If you are surfing here for sports day photos, I'm afraid you have to wait till tomorrow at least. I just came home from this musical and I'm still developing the raw files (for sports day, duh) right now while blogging AND trying to fix the chaotic mess left by CHAOS and at the same time trying to combat Murphy's Law. I spent $389 on this musical, enough to go Malaysia for a weekend of fun for two, and since I can't sleep till that #!$#%@^$#&%* edumail2 recovers from it's almost weekly maintenance to get some work done...

Most people watching this musical would have know the storyline so there is no point in discussing the plot of the musical. Many were there perhaps to watch their favourite actors or actresses or to enjoy the singing in this musical. What's interesting to me about this musical, however, is the use of a limited space and time in the stage to create a smooth and entertaining show.

Watching a musical in a theatre is different from watching it in the movies. In a movie, the director could spend millions of dollars which acres of space to build and recreate everything he wants in his mind. He could get his actors and actresses to repeat every scene till he is completely satisfied with the effects. He could make us of post-production editing to mix and blend scenes and to make everything work in perfection. In a theatre, you can't. There are so many scenes in this musical and you have to make use of the stage cleverly to present your show. From an office to the lake under the bridge to the rooftop, a house or the stage of another theatre, it takes a lot of effort and planning to coordinate and design this musical.

In this aspect, it was very successful, except for minor hiccups like the some fireballs didn't light up, structures get caught in the cover and some no so obvious but still disturbing shadows casted on the backdrop during the show which was not intentional. There are many things that bothers me because I'm physics trained (excuses) so I tend to notice these little stuff that others wouldn't even bother about. Like the "candles" on the VIP box in those stage scenes were specially designed to "flicker" just like a real candle. But real candles do not flicker together uniformly and regularly, it depends on the air flow around it. The chase lights we electronically controlled and moved in steps rather than one fluid motion when it tries to focus on the actors. The boat in lake part was too smooth for a boat ride as it lacks the "speed up", "slow down" processes as the Phantom steers it etc.

Of course, the actors were great with their singing and stuff, there are many scenes where different actors sings differently and I wondered how come they won't get confused by their friends on the stage.

So that's Phantom of the Opera for me...

I remember reading in the Straits Times saying that Singapore's economy is robust (i.e. very healthy) but it seems that our definition of robust is different from foreign medias. Found this information via tomorrow.sg and did some good old google and found more links to show.

Bloomberg

Can't really find the other 2 articles posted there but heck.. it's good to have an alternative point of view on how well Singapore is doing. Otherwise how we know if our ministers deserves their multi million pay since our mass media is monopolized by 2 companies and the government has much power over these companies.

This is totally random, but I think I can prove that the amount of work you are doing is proportional to the number of sms / emails / phone calls / meetings you get or send out per day. Now I just hope the relationship is linear rather than exponential though a logarithmic one would be nice too.

Sports day tomorrow... a welcome break from all the work piling up. Yeah...

Ah yes... Long weekend went to zoo again (this time with my niece too) to test out my not so newly bought but yet to really use it Tamron 70-210 f2.8 lens. And went crazy over at the Meerkat area when we found one ready to pose for us when we arrived there. So this post is dedicated to this cute little furry critters


First up, the H1 Meerkat by Sucre..


This is the A100 - Tamron Meerkat in different views by myself

More exciting photographs expected to come this way with Sports Day next in the calendar and of course, level camp. Then there's this CCA trip to Cambodia too and more wedding shots. Who knows I might be even going to China and grab some shots there. Time flies when you work.. it's term 2 week 4 coming up.

(Little announcement - Year 3 Physics test 2 confirmed on T2W5 Wednesday)

Arrghh! When you see me online blogging so often, it means I have difficulty concentrating on other stuff!

Being the first IP school in Singapore setting up a JC wing for the first time (as opposed to other IP schools who set up a secondary wing), our school spirits in terms of cheer is very lacking. Even though it is much better than my practicum school, who have little to be proud of in terms of achievements as a neighbourhood school, its terrible compared to SAJC (even 10 years ago).

I still remember those days in SAJC, when our school basketball team went into the finals against HCJC for the nth time, (almost) the whole school went down to cheer our team in the finals. In fact, some of us were there to support them during the preliminary rounds. Sucre still went back to cheer for SA's soccer team even after she graduated and I went back to look at SAJC play against (and finally won) HCJC in the finals after graduation too. That is the school spirit that many Saints (the name we called ourselves) are proud of.

SAJC vs HCJC finals in those days was like Singapore vs Malaysia in those good old days. The whole competition hall will be filled with students from both schools and we would cheer our hearts out for our team, losing our voice in the end. We had a simple system for councilors to communicate what will be the next cheer to shout. Everyone was high and standing for the whole match as we cheered. Of course, at the end of the match, I will go over to the HCJC side to look for my cousin among the audience and congratulate them for winning the title yet again.

Ah... those were the days..

Anyway, comparing what I have seen in school and what I experienced in SAJC, here's what lacking in the cheers.

