UK increase in uni fees

Dear world,
If you do not know, I am not a UK citizen and hence will not be complaining about the increase in university fees in the UK.( international students would still pay full fees… That’s if I was going to UK. But I’m not)
So you do not need click the X on your browser. No complaints about the UK parliament here.
But I was on twitter and I searches ‘university fees’ and everyone spammed the same few messages, asking the same few questions, had plans to walk out on classes on Wednesday at 11am local time etc etc.
I would like to politely inform all the UK students that I feel frustrated as well, but not for the same reason they feel frustrated.
You may think ‘you will never be a UK citizen so you don’t understand ‘ but hear me out.
I may not understand, yes, because even subsidized tuition fees here are rather high ( higher then UK anyways) and £9000 may seem like a reasonably cheap price to pay for an education in university and I still stand by the fact that it still is considerably cheap to get a degree. Slightly over $10000 Singapore dollars if my maths is accurate. (Singapore dollar is strong now, so this might increase in coming months).
I am also trying to understand the UK system alil bit more. Most of the tuition fees are tax payer’s money and in fact most things in UK are paid with tax ( if my sources are accurate). I am not condemning this system but I do not entirely agree with it (neutral stand, don’t want to interfere too much with politics) but I think, there are always two sides to this story.
The students strongly strongly believe in their right of an education, and I will not deny them that right. But a free education in a materialistic world? Nothing in a materialistic world is free. It either has been already paid for or is highly subsidized. but yes, education is very important and you have your right to one. But there is this arguement that came across BBC news and twitter post. One girl on BBC that was interviewed or made a comment or something, well, she said my parents had a free university education, they should be paying the taxes for mine ( trying to remember this from memory) and someon on twitter commented that scottland had free education, why should the UK students have to pay.
I am sorry, no matter how much I try and remember the girl, I keep thinking it was a void argument. it made no real sense. As for the second one, well, that is life for you. If that is the cast I should be arguing that my education should be free too. Most Singapore students do take Cambridge exams.
And well, the government has to do this, to an extent. With the financial crisis several months ago that still affected several countries, the government must make more money than it gives to the people before becoming bankrupt. Then students really will have something to protest about.
Well people feel social injustice, they do not sit back and think. They are just filled with emotion. That was why the protests ended up being violent.
Hope UK hangs in there.
Regards,
Cheyenne

Turkey: arrival

Greetings. Greetings from Istanbul,Turkey. I have nit see much of this country but I can tell you one definate thing. It is VERY cold.
But since I have nothing to say about this country just yet, I would like to share with you something else.
Crime and punishment.
Weird for a 17 year old to talk about crime and punishment you say? Well not when you are a junior collge student in Singapore.
This years holiday assignment for GENERAL PAPER was to read the crime and punishment package. So I took it with me to Europe…on my so called holiday.
I have read the first few articles, writing notes, citing examples and
well, learning about crime and punishment in general. In fact I am very happy that brought the package along with me, so I could relate and compare Singapore and the other countries I have and will be visiting.
It seems to me, crime is a very….contraversal. More than originally thought.
Be it nuture vs nature or the forms of punishment.
I am convinced that genetics do have a part to play with the involvement of crime but I strongly believe that your destiny is in your hands and not in your genes. If you wish to embrace these so called ‘crime genes’ and use that as an excuse, go ahead and have that kind of life. Even with nuture, by using it as an excuse you are not taking a proactive approach to your life.
I think that is why I am having a tough time with this topic….
I believe in changing your destiny

Singapore Housing: worries, problems, and may be a solution?

Dear World,

I have found some interesting data which I would love to share with you all.

You see me General Paper teacher keeps telling me to read and I have been but so far, the reading has not been spreading far just yet. It will. For now I want to discuss some thing I find very serious to my future and to the future of Singapore. Who knows? You might just be involved in it to.

It started off with my cousin, Jackie’s wedding last year and now the housing situation with her and her husband is not all that ideal I heard ( they don’t have a place of their own yet) and this coming september her sister, Von, will be tieing the knot too. I am curious about thier housing situation. AND THEN, my relatives were all teasing Nic’s boy friend ( Nic is the youngest of the 3 sisters) what time next year do they expect to mark in their calenders. After drunken giggles, the boyfriend said save money to get a house and then get hitched ( I am exaggerating the get hitched part, he did not really say that).

Then the conversation went on to rising house prices ( my family is always like that). I have seen with my very own eyes that prices of housing are going up by a hundred or may be two hundred thousand and many properties are worth ONE MILLION SINGAPORE DOLLARS ( you can sent at least 3 kids to an overseas university with ONE MILLION SINGAPORE DOLLARS).

Now here is my isusse ( for lack of a better term).

With the Singapore Goverment wanting more couples to get married and have 3 or more kids ( new campaign), how can they when they can’t even afford a house big enough to fit 3 or more kids? The goverment claims that the problem is that women are becoming more educated and want to have career lives. This is NOT entirely true. There are those that want to start a family but they have to settle the house before doing ….
They have to work and earn enough to move out of their parent’s house and get their own place and THEN they can START thinking about having 3 or more kids like the goverment wants.

So I propose the goverment try and help couples out. Give compensation for couples who want a house but can’t afford it. Set some new requirements. Sure they might not want to have kids immediately after getting a house, but they sooner they have a place to call their humble abode, then they sooner they can start thinking of having the sounds of pitter pattering feet running all over the place. AND THE SOONER YOU WILL BE HAPPY!

Think about it. I don’t know if this post will make much of a difference, but I don’t know if writing into parliment is the brightest idea either especially if I don’t have statistics to back up my ‘claims’. But it is a growing trend. That should count for something.

oh my gosh. The Prime Minister was right. Some of us Pre-University Seminar people might end up in politics.

