Events For National Day

This month is the month we celebrate National Day. To spread the patriotism in the school, competitions and events were organised by the school.

In the morning, there was a choir competition and the theme is of course National Day. The form 4 and form 6 class must participate and I am guessing that it's because no one has the spirit to enter so the teachers took actions.

Our class started practicing 2 days earlier before the competition and the teacher felt that we weren't going to put our hearts in it. But somehow our class is like hidden in a mysterious box not knowing what will be popping out. On the day of the competition, our monitor had a small meeting with some of the classmates and we thought of many things to make the performance better and maybe even impress the form teacher.

The last decision of the meeting is that the three rows will be switched and the top row are girls that sway to the left and right. The first row are also girls but they will be standing and focusing on singing. And obviously, the boys will be in the middle, singing and waving the flags. We also made some background singing which the teacher suggested herself earlier but was cancelled because it had felt awkward. The song we sang was "Untukmu Malaysia". Here are the lyrics:

**********
Padamu Malaysia ku berjanji
Padamu ku akan berbakti
Seluruh jiwa raga kuserahkan
Demi kejayaan bangsa

#Aman makmur damai sejahtera
Akan kujunjung dan kujaga
Bersatu rela jujur setia
Membela bangsa tercinta

@Syukur ku selalu kepada Ilahi
Atas segala rahmatNya
Malaysiaku negara maju jaya
Baktiku anya untukmu

Repeat#@
*********

When the results were out, we were dumbfounded as we had won the third place. All the last seconds actually produced results.

In the afternoon, 8 students including me went to school again to participate in the banner painting competition. We drew on a white cloth with the theme for National Day. We only prepare the materials that day and we had a few problems. First, we had to buy the paint for the cloth, also known as colour dye. Second, we didn't plan a diagram, but we manage to make a draft before the competition. Third, we had limited time. Some of us have tuition and some need to get home early.

When we went to see the other teams, we found out that they didn't brought any colour and were planning to paint on Monday. We were struck and felt that we had panicked for nothing. But we still comfort ourselves that we will start earlier. The second truth was worst. We were going to finish the banner but the person in charge told us that the banner can be handed in after a week! We made another reason to calm ourselves, we finished the painting so that we can focus on our exam and enjoy the holidays later without needing to worry about the competition.

Twelve in the morning

This is the first time I actually finish this type of "drawing". It took me about 3 hours, I did this from 12 midnight until 3am in the morning. (Yikes, it really looks weird now)

A chat with Dr.Devi Shetty, Narayana Hrudayalaya (Heart Specialist)

This is an e-mail I received, it's quite interesting. But, still personally I say, read this just as a guide as I cannot promise that this is 100% true.

##
A chat with Dr.Devi Shetty, Narayana Hrudayalaya (Heart Specialist) Bangalore was arranged by WIPRO for its employees.

The transcript of the chat is given below. Useful for everyone.

Qn: What are the thumb rules for a layman to take care of his heart?
Ans:

1. Diet - Less of carbohydrate, more of protein, less oil.
2. Exercise - Half an hour's walk, at least five days a week; avoids lifts and avoid sitting
3. Control weight.
4. Quit Smoking
5. Control blood pressure and sugar.

Qn: Is eating non-vege food (fish) good for the heart?
Ans: No

Qn: It's still a grave shock to hear that some apparently healthy person gets a cardiac arrest. How do we understand it in perspective?
Ans: This is called silent attack; that is why we recommend everyone past the age of 30 to undergo routine health checkups.

Qn: Are heart diseases hereditary?
Ans: Yes

Qn: What are the ways in which the heart is stressed? What practices do you suggest to de-stress?
Ans: Change your attitude towards life. Do not look for perfection in everything in life.

Qn: Is walking better than jogging or is more intensive exercise required to keep a healthy heart?
Ans: Walking is better than jogging since jogging leads to early fatigue and injury to joints.

Qn: You have done so much for the poor and needy. What has inspired you to do so?
Ans: Mother Theresa , who was my patient.

Qn: Can people with low blood pressure suffer heart diseases?
Ans: Extremely rare

Qn: Does cholesterol accumulates right from an early age (I'm currently only 22) or do you have to worry about it only after you are above 30 years of age?
Ans: Cholesterol accumulates from childhood.

Qn: How do irregular eating habits affect the heart?
Ans: You tend to eat junk food when the habits are irregular and your body's enzyme release for digestion gets confused.

Qn: How can I control cholesterol content without using medicines?
Ans: Control diet, walk and eat walnut.

Qn: Can yoga prevent heart ailments?
Ans: Yoga helps.

Qn: Which is the best and worst food for the heart?
Ans: Fruits and vegetables are the best and the worst is oil.

Qn: Which oil is better - groundnut, sunflower, olive?
Ans: All oils are bad.

Qn: What is the routine checkup one should go through? Is there any specific test?
Ans: Routine blood test to ensure sugar, cholesterol is ok. Check BP, Treadmill test after an echo.

