K1's Outings

The childcare has lined up visits to- Chinatown, Gardens by the bay (The Future of Us Exhibition), and a Drama (Three Billy Goats Gruff) for the K1s & K2s over the next few weeks.

How true

Move on

Show & Tell

Chinese & English Show & Tell

I asked what she wants to bring for the Show & Tell session. She says she wanna bring her Touch. 

"Touch" is the cow shaped foam neck rest she uses as her 臭臭 (security transitional object), an item she almost can't do without during bedtime. Since young, she finds comfort in touching prints, like a print on T-shirts or in this case, the cow-patch prints on the 臭臭. We have been trying to find a replacement cow. If I ever see this cow again, I will buy... two more, and double-stitch its seams because we've been using this (second) Touch the past four years.  The first time she had to do Show & Tell at childcare, I let her bring Touch to school because I normally just go with the wind, whatever harmless idea she has is fine by me. But this time I said - No. Because this Touch thingy is so personal! How to share about this with 28 other students? Some more what are you gonna talk about your Touch? So now she has to think about what other item to bring to Show & Tell. Colin never needed the pacifier nor any security transitional object like the 臭臭. He is less insecure I guess. I think the 臭臭 phenomena is not gender biased, there are boys who use the 臭臭 until they are eleven or twelve. The same 臭臭 for a decade even. I never had the luxury of a 臭臭, there is no such a thing as "insecurity" in a household ran by a strong, dominating woman but that's another story.

Glad that we've been given the guidelines:-

Just zoom in to 3-star zone and focus on Delivery of Speech, Engagement of Audience, Content & Language Structure.

• Audible throughout
• Maintain eye contact with audience 
• Sustain interest by using body language & props
• Details, description, explanation, elaboration
•  Speak in complete, complex sentences

 

Reunion Lunch

Less than half the usual staff strength........

Anger LOL

 Pretending to be Anger, Arrrgh! 

battery operated candle

Lo-hei

Our office reunion lunch got down-graded from our regular Ming Jiang Restaurant at Goodwood Park to ... where's this place? Beng Hiang Restaurant at Jurong East. Less than half our usual budget but no one's complaining, we're all fine. The food is not bad. $600 for 12 pax is considered cheap.

 Lo-hei, Huat Ar!

 Suckling Pig
这样吃下去，真不是办法呀。。。

 Or Luak Oyster Omelet, I've not eaten the Or Luak in crispy style until now.

 Soon Hock Fish.

Chye Sim with salted fish & garlic.
Kong Bak Bow

 Hokkien noodles

 John happened to be in town for a job and we invited him to join us. 

He has not done a Lo-hei before, so it was interesting for him. 

Since tomorrow's his birthday, we got him a surprise cake.  

He's too shy to look up, so he's just looking at the cake ya.

Not a funny joke: John says that sometimes, he meets hostile people when he travels. 

Whether he's in China, Korea or Japan, some people showed him hatred. They mistaken him for a nationality that they hated. For instance, while in China, they were rude to him to the extend that the airport porter refused to help him with his luggage as the man thought that John is Korean. He told it in John's face.Other wise while in Korea, they hated him as they mistaken him to be Japanese. Whatever the case, he's Thai-American.

Exploring P1 Online

Many parents are full of complaints. They feel that the school takes for granted that the parents have given their kids a head-start in extra curricular enrichment classes and that four weeks into P1, the expectations from the child is unrealistic. To a certain extent, that's true. But what is the use of complaining? If you go on and on and on and on, that's wasted energy. For me, I will do within my means to seek resources. Of course the easy way out is to send Kiki to Math & English enrichment on top of Chinese which she's taking but I think I wanna hold out, hopefully hold out until P3?  Not sure if I would be able to but I will just do within my means.

The school had introduced two resource websites to us. One focuses on Math, the other - English, Chinese, Math, and General Knowledge (Encyclopaedia Britannica). I feel that's wonderful! So many things to use and learn. Just need to familiarize ourselves with the Apps, it's the same with any distance learning programme, the lesson plans are there, exercises are there, homework are there. Anything else that we may need, just go seek further from teachers, books and if you're lucky; friends, not limiting to online resources. 

Well, to each his own, I am not here to convince anyone. I am here to learn to cope with our educational system and to manage the well-being of my children, to manage their health, comfort and happiness. That's all. 

So, last night, as I was in my showers, Kiki asked- Mama, it's not 10 yet, can we play the Math games later?  Me- Oh sure, but I have to hurry, it's 9.35.... they will be closed at 10. (yes, there's a clock in my bathroom) So I quickly showered and we logged in to see what challenge-sums are there.

Waa.. quite challenging lei. Shall explain to her about these kind of questions another time.

 Encyclopaedia Britannica- many topics

 Chinese

 So SILLY!  I got it wrong twice and the programme kicked me out.
Based on the boy's facial expression, isn't is "Oh!"  so I chose O in first tone but it was wrong. So I thought okay, Oh! in fourth tone, like OH! expression. Still wrong!

After I attempted the second question, did I realise-- oh,,,, it was O in third tone. as in Wo (Me) 我. The picture is showing the boy pointing himself- "Me". But I don't know why the test is only on AEIOU, where is the beginning alphabet?

Anyway. Ha ha. 

Supposedly Yu (with two dots above u)

 

Math "Number Bond"

 Lots of English stuff-- Nouns, Verbs, Articles, Adjectives, Adverbs, Connectors, Preposition, Grammar. Isn't this wonderful?

