``Come on! Let's have some FUN!--

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

The dictionary definition of holiday: 'A day of exemption from work'...

So much for the 'Holidays'... Anyway, Jimmy, Ernest, Samuel and I spent a part of our hols doing our SS Documentry. For those who do not already know our topic, try guessing from the pics. Samuel's Talent Showcase at the end

Posted by Jimmy, Ernest, Samuel and Ben Ng

11:39 PM

Was there even a holiday?

Anyway, in the first week of the holiday, my parents took me to a hiking trip in Malaysia, as usual…

There was fishing, playing cards, bites, and hiking of course.

The next week of the holiday was spent doing Bio Stem Cell DMP from 9am-6pm. An utter waste of time. The final 2 weeks were spent on projects and project meetings.

Yen San

7:04 PM

Monday, June 29, 2009

My holidays

My holidays started off with Venture Camp, a camp for scouts. and since Jack already explained it, i shall not elaborate further. Anyway, heres the picture of the shelter me, ziheng and sup built.

See? more pro than Jack's right?

Ok then there was VLC, venture leadership course, where we learnt stuff like making proposals, leading, delegating etc. stuff that most of us already know. And the last 2 weeks were used for projects. I spent my weekends eating quite a bit, because my bro's in the army and everytime he comes back we will go for a meal (: and also watched movies and spend time going out having fun. I dun really take pictures so theres nothing much to see

And then the last week, i went flyer with jian wei and madnfred. the flyer sux.

Ok thats all

Hiok Yang

9:54 PM

Careful!

8:55 PM

My first week of the holidays was spent in school, where I was attending a Red Cross Camp. So, no work was done in the first week of school. As for the second week of school, I was mainly at home, working on a math performance task and doing some Chinese worksheets. On the third week, I was still working on projects and occasionally playing computer games. On the fourth week, I spent most of the time going out to do projects. So, you can see that most of time was spent on work, work and more work. So boring, but there is nothing that I can do. Well, I played some computer games and here is a screenshot of me getting a ”rampage” in the latest version of DOTA(a special screenshot for dota fans out there). LOL!

~Brandon

5:45 PM

Sunday, June 28, 2009

been a very busy holiday. got too many projects to do. now still havent finish all.

anw, went to desaru, malaysia at the end of week 2 of the hols.

short trip (2D1N) with my family, which was a good time for relaxing and getting away from singapore's hot weather. i realised that trips to malaysia may not be that bad after all, if you go to parts which you haven't gone before. at desaru, we spent quite a bit of the day in this fruit farm. this trip's supposed to be about fruits, so there were lots of fruits to try. one of the more interesting fruits was the breadfruit, which can only be eaten after its cooked/fried. we also visited this ostrich farm and i got to see the ostrich yolk and white for the first time in my life. the yolk is GIGANTIC. we spent our night and the most of the 2nd day at a comfy beach resort, where we even played beach volleyball.
sadly, after the two days, i had to go back to projects.

9:26 PM

My holidays =D

My holidays were just mainly trying to finish up my homework and projects. Hardly had any time to myself to go out or do anything fun. Did play some com games though, during my limited free time but mostly was just trying to chase people to do their part of the projects (cough*cough). Anyway, there's one day that I was supposed to go Chinatown with Ming Chan and Brandon to finish the geog tourism project. As you can see from the pic here. I expected to take abt 1hr to walk up and down chinatown to take photos but on that day, half the time spent was just stoning there, took abt 6 photos, then decided to go watch transformers (lol). Movie was quite cool, nice effects but storyline wasnt too good. Later had to go and do greenwave in library, yah but that was one of the few days I had fun............. :-)

~Jonathan Koh

4:17 PM

My june holidays was a very fun one. Tis time i decided to push back all the hw until last wk, so i had 3 wks of slacking (aka fun). First week had interact camp. during first 2 days of the camp was a bit sick, so had to wear a mask to school. den walk around school kenna spotted by mr. kwok, who tell me i very guai :D and responsible, ask me continue wear mask.

First week also had 1 tabletennis competition. Din do well, kenna kick out in 2nd round by small margin 2-3.

2nd and 3rd week roughly the same, tabletennis training den another tabletennis competition. Tis time did better go until top16 den lose to the eventual runner-up. from week 2 we stopped school training, so had to go back to pri sku to train pingpong. all my pri sku juniors (p6 ones) all dun wan to come RI, they say they stupid stupid de.

My slacking for the first 3 weeks was : playing neopets (few hrs per day), staring at the sky (morning & evening), watching dramas (when i get sick of neopets), listening to radio (all the time), sleeping (at night. LOL) and doing CIP (i did a few, but not getting CIP hours for them :'()

4th week, still go back pri sku training, but start on some work alr. Also have to mug scrabble like siao bcos our competition is nxt wk. Now still mugging scrabble.

