The zoo

I've been quite lazy to post lately. Many things have happened during the holidays so far. I'm kind of suffering from fatigue from the onslaught of activities which have nevertheless been fun. One of the recent places I went to was, the zoo! My aunt had her company's corporate pass to the zoo so she invited my mum, younger bro and I to go along with her. We had free admission and didn't have to queue for tickets so it was quick entry. :) My last visit to the zoo was 2 years ago, also, with my aunt. haha, anyway, the zoo hasn't changed much. We visited almost every animal and show stated on the zoo map. I think the monkeys were the funniest and most in variety of species there, well, maybe, aside from the variety of snakes.(not that snakes are funny, they're scary) There's a new show featuring domestic animals such as dogs and cats performing, its target audience is children, I think the show just started a year ago. It's not too bad for a new show, just that I think there was more entertainment than the animals performance. The trainers of the animals even performed break dance moves. Here are some pictures I took at the zoo:

  {An elephant placing a hat on the trainer by using suction to grip the hat by its trunk}

                      

{I love the beauty of this butterfly, it's a pity that I couldn't capture it clearly}

                            

                                                    

{a bat eating from a bunch of fruits}

                                                     

           {A monkey we saw sitting randomly on a sign ( I forgot what the sign was, I think it was something to do with reptiles. haha) I wonder how it got there. It looks bored.}

{Giraffes! My favourite animals}

                                                     

{I think this is an ostrich? I had some trouble capturing its picture because it kept moving its neck up and down.}

{Two cuties we saw near the entrance of the zoo}

{Mutualism in action}

{Rhino}

{Close-up of a dragonfly I saw}

{A monkey we saw hanging there... it was facing us initially just staring into space, then after some time, it swung its arms and faced backwards and stayed like that for quite a long while... it was quite funny... :) }

{I think this is an iguana but I forgot, it looks really comfortable on its perch}

Ok, that's all. :)

19th International Coastal cleanup

I went for the coastal cleanup last saturday. It was quite an eye-opening experience for me. :) We were assigned to Chek Jawa to do the coastal cleanup. Woke up at 5.45am and took a train to Eunos station, then a bus to the jetty and then took a ride in a boat pulau ubin and then a van directly to the area where our school was assigned to do the coastal cleanup. Armed with gloves, trashbags and cutters, we cleaned up the length of beach. There was seriously a lot of rubbish and the variety of rubbish found was quite shocking. There were plastic bags, fishing nets, ropes, those big plastic drums, tyres etc. and things like an intact wooden folding chair! There was a list we had to mark against, using the statistical method where you put 4 horizontal lines and the 5th vertical line across for each item we picked and threw into the trash bag. Picking rubbish may seem easy but there were some things like having to bend low to untangle ropes entangled on the mangrove branches and picking up sacks filled with sand that required a lot of strength and effort. We only cleaned up for an hour or so because of the incoming tide but we collected quite a lot of things... filling 23 trash bags! I still find it quite unbelievable that people can throw things like a chair into the sea! Why do these people treat the sea like a rubbish bin. We cleared rubbish on only a 50m stretch of beach on Chek Jawa and already found so much rubbish... imagine the amount of rubbish dumped around the entire island! Through this coastal cleanup, I've seen the extent of human damage done to the environment of non-biodegradable waste. You should have seen the "decorations" of rubbish and ropes etc. on the mangrove branches... Yup, so I realised that it is very important to dispose of waste appropriately and how important it is to look after the environment. 

Here are the statistics of our cleanup.

Teachers' Day

I went back to St Marg's today. It was fun meeting Joanne, Marion, and Marisa as well as others like Ji Yin, Xin Xuan and Xuan Rong, even though I do see 4 of them in school occasionally. :D We met Mrs. Seet, Mr Ang, Ms Lee, Ms Lum and Mdm Wang Li. Teachers' day seems to be quite a quiet day. After the chaotic 'rush hour' in the staff room, students clad in their colourful house shirts thronged home. Anyway, it was still great talking with the teachers and Ms Lee treated us all to ice-cream at the Student hub! We repeatedly refused but she insisted in the end... aiyo, I didn't give her anything for teachers' day. The ice-cream tasted good. :) Oh, and something interesting (or scary) happened, somehow, the principal approached us when we were waiting for Ms Lee who was having a consultation with a student and found out that we were all from poly. She asked us about our courses and whether we enjoyed it and suddenly she asked us if we could talk to the sec 5s about our courses. I don't know about the others, but I was stunned and my body froze for a second. Her statement caught me completely by surprise... followed by a slight dread and the 'oh no' groan. (I have stage fright...) In the end, she took down our names and phone numbers. I'm really scared if she calls. But I do wonder though, not to be judgemental, if she knew that we were express students (not to be 'high and mighty' either, we're all students).

