Poetry Appreciation

I felt that the lessons in term 3 were very useful. It helps me to appreciate the art of poetry and help me understand what was the poet thinking when he wrote the poem. Before term 3, I never thought of analysing a poem as it was quite boring and does no good to people who are not interested and I felt it was not a must to know how to analyse a poem. However, after Mr Lundberg have explained how it was to analyse a poem, I began to find it very interesting and fun. The reason is that some of the poems are very interesting in content and the poet's language is very good, enabling me to get higher marks in summary writing and literature test, thus increasing my overall english marks. It is very fascinating to see how the poet managed to squeeze a whole scene into just a few stanzas. If it was me, I would have taken 2 whole pages talking about a certain scene with bad language. I also learnt that there is quite a few different type of poems and analysing a poem can be extremely complicated. There is a total of 10 steps to analyse a poem that is maybe not even more than 100 words. This shows that the poets are extremely skilled at describing things using as little words as possible.

Haikus by Basho

Ancient pond
Frog leaps
Splash!

Waterjar cracks -
I lie awake
This icy night.

Lightening -
Heron's cry
Stabs the darkness

Sick on a journey -
Over parched fields
Dreams wander on.


Analysis of Basho's Haikus:

I think that unlike other haikus, the haikus written by Basho actually made sense. His haikus describe the nature and he did it with a lot of descriptive phrases like "Stabs the darkness". However, some of Basho's works are not following the 5-7-5 format of haikus. I might want to think that this is because Basho wants to make his haikus more unique than others. Also, in Basho's haikus, the second line of each haiku usually describes a living thing and the last line of each haiku describes the actions of the living things. I think that this format of writing allow the readers to understand the haiku better. Even though I think that haiku can be written well by everybody, I think that the quality between professionals like Basho and amateurs like us is still very different. Professionals can think of better descriptive phrases while most amateurs like us are limited to the few words we usually use. This will make our haikus much worse. So I think that if you want to improve on Haiku skills, we can read the haikus from professionals.

Poem: Sounds

I heard the sheep bleating beyond the hill.
I heard the sparrow chirping on the trees.
I heard the dogs barking at a stranger.
I heard the horses neighing on the field.
I heard the bulls mooing behind the fence.
I heard the bees buzzing in front of the flowers.
I heard the frogs croaking on a lotus.
I heard the mice squeaking in its hole.
I heard the roosters crowing in the morning.
I heard the turkeys booming to each other.
I heard the pigeons singing gracefully.
I heard the ducks quacking in the pond.
I heard the pigs grunting in the mud.
I heard the cats meowing in its warm basket.
I heard the sound of animals, in a farm.

Learning reflections

I think that Mr Lundberg is a very effective teacher compared to other inexperienced teachers who doesn't know what they are teaching at all. Mr Lundberg's teaching style might not work with others, but I felt that my english have improved drastically since coming to Secondary One. I think that Mr Lundberg knows what he is teaching, especially with summary writing. For summary writing, I clearly understood what he wanted to say and the format of the summary writing in a very short period of time. Even though I am still weak at finding out the points needed, I felt that my language have improved. His talk on literature was also very effective. He gave us many examples of how we should write and let us try on our own. I feel that my english literature test marks are much higher than my expectations, and much of the credit goes to Mr Lundberg. Another effective way of teaching is actually the "Pass the Ball" method which allows everyone to have a chance to participate in class discussions and answer questions. I was not able to speak confidently in term 1 and 2 because I felt that if I spoke, the answer might be incorrect. This method help me to gain the confidence to speak up and allow me to understand that answering wrong is okay. In conclusion, I think that Mr Lundberg have been a very good LA teacher and I have learnt a lot from him.

e learning term 3 week 5

Poem: Walking Away by Cecil Day Lewis

Answers:
(a) The poet is speaking.
(b) He is referring to a particular person.
(c) He is trying to unleash his sadness
(d) He is also trying to unleash his sadness.
(e) The poet wants the audience to read this poem more clearly and to show that he is sad and is serious.
(f) This help me to find the answers to the questions.

Analysis:
The poet wanted the audience to not to follow his path. He also wants his friends to know how sad he was. He wanted the readers to treasure the relationship between friends, not like himself. The poet also wants to inform the audience that he suffered many setbacks. The poet, who was once a communist, thought setbacks are encouraging. Lastly, he is trying to tell his friend how sad he was by losing him as a friend. He treasured the relationship with his friend, and is sad at losing such a wonderful friend.

