My class is quite a strange class. With all the lacking in class chemistry and the craze in computer games, I’m proud to say that we are still doing quite well in terms of class MSG. However, are results all that important when we are lacking in moral values?

Our class has quite a few theft cases since last year. We thought that after the installation of not one but two cameras in our class, we could stop the thief from going about his activities. We were so wrong.

Theft cases are still going about in the class. From losing pens and pencils to losing wallets. At the moment, no laptops are stolen yet maybe because of it is quite bulky and there isn’t a lot of place to hide it when it is stolen. But I feel that it will happen sooner or later as most of my classmates leave their laptops on the table instead on putting them in their lockers as they find it very troublesome to do so.

Hwa Chong Institution is a very big campus and almost anyone can enter and leave without anyone even noticing. Our classrooms are not very secure even with the doors locked as if the thieves are determined to steal the laptops they can just break the glass windows of the classroom and climb in, sweeping all the laptops at one go. If they managed to do that, they would be rich overnight with thousand of dollars of laptops in their possession. If the thieves come from the general public and they so happens to wear a mask, our cameras will not be able to capture their faces and it would be very hard to track them down.

However, today I will not be talking about thieves from the general public but thieves from our class.

They have to be very stealthy and sneaky to be able to steal anything with so many people around the class, thus a laptop is out of question. However, wallets that are left lying around the classroom are quite easy targets for thieves. In the blink of an eye, it will be gone. Even with the cameras, it would be hard to capture as there might be a case whereby many people are standing up, blocking the view of the cameras.

Why then must they steal?

There are many answers to his question.

Firstly, these thieves find that their parents did not give them enough money for allowance and cannot buy sufficient food to fill their empty stomach after a long day in school. Thus, they have to resort to stealing to get more money to fill their stomach. The solution to this is that they should tell their parents that the allowance that they are given is not enough to fill their stomach. I am very sure that their parents would be understanding and increase their allowance. If their parents simply have not enough money to spare their children, I guess that the student would just have to eat less.

Secondly, these thieves receive enough allowance from their parents to fill their stomach. However, they want more money to buy other stuffs that they want but their parents refused to buy it for them, labeling it as a waste of money. Thus, they resort to stealing to get more money aside form the allowance they get. The stuff that they want to buy includes a new phone, a new electronic device, etc. Their act of stealing just so they could buy the things that they want is a very selfish way of thinking. If you steal wallets from others, those people would not have money to buy food for themselves. They would also be scolded very badly by their parents for losing so much money and they might be grounded or have their allowance reduced. Why must you cause so much trouble for others just for the benefits of yourself?

Thirdly, I feel that these thieves steal from others just so that they can teach the victim a lesson to be more responsible for their own things. They are pissed that the victim is so careless, always misplacing his things and therefore, he steals to teach him a lesson to learn from this incident and not be so careless ever again. Another reason is that these thieves steal to help his friend “safe-keep” so as to prevent other thieves from stealing it. At the end of the day, he will return the stolen item to the victim and advised him not to be so careless in future.

Lastly, I feel that these thieves just steal for the fun of it. They feel that it is very thrilling to steal from others and as the time goes by, they get hooked and addicted to stealing and cannot live without stealing. If these problem is not solve early, most probably when he grows up he will be a “full-time” thief and in the end will be caught by the police and put behind bars, ruining his future, if he has any future to begin with.

I feel that all this theft cases would not have happen if students are more responsible for his items and put them in the lockers so as to prevent them from TEMPTING any thief to steal them. Some students may come from a well-off family and feel that they do not need to be responsible for their items as they can always buy a new one if it ever gets stolen. This is a very selfish way of thinking as their parents worked very hard to earn money not to just let him waste it like that. If he has so much money, he can make it more worthwhile by donating it to charity organization to help the less fortunate.

The less temptation the thieves get, the fewer items to get stolen and the less the name of the class would get affected.

