Hey me! Talk to me!
Several friends use Blogger for their Weblogs. It has been over 6 times with several of these Blogger sites that I have posted casual proper legitimate comments only to find that they have disappeared from their sites the next day. This, however, does not happen every time, just once in a blue moon, while they have passed the human code checks with posted confirmations.
Just thought I should report it and perhaps quit wasting my time posting comments on a Blogger site.
Team Midland’s Christijan Albers is just a bad a racer as Team Toyota’s Ralf Schumacher. Both kept running into their own teammates’ cars damaging them and ruining the team results. At least this time Albers was penalized for that unlike a few times where Ralf had hit then teammate Juan Pablo Montoya and now teammate Jarno Trulli and got away with it.
The penalty for Michael Schumacher’s yesterday’s qualifying run was just as uncalled for as it was for Juan Pablo Montoya in last year’s Monte Carlo race during the Safety Car period inside the tunnel where it was clear that it was Michael Schumacher that was at fault closing the race line on Montoya on the inside of the curve, yet Schumacher claimed he skeeted during his break warming/testing act (laws of physics dictates one skeets toward the outside of a curve not the inside). Michael might have cheated in yesterday’s qualifying run but where is the prove?! Slow motion video may look odd but in realtime, the car was moving very fast and the time was very short to have allowed for such a driving decision and therefore it can’t be proven beyond reasonable doubt.
Fernando Alonso is a safe driver but just a lucky B. He has no trick in his bag and he can’t even get pass his own teammate without yelling back to the pitt demanding for a move over order.
Tough luck for Raikonnen, Trulli, Heidfeld, Button and Rosberg. Hope their respective teams get their acts together and give them more reliable cars. Oh, yeah, for Webber too; but unlike others here, Webber is not that good a racer.
This morning, I received an email and a comment replied by someone I had written about last August. Janice Yan, a truly talented 16 year old female vocalist, had sent me a comment and an email and letting me know about her website.
I would very much like to hear her performances again either in a form of a recording or live performance.
Keep up the good work, Janice!
In few days ago, we came across a math question on Alec’s assignment that goes something like this in Chinese…
“A has $4000 and B has $3200. How much more does A have compared with B in term of a fraction.” The model answer was later found to be 1/4.
Before M and Alec found out about the model answer, while they all new the absolute difference is $4000-$3200 = $800, they were boggled with the calculation as to which amount should be used as the denominator (divider) for calculating the difference in terms of a fraction.
For some reasons, M had asked mom before I knew about this. By the time mom asked me, she had already forgotten whether the question was about “how much less does B have compared with A” or “how much more does A have compared with B”; yet she remembered all the numbers including the model answer since the assignment had already been marked and returned to Alec.
What’s troubling me was that everyone seems to be trying to find the mechanics for calculating this kind of questions in that, everyone, including Alec’s private math tutor, were more concerned with which “position” of the number is situated within the question is to be memorized for future references as the number to be used as the denominator for the calculation! However, that’s doesn’t explain why it should be used though.
The problem surfaced when mom had forgotten and had mixed up the orientation of the question, and mistakenly said it was “how much less does B($3200) have compared with A($4000)” with the model answer being 1/4. That’s prompted me insisting that either she had the question wrong or the model answer is wrong.
Mom said that she had deduced it but had forgotten in which position the amount is situated within the question that should be used as the denominator. However, she said, if the question was “how much less does B($3200) have compared with A($4000), with the model answer being 1/4, that would be the amount in the “first position” within the question that should be used as the denominator. She continued that I should double check with the question and model answer, determine which orientation the question was, find out which position is the amount that works out to that model answer, that’s the position that should be told to Alec to be memorized as the denominator for future questions!
Like I said, that does not explain why. Yet everyone seems to have that same idea.
Over the next couple of days, while I kept forgetting to ask M what the actual question was, I insisted upon mom that there was something wrong with that. My reason is, since we are “comparing the first person’s amount with the amount of the second person”, then it should be the second person’s amount that should be used as the denominator to be used to calculate the answer, not because whether it is situated in the first position or the second position of the question.
My way of thinking was, even though admittedly I had forgotten exactly how this kind of question was to be calculated, since the later person’s amount is used to be compared with, then we are taking about a fraction related to the person’s amount. So, if the question were how much less does B ($3200) have compared with A ($4000), then the calculation should be (A-B)/A and the answer would have been 1/5 rather than 1/4. Since we already knew the answer is 1/4, then there must be either something wrong with the question or the model answer is wrong.
