Smileyface's Blog

Saturday, May 9, 2009; Blog Prompt 2

Q: Traffic woes are part of a bustling city. Discuss.

In a modern city such as Singapore, traffic jams are common at peak hours. Because of its small size, the Singapore Government has implemented two schemes to help ease congestion, Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) and the Vehicle Quota System. Although these measures have been somewhat effective, jams are still unavoidable. Because of this, many people wake who need to go to work or school wake up much earlier than their shift or session starts, just to ensure that they will reach their destination on time. Although many people use Singapore's efficient public transport, Singapore is still too small to completely avoid jams.

People buy and drive cars beucase of the more comfortable journey and flexible commute. However, they often don't see the cons to buying their own car, such as fuel and maintainence.

Written at
9:24 AM

After posting my previous entry about Swine Flu, I was reminded that the school had temporarily "disabled" the infamous "capped at 69%" rule due to the Influenza A virus outbreak. I was reminded of a particular incident where one of my classmates, after nearly vomiting at school, was informed that his mother was coming to pick him up. In response to this, he said, "Can I take my history test first?" There is another incident, where one of my classmates went home early because he was sick. He came back later that day just to take his chinese exam.

I don't think that the school had these situations in mind when they made this rule. It forces them to stay in school just to take an exam even if they are not feeling well. This is a really bad decision. If the studenet in particular has a contagious illness and stays in school to take his test, whose fault is it? The student for not being responsible or the school for setting such rules in the first place?

I feel that the student is not to blame. It is not his fault that he has fallen sick on this particular day and capping his marks even though he has a valid reason seems to be too harsh.

Written at
9:23 AM

Friday, May 8, 2009; Current Affairs

We had a current affairs panel discussion yesterday about video game addiction. It was quite lively as usual, with most people supporting video games. One panellist that particularly interested me was Zhong Yang, who took on the role of a mother whose son died as a result of video game addiction.

My views on this issue basically echo that of the CEO of a video game company. Video games are just amother form of entertainment, like films and books. However, their interactivity allows people to replay them just for high scores, or to play through the game’s story in a different way. Therefore, people tend to spend more time on video games then they do on books.

I feel that the highly-publicised cases about people that die as a result of video game addiction are very rare, isolated cases. Video game ratings are there for a reason. If the parents of a child allow him or her to play mature games when their child is 7 years old, they have no right to blame the video game company for making the game in the first place, since they were not responsible parents themselves.

P.S. I hate blogger. It deleted this post and my swine flu post, so I had to rewrite them. L

Written at
9:04 PM

Well it seems the recent swine flu scare is declining, as Singapore’s DORSCON flu alert level is back to yellow. So we probably won’t get an unexpected holiday, but it makes no difference to me since the June Holidays are coming in a few weeks. There will not be so much temperature taking as we have experienced a few days ago, but we still have to be vigilant, of course.

I personally think that Singapore handled (and is handling) the swine flu outbreak quite well. With the horror of SARS still fresh in our minds, the precautions, which some people may view as stringent, were effective in ensuring that the Influenza A virus did not spread. Even though though there are no reported cases in Singapore and Tamiflu has already been proven to be effective against it, our vigilance is key in ensuring our safety and health.

Written at
3:40 AM

Sorry for the inactivity, I have been too busy with my exams L. At least our exams will finally end next Thursday! Sadly, from my results so far I have deproved quite a lot since Term 1, but on the bright side, my Chinese seems to have improved.

Not quite happy with my results though, on Chinese paper one, I missed A1 by half a mark, missed A2 in Science by half a mark, and I missed A2 in Math by 2 marks.

Still quite busy though, with some ACE activities, the end-of-term birthday celebrations, and my project’s day project (my group hasn’t done anything since the Prelims!).

Regardless of my results, at least everyone will finally get a much-needed break after very busy term.

Written at
3:40 AM