Random stuff: Pokemon online

Pokemon is a very fun game, but when I first started to play this pokemon online thing, I lost quite a number of games, especially to Bryan, who still beats me now. I was originally at the very end of the player ranking, but with a little reference to www.smogan.com and a little tweaking, I proceeded to the 1k++ ranking out of 19k. I think this is a quite good achievement, and I sure hope that I can surpass Bryan in the future, preferably with a snorlax soloing his whole team(I like snorlax).

Random stuff: My mousehunt ban

Well, I got banned on Mouse hunt last Saturday, because of multiple accounts. The image displayed on my screen was: You got sent to the King's Stockade and there was a picture of a glitch paw mouse, along with a list of rules on the lower half of the screen. When I saw this, I was initially quite sad, as if it was a permanent ban, I would have lost all the free superbrie( 600++) that I had gotten for free. Luckily, I asked Ian, a very very very very nice friend for help, and he helped me appeal. Incredibly, the appeal succeeded, even though it seemed like it was going to fail, and they gave me one last chance. I am definitely going to treasure the chance, as I have amassed a great collection during my time playing and I certainty do not wish for my collection to be gone, nor my great collection of mice caught(or maybe not, as Bryan and Ian had surpassed me in the one week I was banned). Now I am off to get an acolyte mouse!!!

Random stuff: Staring off into blank spaces

Have you ever tried staring off into blank space before? It is quite interesting. You still see stuff happening in front of you, but after you stop staring, somehow you will forget what you saw, or maybe you only remember parts of it, leading you to wonder where you got those information from. I usually do this when I am immensely bored, like during a bus ride, or when I don't know what to do or write( I did that before thinking of writing this random thing) or during boring classes.( Not In Language Arts!) But now, I do that lesser as trying to daydream or stare off into blank spaces while sitting next to Bryan is too hard, as he is too active. However, I daydreamed a lot in class in my primary school( luckily I never got caught by teachers), and I don't know I managed to get into Hwachong(maybe luck). So here ends my random post about staring off into blank space.

Machines vs human teachers

Machines might be able to replace human teachers in the future, but not now. Machines are not able to process information independently, needing a controller to input suggested answers when marking, and they are not flexible enough when it comes to marking, being only able to mark things based on the inputed information and not based on their own knowledge. It is true that the internet is a great source of information, but what are are the true and false information present in the internet. Not everything on the internet is absolutely correct. Also, getting a machine to teach is akin to asking students to read their textbooks. It is the same, as since machines cannot process thoughts and can only repeat the data given to them. Also, though information present in the textbooks are supposed to be correct, some information might be wrong. If there was a human teacher, the teacher might be able to correct the information. but since the machine teacher does things based on information given to it, it cannot correct mistakes and all the students will be implicated. Thus, the current machines cannot replace human teachers.

Random stuff: Journey to school

Going to school is a very boring thing to do, and having to go to school half awake makes it even more tedious, especially when you do not feel like going to school. However, I have met with some interesting incidents while going to school. I live at Sengkang, so it takes about 1 hour to reach Hwachong. During this trip which takes 1/24 of one day, interesting things rarely happen. There was only one incident that was slightly interesting in my one year plus trips to Hwachong. One happened last year, at about May(I think). My friend(in pro ed) and I had just boarded the 67 bus at Little India and were standing in a full bus. Halfway through the bus ride, just as the bus was leaving, it stopped. A silence replaced the usual vibration and noise of the engine. All of us felt the change and guessed correctly; the bus's engine had stopped. Refusing to believe it, the bus driver turned the engine key multiple times, but his futile attempts failed. He had no choice but to ask all the passengers to exit, giving us a ticket for a free bus ride and sending us all out of the bus as he went to the back and tried to fix the problem. I stuffed the ticket into my wallet and promptly forgot about it, only finding it this year when it had already expired. Even though I wasted my bus fare, at least I got an interesting experience out of it. And thankfully, I was not late for school.

A book review!!!

