Lotteries

Lotteries have been called a tax on the poor. Personally, I feel that the emphasis of this quote is on tax instead of poor. Since people seldom win lotteries, they are practically giving money away.
However, I think that the poor part refers to when they become addicted, they would spend a huge amount of money. This makes the money spent like a "tax" to poor people.
"He lost almost everything to a gambling addiction — his wife, his money, and the life he once knew. " this was taken from the internet and this sentence can tell us how dangerous gambling addiction can be. Actuallty, I support lottery but NOT LOTTERY ADDICTION. Buying lottery once in a while with small bets can be treated as a form of leisure. My mother does not support gambling as she thinks that lottery is using precious money to try her luck.

Biblography:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93191168

Sonia Sanchez

"Her poems manifest the spiritual link between art and politics" that was what her poems was descript as on the internet. Born in Birmingham, Alabamaon on September 9, 1934, Sanchez has taught creative writing and African American literature in at least eight universities across the United States and has lectured at over 500 college campuses . When Sanchez was only a year old, her mother passed away and Sanchez was sent to live with her paternal grandmother. She then lived with family and friends until 1943, when she moved to Harlem to live with her father, her sister, and her stepmother who was her father's third wife. Sanchez's language comes out of her immediate surroundings and accents her characters' lifestyles. Her refusal to use standard, academic English is a part of a political statement which undermines the use of language as a tool for oppression. During the early 1960s she was an integrationist, supporting the philosophy of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE).
Actually, I do not have a favorite poet as I seldom read poems and when I do, I do not remember the poet's name. I chose Sonia Sanchez for this blog entry because I happen to see her name on "this week's highlight" on poets.org. But I feel that the poems she write consist of a lot of figurative language and the poems she write interest me, that is why I chose her for this blog entry.
The poems she write include Ballad, To Anita and A poem for my father. The books she wrote include Shake loose my skin: New selected poems and Under a Soprano Sky She has authored over a dozen books of poetry, as well as plays and children's books.


Bibliography:
http://www.afropoets.net/soniasanchez.html
http://poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/276
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonia_Sanchez
http://www.nathanielturner.com/soniasanchez.htm

IT Home Learning Lesson 1: Figurative Language

The poem I chose is Messy Room by Shel Silverstein

Whosever room this is should be ashamed!
His underwear is hanging on the lamp.
His raincoat is there in the overstuffed chair,
And the chair is becoming quite mucky and damp.
His workbook is wedged in the window,
His sweater's been thrown on the floor.
His scarf and one ski are beneath the TV,
And his pants have been carelessly hung on the door.
His books are all jammed in the closet,
His vest has been left in the hall.
A lizard named Ed is asleep in his bed,
And his smelly old sock has been stuck to the wall.
Whosever room this is should be ashamed!
Donald or Robert or Willie or--Huh?
You say it's mine?
Oh, dear,I knew it looked familiar!

1) Figurative language used in this poem are mainly Hyperbole.
Statements such as "wedged in the window" "jammed in the closet" "stuck to the wall" and "Oh, dear" are used as figurative language.
I think that the poet used these figurative language to exaggerate on how messy the room is.

2) I like this poem mainly because the poet has included humor in his poem. The poem was quite funny and thus, i chose this poem. The poem also has a great number of descriptive words. The poem is also closer to my daily life in the sense that I also consider my room to be a messy one. I like the way the poet ended his poem. He ended it with a twist, writing that the person that should be ashamed is not Donald or Robert or Wille but is actually he himself. In other words, the messy room was actually his!

HOOT by Carl Hiaasen

This blog post is for English ace assessment. This is my fifth and the last blog post for this term. In this blog entry, i will be sharing with you one of my favourite books. It is titled "HOOT" and it is written by Carl Hiaasen. I received the book as a prize in my primary school. It's main characters in the book is Roy and Napoleon. Roy's father's job needed him to move from country to country, so his family always follows him. Thus, Roy does not have a fixed home and he is always transferring school. When Roy's family moved to Florida, he finds himself involved in a adventure trying to prevent a "Mother Paula's" restaurant from being built on a plot of land which is inhabited by burrowing owls. Together with Napoleon, they do all kinds of things like releasing snakes, removing seats from machines, and Napoleon even buried him self to stop the restaurant from being built. After all, they managed to succeed and stopped the restaurant from being built. Personally, i feel that it is a very good book. Another book written by Carl Hiaasen is "Flush", which is also a nice book. This is all for this term, thank you for taking time to read my blog.

