Some things that REALLY irritates me

Yeah, crazy homework, crazy studies, crazy parents, crazy teachers can really get on my nerves sometimes. But what really irritates me the most was when someone asks something that you have already answered before.

Just an example:

Son: I just wrote an email to our form teacher to say that my friend and me will not be going to school tomorrow.

Mother: Did you include your friends name in your email? I heard that he will not be going to school tomorrow too.

Well, that is EXACTLY what happened to me today. Just that I tweaked the events a bit in the example. The example is just a short extract of the events. The whole conversation you will find out that the Son have been answering the exact same question over and over, although the way the question is phrased may be different. Obviously I got mad at my mum and I shouted, immediately regretting it later.

What does this kind of conversation show? It can show two things, the mother is only concerned about what she is trying is to put forward and did not know the son is actually trying to clear her doubts. The next thing is that the mother does not trust the son, hence repeatedly asking the question to assure herself that the son is telling the truth.

In my opinion, the second option is absurd, because in the example above, you cant say the mother could not trust the son in adding his friend's name in the email. Hence, I take the first option.

This kind of attitude is definitely flawed. Listening is the key to understanding and preventing misconceptions. You have your time later to put forward you point or your question. Listen to what the other guy is talking about and it will definitely prevent misconception. People with this kind of attitude can be deemed to be selfish, only caring about their own points, their own thoughts.

Unfortunately, I have noticed that this kind of attitude is quite common among people. People tend to think they are always right and others are always wrong, is this human nature? Perhaps yes, perhaps not. It leaves you to decide.

I am feeling really sleepy after the long fight with my mum. Today's post shall be a short one. Goodbye.

Some thoughts on Hwa Chong's new education system

Okay, I shall just give an overview of the current system. Apart from academic studies, there is still the scholastic part, which worries the cohort the most. Because, if you get B3(65) or below for independent studies( ace + projects), you will not be promoted to sec 3.

Take a typical sec 2. He did not make it to the finals for projects day. For passing prelims, he gets 5 marks. Semifinals is a total of 30 marks. HOWEVER, if he did not pass in to finals the capped marks is NOT 35, it is 25. This is because those people who get 21 or above for semi-finals make it to the finals. So, in other words, it is impossible to get full marks for semi finals and still dont make it to the finals.

In this case, lets take it he gets 20 for semifinals, adding the 5 marks form prelims, total 25marks. Now, doing a little math, you will know that he needs to get at least 40 for his ace to get promoted. This is still possible to get promoted.

However, 1/4 of the whole cohort only gets around 16 for semifinals. In this case, adding the 5 marks from prelims will get them 21 marks. They need to get 44 for ace to get promoted. Losing 6 marks for ace is not difficult. Considering we have our studies to focus on, CCAs until 7pm for 3 out of 5 working days, and on those days reaching home at 8pm. To get enough sleep one needs to sleep for at least 7 hrs. Lets say students have to get up at around 6am, then he will have to sleep at 10pm. 2 hours for homework, ace, dinner, entertainment.

You cant possibly leave out entertainment, without entertainment, life is seriously meaningless. And by entertainment I mean family bonding too. However, 1 hr spent on entertainment should be enough.

Getting back to the topic. For the 3 days of CCAs, total makes it 6 hrs of home-life. For normal days, lets say students reach home at 3. 7 hours for homework, ace, other school related preparations, necessities, Entertainment. 2 days for free days per week. 14 hrs + 6 hrs. That leaves in 20 hrs for homework, ace, necessities, in other words, lesser than 1 day. Plus saturday and sunday, make it another 20 hours for studying and school related stuff.

That leaves it around 2 days to complete 1 week of work. Having so much stuff to work on, and thats excluding random activities that may pop up and CIP hours, how is it possible for a student to lead a healthy life?

The Hwa Chong syllabus is already much faster than normal schools, we still have to deal to two extra subjects, independent studies and oral communication. How is it possible? The math I have done is already assuming people as robots, people will tend to forget, procrastinate(even if it is just for a few hours, it matters a lot in this kind of schedule). And when you do not get promoted, you go to the O level class. Thats equal to getting mocked by the whole school. It is not simply getting transfered to another class.

I suggest that we could tweak the system a bit. Instead of stating the criteria as C5 for oral and B3 for independent studies. Why not just let it be 3.0 for overall msg? This will work so much more better.

I hope someone considers.

Songs.

I was thinking about the different genre of songs and how people often comment on how disgusting a song or a typical genre of song can be. So what exactly is disgusting about these songs? I typically prefer those quite, peaceful songs. Some pop or rap ones are nice too. I also seem to have a particular fondness of chinese songs.

I guess why some people hate a certain song genre is because they do not truly understand the genre and do not know how to appreciate what that is special. I could not understand why people even like rock and pop songs before, to me, they are just random beats and "noise", there is not much melody in it. However, I realised that my definition of music was wrong. Music is something that evokes emotions in us, any kind of emotion. My definition was something that calms you down. I have since learnt to appreciate pop and rock music.

Different pop or rock songs have their special rhythm, something that evokes excitement, something that makes you actually reflect on the lyrics. Different artists also have their own special voice tone, something that everyone can appreciate. I can feel what the singer is trying to convey his/her emotions to us just by listening to his/her music.

Rap music are special in their own way too. Rap music also has interesting rhythm, however it has another type of property, it is articulation. Articulation is rather hard to achieve, since rap music are often fast and rapid. Breaths have to be taken in fast. Listening to certain rap music sometimes motivates me to compete a task. The feeling just could not be decribed in words.

Now onto the type of music that I specially like. You can say it is country music. Song artists like 苏见信，许嵩，周杰伦 are my favorites. The special effects they have in their songs are intriguing. Some of their songs actually make my tears flow. I think this is exactly what differentiates a good song artist from an average song artist. Their songs have great melody with deep meanings that could apply to everyone. It is a lesson learnt to every song you listen to.

People's tastes and likes cannot be changed or controlled. But I that by gaining a better understanding of a certain genre could help a lot.