Recently, the secondary four in Hwa Chong institution went to the auditorium to listen to a talk. Our discipline master, Mr Sung went about his usually routine around the school when he found out that the doors of all the secondary four’s classroom were left unlocked. He felt that he should teach them a lesson and went into one of the classroom and sweep everything valuables from the classroom. From laptops to wallets to ipod. For each items he took, the took a picture of it. The students were asked to collect their valuable after school and a message was posted up on SMB to notify them. In the end, a student felt that the teachers violated his privacy and was enraged by this and decided to post it up on STOMP to get the opinions of the general public.

I feel that this student make a mountain out of a molehill. This problem was actually very small and minute and can easily be solved, yet he choose to post it up on STOMP and thus gratifying the matter.

When the students got back from the auditorium and found out that all their valuables were lost, they thought that a real thief actually came into the class and steal all the valuables. They were shocked and heart-broken. Although Mr Sung posted a message on the SMB, those people whose laptops are confiscated would not be able to check the message. Furthermore, they are secondary four students and need to use quite a lot of their laptops during their lessons. If their laptops are being taken away, how will they be able to carry on with their lessons? Moreover, their minds would harbour thoughts of their parents reprimanding them and grounding them, causing them to be unable to concentrate entirely in class. When they finally found out that their laptops are only being confiscated instead of being stolen, they will definitely feel a bit cheated and thus, posted the message out of anger.

I think that the root cause of this incident was the lack of communication between the teachers and students. This is because Mr Sung didn’t inform the student before he confiscate their valuables, causing the students to think that it is really stolen by thieves. If Mr Sunk had written on the whiteboard that he had confiscated their valuables and asked the student to collect it from him after school, the students might not feel angry at all and can only blame themselves for being so careless and accept the punishment.

However, it is not entirely the teacher’s fault as the students also play a part in the blame as well. Had they secured their valuables in the lockers instead of putting them carelessly on top of their tables, this incident might not even happen. Therefore, since it is their fault, they have no reason to go blaming the teachers should they confiscate their things so as to help them “safe-keep” to prevent it from really getting stolen.

The school provides lockers for a reason and thus the students should fully utilize them so as to prevent this incident form happening again.

I strongly disagree with the student for posting the incident up onto STOMP as it not only does not benefit the school but also caused harm. It will cause the general public to think that Hwa Chong’s educational system is flawed as it fails to handle this case effectively and it will affect our school’s image significantly. It also does not go with our school value of “win –win”.

The school should also have a forum whereby students can voice out their comments or opinion about the school instead of voicing them to the general public. In this way, the problems can be solved internally without the general public finding out. The school is more than willing to listen to the students’ opinion as this is evident from the incident whereby the time of the assembly is pushed back 5 minutes because a student voice out his opinion about it as by pushing back by 5minutes, it would prevent students from ever being late for assembly. And if students are still late even though the assembly is pushed back by 5 minutes, then he would have no excuse to defend himself and has to accept the punishment without any complain.

In conclusion, this incident was just a small matter. But it was just blown up due to the post on STOMP, attracting many general public’s attention and comments.

Singapore has one of the leading educational system in Southeast-Asia. It exposes us to two main language, English language and out Mother tongue. It also have Mathematics, Science which consist of Biology, Physics and Chemistry. Integrated Humanities which include History, Geography, Literature and Social studies. Some schools also have computer studies, philosophy, Arts, Music, etc

Learning is easier when you are young, therefore, from young, schools try to provide a wide-range and variety of subjects so as to further increase our knowledge capacity as much as possible. However, is it really necessary to have so much subjects? Must we really crammed our brain with so much information everyday? Why isn’t there any freedom for the student to choose the subjects that they like?

Some say that we must at least know the basic of the subject. What is the use of primary school when during the secondary school, we are still learning the basic?

I feel that the objective and purpose of primary school is to learn the basic of all the subjects. So, when we reached secondary school, we will be able to choose the subjects that suit us and further develop on it, instead of continuing learning subjects that you have practically no interest in. If the student has lost the interest in a particular subject after learning it for six year in primary school, no matter how much you force he, he will still not do well in that subject. If we let him focus on the subjects he like and is interested in, he would be able to handle the subject easily and will be able to learn more things about it.

Firstly, when he has interest in the subject, he would most probably have a strong basic in it and it will be easier for him to compress and store the information that he is learning. Thus, he would not have so much stress on him as he would not be worrying for other subjects that he knows that he is going to fail in and will not be wasting time practicing it again and again but to no avail.

