Distance fares

RIGHT. DISTANCE FARES. Land transport and authority's new policy for road users. How did it work out? BAD. well, not to insult ANYONE or show a biased view, but honestly, it did not work out that well.

Well, for anyone who did not know, Singapore, on 3rd of july tried a new policy, which is to charge commuters by the distance they travel. and APPARENTLY small number of people would pay a LITTLE BIT MORE. How ironic.they said that 2/3 of the people in Singapore would be able to save money and only a small number of people needed to pay extra money.

Let me fill you in on something. Last time, every time a person changes a bus, he have to pay 60 cents as entering fee. Hence, if one changes more busses, he had to pay more. Now its the opposite as we do not need to pay any money if we change bus, as it would be cheaper if we change bus. Hence, now, if one wants to travel to destination x and he transfers buses, he will pay significantly less money than another person who wanted to go to destination x with direct buses.

This is where i feel unjust for everyone. Well, to be honest, i actually benefited from this new policy as I change bus everyday going to school and going home, but hey, i am trying to feel sympathy for the other commuters, basically, the adults. Most people are already accustomed to taking direct routes to offices or schools, and very little people, YES, VERY LITTLE PEOPLE, likes to transfer bus to go somewhere and they will only do so out of emergency. Hence, the fast policy change caused the people in Singapore to protest as they could not adapt to the new policy in short time.

This policy also had some flaws and miscalculations. For example, the most serious case is the 170 bus ride and the distance was 7.1 km, but the distance being calculated was 9.5km, resulting in commuters paying 2.4km more fees.

Basically thats the policy.

What do you think?

Well, my friend and i had a debate over this topic. You see, he thinks that the policy is good and beneficial to the people of Singapore and he supports it. Yeah, but you see, i do not really believe in this kind of policies and i prefer the old policy.

Seriously. No joke.

He said that he supported the new policy as it was a more fair distribution of fares and it would not be biased towards anyone as it is purely based on distance. Yeah and something like that.

My opinion? Hasty generalisations.

While i indeed must say that the land transport and authority had did well in trying to satisfy everyone and they are under a lot of stress and pressure, i felt that it is still not good enough to satisfy everyone. This is because even though by each passing week alot more people changes their ways to travel by transferring buses, there are still some 20% of the whole population that could not change their ways. Who would want to change bus if they could arrive at a same destination with a direct bus and faster in terms of speed and time?

Last time, my mother travelling to Clementi from Jurong East costs 60 cents, and now? 1 dollar plus. How ridiculous. I do not understand why do we all need to increase the amount of money we needed to pay just to ensure a fair distribution of fees. I think that the government should consider using back the old policy. That was completely fine and there were little mistakes and everyone was happy about it.

Yeah, and thas my point. I know the post's a bit short but i will try to post more next time!

What are your opinions of this matter? Feel free to post a comment to let me know :D

world cup

When we get older, we will be stronger, they' ll call me freedom just like a waving flag.....

World cup's here. Yay! Football fans, you will have your delights everyday!

I am also a football fan, yeah of course, ever since i was fascinated by the game of football when i was as young as primary four. No kidding. Soccer, or should i say football, caused a total change in the world of sports and today, it has even became the most watched and celebrated sport. The world cup, held once in 4 years, is a great event and will always be a time whereby people will risk everything - and by everything i mean EVERYTHING - to watch their favorite teams in action and cheering when they scored a goal, or shouting when they conceded a goal.

That is football.

This year, South Africa was the country to hold the world cup and believe me, they did a great job, probably better than the last few world cups. The only beef was probably the fact that 7 reporters was robbed of their particulars, but lets not get on to that, shall we? South Africa led us see the customs, traditions, and beliefs through their opening ceremony and although many people was not watching but was anticipating for the first match to happen, i think that the opening ceremony was a good idea. Why? Through this world cup, South Africa also introduces to everyone how it is like and people will get to know South Africa better!

