What's the meaning of life???

Gambling Addiciton

The casino being built in Singapore is supposed to be a money-maker and job creator. However, many people have spoken against it. Talk to a parent or adult and get their view on the casino. Listen to the NPR and YouTube offerings and choose one that substantiates your viewpoint and include a quote from it as well. Your blog entry has to be at least 200 words and you must either support the casino or condemn its construction and ultimately the hardships it will cause in Singapore.

What is Addiction?
Addiction is any behaviour that becomes so excessive that influence our life with a negative effect and is very hard to control.
Who gambles?
1980 just a handful of women sought treatment for gambling addiction.
Now almost half of gambling addicts are female.

This addiction caused the addicts to lose everything. Their house, car , marriage, assets and most importantly their life. The addiction not only will hurt the addicts but also their family members.

Now that the government have given the green light to build the casino in Singapore to be a money-maker and job creator. It is good for the economic of Singapore, job-seekers and of course gamblers. However, I do not support its construction as it will cause a lot of harm to the people in Singapore. With the casinos, the number of compulsive gamblers will surely increase and will lead to many problems. They will not care about their family members, leaving them in the lurch and only cared about making more and more money from gambling. Even if they had earn a lot of money, their greed will tempt them to gamble more and to earn more money. Furthermore, the gamblers if they ran out of money, they will do anything to obtain more money to gamble. They will beat their relatives up to get money from them. If they were not successful, they will either rob, steal from other or even kill people to get more money. This will increase the number of crime rate drastically in Singapore.

My Dad point of view about the casino being build in Singapore is that "it is not only a casino but it is also an entertainment centre, for exhibions to attract foreign tourists. Untimately, even with all these advantages, gambling is still a bad habit. If we lose control of it it will lead to many problems." He does not support it construction too as he has his own experience as his father was a compulsive gambler when he was young and he suffered a lot in those days.

Here is an example of a real life experience from a compulsive gambler that is fighting against that addiction even today.http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93191168

In this video, Jonny W said he started gambling at the age of 12 years old .When he first start out it was just the matter of having fun and hanging out with his friends. He crossed the line when he was in college,trying to go to school and was always short of funds. He thought he could increased his funds by going out to gamble. At first, he kept winning but he always wanted more and more and could not stop himself. He soon found himself going there every night and on the weekends and every opportunity that he could find. His luck changed and he kept losing. The more he lost,the more he wanted to return and reclaim his losses. In total,he lost hundreds of thousands of dollars. He became alienated by his friends as he was never there for them and with them at social events as he was always going to the casinos. He later got a divorce with his wife and she took away the two of his children. Jonny W said he was basically out on the streets trying to survive. That was when he found out he needed help and contacted the number for help and that was what that changed his life ever since. However, he still look at himself as a compulsive gambler till he dies.

Once a compulsive gambler, always a compulsive gambler.

Perhaps, the reason of building a casino in Singapore is to not lose out in the global tourism industry and want to create a tourist attraction. However, is it worth it to sacrifice and destroying the life of people in Singapore?

Here are some videos that you might be interested in:

NPR National Public Radio.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5182193 Drugs Shows Promise in Treating Gambling Addiction.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93191168 Battling back from Gambling Addiction

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92278316 Gambling Habits Reflect Personalities

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4801449 Online Gambling Attracts Millions

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90213926 Casino’s Bankruptcy Signals Gambling’s Boom Bust

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93191163 Defining Addiction And its Many Forms

YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHDYk15V6hE Gambling Addiction

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aQgpcxVtu0 Gaming Addiction

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvVbzbT4gJw Internet Gambling

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chbjc-XDKLw Anti-Gambling Singapore

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.

Stress

Stress is a thing that we as human beings cannot avoid in life. It can be inflicted by many causes. Peer pressure and parents expectations are two of them.

Peer pressure

We can be very stressed up when seeing our friend score higher marks than us in an examination.This is a very common sight in HCI. We will therefore need to work very hard in order to get the better of them in the next examination. In this way, it is a positive thing as it gives you the drive to work harder and achieve your goals. However, too much of it will lead to stress that we ourselves cannot handle. Therefore, our goals must be realistic in order to avoid this effect of overwhelming peer pressure.

Parents expectation

It is good to know that your parents expect you to achieve certain goals. This shows that they care for your well-being. However, this can also lead to overwhelming stress. Your parents care about you. They care for you so much that they they want the best for you. In other words, I can say that your parents are kiasu. They want you

to be top of everything which sometimes might not be good.

I would like to share an example here:

I saw in a newspaper that a 13 year old boy jumped down from a 7-storey building but survived. It is reported that the boy was scolded because he played truant.

A 13-year-old boy ending his own life because he was scolded for playing truant? If that is the case, many students would have died. Maybe he had some other problems he faced? Maybe it is not the because he was scolded for playing truant that caused him to jump? Maybe he was caused by an overwhelming of stress because of peer pressure or parents expectations? No one knows what is the truth behind it but one thing for sure is that what he did was extremely unacceptable. He shouldn't run away from his problems by ending his life. Instead, he should face them and try to solve them. If he cannot solve them he should ask his parents, teachers or maybe even friends who can provide a listening ear to his problems and try to help him solve them. This is the same case as Adeline Ng Ai Choo where she didn't want to tell anybody about her problems. Therefore, I advise you that before you do anything foolish please please please tell someone about your problems and that might actually save your life.

Way to keep stress level down

-exercise often

-take up some hobbies

Exercise can include swimming, jogging etc. Most importantly participate actively in your ep3 as that might be the only time you can destress.

Take up hobbies like collecting stamps, keeping pets, reading books etc, things that you can do conveniently at home so that whenever you feel bored or stress up you can immediately destress.

Okay I think I should end here. However, if you guys have any opinion to share feel free to post in comments. You can give comments on other ways to destress or other ways that can cause stress. Thank you.

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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