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Can the millennial generation sustain Singapore for the next 50 years? Why should I care? This answer raises many questions: Why am I apathetic?  In fact, why are people apathetic?  Blame has been placed on self-centredness amongst the youth, but you find the most self-centredness in countries with lesser political apathy – why are, for example, divorces commonplace in the West?  The self-centredness of the youth in Singapore, in spite of their political apathy, cannot be placed on their “myopic self-centred interests,” to quote TOC, alone.

You can put it this way too – people who are engaged in politics do so either because they are really altruistic and want to do something for society, OR because they want to make a point, they want to go down in history.  But these are two extremes, and people normally do so because they want to improve the lives of others and at the same time be remembered when they are gone. It all has to do with finding meaning in life.  So why are Singaporeans self-centred, and at the same time, apathetic?

Perhaps it is because life in Singapore is meaningless?  Meritocracy – the good will succeed – does that make sense at all, for who defines “good”? I think meritocracy has led to an equation “more” = “good”, where “more” means a material more, a more which you can see with your eyes and touch with your hands. But is there meaning above that?  For those who pursue materialism, meaning is just a thing of possessing a quantitative more, by which I mean more money, a better car, a bigger house, more marks than your classmate, etc.  Who reads anymore, who thinks about life? (No time, right?)

Furthermore, everyone has worked hard so that no one ever has to see poverty, the “evil” again. So, this explains the apathy somehow – just as you will trust whatever a doctor tells you with regard to your health, you will trust whatever the politician tells you regarding the country.  So, apathy, in the form of blind trust, is good for you, the doctor, and the politician. So maybe Singapore is, in this sense, a victim of its own success. As long as this conception of what is good remains, then no, I don’t see sustainability for any country, let alone Singapore.

When MM Lee says that we have never experienced poverty, it is because he has turned out to be a good doctor, a good politician (past or present is not my topic), who will never allow anything to run wild. We have been told that we should always trust the leaders we have “voted” into office, because they have, well, worked for the material good, and since we see this as the good, is it any surprise that we believe that our politicians are good doctors for the country? Rich in material goods, poor in soul – we seemed to have missed the point somewhere that there are more ways in which something can be good.

The writer, who wishes to be known only as Guojun, is a product of the millenial generation (year of birth: 1985), digital native and a philosophy and German major in (where else?) Germany. Amongst the special powers he possesses: levitation, master elementalist, part-time Maori and medicine man. When he’s not mixing Singlish with German (ya!), he is busy writing here.

For those of you who missed last night’s episode of BlogTV, you missed the great fun we had playing “Are You Smarter Than A 12-Year-Old, where 31-year old private banker faced off with a 12-year-old school boy.

10 questions, 40 minutes later, the 12-year-old boy emerged triumphant, having answered 4 questions correctly. The 31-year-old banker managed only 1 correct question.

So do you think you’re smarter than a 12-year-old? Here are the 10 questions we posed to our two wonderfully brave contestents.

QUESTION 1
Bryan invited 20 more boys than girls to a party. 3/4 of the boys and 2/3 of the girls came. 19 people didn’t come. How many people did he invite?

QUESTION 2
Of the visitors in a museum, 40% are children, 3/4 of the adults are women.
a) what is the ratio of children:men:women.
b) the second day, children number increased by 20%, adults number remain the same but women is 3/5 of adult. if there are 336 more children than women, how many visitors on second day

QUESTION 3
The figure below, not drawn to scale is made up of a big circle, two semicircles, two quadrants and two squares.
a) Find the perimeter of the shaded figure
b) find the area of the shaded figure

QUESTION 4
A millipede is climbing up a wall. For every 3cm it climbs, it slips by 1cm. It takes 3 seconds to climb 1 cm and 1 second to slip by 1cm.
a) How far would the millipede have climbed after 1 minute?
b) How long would the millipede take to climb 56cm?

QUESTION 5
There are red and green beads in a bag. When 75 green beads are added, the percentage of red beads decreased from 30% to 20%. How many red beads are there in the bag?

QUESTION 6
Kavita had 50% fewer erasers than Mark. After Mark gave 15 of his erasers to Kavita, Kavita had 40% fewer erasers than Mark. How many erasers did Kavita have at first?