The scary thing is that I might be one of them.

Terrified,
Cheyenne

P.s. I premed my hair

P.p.s Tomorrow are my exams. Wish me luck

Muslim shot when attempted to assasinate cartoonist

http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2010/01/muslim-shot-outside-of-danish-cartoonist-kurt-westergaards-home.html

Just read the above link.Then read my post.

Sigh.

The world is just pissing me off. AND I DON’T BLAME THE MUSLIM DUDE.

What history we do not learn we will repeat.

This happened in ….world war 2 if  I am not wrong. Where pictures of the Jews were drawn to make fun of them and mock them.

SAME THING.  If you draw a bomb coming out of Muhammad’s head, someone will get pissed off and want to kill you. SO no I don’t totally blame the 3 Muslim guys that wanted to kill him. He aroused the feelings of them to piss them off so much that they would want to kill him.

Agreed, they properly should not have tried to kill him but if you look at it. If you are a Muslim guy and you try to walk up to this Cartoonist house to talk to him, you will already look suspicious and he might stop the drawings.  We also have to remember that these people are extremist and not all Muslims are like this although the drawings are rather …well I have no idea how to describe the drawings. I just know this Kurt dude put himself on the list of people the extremist Muslims want to kill.

I think if I show my best friend those cartoons she would want to give Kurt a good talking to. And trust me my best friend is not an extremist but she’ll woop your ass if you insult her religion.

the school of the future

Trust me when I say I am do not only like the school of the future because I want to become a student there. No. I actually believe that that is our future. If were a heading towards a future that is very high-tech and very advance then shouldn’t technology already be intergrating with learning? Shouldn’t all this be already in our classrooms? In my short 15.8 years,I have heard many telling the world ‘The children are our future’. So shouldn’t our future understand and begin to experience what the future is going to be like?

Sometimes I get the vibe from people that in the FUTURE, they are just going to wait for other people to invent stuff and discovery that cure for incurable AIDS. I really do get that vibe.

I just told my mother about this and she keeps going HMMHMM!

Sigh…

Movie Review: Transformers 2, the revenge of the fallen

Everyone should do like  Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox and run to your closest cinema now. This is one of the best secquels to a show ever. Filled with action, romance, family and ROBOTS. In this sequel, Megatron comes back to life and happens to actually working for…. nah, im not a spoiler. Go watch. My rating? 5 over 5.  Our favorites come back and join in this epic battle. However, if you dont get the chance to watch it just watch the trailer. Its the entire movie plot in 30 seconds!

27 May update.

Let us see. Well, I would like to apologise for not blogging about my usual thoughts. I have been busy from school, friends and life. I can’t be in so many places at once right?
Lastest in Singapore this afternoon: My classmates got news of the first H1N1 CONFIRMED case in Singapore. Nombor Uno! Now, we Singaporeans( and sooner or later one of us has to admit it) are very very….how do I put it? Paranoid? There is a slang word that would be much more appropreate I feel but firstly I am not confident of the spelling, two, who ever is not Singaporean might not have a good understanding of the word used.
We are rather paranoid.When the number of H1N1 cases in American increased we went crazy and went to orange alert. Now we are at yellow alert. According to the Ministry of Health we aren’t going back to orange alert until there is a wide spread of cases in Singapore. How many people is considered wide spread? I am just hoping I don’t come down with anything. ANYTHING. I have

AWARE: should we beware it or not?

So the Singapore Goverment is trying to standardise sex education. I may be wrong but that is what I get from reading the article about AWARE this morning. One Principal disagreed with the programme because it went against his schools values.

I feel that there should be some guidelines but schools should be given the oppertunity to teach their students in any way they see fit. I am very very grateful I am in an all girls school because if I were not, I have no idea how I would sit through a sex ed class.

I am going to do more reasearch on AWARE and let everyone know about it and my views. Now, my thoughts are still a little foggy. If you have any infomation or would like to share your views on sex education, drop me a comment below or email me at cheyenne_phillips@hotmail.com

Mas Selamat’s capture

WHAT CAVE HAVE YOU BEEN LIVING IN CHEYENNE???

This was the wake up call my good friend, shelle gave me yesterday when she figured out I didn’t know they caught Mas Selamat on the 1 of April however the reports came out this yesterday morning in local news. I am equally as shocked. According to the Straits times, Mas Selamat used an ‘improvised floation device’ to Swim across Singapore waters to Malaysia shores on the day he escaped through a toilet window. Also, this is the third time he has escaped from anywhere.When he is brought back to Singapore he will be sent back to Whitney Road Detention Centre which is way way different from the one he escaped from over a year ago. He was planning things for Singapore and that was the scary bit.

Although the Leader of the JI group might have been captured, I know that I can’t just walk around, my nose in the air and think everything is going to be okay. That is stupid. Now I might have been a cave all this while but I am so not stupid! Singaporeans or actually the people of the world can’t look at this situation lightly. We have to be alert and vigilant. The treat of terrorism is very real.

In fact, I dare to bet that on every world leaders desk there is this huge messy file labeled TERRORISM!

H1N1

This morning, I walked into school and there was this silence everywhere. I could only tell that fear surrounded the grounds. Was it fear of the H1N1 virus or our mid year examinations, I couldn’t tell at that moment. But upon arriving at my classroom, our mid year examinations were more important to us than the H1N1.

Even after moving from a yellow alert to an orange alert, students here are still not taking this H1N1 virus seriously. I’m just waiting for this to hit red alert and watch the panic in everyone’s eyes!

But honestly, we should take this seriously. This is another possible SARS out break and its right under our noses and someof us are not even caring. LOOK PEOPLE!!! WE ARE IN TROUBLE