Mas Selamat

SINGAPORE: Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has said Singapore's security challenge is to keep up its guard without getting fatigued or complacent.

In his first remarks on the capture of Mas Selamat Kastari, Mr Lee said Singapore must not think that the re-arrest of the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) leader is the end of its problem.

He said the terrorism situation in Southeast Asia is under control, but the threat is far from over. He added that the price of security is eternal vigilance.

In a statement to the media on Saturday, the Prime Minister also said information about the capture of Mas Selamat on 1 April was not made public earlier, because of a prior agreement with the Malaysian authorities.

Mr Lee said he was told about the arrest by his Malaysian counterpart Najib Razak on 11 April during an impromptu four-eye lunch in Thailand's Pattaya after the ASEAN meeting was called off due to demonstrations.

He thanked Datuk Seri Najib for Malaysia's generous support and help and told him Singapore's Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister Wong Kan Seng had earlier told him of the arrest.

Mr Lee said he was happy and relieved that Mas Selamat had been found and arrested before he could do any harm.

But Malaysia had asked Singapore to keep this information quiet for the time being, so Singapore respected this and held the information very tightly in order not to jeopardise the operation.

But on May 7 afternoon during a weekly pre-Cabinet meeting lunch, Mr Wong received a phone call informing him that the Internal Security Department (ISD) had received a request from the The Straits Times to confirm a scoop that Mas Selamat had been arrested by the Malaysian authorities.

As the news had leaked, the Singapore government had no choice but to confirm the story.

Ministers who were present at the lunch were completely taken by surprise when Mr Wong told them that Mas Selamat had been arrested.

In his statement, Mr Lee also thanked all officers involved in tracking down Mas Selamat over the past year.

He said he never had a doubt that Mas Selamat would be found because he knew the quality and commitment of the ISD officers working on this.

He said the ISD had recovered quickly from the mistakes which led to Mas Selamat's escape from the Whitley Road Detention Centre in February last year.

Mr Lee also thanked the ISD and its Malaysian counterpart, the Special Branch, for working closely together.

adapted from http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/428076/1/.html

online chat

Hello! Today, i am going to talk about the risk of online chat and what safety measure we should take in order to surf the net safely.

Today, in school, we have a drama group, coming to our school, putting up a show on online chat. It was funny and entertaining but at the same time, we benefited alot from it.

I shall not elaborate on what the drama team did but i shall go into the topic of chatting online. As you people use the internet daily, we have to know the safe way to surf the internet in order to keep yourself safe!

Let me tell you what you should do first
1. Never reveal your passsword to anyone except your parents as they will not harm you

2. Do not give your personal information such as your school, contact number to your online friend.

3. Never send your photo to someone you know online.

and so on. If you want to know more, you can search on the following search engine
- www.yahoo.com
- www.google.com

You can also have a look at the video below to know more about online safety and at the same time, enjoy!

Swine flu

Hey everybody. Today, i am going to post about the swine flu.

Influenza A(H1N1) - update 11

3 May 2009 -- As of 0600 GMT, 3 May 2009, 17 countries have officially reported 787 cases of influenza A(H1N1) infection.

Mexico has reported 506 confirmed human cases of infection, including 19 deaths. The higher number of cases from Mexico in the past 48 hours reflects ongoing testing of previously collected specimens. The United States Government has reported 160 laboratory confirmed human cases, including one death.

The following countries have reported laboratory confirmed cases with no deaths - Austria (1), Canada (70), China, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (1), Costa Rica (1), Denmark (1), France (2), Germany (6), Ireland (1), Israel (3), Netherlands (1), New Zealand (4), Republic of Korea (1), Spain (13), Switzerland (1) and the United Kingdom (15).

Further information on the situation will be available on the WHO website on a regular basis.

WHO advises no restriction of regular travel or closure of borders. It is considered prudent for people who are ill to delay international travel and for people developing symptoms following international travel to seek medical attention, in line with guidance from national authorities.

Canada on 2 May reported the identification of the A(H1N1) virus in a swine herd in Alberta. It is highly probable that the pigs were exposed to the virus from a Canadian farm worker recently returned from Mexico, who had exhibited flu-like symptoms and had contact with the pigs. There is no indication of virus adaptation through transfer from human to pigs at this time.

There is no risk of infection from this virus from consumption of well-cooked pork and pork products.

