Pkchukiss - Reality Wine

I can’t really put my finger on it, but does it look like most of Singapore’s worst arguments of logic coming from ladies?

Here’s another one, this time on the issue of overcrowding on the North-East line.

Increase frequency of trains on North-East Line
I TAKE the North-East Line, from Boon Keng Station to Dhoby Ghaut, to work in the morning. It is almost impossible to get into a cabin by the time the trains reach Boon Keng Station.

At Farrer Park and Little India, only those who dared to push themselves (and others) can get aboard. The journey is extremely uncomfortable for everyone.

The seven minutes-a-train schedule was set when the flats in Punggol and Seng Kang were not filled, and when the country had a smaller population. Now, there are more people living in Punggol and Seng Kang - in fact, everywhere on our tiny island, contributing to our economy and making it ‘vibrant’. Unfortunately, a more vibrant Singapore is also a more crowded one.

Before SBS Transit starts comparing our trains to Tokyo’s, may I repeat the point a Singaporean who had lived in Tokyo made a couple of years ago when the crowded-trains problem was brought up: Our standard of personal hygiene is not on par with the Japanese’s. In addition, our humid climate makes us perspire and smell. It is no fun being pressed against bodies wet with perspiration and body odour early in the morning.

I hope SBS Transit will look into increasing the frequency of trains during the morning peak hours. If this is not possible, perhaps it could do what the Japanese did: designate a few carriages for women.

Kuah Kar Yoke (Ms)

Ms Kuah, I was happily reading your letter in hope that The Straits Times has finally decided to post something that makes sense. And then I saw your last paragraph.

Are you telling me that designating a “few” carriages for women will solve the problem of overcrowding on trains?

So we decide to take up this suggestion in its infinite wisdom and do just that. The ladies take up two or three carriages out of six on the train, and the smelly men are all packed into the other three cabins. How does that enable more people to pack into the same MRT train? We still have the same number of commuters trying to squeeze into the same train; designating sections for ladies will at its best improve the situation for the ladies. Men would have only 3 cabins to go to, compared to all 6 for the ladies. If that doesn’t sound sexist, her implicit declaration that men perspire and smell does.

I myself board the train at Boon Keng station, and I travel to Outram Park for my line transfer to the West line. What I’ve seen is that wait times for the next train will always be at least 5 minutes during the morning peak hours. Unless the train interval is there for the sake of safety (in which case I would have rather had the safety officers in the train manually operate the train during peak hours to enable more trains to operate at one time), I don’t see any other reason for operating that few trains, except perhaps SBSTransit is trying to get away with packing as many people like sardines into a can as it can get away with.

This is yet another example which shows that the competition situation in the transportation arena is sorely lacking. Without either competition or governmental regulation, passengers are the only losers in this game.

Scribbled under:
Current Affairs

Chamber wrote a little about how he studies in school. Essentially, he calls it a game plan that allows him to absorb the material so that he can squeeze things out like a sponge when exams come by.

Now, just what game plan might pkchukiss be using to get that result in the first semester?

It is actually something deceptively easy - in fact, you might even think that it is no secret. But the fact remains that my game plan is my ticket to winning the first semester.

Study.

Now before you fall to the ground with your legs crooked up in the air, let me qualify that word by saying that “Study” doesn’t mean that you take the material and stare at it for hours on end. (I used to do that though, but since it is super ineffective, I thought that I might as well try something new.)

Studying smart is not something new. The techniques have mostly been discovered and employed by test-smart people all over the world for many generations. It’s just that you might not know the best way to get around to it that may be responsible for an average result in the examinations.

#1: Know what you don’t know

The basics of learning is to make a list of what you need to know, but do not yet know. This allows you to massage your weak areas, instead of spending time cooking the over-done parts, which you already do know. Usually, you can make this list immediately after class, though sometimes it could take a quiz or a mid-semester test to give you the rude awakening. The point is to get help for your weak areas immediately! I dare say that you need to treat it like an emergency situation, if not for your end of semester test, at least so that you won’t become lost when the lecturer goes on to material that builds on what you are already having trouble with!

#2: Stuff it in your head

Once you understand the material on hand, you only need to commit it into your long-term storage memory (a.k.a. non-volatile memory) for reproduction during the examination. Now, just how do you remember all those facts and figures for the end of semester test that seems so far away from now? The trick is to treat your brain like a RAM - where electric charge is applied frequently so that the information is not lost. Similarly, read up on the material you are supposed to remember on a consistent basis, so that the image will be burnt into your brain, like how a plasma television can get ghosty images permanently burnt-in if an image is left stagnant there for a long time.

The timeline goes like this: read the material (don’t even make a conscious effort to remember it) once after the lesson, and again for another time when you go home. Read it again at the end of the week, and another time while you are doing your tutorials. Once more on the month anniversary of that lesson. This should be enough for your brain to absorb the material for the long run. All it takes now is for you to read through the material the night before the test, and you’re good to go for the examinations. Note that if you do not understand the information at all, you need to take a look at #1 above. You must understand the content before this will work.

If the test is more than 6 months away, be sure to take out the content and go through it at least once at the 6 month mark.

You’ll notice that the time between revisions gets longer over time - that is because your mind is being trained to retain that piece of information for longer periods of time. Usually, if you ever get past the one year anniversary, that particular chapter would remain with you for almost the rest of your school life.

#3: Hard facts

You see, there are always these little things that your teacher forces you to memorise. Things like the date when Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles landed on Singapore, the name of the nuclear bomb that ended World War II, 250 word-meaning combinations for the school spelling quiz, part model numbers and other bits and pieces lying around.

Those things can get really annoying - I can attest to that. Worse still, your teacher refuses to tell you the significance behind that nugget of information, or you get kidnapped by aliens, and you need to be able to describe to the police the details of the place you were kept in (aliens seem to like dumping humans after taking them hostages).

For these hard facts and more, use mnemonics.

How do you remember the 9 planets that revolve around the Sun?
Mercury
Venus
Earth
Mars
Jupiter
Saturn
Uranus
Neptune
Pluto

If you had only one minute to memorise this, and be tested on it 3 hours later, what are the chances that you would remember it from pure memory? Remember #2 shows that you can eventually memorise anything you understand - if you see the material at suitable intervals. The answer would be this:

My
Very
Energetic
Mother
Just
Served
Us
Naughty
Pudding

A mnemonic that is memorable, and preferably outrageous (how can puddings be naughty?) will provide you the shocking effect needed to make an impact on memorising hard facts. Let’s try another one:

Group 8 of the periodic table consists of elements that are stable, and generally unreactive:
Helium
Neon
Argon
Krypton
Xenon
Radon

Try this for a fit:
Horny
Neo
Asks
Keanu Reeves
Xena’s (The warrior princess)
Rack size

It even works for numbers too:
Date of modern Singapore’s founding, 6 February 1819

6 Fabulous (Feb) pigs ate 18 cabbages, and 19 carrots. Raffles saw them, and puked violently on the Temenggong right before he found Singapore.

There. Memorising something isn’t that hard now, is it?

Scribbled under:
Tips and Tricks