Secondly, if we force a student too much to master the subject that he has no interest in and is weak in, he would reach his limit and reject the subject completely. He would be sleeping during the lesson of the subject and will be completely ignoring it. He would be wasting his precious time on it. He would not hand in his homework since he did not listen in class and he would also fail in him examinations. This becomes a vicious cycle causing him to not be able to accomplish anything in the end because he does not further his knowledge in both the subject he likes and the subject he does not like. If he is able to not take the subject that he has no interest in and focus whole-heartedly in the subject that he is interested in he would then be able to further his knowledge in that field and maybe be a professional in that field when he grows up.

A person is grown to be good in some things and bad in others. In conclusion, I feel that he should go about improving the things he is good at instead of improving the things he is weak in.

As the saying goes, “every cloud has a silver lining”. However, in this case, is the silver lining enough to overshadow the cloud?

I remember that this incident was published on several local newspapers a few years back, grabbing many attention throughout the nation. However, I was too young then to fully comprehend the gist of the issue. Now thinking back, I decided to do a blog post on it.

It was a about a family, a poor family. The parents had no job and there was not enough money to support the entire family. They have several children and they were too much a burden for them to cope. The father went out into the streets to ask for help from people but to no avail. Everybody refuses to help him and thus he has no choice but to go to the extreme. He committed suicide. He jumped down from the Mass Rapid Transit(MRT) platform and the train went over him. This sparked mass media coverage and many people came to know about this tragedy with a tragic story behind it. This evoked sympathy from the general public and many people feel pity for the family and donated money to them. (this is only a rough idea of the incident according to what I can remember and some facts might be inaccurate)

Did the man really have to die so as to gain sympathy from the general public? Could this tragedy be avoided?

Firstly, those people whom the man approached shouldn’t have ignored him and they will definitely feel guilty when they heard of the death of the innocent man. However, I can understand those people since the reality of the world is cruel and no one or few would give money willingly to others just because they ask for it. This is also partly because people lost faith in donating money resulting form the NKF incident.

Secondly, the man should not take his own life as that would not really solve anything. Although it cause quite a number of people to donate money to his family, but donation is only temporary. What happens when all the money run out? Him committing suicide also cause much harm and pain to his family especially his wife. The wife will be overcome with grief and she would bear the burden of supporting the family alone. He should have approached any charity organization to seek help.

The charity organization can try their best to help him. For example, they can help him find a suitable job so as to have a stable income to support his family. With this he could be prevented from committing suicide.

Although I have said earlier that no one or few would be willing to give money to people just because they ask for it, but employers can be more sympathetic about this man’s plight and can employ him, providing him with a stable income. In this way, the employers will not be giving out money but will be giving him money for his contribution to the company instead.

Lastly, if the parents have trouble supporting the family, they should have made some family planning first before they gave birth more kids than they could handle. In this way, there would be less burden for the family and they would be able to cope better.

Now the mother is left to fend for herself and become the sole bread-winner of the family.

Lets just hope that the family is doing well now……

This is a website of the SOS organization which offer helps for those people who are feeling troubled and are planning to commit suicide: http://www.samaritans.org.sg/index1.html

Do you see beggars on the streets? Ok you seldom see them in Singapore that’s for sure, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

Maybe they are not really beggars. They are just some old uncles and aunties selling tissue paper at four packets for a dollar. Or they just go around hawker centers or digging into bins collecting empty can drinks. Or they just stand at one side of the road, giving out flyers.

These senior citizens most likely do not have any children to feed them or they have unfilial children. Their parents have spend lots of time and effort just to bring them up but yet these children do not spare a thought for the effort that their parents put in to rise them and just abandon them just like that. These people are what I call jerks. The parents being old would not be able to find work easily since even graduates cannot even find a job nowadays. They can only work as toilet cleaners if the job is available which is also hard work especially for a 50-70 year old auntie.

