It’s already nearing midnight as I type this, and it means it’s gonna be Sunday soon. And before long it’s gonna be Monday and that means schools starting again! Argh! I need a longer break to catch up on my work.

I’ve got a whole long list of work to be done….Let me list them down here based on the work that must really be done and those that I want to do….

Must Do List

1 – Do tutorials
a) Maths - Transformation (2nd Part)
b) Maths – Integration
c) Physic – Waves
d) Chemistry – Chemical Bonding II
e) Chemistry – Ionic Equilibrium (First Part)

2 – Understand lecture notes
a) Maths – Integration
b) Chemistry – Chemical Bonding II
c) Chemistry – Ionic Equilibrium
d) Physics – Gravitational Field

3 – Review previous tutorials
a) Maths – Curve Sketching
b) Chemistry – Chemical Bonding II

4 – REVIEW EXAM PAPERS (IMPORTANT)
*It’s been more than 1 week but I still have not looked at my mistakes!*    

Want To Do List

1 – Finish reading the book - Good to Great by Jim Collins
2 – Start collecting statistics, words of wisdoms and vocabulary for GP essay
3 – Finish reading 3 magazines that I have – The Spectator (borrowed from school library), .Net magazine - some computer techie magazine (borrowed from national library) and my new edition of Time magazine
4 – Finish up the PHP tutorial book that I borrowed from national library and master the PHP language
5 – Practise Economics essay

****

Haiz….Saturday is over and it’s gone for me. Morning had been spent building the float while the evening till night I went for Singapore’s National Day Parade (NDP) rehearsal at Marina Bay.

Before I go catch up on my beauty sleep, here’s an overview on my next few posts in the next few days.

1 – My experience at the NDP rehearsal
2 – My latest newspaper article! Yes, one of my writings appeared in The Straits Times on Friday….
3 – Review on Roomsdb.net courtesy of Advertlets.com
4 – Most like some update on my Class Birthday – It’s class 23/07 and the class birthday is this Monday..Lol….

I have a long list of work to be done tomorrow. I better go Zzzzzz now….I miss the time when I can get 8 hours of wonder sleep everyday….

This is an unusually long update from my previous post. As I checked on my previous post, it is dated 9th July while today is the 20th July. A good 11 days has passed by since my last day. Really sorry for the long delay.

I had been extremely busy in school (aka junior college) lately. I’m in a rush to complete my float for submission on August 4th. Ok, if you are wondering what that is, here’s a pix of the half completed float.

It’s basically some competition a group of friends and I signed up for early this year for SPARKS carnival this August 4th at NTU. The theme of the float is FuzAsia - ie Fusion Asia. And as you can see from the pix, we have the Petronas Twin Towers. The other structures are the Great Wall of China - on the ground, the Globe at the background representing Asia in a globalised world while the building on the middle and left is the half-completed Taj Mahal and Burj al-Arab.

We have less than 3 weeks to go and we have to complete the float, prepare a performance complete with music and costumes.

Long busy week….And FYI, for this week, I’ve not reached hostel early at all. The earliest I’ve reached hostel is during study time at 8.30pm while on one of the days I came back as late as 10.20pm. That’s one of the reasons why I’ve not been able to update my blog. Too busy in school, finishing urgent homework then hitting the bed straight after that.

I have been struggling to complete all my tutorials (aka homework)….There’s just simply many to do….And things that I learn are really getting harder by the day.

I’ve been so busy that up till now I still have not even had the time to review my exam papers. It’s all stacked up on my table waiting for me to find some time to look at my mistakes.

Anyway, if you are wondering how I fared for my exams? I would just describe it as not too good, nor too bad; just average.

Here’s the breakdown:

General Paper – 67% B
Physics H2 – 59% C
Chemistry H2 – 56% C
Mathematics H2 – 59% C
Economics H2 – 53% D

I did not fail any subjects. That’s one good thing to shout about. But I did not get any As either. And my core subjects – Physics, Chem, Maths brought me a C….

Still a long way to chasing the elusive A……

This book is my current reading material - Good to Great by Jim Collins. I bought it from a second-hand bookstore at Bras Basah for S$18.