Saving The Environment

This blog entry is for English ace assessment. This is my fourth blog entry for term two. If you have noticed, this blog entry was posted on the same day as the previous one, this is because i am trying to finish all my blog entries during this weekend. In this blog entry, i will be talking about global warming how Singaporean are doing their part to save the environment. As many know, global warming is causing the temperature on earth to rise by the day. Let me give a brief introduction on the effects of global warming. Firstly, global warming will cause the ice caps at the north and south pole to melt. This will cause the sea level to rise and many countries, including Singapore, will be submerged under water if this happens. Another reason is that forest fire will happen easily with the rise in global temperature. Many animals will also die as they are unable to adapt with the sudden increase in temperature. Singaporean are doing their part to save the environment as well too! Recycling bins can be seen at the void decks of HDB flats, campaigns are set up to encourage people to reduce the use of electricity, electrical appliances with energy efficient labels are chosen...All this actions shows that Singaporean care for the environment.

A Book That My Mother Remembered

This blog entry is for English ace assessment. This is my third blog entry for term 2 and it is one of the required blog entry for this term. I will be talking about a story that my mother remembered the most. As it is a book in Chinese, I will be translating it into English, so do pardon any vocabulary or grammatical errors. The book's main character is a girl from a very poor family. Her father passed away when the girl was still very young, thus the girl had to work for a rich family as a maid to earn money. When the girl's mother passed away, the rich man adopted the girl as a daughter and paid for her education, seeing that she was a nice girl. After some time, the rich man decided to marry his adopted daughter to his own son but the rich man's wife disagreed with the marriage as the girl came from a poor family. The girl had a good relationship with the rich man's son as they were studying together. As time passes, the rich man's wife was persuaded to let her son marry the daughter and the couple lived happily ever after.That is all for this blog entry. If you have any comments, please feel free to comment on this blog entry. Thank you for spending your precious time on reading my blog.

My Ending For The VIllage By The Sea

This blog entry is for English ace assessment. This is my second entry for term two and I hope that I will be able to finish all the blog post within this week. Three months later, the family was now staying in a brick house where their old house once stood. Although it was not very fancy, there was enough space for the family. Beside the house was a big chicken coop and in it, there were five big hen and two roosters. "Hari-bhai, there is a man at the door!" Bela said to Hari, who was feeding the chickens. When Hari approached the man, he said," Are you Hari? Can you fix my watch?" Hari nodded confidently and the man handed him his watch before going away. Hari told him to collect his watch the next day. Just then, his father came back from his work at the factory and he was carrying a dog exactly like Pinto. "Pinto!" Bela and Kamel exclaimed excitedly. "Found him beside the road and thought you might like him. I am sorry that I made you lose your last dog." their father said. Then he turned to Hari and said, "A friend of mine from the factory wanted to buy half a dozen of eggs from you. He asked how much do you charge for your eggs." "Two eggs for a rupee," Hari replied, eyes glinting in excitement. he had a feeling that their lives from then on was not going to be hard anymore.

Nothing But The Truth

This blog entry would be for English Ace Assessment. After the five blog entry for term 1, i would be trying to finish my five blog entries over this two weeks. I hope that i will be able to finish! Let's start with the first required blog entry. I am required to place myself in the shoes of a character in Nothing but the truth. After much hesitation, i have decided to be Mageret Narwin in Chapter 12. "That Malloy boy better not sing again today,” I muttered under my breath as the announcement was heard over the intercom. As the national anthem started playing, i strained my ears to check if Philip was singing again. To my horror, the sound of a boy's voice was clearly distinguished over the tune. I asked him if he was singing again but he replied that it was his right. My blood was boiling with anger that moment. Even when i told him that it was very disrespectful, he argued that i was the one who was disrespectful. I simply had enough; i had no choice but to make him report to the principal's office. That is all for my first blog entry for the first term. If you have any comments, please feel free to comment on this blog entry. Thank you for spending your time to read my blog.

