Let It Go Butterfly

Date:  Aug 23, 2015

One day, Blue Blue, my blue eye cat, was caught playing with “something” in his paws and mouth.

When you get close to see it, it was a bright green caterpillar, may be drop from the leaves in one of the pot in our balcony garden.

My wife thus place teh caterpillar into a plastic container.  Of course, we place some leaves and water in it.

Few days later, the green caterpillar ate quite some leaves before turning itself into a pupa.

Another few days later… which is today.

Jay suddenly shouted and say “Mommy, mommy, the butterfly has come out…."

And there you go, the butterfly that we saved from Blue Blue’s paw.

As it is just came out from the pupa, the butterfly is learning how to flap its wings.

It is actually quite a nice butterfly.  Very pretty.

She still flapping the wings.  And she is ready to fly.

So, we have decided to “let it go”.

So that the butterfly can find a new home in our herbs garden downstairs.

We let Kay Kay do it.  So, Kay Kay will let the butterfly go, and let her has her freedom.

She was a bit scare in the beginning, but as soon as she flapped a few times of her wings, she flew off.

Bye bye butterfly.

Of course, I did not waste this opportunity for Jay Jay to learn his Chinese Composition.

So, I quickly draw out my iPad and ask him and the brother to think about the Butterfly event, and write a small passage of it.

So, the journey from home to Millenia Walk is only 15-20 minutes. 

As you can see, this is what he comes up with.  Not too bad.

I recon that this will give him may be 5/10.  So, thru out the day, we discuss about the whole event.

Instead of “my cat”, I asked him to think, where is the cat?  Where he (the cat) finds the caterpillar?

Instead of “let it go”, how he fly away?

What about the conclusion, any thoughts he wanted to write down?

During lunch time, we talked about it.

After he took his Taekwondo grading, we talked about it.

While going from Millenia Walk to the Turf City, before the drawing class, we have another 20 minutes or so, for him to work on it.

And this is the revised version.  

Much longer version.

He knows learned the important thing of “describing”.

Describe our cat is naughty.

Describe where our cat found the caterpillar.

Describe why the cat is naughty?  See the caterpillar, wanted to bite it.

Describe the how he tell mommy about it.

Describe how the butterfly is scare and don’t want to fly out.

Tell who is the one brought the butterfly downstairs.

Describe how he touch the butterfly and make it fly away.

Describe what was his feeling?  Happy.

Describe why?  Because he let the butterfly regain his freedom.

This is a very short event.  But writing it down involves constant thinking and asking questions about the 6 “Ws”.

Who?

Why?

When?

Where?

What?

How?

And after we have done with the Chinese composition, I will let him speak out from his mind in English.  Again, asking him to “describe”.

He won’t learn it straight away. 

But I am sure, thru the training, and exercising, he is more confident and grabs the concepts of writing.

Writing is about describing.

Writing is about asking the 6 “Ws”.

Why I love to read the Hardy Boys Junior Files for them every night.

That is because these Hardy Boys books focus in asking the 6 Ws to solve crime.

Hardy Boys: http://miniliew.blogspot.ch/2015/07/hardy-boys.html

And I show him a way how to use technology, the Dragon Dictation to quickly jot down the chinese sentence thru speaking.

First you learn how to pronounce things correctly.  Second, you quickly write down the Chinese senates.  For words you don’t know, as long as you can read, you can use the Han Yu Pin Yin to find the words.  In P3 Chinese composition, they are allow to use the dictionary.  Be it hard copy or electronic.

Hopefully, thru these methods, I can help my boy to improve his writing in both Chinese and English.  Yeah, Dragon Dictation can change the languages to English or Mandarin.

Quite cool.

Dragon Dictation:  http://miniliew.blogspot.ch/2015/08/learning-chinese-composition.html

And lastly, you notice that the brother Kay Kay is sitting besides.  Do it in front of the siblings so that he or she can be inspired and wanting to follow his brother.  :)

????My sons, if you guys can make it for your Chinese, don’t forget about the efforts your daddy put in to teach you guys.  :)

SG50 National Day Observance

Date:  Aug 9, 2015

Today is Singapore’s 50th National Day!