Also, lets not forget the vuvuzela. Ok, i think that anyone who is reading this post will be thinking, curse you vuvuzela. I understand. The vuvuzela, the horn of Africa, was a very noisy object played in the world cup and during the matches, it is filled with the vuvuzela's sounds, making us unable to comprehend the what the commentator is saying. I know what it feels like. Very irritating. However, i think that it is a very special item for the Africans and we should respect them by allowing them to continue blowing. Its their culture. We can't really change that.

Right.

So as all of you know, South Africa also produced two songs about the world cup. Can you tell me what are these two songs? YES YOU ARE RIGHT! It is waka waka (This time for Africa) and Wavin' flag! These songs are simply amazing! You should listen to it more often. They are catchy and nice. You can feel football inside the songs. As a freak of music, i just love the songs!

Ok, as a crazy football fan, i am so desperate for this world cup to come. It would be so nice to watch. As usual, i am supporting Argentina. ARGENTINA GO GO GO! Now the world cup finally comes, i know i can watch the expert playing of Argentina now, but, my hopes were blown, kinda.

Guess what happened.

You need to pay $88 to watch world cup.

My first reaction: Jaws dropped, textbook slipped from hand, shocked face.

Second reaction: pinched myself, shouted, rubbed my eyes, more shocked face, almost fainted.

By the way, the almost fainted was a joke. Oh my lord......... I was thinking. 88 dollars? What the hell? How can it be so expensive? The previous world cup was much much much much MORE cheaper. Argh! I am not buying it. I am so not buying it. It is so expensive and my father who is very thrifty..... you think he would buy? Then, i was like....

Panic! panic!

Yeah, i think people are complaining now. And i think i know what they are complaining about. Kinda.

I just don't understand how is it so expensive! Why? Perhaps, the number of people that bought the package last year? Or is it the popular demand that made Singtel and Starhub so unreasonable? Who know? But we just know that the price is high, very high.

Oh well, i think i have to face the fact. I hope the web addresses my friends gave me were usable because i am counting on that to watch Argentina in action. Pretty desperate, don't ya think. But i can go to extremes in football! So let the world cup begin!

Those who bought the world cup package, make sure you have a cup of popcorn, a bottle of cold drink, a miniature zakumi in your hands, and a Vuvuzela at your mouth and you are ready to go!

For the likes of me, oh well, i think i will just have to surf the net and if unsuccessful, go down to the noisy coffee shop near my house and lets hope i get at least a peek at the screen among the sea of faces.

Annex A steps in analysis

Have you all seen the poem analysis on conflict i posted just now? No? Well, what are you waiting for? Read that! Anyway, the thing is, you need to read that to understand this post that i am writing.

So firstly, the point of view of this poem.

Point of view :

Evidence: "America did not foresee" , "nefariously America led astray"

Elaboration: From these two quotes, we can see that this poem is in a third person point of view as the poem wrote America which is referring to the general country. It does not necessarily mean someone who is involved in the war itself, and the speaker can be soldier who survived the war, yeah, that is a possibility, but it also can be someone who witnessed the war or was born after the war as agent orange was spread after the war, which is why the poem itself tell us that there are still some wars after the wars supposedly ended.

Lets move on to situation and setting. So, you may ask, what is the setting of this poem? It seemed so general that it has no setting.

Situation and setting:

Evidence: actually all the lines can be used as evidence, but i will just pick out a few important ones: "Nefariously America led astray, generations untold will pay, execrable effects of agent orange spray!"

Elaboration: Basically all of the quotes are about the situation in this poem. As you can see from the three quotes (i combined the three), it kind of summarized the whole poem's situation. It tells us of the aftermath of the war and how it could kill innocent people in the later generations and how America's mistake allowed it to deteriorate. The situation here is that America used agent orange to kill the Vietnamese, but the agent also spread to its own personnel that came in contact with this agent and how this agent will then affect the innocents in the later generations. As i said before, this poem has no setting as it is based on a general theme.

