National Interschool Media Challenge 2006

At today's award ceremony - our team came in 2nd! Our students won $2000, $250 voucher and 5 Nokia N80 3G handphones. I mentioned I won the motorola v3x handphone in a contest but so far the motorola executive has not contacted me - it is really a far cry from the handphone which my students won today. Basically the N80 can be used to surf the net more effectively - how I wish my prize is the Nokia N80 instead. It cost more than $700 each and I don't think I want to pay so much for one. Anyway, my hubby's phone broke down - I am planning to give him the Motorola which I have won - just wondering when that will be!

I must confessed that I am pleasantly surprised that we came in 2nd, overtaking Nanyang Girls who was the champion last year. We came in 3rd last year. I supposed our girls did a better job by focusing on caring for our community. I think Jamie Yeo mentioned about our blog on the care for the elderly.

I am also happy that our girls have decided to contribute half of their winning cash to charity.
I would like to congratulate Peijun, jialing, kiatyi and Naomi again..... hopefully our team will win again next year!

MOTOCOLOURS Contest winner

I had just received an email notifying me that I am a winner of the MOTOcolours contest. I was trying to encourage my students to participate in the contest which was announced in campusmoblog but I didn't get any response. At the end, I decided I should submit an entry myself. I created a simple one using window movie maker and edited the images with Macromedia firework. It took me around 2 hours. I am surprised that the entry won. My only regret is that the students did not participate in it - I am sure that many can do a better one.

I will be quite busy with my markings - I have to mark more than 40 essays a day - I have 320 essays to mark for the Prelim! I have finished marking the test for Sec 2 and Sec 3. I am quite disappointed with the tests as I can see that many of them did not put in any effort at all. Some of the Sec 3 did not even turn up for the test. Qi Qi and Yihui came in only after my test - can you believe it? Christina, Michelle, Chunfa, Ivan and Zongren were hiding in the classroom - they did not even come to the humanities room to take the test. I just hope that the Sec 4 will perform better.

We had the promotion ceremony for the Red Cross Cadets today. I am so happy to see that the Sec 2 and 3s have achieved so much and had grown to be better leaders. The Sec 1 has also done us proud - all of them were promoted and had received 3 badges or more. You can view the photos here: http://geocities.com/hsredcrosspro06/ Don't be shocked to see that my uniform is a little bluish - I didn't realise it until Jannah pointed that out - the colour must have run as I washed it in the washing machine (we had photo-taking on Wed). I was quite embarassed but I think if I bleach it - it will be white again!

Geography in Movies

For those who know me - I often say that Geography is everything. You often laugh when I relate the Geography to the things around you, even the movies you watch. For example, recently I watched the korean drama series "Jewel in the Palace" and "legendary doctor Hur Jun. Both pointed out the importance of the source of water for cooking and brewing medicine. Chang Jin was asked to bring back different types of water and used them for cooking. She later realised that a certain spring water make a wonderful soup base for noodle and was served to the king. Hur Jun's teacher was angry that he brought back the wrong type of water which was not suitable for brewing medicine. Have you really wondered why there are so many different types of water? When I was young, I brought the water from a well to school and as we looked at it through the microscope, we realised that it was so different from the tap water. As water seeps through the ground, it dissolved some minerals and the water content thus differ. That's why some people prefer to drink from certain springs. I love to watch CSI and it was mentioned in many series that water carries an identity - the water found in a river or even in different swimming pools differ.

In a particular Hong Kong drama "Cha shi Gu Xiang Rong" and it was about how people struggled to grow tea. It is simply so geographical - from looking at the soil type to tracing the water source. How tea plantation was monopolised and of course many features of plantation which I had discussed with the students - such as how the tea leaves are harvested using cheap labour and how the tea leaves are processed in the factories. The growing of tea plants on higher altitude and how roads are constructed to faciliate movement of the processed tea leaves from the plantation to the factory and from the factory to the market.

Even movies like the Hong Kong movie 'the monster' talk about a tragic caused by development. The 'monster' was actually a woman who had lost her husband and kid during the 70's when the government forced the occupants of the slum to move out. Her husband was burnt to death while protesting against the government. She refused to move out of the slum and her boy was eventually killed by a fallen structure while looking for food in the deserted slum. She continued to live in the area (hiding in the ventilation shaft) even though a high rise condominium had been built over the slum she used to lived in. A point to ponder- a slum is considered to be undesirable for development as it has poor sanitation, hygiene and prove to be a fire hazard. However to many the slum is their home and they had developed a strong attachment to the place. Many had been cleared for development and standard of living has been raised. However, slums had proven to be a challenge to many governments in the developing countries as the occupants refused to move out of the slum - even till today!

Of course there are hundreds of movies which look at the natural disasters we faced today as well as environmental degaradation which leads to problem such as global warming. My favourite would be 'Dante's Peak", "the storm" and 'the day after tomorrow." The one I missed most is 'The Medicine Man" - a movie which shows how deforestation has affected the natives living in the Amazon as well as how Man's greed had also led to us losing some of the possible medicine which we can use to treat illness such as cancer. I would really appreciate if you can find a copy for me!