Singapore: The Inconvenient Truth from catherinelim.sg on Vimeo.

Catherine Lim's Speech at Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy made on February 22, 2008

This was like one of the first cassette tape pop album I bought when I was a child. The best song ever in my memories!

By ELLEN GAMERMAN
February 29, 2008; Page W1
Helsinki, Finland

High-school students here rarely get more than a half-hour of homework a night. They have no school uniforms, no honor societies, no valedictorians, no tardy bells and no classes for the gifted. There is little standardized testing, few parents agonize over college and kids don't start school until age 7.

Yet by one international measure, Finnish teenagers are among the smartest in the world. They earned some of the top scores by 15-year-old students who were tested in 57 countries. American teens finished among the world's C students even as U.S. educators piled on more homework, standards and rules. Finnish youth, like their U.S. counterparts, also waste hours online. They dye their hair, love sarcasm and listen to rap and heavy metal. But by ninth grade they're way ahead in math, science and reading -- on track to keeping Finns among the world's most productive workers.

The Finns won attention with their performances in triennial tests sponsored by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a group funded by 30 countries that monitors social and economic trends. In the most recent test, which focused on science, Finland's students placed first in science and near the top in math and reading, according to results released late last year. An unofficial tally of Finland's combined scores puts it in first place overall, says Andreas Schleicher, who directs the OECD's test, known as the Programme for International Student Assessment, or PISA. The U.S. placed in the middle of the pack in math and science; its reading scores were tossed because of a glitch. About 400,000 students around the world answered multiple-choice questions and essays on the test that measured critical thinking and the application of knowledge. A typical subject: Discuss the artistic value of graffiti.

The academic prowess of Finland's students has lured educators from more than 50 countries in recent years to learn the country's secret, including an official from the U.S. Department of Education. What they find is simple but not easy: well-trained teachers and responsible children. Early on, kids do a lot without adults hovering. And teachers create lessons to fit their students. "We don't have oil or other riches. Knowledge is the thing Finnish people have," says Hannele Frantsi, a school principal.

Visitors and teacher trainees can peek at how it's done from a viewing balcony perched over a classroom at the Norssi School in Jyväskylä, a city in central Finland. What they see is a relaxed, back-to-basics approach. The school, which is a model campus, has no sports teams, marching bands or prom.

Fanny Salo in class

Trailing 15-year-old Fanny Salo at Norssi gives a glimpse of the no-frills curriculum. Fanny is a bubbly ninth-grader who loves "Gossip Girl" books, the TV show "Desperate Housewives" and digging through the clothing racks at H&M stores with her friends.

Fanny earns straight A's, and with no gifted classes she sometimes doodles in her journal while waiting for others to catch up. She often helps lagging classmates. "It's fun to have time to relax a little in the middle of class," Fanny says. Finnish educators believe they get better overall results by concentrating on weaker students rather than by pushing gifted students ahead of everyone else. The idea is that bright students can help average ones without harming their own progress.

At lunch, Fanny and her friends leave campus to buy salmiakki, a salty licorice. They return for physics, where class starts when everyone quiets down. Teachers and students address each other by first names. About the only classroom rules are no cellphones, no iPods and no hats.

Fanny's more rebellious classmates dye their blond hair black or sport pink dreadlocks. Others wear tank tops and stilettos to look tough in the chilly climate. Tanning lotions are popular in one clique. Teens sift by style, including "fruittari," or preppies; "hoppari," or hip-hop, or the confounding "fruittari-hoppari," which fuses both. Ask an obvious question and you may hear "KVG," short for "Check it on Google, you idiot." Heavy-metal fans listen to Nightwish, a Finnish band, and teens socialize online at irc-galleria.net.

The Norssi School is run like a teaching hospital, with about 800 teacher trainees each year. Graduate students work with kids while instructors evaluate from the sidelines. Teachers must hold master's degrees, and the profession is highly competitive: More than 40 people may apply for a single job. Their salaries are similar to those of U.S. teachers, but they generally have more freedom.

