Edison's project and inflation

Edison has chosen to present his research on the topic "Inflation" for his Social Studies portfolio project which is due on 13 Jul 2012.  

Before the vacation, his classmates and him had handed in their drafts to their Social Studies teacher for comments.  I kept asking Edison about this assignment, but his reply was that he could not continue with the report until he receives feedback from his teacher about his draft.  Finally, after waiting for one whole month, his Social Studies teacher returned their drafts to them yesterday! :)  

Fortunately, his draft was more or less "acceptable" and only needed the inclusion of artifacts to support his statements besides other minor changes.  

As there is only one week left to complete this assignment, he quickly tried to look for artifacts this evening that he can include in the report. 

We thought of ways to help him such as looking for old receipts of our purchases to show the increase in prices over the years that reflect inflation, but unfortunately, our 'brilliant' idea did not come to fruit since most people don't really keep receipts from 1980s and neither did we. 

Well, a better idea was to Google.  And so this is what he did, and NRZ chipped in to find some resources for him too. 

Sadly, his Daddy and Mummy are totally noobs at economics.  We did not even know how inflation rate is computed!  After reading some of the notes at the links below, I think I have a better understanding.

http://www.singstat.gov.sg/stats/themes/economy/prices.html
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/singapore/inflation-cpi
http://www.mas.gov.sg/Monetary-Policy-and-Economics/Education-and-Research/Education/Inflation-Video.aspx
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_inflation_rate_is_calculated
http://www.rateinflation.com/inflation-information/calculate-inflation.php

Explaination taken from this site

The formula for calculating the Inflation Rate looks like this:

 ((CPI_Today - CPI_LastYear)/CPI_LastYear)*100

So if exactly one year ago the Consumer Price Index was 178 and today the CPI is 185, then the calculations would look like this:

((185-178)/178)*100
or
 (7/178)*100
or
 0.0393*100 

which equals 3.93% inflation over the sample year.

Breaking News - City Harvest Church

After a few "quiet" days, something exciting happens in little red dot country again!

Today, the breaking news is about the arrest of Kong Hee, the founder of the mega church City Harvest Church for misuse of charity funds.

According to reports, among other things, the CoC (Commissioner of Charities) found financial irregularities of at least $23 million from the church funds. Its spokesman said the funds were used with the purported intention to finance the wife of pastor Kong, Ms Ho Yeow Sun's secular music career to connect with people.

Four others were charged along with him: his deputy, Mr Tan Ye Peng, former board member, John Lam Leng Hung, church investment manager Chew Eng Han, and church finance manager Sharon Tan Shao Yuen.

The investigations apparently started two years ago, on May 31 2010. Back then, the Commercial Affairs Department (CAD) started an investigation into certain financial transactions of CHC after receiving information of misuse of CHC funds.

After two years, finally this issue is slowly coming to light!

And of course, Internet is abuzz with all kinds of discussions on him!

There's even a thread on hardwarezone to analyse his "Bazi"!

Until one guy buay tarhan and pleaded everyone to stop posting about him!

*Links*
Yahoo news about his arrest
Straits Times article about the arrest
Huffington Post's article about the arrest

ChannelNewsAsia's forum thread about the arrest
Eat-drink-man-woman thread
Kiasuparents thread 

Kong Hee's Facebook Page
Kong Hee's Twitter Page
Kong Hee's Wiki Page
Kong Hee's LinkedIn Page
Kong Hee's iTunes Podcasts Page
Youtube video of Kong Hee

City Harvest Church

Twitter Profile

Facebook Page

LinkedIn Profile

Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

真好喝！

Drank the Strawberry Banana Smoothie *two times* today! Its so nice!

The first drink was bought at SP after bringing the two UK girls to the gym and the second one was with NRZ after our dinner at coffeeshop.

