Moving from a relatively new campus to an almost historical campus in Singapore is something different but that's what PRIME is about. At least it is on a temporary basis (sigh...). Been there many times myself but finally had a chance to walk around with my camera looking for all the hot (and hidden) spots around the campus and to familiarise myself. Teaching year 5 is no joke in the future, especially for humanities teachers as they would have to climb down from 3rd floor to the ground floor and trek to the container classrooms and climb up again just to reach the classroom. I can forsee myself getting a lot fitter from all the stairs.


This is where students will go for their physical education and here's the vantage point to people to ogle observe them. Note that the folks staying at the private housing opposite gets a pretty good view of the basketball courts area too.


The grass is green and the track is urmm... supposedly red. This is no photoshop trick but I sure hope they repair the track soon...


Something tells me that the container classrooms aint new. Afterall I guess I'm among the pioneer batches in JC who started using container classrooms. It was introduced in my JC 2 year at least in my JC. Before that it was unheard of.


And it seems they are going to call the classes in year 5, 5A, 5B blah blah.. like primary school. lol...


There's no windows for container classrooms, but every class has this... the same brand and type of air-con that I use in my house. Cool!


The corridors of the container classroom. Look at the floor during raining season. That's why I say we need to trek to the classroom.


Meanwhile, other levels get to use orthodox classrooms like these


Nice rooftop garden... would be great if we could do a BBQ cum moon gazing here too. Perfect location for mid autumn festival event


The track again from another vantage point

All photos taken with the Sony Alpha A100 using the Sony 18-70mm F3.5-5.6 kit lens except for the last 3 photos were taken with the Minolta 'beercan' 70-210mm f4.0 lens. Pictures seen here had saturation and contrast pushed up a little to make my nature shots look more appealing but forgot about these shots and applied the same settings to all of them in postprocessing...

singapore photoblog sony a100 alpha

1.) That I could perspire and catch a cold at the same time. Not that this is the first time it happened to me but it's been quite a while since it last happened that I thought I lost this unique ability. Must be my body is thermally insulated from inside out or something.

2.) That one can spend more than S$250 just on developing photos or a grand total of S$400 a year. That's more than enough to get an entry level point and shoot digital camera. Luckily more than half of those photos developed belongs to someone else.

3.) That I have more than 15 000 clicks on my 3 cameras in a year! Of which, 10% from Fuji F11 and 40% from Sony Alpha and 50% from Sony H1. That I need more than 5 DVDs to store them.

4.) That Physicists have a better sense of humour compared to Mathematicians, Biologists and Chemists simply by counting the subcategories of a large database of academic jokes.

5.) That teachers simply do not have any holidays as they would have 101 things waiting for them to do during the holidays. I need to get motivated to start else the worklist will be very long...

6.) That I had my first (and second) many dust particles on my dSLR sensor of which two of them were obviously parents due to their size! Darn.. should had bought that blower when I saw it last month... Just pray that the problem will go away before it irritates me.. Even though it is barely visible with my everyday shots, but it's clearly there when i play around with the levels. Need to buy a blower...

7.) I need to learn how to count again.

8.) That the temperature gradient between my brain and my body is causing a headache to me now..

To mark the closure of the Year 5 orientation camp and to thank all the student committee helpers, Michelle brought them out for ktv and dinner. The least I could do is to take more photographs that night... All photographs can be found here, without the speech bubbles of course. As usual, these are resized version but good for 4R prints at least.


Having fun playing with my zooom lens "zooming" effects


The year's most photogenic students doing the V that bridges across many generations


Random shot to test if 18mm is wide enough to frame everybody in. Again you see the V sign here..


Tien Leng doing the smell test... I think he got talent to be a chemist doing all those pungent smell stuff...


Group photo...more V signs at the back...

All photos taken with the Sony Alpha A100 with the Sony 18-70mm f3.5-5.6 el-cheapo kit lens. No flash gun was used... amazing... Again.. comments are for fun and humour... please don't take it seriously... *laughs*

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Yes, it's plural. I think it is somehow a tradition for all year 4s to have a class chalet at the end of the year. And I learnt a fact that being a teacher means your work life is revolving around students and your private life revolves around students also.. Need proof? Here ya go!

Well, its some time after the GST increase bomb was dropped and there are plenty of good articles out there discussing the issue at hand. Just had to distinguish them from those "non-constructive criticism" posts that the government hate. Points like "GST is a regressive tax that robs poor Peter to give back to poor Peter" had been discussed extensively. Now how would GST affect poor Peter? Here's some simple considerations.

1.) Big Items
2% may seem little figure wish but if you are buying some big items (cost wise) it is a considerable amount. A $50 000 car with 5% gst is $52 500 while 7% gst is $53 500. A whole $1 000 extra in terms of tax. And if you take a car loan for 5 years with 2.5% interest that will be another $125 extra in interest that you need to pay. Now $1125 is like more than the income tax payable for many families in Singapore in a year. ($40 000 per annum taxable income translate to $900 of income tax)

Now keep your fingers crossed if you are buying a house with 30 year loans and expensive renovation. Or getting married with bridal packages that goes up to $8 000 and hotel receptions that costs up to $20 000. Or University education that can cost more than $20 000, or that medical bill for an operation blah blah blah...