My favourite Poem( e learning)

Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein

There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.

1) Figurative language is not used in this poem. The poet did not describe the the things, but rather illustrate it from what he saw.
2) I like this poem as the poet writes very well about his walk on a street. He illustrated the whole event extremely well and elaborated well enough to let everyone get the idea of what he saw and what he did. I like illustrating more than figurative language as I like to imagine what things like from writings and something like that. I feel that the poet was being extremely careful as he writes about such a small thing that no one will take notice of. That is very unique. Shel Silverstein have always been one of my favourite poets because of his strong description about things. I hope that my poems can be at least half as good as Shel's.

Television show review

Top Gear is a show that everyone that knows what is a Bugatti Veyron knows. Even if they don't they should know what is The Stig or Jeremy Clarkson. I know this isn't going to be perfect, but I am reviewing this excellent and hilarious show.
First of all, the presenters: Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, James May and The Stig. A pretty good lineup, I must say. A typical Top gear show would be segments of challenges, cool walls, car reviews, news and stars driving reasonably priced cars. Occasionally, there would be a special episode, when the whole thing is made up of one big chunk of challenge. When I mean reviews and news, I didn't mean anything like the normal ones at all. In the reviews, it is basically one of the presenters driving a car, usually a supercar round the test track and the Stig will set a time in it. The news is basically the three presenters defaming cars like Morris Marina.
The challenges are the best part of the show. The challenges are almost all the time extremely hard to attempt. Past challenges included "Buy a car for $100" and "Make an Avantine go faster then a Evo 8". In most of the challenges, Jeremy Clarkson will either have the best or the worst car and made the stupidest decisions. It is his shrewdness that made him winner for several times. The usual flow of a cheap car challenge is: Speed test by the stig, Reliability test, Fuel Economy and a unique test.
What is one of the hilarious thing about Top Gear is that all three of the presenters hate Morris Marina, a British car. They even dropped pianos on two Morris Marinas in seperate occasions.
As you have read, I give a very high credit to Top Gear's hilarious style. If you have nothing to do on Wednesday nights, tune in to BBC Knowledge and watch it. Trust me, you will be addicted to it.

Why can't everyone go in cars instead of planes like Jeremy Clarkson?

We all heard of the recent Icelandic volcano explosion and how chaotic it is on in the sky. But how, in the hell that they got stuck? There were many alternatives, and one of them is by driving. It has already been proved by Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May that flying in a plane from Milan to London in a boeing 737 isn't as fast as going in a Bugatti Veyron, and a plane ticket cost a lot more than tons of fuel. You may argue that the Veyron is the fastest car in the planet, but it is still a car. I bet that a G-Wiz will not be more than 5 hours behind the Veyron, that is that the G-Wiz made it to London.
The news all said that passengers were stuck all over Europe and for god's sake, they are nonsensical. Take F1 as an example. Most of the team got stuck in Shanghai. But those brittering idiots did not take a more convinient route: Fly to Russia, then drive a Scania all the way to England! Instead, they waited until the ban was lifted! Then, there is MotoGP, fancy postponing the Japan race because of the plane issues. Oh for crying out loud, they could have just flew from Turkey or UAE!
People who got stuck in the Changhi Airport should just fly to somewhere like Istanbul or Moscow then take a taxi back!

A book that everyone who knows how to read must read

I would like to introduce a book, called "The world according to Clarkson" by of course, the ever funny Jeremy Clarkson. Many people know that he had a show in BBC called Top Gear which he talk about cars with James May and Richard Hammond, but don't actually know that he writes books. That is no surprise though, but what is surprising is that he writes such good books that I was engrossed with a book for the first time.
The book, is pretty retarded. Clarkson talk about every single thing, from Range Rovers to why science is bad to our healths. The segment I like most is actually when he talk about toothbrushes, stating that his wife spends 60% of the house GDP and 40% of her time doing things related about the teeth. Clarkson was pretty funny in his phrasings in the words he use, I mean how hard can it be for such a funny man to talk about things that are not funny and turning them into funny things? Like Clarkson style, he scolds a bit of vulgur in the book, but thakfully it is sensored. So, the verdict is, if you want something funny, buy a Jeremy Clarkson. If you have not enough money, buy a"World according to Clarkson".

