What's the meaning of life???: June 2009

Poet (Robert Frost)

Robert Frost was one of America's leading 20th-century poets and a four-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize. I find him very intriguing as he lived somewhere 1874-1963, but millions of readers around the world have still found comfort and profound meaning in his poetry and he has influenced numerous other authors, poets, musicians, and playwrights into the 21st Century. Here are some background information about him. Robert Frost was born in San Francisco on March 26, 1874. He moved to New England at the age of eleven and became interested in reading and writing poetry during his high school years in Lawrence, Massachusetts. He was not a poet from the start. After leaving school, he drifted through a string of occupations, working as a teacher, cobbler, and editor of the Lawrence Sentinel. His first professional poem, "My Butterfly," was published on November 8, 1894, in the New York newspaper The Independent. A year later he married Elinor White, with whom he had shared valedictorian honors at Lawrence, MassachusettsHigh School. His wife became a major inspiration in his poetry until her death in 1938. Over the next ten years he wrote poems but rarely published them, operated a farm in Derry, New Hampshire and supplemented his income by teaching at Derry's Pinkerton Academy. The couple moved to England in 1912, after their New Hampshire farm failed, and it was abroad that Frost met and was influenced by such contemporary British poets as Edward Thomas. Rupert Brooke and Robert Graves. Now, this is the start of his poetry career.

President John F. Kennedy said , "Frost has bequeathed his nation a body of imperishable verse from which Americans will forever gain joy and understanding." Frost style of writing is very simplistic.His poetry was also very natural in its wording, using words that most people can understand and that make his poetry seem practical and ordinary.

Robert Frost lived and taught for many years in Massachusetts and Vermont, and died in Boston on January 29, 1963. his live was was plagued with grief and loss. His father died of tuberculosis in 1885, when Frost was 11, leaving the family with just $8. Frost's mother died of cancer in 1900. Elinor and Robert Frost had six children, but unfortunately, only Lesley and Irma outlived their father. Son Elliot (1896–1904, died of cholera), daughter Lesley Frost Ballantine (1899–1983), son Carol (1902–1940, committed suicide), daughter Irma (1903–1967), daughter Marjorie (1905–1934, died as a result of puerperal fever after childbirth), and daughter Elinor Bettina (died three days after birth in 1907). Frost's wife, who had heart problems throughout her life, developed breast cancer in 1937, and died of heart failure in 1938.

Having lived for close to 90 years, he had written about 180 poems or more. That is a great achievement for somone who started writing poems only after spending half of his lifespan.

Here are the three poems:

1.The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood,
and I-I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

2.Fire and Ice by Robert Frost

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favour fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

3.Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

I really hope you can appreciate these 3 poems.

More Robert Frost Poems>http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/robert_frost/poems

Citation

Info on Robert Frost
http://everything2.com/node/1149111
http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/robertfrost
http://poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/192

Robert Frost Poems
http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/robert_frost/poems

Poems

Messy Room by Shel Silverstein

Whosever room this is should be ashamed!
His underwear is hanging on the lamp.
His raincoat is there in the overstuffed chair,
And the chair is becoming quite mucky and damp.
His workbook is wedged in the window,
His sweater's been thrown on the floor.
His scarf and one ski are beneath the TV,
And his pants have been carelessly hung on the door.
His books are all jammed in the closet,
His vest has been left in the hall.
A lizard named Ed is asleep in his bed,
And his smelly old sock has been stuck to the wall.
Whosever room this is should be ashamed!
Donald or Robert or Willie or--
Huh? You say it's mine?
Oh, dear,I knew it looked familiar!

This poem is taken from http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/shel_silverstein/poems/14818

In this poem, hyperbole is used. 'Whosever room this is should be ashamed!','Oh, dear,I knew it looked familiar!'. These two statements potraits the person' feelings and emotions with a bit of exaggeration and to heighten the effect when readers read the poem.

I like this poem because 'his' is used throughout this poem without mentioning who he is until the last part with a little twist. It also quite humorous with vivid description of the room and I can almost picture the room in my head. The mess in the room is mostly in the most unusual place like the underwear hanging on a lamp, old sock stuck to the wall, etc. This aids in the humor in the poem and makes the poem stuck in the reader's heads. In addition, this poem also conveys the message that in our society, many people blame others for their wrongdoings but never seem to admit or accept their own mistakes. Although they themselves know that it was their own fault, they will still try to push the blame to others and let the others be their scapegoats.It also tells us that we must be, more organised and plan ahead before taking any action. If not our action will be in a total mess like the room in the poem.

For more poems
Click here>http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/

Holidays

Now as you all know, it is the June holiday now. After the gruelling school term, we are finally able to take a rest, relax and enjoy ourselves.