Now we are dealing with language and diction. As we all can see, there is a heavy use of language and diction in this poem. Although its a short poem, it is enough to express its content with the help of language.

So what is language and diction? I shall continue in the next day!

Home learning - poem analysis

Right.

so i have home learning today and yesterday. Hooray. Sense the sarcasm. I prefer school to this. Ok, nevermind, due to home learning, i will need to write an analysis of one of the three poems.

That's hard.

Anyway, among the three poems, i chose rainbow death. Woah, ok. Why did i choose rainbow death? The first thing that captured my attention was the title. Rainbow death is a strange title. What is it? And as i read on, although the poem was shorter than the other two, it displayed war in the form of colours. Rainbow's colours. So how did the poet do it? Which is exactly why i am researching on that right now.

Ok, here's the poem,

America did not foresee
Green, pink, purple and other colors death potpourri!
Expecting others to pay a high price.
Now thinking twice?
Toll on the innocent and unborn.

Omnipotent and disregarding who will mourn.
Reflective about all the illness, birth defects and prematurely dead.
All the deceit continues to spread.
Nefariously America led astray -
Generations untold WILL pay -
Execrable effects of agent orange spray!

Lets begin.

As i begin to research on this, i find that this poem had something to do with agent orange. I mean, look at the last line, execrable effects of agent orange spray! It tells us this is caused by agent orange. "Agent orange is the code name for a herbicide and defoliant—contaminated with TCDD—used by the U.S. military in its Herbicidal Warfare program during the Vietnam War. " - Wikipedia. As i continued my research, i found out that millions Vietnamese people were exposed to Agent Orange, which resulted in many deaths, disabilities, and children born with birth defects. So what is the conflict here?

As Agent Orange was the most widely used of the so-called "Rainbow Herbicides", agents Purple, Pink, and Green dioxins were also produced, which resulted in health problems for alot of people. In my opinion, my opinion, i think that the conflict in this poem is that although America wanted to use agent orange to kill the Vietnamese in the Vietnam war, the American personnel or soldiers who came in contact with this agent was also infected and this led to some parts of America being infected. Hence, the conflict is when America was trying to kill someone, it also killed its own country. And this tells us that there are still some "wars" going on when they are supposedly finished. Ok, to be honest, i cannot find the conflict and i attempted this conflict based on my own understanding of the poem so i think it may be wrong so please understand.

Background of author:

Hubert Wilson, author of this poem, was a Vietnam War veteran who served in the USAF Security Service. He stayed for about 14 months at Kelly AFB in San Antonio, Texas, and after that period, hoped to be sent to Vietnam or elsewhere in southeast Asia in 1970. He was assigned to Shemya Island, Alaska, with the 6984th Security Squadron. He began having health problems like unexplained headaches and limb pains. Slowly, his central nervous system deteriorated with severe headaches, progressive limb pains, etc. and he did not receive help from any physicians.

Quality or quantity?

Here we go again.

So now, get serious.

Quality or quantity?

Quality, which refers to how good it is, and quantity, which refers to how much it has.

So which one is more important? (Ok i am like jumping to the point too fast here this time to save your. Oh look i wasted some time.

Let me start off with quantity.

Quantity is how much something has. Right. How much. So is it right of me to say that the more i do, the better i am? Ok, perhaps you all have not understood my point. Let us take blogger as an example. So is it right of me to say, the more i blog, the better i am? I will get more ace points? Is that really the case? I know everyone heard the phrase, the more the merrier. Peoples' mindsets are always thinking that if i do extra work, i do more work, i would get good results as my good work will be covered by my bad work and they tend to do more work. However, is it true? Is it accurate? Or is it a misconception? I have always been thinking about this and i cannot come up with an answer. Ok, after reading this, you may think, aiya, since you say its not so accurate, then of course it is bad. Think again. That is rather only my perspective of viewing things. People sees things in a different light. But there are also people who shares my views in an indirect way. For example, my biology teacher.