Thus, seeing their plight, we should lend them a helping hand. How? By buying their tissue and by taking a flyer. They are in such a desperate situation with no jobs available that they have no choice but to sell tissue and flyers as people who whom they approached will evoke sympathy for them and buy tissues from them or just take their flyers. However, they cannot really earn much from selling tissues and giving out flyers and they can barely support themselves.

However, some people just ignored the old uncles and aunties completely and walked past them like they are not there, even when they approached them. These people did not help the old uncles and aunties maybe because they find them a hassle or they do not want to spend money buying tissues because they don’t need them. I feel that no matter how much a hassle it is or no matter how much you don’t need the tissue, you at least can fork out a few dollars to the elderly as a form of donation instead or just by taking the flyer which is FREE. Isn’t that what all Singaporeans look forward to? They are already very old and do not have the support of their children and thus we must try our best to help them. They need to feed themselves and thus if they cannot feed themselves, there can only be two things they can do. First, they starve to death. Second, they fight for survival. How? They steal and rob others off their money, although I have never come across any elderly robbing or stealing from anyone. This is just a theory or it only applies to those who are younger and are desperate for money. Therefore, if we offer to help them as much as possible, it can reduce the number of theft cases significantly.

I always see a poor uncle on my journey home from training at around 7pm-8pm at Choa Chu Kang Interchange. He is always standing at the entrance giving out flyers. He wore a very sad face hoping to appeal to the public and I often pity him but all I can do to help him is to take the flyer as there is only so much I can do.

Then again, the real world is cruel. If you are not competent enough you will not survive. However, those that are competent should really share some of their money to the less fortunate as they are also fellow human beings. Even with that said, how many people are willing to give for no return? Very few of them will do that as humans are selfish by nature and there is little you can do to change that unless through education which sometimes might also not work.

Maybe we can solve this problem by allowing those selfish people to live a life being poor and full of hardship for a short period of time. Only then will he be able to understand what it feel and will sympathize for the less fortunate more.

As the Chinese saying goes “生在福中不知福” Before you buy something next time, make sure that you really need it and not want it. If you really do not need it then maybe you can donate the money to those of less fortunate.

So next time you see elderly selling tissues or giving out flyers, keep this in mind that you are a lot more fortunate than them and should thus lend a helping hand.

When people talk about ITE, short for Institute of Technical Education, they usually associate the students with smoking, gangster, tattoo, rowdy, unruly, uncouth, bad attitude, difficult to get along with, bad grades, no future, etc

I once heard a conversation between two people. “ Huh? You want to go ITE? You go there, it’s the end for you.”

I feel that these people have misconception about ITE students. These people might not even met an ITE student before and they just label them as bad students. Why is this so? Maybe because they are just following the crowd. They are not critical enough and do not have an opinion of their own. They just label them as 烂货 “lousy goods” in English which is quite a cruel thing to say. Maybe these people are the ones that are lousy since they cant think for themselves.

I feel that these students who goes to ITE might not necessarily be bad after all, or in other words there is still hope for them. It takes a lot of courage for them to have the will to carry on studying even when the whole world seems to turn their backs against them. For that we should at least credit them by not stereotyping them. There might be smart and bright people in ITE who are just lazy to study or work hard.

Those students who chose not to study and dropped out of school should deserve the nicknames instead not them. They have worked very hard, hoping that there is still a chance for them to succeed. I admire their hard work and never-say-die attitude and hope that they can do well in life.

Here is a case of an ITE student still being able to succeed in life:

My mother told me that their company has recently hired a graduate from university that was originally from ITE. This guy went into ITE and realized that his life was not what he expected to be. He was actually quite a smart boy, but it so happens that he walked the wrong path of road and thus entered ITE. However, when he entered ITE, he told himself that he did not want to enjoy his carefree life anymore. He did not want to play anymore. It seemed that he has finally come to his sense and has matured to finally see things from a different light. Therefore, he worked very hard and entered Junior college after ITE. He was still not satisfied and did not give up. From there he entered university and became what he is today.

This goes to show that we should not have stereotypes of people and we should experience it ourselves and from there generate your own point of view instead of following others. Before we criticize others, we should try to improve ourselves first.