My Primary School

This blog entry would be for English Ace Assessment. In this blog entry, I would be blogging about my primary school as well as my CCA. My primary school is Evergreen Primary School. I am sure that many of you have not even heard of the school before but never mind, because I am telling u now. Actually, my six years of Primary School was not only spent in that school. I transferred to Jing Shan Primary School in primary three due to some personal reasons but at the end of primary three, I was transferred back to Evergreen Primary School. When I heard of the news, I was elated! This is because I have many friends in Evergreen Primary School. At first, my transfer back was not approved but I met my primary two teacher and she helped me to transfer back. Now, thinking of all this, I felt very lucky. As for my CCA, some of you have already know that my CCA is robotics, which I think is an interesting CCA. It allows us to build our creativities skill and also photography skills. I look forward to my CCA every Wednesday and Friday. There goes my blog entry for term 1. My blog mission for term 1 is officially completed. Once again, if you have any comments to make please feel free and thank you for spending your precious time on reading my blog.

Adeline Ng Lai Choo

This blog entry would be for English Ace Assessment. I would be blogging about my opinion about the teacher in the short story" Adeline Ng Lai Choo" written by Catharine Lim. Sorry that I had only blog about this story after such a long time. Well now, many of you would thinking that the teacher is the" bad guy" in the story, but have you thought that the circumstances she was in when Adeline requested for the one mark? If you cannot do so, just imagine you are a teacher, you have just finish going through the test papers and a girl comes to you for one mark, would you give the mark to her? If you said no, like the teacher, you woke up the next day with your phone ringing, the principal telling you that one of your students had committed suicide, how will you feel? My whole point of blogging about all this is to tell you" It was not exactly the teacher's fault that Adeline committed suicide. If you have any strong disagreement about my stand, please feel free to comment on this blog entry. Thank you for spending your precious time on reading my blog.

Angles 2009

This blog entry would be for English Ace assessment. I would be expressing my thoughts based on Angles 2009 (workshop and finals) after attending the finals on the 25th of February. On the day of the workshop, we were briefed on how to write a speech. I found the PowerPoint presentation was very useful in guiding me on my speech. After the presentation at the drama centre, we proceeded to our respective classrooms with a student leader who is in charge of judging us during our respective speech. We were given a topic ”Money is the root of all evil” and given five minutes to prepare for our speech. As I had expected, I was not selected as I was not very proficient in English. During the finals, my classmate was first up with the speech” Speech is silver. Silence is golden”. Our class cheered wildly when he finished his speech. After the speech, I felt that I had learnt a lot from the contestants. I would like to thank Mr Tommie Chen for creating the opportunity for us to score 2 ace points. Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to read my blog entry. Please feel free to comment on this entry.

The Village By The Sea

This blog entry would be for English Ace Assessment would be expressing my based on the short story "The Village by The Sea" by Anita Desai. I would be blogging on my thinking about Hari, the village boy who decided to go to Bombay, a bustling city to work and earn money for his family. I feel sorry for Hari as his father is always drunk with toddy and his mother is too sick to work leaving the children, Hari, his elder and two younger sisters to fend for their own, with a small piece of land which they grew vegetables on. Personally, i feel that Hari is very filial and cares a lot for his sisters. He is also very keen on learning new knowledge, like learning how to mend watches from an elderly man. He is also very intelligent and has long-term vision. I know that he has long-term vision from what he had said at the last part of the story. He wanted to open a chicken farm so that he can generate income for the family. In conclusion, i think that this is a very good book. Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to read my blog entry. Please feel free to comment on this entry.

Lamb To The Slaughter

This blog entry would be for English Ace assessment. I would be expressing my thoughts based on the short story "Lamb To The Slaughter" written by Roald Dalh. I would be discussing whether Mrs Maloney is innocent or is she guity of killing her husband. In my opinion, i think that she is guilty of killing her husband as if she was innocent, she would not have devised or carried out the plan to conceal and destroy the murder weapon. Also, if she was innocent, she would have regretted what she had done and confessed to the police officers but she did none of these, so i think that she is guilty of her husbands murder. You may bargain that she only killed her husband out of shock but i strongly disagree. This is becauseif she really killed her husband out of shock, she would not have giggled in the end of the story. In conclusion, i strongly think that Mrs Maloney is guilty of her husband's murder. If you have any disagreements about my stand or additional points to make to my stand, please feel free to coment on this entry.Thank you for spending your precious time to read my blog.

Hi :)

Hi everyone!!! Glad to have my own blog now...but some say its tough to maintain a good blog but anyway i will try my best.