Finnish teachers pick books and customize lessons as they shape students to national standards. "In most countries, education feels like a car factory. In Finland, the teachers are the entrepreneurs," says Mr. Schleicher, of the Paris-based OECD, which began the international student test in 2000.

One explanation for the Finns' success is their love of reading. Parents of newborns receive a government-paid gift pack that includes a picture book. Some libraries are attached to shopping malls, and a book bus travels to more remote neighborhoods like a Good Humor truck.

Ymmersta school principal Hannele Frantsi

Finland shares its language with no other country, and even the most popular English-language books are translated here long after they are first published. Many children struggled to read the last Harry Potter book in English because they feared they would hear about the ending before it arrived in Finnish. Movies and TV shows have Finnish subtitles instead of dubbing. One college student says she became a fast reader as a child because she was hooked on the 1990s show "Beverly Hills, 90210."

In November, a U.S. delegation visited, hoping to learn how Scandinavian educators used technology. Officials from the Education Department, the National Education Association and the American Association of School Librarians saw Finnish teachers with chalkboards instead of whiteboards, and lessons shown on overhead projectors instead of PowerPoint. Keith Krueger was less impressed by the technology than by the good teaching he saw. "You kind of wonder how could our country get to that?" says Mr. Krueger, CEO of the Consortium for School Networking, an association of school technology officers that organized the trip.

Finnish high-school senior Elina Lamponen saw the differences firsthand. She spent a year at Colon High School in Colon, Mich., where strict rules didn't translate into tougher lessons or dedicated students, Ms. Lamponen says. She would ask students whether they did their homework. They would reply: " 'Nah. So what'd you do last night?'" she recalls. History tests were often multiple choice. The rare essay question, she says, allowed very little space in which to write. In-class projects were largely "glue this to the poster for an hour," she says. Her Finnish high school forced Ms. Lamponen, a spiky-haired 19-year-old, to repeat the year when she returned.

At the Norssi School in Jyväskylä, school principal Helena Muilu

Lloyd Kirby, superintendent of Colon Community Schools in southern Michigan, says foreign students are told to ask for extra work if they find classes too easy. He says he is trying to make his schools more rigorous by asking parents to demand more from their children.

Despite the apparent simplicity of Finnish education, it would be tough to replicate in the U.S. With a largely homogeneous population, teachers have few students who don't speak Finnish. In the U.S., about 8% of students are learning English, according to the Education Department. There are fewer disparities in education and income levels among Finns. Finland separates students for the last three years of high school based on grades; 53% go to high school and the rest enter vocational school. (All 15-year-old students took the PISA test.) Finland has a high-school dropout rate of about 4% -- or 10% at vocational schools -- compared with roughly 25% in the U.S., according to their respective education departments.

Another difference is financial. Each school year, the U.S. spends an average of $8,700 per student, while the Finns spend $7,500. Finland's high-tax government provides roughly equal per-pupil funding, unlike the disparities between Beverly Hills public schools, for example, and schools in poorer districts. The gap between Finland's best- and worst-performing schools was the smallest of any country in the PISA testing. The U.S. ranks about average.

Finnish students have little angstata -- or teen angst -- about getting into the best university, and no worries about paying for it. College is free. There is competition for college based on academic specialties -- medical school, for instance. But even the best universities don't have the elite status of a Harvard.

Students at the Ymmersta School near Helsinki

Taking away the competition of getting into the "right schools" allows Finnish children to enjoy a less-pressured childhood. While many U.S. parents worry about enrolling their toddlers in academically oriented preschools, the Finns don't begin school until age 7, a year later than most U.S. first-graders.

Once school starts, the Finns are more self-reliant. While some U.S. parents fuss over accompanying their children to and from school, and arrange every play date and outing, young Finns do much more on their own. At the Ymmersta School in a nearby Helsinki suburb, some first-grade students trudge to school through a stand of evergreens in near darkness. At lunch, they pick out their own meals, which all schools give free, and carry the trays to lunch tables. There is no Internet filter in the school library. They can walk in their socks during class, but at home even the very young are expected to lace up their own skates or put on their own skis.