2.) Small items
Imagine a small bakery in Singapore, they order their ingredients like flour etc from some distributor in Singapore. In order to deliver the ingredients to your neighbourhood bakery, they would have to pay for 7% gst for the transport (in terms of fuel and/or vehicles). When they sell those ingredients to the bakery, they have to include 7% gst again. Finally when you buy your bread from your neighbourhood bakery, there is another 7% gst to be factored in again. Granted that you don't add the taxes to get 21% but I won't be surprised to find 10-15% extra in prices.

Someone have to bear all the taxes incurred on the way and that someone would include poor Peter.

Increasing GST is equivalent to increasing the taxes of the average Joe and cutting income tax would benefit the rich more than poor Peter. Increase in GST may solve some problems in making Singapore more competitive but it in turns create more problems for many Singaporeans. And how would the government tackle these problems would make or break their trust in younger voters like me more than the fact that they blog or hip-hopped.

singapore gst hike essay

Finally, here's the last batch that I will post up since by now each class would have a copy of the photos DVD. The photos contained in the DVD are resized versions (else it won't fit into one DVD) and is about 3 megapixel in size or sufficient for excellent 4R photos and good 8R pictures. If you intend to blow any image up to a size of 12R or larger. You can always request for the orignal size photographs.

Oh, I need to select a few photographs to blow up to A4 (or 12R) size for the school to display at Mt Sinai to welcome students back to school. I had a few in mind (i.e. Mr Biollo's hands on ball image) but would welcome any suggestions. Don't be surprised if you find your photos in school with or without any warning.

Anyway.. here's the last wave... embraced for a slow load time for slower connections.












Group photos right at the end of day 2.


Bonds between friends were strengthen...


Really enjoying themselves... all the effort was worth it...


Dancing queen during the finale dinner


More dancers that night


Take my hand, take my hand...


From the left, the camp slave, camp witch, camp king, camp queen, camp princess and camp prince.


The emcees for the night

All photos taken with the Sony Alpha A100 with the Sony 18-70mm F3.5-5.6 kit lens and some with the Sony F56AM flash gun too for indoor shots and the Minolta 50mm f1.7 prime lens for outdoor shots. Coming up, photos from class chalets... too many photos to upload so slowly taking my time to do so... lol..

singapore orientation camp photoblog sony a100 alpha

No english title - video powered by Metacafe

YouTube rejected my video cause it's too long, metacafe took it but still I'm limited to only 100mb of video so had to downsize it to this version that looks pretty ugly but still more than 80mb. Think I should go and look for a mpeg4 converter or something...

Metacafe is not so stable, even though I submited a title, it still end up with "no english title" as the title. sheesh...

I need to increase my ram on my antique PC from 512mb to something like 2gb. All those video editing is making my PC respond like my 80286 I had more than 10 years ago. I hope that YouTube will let my more than 10 minutes but less than 100mb video slideshow of the year 5 camp through man.

Watch this space tomorrow on Tuesday night to see if it is successful. Am tired after 1 whole day of video editing, time for a deserved break when I go for course tomorrow followed by 4K class chalet.

Need to introduce my students to Aloha chalets, much cheaper but much larger (up to 4 bedrooms with attached bathrooms) and far from civilization (ulu).

Decided to post these photos separately from my random ramblings. Here are some selected photos from the amazing race. Not as many photographs since I was heavily involved in the organization of the games.


The night before the amazing race


The track game


Ready Set Bingo


Time to try to Bingo


Hunting for clues


Pretty near to the treasures..


Looks like face painting isn't such a good forfeit afterall


Group shot with Derek's camera

All photographs taken with the Sony Alpha A100 with (most likely) the Sony 18-70mm f3.5-5.6 kit lens unless otherwise stated.

singapore amazing race orientation camp photoblog sony a100 alpha

Had a valuable lesson today. June is really an experienced teacher and there is plenty that I could learn from her. If I were to convey the same message across to my students, I think the effect would only be 1% of how she did it today. No wonder she is well-respected by her students. Respect is earned, not demanded. I would say her respect is well deserved. Kudos to her.

Most of the time, teachers demand and expect the level the trust and respect from students and students would look up at teachers as a mentor. But sometimes, a teacher may fall short of expectations as a mentor as we may not be experienced and masters of everything. I think it is important as an individual to know his/her weakness and work on it.

《大学》的哲学思考 (wiki)

I'll be looking forward to course next week... It's great to be a student, stop thinking once a while and drawing blanks at the lecturer/tutor. There is a big gap between what we learn in course (theory) and what we can do in school (practice) and this joke sums it up neatly...

"Theory is when you know how it works but it still doesn't. Practice is when it works but you don't know why. In this school, theory and practice are joined together: nothing works and no one knows why!"