So what's so special about him? What is so special about him you may ask. Well, he only allow us to do one ace per person per term. OY MY GOSH, SO STRICT! That is what you may think. People can only depend on this one ace to get all five marks. That is seriously strict. However, think of it in a positive light. By doing this, isn't he making us do quality work? If we only do one biology ace, we will make sure we do it good and we do it neatly, hence we will all produce great ace submissions. By doing this, he is stressing us to force us to be afraid and anxious and prevents us from having the mindset, " Ok we can submit one ace after another. If it is not accepted then we do another one." Given this mindset, people tend to relax and not do work diligently.

You got my point? Right. Let us move on to quality.

Quality is how good something is. Great! How good something is! When we do things, we tend to say qualitive work. That means that the work produced must be nicely done. So quality is better than quantity? Hmmm...... I agree this to a certain extend. Of course, when we do things, we must do them with our best effort. My mother always tells me, if you want to do this, do it well. I agree. I f we want to do things, we cannot or should not anyhow do it. We should put in our best effort so it is worthy! My teachers also often tell me, Quality, not quantity! How many times do i have to tell you! You see, i always hand in quantitive pieces of work when i was in primary school. Obviously i changed for the better now! I had enough of that then and was pondering over that since then. well, at least i got to write down this in a blog! So after all this blatant blabbering, you all think that quality is better than quantity, right? Think twice.

Right. So which is better, quantity or quality? You all may think, aiya, quantity no hope already. It gotta be quality. Haha, i do not really think the same way.

In my opinion, both are equally important. Whoa whoa whoa. You all may be dropping your jaws and saying, ARE YOU NUTS? Quality is better than quantity! If that is what you think, think again.

Lets put this in a different prespective then.

As we all know, if we do qualitive work, we need to put in a lot a lot of effort into it and we need to sacrifice a lot a lot of our time into it. We would need to concentrate on it and pay full attention on doing it. That is really quite hard to accomplish as people usually do not have the time and effort to do those things. This is when quantity comes in.

(To be continued)

Everyone can be a genius

Hi people of the world! Good morning world! Oh yes, here' a new topic. Sorry i have not been regularly updating this blog, but yeah, i will try my best to share my feelings with you all. Right.

Okay.

So let me ask you all one question. You all may have all sorts of reactions, but yeah.

"Everyone is born equal and could all succeed in life and become a genius"

Okay, i think all of your first reactions would be staring at the screen shocked with your jaws dropped and saying, "you got to be kidding me." Quite the contrary. Really.

Now, yes, i know. Many of you are not that clever or do not really succeed in life and you would be looking at this shaking your heads. No offense, but i am not trying to say i am a genius, so keep with it.

You all should be thinking, "What? Everyone, born equal? " Yeah, i know how you feel. When i was young, there were always those kids that appear very intelligent. You have a point here. However, look at the larger picture! Well, yes, everyone in this world may not be born equally smart but their intelligence levels are close. Very close. Who disagree here? Maybe some still do.

Maybe you all are wondering, "Hey, why is it that i am not smart? I am also born around the same intelligence of the other students, right? How come my studies are so lousy." Haha, here is when you start thinking. What have you been doing in your youth? Your early days?

You may ask, why is it that from statistics, a lot of poor men's sons or daughters are able to do so well in school? The answer is that when they are still very young, their parents had the time and effort to help them study and learn. Their parents teach them all sorts of things and learn from their mistakes so as to prevent their children to end up in their poor state.

On the contrary, rich people (no offense, seriously) tend to not fare that well in their studies. Ok i am not prejudicing here but i am trying to cover this on a larger scale. That is because in their early days, their parents are very busy with work and hence left them to their own devices. Hence they had no one to teach them things and would not learn a lot. And when they grow a bit more, the parents would pamper them and they would not focus on their studies.

