Singaporeans

Today, i took the MRT and noticed something that really pleased me. An old lady boarded the train and 2 guys stood up immediately just as she step in. I was quite shocked when i witnessed that. The old lady thanked the 2 guys and she picked one og the guy's seat. The other guy look quite embarrassed and after he stood up, he did not dare to sit down. However, I feel that the guy should not feel embarrassed because of that. He should feel pleased to have give up the seat for the elderly. Nowadays,from what i had seen, Singaporeans really have improved in their courtesy and the moral values. I hope that they can keep up this trend and influenece the others making Singapoe an ideal place to live in.

Reflection for the past few weeks .

Honestly, I don't think I am hardworking enough for these few weeks. I think I had been quite playful. When exams came, I was very nervous. I revised for short period of time, not knowing that I had not studied enough for the tests coming up. Seriously, my heart is feeling very uneasy. This kind of feeling is like accompanied with fright and guilt. I guess I just have to bulk up for the rest of my exams. I had put in effort for my literature test but not my geog test. I did not expect these geog questions would come out. I think I did not study hard enough for it. End-Of-Year examinations are coming and I am really afraid that I would get into the O-level class, 3Q. I am going to try to focus on my work now and ignore all kinds of distractions. To those who are reading this, I hope you could also work equally hard to get into the kind of class you want or else you will sure REGRET it. We can have fun but studies is the priority.

Do a research on the natural habitat of mockingbird. In your research, include the kind of flora and fauna you think exist in Maycomb and explain why

Mockingbirds are found in most of the continental United States from southern Oregon through northern Utah to Newfoundland and south to Mexico. They live in open country with farmland and desert brush. Their diet mostly consists of ants, beetles, seeds and berries, fruits.
Maycomb is found in the south of Mexico where Mockingbirds also reside in.Maycomb is a small old town thus i think their main source of income is farming. There will be leftover food such as seeds, berries , insects for Mockingbirds to feed on thus it is a very suitable place for Mockingbirds to live in.

How does computer games affect teenagers these days?

I feel that its okay to play computer games occasionally. Some computer games help you to gain more it skills and trains ur vigilancy.However, most computer games are bad for our mind,eg.Wolfteam..Counterstrike..Gunz The Duel..and etcetra..Honestly, i also play these games but not as excessively as when it was december holidays.These games deteriorate our brain and "attract" us thus making us addicted to them.It is seriously not beneficial for us although it has the excitement :P I myself was once addicted to these games and scored real badly for my exams :( In overall, games can be good to us to distress if we play it with limits.

Why do i like the poet?

Billy Collins does not keep things from others and will share with others what he had discovered of himself.That was what the poet Stephen Dunn has said, "We seem to always know where we are in a Billy Collins poem, but not necessarily where he is going. I love to arrive with him at his arrivals. He doesn't hide things from us, as I think lesser poets do. He allows us to overhear, clearly, what he himself has discovered." He has a good thinking mind and allows the reader to understand fully of what he meant about his poems.His poems are able to make the reader have emotions like sad, touched and etc.All of his poems are excellent as each poem is unique in the way that the ending is very surprising and impactful.

Billy Collins was born in New York City in 1941.He is just another above-average guy in New York City. A 60-year-old college professor, soft spoken, bald on top. He's learning to play jazz piano.

Link:http://www.npr.org/programs/atc/features/2001/sep/billycollins/010904billycollins.html

Three poems by Billy Collins

The Golden Years
All I do these drawn-out days
is sit in my kitchen at Pheasant Ridge
where there are no pheasants to be seen
and last time I looked, no ridge.

I could drive over to Quail Falls
and spend the day there playing bridge,
but the lack of a falls and the absence of quail
would only remind me of Pheasant Ridge.

I know a widow at Fox Run
and another with a condo at Smokey Ledge.
One of them smokes, and neither can run,
so I’ll stick to the pledge I made to Midge.

Who frightened the fox and bulldozed the ledge?
I ask in my kitchen at Pheasant Ridge.



Forgetfulness
The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.



The First Night
Before I opened you, Jiménez,
it never occurred to me that day and night
would continue to circle each other in the ring of death,

but now you have me wondering
if there will also be a sun and a moon
and will the dead gather to watch them rise and set

then repair, each soul alone,
to some ghastly equivalent of a bed.
Or will the first night be the only night,

a darkness for which we have no other name?
How feeble our vocabulary in the face of death,
How impossible to write it down.

This is where language will stop,
the horse we have ridden all our lives
rearing up at the edge of a dizzying cliff.

The word that was in the beginning
and the word that was made flesh—
those and all the other words will cease.

Even now, reading you on this trellised porch,
how can I describe a sun that will shine after death?
But it is enough to frighten me

into paying more attention to the world’s day-moon,
to sunlight bright on water
or fragmented in a grove of trees,

and to look more closely here at these small leaves,
these sentinel thorns,
whose employment it is to guard the rose.

Why i like this poem?

Firstly, this poem is short and made me understand it very well.It makes the reader feel and think about what the author meant when he used the figurative languages.Although the poem does not have much figurative languages, the author himself expresses his feelings towards the poem very well.I like the part where he wrote "sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide".It makes me feel very impactful as his words are well expressed.