ECE YEP March '12

The SoE-ECE division is organising 3 YEP trips to Laos(Vientiane), Vietnam(Hue) and China(Yunnan) during the March '12 vacation. Miss Auyong and I will be leading the Laos YEP.  For more information see:
China YEP
Laos YEP
Vietnam YEP
Application form

Eureka 2011

ECE ran an event called Eureka 2011 on 25 Oct 2011, Tuesday.  We invited some secondary school students to our campus for some fun competition.  I was very impressed by a group of girls from SCGS.  They were obviously very intelligent. I was manning a Jeopardy (Trivia game quiz) booth as part of the fringe events.
When this group of 6 girls came to my booth, I divided them into 2 groups, 3 against 3, to play the game.  The leader of one of the groups was very interesting.  I don't know her name, let's called her Mary.  She was able to come up with very good distractor to confuse her competitors.
Let me give you an example.  It was her competitors' turn to answer and their question was to identify a device and it was a Linksys wireless router.
Mary's opponent said, "Linksys."
I said, "No, that is the company."
She said. "I know. I know."
I could see her thoughts converging and the answer is going to come up anytime.  But just before the connection could be made.  Mary prompted, "Modem".
Her competitor retorted, "No, it is not modem."  She went on repeating it a few times.  I could see the agony on her face as she was thrown off balanced by Mary.
In the end, Mary won comfortably.  I was so impressed by her that I offered to let her choose any of the NP souvenirs.  Then came surprise number two.  She scanned the collection of colorful highlighters, CD albums and shoe bags; shook her head and said, " I have no need for any of them."  She started to suggest to her friend, "You play squash, you might need a shoe bag."
I am very impressed with this little girl because she is way ahead of me in coming up with good distractors ( a skill I needed to come up with good MCQ) and her maturity: she goes for needs not wants.

YEP Leadership Training II at Pulau Ubin, 1-2 Oct 2011

Other than sandflies, sitting and sleeping on wooden floor, I love the Pulau Ubin experience.  It was so intense that I am still thinking about it long after the trip.

YEP Leadership Training at Civil Service College, 24-25 Sep 2011

Malacca 2011

Baba House: never choose to stay in windowless unit. It is like sleeping in an air-con store room. I made the mistake and have to endure breathing in my own exhausted air. In the end, we did not enjoy the trip as much as we should.

8 Sept 2011, Malacca

Runners' Relay 2011

On 29 July 2011, we were on unfamiliar territory.  We finished sixth out of twelve staff teams in the Runners' Relay.  As far as I could remember this was our worst performance in the race history.  From the start, we were plagued by older runners not willing to run for one reason or another and young ones not stepping forward.  We have more female than male runners. On the actual race day, we could only find exactly six men, anything less we could not even field a team!

Granted that as we aged, speed started to desert us and we shy away from competition of the physical kind.  But when you trained for speed you would re-discover the joy of having a youthful spring in your feet.  With that, you could climb mountains, hike to the end of the world, and run the Marathon and all those things that you had wanted to do before you called it quit.

Looking forward, I invite all of you to come down to the NP track and field every Wednesday, 5 pm.  You will run 2.4 km at your own pace.  Hopefully, the presence of the other runners will spur you to better timing and a fitter you.  Yes, we will train starting from now and for every week.

I hope to see the day where people will fight for a place to be in team 1 for ECE.  The ECE Road Warriors will then rise again like the phoenix out of the ashes.