F1 future stars

There may be many failures in GP2, but some of them are lucky and got a F1 drive, like Karun Chandhok and Nicolas Kiesa, who drove for Minardi for 1 season. There are also good drivers but could not perform in the feeder series but shone in F1, like Damon Hill and Felipe Massa. Some don't have experience at all, but they got F1 drives because of sponsership money like Giovanna Amati and Kimi Raikkonen. Some good drivers failed because they do not have sponsership, like Bjorn Widhelm and Vincenzo Sospiri. So now lets look at some other young drivers who are getting a F1 drive.
The most possible ones are Davide Valsecchi and Pastor Maldonaldo, both driving for isport and Barwa Addax respectively in GP2. Maldonado was close to signing with Renault, but it opted for Vitaly Petrov in the last minute. Valsecchi's reputation have grown much over the last few months. having won the GP2 Asia series. The other possibilities are Ho Pin Tung of DAMS and Alvaro Parente who last drove for Ocean Racing. Tung is linked strongly with Renault because of sponsership. The other choices are Sebestian Loeb and Valentino Rossi, WRC and MotoGP legends who were linked with Red Bull and Ferrari for almost three years. Don't think they will succeed though. Come on, not everyone is Kimi Raikkonen or John Surtees.
Jumping series are not a good idea, as Jaime Alguersuari and Martin Brundle would demonstrate. Both their careers are not as good as Vitaly Petrov and Ayrton Senna, who they thrashed in Formula three.

Journal of Hari(intrapersonal)

Dear diary,
Today have been a pretty wonderful day for me. I have been on a journey to Bombay all this day. Now, I am nearer to it than ever-I am in Rewas. The past few months have been too much for me. Old Biju's ship might have been built by now, but I certainly don't care about it. All I want is to prevent the stupid government to build factorys on Thul's land. They certainly will be importing those city workers and I will only get a job of a cleaner who earns a measly sum of money. Who wants them? I would rather work for Biju-if he wants me to.
So here I am in Rewas, waiting for the ship to take me to Bombay. I wonder how Lila was doing with that stupid father. Do they have the cash? I am worried. But, there is no turning back. Only me can help my family escape poverty and protect our lands. I shall return in PRIDE.
Love,
Hari

chapati, roti prata, jalebi and you tiao(Naturalist)

First, chapati and roti prata. The chapati is found in India, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya. While Roti Prata is mainly found in Singapore and Malaysia. The definations: Roti Prata evolved from the some kind of pancake from India and Parkistan. Roti means"bread" and prata means"flat". So it is basically flat bread. Chapati is just a piece of bread made out of wheat. The way it is consumed: Roti Prata is consumed popularly with toppings like cheese, curry and tuna. Chapati is often consumed with butter, if not, plain. Recipe for chapati: All you need is: 2 cups of wholewheat flour, water, alt, 2 tablespoons of cooking oil.
Here's how:
1)organise the equipments
2)Add water
3)Add oil
4)leave the dough to rest for 10-15 mins.
5)divide the dough into equal balls.
6)lightly coat one ball in dry flour.
7)flatten it
8)roll with circular motion
9)finish rolling
10)start cooking
11)first flip
12)flip again
13)press gently
14)Done!

Next, jalebi and you tiao. The jalebi are some kind of fried sweets. So, they are sweet. While you tiao is also a stick, but it is lightly salted and not sweet. The jalebi is eaten in Pakistan and India, while you tiao is widely eaten in China, but it is also eaten all over the world as a breakfast by chinese. The you tiao is most of the time eaten with congee or soy milk while jalebi is eaten on its own. Even though they have similar colours, the colour of jalebi is of a darker orange than you tiao.

