The school of the future...

Having been in the army for so long, I found that there are actually a lot of similiarites between an army camp and a school... Both has to do with passing on knowledge and strict discipline in an organisation... This could be the new kind of schools in the future...

Hierarchy level:

First off, a primary school will have 6 levels of education and hierarchy system... The students will be classified accordingly to these levels...

• Pri 1 students will be known as 'recruits' (REC)
• Pri 2 will be 'Private' (PTE)
• Pri 3 & 4 will be 'Lance Corporal' (LCP)
• Pri 5 & 6 will be known as 'Corporal' (CPL)

Once the students have reached Pri 3 level, the well-behaved students will be selected to become prefects... They are known as the Sergeants (SGT)... They will be in-charge of booking students whom mis-behave... Other than that, they have another important role too... They will be stationed at the cookhouse/canteen during mealtimes to ensure that the students do not run about and move in an orderly manner... On most occassions, this role seems redundant as the prefects are juz standing there and staring into the air... But it is important... juz like how a security guard standing at any entry or exit point to 'show face'...

Higher up in the hierarchy comes the form teachers, also known as the 'Platoon Sergeants' (PL Sgt)... They are in-charge of their own particular classs' welfare and well-being... He will act as the fatherly role, while the students will be the kids... The students can refer back any questions or feedback to him, but wil first have to endure any wild vulgarity that will be showered at him... He wil be blessed after that...

Above the Platoons sergeants will be the 'Company Sergeant Major' (CSM) He is the Head of Department for each subject...

Next in line is the 'Regimental Sergeant Major' (RSM)... As the name suggest, he is in charge of disciplinary issues... Any disciplinary cases reported to him will be served with at least 3 extras to the offender... Extras here refers to extra duties or detention... They will be confined over the weekends to do cleaning work to the school... 3 extras means 3 saturdays or sundays will be burnt... This is something that is terribly avoided by people as weekends are precious...

Top in the ranks will be the 'Commanding Officer" (CO)... He is the principal of the school and is most of the time found in the office... He is in-charge of planning the training schedule... and commands a pay of at least $5 to $6k..

In each class, the will be a class monitor, known as Platoon IC... He will have to report the strength of the class before the start of every lesson... Whenever any PL SGT steps into the class, he will go:

"Class DIAM!! (Attention!!)"

"Good Morning/Afternoon Sgt Lim... Platoon IC reporting Strength..."

"Total strength 35, current strength 34... One man 'Attend C' (On MC)... PTE Chao Keng Kia"

"Permision to carry on sergeant?"

Permission is then granted to carry on, and the class will since start...

Curriculum:

The curriculum of the school is very much 50% theory, 50% practical... Students are taught on survival skills, such as to hunt animals for food and to make a fire, to home-making skills such as to build tentages, together with decorating their homes with natural plantation such as plants and scrubs so as to blend in with the environment, otherwise known as 'camoflauging'... Students will have to pass their theory test first, affectionally known as the technical handling test, before they can start on their practical lessons... Practical lessons are normally conducted outfield, so as to make the learning environment as close to nature and as realistic as possible... But before the students set out to field, they are always reminded to put on sun-block lotion, in the colour of green and black... Failure to do so, or to apply properly will be dealt with by having more sun-block lotion applied onto them... This is to ensure that they do not suffer from any adverse effects of staying under the sun for long hours...

Physical Activity:

All work and no play makes Adam a dull boy... To instill a healthy lifestyle, physical lessons are conducted everyday... They range from daily morning basic exercises before their lessons starts to runs in the evening... Basic exercises are 20 push-ups, 20 crunches, 20 star-jumps, 20 alternate leg-thrusts and 20 sit-and-reach stretches... Runs will normally begin with 3kms up to 8 kms, averaging 5 mins per km... Failing to reach end point before time limit will be served extra PT training such as running around the parade square a few more rounds...

An Individual Physical Proficiency Test (IPPT) will be conducted every year to see their fitness level... This is similar to the NAPFA test conducted in other schools but without the sit-and-reach station... The test results will be classified into 4 ranges... Fail, Pass, Silver and Gold... All other awards except gold holders, will have to re-take the test again and again until the gold si obtained...