QUESTION 7
The ratio of Ryan’s pocket money to John’s pocket money was 3 : 2. After Ryan saved $15 and John spent $8, the ratio of Ryan’s pocket money to John’s pocket money was 3 : 1. How much money did Ryan have at first?

QUESTION 8
Shop A has 156 kg of rice. Shop B has 72 kg of rice. After both shops sold an equal amount of rice, the ratio of rice that shop A has to shop B is 4:1. Find the amount of rice sold by each shop.

QUESTION 9
6/14 of the chairs in a hall are in rows of 13. Half of the chairs are in rows of 7. There are 112 more chairs in rows of 7. The rest of the chairs are stacked up. Find the total number of chairs.

QUESTION 10
Tank A is filled with water to its brim. Water is then poured from Tank A to Tank B until both share the same height. What is this height?

You can also download the Math Quiz and the Quiz Answers.

Scroll down for the answers.

You are sure you want to see the answers? Have you tried your absolute best? Have you? Really? Okay, okay. Here you go:

QUESTION 1
68 people were invited

QUESTION 2
a) 8:3:9
b) 3024 visitors

QUESTION 3
a) 125.6cm
b) 192.5cm squared

QUESTION 4
a) 12cm
b) 4min 36 sec

QUESTION 5
There are 45 red beads in the bag

QUESTION 6
Kavita had 120 erasers at first

QUESTION 7
Ryan had $39 at first

QUESTION 8
Each shop sold 44 kg of rice.

QUESTION 9
There were a total of 1568 chairs.

QUESTION 10
The height of the water is 25 cm.

So how many correct answers did you manage?

Tags: math quiz, psle

I’ve been asked by BlogTV, goodness knows why, to write a piece about the recent PSLE Math “fiasco”. Why I put fiasco in inverted commas is that this fiasco occurs every year and every year, parents get incensed. Granted it’s usually the next batch of parents who have kids nearing the exam taking age who look at the paper and panic.

Heck, my twins are two and I panicked, rapidly running their academic options through my mind. When I showed it to Packrat, his response was severe annoyance on both a personal and a professional level. One of our favourite experts on education is a British academic by the name of Ken Robinson. I first discovered him on Ted.com and was spell bound when he talked about how schools killed creativity and a wonderfully apt term that he discusses called “academic inflation”.

And academic inflation is something that Singapore is so severely suffering from. When I was 12 and taking the exam, I was extremely stressed about the Math paper. Even at that point, the Math paper was difficult. I distinctly remember trying to explain my way out of the problem rather than present a working for it because I couldn’t figure out how to present it mathematically. Even at 12, I was more comfortable using words than numbers. Anyway, it was difficult then. And more than 20 years on, it’s even worse. It’s harder than ever. Packrat swears that if this continues and is worse (which I suspect it will because it’s just an upward spiral) when the twins hit 12, we’re outta here. Call us quitters if you will but we value ours and our children’s sanity more than a label that the government brands us with.

I took days to do it. I finally figured it out with the help of a 13 year-old, a PSLE veteran. When I asked her how she figured out how to do this last year, she said that she that she did sums everyday and was tutored everyday in Math because her mother wanted her to score a distinction and score it she did. And that’s the problem isn’t it? Everyone’s mom and their dog wants them to score distinctions in Math, or Science or Language or Moral Education for that matter. And because that’s du jour, there becomes a real need to separate the ones who truly can from the ones who can because they’ve been drilled to be able to and spend every waking hour at the Learning Lab or any of the other juvenile greenhouses that have flourished all over the island. Hence, the need for the spiralling out-of-control difficulty. But if this isn’t academic inflation, I don’t know what is. Being good isn’t enough and that’s just plain ridiculous. And it’s just one of the MANY things wrong with our system and needs to be fixed.

We are a nation of complainers and we’re good at kicking up a fuss. So that’s what we do. Do we need to change? Or as Bob the Builder (I am watching far too much kid television!) asks, Can we fix it? But oh! Why would we do that? Why fix something that gets us clever kids? Oh, never mind if a truck load of them fall by the way side, it’s just natural elimination and we are after all a system that is built on meritocracy so you need merit and if you don’t have it, well, you don’t deserve to be here.