SERIOUSLY I AM NOT PREJUDICING HERE. THEY ARE JUST STEREOTYPES! Okay, there are some cases that are different from this, but lets not talk about that and focus on this, shall we?

Ok lets not venture further about what happened in your early days and years. Lets talk about why is it you are not a genius by secondary school or older.

You may ask what i meant. So, lets put it in another perspective.

When we are all in primary one, some of us are stupid and some of us are clever. That is a fact. Right. So look at my question, well, statement to be precise. It states that everyone COULD become geniuses. Yeah. And i did not mean it in a way by chance.

I meant it by hard work.

Well, i have seen lots of these cases and you may ask what do i mean?

A lot of people, my friends, were very very clever and intelligent in primary one. On the other hand, some of my friends were not very clever. And i mean not very clever. However, when i reached primary six, some of my ""clever friends" became lowest in class while some were still at the top. Amazing, some of my "dumb friends" also went to the top and of course there are those that still lack knowledge.

What does this show?

This show that we can succeed, we can become geniuses, we can do it and nothing is impossible if we put in hard work, dedication, sweat and blood.

Even if we are stupid, we can always work hard and try to catch up with other people. If that does not work, we can try working double hard, triple hard and i am sure that we can succeed and become clever. It also shows that there is no such thing as a born genius. Sure, there may be smart people born everyday, but they are just smarter than others by a tiny little bit. If we want to outsmart others, we can try to gather more knowledge. Those of my friends who are clever in primary one were not in primary six as they did not persevere or put in hard work to do well in school but relied on their natural intelligence to do the work for them.

So after so many perspectives and thinking, do you all agree to this statement? Personally, i agree to this statement as i had already stated that only hard work and dedication can help us succeed in life.

What do you think? Drop a comment to write down your thoughts!

If there is any questions, please feel free to post a comment and i would answer it as soon as possible.

Thank you!

The craze over the iPAD

Right.



So today we shall kick off on a new topic, which is the iPad. You guys out there must be either jumping with joy right now, crying in despair, or feeling envious. Well, there are those that are not crazed over the iPad, but there are very little people like that. Oh and by the way, i am not sterotyping, this is the truth. Everyone loves the iPad, right? Say yes.



Okay. iPad. Cool. A very good invention in the ---- HOLD IT!



Wait, wait, wait. I need to ask you all a question before we proceed. Is iPad a very good invention? You may laugh, you may feel this is stupid, but let me tell you, critics and quite a lot of people out there feel that the iPad is good, but not that good. Why? you may ask.



Well, that is because critics found out that the iPad lacks basic functions such as a camera, a phone and a ketboard function. Well, i agree with some of you that the iPad is not supposed to have these functions, but since it is so great, why should it lack such basic function? Well, that may be the case, but people and reviewers do not really care much about these functions when all they see are the unique designs, the elegance and the mesmerizing features of the iPad that differntiates it from other portable computers.



So do you agree that iPad is an extremely good device? Well, there had been over 450000 copies sold since its debut and people are raving about it. However, we could not really decide from there if it is really significantly beter, not only better.



Hence, i came across an article called,"Can the iPad pass the mom test?" I was very intrigued and i found out that the author wanted to see if the iPad is good enough for his mum, who is not really interested in technology and stuff, to like it.

Well, i guess that the author's mum took a while to be persuaded to go to the store as visiting it may be the last thing on her mind. After using much effort to persuade his mum to go to the store, the author's mum looked at the iPad, and was automatically attracted to it. In the report, it was stated that she thought it as the best thing in the world.

So why is this so?

Well, i might not know all answers, but in my perspective, i think that people when viewing things do not really care a lot about their function, well that applies to most people, and they just care about whether it is nice or not. Same with the iPad, it is very elegant an beautiful and its design is unique. Although it may lack those functions, no one will notice and no one will care as it has better functions and more advanced things.

What are your views?