Farmville

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Now that I wrote about Facebook, can games on it be far behind?

When I first got on Facebook, I was not interested in any of the games there. Then after I started getting heaps of invites to games, I started with playing Farmville. This game was the first one I played and am still playing. I also played other such games, but lost interest in it soon.

Farmville, for those who probably live under a rock is a real-time simulation game by Zynga where you manage a virtual farm by plowing, seeding and harvesting crops, animals and trees. This is a very popular game with over 77 million people playing the game across the world every month!

I’m hooked to the game like I said before and although I play it everyday, am I addicted? Well I don’t know, but hope not!!

Facebook

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I came into Facebook quite late – sometime in early 2009 if I remember correctly. I was pretty much against it and was dragged into it kicking and screaming! As you may know, I am an intensely private person, so the idea of having my entire life played put for the world to see seems to be very ugh to me!

Don’t take this as an anti-Facebook rant – far from it. Once I discovered Facebook and what it can do, I was hooked! I reconnected with classmates and friends whom I had probably seen  on the day we collected our class X results, around 20 years back and it was great to be a part of their lives, albeit through Facebook. Unlike some people, I am very discerning about whom I ‘friend’. I need to know who this person is and also check for mutual friends before I ‘accept’ their friends request. Sometimes without a photo, I have rejected requests only to find out later that I do know them after all – and then go and give them a friend request!

But seriously how many friends are you really in touch on Facebook? I would say there are about less than 10 that I regularly send messages or write on walls. There would be another 20 odd with whom I have sporadic conversations. The rest are either work related friends (and I use the term very loosely here) with whom there would be interactions perhaps a couple of times a year or school/college/previous workplace friends who’ve friended me and whom I’ve accepted as a friend just because I know them. Other than an initial chat when we first reconnected, there’s nothing to talk!

So how many ‘friends’ do you have on Facebook and to how many so you regularly and really talk to?

Here’s a real funny video about what would happen if Facebook happened in real life!

Primary 2 – Term 1 – Week 2

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Ok, I had written this yesterday and tried uploading it through my phone, but it didn’t go through! Now the WordPress app is giving me grief – guess I’ll have to delete it and reinstall it….

Week 2 was nothing to write about. The children are just settling down and getting to the business of studying. They had their first spelling test last week and both D&P got 9/10. Sigh! I expected perfect scores from both as they knew all the spellings!!

D has a bad cough today which was diagnosed as bronchitis by the doctor. She’s on a two day medical leave and a week off from PE. She just didnt want to stay at home today and had to be persuaded to stay back as the school would send her back home if she did go to school (that was my argument). We’ve decided to check again tonight to see if she can go back tomorrow. Since D was not going to school today, P also decided he was not going too! He argument was that there wont be anyone to sit with him in the bus coming back home!!

 

So what sign are you now??

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There’s a new sun sign in town and it’s name is Ophiuchus…

This article in MSNBC, says that over the last 2000 years since the time astrology came into being, the stars and their position relative to the sun on a particular day and time have shifted and now the traditional horoscope signs are off by almost a month! Also apparently the ancient Babylonians discarded the formation Opiuchus, because they wanted 12 star signs and not 13!

Also one 2006 study published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences used data from more than 15,000 people and found that there was no relationship between your date of birth and the personality you have. Actually I have proof of this at home – D&P are born 2 minutes apart, so according to astrology, this means that they should have very similiar, if not identical personalities, but they are so dissimilar!

Well according to astronomers, here are the new dates for the various sunsigns:

  • Capricorn: Jan. 20-Feb. 16.
  • Aquarius: Feb. 16-March 11.
  • Pisces: March 11-April 18.
  • Aries: April 18-May 13.
  • Taurus: May 13-June 21.
  • Gemini: June 21-July 20.
  • Cancer: July 20-Aug. 10.
  • Leo: Aug. 10-Sept. 16.
  • Virgo: Sept. 16-Oct. 30.
  • Libra: Oct. 30-Nov. 23.
  • Scorpio: Nov. 23-29.
  • Ophiuchus: Nov. 29-Dec. 17.
  • Sagittarius: Dec. 17-Jan. 20.

This means that I move from Virgo to Leo, D&P remain Virgo and S moves from Capricorn to Sagittarius.

Here’s a confession – I believe in all this astrology and read it online quite regularly. My take on this is that this is an emotional crutch for us – we want to know if things are going to get better for us and quite frankly, I turn to astrology mostly when I am unhappy with what is happening in my life. After all, who doesn’t want to know that tomorrow is going to be a better day!

A question to you – Are you in the sign you thought you were in or have you moved up/down? Also do you use believe in astrology and use it as a crutch or are you a non-believer? Drop in with your comments, I’d love to hear them….

School

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Today was a parents curriculum talk in D&P’s school. As their principal is fond of saying “this is a neighbourhood school, but not a neighbourhood school” To those who have no clue what I am talking about – neighbourhood schools refer to schools which are not nationally recognised schools – schools where the average child goes to. To that extent this is true – D&P’s school is none of those – they go to a regular school in the western part of Singapore, where most of the children come from within a 1 km radius. Most of the children are normal middle-class children. But a big difference is that this school is also part of the Future Schools of Singapore.

Future Schools@Singapore is a project by the Ministry of Education and the Infocomm Development Authority to build a more IT-savvy nation.  This will be done by having a small group of schools to lead the way in providing possible models for the seamless and pervasive integration of information and communication technologies (ICT) that include interactive and digital media (IDM) into the curriculum for engaged learning in schools.

D&P’s school – Beacon Primary is the first new primary school for the project. This is a new school – D&P’s cohort is the third cohort and the school just welcomed their fourth cohort last week. Once I heard about the school and the fact that it was literally on our doorstep, I was determined to get D&P in – I was a Parent Volunteer at the school for 2 years (that’s for another post). So far, I am liking what I see. This year, the school plans to take the MOE standard curriculum a bit further and enhance learning. Well we’ll see how that comes about.

I’ll leave you with a small anecdote. The P4s in the school have started using their own personal laptops. I did see some students with it last week and this was confirmed by D last week. She came to me and we had this conversation:

D: Mom, do you know that when I get to P4, I’ll have my very own computer

Me: Wow! That’s fantastic! You’ll be able to do so much with it.

D: Yes….I can use my own computer to play any games whenever I want….

Me: <Zapped>

We do not allow D&P unsupervised time on the laptop, which is also password secured so that they can’t use it without permission also not go to websites they are not allowed to .