Qn: What are the first aid steps to be taken on a heart attack?
Ans: Help the person into a sleeping position, place an aspirin tablet under the tongue with a sorbitrate tablet if available, and rush him to a coronary care unit since the maximum

Qn: How do you differentiate between pain caused by a heart attack and that caused due to gastric trouble?
Ans: Extremely difficult without ECG..

Qn: What is the main cause of a steep increase in heart problems amongst youngsters? I see people of about 30-40 yrs of age having heart attacks and serious heart problems.
Ans: Increased awareness has increased incidents. Also, sedentary lifestyles, smoking, junk food, lack of exercise in a country where people are genetically three times more vulnerable for heart attacks than Europeans and Americans.

Qn: Is it possible for a person to have BP outside the normal range of 120/80 and yet be perfectly healthy?
Ans: Yes.

Qn: Marriages within close relatives can lead to heart problems for the child. Is it true?
Ans: Yes, co-sanguinity leads to congenital abnormalities and you may not have a software engineer as a child

Qn: Many of us have an irregular daily routine and many a times we have to stay late nights in office. Does this affect our heart? What precautions would you recommend?
Ans: When you are young, nature protects you against all these irregularities. However, as you grow older, respect the biological clock.

Qn: Will taking anti-hypertensive drugs cause some other complications (short / long term)?
Ans: Yes, most drugs have some side effects. However, modern anti-hypertensive drugs are extremely safe.

Qn: Will consuming more coffee/tea lead to heart attacks?
Ans: No.

Qn: Are asthma patients more prone to heart disease?
Ans: No.

Qn: How would you define junk food?
Ans: Fried food like Kentucky , McDonalds, samosas, and even masala dosas.

Qn: You mentioned that Indians are three times more vulnerable. What is the reason for this, as Europeans and Americans also eat a lot of junk food?
Ans: Every race is vulnerable to some disease and unfortunately, Indians are vulnerable for the most expensive disease.

Qn: Does consuming bananas help reduce hypertension?
Ans: No.

Qn: Can a person help himself during a heart attack (Because we see a lot of forwarded emails on this)?
Ans: Yes. Lie down comfortably and put an aspirin tablet of any description under the tongue and ask someone to take you to the nearest coronary care unit without any delay and do not wait for the ambulance since most of the time, the ambulance does not turn up.

Qn: Do, in any way, low white blood cells and low hemoglobin count lead to heart problems?
Ans: No. But it is ideal to have normal hemoglobin level to increase your exercise capacity.

Qn: Sometimes, due to the hectic schedule we are not able to exercise. So, does walking while doing daily chores at home or climbing the stairs in the house, work as a substitute for exercise?
Ans: Certainly. Avoid sitting continuously for more than half an hour and even the act of getting out of the chair and going to another chair and sitting helps a lot.

Qn: Is there a relation between heart problems and blood sugar?
Ans: Yes. A strong relationship since diabetics are more vulnerable to
heart attacks than non-diabetics.

Qn: What are the things one needs to take care of after a heart operation?
Ans: Diet, exercise, drugs on time, Control cholesterol, BP, weight.

Qn: Are people working on night shifts more vulnerable to heart disease when compared to day shift workers?
Ans: No.

Qn: What are the modern anti-hypertensive drugs?
Ans: There are hundreds of drugs and your doctor will chose the right combination for your problem, but my suggestion is to avoid the drugs and go for natural ways of controlling blood pressure by walk, diet to reduce weight and changing attitudes towards lifestyles.

Qn: Does aspirin or similar headache pills increase the risk of heart attacks?
Ans: No.

Qn: Why is the rate of heart attacks more in men than in women?
Ans: Nature protects women till the age of 45.

Qn: How can one keep the heart in a good condition?
Ans: Eat a healthy diet, avoid junk food, exercise everyday, do not smoke and, go for health checkups if you are past the age of 30
##

(:^>)

English Oral Test

English Oral Test is a test for every student to stand in front of an audience and make a speech or maybe say anything that pops into your mind at that moment. But for our class, we usually remember a passage before we went for the test. The reason is because we are not use to standing in front of a crowd, even more, talking in front of them. Before we went for the test, we were given a period of a few weeks to get ready. We need to find a material and I went with what I would actually be interested in. I had written "Rome" as a title in the name list, so I went for the search for an essay. A few weeks ago, I had kept an article from the newspaper, they were introducing the places in Rome. What's special about it is, they were introducing places that were also the settings in the book written by Dan Brown, Angels and Demons. There was a small problem though, the article was in Chinese, it took me at least 3 hours to translate the summary of it, there were 6 places, but I only took 4 or else it would be too long. Below is the material I had for the oral test.

##
Good morning everyone, my topic for today is masterpieces in Rome. Rome is one of the most interesting cities in the world due to the presence of historic monuments and ancient buildings. The origins of this Italian city date from more than 2,700 years ago. Rome contains some of the most interesting ancient buildings and monuments of the entire world.

One of them is the Pantheon, built by Marcus Agrippa as a temple to all the gods of Ancient Rome. However, the structure of the building today we see might belong to Trajan’s architect Apollodorus of Damascus as it was rebuilt after 100 years. The Pantheon has been in continuous use throughout its history. Since the 7th century, it has been used as a Roman Catholic Church dedicated to “St. Mary and the Martyrs”.

