lame?

with reference to my previous blog entry, I'm quite surprised to see that there are readers checking my entry as LAME. hmm. i wonder why. i would appreciate if they could tag on my tagboard to provide their opinion on this. I dun get why would someone think that that is lame! are you saying that its lame because u think im trying to create something out of nth by posting that status? or are u doubting whether im really a man of integrity. i wonder why.

but it does hurt to see ppl having such reactions to a truly honest status. i was feeling discouraged by integrity issues and even myself considered doing something that i would feel unhonorable to gain some marks. i somewhat disgusted by myself over this as well because i know i shld have been firm and not even considered that option. however i stood my ground and i appreciate the likes on fb that do, really, act as encouragement to me, reminding myself that i should do the right things.

i dunno wads so lame abt this.

POTD 31-08-10

the sci library toilet is qt special here! there is alternate taps that work manually or by sensor.

POTD 30-08-10

my mum found this TINY crab within some other dried food she was sorting out in the kitchen. lol so cute!

im glad i still have moral integrity

want to put it here, also as a reminder to myself to stick to my principles. because these are what makes me who I am. im grateful of the support from my fb frens as well (:

angry bird part II: lsm essay

Dear Dr Kim,

I am sure you have already heard or received feedback from your LSM 1401 students with regards to the essay assignment. I am also one of your students taking this module for the semester and would like to feedback to you about this issue as well. I think that this system is extremely unfair to be used as a grading system and I hope that you can understand my view on this, of which I will be supporting below.

Dr Kim, you have mentioned that this is a method that has been used for scientific journals, but that point, I feel, is irrelevant to us. This is because although this peer evaluation system is likely to be able to choose the best papers and also to help improve each and everyone’s essay based on the feedback from peers, it does not seem appropriate for grading purposes. Each vote is worth one mark and the chances of one getting a very low score, or even no votes are quite high if their essay is not a very good one compared to the rest. It will all depend on one’s luck in getting grouped with which other four essays. How random is the distribution of the essays to ensure that luck plays an insignificant role? Is three rounds of evaluation enough to reduce this luck factor determining your grade? Furthermore, it is worth so high percentage of the final score for this LSM module. Thus, an assessment carrying so much weightage should be graded with a fairer system.

Moving on, I have seen many many ways in which a student may cheat in this system. True, one might argue that cheating cannot be stopped and its down to the moral integrity of the students. But, given a flawed system with so many easy avenues for cheating, it would seem like an unfair gaining of marks is presented and encouraged.

1. Having access to everyone’s essays.
A student can easily obtain access to EVERYONE’S essays with the current system. Although one can only view essays of another topic currently, viewing other’s essays on a student’s own topic could be easily done by the help of a friend in another topic. He can download ALL the essays and abstract all the original work and research of the other students if he wants to. This system does not protect the writer’s intellectual properties. A student who had spent days to generate an innovative and brilliant idea and put it in his essay could have his idea stolen by many other students.

And with regards to this, it is too late to try to salvage the situation because the damage has been done and students could already have looked at many other essays and even saved copies of it for future reference.

2. Authors of the essay one is marking are no longer anonymous.
The identity of the author has a high chance of being checked by simply looking up the properties of the word document file. If the author had put in his name/matric card number as the author of his Microsoft office, he could be tracked easily. Biasness will now come into place while marking.

3. One could easily check who is marking his essay.
For example, I’m writing on question C and I want to check who is writing my essay. I ask a friend who is in grp A to download all the essay files, I check where are mine, then I check who is marking this essay from the list of markers and the files they are allocated on ivle.

4. Trading votes.
With the two points, 2 and 3, above, it is evident that it is easy to beat the system. A student can strike a deal with the person who is marking his essay to vote for his feedback as the best feedback while he votes his essay as the best essay. A win-win situation is easily obtained. One could argue that the chances of the student knowing the other person might not be high, but this deal could be done even with someone you don’t know. And furthermore, in this system when we could easily cheat, the people with more friends will somehow, gain an added advantage which totally makes no sense to me.

Personally, I have a friend who is marking my essay, and I’m marking another friend’s essay. Thus, if I wanted to, I would have struck two deals and ensured at least two points in this first round of essay submission. By doing so, I might be depriving the student whose essay is really the best among the five I have to evaluate of his one vote just because I want to get a vote from my friend. From my understanding, a huge majority of people would settle for such a deal because everyone wants to get a better score and there is no harm in helping each other out. How many people would actually have the moral integrity to say no to a “free vote”, to a friend?

I think there are many loopholes in this grading system and probably some more that I did not pen down here. I sincerely hope you, Dr Kim, could do something to change this system because I’m very disturbed by the unfair advantages the students are gaining. And even if there is a change, cheating would already have been done in the first round and if the scores are still taken, then it would be unfair to students who work hard and try their best losing out to those to unfairly gain superiority in votes. I believe there are others who share the same viewpoint as me and I hope you too agree with us on our major concerns. If you would like a face-to-face discussion, I’m sure many of us would be available for it.

Thank you for your time Dr Kim, I eagerly await your reply/changes that will be made.


Your concerned LSM1401 student,
Tang Kai Him

POTD 29-08-10

this is damn funny and lame la.. woke up late today and found myself with this notification! 310 photos of john. omggg. lol. fb errors are getting funnier. likes.

POTD 27-08-10

had craving for BAN MIAN for the week and in the end had ban mian for dinner! hahaha it was at kopitiam at vivo. altho it isnt really v good. the noodles were a little too solid and i prefer those that have a more powdery taste to it.. like the soup will not be so clear and its all messier hahaha.

but overall it was a good meal, except for the noodles that were a bit disappointing, the soup was good and i finished the whole bowl at qt a high rate!! as commented by ben haha.

angry bird part I: friend X

i am not angry, i am not emo..

but.

i think i should be angry. sometimes i'm even angry for myself for not being angry. i seldom blame ppl/be angry over something, unless its really too huge a problem for me to ignore. i think thats part of kai him, and sometimes i think its pretty weird lol. not that i prefer being angry of cos.

this friend is X.

and X is a good friend to me, but the things X does sometimes really make me wonder how is it that someone with some intelligience could not really use the brain first being doing/saying things. its not only once, it has happened many times. and not only to me.

and like so many times alr, its still the same even though the problem had been presented to X b4. as in like i told X b4 of this issue that i aint particularly happy with, and X always ends up saying things like sorry i wun do it again. i promise and stuff.

but the thing is, it happens and happens again. our level of friendship, i would say, is not low and on the surface and i would really expect more from X.. i know X doesnt do it on purpose, but i think X oughts to do something abt this problem, or else its v hard for me to trust X.

and after everytime this kinda issue occured, i give X a chance, and i tell myself that X will know wad i mean and rmbr and be careful. friendship IS abt trust isnt it. but, more often than not, there will be things that X do that really gets me thinking why am i such a "fool" in believing in X when such things happen over and over again.

im not angry, i really am not, i think i should be. i guess im not angry becos the effect of wad X did is not big and im fine with sharing it w most ppl, but its not a matter of whether the issue is so important to me, its a matter of X kinda betraying my trust.

and most imptly, when X did that, and i was momentarily frustrated that i scolded X and X still asked me why i so fierce when X is the one in the wrong. and as it happened many times b4 alr, X did not know that X was wrong! wts. its like O.o its you who did this stupid thing and now u blame me for being "angry"? shit man.

im just frustrated i feel this friendship is not balanced. im frequently on the losing end of things but i nv get angry for long, its just me. i forgive and forget, and i trust, but i wonder why X still doesnt understand. seriously. please.

its a pity really. i just want X to realise wad is wrong, and really truely change.

slow poke

omg im such a slow poke! i have been putting in extra effort this sem from the start, like week 1, but im still having problems keeping pace! omggg. i needa sort this out!

and lsm essay's due on tuesday, i haven started! hahaha. now i will go and start and settle that within these about 50 hours. woots.

POTD 21-08-10

OMG FINALLY SNEKU IS OPENED! lol

POTD 20-08-10

dessert today: 豆花汤圆!

too bad i was alr on a rather full stomach and this proved too much for me! haha i underestimated the power of the tiny glutinous balls.

a little emo

i was thinking yday night that i hadnt been really into the emo mode recently (guess due to being relatively busy and occupied in stuff like oweek) and that i might go into the mid sem emo mode which occured last sem.. i guess its just the time when u start feeling tired of your mundane life and think once again about what u really want/ reflect and realise that u have achieved so little.

and right after that, i was feeling a little bit emo today. not about like life this time, but about something else.

i wrote on fb:

"if u know u might be falling into the same hole again, do u pull yourself back and make sure you dont fall into the hole because you know why you shouldnt? or should you just fall back into the hole because there must be a reason why u keep falling in."

cos i thought i wouldnt be falling in alr, as it hurts and that there is a valid reason why i shld advoid the hole. but i realised its not that simple cos there are always two sides to a coin, and there is always positive and negative, pros and cons, good and bad. going with my heart naturally, i feel theres is still a dangling tendency in me. to walk towards the hole.

its pretty interesting to me, and im drawn towards it naturally. but i know its not the way it should go, just that i always tend to use my heart more than my brain and be a human rather than a robot.

i think about it, and its quite weird as well. i wonder wads gotten into me. haha.

POTD 17-08-10

And there we go! gotta catch 'em all, and today, im the true master. i have caught them all! all five texts for all five mods this sem! omg total overrrrrr. zz. now lets hope they are useful, and im sure some of them would be, very.

look, the stack on the left are the two books i bought for the first two sems, one each. and on the right, the stack / PILE of books are the material i will be befriending this sem! chem eng yr2s1 FTW!

and the amount i spent also increased exponentially lol. sem 1: $30, sem 2: $50, sem 3: $200!! (rounded offs)

yayyy kaihim is a chao mugger, kaihim is a chao mugger...

LOL.

POTD 16-08-10

i just found the guy stupid-looking haha..

RUNNUS 15-08-10

today was the first time i fell out of a run =S siann. this morning on the way to NUS for RUNNUS i had a stomachache. it was qt bad cos it was like ongoing. i knew it wasnt just a case that could be solved by clearing my bowels and that the pain would be staying for some time. however, i still decided to start the run and hope for the best.

as i started the run, i started to feel the movement in my intestines as expected and the urge to visit the toilet. i tahan-ed for a while until i was at PGPR and i thought to myself that if i dun go to the toilet now, there might no longer be a chance to do so once i leave the "sch compound"!

and luckily for me, it was the right decision. cos with my character, i would have most likely tried to go all the way but today i wasnt feeling so determined. so i went to the toilet in PGP and oh man, i had abt half an hour of a struggle and was sweating like a dog while sitting on the toilet bowl. =X haha but after that i felt better and decided i could no longer carry on, cos running will just cause further peristalsis that would hurt me more. a marshal helped me to call the organiser to check out the falling out procedure and apparently i could just leave. lol thus i took bus A1 back to the starting pt!

as u can see above, there is a finisher certificate, and i cannot have my name on this cos i didnt finish :(

its qt sian to sleep at 130am the day b4 and wake up b4 6am, travel all the way to sch and have a tummyache and suffer during a short 2km run then falling out!! mans... it was a unique experience though. dun think i have ever fallen out from a run b4.

hope i dun have to go through such trouble again! heard from my friends who completed the run that it was challenging, sad that i didnt have the chance to challenge and complete the run today. may i have another chance in the remaining two years to go for it again ba!

POTD 14-08-10

while i was planning my time table and modules to take this sem, obviously my brain wasnt functioning very well LOL. accountanting.

POTD 13-08-10

this sem i decided to buy ALL the text for my modules! lol this is so unlike me la to be so over academically. but i decided to do so la, force myself to use the textbooks more often. hope it works out fine and its useful for me. i have bought three text today, damn heavy la. one second hand and the two others first hand.


the access card which is just a piece of paper in the pic below, costs 30 bux on its own! omggg, its forcing everyone to get the whole package of the book and the card which cost abt 50 dollars.