However, I feel that there should be a change in the holidays. In my opinion, we should have holidays planned out as follow. Every week, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday there will be school. Wednesday and the weekend there will be rest and no school. There will be no school holidays for March and September, but there will be a two week school holiday during June and a month of holiday during December. If the holidays are planned out like this, we will have a rest on Wednesday and need not go through school in one shot for five days. With this, I think that we can excel more in school as we have adequate rest on Wednesdays. Moreover, with no more March and September holidays and the holidays of June and December shorten, it will not allow us to forget the things that we learnt in school during the holidays. For example, after one whole month of June holidays of playing, we might forget what we have learnt in school before the June holidays and it will be hard and a waste of time for us to refresh our mind and pick up the skills again.

This plan will enable the students to have sufficient rest so that they can concentrate on their lesson in class. It also allow the students to have one extra day to catch up with the homework and lesson that they have fallen behind in. They can also use the extra day to revise for their coming examinations so that they will not need to study extra hard, having already revised their work. This extra time will allow the students to focus more on their weaker subjects. They can enrich themselves by reading books or engaging in research, things that are seldom or unable to do in school.

With this new plan, a lot of the school system will need to be revised like the school term, the examinations etc and it will be a big trouble to do so but it will be worth while with the results that follow after adapting to this new plan. Although many things are needed to be considered, I do hope that we will adapt to this plan and hopefully it will work better than the current one.

Thank you. I have come to an end and I would like to hear what you readers have to say. Do you think this plan is even possible? What are the advantages and disadvantages? Please comment:)

Is the process or the result more important?

Okay! I'm back to posting. Today and last Sunday have been wonderful to me as I participated two different swimming competition, one at NSRCC and the other at Temasek Club. I finished with a whopping result of 4 gold and 4 silver.

However, what I am talking about today is whether the process or result is more important. I feel that the process is of course more important than the results. Without the process, we will not be able to yield any result. For example, if I did not train well for these two swimming competitions, I would definitely not have the 4 golds and silvers. The process is very important. If you don't have the basic foundation of anything and you want to achieve the highest possible level of that particular thing, it will be almost impossible to achieve it. Another example is before you learn how to walk you want to run. Hence, we must take things at our own pace. Slowly build up the strong foundation and gradually you will find that you can achieve your target.

Therefore, the process affects the result and the result will depend on the process. In conclusion, the process is more important and we must work hard on the process to get better result.

I have to credit Mark Loh for giving me this idea of blog post and I will try to post more often.

First semester as a secondary 1 in HCI

I feel that my first semester here as a secondary one is a fun and fruitful one as I have made new friends and already got used to the environment here. Although the days here are even more tiring and stressful than in those days during my primary school, I feel that I had benefited a lot and that all the effort that I have given is worthwhile.

HCI is very big with facilities that not all schools in Singapore might have. For example: a swimming pool, a well-equipped gym for us to work out and a track for the trackers etc. However, HCI being a big campus, it is quite a tiring job for you to walk from one destination to another.

Everyone is required to have CCA and my CCA is Waterpolo. We train three times a week, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday (CCA day). Although it is tiring, it offers many benefits like helping us to relax and most importantly have fun. However, we have long hours of training and usually ends very late. By the time we reach home, we will not have sufficient time to do our homework. The workload increases from primary to secondary, and we will have to adapt to the increase in workload and the decrease in time. Therefore, I usually sleep at about 11pm and wake up at 6am which is considered very good compared to others who only slept for 5-6 hours.

HCI also has an interesting way of tabulating the result of a student. It consists of three components. Your MSG (Mean Subject Grade), ACE, OP (Oral Participation). It also offers CIP etc for character development of a student, including the core values (J-tigerr) and Motto (自强不息)

For term1 I think I did okay with a MSG of 1.67. However, for term 2, I got a MSG of 1.83. I'm not very happy about my term 2 grade. I will try to work harder to achieve better results and that will be my goal for term 3. Although result does not mean everything but striving hard to the best of your ability will make all the efforts that you have put in pay off. And to achieve that, I will work extremely hard and not play too much during the coming June Holidays. I will have to buck up for all my subjects especially Language Art and History which I did very badly.

As the saying goes, “Failing to Plan is Planning to Fail”. Therefore I have to work on my planning and time management to achieve my target. The road ahead can be tough but I am willing to take on the challenge and see what really lies ahead in my way.

About Me
Name:Marcus Ong
Age:13
DOB:1 July 1996
Presents pls!!!
School:~~De La Salle~~
Hwa Chong Institution
Class:~~1o1~~ 2o1

Wishes
New hp!
~~New laptop~~

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