The Finns enjoy one of the highest standards of living in the world, but they, too, worry about falling behind in the shifting global economy. They rely on electronics and telecommunications companies, such as Finnish cellphone giant Nokia, along with forest-products and mining industries for jobs. Some educators say Finland needs to fast-track its brightest students the way the U.S. does, with gifted programs aimed at producing more go-getters. Parents also are getting pushier about special attention for their children, says Tapio Erma, principal of the suburban Olari School. "We are more and more aware of American-style parents," he says.

Mr. Erma's school is a showcase campus. Last summer, at a conference in Peru, he spoke about adopting Finnish teaching methods. During a recent afternoon in one of his school's advanced math courses, a high-school boy fell asleep at his desk. The teacher didn't disturb him, instead calling on others. While napping in class isn't condoned, Mr. Erma says, "We just have to accept the fact that they're kids and they're learning how to live."

Original Article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120425355065601997.html?mod=hpp_us_inside_today

THE leader of the Singapore Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) network, Mas Selamat Kastari, escaped from the Whitley Road detention centre at about 4.05 pm on Wednesday, said the Ministry of Home Affairs in a statement.

A massive manhunt is underway to track down the escaped detainee, who walks with a limp.

'He is not known to be armed. Extensive police resources have been deployed to track him down,' said the ministry statement.

The public is asked to contact the police at 999 if they know of his whereabouts.

Full Story: http://www.straitstimes.com/Latest%2BNews/Singapore/STIStory_211064.html

Monday blue at its highest. My tummy is going haywire, what the fuck I ate!? I've been to the toilet for like 3 times already and its still grumbling.

Feb 24, 2008
Nokia forced to cough up more than $1,000 over faulty phone

EARLIER this month, Ms Tan Geok Hoon marched into Nokia's office, brandishing court documents and threatening to seize the assests of the cell-phone giant.

A bailiff stood at the side of the 43-year-old sales manager, ready to repossess the company's things.

Ms Tan was enforcing a small claims court decision that ordered the world's largest cellphone maker to pay her $778 for a faulty cellphone she bought last year.

The moment, which Ms Tan recalled recently, marked the culmination of a seven- month David-versus-Goliath battle.

The story of one woman's fight against a mighty firm made its rounds in several online forums last week, casting the spotlight on how the world's top phone maker handled unhappy customers.

Things all started in August last year, when Ms Tan bought a Nokia E61i phone from a StarHub store.

Ms Tan said the phone would not power on in the first week, but a Nokia service centre refused to exchange it for a new one.

Frustrated after sending it for repairs several times, she turned to the Small Claims Tribunal in November.

At this point, Nokia tried to settle the matter privately, by offering to exchange Ms Tan's phone with a new one, or to refund her $388. This was the purchase price that came with a two-year StarHub subscription.

She rejected the offer, looking instead for $778 - the full retail price of the phone.

Ms Tan told The Straits Times: 'I didn't claim for more than what the phone cost because I'm not greedy for Nokia phones.'

There were two consultations and one hearing before the small claims tribunal. Nokia missed the last two sessions, claiming the relevant department had not received the notice on time.

As a result, the company was ordered on December 18 last year to pay Ms Tan $778 within 15 days.

But it did not.

1: I am currently out at a job interview and will reply to you if I
fail to get the position .

2: I'm not really out of the office. I'm just ignoring you.

3: You are receiving this automatic notification because I am out of the
office. If I was in, chances are you wouldn't have received anything at
all.

4: Sorry to have missed you but I am at the doctors having my brain
removed so that I may be promoted to management

5: I will be unable to delete all the unread, worthless emails you send
me until I return from vacation on 4/18. Please be patient and your mail
will be deleted in the order it was received.

6: Thank you for your email. Your credit card has been charged $5.99 for
the first ten words and $1.99 for each additional word in your message.