So what if you are from Hwa Chong Institution? So what if you are the top 3% cohort of Singapore? Does this means that you will definitely succeed in life? The answer is NO. Without working hard it is almost impossible for you to be successful in life.

Sadly to say, the real world is cruel. If you are not competent enough you will easily be “dispose of”. The competitive nature of our society might cause some teenagers to be reluctant to study because even though they tried very hard, they still could not get good grades and be one of the best. Furthermore, some teenagers don’t even know the competitiveness of our society since they have parents who are quite well-off and they live in a carefree and relax life without having any stress or the pushing factor to strive harder in their study since they harbour naïve thoughts that their parents’ wealth will be theirs sooner or later and that they do not really have to work hard at all. However, when they grow up, they will soon realize what the real world is and will feel that the wealth left behind by their parents will run out soon enough and from there will they begin to regret not studying hard in the first place.

These ITE student have to understand the competitiveness of the real world and I still believe that they can do it provided they continue to work hard. They can be successful in the feel of technology as the name of the institution suggest. It is definitely not THE END for them.

Do not say I didn’t warn you guys to stop having these stereotypes of people as you might unknowingly hurt their feelings if they heard you. If you continue to be stubborn and keep ranting that ITE students are bad, maybe these “uncouth, unruly and rowdy students” might just come and get you and beat you to a pulp.

So please watch your mouth AND YOUR BACK !

Holiday just came and past with the blink of an eye. It is so fast that I still cant get use to school life yet, thinking that it is still the holidays and I can still slack.

Thinking back, I feel that I have not done any thing meaningful throughout the whole holiday except training, playing and more playing.

This topic suddenly came into my mind when I was thinking about what I should have done over the holidays to make it more exciting and meaningful and I feel that I can share with you guys what are the pros and cons of working during the school holidays in my point of view.

There are two long school breaks a year and it is a time where student relax and enjoy their carefree life of not going back to school. There is no homework and even if there is, there is about a month to do it so student don’t really do their homework. It is only during the last week or the last few days of the holidays do they start “chionging” their homework so as to hand in sloppy work to their ever-demanding teachers.

There aren’t many things that we student can do except for sleeping, playing computer games, watching the television, shopping, going out with friends, reading a book ( for those hard-workings ones) and going back to school for remedial lessons. Each day come and go just like that and by the end of the holiday, you will realize that you haven’t really make the most out of your time and didn’t accomplish much.

Hence, rather than wasting your precious time like that, why not try to work during the holidays?

Firstly, working allows you to earn extra cash, which allows you to buy anything that you want. It trains both your responsibility and independent as you do not have to depend on your parents for money and when you are working and you have to be responsible for what you are doing or else you will faced severe consequences and complaints from your boss and your clients or customers should you be working in the service line.

It also allows you to get the experience of working, how hard it is to earn money. This enables you to understand the hardship that your parent faced when they are working so as to provide the family with enough income. Through this you will slowly learn to be less spendthrift and even help your parents save money by not buying stuff that you don’t need. You can be more mature by not letting your parent worry about you be it your studies or your well-being by showing them that you can take care of yourself so as to lighten the already heavy burden that they had to carry. By working, it also allows you to widen your social circle and make new friends.

However, working also has its disadvantages. Firstly, you might be influence by your fellow colleagues and pick up their bad habits like smoking, gambling speaking coarse languages and maybe even drug trafficking which might pollute your pure and innocent minds and this is one of the major reason why parents are reluctant to allow their child to work during the holidays. Furthermore, some parents care so much about their child that they do not want to let their precious child to suffer any hardship derive from working. They rather their child stay at home and study or revise their school work.( most student don’t really do them during the holidays.)

I feel that these parents are being too over-protective of their child and they should allow their child to see what exactly is the real world instead of keeping them shut up at home. If they are afraid that the working environment might be bad for their child, they can find out more about what exactly will their child be doing before allowing them to work there.

In conclusion, I feel that those who want to make the most out of their time, they can try working during the holidays provided that their grades in school are quite good so that they would not have to study and can still catch up when school reopens.(like I said most student do not study during the holidays so it doesn’t really matter)

What are your opinions then? Should we really work during the school holidays? Are there any other meaningful things that we can do during the school holidays?