2:47 PM

An amendment to my previous post

After checking the details of the photo i've posted, i've realised that it was the photo of sunrise taken at abt 6am, not in the late afternoon. Sorry for any inconvenience caused =D

~Xin Yan

2:42 PM

WOOHOO!~~~ WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE Are the CHAMPIONS!~~~
We just finished our finals against Montfort today. It was super close and eventually won 3-2
Our plan was to win the 2 doubles and one of the singles... but our lineup wasnt THAT good... cause montfort's plan was to win the 3 singles...our first singles was... isryad (I think its spelt like that..)
First doubles: Shayne and JeysngSecond Singles: Me...Second Doubles: Bryan and elvisThird singles: ROY <--- THE ULTIMATE GOD OF BADMINTON WHICH DID A MAJOR UPSET Erm... first singles, we lost coz that guy was srsly too good... first doubles we won coz we were srsly just too imba... second singles... i lost coz i screwed up and he was too good... second doubles we won narrowly and bryan was playing a fool and stoning =D LAST MATCH... ROY... He was playing some super duper short but imba guy... It was super close but he eventually won with he pro skills... His composure, accuracy, strength, speed, guailan-ness was all at its max. He was total ownage... Anyway, here are some pics

Our Champion... ROY!~ (Can see that his whole body is soaked in sweat!)

Pic of PROVE! (The 3 of us now dont have to do!~ ^^)

RI Team A and Team B Cheering... supposedly =D

Team talk before the match... deciding lineup etc.

Overview of the courts

Overview of the courts 2

Thats all people!~ Now the 3 of us are safe! =D

-BenNah

2:14 PM

Saturday, June 27, 2009

What i did during the holz

Erm... i have bascially been busy with my... work as well playing in a badminton tournament with bryan and roy. We are in the Finals and are gonna play Monfort Sec tmr at Arena Country Club.
No photos as photography is NOT allowed in the competition xD

Come support us!~~~ =D

-BenNah

3:23 PM

My holidays

Hi all,

I'm here to post about my holidays and keep the ball rolling (:
Unlike Jack's holidays which is so "colourful", my holidays is only made up of 2 main colours:

For the first two weeks, my family went to China to visit relatives and also to update ourselves on any new developments of the town. The town we went to is named Wuxi, which is quite near to Shanghai. For the photo, I shall post a picture we have taken in the late afternoon.

For the next two weeks after I came back, I spent most of my time mapling. This screenshot shows how long have I maple-d during one of the days.

If you're lazy to open and see, I'll quote for you the auto-reminder service, "You have played MapleStory for 8 hour(s).We suggest you take a break from Mapling." 8 hours is my record time so far xD

~Xinyan

11:39 AM

siigh okok my holidays have been very very busy with all the many camps i had; interact camp, church camp, judo camp, almost had the science camp. ahaha my holiday was really quite sad, other than church camp which was the highlight. other than that, holidays were mostly just training and training. and, everyone has to post a picture right. for mine, just see below :D the chemistry thingy posted by jack

-kingdom

1:33 AM

My so-called Holidays

Im going to post some pictures and write about the topic: My so-called Holidays. Make you sure guys do the same hor! =D

The first event for my holidays was my 01 Venture Camp! And the photo you see below is actually the shelter Alvin Chua and I built for our survival night, where we could only use the natural materials found in the forest. All these is made from trees! (note: we found the tree stump, we didnt chop the tree down.)

So that was one of the highlights of the camp, and the next was cooking by the beach and marshmellows in the night! Cool right, ok maybe a bit warm...

Alright, so right after the fun fun venture camp, was the interclass basketball! Which I didnt play for because I was the guy recording scores...haha. But got some photos of our class in action too.

After that was the MOE conference, and then the Learning Journey to IRAS, and soon the Chem workshops (2 of which I have posted about).

And then I had some more scouts stuff! Cos we had a den cleanup, and then it was another venture camp- the Venture Leadership Camp. Its organised by the HQ, so we got to meet scouts from other schools too! Good exposure for us! =) Learnt quite a bit from that camp too! Here is a photo of my ex-co! =D

After the camp, was getting back to work...all the 8 or 9 projects which we have...scary. Also went to meet Viriya for our Cohort CIP, the Home Creation. We discussed about what we need to do and what we have tobe concerned about, and then I prepared a briefing sheet of sorts which none of you will see becos I dont think any of you wanted to sign up for 2NA. Haha. Oh yes, 2NA is going to be postponed...due to H1N1.

The last week, still all about projects! But there is of course some fun in it! If anyone wants to see a nice video about our class feel free to come and look for me! (ok i know we all cant feel free...lol)

Enjoy the last few days!

Jack =D

1:04 AM

Jun Holiday 2009

This hols had been a hectic one for me (I think it applies to all).

But there was fun.... like working till 4 am for CCC, KTVing, visiting Marina Barrage (see below), table tennising, NPCC Camp, etc.

Only disappointment is the missing out on the "all expense paid for" trip to Japan... haiz.. nvm, maybe next time....

The Kiasu One

12:39 AM

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

VJC Chem Workshops!

Today a group of us went to VJC for some fun chemistry workshops!! We signed up voluntarily and we weren’t disappointed. (Alvin, Teng Chuan, Manfred, Jian Wei, Mervyn, Dominic, Ben Chin, Jim and Me) We went into the VJC campus, and after the registration, travel declaration and stuff, we took a walk around before entering the lab.

