Turning back time to year 1988 NDP

I have been walking through back in time and I came up with 1988 Singapore National Day Parade at Kallang our old National Stadium.

This very day is very special to me. In the year 1988, I was 15 years old then and in my Secondary 3 at Westlake Secondary School. This very year, our nation have plans to celebrate National Day with a topic of Flash Card. Few schools have been picked to participate in this event and my school was one of the selected ones. I remembered that we have to head there a few times to practice under the hot sun and having to seat there and hold our huge book of pages with colors. We have no idea at first that it was pages of pictures put together with everyone coorindinate to flip to the pages at the same time.

Picture by nas.gov.sg

This is how it works. We will all seated across where the VIP was to be seated. Above that area, there is a small sheltered house where the person in charge will flag out his flag. When we see the flag, we will flip the pages of our flash cards to the next page and the big picture would appear. We had lots of fun then and get to enjoy watching the event through a small peep hole made through the book that was given to us. We only got home that actual day almost midnite but we had lots of fun.

A good book that bring laughter for being a KIASU mother

I recently borrowed the above book by Monica Lim, The Good, The Bad and the PSLE from the library.

This is a very interesting and well written book by a local author. I don't normally read a lot of books written by local authors and that doesn't really mean I am bias. It is just that I noticed that not all local writers can write interesting topics that can keep a reader like me interested long enough to finish the whole book.

After reading this book, one can tell that you are not alone as being a Kiasu Mother. In today's generation, it is normal for any mothers who would want best for their child and to have the best for their child's future. This book mentions the trials of the author going through handling her own two children, one boy and one girl. One is smarter and the other is a bit handful.Read to understand how much a mother would stretch to give the best to her children.    

 

MOE allows school to decide, use of WhatsApp!

This is not new! With new technology of smartphones and all kinds of apps available to us these days, Secondary School are also recommending students to use WhatsApp for discussing school work with each other. What's more the app is FREE! However, you have to have a smartphone and data plan to go with it in order to be able to used the WhatsApp. This is not provided by the school. Funny! This can be really costly to parents. Smartphones these days don't come cheap. A second hand smartphone can cost you few hundred bucks. Not forgetting that you need to have data plans in order to get connected to WhatsApp. The cheapest data plan would cost about $30.00 but then it only have  100MB of local data. These can be used up pretty fast. An example of Youth Plan by Singtel

I find this impossible to accept! When I went online in search of approved MOE school platform, I came to realize that I have been outdated with this. Other parents have also raised this issue to MOE. Sad to realize that MOE replied that they allow school these days to decide on the platform to be used which means it is out of their hands and that is how WhatsApp come into picture. Read this replies from others who have raised to MOE about the above issue HERE

Like as if it is not stressful enough that things are getting more expensive and everybody is trying to keep a close eye on what is spent these days and school is adding expenses like this to parents. No wonder Singapore is getting so tensed up with tons of upset people.