Ingridients for jalebi:

2 cups of all purpose flour

11/2 tablespoons of graine semolina or rice flour

1/4 tablespoons of baking powder

2 tablespoons of yogurt

11/4 cups of WARM water

1/2 tablespoons of saffron threads

3 cups of sugar

1/2 tablespoons of green cardamom seed powder

11/2 tablesppons of rose powder

ghee or vegetable oil

Steps:

1)Mix the flour, semilona powder baking poder, yogurt and 3/4 cups of water in a bowl

2)Add remaining water and 1/8 spoon of saffron powder

3)Wait for 2 hours for it to ferment

4)Whisk thoroughly

5)Prepare syrup by dissolving sugar. Just before the syrup is ready add saffron and cardamom powder

6)Heat oil

7)Deep fry it until they are crispy

8)Drain them in the kitchen paper and immerse in syrup

9)Leave them for 4-5 min to drain the syrup

10)Take them out of syrup and serve hot

Interview with Hari(Linguistic)

Me: How are you, Hari?
Hari: I am fine. The situation is very bad at home. Mom is still sick, I could not get a job and dad is still drinking every night.
Me:How are you going to cope with it?
Hari: I am thinking that if I could not get a job here, I may go to Bombay. The factory is still not ready yet. There may be more jobs in Bombay.
Me: What about your sisters and mother at home?
Hari: I will send money to them every week and Im am sure my sisters will take care of ma.
Me: Have you decided really to go to Bombay?
Hari: I am just considering. But the farmers in Alibagh said that they are conducting a strike in Bombay, maybe I will join them.
Me: That would be dangerous.
Hari: No choice, this is for my family's good. I will do anything to make life easier.
Me: So what will you do?
Hari: I don't know. Maybe I will find Mr de Silva...
Me: Good luck!
Hari: Thanks

F1 review up to Malaysian GP

I know this got nothing to do with class, but I would just like to write about F1. Let me review the cars. Red Bull have the fastest car but is it so horrifyingly unreliable. Mercedes is not up to the standard yet. Ferrari has the complete package and Mclaren have a car which sucks at qualifying but is good in races. Force India proves to be best of the rest and Williams are not far behind. The new Renault is doing wonders in the hands of Robert Kubica but the car is rubbish. Toro Rosso and Sauber are not quite on the pace yet and Ferrari engines have not been proven to be reliable. For the new teams, Lotus is reliable and the fastest out of the three. Virgin is constantly on the pace of Lotus while Hispania certainly improved and is much more reliable.
For the drivers, Alonso outpacing Massa at Ferrari, Vettel so much better than Webber at RBR and Rosberg proving the better one than Schumacher in Mercedes. While in Mclaren, things are quite even. Force India is quite weird actually. Sutil always outpaces Liuzzi in qualifying but can't get to grips in the race. Barrichello, Kubica and Glock are humilating Hulkenburg, Petrov and Di Grassi in Williams, Renault and Virgin respectively and Lotus and Hispania remains even, even though Trulli and Chandhok are starting to gain upper hand.
The new season was certainly boring if not because of the rain in qualifying in Malaysia messed up the grid and the leading drivers have to climb up the positions in order to score points. Surely, this is not going to be one of the worse seasons right?

Term 1 Hwa Chong review

I have been in Hwa Chong Institution for the past term and I have learned a lot of new things. But for now, I would like to review the past term. From the day I stepped into Hwa Chong, I knew that there were something different between the school and other schools in Singapore. First of all, Hwa Chong have a very big campus. If I were to walk from gate2 all the way to boarding school, it might take me 10 minutes or more. Not many schools are able to do that.
Secondly, there are two canteens, one in the college section and one in the high school section. There is also a poolside cafe in the swimming pool and I heard there is an ice cream stall somewhere in the school. The school's facilities includes swimming pool, field, gymnasium, table tennis room and more.
For academic, I am pretty satisfied with my results. The results I have achieved are Maths:A1, Chinese:A1, Science:A2. I hope to do better from term 2 onwards. I would like to ask my friends from primary six this year to select HCI if they can, as Hwa Chong is one of the only schools that have a lot of computer labs and auditoriums.etc.