Our first workshop was titled: Snacks- Recipe for a Horizontally Developed Body? It was basically about what our food is made up of and what make you fat. So to get us awake he showed us some random videos…about turning water into ice and some painting video haha. But quite interesting la. He also explained how the 2008 compound of the year- melamine, increases the protein level in milk, haha. Anyway the lesson proper, first part is about the stuff we learnt in bio, like all the carbohydrates, lipids and proteins, plus trans fats. But then the second part was about reading nutritional labels on food. And like how calories are used in our body- 60% on Basal Metabolic Rate, 30% on Movement and 10% on Dietary Thermogenesis. Also how to gain weight, haha, for those underweight people! LDL (“bad”)and HDL (“good”)cholesterol, and about the only food with negative calories! The celery! Im just writing out the concepts, find out why yourself! Or ask the people who went! =D

Then we had an activity where we were all given something like this:

Regret not going right…lols. Anyway, we could choose to keep what we were given, or do a one to one swap among ourselves, where we could exchange something we don’t like for something we like. And at the end, the calorie values were given and we could actually measure how much we would have gotten. Mr Lim told us that, the amount of calories given at the start was actually what is required in a meal, about 600+ calories, but we wont feel full even after eating whats in the bag! Due to the nature of the food…hmm…think about it…Oh and yes, we got to keep the food. =P haha.

Ok so after that we sort of had an empty slot, so we went out to lunch together at Parkway Parade. It was quite fun going all the way there to eat, at least something different from the usual J8. Hm..ok maybe not, cos we still ate at a restaurant J8 has in the end… Well, after lunch some people had a change in plans…

Anyway, we* went back to VJC and had our second workshop titled: Going Bananas!- The Chemistry of Flavours. We learnt that flavor is actually a combination of taste, sensation and colour transmitted by receptors in the taste buds. And esters are a key component of the aromas of fruits (carry the bulk of the signals). Esters tend to have distinctive, generally pleasant odours, and are made from the reaction between carboxylic acids and alcohols. Flavours are usually created using a complex mixture of esters, and food manufacturers use them to make artificial flavouring.

We learnt 2 methods of synthesizing esters. Method 1 is simpler to understand: Condensation reaction of alcohol with carboxylic acid. The 2 chemicals we used are Methanol and Butanoic Acid, and we also needed to use c. sulfuric acid as catalyst, and heat it over a boiling water bath. Cant heat it over a naked flame, as alcohol is flammable. We got a smell closest to that from an apple from this experiment! Ok, fine we couldn’t really tell that well…(remember a flavor is made up of a combination of esters?) But still we had to learn how to draw the structure of the methanol and butanoic acid, and how they eventually formed the ester with the apple smell, and of course water, being a condensation reaction. The very nice teacher’s assistant taught us this! (something like Xin Yan, Yen San or Zhao Yuan…haha) So we had to know how to identify an ester. It’s a C with one single C-O bond and one double C=O bond, so it’s like O-C=O. That’s an ester.

As for Method 2, the reaction of alcohol with ethanoic anhydride, it was basically similar steps in doing it, but adding different stuff. We added alcohols such as: Octan-1-ol, Propan-1-ol or 3-methyl-1-butanol, to an acid derivative, Ethanoic Anhydride. Think its because the acid derivative is more reactive… So, from these, we got the smells of orange, pear and bananas!! (respectively) Again, these smells aren’t that obvious, except for the banana, which most of us are able to tell because it has a more distinct smell. Really nice! Haha. After that, this time, they only showed us the chemical formulas for the substances, and wanted us to draw out the structures of the esters that would form as a result. Slightly difficult to understand at the start, but simple once you get the hang of it, haha. Its quite interesting how they are able to tell the information of the substance from its name…like the prefixes: Met means 1 C, Eth means 2 Cs, Prop is 3 Cs, But is 4Cs, and Hep is 5Cs. (a lot of Singaporeans like Hep? Haha!) The teacher said that we are going to learn this in organic chemistry! And, we have to remember up to 10 Cs for our A levels…yea so learn 5 first lor… and then also if the name ends with –ol then its an alcohol, with an OH functional group…yea this sort of thing.

We were also supposed to do it in something called the reflux setup, which actually just means heating with an attached condenser which helps to condense the vapours which evaporated back into liquid form for heating, as the organic compounds are very volatile.

This second workshop has a lot more new content for us, still the level pitched was okay, not too difficult or easy, so its understandable la. We were a bit overwhelmed at first, but after a while, with some help from the assistants, we were good to go, haha. And its quite fun to get to conduct the experiment yourself, and smell the fruit flavouring you created!

Overall, I enjoyed both the workshops very much! And we had quite a fun time engaging in the activities while having learning chem! These workshops have given me a chance to get to see more of the uses and applications of chemistry! =)

2:36 AM

IRAS!!

What can I say? Told you it wouldnt be so bad... Tax is a really interesting subject...haha! =)