Another test called Standard Obstalce Course (SOC) is also conducted annually... This is a more gruelling test compared to the above... It starts off will a 700m run, followed by 11 obstacles and finishing off with a 600m run... To pass the test will require students to come in with a finishing timing of 9mins 30 secs... The 11 obstacles are:

1. Low wall: students are to jump and lunge themselves over a 2m high wall...
2. Parallel bar: Students are to use their arm power to support themselves and manoveur across the bar...
3. Horizontal beam: This is a horizontal piece of log... students will have to step and jump across a horizontal log... They have to try to jump further off as the log is laid with barbed wire on the other side... You dun wan to risk getting your buttocks poked, do you?
4. Swing trainer: Also known as the monkey bar... Needless to explain...
5. Low rope: Students will have to climb up to the rope to reach the top... looks similar to the fire-fighters vertical bar which they slide down... But this goes in the other direction-- Up, and it is a rope...
6. Horizontal log: Students will have to leap over this horizontal log, one left hand holding onto the log and using the right leg to leap over...
7. Balancing beam: Students will have to balance themselves as they walked through a wooden plank held on the two ends...
8. Zig-Zag: It's a 2m high zig-zag obstacle of wooden planks... students will have to walk up the steps to reach the obstacle, walk through the zig-zags and jump off... students will have to battle with their fear of height at this stage...
9. Window gate: Students will flip over themselves through this obstacle... they will bend themselves over the bar and flip over... Juz imagine...
10. Jacob's Ladder: Students will have to climb up this triangular obstacle laid with logs, and walking down on the other side... It can be pretty scary for the first few tries and people with a phobia of heights...
11. High ramp: Students will run up a ramp off about 2.5 metres high and jump off... when they leap off their feet, they will have to shout their school's name "Sadist!!" At this point, many knees or ankles will be injured if they do not land properly... After this last obstacle, they will have to remind themselves that it's not the end and there's another 600m to the end point...

Upon reaching the end point, you will breathe and pant like you never heard yourself gasping for air before... Your muscles are so tired that you feel like your bladder muscles can't seem to hold onto anything and you feel like you can leak anytime... that's SOC for you... FOC (Free-of-Charge) with our curriculum...

Disciplinary issues:

To get from point to point, the students will have to queue in rows or 3... Instead of putting their hands on the person in front when moving from point to point like a 'too-too-train', they will march...

Whenever the class is too noisy, they will be put to a test of their limbs... Not in the case of standing up, but laying on their fours in a push-up position... Whenever instructions are not carried out quickly, they can be seen in this position too...

End of the day:

At the end of each school day, the whole school will form up at the parade square... The sergeant on duty will have to lower the flag... An instruction order will be read out, called a "Routine Order'...

School of Sadist

(Formerly known as Institiue of Mental Hell)

Routine Order by Commanding Officer

Mr Chin Bian Tai

26 August 2005

Assembly: 0730 hours

First lesson: 0800 hours

Canteen break: 1000 hours

Lunch: 1200 hours

Canteen break: 1500 hours

Last parade: 1830 hours

1. Students are reminded to have a good hair-cut by next monday... Failure to do so will be disciplinary dealt with...
2. Students are once again reminded to march from point to point... Failure to do so will be seriously dealt with...
3. Running around during canteen breaks are STRICTLY prohibited... Offenders will be seriously dealt with...

Safety Message of the day: Students are reminded to drink at least half a water bottle every hour, after meals and before any streneous exercices...

Quote of the day: The greatest oak tree was once a little nut on the ground -- annoynomous...

**End of Routine Order**

This will be followed by the lowering of the National and school flag, together with the National Antemn... After which, the school is dismissed, by having the stidents march out of the gates... And remember... they have to march out and not run, even though they have seen their parents waiting anxiously outside the gates for them...

And now, it's the time of the year again... The school is recruiting for next year's school cohort... Calling out all parents whom wanna send their kids to our school to register by October... There's no distance restrictions (Eg: 2km radius within school)... Right now, we're having a promotion... Free school bus rides and textbooks will be given to the first 100 kids, on a first-come-first-served basis... While stocks last... So hurry!!!

Please join us and together, we're pave your kids pathway to success!!!

CROUCHING TIGER... hidden dragon...

I've always thought that films by great directors like Ang Lee or Zhang Yimou were 'chim' and had confusing plots, leaving you at the end of the show thinking: "What the heck happened???" But these 2 shows realy blew me off...

"Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" was a show directed by Ang Lee, one of the great legendary chinese directors that made it to Hollywood... It had great actors and actresses in it, with big names like Chow Yun-Fat, Michelle Yeoh and the rising star, Zhang ZiYi... ZiYi played a demure lady set to be married in a loveless marriage... But behind the demure side is a rebelious lady that wants to break out of her monotonous life... She stole Chow's sword and the two swordsmen began hunting her down... It was a film of wits, with them both parties trying to outwit each other, leaving me sitting by the edge of the seat, seeing them coming out with stunts after another... There are some twists in the show, leaving you to think... "Ehh... Why like that??" and "Wow... so you actually knew what happened and kept it all to youself..." There's actually more action to this show, which i had only juz briefly described as I'd watched it almost 2 weeks ago...

The show really lived up to its name, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon... I strongly encourage you to watch this show, which i totally enjoyed... Apart from the story line, there's also something to look out for... The up and rising beauty Zhang ZiYi... She not only is talented with her acting, but is also a true beauty... Not surprising that she will be appearing on the wardrobe poster girl of many guys... *drooling...*

Verdict: 4.5 out of 5 Popcorns

"House Of Flying Daggers", directed by Zhang Yimou, casting Andy Lau, Zhang ZiYi, Takeshi Kaneshiro, or better known as 'Jin Chen Wu'... It was a great story of good hunting the evil... But are the good really good? And the evil really evil?

Andy and Jin are two captains tasked to capture the leader of a underground alliance... Andy got Jin to check out the new dancer of an entertainment pavilion, whom is blind, noting that she could be the daughter of the alliance's leader, whom the local authorities had killed... They captured her and brought her back, drilling her for the alliances' whereabouts, but she refuses to divulge... Both of them then had another plan... Jin would rescue her and escort her to the safety of her allaince, thus bringing the authorities to their hideout... Along the way, both felled in love amid dangers of the authorities coming after their lives after they had escaped from jail...

Then came the amazing twist... The madam at the pavilion is actually of a high ranking of the alliance, ZiYi is not blind, and best of all, Andy is in cahoots with the alliances... ("Ehh... Huh???") They actually using Jin as a bait... Andy actually had a thing for Ziyi, before he was sent for 3 years to be a spy in the authorities... ZiYi was tasked to kill Jin, which she couldn't bear and let him off... But not before a rendezvous sex scene in the woods... (It's actually a great place out in the great outdoors looking at the scenery in the show... *slurppp*) Andy then got jealous and killed her out of jealousy... The two swords hero then fought against each other...




It was a great show with a great story line of love, jealousy, witty plot and strategies, great scenery and cinematography... It was truly a great show to be watched, and i urge you to catch... Not forgetting the screen darling, Zhang ZiYi in this show... I guess she will be my next screen darling after Joanne Peh... =)

Verdict: 5 Popcorns...

NEWater visit

The last excursion that i had was when i was in Secondary four... Excursions were the usual thing after the exams, when school curriculum work is out and we had lots of time... I was always looking forward to excursions as i'll get to travel out of school, out of gates (similar to today), and go gai gai... So, going to the NEWater plant at Bedok this afternoon reminds me of the good old days, when i was still wearing silly uniforms of matching colours and white canvas shoes, coated with brown stains here and there...

The NEWater plant is located between the Tanah Merah Station and Expo... It's a long deep drive from the main road, thus it was of much consolation when we realise that there was a shuttle service to fetch us out later... The Visitors' Centre is a beautiful piece of architecture... Glass panelled building with a wavy roof top. The interior reminds me of the Singapore Discovery Centre with the high-tech infrastructuresuch as plasma tv screens and 3D guide speaking off the screen...