I then showed mom that, assuming the model answer of 1/4 is correct, and if we rephrase the question “how much less does B have compared with A” to “if B is 1/4 less than A’s $4000, how much does B have”, then the absolute amount of B would be have worked out to be $3000 instead of the said $3200. That is why I think there is something wrong with the whole thing. Had the question been “how much more does A have compared with B ($3200) in terms of a fraction”, then 1/4 would make A has $4000 which coincides with that amount given.
Finally, a check with the assignment revealed that I was right. The question was indeed “how much more does A($4000) have compared with B($3200)” and the answer was 1/4.
The whole point is, rather than understanding the question and calculating the answer in order to learn mathematics, people are more concerned with how to memorize a quick way to find an answer that matches the model answer in order to get a higher mark. So when the model answer were incorrect, than no one would have noticed it and continue to solve other questions in the wrong way. Then the mathematical questions became just a bunch of number crunching practices rather than something to could be applied to solve real world problems. And that is one of the main problem of local education!
Went to a seminar over the weekend about a new international school opening this September. They have Primary Years, Middle Years, as well as Diploma Years. Being an international school, I would expect the presentation to have somewhat more of a business quality/orientation and the crowds to dress and behave a little different from local standards. I was wrong.
Aside from not having enough seats, which is understandable since it was an open invitation and there was no telling how many would attend. As many other presentations, they had also fell in the traps of Powerpoint having slides after slides of overly wordy information and no illustration of any kind with just a few photos. Many times, the three presenters asked the audience to refer to their school website which is due for a revamp in the next few weeks.
Handouts must have been some leftover ones from other usage which do not contain much information about the mechanics of the school but rather just some photos and write outs about the staff yet I can only find one of the presenters in it. Two out of three presenters spoke in low monotone voices with a bit of an (Australian?) accent which bored everyone to death. There were no microphones for the audience during the Q&A session so the presenters had to repeat the questions before they answer them which resulted in even more noise in the audience during a long questions.
Kids were running and laughing loudly in the back. With this, I blame the parents. Look! There is presentation to be made. Someone there has something to present. You go there for this and to listen to what they have to present, not to walk the kids like you would with dogs in an open park. You could either not bring the kids if you can’t control them, shut the kids up and pin them to a chair or stand them by the wall, or leave. It is as simple as that!
Dress? Shabby singlets, shorts, and flip-flops - the Chinese “Yan Ji” rubber ones. As Edna Mode put it, that’s a hobo suit.
There was, however, one statement in the Powerpoint that I like, “To prepare students for the tests of life, not for a life of tests.”; and I have learned what not to do in a presentation to avoid boring the audience.
I left early in disappointment.
“Urban Dictionary is a slang dictionary with your definitions. Define your world”.
Now that the government have put its foot down (sort of) on unsolicited phone marketing - aka SPAM calls, my building has just been washed over by a middle age man and a late-20 or early-30 not so bad looking well groomed OL dressed but overly make-up lady soliciting registering for “15X7″ IDD long distance phone call account.
They rang the door bell and marched right in to the office as I opened the door despite my trying to block them from coming in. I had to give to avoid her bumping into me. (Perhaps I should have walked out at the same time.)
“We don’t make long distance phone calls whatsoever here.”, I explained. She asked why not just register anyway for it is completely free. The conversation went like: “Please registered” vs “We have no need. Thank you.”… repeatedly over 10 times with my arm showing them out. All that time, the middle age man was just standing there like a log without a single word. (Hmmm…, this kind of a team reminds me of another profession.) Eventually they left empty handed.
Can’t blame them for trying so hard though but I don’t give in to this sort of tactics. Well… OK… unless perhaps maybe if she were Monica Bellucci and the middle age man would leave us alone for a couple of hours….
by Santana
—————–
Dont rush me just this once
I want to make this moment last
Slow down the pace, theres no hurry
I cant let another pass me by again
Let me be the one to say when Ive had enough
Just let me close my eyes, memorize
The way things are this minute
So when youre gone I can go on
If memory can hold within it what Im feeling
Should time try fading or stealing something away
CHORUS:
Hold on, nothings the same
Tell me why I feel this way
Life wouldnt be worth living without you
All along Ive been the pretender
But now thats gone forever
Nobodys ever loved me like you do
Nobodys broken through
Got to concentrate, file away
Every last detail
Dont want to lost whats going down
I want to remember everything Im feeling
Should time try fading or stealing something away
CHORUS
create your own visited countries map
or vertaling Duits Nederlands
It looks like a whole lot of places I have visited on the map. It’s just because one can only choose by the country and not by the city. But then again, choosing cities instead would just make my map look like a few hot pixels on a LCD monitor. :-/
WhaUSay?!