it was a year and 6 mths ago that we graduated from hwachong, nothing much has
changed since then - we still have the good old class outings when we spend most
of the time walking around (+ extended one in europe recently), we still play
mahjong, watch movies, go æçå¦! together (at nwxiang's request of course)..
...wan come my hse for a swim on nx Monday morning - afternoon?
Wahaha, I've rediscovered swimming :)
suhan lived on 4:24 PM
- 03S78 forever -
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Look Around You
Good day people!
Just in case you haven't been looking around you recently, you should watch this documentary. I think its quite farnie. Don't know if you would agree. Some of you might have watched it before. Haha.
Hey guys, a friend recently asked me for my opinion on the career prospects of mechanical vs electrical engineering.
Unfortunately, I have no idea.
Hope some of you, or anyone who chances upon this blog, could enlighten me... presuming that he has no preference for either. Feel free to tag or send me an email, in this case (ryan.shea.tan@hotmail.com). If you'd like to give your take on chemical and biological engineering, you are welcome too =)
Its been so long since we had our very own orientation campfire. I guess people had long forgotten what's so nice about campfire. I guess its not really nice lah. But its the community, the people and the bondings made during orientation that push all the passion into a fireball exploded on campfire night.
Yah everyone noes Rain is in Singapore. Not only the Rain who pulls his shirt to show off his abs in the midst of his concert. But also the drip drip drip rain that rained the whole day whole night. 真的是天天夜夜. Gian go ktv liao. :)
Anyway it was raining and raining and raining. Then before I left house to go Hwachong for orientation, I put on my msn nick: 让孩子们开心一下吧. Go away stupid rain. Sorry.
Abit sad. The rain continued and campfire was held in the hall. You can see the small small "campfire" on the corner of the above picture. And that was zhiyang singing with his friend from 歌坊. Zhiyang was sooo good, and zhiyang was just sitting around me. Wah hahaha. Ohyah, I realised that they like to sing alot of old songs. Like they sang 冻结(林俊杰's first album), 开始懂了(孙燕姿's first album), really not the songs that I sing when I was in J1 lah!!!! I concluded that they know that I am coming back, so sing some old songs to please the old people. Make me feel more "homely", or "farmely-ly".
Introducing the people who came down, starting from the oldest.
Yew Wai from 02s78!!! Haha haven seen him for quite long already. He is studying in TCM in NTU. Yep. Came back with his friend. Heehee.
Yang from 03s78!!! Haha one person oso wan to take batch foto. What can I do? "I also bo bianzzzz." Haha. Sorry I clown around.
The 04s78sssssss. See people's class so enthu everyone(except wenx's sis) wore hwachong uniform back. No school badge except 2. Almost kena caught by Pang. Haha. Hope that they will still be so enthu next year. But abit siao liao lah especially the medicine people, talking abt zhiyang's sternocleidomastoid when he was singing.
The 05s78ssssss. Freshly baked and newly come out from Alvls oven. Haha highly enthusiastic pple going to go into society and uni and army:P. Enthu enthu pls dun go into med and become siao like ur snrs. Haf fun while not in sch. Oh finally, no more school!
06s78sssss!!! Wahseh now become senior already. Last year still blur blur come in. The class with only 4/5 guys. Haha I bet the guys must be quite enthusiastic about becoming good snrs, hmm, not like me. Haha. Jia you jia you.
07s78!!!! Ok erm, better distribution of guys and girls. 10+ : 10+ haha wadeva! Ok erm, some from HCI integrated programme, some not. Some stressed out, some stress in. Hm. Only know the class rep is the girl 2nd row in the middle, called weiting, she qt stressed, like me liddat. Then another girl called rachel. So it seems like I only remember girls' names. Cos they took bus with me home with alot other people, and those were the last two names I heard. Pooh.
Ohyah, almost wanted to tell them about the legacy of our class. Especially the part about, "You know, I moved this class bench here", say it in chinese more seh, "此桌是我搬". Haha like wad pple used to say "此山是我开". Haha, that was sooooo sooo sooo so long ago liao.
Here's everyone! S78!!!! Later the whole company about 40+ of us went down and colonize KAP first floor until 11.30. Fun. But me not enthu leh, din go around and know people, they know me can liao. Im the only one super duper lao jiao anyway.
It happened that during the dancing session, the rain stopped. I din dance of course, was with the 04s at the class bench talking cok. Then the juniors all came down, and everyone gathered at the central plaza. Campfire's burning!!! Woohoo!! Turbocharged! Then immediately after everything light up, the rain came back. But thank goodness.
I read with interest the recent flurry of articles in ST's forum page on HPB's decision not to ban trans fats in Singapore following New York's recent ban on trans fats in restaurants. So I shall just ramble here.
As usual, wikipedia has a long article on trans fats too, which are basically the side effect of partial hydrogenation in foodstuffs to make them less prone to rancidity (food chem!)
Interestingly, one of the studies in our Community, Occupational and Family Medicine (COFM) tutorials is strongly involved in all this: the Nurses' Health Survey (NHS)... a cohort study involving 120,000 nurses.
"Hu and colleagues analyzed data from 900 coronary events from the NHS population during 14 years of followup. He determined that a nurse's CHD risk roughly doubled (relative risk of 1.94, CI: 1.43 to 2.61) for each 2% increase in trans fat calories consumed (instead of carbohydrate calories). By contrast, it takes more than a 15% increase in saturated fat calories (instead of carbohydrate calories) to produce a similar increase in risk. Eating non-trans unsaturated fats instead of carbohydrates reduces the risk of CHD rather than increasing it."
All the vegetarians started to get visibly concerned... started big law suits against Oreo etc etc Then it led to a flurry of change in regulation in Denmark, Canada, US...
But in Singapore, we are still quite far behind. According to the CNA article, only 30 percent of packaged food products carry trans fat labelling. And HPB released a statement saying "We should be more worried about saturated fats...A recent 2004 National Health Survey found that 17 percent of Singaporeans exceeded their trans fat intake, and 85 percent took more saturated fat than is recommended."
Dunno how that was calculated but here was what appeared in the forum today:
"Below is a list of the packaged foods commonly consumed by children and adults which contain significant amount of trans fat:
- Ice cream made in S'pore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines. Those made in Australia, New Zealand and Europe do not contain trans fat as its use is not allowed. - Dairy creamer or coffee creamer. All the 3-in-1 coffee packages contain high levels of trans fats - Most biscuits, packaged chocolates & creamed sweets made in S'pore, Malaysia... (same countries). Biscuits and waffles, especially those with cream filling contain trans fat - Instant noodles. Most are fried with palm oil a great number of which are hydrogenated and thus would have trans fat."
Oh my, that sounds like that's an awful big part of my mugging diet. And goodness know how much is in the made in malaysia palm/soybean mix cooking oil in the kitchen.
But wait! Khong Guan and Hup Seng biscuits claim to have no trans fats! (at least not measurable by 0.01). Maggi, Nissin, Myojo and KOKA all say they are trans fat free too. Same however, cannot be said of Julie's biscuits tsk tsk.
N.B. American Heart Association recommends that your daily intake of trans fats be limited to 1 percent of total calories, which is equivalent to roughly 2 to 2.5 grams of trans fat per day. (The AHA also recommends that you limit saturated fat to about 15 to 19 grams per day.)