Would drink it everyday if not for its price tag - $3.95 for a medium cup at the shopping mall Mcdonalds outlet. A consoling factor - it costs $3.45 at the SP outlet :)




@Breakfast








@ Dinner










@ Work
-- Brought the UK girls to the classroom (T2247) for their Global Marketing class at 8 am
- Met them again at 10 am to SPICE office to troubleshoot Adeline's Macbook
-- Brought them to SP gym at 3 pm and also to meet Jeremy's group

-- Updated DBIT achievements

-- Sent SMM CA1 marksheet template to Chee Seng
-- Touched up the Topic 6 SMM slides

-- Created a new blog for giving feedback to SMM assignments (http://st1007smm-assignmentsfeedback.blogspot.com)
-- MTP preparation

Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Fleming's latest loves

After a not-long-enough three weeks vacation, the kids are back to school while I brace myself for the adrenaline rush as Term 2 begins at SP.

Back to eating from Foodcourt 6 Auntie's beehoon stall. She's very nice today, charged me $3.00, twenty cents cheaper than usual. Paiseh leh.

Not sure why, Fleming has Pokemon watching craze lately. So the three males in the family are now watching "Garatina and the Sky Warriors" in the room.

His other latest hobby is working on his two newly created blogs: Flematics and Fleming's Knowledge Chest. The first blog focuses on sharing interesting mathematics questions (at his level of course) while the second is a rojak, anything-goes kind of trivia blog. He enjoys viewing the Google stats to see who visits his blog, and excitedly announces to me each time he has a new visitor from some exotic country like Korea or USA. Seriously, I am quite perplexed why people from those countries would visit his blog. @.@

@ Work
-- Met up with the two UK students Adeline and Shahad and worked out their timetable.
-- Did up a new set of slides on Facebook Insights as must-have slides for CA2 presentation
-- Uploaded Prac3, Prac4 and Topic 5 slides.

端午节

Oh, and I forgot to post about our little "celebration" of the Dragon Boat's Festival yesterday.

Lest you are expecting some big dinner or party, we just bought ONE $3.40 dumpling, boiled it (with mum's help) and shared it.

Actually the "celebration" part is an excuse. The simple reason is that the kids have not tasted 棕子 before and we wanted to let them try.

Edison's comment after tasting one bite of the Nonya dumpling we bought was,"It tastes alot like char-siew bao. And you know I don't like char-siew bao."
















Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Last day of the mid-year school vacation!

Back to those "wake up at 5.30 am" days from tomorrow onwards :(







After our breakfast at KFC, we walked around the shopping mall.

On the third floor, we spotted this 三国杀 box set in the window display of the Comics Connection shop. Edison said he played this with his friends at school before.

NRZ and him started to guess how much this green box set would cost. NRZ thought it would be around $120.

In the end, they went in to check with the shop and found that it costs $24.90.



This morning, I was reading a forum thread where a guy was sharing his problem of how he felt troubled that his three years girlfriend lost her previous attractiveness after experiencing a persistent acne problem.

They had spent $3k on medical treatment which was effective in alleviating the girl's acne problems but due to health concerns, the girl did not want to continue with the medication anymore.

The guy confessed he felt "sian" and worried that her condition might not improve and would not look good in bridal costume if they were to get married in future.

He wanted to seek the views from
the forum readers on his concern.

Well, there were various responses from the forum posters.

Some gave him advice on how to tackle the acne problem. E.g. one poster told him to try eating black garlic and apply normal garlic on the pimples. He/ She sweared this method has been highly effective for his / her family for many years. Another person advised him to try buying this Chinese herb with detoxification effects called "Pu Tu Pi".

Many of the thread replies chided him for his "superficiality", saying that if he really loved his girlfriend, her acne problem would not have bothered him.

My own personal feeling is that as humans, we are all too often clouded by our narrow emotional fears and overlook the bigger picture.

I do not have any advice for the thread starter but I wish both him and his girlfriend well, and that they might both reach a resolution that ensures the long-term happiness of each.

Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Dinner @ Causeway Bay Hongkong Cafe (Centrepoint)

Bought a $50 Groupon for this cafe (paid $25 for it) last week.

After ordering 4 main courses and 2 drinks, the bill came up to $65 (with GST and service tax). So ended up paying $35 in all.

Verdict:
Curry not that fantastic, the mee not bad and the congee too watery.

The mango passion was nice and the chocolate fantasy was sinful!
Some pictures to share:



















































Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone