1. No science experiments for 2 months
2. Unable to recognise the classroom marked in the online timetable (for example, once, the online timetable says that we need to do Physics class in a classroom named HSLCR. The first two letters obviously indicate the High School Block, but what does LCR mean ? (Liquid Crystal R… RAM?) Usually classrooms have name like 302, 519, but what the hell is this one? Everyone in my Physics Class gathered together and think, and then someone finally got it — Library Class Room, the classroom in the library inside the High School Block…
3. The classrooms are on the higher floors like level 5 or 6. Going to the classrooms feels like stamina training

Besides these, it feels so sad every time I walk pass the science building. We were sitting in the bright classroom the day before, doing our biology test, and the next day we heard that our biology test papers and the classroom was burned.

The walls of the building used to be white, now the top of it is covered in a layer of black ash, as if the building was bleeding. Looking inside the windows, chairs and desks were clumsily stacked together — they would soon be brought away.

However, the campus didn’t become lethargic after the fire. Around the Science block there are green trees, new-born birdies learning to walk on the fences, trying to fly. Everything looked vivid and lively, full of vigour. Watching the science block being renovated, I quietly hoped that everything will go back to normal soon.

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Everything is normal, except — why are we not allowed to wear masks if we are not sick? Isn’t wearing masks the best way to prevent being affected? To my surprise, our school also posted an announcement later today, saying that if we wear masks in school, we would be taken as being infected by the virus and would be sent home because of this. That was probably a common rule now for schools in Singapore. However, what is the point of this rule?

To be honest, I don’t really know, and the news article on the official Singapore government website didn’t mention it either. There were two possible reasons that I can think of. One of them could simply be, to let more people be aware of those potential virus carriers.

The effect of this rule was soon experienced by a neighbor of my sister’s classmate, not long after the article appeared on the newspaper. So my sister’s classmate’s mum was, I think, washing her car downstairs. Since washing a car might have water splashing everywhere (that’s the case for me when I was washing my horse) and it might smell bad, the mum wore a mask, the normal kind of mask, not N95. She went upstairs by the lift of her apartment, and when the door of the lift opened there was an old gentleman standing outside, seeing her mask, too shocked to say anything and out of the mum’s surprise, he fell down just next to her feet.

Well, you may ask, who will wear a mask then, if everyone will be scared of him/her and keep away from him/her if he/she do so? Exactly. It is likely that no one will want to wear a mask anymore if they can choose not to.

Since the second and third case was confirmed in Singapore, there have been long queues and empty shelves at several retail outlets islandwide. Everyone wants to stay safe, and my family was no exception. The night when the 2nd case was confirmed, mum was searching in all online stores in Singapore for masks, and after all of these searching and shopping, we got more than 500 masks delivering to our home. This might seems like a lot in a normal family, but for our family, my 4 grandparents, daddy mummy Ariel and me, our 2 helpers, there are 10 people together. If this novel Coronavirus lasts for 2 months, it is not an unusual thing for us to use 1 or even less a day. Think about this, normally a family will think of buying 500 masks, what about 10 families, 100 families, 1000? As a small island, Singapore apparently does not produce its own masks. These masks that people are trying to get from the retail outlets must be imported from a close and reliable source. Some mask before the virus might be imported in China, but right now, as the place with the most number of people infected, China probably won’t export masks anymore since mask is already short for its own use.

So in a nutshell, the reason why the government wanted to stop people from wearing masks if they are not sick, might be:

1. letting people to be more aware of those around them since they could be potential virus carriers
2. Save masks as they are already short in supply in Singapore

Well, it is still undeniable that masks are useful and helpful when preventing infections. There are still risk of no wearing a mask, but since the article is already posted on the newspaper, I guess the advantages of doing so still outweigh the disadvantages. Just be careful everyone ?

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The news also said that, there were about 9900 people from Wuhan coming to China. One of them was infected, but doesn’t tell other about that, carrying the virus for one whole week and has been to lots of places around Singapore with his family, such as Sentosa, Holland Village, the Paragon, etc, and had took lots of taxis, until he felt really sick and had to went to the Singapore hospital. He could be uninformed of the new virus from Wuhan, or he might not know that the symptoms on himself are caused by the virus, but once he felt uncomfortable, he should go to the hospital and rest instead of going around the tourist sites — that was absolutely an act of irresponsibility to himself and to the people around him, including thousands of tourists, local residents and his family.

Anyways, the virus has possibly spread and I was thinking of excuses of not going to school tomorrow.

And when I was thinking about all of these, I was getting bombed by messages in my Chinese class chat. I took a lot of the contents of the chat and, instead of text messages, I am actually bombed by videos. Videos. And these videos are not selfies or pets or food, instead, just by looking at their thumbnails, I could see orange flames ? behind the “play” icon.

The fire was on the top floor of the science block. Probably due to someone sneaking into the block and trying to do some secret experiments. Speaking of fires in our school, there was one about 3 months ago in Tent Plaza. It was caused by our Science teacher (I know, everything is related with science right), when he was trying to cook some beyond meat for the beyond burgers and added too much vegetable oil. I don’t really know the details of the incident but, I started to find science a pretty dangerous subject (especially Chemistry).

Well, I think I should still go to school tmr since… since I can’t think of any excuses… Chinese New Year is coming soon and which all the misfortune and diseases to be gone on Jan 25!

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Low needed to endure the ordeal of the pain of the beating sun as well as the cold temperature at night on South China Sea. When he was just rescued, he was seriously sunburned. “It’s like 1,000 needles poking your face.” says Low. He described that it hurts a lot when putting his sunburned skin into the sea water,

During his time stranded in the sea, all Low had as companions were his ring buoy and Rolex Mido Commander, The Straits Times reported. To stay sane, he talked to those items, calling them “boy” and “brother”, the report added.

Low says that thoughts of his family – a wife and three sons – were what kept him going during the ordeal. Low also considered himself religious, and he exclaimed that it was the belief of God that keeps him persevering until being rescued.

On the fourth night, relief finally came when Low saw a 10-storey high ship called Diogo Cao. He became unconscious as soon as he saw the ship approaching him.

After lifiting him out of the waters, ship crew notified Singapore authorities, and the Republic of Singapore Air Force (RSAF) deployed its Rescue 10 team to rescue the dehydrated man via helicopter.

In a video posted by the RSAF, Low thanked the team for bringing him home. He said it was reassuring to see the team anxious over him. “I hope there will be no one else for you to save but if you do , keep doing the same thing with your bravery,” Low told the men, before hugging each and everyone who had come to visit him.

Low recovered in the hospital for a month. He got kidney failure from the high intake of salt water, skin burns and an infection in his lungs. However, the pain did not seem to diminish his sense of humour. In an update posted on his Facebook page, Low joked that his face resembled Chinese-style barbecued meat or bakwa.

One month on, Low reports that he has fully recovered from his injuries.

This reminds me of my trip to Sibu in Grade 7. When we went there, the sun was also scotching, but not as serious like needles. Many of my classmates still get sunburned. Although I did not get burned (probably because of the protection of my dark skin color), I was hydrated and suffered from the scratches of sand inside my rash vest. It was like Low’s face, when you want to wash the sand with sea water, it just get worse — the salt in the sea water make it even more painful. My skin started bleeding until I went home for a hot shower and washed the 1-cm-thick sand off (after the trip I found out that some classmates brought baby powder — it makes your skin slippery and all sands will come off. I immediately felt stupid). It was similar with Low, but I always knew what was going to happen next in the trip while Low did not know what his fate was. All he could do was to pray, be prepared to go back to home and reunite with his family or to go to the other home (heaven).

I felt so lucky that I do not have to face such risk. And the most importantly, I will never forget to put on sunscreen again…

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Here’s a hypothetical: a telescope detects an asteroid between 100 and 300 meters in diameter racing through our solar system at 14 kilometers per second, 57 million kilometers from Earth.

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In Choeung Ek “Killing Fields” in Phnom Penh (the one I went to two months ago), many students in black went reenacted the horrors of the Cambodian genocide at the ‘Killing Fields’ on Monday to commemorate the two million people killed by the Khmer Rouge’s murderous, Maoist regime.

Student acted out the scenes of people being killed, children being separated from their parents, women being forced to leave their husbands and many other scenes showing the cruelty of the Khmer Rouge and how much the Cambodians once suffered from the genocide.

It was an emotional day. Many attendees cried when watching the scenes, as the actors pretend to slit open the victim’s throats and throw them into the lakes. Even though I did not see the scenes I could imagine the sadness of the atmosphere through the screen. The scenes reminds me of a book that I just finished on Friday called Never Fall Down. It narrates Cambodia under Pol Pot’s governing through the eyes of a boy named Arn, who was just 11 when the Khmer Rouge took over the country and forced everyone to go to the countryside. His struggles to stay alive by obeying everything the Khmer Rouge says, killing people from his hometown, and efforts he made to not lost his true self that always wants to help others, sharing his food with everyone. I feel sad a a bit scared while reading, half hoping that everything could go back to when Arn sings happily everyday, eating ice-cream with his friends, and half hoping that Arn could move on with courage and share his story to the world, letting more people to understand the Cambodians.

“These views brought my feeling back to the Pol Pot era, the killing was heinous,“ said 62-year-old Chan Ren, who lost more than 10 relatives under the regime.

“Today, people attend the event to pray to the souls of people who were killed by the Khmer Rouge,“ she added.

I once felt quite hopeless that no much people in the world know about the Khmer Rouge (In fact, I did not know it too before I went to Cambodia on the Tabitha trip.) , as it has been something that is rarely told even between the Cambodians. I afraid that the reason why Cambodia turned from the glorious Ankor empire into one of the poorest country in the world will remain a secret and Cambodians will be always seen as the lazy once and be discriminated. Today I saw the voice of Cambodia with my own eyes. I wish through the event, more people from countries around the world will know what happened during 1975 – 1979, understand what the death of a quarter of the country’s people was like. I wish the new generation could be more open and confidence to explain these to the others and lead the nation into a brighter future.

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Obituary: Dolly the sheep

Dolly leaves a few surviving lambs.© AP.

For over six years, every bleat of the world’s most famous sheep has been analysed for biological significance and hints of decrepitude.
No longer: Dolly was put down by a lethal anaesthetic injection last Friday. She was six and a half years old, and suffering from lung cancer caused by a virus.
Preliminary post-mortem results show that, apart from the cancer and her well-publicized arthritis, she was relatively normal, says Harry Griffin, assistant director of Dolly’s home, the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, UK. “There were no other signs of premature ageing.”
Dolly was the first mammal to be cloned from an adult cell. Her chromosomes were taken from the udder cells of one sheep, and injected into an egg cell from another which had had its DNA removed. Dolly’s nameless DNA-mother died three years before her birth.
The project showed that adult DNA, which has become fixed to do a particular job in its cell, can be reprogrammed to create an entirely new organism. This was the key breakthrough in her creation, says Griffin.
“In 20 years time, Dolly won’t be remembered for the practical applications that she led to, but for opening our eyes to the idea that the cells in our bodies are much more flexible than we had thought,” Griffin argues.
Not everyone accepted the uniqueness of Dolly’s origins. In 1998, some researchers suggested that her DNA could have come from an adult stem cell or from a fetal cell – Dolly’s mother was pregnant when the cell for the clone was taken. But DNA fingerprinting of frozen tissue cleared the argument up, and re-affirmed Dolly’s status as a clone.
Dolly became an unlikely icon for the promise and threat of biotechnology. The electronics company Zanussi used her image in an advertisement for washing machines with the slogan ‘Misapplicance of science’. She features in an opera by the American composer Steve Reich. And last year, Scottish anti-monarchists elected her as their preferred queen.
When her autopsy is complete, Dolly will be stuffed and exhibited in the National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh. This is not the first Dolly relic: a jumper knitted from her wool is on show in London’s Science Museum.