Happy Birthday Singapore!

Early morning, we are heading to the National Day Observance event @ Teban Garden.  

We tried to ballot for the NDP, but we did not get it.  We got it in 2013.  I guess there are too many people balloting for it.

We are are on red top today.

Some friends ask me, “I thought you are Malaysian?"

Well, my wife has converted to be Singaporean for our children sake.

And both my sons are Singaporeans already.

One of the thing that I teach my son is “You have to love your country."

That is why as a father, I will have to go all the way to support the Singapore national day events, and make my sons to be as patriotic as possible.

After all, they are Singaporeans.

No point to teach them politics.  Just ask them to be a good Singaporean who love their countries.

When national day comes, there is no line drawn.  No PAP, no ??? (oppositions).  All is about loving your countries.

This is what they have to know today.

When they grew up, and when they become older, and they can think, then, they will think for themselves and they will make their own observations, and make own judgement which side they want to choose.

Quite cool they decorate their HDB like this.  At Teban Garden.

So many Singapore flags.  Must be here la.

A lot of people are here already.  The band is from Commonwealth Secondary School.

We don’t know what is National Day Observance.  

Oh…. oh….

It is a small parade.

There are uniform cadets marching, etc.

More and more people arriving.

Here come the guest of honour, Ms. Foo.  The MP.

Shaking hand with all the residences.

Oops… She spotted both Jay & Kay.

Then, she put here hands on Jay’s shoulder, and ask her guys, “Let’s take a photo here!"

Too much publicity.  Don’t like. hahaha

Raising the flag.

They are broadcasting the Mr. Lee Kuan Yews proclamation in 1965 live across the whole Singapore at 9am. 

Then, the MP gave National Day speech in 3 languages.  Wow, I am impressed with her Malay.  Click below to listen a bit.

https://instagram.com/p/6JJryLsk--/

She also get to inspect the uniform groups.

Jay Jay was happy to be here.

The cake is here.

Kay Kay also very happy.

My two boys.  They have grown so much.

The three Singaporean at home.

3x S and a M.

Let’s light up the cake.

Got flag, got SG50.  Its perfect.  Let’s take a photo.

Happy Birthday Singapore!

Soft Copy of Business Cards

Date:  Sep 6, 2015

You sure have a lot of business cards in your office.

Your day to day work.

Your contact for ordering Ramli Burger.

How do you store them?

Today, my wife taught me something new.

I did even know Evernote can do this!

Yes!  Evernote.

You can now use Evernote to store your stacks of business cards.

Take note, you have to be a Premium user for Evernote so that you can scan and digitise the business card.

Last time, I used a program called “Hello” I think, and it is the business card app for Evernote.  It is quite good.  Until it start to collect fees.

And then, it start to disappear.  Evernote says it no longer will support it.

Then, we thought it is over, there is no one app that you can use to efficiently and effectively store the cards.

Take a look at the video, where my wife uses the Evernote to scan my business card.

1.  Run Evernote.

2.  Take photo using Evernote.  (Cannot use the iPhone Photo to take, must use the photo feature within Evernote)

3.  You don’t even need to press any button.  Evernote photo will automatically know it is a business card and automatically turn on flash light to take the photo.

4.  Once it took the photo, it will scan it.  Then, it will present the info in data fields.

5.  Then, you choose to save it.

Now, you can customise some settings too.  

Go to Evernote Settings.  Choose "General".

Next, choose “Camera”.

Next choose “Business Card”.

 

This is where you can customise what you want to do with the business card scans.

You can automatically save all the scanned business card into any notebook you like.  In my case, I store it into a notebook called “Contacts”.

You can tag the name cards too.

You can save the contact info into your iPhone contacts.

Oh ya.  You can also snap a second photo (Back of the Name card) and attached it under the same contact.

Quite nice feature to have.  But it does not do a digitisation on the second photo.

The scanning part is quite OK too.  

OK.  The next few days, you will see me busy snapping photos of my name cards.