My Baby Cousin

She comes every single week ever since she was about 9 months old. She's real cute and fun to play with but recently, im starting to find her an irritant. My parents overly pamper her and always call her things like "my baby." Creeps me out sometimes because I think that my baby cousin, Hazel, should be spending more time with her own parents. True, she only spends the weekends over at my house, but hey, weekends are for bonding periods with your own family right? My parents tried to reason with me by saying that her parents cannot occupy her whenever it's the weekends cause of work, or other reasons. But is this what my parents want? Every single weekend, do they want Hazel over? It might seem like they're okay with it now but what about when Hazel grows older and less fun? Do they expect her to keep on coming over?

And another thing, my parents often tell me to do things for her because when we bring her over, we should all take care of her. Even now, im babysitting her. I never asked for her to be here. And they bring her over every single week and expect me to do things for her. Go to the car and grab a balloon for her, babysit her, try and put her to sleep, etc. Weekends are supposed to be my day off, yet every weekend, i have to take time off to take care of her. I understand that my parents like her to be here and most of the time, i try to be accommodating to her. Yet sometimes, i wish she wouldn't come every single week. Sigh... guess ill have to try to bear with her...

Linguistic ( a )

I would choose to be friends with Dill. The world is quite evil, any way you look at it. Evil in fact is quite a general term. To take a life is evil. To kill a tree, that is also evil. Evil is all around us, it cannot be measured. Dill takes a light view of everything. He chooses to laugh at everything instead of being too serious about it. Dill is innocent and in a way naive. He does not bother much about the world and no matter what happens, he always has a way to make light of it. He even wants to be a ' clown ' that cheers people and himself up. Thus, it would be great to have a friend like him who can cheer me up even when I am down.

Naturalistic(Mockingbirds)

Natural Habitat: Open Woodland; open country with thickets; gardens; orchards

Distribution: Southern Canada; Most of USA and Mexico; Parts of carribean

Maycomb is a pretty poor country and I suppose much of the revenue in Maycomb is generated through farming or other agricultural activities. Large spaces of empty farmland are very suitable for Mockingbirds to breed and crops from the farmland can help feed the mockingbirds. Also, as shown from the distribution above, Mockingbirds are often found in America, which is where Maycomb is located at.

Some extra things I have found out about TKAM:

One of the definitions of a mockingbird in the story is "good being destroyed through contact with evil." Under this definition, a good example would be Jem Finch. But even his name has a reason to it. A Finch is also a kind of bird, a small bird, which could possibly be used to show the vulnerability to the evils of the world. Mockingbirds are also very territorial creatures and are also very brave, sometimes even fighting(and failing) dogs and cats who intrude their territory. This is seen in some parts of the novel where Jem himself attempts to fight of any who might bring harm to his family and also where he stands up for his father in spite of the country waiting to lynch him.

What do I feel about the Multiple Intelligence Test?

According to the test, I am intrapersonal and naturalistic. I feel that this is very true as i feel i do know about myself quite well, my strengths and my weaknesses. That is not to say that I can manipulate my strengths and weaknesses well enough. I am also a very naturalistic person.I may not necessarily be a very outdoor kind of person but i still feel a strong connection to nature.

Modern Fashion Too Casual?

Singapore has a fashion sense that is more often than not casual. Go to a wedding? Should I wear a tuxedo? A suit? No!!! The best would be a Polo Shirt and jeans. What about a opera? A buttoned-up suit? What about a double-breasted suit? No!!! The best would be perhaps a shirt showing your favorite band and trousers.

These habits may seem odd but they are happening in Singapore. In the past, people often felt that their dressing was their number one priority. They insisted on wearing their best, suits and dresses at any time of their life. But if you dress with this kind of 'formality' in contemporary society, you will immediately stick out like a sore thumb in a bunch of people. So what happened in between the past and now? Have people lost their respect for dressing? Or perhaps, as Singaporeans often say, they dress like this because 'its too hot?'Or perhaps, the answer is simpler than this. In the past, people will dress more or less the same. Men in button-up suits and women in flowery, flowing dresses. Whether there is a difference in colors, in quality or material, the people of the past dress more or less in the same way. In other words, whether they are doing it consciously or not, they are following a hidden protocol.

In a way, so are we. Our dress styles may seem weird to people of the past, but then of course, their dress styles weren't exactly normal to us either! I mean, girls nowadays dress in flowery dresses only for extremely important things like weddings and boys nowadays dress in suits only for important events like funerals. Other than that, we dress in our own style, to our own liking. But like the people of the past, we too are following a hidden protocol. This would be the 'trend.' Trends change as time pass, girls may change their jeans for shorts and pants while boys change suits with tees. One day, orange spectacles may be very fashionable and the next day, it could be black. Trends change and people are simply adapting.

Thus, to conclude, i do not agree that modern fashion is to casual. The fashion changes with time and we are not any more casual than people in the past are any more formal. We are simply defining our style as the trend goes.

Exam Preparation

 After an entire year, it's finally reaching our end of year exams. Naturally, to ensure a good grade, i will have to study hard for the test. However, unlike Math and Science, Language Arts cannot be memorized. It requires reading up of different methods, committing them to memory and emulating them.

For paper one, I will be reading up on some of my own compositions as well as those from others who have written well and will try to emulate the methods that they used. I will also study the formating for situational writing.

I will reread animal farm as well as memorize the necessary  quotes in the animal farm that questions in the exam might make use of.

I will study the different poetry and prose analysis methods and decide which kind i will want to tackle during the exams.

These three are the main components that i will study. As for the rest, like comprehension open- ended, i see no way to study them since they are basically a test of our identifying of answers and applying of knowledge, together with other methods like inference.

My weread

I forgot the password to my previous account but here is the link to my new one: http://weread.com/iread_index.php