I’m less than halfway through the book but I find it exceptionally insightful reading it. Anyway, if you are wondering what kind of book this is, it’s a business-management-leadership book. Basically it speaks about the qualities that cause the companies to transform from being good to great.

“Good is the enemy of Great”

That’s the first sentence of the book; a statement with maximum impact.

So far by reading the book I learned a few things that make me question myself.

1 – Good is never enough. I look back at myself and I’d realised that for a very long time I’ve settled for just being good. What must I do to transform myself to be great? Have I settled for the mediocrity notion?
2 – Disciplined people, disciplined thought and disciplined action. Am I a person with discipline in my thoughts and actions?
3 – Humility + Will = Level 5 Leadership – Humility. My parents always advised me to be humble, but up till this point I find it extremely hard to practise that. How?
4 – Good-to-great leaders don’t talk about themselves and are not I-centric - How? What is my real purpose in life? What am I really gunning for? I’m a big talker and one secret desire that I always have is to desire to brag. This correlates with number 3.
5 – “Good-to-great leaders never wanted to become larger-than-life heroes” – These Level 5 leaders don’t chase stardom. What am I up to? I always tell people do something for the right reasons. But am I practising what I preach?

I’d just realised, I’m very far away from being a Level 5 leader. What constitutes a Level 5 Leader? Level 5 leaders “build enduring greatness through a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will.”

Not being self-centred and being humble. Perhaps I gotta learn more through AJ’s servant leadership programme. And put into practise for real. Coz it won’t hurt being humble.

Credit for Bad Behaviour. If buying offsets can excuse excessive carbon use, why not other irresponsible acts?

This is a cool article that appeared in the latest edition of Time magazine (July 9, 2007, pg 17)

For most JC Economics students, you would most likely completed studying about Market Failure and the solutions to counter Market Failure….And one of the solutions to counter environmental problem is to have a tradable carbon permit scheme to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide.

Based on this tradable permit idea, the writer, Michael Kinsley wrote about a myriad of other applications of this concept in our life. Some sort of new capitalism I would say.

“The genius of carbon credits is that it opens up a whole new inventory of things that people can buy and sell. And there is no reason that the principle should be limited to environmentalism”

What sort of other applications can this be applied in? Already it’s complicated enough for the concept to work in the environment area….

“For example, how about a “bad parenting surcharge”. It would work like this.
Suppose you come home after a hard day of work, and there is your acne-ridden, foul-smelling brat of a son - if, indeed, he is you son, which is hard to believe - playing video games with his friends. Your living room is strewn with Dorito crumbs and other detritus that doesn’t bear close examining. Needless to say, the lawn has not been mowed as promised. How would you like to slug him? You know you shouldn’t. But what if by slugging him, you could actually reduce the total amount of child abuse in the world? Wouldn’t that be a good thing?

What’s needed us a market in child abuse credits. Somewhere in the world there is a parent who is slugging his kid every night. For a price, he would refrain for a night, or even two. By paying that parent not to slug his kid twice, you gain the right to slug you kid once.

It’s a win-win-win. You get to slug your id. This other father gets the money. The other guy’s kid is happy - he gets a night off from being slugged.”

Sounds too optimistic to be true…And for me, it’s an idea that is incredibly theoretical in nature and has absolutely no chance of seeing light in reality…

A market in child abuse credit? Laughable….And how will the system work? How will you know that the parents will be honest? There is absolutely no measuring or accountability system in place….

A creative idea, but a real theoretical one indeed…..What do you think?

Technorati Tags: carbon, Market Failure, bad parenting surcharge

I was surfing around the webbie and I can’t remember how I’d stumbled upon this website, but this is one of the coolest website that I’ve seen in a long time. It’s called DontClick.It

Cool name right? And as the name suggests, users can’t click on the website. All you can do is just hover you mouse over the link and you will be transported there - minus the clicking….

This is what will happen if you click anywhere on the page…

Will this new technology be a breakthrough technology? And will we be able to surf around websites without the need to click around some day in the future? Or will we see mouse without buttons to click?

I personally feel awkward surfing around that site without clicking at all…Perhaps clicking has been too ingrained into my habit…..

Technorati Tags: DontClick.It, click