The End of IP and the Last Man

If you are not feeling lost; if you are not missing having a class room of your own; if you are not envious of some other lucky people taking your beautifully decoracted previous classroom; if you are not unhappy about having no more free lockers; if you are not jealous of people using your clean previous lockers while you have to pay for an old dirty one… Then it is time to wake up.

The IP for you has ended for all but one last man (sorry if this sounds rude, but I am not looking down on the person who got retained). I am not denying that IP is a “4 year” programme. But this is actually a misnomer. I think it should be called a “2+2 year” programme. The first “2″ of the “2+2 year” programme has ended, while the second, more less prefered (pun intented), “2″ has just begun, and the time of awakening is here.

The End of IP will be as boring as the End of History, as according to what Francis Fukuyama described in his book “The End of History and the Last Man”. Only this time, there is no chance for this boringness to subside; unlike the boringness described in “The End of History and the Last Man” which might be broken by people who find the end of history too boring, the boringness of The End of IP stays permanent. This is not to say that we will never be happy again, but that we might never be able to be as happy as before. The happy dreams are over, wake up to face reality.

2007 markes the The End of IP (except for the Last Man) for us guinea pigs (erm, I mean pioneers) of the year 2005/2006… ….

ONE MILLION DOLLARS

1 million dollars is a LOT of money. Even though it is not 1 million USD, but in SGD, it is more than enough for almost anyone. There are few competitions in the world that gives you 1 million dollars, the only one other that I know is “Who wants to be a millionaire”. But then, few ever won that 1 million dollars did they? Now, I shall introduce you to a competition that will GUARENTEE you 1 million dollars (if you win). As long as you get the first prize (+ fulfill some simple criteria), you get 1 million dollars. Are you ready for the million dollar challenge?

Try TechX Challenge:
http://www.dsta.gov.sg/TechXChallenge/index.asp

1 million dollars for designing a single autonomous robot that can do things like walk over areas with obstacles while not banging into them intentionally, climb staircases, take lifts (you need some kind of mechanism to press the buttoms), use a water pistol, aim the water pistol and use the correct amount of force so that you can shoot down a target… …A from now (23rd January, 2007) to August next year (August 2008). Thats about 20 months, for 1 million dollars, it is certainly worth it: thats 50 000 a month!

Recommendations:
1) Dont bother taking part if you are not an enginner (or rather, if your team doesnt have one) [but prove me wrong if you can, that will be quite impressive]
2) Get that physics/robotics boy genius from Taiwan (anyone knows his name)?
3) (For teachers) Form a enginner-turn-teachers team!
4) (For students) Look around and see if any of your friend’s parents are enginners…
5) (For the money seekers) Join ALL the teams… you are join as many teams as you want…

One million dollars… … I wonder who will get it…

Rain in our school

I love rainy weather, because it is cool and colours of our natural (or not so natural) surroundings seem to take on a more saturated colour. Or it might be that it is rare. But then I do not really like to walk about in school when there is rain. The corridors are commonly flooded, one example being the walkway at the second floor linking the T2X class rooms to the VIP learning hub (“VIP” is included in the proper terminology, which refers to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_Programme ). The walkway linking the main block to the canteen is only 5-10 person in width and will definately be wet all over if rain is heavy. And I just realized today that there are holes in the roofs of the canteen.

So where can we get money to repair this problems, which have been here for as long as (I think) I have been in VJC. My premise is: “Money spent on building the students’ lounge should be spent on repairs”. The students lounge is actually a misnomer, because it does not really allow all students to use it, but only students who are willing to pay (or somehow know a friend that is willing to pay for him/her). I wouldn’t talk about how the students lounge is unfair to poor students by require students to pay before using it when it is advertised as lounge for all students. But, I believe that the utility of the school as a whole will increase if the money had been spent on repairs instead. The main reason is that all students would be affected by flooding (assuming they do pass through these places, which I believe is a valid assumption that it difficult to discuss in such a small section as such) but only those that are willing to pay will benefit from the students lounge (which I belive is few, which is yet another assumption that I would not back up due to constrains). Maybe when I have more time, I will spend more time on a lengthy discussion on why the school should not have spent the money on the students lounge but spend it on repairs instead. But for now, my premise stays as such.