Anyway, 4 of us went for lunch at an interesting place in Bras Basah complex. I didn't know that there was a block of flats above the complex. haha... nice windy place though. We ate our packed lunch from the food court there.

 I didn't see many other ex-students today. There's the new sports complex... but I miss the green field in that spot.

Whoopie Pies! :)

I had fun making whoopie pies! :)))

Monday

So many thoughts fill my mind that it's hard to organise and pen them down sometimes. Today, I played badminton and captain's ball and finally after a long while, got to attend Bright Lights. Right now, I'm trying to stick to a challenge of finishing the New Testament according to a schedule by the Navs by this October. It's been consistent so far although there are times when I still struggle to read and meditate. The study break so far has been quite packed for me but there have been some breathers...


 I guess the good thing about the school system now is that when there are holidays, we don't have pieces of homework to do nor projects although we do have to study for exam but still, it's a different kind of experience of a break now and a break then during secondary school where the holidays seemed like school.

YOG has been quite exciting so far, although sadly, Singapore has not bagged many medals. But, it's not the winning that counts, it's the whole process and experience of learning from top athletes around the world. I think that YOG will be a great experiential platform for athletes in Singapore to learn from other athletes and to improve. Haha, YOG is really history in the making...it's cool having an international community of athletes and to be part of a host country for a mini olympics. When I think of Olympics, it's always a very grand picture, like how they always show it on television. Never did I picture that Singapore would also host an olympics, despite it being a mini one; the Youth Olympics. It's awesome just to see the youth olympics aired on television on home ground with Singaporeans. ... I love the thrill of sports even though I'm not a sporty person. :D

Alright, I don't know what else to type now, I'm simply rambling out my jumbled thoughts. haha.:)

Witnessing

I really thank God for the chance to be able to witness to others about HIM. Although it's challenging for me now because of the boldness required to approach a complete stranger I'm glad I'm able to learn from S.M., my leader in the Navs. My prayer is that those who are witnessed to will have receptive hearts to hear about Him and will seek Him. haha, although there are times of rejection, witnessing can be exciting. :) Thank God for the opportunity this afternoon. :)

Website woes

I'm now currently waiting for the 3rd part out of 9 split zipped components of my video presentation to load. Sigh, out of 3 zipped folders that i needed to submit for the website, only 2 managed to squeeze in on time... Thank God that at least the main folder (containing the website!) was in time otherwise I would get 0 marks. *phew*. After going through this nerve-wrecking assignment, I don't think I'll ever venture into the IT line of web designing. At leisure, it's fine, but with a dateline... woah, the technical tediousness gets to me...I panic like crazy. Now, that the last website assignment is over, I can finally concentrate on my studies during this 3 weeks of study 'break'. The past 2 weeks have been just... crazy and dramatic, especially last Tuesday. I had to submit both my final term essay and the psych group project due at 5pm and 3pm respectively. Time management is really of the essence. That day was a first for me too, in that i skipped lunch (I don't skip meals). It was quite a comical sight to behold for the submission of the psych analysis project. Our group was rushing like crazy in the library to touch up on our 2000 word essay and video (cutting and joining together in Windows movie maker). I downloaded converter programs to find the most suitable one until I don't think I want to try converting another video again. We only needed a small segment from each of the 2 you tube videos of the video we chose to showcase the social learning theory but it took so much effort just to cut out 2 sections and join it together with WMM. I slept at 3 am (another first) on a usual school day the day before, being successful in converting the actual disc parts. BUT, it took extremely long to load all the clips in WMM even till the next day! In the end, thank God, a classmate helped us to convert the youtube videos (we had originally decided against using the youtube videos because of the bad quality so that's why I was trying to use the original cd to try and convert the format, cut the parts we needed and join it in WMM. ) So, after all the effort, the original bad quality videos were used still, but it's better than nothing in that crazy moment of time. Every second counted. I was adding in English subtitles (as it's 小孩不笨) and well i guess my adrenaline was really rushing. It would take about half an hour converting the disc. So, holding my computer, charger and external disc drive (with cd, still copying movie over), I went with 2 of my classmates to the HMS office which was quite a distance away with a few flights of stairs to counter. On the way, I saw at least 2 groups of people running to the building as well. It was very dramatic. In the end, we managed to submit by the time our lecturer came (which was half an hour after the submission time to the pigeon hole). Thank God.