When I first took this picture, I exclaimed to Bren- "Look what I've got, I've got a million-dollar shot"  By that, I only meant that I was happy with my shot.

I had used EyeEm only for a short while and didn't know that someone bought my photo for US$5 since November. I've only accepted payment recently. That market place is not really pushing sales, users like me are just sharing our photos for viewing but of course there are media or online media looking for materials and library photos, hence.

 Sold

In a Nutshell

A movie adaptation from the book- The Big Shot, by Michael Lewis; an American non-fiction author & financial journalist.

Ip Man and Star Wars were still screening. But I chose to watch- The Big Short because time and energy is precious.

This movie is quite hard for me to watch. I will tell you why.

So, first. About the movie.

It is about the bursting of the housing bubble (in U.S) that eventually crumbled the entire financial institution, leading to an entire meltdown and financial crisis throughout U.S and the rest of us. Otherwise a dry subject, the movie put it as plainly as possible, explaining financial jargon in layman terms. There is no fun fare about the movie, it is as painfully plain but necessary to hear it again. We never learn. Never. Greed has no pit. Stupidity also has no pit. I don't say this in a pompous way, I say this because I am also caught in the wind of ignorance and stupidity.

The sub-prime mortgages were grouped into securities (Mortgage Bond Securities- MBS) and sold as potential assets to bond holders in the light that when they pay their monthly mortgages in full, they can get paid their bonds. However, the institutions created different tranche rates (tranche means a part of a deal, a slice of, a portion of), meaning higher tranche rates bond holders get paid first, while lower rate bond holders get paid last or not at all. This is the beginning of the entire bullshit system. When lower rate bond holders having paid their rents in full, don't get paid their bonds, coupled with living condition hardships, start defaulting on their rents, this simple structure becomes a self-fulling monster headed to failure. Instead of taming the monster (sub-prime mortgage), they went ahead to pull sub-prime mortgages from MBS, and repackaged them as yet another new product: CDO- Collateralized Debt Obligation, and sold these high risks products as profitable bonds. The shit doesn't end there, they took CDO and spun it into CDO2 (CDO square), meaning- a side bet of a main bet. And then came the side bets of the side bets, and the side bets of the side bets' side bets. You get the drift, it's synthetic CDOs cloned and sold. At the same time, the rating agencies just keep rating whatever crap shit as AAA, they have gone too deep into fake ratings, it was point of no return. 

The entire financial saga turned US$1.5 trillion into vapour, jobs lost, homes lost, lives lost. 

Despite all these, fast forward to current, the new term for the same shit is now called -  

Bespoke Tranche Opportunities. (They have totally ruined the word "Bespoke" !)

How is this hard for me to watch. Firstly, we lost money. I lost money. For sanity's sake, the only thing left to do is not to think about it.

Secondly, the Oil & Gas market is in the same shit. And we're just at the beginning of that shit hole.

Fold your knees, duck your head and get ready for a crash landing.
Tiiiiiimmmmmmmbbbbbbeeeerrrrrr!

#SAVEMONEYFASTWITHFIVES

Month of January 2016

 #SAVEMONEYFASTWITHFIVES   Hashtag on Instagram

Sept, Oct, Nov, Dec, Jan: Approximately $975

(FYI- I've banked in my money instead of stashing them under my pillows)

One-pot-dish for recess

Today's one-pot-dish: Sardines

独乐乐不如众乐乐

Can you see the oil stains on the cardboard viewer? The cardboard paper blotted my T-zone facial grease and probably some from my colleagues' too. Before you say Eeew, look at this another way, 独乐乐不如众乐乐, everyone was somewhat impressed by those VR (virtual reality) short demo clips, scenery (street, underwater, aerial views) exhibitions, digital made-up landscape, and interactive 3D games (magnified view). It's pretty awesome. I love to watch the faces of everyone's maiden experience with the Google Cardboard. Go try.

Shooting laser beams at targets on a 3D VR. (game setting- shoot depressive brain neurons)

We Live In An Online World

We live in an online world, at 10.12pm, we logged in to the Homework intranet but the "challenges" were closed for the day. "Challenges" is where we do Math sums to earn credits and virtual badges. (or will they issue real badges? I'm not too sure) Anyway, the sums are open between 6am to 10pm, so we just familiarized ourselves with the website and was surprised to discover there were 'homework' in stored, 5 homework, so we did all five. (there are homework assigned by the software and homework assigned by teacher. for extra practices, we can attempt the 'challenges'). Kiki says her Math teacher has gone through the lessons with them in class, so she found the questions online a re-cap of what was imparted. 

Prior to that, we voted for our preferred colour for the new bus operator that would be operating in Singapore. Her Chinese teacher had briefed them on some current news and told us (parents) to be more active in engaging our kids, and to work hand-in-hand with the lesson plans. She says from now onward, a large part of our education system will focus on - critical analysis, critical thinking, constructive debate, presentation skills. (for both Chinese & English), no wonder the queue at  Learning Lab is hotter than showrooms at new condo launch. I am unable to fathom what the parents are queuing for; payment? registration? such large crowd congesting the holding area.

Where else can I learn to develop children's critical thinking skills? Must do some research on this. 

Maybe I should just straightaway treat KiCo as JC students lah.  Like that I don't have to think so much. Just give them lots of open-ended food for thoughts views and give them contradicting views to push their minds to think, substantiate, put forth their points, chunk-up, chunk-down, relate, etc.

What number comes just before 1?

What number comes just before 1?