Individuals are advised to wash hands thoroughly with soap and water on a regular basis and should seek medical attention if they develop any symptoms of influenza-like illness.

The above news was extracted from the website http://www.swineflu.sg/forum/index.php?topic=71.0.

It is the latest news i get. Well, as you can see, swine flu is getting more and more serious. Its spreading too fast among the world. and most importantly, it kills. So we have take precaution against it.For eg, we must take our temperature regularly. If we find anything unusual, we should not hesitate to go to the hospital.

Even though Singapore Alert Status is orange, but we have to play our part to keep singapore away from the swine flu.

To know more about the colour alert thing, you can go to this website
-http://www.swineflu.sg/forum/index.php?topic=42.0

To get the latedt news on swine flu, you can go to this website
-http://www.swineflu.sg/

The websites are rather reliable as it is under singapore. So feel free to have a look at it.

Lastly, i want to say take care! espically during times like this...

class

Hello guys and people, i am back to square one-posting!
Recently, there has been some problems among the class.
Like quarrels and problems that are unsolved keep coming up.
Take for example the class seating arrangement, there isn't a win-win solution.
But the cmc tried their best to make it the best.
Still, there are complaints or rather 'appeal'.
Seriously speaking, i am really tired being a monitor.
Many will be talking at my back, saying some mean words or rather unpleasant comments about me, saying that i too strict or so on. But have the class really stand at my position and think? Some time, i feel that i am the bad guy while they are the good guys. In other words, even though helping the class but in their eye, i am still a what so ever guy which is to the bad side while they are to the good side. But can i just leave the class and do nothing? It really makes me wonder if i should just stop whatever i am doing and just let them do whatever they want. Maybe this is a win-win soultion among the class but will this benefit the class?

I am a person who wants a good impression among most, or every, but because of the postion 'monitor' makes people saying mean things behind my back. i really dislike it but i know i can do nothing. To gain back impression is very hard, but at the same time, controlling the class is also very hard. I am really sick and tired. Not trying to say that my class is very incoperative but maybe i still have not figure out the best way to interact with the class. I promise to give myself sometime and we will see in the future.

That's all for today's post. Anyway, enjoy the this weekend while you can!

Labour Days on the First of May

Most countries celebrate Labour Day on May 1, known as May Day and International Workers' Day. In Europe the day has older significance as a rural festival which is predominantly more important than that of the Labour Day movement. The holiday has become internationalised and several countries hold multi-day celebrations including parades, shows and other patriotic and labour-oriented events. However, in Northern Europe, Walpurgis Night is celebrated on the preceding night and this holiday merges with the Labour Day in some countries.

May 1 is a national holiday in Albania, Argentina, Aruba, Austria, Bangladesh, Belarus, Belgium, Bolivia, Bosnia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, China, Croatia, Cuba, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia (locally known as Hari Buruh), Italy, Jordan, Kenya, Latvia, Lithuania, Lebanon,Macedonia, Madagascar, Malaysia, Malta, Mauritius, Mexico, Morocco, Myanmar (Burma), Nigeria, North Korea, Norway, Pakistan, Paraguay, Peru, Poland, the Philippines (spelled as "Labor Day"), Portugal, Romania, Russian Federation, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Serbia, Sweden, Syria, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, Uruguay, Venezuela, Vietnam, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

In Slovenia, Serbia and Ukraine, May 2 is also a national holiday.

In Poland, while May 1 is a national holiday, it was renamed from Labour Day to simply "State Holiday" in 1990.

Beach cleaning CIP work

Two days ago, we went to sembawang beach to clean. The weather was quite good. As soon as we reached there, we are all excited and can't wait to go to the beach. We were given gloves, trash bags etc. We settled down and went on to collecty rubbish. As we were collecting, i feel sad. I realised that people who went down do not clear their rubbish. Instead, they left it there and leave the place as if nothing have happen. But at the same time, i am also very happy as can do our part, cleaning the beach. The process was fun. Tell you guys a secret, we went to throw stone without the teacher knowledge. The worst part to us is we have a thick stack of worksheet to complete. The place was much cleaner after we cleared the beach. We hope to make singapore a clean and green city even though there are only a few of us. But i believe, every hwa chong-ian will want to do somthing for singapore and do more CIP.

In overall, i hope that the school can organize more CIP work for us.

Thank you! Yong rui!

