position than one who show that he could do nothing but study.

So when paper qualification / grades are not sufficient, you need to develop your own niche area. Singapore is a very competitive society, the world is a competitive society and grades is no longer a convincing argument on who is better. Your experiences will. After all, grades are just words and to experience is gained from actions, and ACTIONS speaks louder than WORDS. Don't you think so?

Forget about the problems, here's some photos. Just hope that it will go away soon, like a terrible headache or something.


Everybody saw you did this




Making music...


The only face I recognise beneath the make-up



Dance dance

Ok.. that's all... time to do the trick again to blog...

I was preparing for the big shift and stuff to wordpress.com but after investing hours, I realise that wordpress do not support iframes or javascripts whatsoever. Many of my stuff from blogger will not be able to work in wordpress (including tagboards). So here I am still stuck with blogger... sigh.. shall keep my post short so I don't have to work around it.

see simpleus.wordpress.com

It shall be a fanciful way to backup my blog

Serious problems with blogger

Read... I have to keep this short. After reading up, this is the summary of the possible problem with blogger that kept me from blogging for quite a while.

1.) Cookies "koyak"... stale already then stink up the connection end up cannot connect
2.) Why cookie "koyak" is because I too "lor soh"... type too much and they have too many "saliva" stored inside
3.) So only way to make it fresh is to throw away cookie after finishing nagging and grab a new cookie by deleting cookies and re-logging in to get new ones.

Sigh... I cannot live with short short posts. I'm quitting blogger.. I shall be a quitter... lol..

"Pardon my use Singlish here"

Gotta finish all these back dated sports day pics because there's a lot of speech day pics coming out. Couldn't believe it when I realize that I took more than 6 gigabytes of photographs (though it is in raw format - 10 mb per photo), that's about 600 photos.

Of course, of which mostly are prize presentation pictures which aren't interesting at all, a couple of shots for each prize recipients so that I suspect took up the majority of the photo. If you are a prize winner, be prepared to see your face here pretty soon. Don't worry, my rates are very reasonable. Just $3 per 5R photograph or $7 per A4 photograph (laminated!) from me. LOL! You want it to be framed? That's $6 per 5R size and $16 per A4 framed. (Just kidding)

Anyway, here's the last of the pics from sports day.

Really random

Really childish



Really teachers


Really over...



Really Birthday...

Really tired

Oh.. the blogger issue, seems like its not because of my new BitDefender but an issue with cookies on my computer and the way blogger work with cookies.. strange...

I can blog elsewhere! Arrghh.. gotta fix the home PC...

6: A4B, A5, P5, P2, R1
13: A5, R1
18: A5
19: A5, R1
21: A2, A4B, A5, R1

Blogger is very unstable with me.. or is it due to the new antivirus software.. arrghhh...

Maybe it's the new software... arrghhh...

Test

The handsomes throwing balls



The cd-rom discus throwers


Runners standing by...

Thanks everybody for the sms and tag board well wishes, I'm still alive and kicking and this is the first day in a very long while since I totally did zero amount of work and slept like more than 1/2 the day away. I'm just suffering from typical flu with running nose (2 days), a sore throat (better now), cough (getting worse at night as expected) and the occasional fever (highest of 37.9 degrees C, mild considered that I'm usually 1 degrees hotter in such situations). Of course, the body ache that comes together with fever.

After living for so long and seen so many doctors in my life I'm pretty certain of the kind of western medicine that would be prescribed to me based on my symptoms. But didn't manage to get any antibiotics from polyclinics (it's difficult to get from them in any case since they like to keep costs down) so I'll have to depend on my good old system of recovery. Must have caught this bug in school since I found a few colleagues and students on mc for the past week too. I'm a slow learner, what to do.

There are so many different sickness that has flu-like symptoms so I'll be on the alert for any danger signals. Looks like no running for me for some time... sigh... and my timing would definitely be affected adversely after this bout of sickness. Ah well... Time to take my drowsy medicine soon... it makes sleeping easier and your sickness less painful since you sleep your way out of it. But I hate the tasteless feeling I get from medication. arrghhh...

Feeling terrible right now with a running nose, slightly sore throat and incoming fever... Can't just fall sick right now with so much work to do like sorting out the camp project, selection of camp logo and finalizing the MFA stuff. Gotta give test tomorrow too plus there's parent teacher meeting and the important tutorial for work energy power. And I scheduled to wear pink tomorrow too. LOL...

Ok.. before I spout more nonsense, here are the jumpers from sports day

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These guys were eager to check out the latest technology from KingKoll


From the looks of their faces, these new beds ain't comfortable


This is another dimension to measure a jump


Incoming!

Sorry, only small pics loaded here. Click for larger versions. I'm not in the right condition to do work...