How friendly are you?

Society always strive to be more friendly, and what I mean by “friendly” here refers to things like “handicap-friendly” or “environmentally-friendly”. I think it is about time to coin a new terminology: “IP-friendly” (no… IP does not stand for Internet Protocol here, but Integrated Programme).

When we think of “handicap-friendly”, we think of ramps in places where there are steps and lifts where there are staircase; when we think of “environmentally-friendly”, we think of the amount of pollution the product you purchased generated or how much greenhouse gases were given off when manufacturing this product; when we think of “IP-friendly”, I think we should link our thoughts to application forms.

A lot of application forms are not “IP-friendly”, or we can coin a second term, “IP-unfriendly”. For example, those demanding your L1R5 aggregate for O Levels, or those asking you for your secondary school. I think “IP-friendly”ness can be generally rouped into 3 levels:

Hostile: Forms are designed for O level students only
Stranger: Forms that allow you to identify yourself as an IP student (or not) easily, but have certain fields that are vague (for example, asking for your secondary school)
Friendly: Forms that are clear, and it is obviously designed with IP students in mind (for example, when asking for your secondary school, there would be a small line that informs students to put which junior college they are in if they are from the IP)

Now I think most of the forms are in the realm of “Hostile” and “Stranger”… Lets hope as the years go on, more changes will be made, and more forms would be IP-friendly.

Example of a hostile form:

The Orientation Challenge

I now challenge you to The Orientation Challenge!

Scenario:
1) You are member of the school prefectorial board/ student councilor/student leader
2) You are incharge of distributing thousands of files
3) The files are to be distributed in your school’s orientation
4) The files are paid for the students going for orientation.
5) Every student going for orientation has to go through registration
6) Logically speaking, to ensure that everyone gets a file, one method is that you pass them at the point of registeration
7) For some obsure reason, you are unable to distribute files to 30 students of a certain class X becauase of the sheer chaos that came out of distributing thousands of files (understandably)
8 ) The students of class X remind you
9) There are 3 days of orientation
10) During orientation, there are many times where everyone is in the school hall,
11) During orientation, if you make an announcement in the hall (when everyone is in the hall; condition 10), you will definately reach out to all students in orientation (assuming they hear)
12) During orientation, when everyone is in the hall (condition 10), people from class X are spreaded out all over the place,

Challenge: How are you going to pass the 30 files to 30 students, when they are all in the hall, but all spreaded out evenly (more of less).

Hint: Making an announcement when everyone is in the hall, will ensure that every student will hear (assuming they can hear you and not caught up talking)

Hint hint: People will stop talking if you make an announcement (of course, you have to demand that they stop talking before you do the announcement)

Hint hint hint: People will stop talking if you demand them to do so before the announcement

I acknowledge that this is indeed a difficult challenge, and that some ordinary human beings might not be able to do it… So, I shall give you some assistance!

Assistance 1: At least one person from class X will remind you of the files daily, for everyday in the 3 days of orientation (condition 9)

Assistance 2: You can make an announcement

Assistance 3: The 30 files are tucked away safely in the school prefectorial board/ student councilor/student leader room (remember, you are a member of the school prefectorial board/ student councilor/student leader)

Hint hint hint hint: You know someone who has the keys to the room

Hint hint hint hint hint: The keys will open the door to the room and give you access to the files

Hint hint hint hint hint hint: If the files are too heavy, students from class X do not mind going down to help carry the files

Important hint: Telling one or two students to go inform the rest of the class to wait for you till end of orientation is impossible because of condition 11

More important hint: After orientation, some people in class X are going off very soon such that you will never be able to gather all the students of class X if you want them to meet after orientation

Most important hint: DONT FORGET ITS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY IN THE FIRST PLACE TO GIVE STUDENTS FROM CLASS X THESE FILES; AND EVEN THOUGH YOU HAVE FAILED IN DOING SO IN THE FIRST DAY, ALL THE STUDENTS OF CLASS X WERE VERY FORGIVING. (Dont take advantage of such forgiveness please)

Alright, thats the challenge, dont worry if you fail to think of a solution… because in VJC, even the students concillors are unable to meet up to such a difficult challenge.

Update: The files were finally given out after 8 days!