Hey guys. I am back to post. Today, this post is specially dedicated to our chairman, yong rui. In my point of view, he is a very good chairman, a chairman who is willing to help the class with all his might. He is chairman who has lots of patient and his tolerance level is high, higher than anybody in our class. Despite the fact that everyone call him names, but he is able to tolerate it even though he does not like it at all. And when the class results were poor, he took the initiative to hold a CMC meeting during recess. He sacrifices his recess time just to come out with plans. Not only that, he also emailed the teachers on our behalf, requesting for more work to be given. More practices will make us more familiar on the subject. To him, every minute, or in fact every second to him is very important to him. But he does not mind using his precious time to help the class. I think that yong rui has a potential of being a future leader of Singapore. In the opposite, I would like to voice my point of view of the class reaction (overall). Firstly, when yong rui is trying to tell us his plan, not many wanted to listen to him. In fact, they cause a disturbance to the class. They tried to oppose yong rui, trying all mean to end yong rui ‘presentation’ fast as they think that it is just a waste of time. Secondly, when yong rui said that he would like to implement the reading programme for the class, which means that either which day of the week, the whole class have to go to the school library as a class, and read a book, after that, produce a book review, everybody was like shouting the whole class off! Some said that ‘how you know we are free!’. I do not think that such comments are needed as it will be taken into consideration when they(CMC) are planning to launch the reading pogramme for the class. Well, I shall end here as if I were to continue writing, it will be a long post. But overall, I will like to thank our chairman, Poh Yong Rui for his contributions to the class. I hope everybody can understand him, try not to oppose him as is not an easy task to be a chairman like him. Thank you! Yong rui!

Welcoming the arrival of term 2

One term have passed. The times in hwa chong in term 1 was really quite tough as i have to pick up subjects new to me like geopgraphy. I have to adapt to the changes in secondary school as compared to primary school. Everything is different from before, including the style of learning etc. But well, i do enjoy the times in hwa chong in term 1. Despite the setbacks like my poor results i have to face, i manage to get over it and decide to work harder than before. Let's wish this term would be a wonderful term for us and enjoy everyday in school! For your information, i have changed my blogskin and thus, enable comments to be posted for a particular post. So feel free and leave your comments, for both improvement and some personal view for my particular post.

camping

Hello guys and girls! I am back. Sorry for not updating. Well, today, I am going to post about my trip on the camp. Overall, I think I benefited a lot from the camp. I learn to cherish everything I have, even if its is just a bowl of porridge. During the three days two night camp and sarinbum camp site, I, in fact most, suffered, but learnt a lot of valuable things. During the camp, we had food that does not match our appetite, a place we would not ever want to stay in. But we were left we no choice. I was arranged to stay in tent. Can you ever imagine 8 persons to a tent? And you imagine how hot, stuffy inside the tent during noon? Well, to me, I rather not take something I need in the noon as it was very hot, stuffy inside the tent. I could not stand it. This was the first time I am living in a tent. I finally have a taste of one who is living in a tent feeling. It is always not a nice thing to live inside a place without air-condition, fan. But I manage to catch some sleep as it was much cooler in the night. As for the food, it was not really nice cooked. But due to our hunger and the need of energy for activities, we had to eat it despite the fact that the food was really not nice. This two factors, living condition and food, is enough to reflect on how fortunate, how lucky we people are. People who are poor might not have nice place to live in, nice food to eat. But we Singaporean, take a lot of things for granted. Sometimes, we even complain that a bowl of plain porridge is not nice enough. Through this camp, I learnt how fortunate we guys are, and we should not take things for granted, not even a grain of rice.

Of course, we also have bonding games, activities that we had to work together in order to reach a goal. We work well together, and get to know each other better. This helps to strengthen the bond between our friends. And we also had fun together, leaving a memorable times with our new friends in secondary.

Well, I hope that the school can organize more camp, such that we can have fun together with our friends. In conclusion, I want to comment that the camp

class test

Well, everybody, sorry for not updating and replying tags. Today, I am going to post about my term test. Okay, apparently, I did not do very well. In the opposite, I feel that this is the worse result I ever get since I started studying. I am not going to disclose my results. Maybe for those who know me, you can ask me in school. I am really very disappointed in myself. I knew I have not work hard enough. I know the cause of my bad results is because of me. even though this time I have not work hard enough, I promise my self not to give up and strive for the better! Okay, I have to go. I will be posting again soon. So sit back and look forward!