So what sign are you now??

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Credit

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 .

 

Privacy Issues

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I started writing this blog as a form of self-expression. I really dont know if anyone other than me is even reading this blog. I haven’t even told my DH, parents, inlaws or friends that I blog. For me this is something personal. Which is why you will not see any pictures about me or my family on this blog. I also have not revealed the names of my DH, kids or even myself except for some basic facts and some clues that you will get about us if you read this blog regularly, which is pretty much noone.

Why did I do something like that when a picture is worth a thousand words? Well for one, I am an intensly private person and do not like strangers knowing about us. Singapore is an extremely tiny country/city and so information about us and pictures will be like a beacon to show who we are and where we live. Thus no pictures which could reveal details about us, but I do intend to share pictures which I have clicked.

 

Singapore Education

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The ‘O’ Level results were out yesterday and as usual most of the top scorers were foreigners! This is a lesson for us – when children who come from outside of Singapore not knowing much English can go from an F6 to an A1 in two years or less, then why can’t our children do the same? Are we mollycoddling our young ones? Here’s an article I just read while browsing WordPress which somehow relates to this issue. Most of the top scorers, especially the foreign students came from China and in two years stared acing subjects. I also know of the son of a friend of a friend who came to Singapore when he was in P3 (I think) and failed in all subjects in his first exam here. He then persevered (to the extent of reading dictionaries daily) and went on to become a top student in his school and after his Primary School Leaving Exams (PSLE), went to one of Singapore’s top secondary schools – Raffles Institution.

Everytime these results come out, I show them to D&P and in my heart, hope that they emulate these children. After all, which parent would not want their child to be academically brilliant, especially here in Singapore which is obsessed with paper qualifications and want to know which primary/secondary school you went to, even if you are the Prime Minister of the country!

The front page of The Straits Times has this picture. It showed a line of people queuing up for something in the dark. As a teaser the article asked readers to go to a specific page to know why these people were queuing up. The shocker – people were queuing up to get admission forms for a kindergarten! And the best part – the admissions were for their tiny tots for 2013!! Here’s the article from the Straits Times website. The article also has a picture with a baby who looks to be less than a year old. And it also mentions that this kindergarten was the alma mater of the Singapore Prime Minister and his children. So what does this tell us – even if you are the PM of the country – where you went for Kindergarten is important!

No wonder parents in Singapore get so hysterical when their children reach P6 and it’s time for the dreaded PSLE. My turn in the next four years – with two of them doing the PSLE, wonder what I will be doing (boink!)

Primary 2 – Term 1 – Week 1

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D&P are start their second week of school today. The first three days was mostly orientation for the P1s and so the P2s were also on some sort of restricted time-table. They were asked to bring with them certain books on certain days and it was only on Friday did the time-table actually start.

And how it started – spelling lists for Term 1 have been handed out and the first spelling test is tomorrow (Tuesday 11 Jan). This year, it looks like Tuesdays will be spelling days. Also the change from P1 is that instead of 10 words to learn each week, this term they have 20 words per week plus a couple of sentences. We did the words over the weekend and P seems to have gotten the hang of them, but D still needs a few words to be learnt.

Hindi also started on Saturday and the pace seems to be slightly accelerated. Now learning Hindi is material for a new post, but this is something I have decided to focus on this academic year.

D&P also started Chinese tuition last week. I have been looking for a competent Chinese tutor for them ever since their last tutor quit. She was a Polytechnic student and apparently wanted to start working so could not teach. In fact, if she did not quit, I would have not kept her this year as I wanted someone more dedicated to teaching them the language. So we looked and looked and ….. looked some more. Just when I was almost about to give up, I realised that there was this tution/enrichment centre in my own housing estate! Talk about missing the forest for the trees!! So off I went and signed them up for Chinese tutions. It costs us S$55 per month and another S$20 per child for material costs. The class runs for 90 minutes once a week (Wednesday nights as of now, but it will move to Friday from February).

The teacher seems to be from Mainland China and can’t speak a word of English! So it’s good that D&P will be forced to speak to her in Mandarin and this will improve their speaking skills. It’s so cute that D is my official interpreter at the classes. D’s Chinese name is Meili which means pretty in Mandarin and P’s Chinese name is Di Jia. D has no clue what his name means by the way…. Also it’s just D&P at the class now, so this means personalised teaching for them – atleast till the class fills up.

Other than Chinese, P&D also go to Kumon for English. They used to do Maths also there, but I stopped it at the end of 2010 as they weren’t moving up much and seemed to be ahead of it in school as compared to Kumon.

As for non-academic classes, D goes to ballet. She has has been learning for almost the past four years (Gosh! how time flies) since N2 and will give her Grade 1 exams in March. D&P also go for Carnatic music lessons from a lovely lady who lives close to our place as well as swimming. Then to round up the week is their Mother Tongue Hindi classes which they go every Saturday.

I’ve been meaning to do a post about the Singapore education scene and the tuition industry here, so will do it later this week.

Edit: After writing and publishing this post I had an idea. From now onwards, every week I’ll do a review of the school week. The review post will be done either on Sunday or on Monday depending on my schedule. This will help me see how the school year went…