Continuation of the story

It was up to the young man to save his life. Will he or will he not follow the princess' instructions and marry the girl behind the right door? As the young man slowly dragged his feet and walked towards the right door, he thought of all the happy moments that he and the princess spent together. "I cannot do this." the young man said, " I would rather die than to marry a stranger!"
With a brave look on his face, the young man turned towards the left door, the deadly one. "No!" the princess shouted. " The tiger is inside the left door!"
The reaction of the king was somehow the entirely opposite of his daughter. As the young man was approaching the door, the king laughed eviliy, thinking that the threat will be gone forrever.
The young man grabbed the handle of the door and looked at the princess one last time. The princess, was crying a lake of tears and did not see the young man looking at him. "Goodbye, my love." the prince whispered. Then, he opened the path to darkness...
Out of the door pounced a ferocious looking tiger who have not eaten anything for three days. The young man closed his eyes, enjoying what might be his final moments of his life."Grrr!!!" roared the tiger. Even hearing the roaring of the tiger freaked everyone in the arena out. The tiger pounced at the young man. Suddenly, it stopped. "What happened?" asked the king furiously. As the young man opened his eyes slowly, he saw the tiger standing in front of him, licking his face in a familiar manner. " Bungo, is that you?" the young man asked.
After seeing the familiar scar of the tiger, he regconised it to be Bungo, the tiger cub that he raised some time ago when he was a kid. The princess was very relieved. She jumped up and down the seat like a mad woman, shouting" He is saved! " The king was so surprised by the unexpected turn of events that his false teeth dropped out of his mouth and finally agreed the marraige of the two of them. Bungo, well, it had became the royal pet for the family!

Compulsory blog prompt 5 ( Linguistic )

a) AVENGING MARY
Mary Maloney, the wife of Patrick Maloney, is suspected of murdering her husband. Mary, who is currently having a baby, is suspected with her husband's murder, which happened last night. Mr Patrick Maloney was found dead when the police arrived.
According to the police officers and detectives involved in the case, Mrs Maloney's actions were abnormal that night. This led to the police believing that it was Mary who killed Patrick. The weapon, which the police suspected to be a club, was not found at the scene of crime. The police, however, believe that the crminal have taken the weapon with him. However, they definately cannot count Mary out. According to Patrick's companions, Patrick have been hanging out with another woman lately. It was suspected that the reason for the murder was that Mary could not accept the fact that Patrick wanted a divorce.
The truth, however, is not out yet. Before the truth is out, everything is just a wild guess.

chinese new year

Chinese New Year have been a celebrated festival in my family, this year was no different. Even though all my relatives were in China, there were still my mother's friends to visit. Each year, I get alot of ang paos, this year was no different. When I counted my money, I got 400 plus dollars! Hopefully, I will be allowed to keep the money:)
The highlight of the whole period was the reuinon"lunch". Even though in tradition, we usually have a reuinon dinner. But since we were visiting someone in the evening, we had no choice but to have it in the afternoon.
During the period, I watched a couple of chinese movies shown on the television. I don't even understand some! The other interesting thing that I managed to watch the annual countdown party in China aired in CCTV4. There were comedys, dances, songs and even magic performances put up by the most well-known artists from China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.
Even though I don't really enjoy the whole period, I did enjoy some of it. I get to do whatever I want when my parents were busy. I can't wait for next year!

Diary from Mary Maloney's point of view

Dear Diary,
It have been a bad day for me today. Well, you could not blame me for killing Patrick. He DESERVED it! I mean, who wants your husband to divorce with you when you are having a child. My trick was quite good in certain sense that the inspector did not sense much while eating the meat I used to kill Patrick. They should not find out the truth. For me and my baby's sake, this secret should be well kept.
I was so relieved when the inspector and all his guys left late in the night. They should have not wasted their time on investigating something that the could not solve because I would not allow that to happen in a billion years. I would make it the most well kept secret in the history of man kind. They could not possibly charge me with murder just because of fingerprints. They couldn't even suspect me for that. After all, I live in the house.
They could not even suspect me for a single thing like me behaving badly-I could just tell them it is normal during pregnancy. Now the weapon is inside the stomach of those inspectors, I can now finally get a good night sleep.
Even I regretted a little when I killed Patrick, I could not surrender myself to the police at least until the baby grows big enough to look after himself. He will not live in poverty.

Quiz

The quiz I did today was quite fun. I have never actually thought that I would be able to remember the things that I did before. The quiz enables me to recap on what I did in the past and how I did to prepare for my exams. Even though, I could not actually remember some of my past related to the quiz, I was able to remember most of it and answer the questions.
The quiz have questions like what music do you like and so on. I think that from the quiz, I found out that I am word smart. I seriously think that they are correct. I like to write and remember in the same time. Like when I did my spelling revision, I write the same words over and over again so that I could get full marks, which I always do. If I were to choose again, I would like to do this kind of learning as well as others.
I would like to thak Mr Lundberg for informing me about the quiz as if not, I would not been able to know what kind of learning is more suitable for me. The quiz was quite interesting. Are there more of the kind of quizzes, I hope there is and I can do them.