Book review

Fablehaven by Brandon Mull

Ever wanted to live in a world full of mystical creatures? In Fablehaven, that is the situation. Kendra and Seth, a pair of siblings, are thrust right in the middle of the action. But in order to prevent people who have not read this book yet from getting confused, let’s start from the beginning. With a rather calm beginning, Fablehaven begins in the middle of a rather boring car journey. Where to? Their old and boring grandparent’s house, of course. (Or so they thought) However, once they arrived, many mysterious things occurred (or noticed). For one, dragonflies and butterflies in there like drinking milk and staring at their reflections in a mirror. An old witchy woman was found a deep forest, while a secret garden was found in a corner of the forest. Cryptic clues given by their grandfather, along with three keys mystify the siblings even further. The breakthrough came one day, as the last and final key unlocks a seemingly empty journal to reveal a single line of text, “Drink the milk” As Kendra ponders the meaning of this line, a butterfly alighted onto a bowl of milk, and starts drinking. Realizing the meaning behind this line, Kendra then drank a little milk from that bowl, getting Seth to do so as well. When they opened their eyes again, a new world is revealed to them. Dragonflies and butterflies are transformed into fairies; while the old woman is revealed to be a witch and magical beings are present everywhere. All these are due to their grandparents being keepers of magical preserves, and out of all their grandchildren, Seth and Kendra were the only ones that passed. And this is where the action starts. Due to the mischief caused by Seth, the fairies now do not offer their protection for the house, and thus renders the house vulnerable, with midsummer eve coming up, a day where all the boundaries of the preserve were released. In the night, deceptive goblins and evil beings trick both Kendra and Seth into opening in the window, thus allowing them in. They wreak havoc in the house, and it was only due to the extra protection that they were saved. The adults were not so lucky, however, and in the morning, had disappeared. Alone, the siblings seek for help, and then, managing to transform their grandmother back from a chicken, search for allies and weapons to use against the evil forces present in the preserve, even have to give a mountain troll a massage to gain its help. They turned out to heavily outnumbered, and lost. Kendra survived, but had to leave her grandmother and Seth behind. Using her last resort, pleading with the fairy queen, she gained access to the shrine. The fairy queen gave her the recipe for a potion that will turn the miniature fairies into human sized warriors, turning her into fairykind in the process, a human with fairy powers. After gathering all the ingredients and summoning the fairy warriors, they rushed to battle, just in time to prevent a revival of the demon Bahumat, which if given the chance, would destroy the entire preserve. After all the normal commotion over the reuniting of the family, they return to the rebuilt house, and with a hint of more books to come, end the story with their parents coming back for them, after the vacation. This was a quite captivating book, and I believe that Brandon Mull is a great writer, being able to sustain my interest till the end of the story. I practically devoured the book, finishing it within a day, reading even while eating.

Nature versus Nurture

I think that nurture is better than nature, as the government must give equal rights to the people. If not, the worse off people would not bother studying and improving themselves and forever remain in their bad living conditions forever. This will lead to a loss of productivity and loss of income as the workers’ standard of work will fall, affecting our economy adversely. People will just think,” Oh, I was born like that, and use that excuse for everything, refusing to work hard or to try.” Instead, I think the true reason for this is because the graduate parents can tutor their child themselves, helping the child’s grades, and they know how and what to study, based on their own experiences.

All summer in a day

The venus children deal with people unlike them by bullying them and trying to get rid of them. This is clearly shown in all summer in a day, where they push and shove and call Margot names, and their bullying kept getting worse, finally reaching a point that they wanted her to go away so much that they did not let her see the once in seven year sun, despite knowing that she was desperate to see it. But, a bit of the fault lies with Margot, as she purposely holds the fact that she saw and remembered the sun over the other children, agitating them and causing them to act like that. Actually, if she made more effort to fit in, and not do those things, she would have blended in very well with the other venus children.

Straits Times article review

For this article, I think that the author is right. Not only do the disabled need help, so do the caregivers. Often, caregivers are affected by the people they take care of. They are both emotionally and physically affected. In the case of the father trying to find a nursing home for his son, the father worries too much for his son, and his children, hence he resorted to trying to kill his disabled son, to spare his son the agony of feeling like a burden, and to spare his children the burden his son will bring to them.

To Kill A Mockingbird: Poetry

By Xu Shi Guang and Bryan Leong and Lee Yun Jie

Arthur ‘Boo’ Radley

Arthur Boo Radley, notorious for his deeds
He was mad, the warnings heed
Morbid mutilations, occurring in the night
With the pets and animals, unable to put up a fight

Arthur's house, an object of fear
Nobody dared to venture near
Things that went over, never came out
For their house was cursed it was rumoured about

The Radleys kept to themselves, Mr Radley “buying cotton”
Not meeting anyone, getting cursed by others, their souls to burn
Not church goers, the Radleys prayed at home
Slowly, building up an invisible dome

Soon, the Radleys vanished from sight
Only, to be remembered like a creature of the night
Rumoured that Boo, Made friends with Cunninghams,
forming the nearest thing, Maycomb had to a gang

In one fateful night, under the influence of alcohol
They came together, up to mischief
Resisting arrest, locked Mr Conner behind a door
Ended up in the court getting charged like thieves

Mr Radley, came to court
To prevent Boo from being sent to be taught
And thus forth Boo was never seen again,
He was neither here nor there, forever detained.