Cruel? Yes. Should the kids, including mine suck it up and just get through it? Well, I think it will do them good and the truth is, I think my twins would get through the system fine. They’ll survive, children always do. Will we, as parents survive? Now, that’s a different matter. And that’s what I worry about. I don’t want to end up being a parent that whips the child because he only got 98 when he could have gotten full marks. As a teacher, I see too many of those parents around me and I see how bad it is for the child. At the end of the day, I think that scares me more than my children having to figure out how many sweets Ken started off with.

Ondine is taking a break from moulding young minds to mould the young minds of her two little munchlets. When she has time and energy, she blogs. She has moved on to be a Warhammer widow and despises the game with every fibre in her body. Fantasises about setting the EA headquarters on fire. But usually mild-mannered and does not usually blog about serious things.

I am a mother of two girls. My first daughter went through PSLE two years ago and it’s my second daughter’s turn this year.  Being a parent who had gone through two years of PSLE where the Math paper was said to be difficult, I could empathise with those parents who showed anxiety and concern over this year’s Math questions.

As a parent, an ex teacher and a tutor, I view PSLE in different perspectives. I beg to differ on Clarice Sim’s blog when she mentioned that students came out crying after the Maths exam. These are 12 year old kids we are talking about. It is not so much of not being able to face failure or feeling guilty but more of being frustrated for not being able to do their utmost best. At that point of time, obviously and definitely they will feel demoralise after putting in a lot of effort preparing for PSLE. Even we as adults do feel the same way when things do not go our way, what more a 12-year-old child!

I have no idea how the overall Math paper was. Based on the grouses by my students and news information plus the questions that I managed to get from the media or my daughter, I must say that the questions were quite tough for an average 12-year old. My daughter came home and wrote down some of the difficult Math questions as best as she could remember (a few questions were similar to those that have appeared on media). Students are supposed to finish each question (Section C: Problem Sums) under 10 minutes, which they were not able to it. Maybe adults will also find difficulty doing the sums under 10 minutes, what more a 12-year-old.

I supposed SEAB has its own set of objectives when setting the questions. One of the reasons probably is to identify the cream of the crop. However, the cream of the crop may only constitute about 10% of the cohort and the majority of the students are average while a handful is below average. I believe, as an ex teacher, they should set a certain number of difficult questions for the high flyers. However, even my A* student complained the paper being too tough. So who or what is at fault here? The system, the setters in SEAB, parents, teachers or students?

Wartik Hassan is a mother of 2 girls, aged 14 and 12 years. A former school teacher and tutor with about 15 years of teaching experience. She is now working in CRPP (Centre for Research of Pedagogy & Practices) at NIE doing educational research work. Currently pursuing a degree in English Lang in Unisim.

What’s on the menu today? Fly rice? Chicken kali? Flu joos? What about soft drink like cock… which comes in different sizes.

Watch this animation and be prepared to lol.

Rayz Ong loves anything to do with animation. He has a strong passion for design related to Graphics, Typography and Interactive elements!
The voices in the video who made u LOL belong to the Muttons from 987FM.

I once swore on my grandfather’s grave that one day I will do the family proud and be a celebrity.

Why wouldn’t I want to prance around in beautiful Manolo Blahniks and Jimmy Choos, all clad in sponsored clothes from Dior, Chanel and Fendi?

Why wouldn’t I want to drive around in a 2009 Mini Cooper Convertible, complete with tinted windows to keep the prying eyes out?

Why wouldn’t I whip out my diamond encrusted Vertu mobile phone and call my personal assistant to find out what is my day’s schedule – which luncheon should I grace and which dinner party will the media be present at?

Why wouldn’t I want the media pandering to my grouchy manager to seek an appointment with me?

With such a beautiful wish list, how can anyone not want to be a star?

Gosh. I can even squeeze in a charity or two in between lunch and dinner appearances.

I’ve always had a soft spot for the damn hole somewhere in our ozone layer, the dying Amazon jungle and beached whales. 

And it crossed my mind how beneficial I will be to those around me.

My cousins will have a great schooling life considering their friends will be hankering after them for my signature. My mother can hold her head high when she shops at the wet market. My retired father will get more offers to play free golf with “Uncle-who?”

To borrow the words ex-Miss Singapore World Ris Low, “It’s all about ME!”

And as you can tell by now, I know how this whole thing works. All I have to do is to make sure that I’m not caught drinking Coca Cola when I’m the face of Pepsi, make sure that I pepper all my sentences with “Manolo Blahnik” and the moo-lah will all come rolling in.