• Warm - up cheer: For SAJC, it goes like this. SC:"Saints, are you ready!" All:"Eveready!" (repeat 1 or 2 more times). During this warm up cheer, the SC will coordinate our next cheer by showing signals for the next cheer. This ensures that when we start our cheer, we start with full force. A warm - up cheer is important because it allows everybody to be prepared for a cheer

• Signals: Which brings us to this point, I don't see any pre-arranged signals to inform students of the next cheer to shout. Which makes on the spot coordination difficult when other schools are cheering. I shall wait for my first sports day with the school to see how's the environment like. Who knows, maybe signals aren't required. Or they are using the numbers indicated in the "cheer sheet" as their guidelines (Saints never need a cheer sheet when they cheer)

• K.I.S.S: This stands for Keep It Simple, Stupid! One of the guidelines I noticed for the success of SAJC's cheers. They were simple to the students. The SC did most of the work by leading. The 3 Basic Cheers for SAJC was a fine example of what I meant. When signals are not available, SCs can take the lead by shouting the cheer while other students follow through by shouting a few key words or letters after that. Remember that asking for 1000 students to memorise 20 cheers with 100 words and different hand-feet coordination may be impossible so it's important to keep it simple. Keeping things simple will allow the cheer effects to be fully felt by your rivals too because the words will be clear to them. Using a tongue twister as your cheer will leave your rivals amused when many students find themselves tongue-tied and nobody can figure out what you are shouting. Unless you have months to practice, like doing a stage performance.

• Uniqueness: I think there is an unofficial common cheers used by many JCs such as Thunderation, Dynamite, Hey "Mickey" You're so Fine and F.I.G.H.T. (don't think it's in our school yet though). Yet every school should have its own unique cheers. We do have one that plays with the school motto. I kinda like this 诚信勇忠 cheer because it is unique and simple, except the part where "绝不" sounds like "全部". As for SA, we have our Saints go Marching in song, the science faculty invention of a cheeky "SA SA the best the best" cheer (don't know its name) and my favourite, the "Stamping cheer". The stamping cheer is unique because the whole cheer consists of only one word, "Saints" but the cheer has a great impact and can potentially last very long. My heart always raced in anticipation whenever we do this cheer.

There's little much on the news and forum lately other than the fact that our top ranking politicians are planning a hefty pay rise (as much as 80%) for themselves and they (mass media minus internet) are trying means and ways to convince us that it is justified. Singapore Inc's CEO feel that he should be earning the same order of magnitude of money compared to the best of the best in other professions.

The same old arguments were thrown around to justify lining their pockets, including

1.) We need to attract and keep our best talents in politics by paying them millions of dollars
2.) We are "under paid" according to standards drawn out by us
3.) According to our research, we did exceptionally well in managing Singapore (Such as creating jobs for millions of people so we can employ over 1 million foreigners in Singapore while retraining Singaporeans to take up jobs at kopitiams or open their own barber shop.)
4.) "MINISTER Mentor Lee Kuan Yew called for a sense of proportion yesterday, pointing out that the annual wage bill for ministers and all office holders is $46 million - or just 0.022 per cent of Singapore's total economic output." - MM Lee (my favourite, extracted from Straits Times Interactive Online)

1.) The best talents that people want for politics shouldn't work just for money, especially since they are earning millions to start with. They should work for the challenge of the job, to serve the nation and people etc...
2.) Singapore is one of the smallest nation by area and population yet our leaders are paid more than the leaders from USA, China, Japan, India and Russia (Combined?)
3.) Rising GST, increasing medical bills, skyrocketing university fees, strained relations with our neighbours, stagnant lower income wages and all time low birthrate despites all the baby bonus (well, at least some things cannot be solved by money), there's plenty of room for improvements too
4.) If the only figure that will dwarf our minister's pay is the nation's economic worth, then that's a perspective that is scary to me. By the way, going by our messiah Lee's formula, George Bush and his team must earn S$4.26 billion per year given the GDP of USA is more than 12 trillion USD.

It seems like yesterday that she was just born.. I just knew sucre while her mother was pregnant and now she's like 3 years old already.. time pass so fast...


Birthday deco


Xiaobudian's birthday cake. A candle for each letter though she should theoretically get only 3 candles.. lol..


That cheeky girl with her only present at Sultan Shoal


Got cake, got present, got kids to play with her.. what a great chalet for xiaobudian..

Remember to catch xiaobudian tonight on TV.. kekeke~~

Hehehe.... it's not all work and no play for me this weekend, at least this is what I found out. Remember I said it was a pity that I didn't have a polarizer with me to make the sky a little more blue with this photo taken? Alright, I found something online that could make it work... Here's some results after playing with it for sometime.


Sky looks almost washed out and the face is a little in the shadow side due to the late morning sun


After toning down the sky brightness and over doing the skin, I got this unnatural pic


Tried a bit harder and got this nice blue sky with a lighter but more natural skin colour. Boosted the contrast a little bit too..

Now the nice blue sky effects, the playing cheat method.. yeah..