7: The e-mail server is unable to verify your server connection and is
unable to deliver this message. Please restart your computer and try
sending again.'

( The beauty of this is that when you return, you can see how many
in-duh-viduals did this over and over).

8: Thank you for your message, which has been added to a queuing system.
You are currently in 352nd place, and can expect to receive a reply in
approximately 19 weeks.

9: Hi. I'm thinking about what you've just sent me. Please wait by your
PC for my response.

10: Hi! I'm busy negotiating the salary for my new job. Don't bother to
leave me any messages.

11: I've run away to join a different circus.

AND, FINALLY, THIS ONE TAKES THE CAKE:

12: I will be out of the office for the next 2 weeks for medical
reasons.

When I return, please refer to me as ' Loretta' instead of 'Steve '

We caught L: Change The World yesterday. Pretty good movie, and pleasantly surprised that Mello and Near are included in the story-line even though its a spin-off from the original plot. I guess thats to satisfy the unhappiness from Deathnote fans that half of the original storyline was cut out in the earlier movies. Mello became a girl though, and her name was Maki.

Go watch it or something.

I can't find the remote for the Projector. Whoops. How!? HOW!?

 

I hate Ops Room Duty. Anything could happen and everything will happen, but that is fine. Except the fact I have to stay in this prison for the entire night.

My role here is actually, superficial, with no importance at all. It's like a full time receptionist   and expected to do a poor job at that too. I find this role as Ops Room Duty Clerk as redundant, useless and a waste of your taxpayer's money - where we could be stationed back at office performing our original full time job.

The procedures we have to perform, is so much irrelevant, its nothing more than rituals performed to appease the hungry ghosts looming above us. It's a waste of time, really.

If you have kids, in the future, I'd recommend you, please, by all means, give up your citizenship and get em out of this maggot infested hole.

 

Self-repairing material

A material that is able to self-repair even when it is sliced in two has been invented by French researchers.

The as-yet-unnamed material - a form of artificial rubber - is made from vegetable oil and a component of urine.

The substance, described in the journal Nature, produces surfaces when cut that retain a strong chemical attraction to each other.

Pieces of the material join together again as if never parted without the need for glue or a special treatment.

This remarkable property comes from careful engineering of the molecules in the material.

The French researchers are already making kilogramme quantities in their Paris laboratories and say the process is almost completely green, and could be completely so with a few adjustments.

'Tiny hands'

The secret of the substance lies in how the molecules are held together.

A piece of normal rubber, says Dr Ludwik Leibler, who headed the research, is actually a single molecule with billion upon billions of smaller units chemically welded together to form a giant tangled network.

The elasticity comes from the fact that the strands within the network are buckled like a concertina: pull on them and they straighten and elongate; let go and the buckles reappear.

But break a rubber (or most other solids), and the chemical welds - known as covalent bonds - are also broken.

These cannot be remade. Nor can a piece of rubber be remoulded or reshaped.

"We wanted to see if we could make a rubber-like material using small molecules," Dr Leibler of the Industrial Physics and Chemistry Higher Educational Institution (ESPCI) in Paris told the BBC's Science In Action programme.

The trick was to replace the covalent bonds in rubber with weaker connections known as hydrogen bonds.

These are like hands on neighbouring molecules that can clasp together, but let go when broken.

Dr Leibler quickly realised that this meant not only that the new rubber could be recycled and remoulded many times over, but that if separated by a cut or break, the chemical hands at the fresh surfaces would still be waving about ready to bind again.

Child's play

François Tournilhac, who runs Dr Leibler's laboratories, demonstrated the healing to me.

Using a razor blade he severed a thin strand of the yellowish material (the colour of corn oil), showed me the clean square faces, and then pressed them together.

Almost immediately, the grip was strong enough for him to hold the sample just at one end.

Within an hour the bonds had rebuilt themselves so thoroughly that it was possible to stretch the strand to twice its length without any sign of weakness where the cut had been made.