“Yes I think we should stop using CFC products because it hurts our ozone layer! Manolo Blahnik.”

“Haha… It’s been a while since I’ve dated anyone. Manolo Blahnik. My schedule is so tight that guys find it hard to Manolo Blahnik ask me out.”

Pffft. Come’on, how difficult can it be?

So as a young girl, my sole ambition was to become a celebrity with good enough star power.

When I heard that talent scouts are known to pick people off the streets, I hung around traffic lights in Orchard Road a lot. But a potential star has got to have a “play hard to get” attitude. So I refuse to join talent search competitions. My reason is simple – someone will see the hidden potential in me someday.

But once I graduated from school, I realized that the talent scouts are still not knocking on my door. In a bid to still fulfill my promise to my grandfather, I decided to lower down my pride and take the step to be closer to my celebrity dream.

I applied to be a TV producer. Now I hide in the corners of MediaCorp, observing the stars, taking down notes. Someday I will become one of them.

But I am still hopeful because the money and power I will have when I become a star makes all this waiting extremely worthwhile.

This BlogTV producer requested for anonymity because in her words, “I cannot show that I’m desperate.” However, should there be any sponsors who are willing to throw lavish gifts on her or any artiste managers who doesn’t mind taking the gamble to fulfil her celebrity ambition, please drop us email at blogtv@blogtv.sg

The wedding of Fann Wong and Christopher Lee has been the talk of the town since news of their matrimonial union was made public. Perhaps as far back as just under a month before the telecast of their wedding, trailers have been gracing the television of many. This was, of course, aptly followed by the names of sponsors who contributed in some ways to their wedding.

While engaging in senseless banter with my friends over the weekend, we commented on how fortunate it must be for superstars to be bestowed with seemingly endless offers from sponsors to be seen using their products or engaging their services. Cars, watches, jewelries and even baby milk powder! We have seen them all.

On the other hand, we can’t help it but wonder which party is benefitting from these arrangements – is it the superstars, who seemingly are constantly supplied with products that take care of them from head to toe; or the sponsors, who get to put their products in the limelight, literally. Thankfully, in biology – the course that I am currently pursuing in my further studies, there is a name for such situations – mutualism.

Before I continue, let me give an example of mutualism in a simple context – ants and trees. Some types of ants build nests on trees and at first sight, it may seem that the ants are taking advantage of the trees. However, ants are, by nature, territorial; and in this aspect, protect the tree from other pests that may otherwise feast on the tree leaves and sap.

In respect of this, it may seem that both parties just benefit from each other and that the story is just as simple as that. If I may be allowed to carry on this analogy, there is a slight difference between being in the situation of the ant or the tree. You see, the ants decide which tree to build their nest on, whereas the tree, well, stands there and wait.

In the glittering glamour of endorsements and sponsorships, there may be very little that laymen, like me, can understand. I would like to think that endorsements are as simple as it is – I like a product and I tell the world about it. However, endorsement deals are probably far more complicated than that. It is usually made official and there are usually clauses that prevent the person endorsing it from using other competitive products; or at least be seen using them. For this, an agreement involving supplies of services or products, or perhaps monetary rewards are usually involved.

I probably will not mind eating the same brand of rice for 6 months or even use the same shampoo for the next 2 years. However, I will be cautious about having to eat at a particular fast food restaurant (or at least not be seen eating at other fast food restaurants) for an entire year for an endorsement.

Having said that, the question on who’s using who probably boils down to which party benefits most from the endorsement – something that we, as spectators, do not really know. However, the recent publicizing of the marriage between Fann and Christopher can’t help but make me envious of the former. I can imagine how much I can save from gown rentals (or purchases, if I am feeling a little generous on myself) and bridal accessories; not to mention a partially if not fully paid honeymoon.

To say that the couple made use of the sponsors is probably overbearing while saying the reverse is likely to be inappropriate. After all, the decision to get the newlyweds to promote their products is likely to stem from a commercial decision. Moreover, it is unlikely that anyone will be able to force a company to use them in an endorsement deal. In this instance, I’ll akin the sponsors to the ants and the endorsement party, the tree.

Simply Jean was a nominee for Most Insightful Blog at ping.sg, a community of meta blog for Singapore bloggers. She can be found discussing current affairs topics at http://blog.simplyjean.com