Some facts that I've learnt today...

1. Water takes up 70% of the world... And of these, only 3% is portable water... (WHATT??)
2. Singapore uses 1.36 million cubic centimetres of water every day, enough to fill up 600 olympic swimming pools... (Sounds amazing...)
3. Singapore has 4 national taps, so they called it...

a) Water from water catchment areas

b) Water from Johor Bahru (Our abang country)

c) Water from the NEWater factories

d) And lastly, water from desalination plants...

4. NEWater is a process of recovering used water, recycling it and reusing it... Up to 90% of recovered water comes from household sewage... (Up to your imagination to think exactly which sewage pipe...) And the remainder will come from used industrial water...

5. These water will be piped to the plant, where it will first goes through filtration(in lay mans term)... Most of the particles will be removed at this stage as the filtration only allows 1/100 the size of our strand of hair of water molecules to go through... Next, it will go through reverse osmosis... At this stage, all bacteria will be removed as the water goes through even finer means of filtration... at the end of this process, water is considered safe to drink... However, Sinagporeans being Singaporeans, where kiasu-ism is always at work, these water will go through ultaviolet light rays to heat up and kill all bacteria, to make sure that water is really really clean... NEWater is thus produced after these stages...

6. After all these hard work, only 2% is pumped into our portable drinking system, where it will be released and mixed together with the water in our water catchment areas... The remainder goes into industrial use... You may wonder, WHY??? Well, it comes down to this mindset that people will have...

"What makes it so sure that the water is really fit for consumption?"

To ease off on people's concerns, the Singapore Government thus take a gentle step... By releasing small amounts of NEWater into our drinking water, gradually increasing the ratio as we get more open to the idea...

If it's fit for consumption, then why is it only 2% of the processed water goes into our portable pipelines, while the reaminder goes to industrial usage?

This is because the industries would require superbly clean water to produce wafers (not the eating kind...) in our electrical components that our Singapore economy depends heavily on...

For people whom have tried NEWater, you will always have this question...

"Why does the water tastes so funny, so wierd?"

The answer is because the water is so terrifically clean that it contains no minerals!!! Thus it tastes bland...

Now, the third question is... "If the water has no minerals, is it safe/healthy to drink?"

That is the reason why the Singapore Government only releases a small percentage to the portable water system, to mix it with the normal conventional water... There has been no exact answer to this question, as there have been 2 different groups of scientist, having different views on the issue... One saying it's alrite to drink mineral free water while the other says otherwise... But, come to think of it... Although you're drinking mineral free water, your mineral intake can come from the food that you eat... So, your body will still have other alternatives to seek the required minerals...

So the next time you pop open your NEWater bottle to drink, remind yourself that the bland taste is due to the taste of mineral free water, and not what your wild imagination would allow you to think... (juz to name a few... pee, human waste, household washing liquid, shower foam etc...)

Cheers!!!

My Maiden blog...

Hello to all my frens and whoever may be reading this... This is my maiden blog posting... I wonder should I be proud or otherwise to say this, coz the blogging sensation has already begun donkey years ago and here i am, typing out my first entry... I've been reading the papers recently, following up on the blogging scene... And i must say it's fairly interesting to be able to add my 2 cents worth to day-to-day issues, hence the name of my blog... (such a no-brainer...) There are actually many reasons for me to create a blog, and are as follows...

• To catch up with what everyone else is doing who are living on planet earth...
• To be able to communicate with my frens and my girlfriend(bao bei)
• To comment on day-to-day issues, adding my two cents worth and taking a chance to poke fun at things happening everyday... therefore, look out for crazy hilarious postings... haha...
• And of course, the most primary reason... to improve on my writing skills (do you believe it??? haha...)

I shall thus end here for now... look out for more postings to come... I'm open to any comments that you may have, but that is subjected to the approvability of the author... (*ahem... that's me) And to all my frens... Have me linked up to you as a link too.... (Pur-lease???) *desperate cry...