One obvious use, says Dr Leibler, is for self-healing seals.

Puncture a seal in a compression joint with a nail, and the hole would automatically repair itself.

He also has more playful suggestions.

"Why not use it to make children's toys? Children are always breaking their toys. Wouldn't it be nice if you could put them back together so easily?"

The material was developed with the support of the French company Arkema, which is already investigating whether it can be turned into a commercial product.

Original Article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7254939.stm

The trainer was so proud of his achievement and started a little speech of dino, and his HR prowess. From what I see, if he ain't a dino, he is a mammoth; both are extinct.

There are much more than dinos that went extinct. Agree?

Oh hurry up! Bloody mammoth, I just wanna go home. So slow! Still talking!

 

Came early in the morning for AIOPS Course at Kranji Camp III. I almost got lost finding this place. I walked all the way from Yew Tee MRT and ended up at Detention Barracks instead. Then, I asked a malay guy for directions and I ended up in nowhere - he had intended for me to turn left but I turned right.

Jeez.

 

Self-Note. Remember to do homework for pg 15, 25. And if possible, do 16 as well.

I finally bought TFT2! Woohoo! I can't wait to go home and play it now, but last time I played, it was pretty laggy for online games. I need some more time to fine tune it to my lowly computer's requirements.

Woot!

When you worked for em, they demand more, asking you to do stupid tasks like standing there for 7 minutes and finally asking you to pick up a printout from the printer less than 10 seconds walk outside - when you have other more important work to do.

And when you fall sick they put the entire blame on you, and ask for the impossible. Today, after many days of discomfort ridden with flu, fever, headache, dizziness, I finally broke down and dragged myself to the doctor. But I was told to return tomorrow, for what? To write some numbers on sheets of paper that we barely used as reference. The doctor anxiously gave me two days medical leave, and I accepted it. My health? My decision, they can summon me back for endorsement for all I care.

This happened before, and I tell ya, I'm furious at how NSF are being abused to this state of slavery. I've seen several other cases of NSF went amok in office before - screaming and running off only to return hours later; and nobody gives a damm about his whereabout. So I'm gonna call back, and tell em they can settle em themselves, and I've made sure my work has been fairly settled for these few days.

There was once, when I am working in this current workplace, I went to a different doctor, my condition was pretty bad and the doctor told me off, "If your officers have anything to complain, tell him to call me directly!"

 

New bride dies in her love's arms during their first dance

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Saturday, February 9th 2008, 6:01 PM

DAVIE, Fla. - Kim Sjostrom wanted a real-life version of the film "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," which played in the background as friends fixed her hair and makeup before her own marriage ceremony.

But less than an hour after she and Teddy Efkarpides were wed, Sjostrom crumpled in her husband's arms during a Greek song that means "Love Me."

At 36, Sjostrom was dead from heart disease.

The wedding had became a project at Davie Elementary School, where Sjostrom taught first grade. Fellow teachers provided the wedding gown, the flowers and decorations. One of them, an ordained minister, performed the ceremony.

"It was perfect for her," said Dominic Church, the minister friend.

Sjostrom carried blue and white flowers during the ceremony — the colors of the Greek flag — as she exchanged vows with Efkarpides, a 43-year-old carpenter and Navy veteran. They had met three years to the day before the Jan. 19 wedding.

During the couple's first dance, Sjostrom complained of being lightheaded. Efkarpides thought his wife, a diabetic, needed sugar, but she collapsed.

Wedding guests, paramedics and doctors at a nearby hospital were unable to revive her.

She had a previous cardiac episode in her 20s and was a poster child — literally — for juvenile diabetes, relatives and friends said. Efkarpides recalled seeing the poster featuring her on New York subways.

He consoles himself by reading a list of "101 Reasons Why I Love You" that Sjostrom gave him their first Christmas together. "Number 1. You make me smile."

No. 98 is especially difficult: "You're the one I want to grow old with."

The moon looked like this during my birthday.