Santa Maria del Popolo is a notable Augustinian church. It stands between Piazza del Popolo and the ancient Porta Flaminia. This church has a vast collection of artworks. Arts from famous artist such as Michelangelo, Raphael and Bernini are found in this church. The detailed mosaic dome created by Raphael was for his friend, Agostino Chigi as a private chapel.

The Saint Peter’s Basilica is located within the Vatican City. St. Peter’s has the largest interior of any Christian church in the world, holding 60,000 people. This ancient building was built by Emperor Constantine, taking about 120 years to be completed. Many known architects had participated in this great construction.

Finally, the Fountain of the Four Rivers, a masterpiece by Bernini is located in the Piazza Navona. The Four Rivers represent the four great rivers, they are the Nile in Africa, Ganges in Asia, Danube in Europe and Rio de la Plata in America. Each carving on the fountain carries a certain number of allegories and metaphors. Even if it has been standing for 358 years, it still has not lost its soul and charm.
##

After 2 weeks of remembering the script, I finally went for the test. I gotta say, this was the first time I didn't make a fool out of myself. This is because for every oral test from primary school to secondary school, I would make a very big mistake or forget what I was going to say.
(:P)

Co-curriculum Day, Parents-Teachers' Day

On the 26th of June, the school was crowded with students, teachers, parents because it was a combination of 2 events, Co-curriculum Day and Parents-Teachers' Day. Every club will be "working" to pump up their club budget while every parents will get to know the "skulls in their children's closet" or the best behavior anyone has seen.

My friends and I was managing the ping pong club stall. Earlier, we had planned to sell pudding, cake, herbal eggs and sweet corn. I did not join in the early preparations like shopping for the ingredients, making the food and the banner for our stall. We went to school at 6:45am and set up the stall. After that, we didn't wait for the customers first, we pulled our friends to "support" our stall, it's kinda of a tradition started by our alumni when you're afraid no one's going to buy your stuff.

When my father came at 8:00am, my brother and I went to meet him and we decided to go to his class first. My father paid the school fees and out came the report card. The teacher gave a few comments saying that improvements have been made, but much more is needed for the upcoming government exam. I gotta say, thank goodness that was quicker than I thought.

Of course, next in line is me. We went to the art studio as my classroom was made into a maze by the geography club. When we stepped in, I saw my Chinese teacher and Malay teacher (both are the form teachers of my class) and felt a bit uneasy. I hadn't done well in my Chinese or Malay paper and was wondering what were they going to tell my father. We took a number and waited for our turn. I was starting to feel shaky, which always happens during these days, afraid that my father was going to receive comments that were never said about me.

It was my turn, my father and I sat down. After the payments were settled, the teacher took out my report card, passing it to my father. He looked at it and said a few about the B and C. The teacher said the same thing every last form teacher told my father, "she's quiet in class, sometimes too quiet." Usually my father will encourage me to socialize more with my classmate but this time, he didn't. I was quite surprise when he said that I was quiet because I had no topic to have a conversation, I guess I've been talking a bit too much in front of him......

When we came out, he went back to work and I went back to the stall. There weren't many people so we decided to take a carton of pudding and walk around the school blocks, hoping more will come up to buy the pudding. We had to carry the carton around 3 blocks and up to three storeys high. Well, I gotta say my friends have some stamina, they went out at least 3 times.

When the day ended, we did finish selling all the food. We discuss a bit about the sale for next day and went home with aching feet.

On the next day, we prepared only the sweet corn, pudding and herbal eggs, cakes were a bit tough to sell so we didn't prepare any. There was an assembly, the national anthem was sang, speeches were given as the discipline teachers check on the students managing the stalls. This was done to prevent any other students from sneaking out of class (Students still need to stay in class even though there's a carnival). There weren't many students and nothing much special happened. When we have sold out the food, we tidy up and check out the games.

We tried out the maze. We paid RM1.00 for each person. We saw 2 of our friends went in, one of them promised she would never scream or shout, but...... she screamed 3 times and finally finished the maze in 10 minutes. The 3 of us went in, I thought we should still get to see a bit, but when they closed the door, it was pitch black, really, you can't even see your own partner's hand. We had planned to hold each others hand but there was a rule, "ghost" was attacking us by messing up our hair, grabbing our arms and feet, splitting us up while we tried to get out of the maze. They also have torch lights that will be flashed in front of us, making us blind once again when we finally can see a bit in the dark. It was quite funny when I thought back, we were pulling each other's hand, one left, one right, thinking that the right way was just in front of us. Only until we were turning in circles when we found out we were being set up, the "ghost" had covered up the path without us knowing. We got out of the maze with a messed up hairdo, but at least we had hold each others hands without being separated.

We needed to wait until 1:00pm to go home, well, it's still a school day. It was fun, but under the burning sun for two days made my sensitive skin a landscape of pimples, which really itches! (It'll heal in a few days, at least...?)