Ewe first

Dolly’s lung complaint was the last in a series of medical problems. Last year, Ian Wilmut, the Roslin researcher who led the team that cloned her, said that had he been a hill farmer and Dolly a regular sheep, the size of the vet’s bill would already have sealed her fate.
Early in life, Dolly had a weight problem. Then, in 1999, it emerged that caps at her chromosome ends called telomeres, which get shorter each time a cell divides, were 20% shorter than was normal for a sheep her age. This led to speculation that Dolly’s biological age might equal that of her and her mother combined.
Early last year, Dolly was revealed to have arthritis, possibly related to her corpulence. Her celebrity may be partly to blame: “For the early part of her public career, she was fed a lot of excess food to get her to perform for the cameras,” says Griffin.

“She was fed a lot of excess food to get her to perform for the cameras”

Harry Griffin
Roslin Institute

Dolly’s breed, the Finn Dorset, can live to 11 or 12 years of age. Dolly’s comparatively premature – if unnatural – death is typical of cloned animals. From conception onwards, clones suffer a higher mortality rate than non-clones. Studies in mice seem to show that this bad health persists throughout life.
Some seized upon Dolly’s ailments as evidence that clones are invariably sickly and age prematurely. Although it can’t be ruled out that her origins made her less robust than other sheep, it is not possible to make generalizations about clones’ health from the fate of a single animal.
Since Dolly, other mammals – cows, rabbits, mice, cats, goats and pigs – have also been cloned. But the process of genetic reprogramming seems too complex and haphazard to control tightly, and its success rate has not improved much since Dolly’s day – she was the sole surviving adult from 277 attempts.
Earlier this month, Matilda, Australia’s first cloned sheep, born in 2000 and the first to be cloned outside the Roslin Institute, also died. Matilda’s corpse was found in a decomposed state and was cremated. The cause of her death remains a mystery.
Dolly is thought to be survived by three or four of her six lambs. 

Roslin Institute

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Thousands of glitzy new gadgets have been launched today at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Some of the innovations could transform our lives — but not necessarily for the better.

Facial recognition cat food bowls that only open for specific pets; freshly baked bread vending machines; underwater drones; self-driving cars. From the ridiculous to the revolutionary: the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) has it all.

Opening in Las Vegas today, the event brings together 200,000 tech junkies, journalists and entrepreneurs to try out the most cutting-edge gadgets and technology. Some of the gizmos might just revolutionise our lives forever.

This year, the show is dominated by companies trying to make our lives “smarter” — fitting everyday objects with mini computers, cameras or microphones. This allows them to connect to the internet and complete tasks automatically.

Which machine is making the biggest splash so far? The smart toilet. Designed by manufacturing company Kohler, it connects to Amazon’s Alexa and comes with voice controls, personalised cleaning functions, ambient lighting, speakers and a heated seat.

It is just one of countless intelligent household devices on show, including smart padlocks, smart bottle openers, smart fridges, smart doorbells, smart mirrors and smart baby toys.

While all these things may make life more convenient, some worry that the trend is going too far.

“Putting a computer in everything turns the whole world into a computer security threat,” writes Farhad Manjoo. “In a roboticised world, hacks would not just affect your data but could endanger your property, your life and even national security.”

Nevertheless, many remain excited by what CES has to offer. For example, several gadgets promise to boost our health and hygiene. The Y-Brush supposedly gives teeth a perfect clean in just 10 seconds. Various other innovations could improve sleep, decrease anxiety and diagnose genetic diseases.

Then there is the self-driving revolution — something no longer limited to cars. Visitors will see self-driving suitcases whizzing between the stalls, specially programmed to follow their owner. Self-driving lawnmowers, buses and tractors are also on display.

Which of these technologies will catch on remains to be seen.

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