Have you ever wondered how can Santa Claus deliver so many presents in one night? With the advancement of technology, you can imagine things are now more high-tech. I shall not revel too much, but have to say its a fantastic movie for the whole family this season. I brought my wife and two daughters and they simply loved it.
Packing Elf
Look out for the Packing elf, she is way way too cute and cool.
There was a lot of talk about social media and from her sharing, she have clearly studied many countries and how Governments use social media. She made a good point that in the 1960 Presidential Elections between Nixon and Kennedy, television was a new technology and it was also the very first time a live televised presidential debate was held . Without a doubt, how the candidates looked on television was apparently how the public judged their capability to govern. Its quite superficial, but thats reality. This draws a very good parallel on how our current politicians in Singapore are judged by the way they use social media.
Following that, there was a panel discussion by Jane Fountain, James Kang (Assistant Chief Executive, IDA), Prof Ashish Lall (LKY School of Public Policy) and Dr Pallab Saha (Institute of Systems Science at NUS). There was a lot of talk about data privacy and its good to know that there will be a new data-protection legislation in Singapore come first half of next year. Yay, no more random sales calls.
Breakout Session at GovCampSG 2011
That was then followed by food and beer. If I don’t recall wrongly, they were actually serving Schneider Weisse beer and I have to say its pretty good. Then came the main event which was the breakout sessions. There were quite a number of good one and the first I went to was Prof Ashish Lall’s session about Society 2.0.
It was quite an intellectual discussion carried out in plain simple english. Basically, everyone was challenged that if we wanted change, we should do something about it and not wait for someone else to do it.
A few cool sites he shared:
Give a Minute! – An suggestion platform that asks the public what would make them use walk, bike, but or train more. Over a period of 13 months, there were 3000 suggestions and 97% of them were on topic.
Public Insight Network – A site that connects Media to experts. Experts not by the title of where they work or paper qualifications, but real experts. Even experts from super niche fields.
InnoCentive – Where it aims to matchmake people who have a problem to people who like solving problems.
PriceStats – A site that collects prices of products available on the net to try and measure inflation.
The Finland Phenomenon – A documentary that reveals the surprising factors accounting for Finland’s rank as the #1 education system in the world.
my sticker
I then managed to catch a few other interesting sessions as well. Yin Shanyang shared on data visualization and his work on the Melbourne transportation which was really impressive. Robin shared on Using Social Media which led to some good discussions about how local politicians used social media in the last general elections. Preetam then led the next discussion around Social Tool for Emergency Preparedness which was an open brainstorming session.
This session gave me 2 ideas:
Why not have a website to allow commuters to volunteer their commuting habits. Where they live, when they travel, from where to where, what do they use. If there is a sizable sample size, this publicly collected data could allow the authorities to better plan public transport?
Local developers at GovCamp mention that most data available at data.gov.sg is not really usable, hence not possible to use or create anything. However, I think why think about just Singapore? Why not use available data overseas to create the app ideas and just show the relevant authorities locally and tell them if the data is available in a particular format, then the application can immediately be used in Singapore as well. But the assumption is of cause the application is a good one.
Overall, I really enjoyed this GovCampSG and hope that it will be even better next year with even more breakout sessions and constructive ideas exchanges.
Punggol Waterway opened 2 weeks ago, 23rd Oct 2011 to be exact. As supportive Punggolians, our whole family went down to see what the buzz was all about. We managed to park by the road and this was the first view of the waterway. Fwah… impressive and the crowd was madness.
Sand Play Area
We walked quite a long way and eventually arrived at the sand play area. Very nice. Mental note was to make sure we come again in the day. There were some sandcastle pros doing some impressive work. A touch of the sand and you know its not the crappy type of sand you find at East Coast. Should be great to build with.
Fireworks!!
The crowd gathered at the main area to see the performance, but the whole place being so crowded and us being not so kiasu, we ended up quite far behind and did not manage to see much. But everyone caught the fireworks. :)
Huge huge crowds
I turned my head around and the amount of people behind us was super alot. People were all over the slopes, on the bridges, along the waterway. It felt like a mini NDP.
Carpark Area
So TODAY, we made time to go check out this new place in our neighbourhood properly. Armed with wife, 3 kids, pails & spades, extra clothes and iPhone4s Thepans descended on Punggol Waterway.
There is a decent parking area for about 10 – 15 cars I guess, kinda small, but good thing is there are parking lots all over the roadside, so no biggie.
Bridges
The bridges look beautiful in the day. The amount of greenery was really nice.
Water Fountains
The waterway is beautiful, there were fountains (which river in Singapore have fountains?? Tell me!!) so cool right. It feels like some kind of tourist place.
Punggol Waterway
The meandering river is really nice, all decked out with well planned landscaping. Its like its drawn out from some artists impression, but no its right infront of me. Super cool.
Bringing Clara out to play sand
We brought the kids here to play sand. They have been nagging us to bring them to Punggol Promenade Riverside Walk to play sand, but that place is not really geared up for full on sand play, but this place is.
Clara playing Sand
Clara loves the feel of the sand. She will walk around, touch the sand, sit down, grab the sand and let the sand slide out from her hand. I think she should be right handed as she always use the spade with her right hand.
Sand Play Area
The sand play area is huge. There were lots of people there and the quality of the sand is really good. If you dig like 5cm deep, you start to see moist fine sand. Its perfect for building stuff. You know how we always get sea water to mix with the sand to make it stronger. You seriously don’t need to do that here. I don’t know how this place is like when its pouring.
The girls enjoying the sand
The kids really enjoyed themselves. Of cause Clara crushed every single standing structure that her sisters did. And I told Cleo this was the exact same thing Cleo did to Clié’s sandcastles when she was younger.
Water Play Area
The Water Play area came alive at 6:30pm. The kids immediately wanted to head over. We packed our stuff and went.
There were alot of kids. Alot of running, screaming and super excited kids.
Clié and Cleo started running around too, but I held on to Clara as it was just too dangerous with all those kids. Clara was super excited too and the cold water did not bother her one bit. We only allowed her to play for only about 7 – 10 minutes as the evening winds were blowing quite strongly towards the northeast and wet clothes only meant super cold kids.
Public Toilet
We dried Clara up and the older sisters went to the toilet to get changed with the help of mommy.
Exercise Area
Just outside the toilet was the Exercise Area. Its simple and had a few new-ish type contraptions.
Sunset at Punggol Waterway
The sun started to set. It was overall a nice experience. I reckon it would be a romantic place to have a nice picnic with someone you love… only if the whole of Punggol is not also there with you.
This year for Diwali, our whole family went to my boss’s place for a wonderful party fully decked out in festive gear. Clearly Clara was the star of the day and simply too cute to resist, so everyone took turns to carry her and take pictures with her. She was a darling and slowly got comfortable with everyone.
Here are some of the wonderful photos that my boss’s daughter took. Enjoy.
The kidsRajeev with ClaraBoss's mom with ClaraSparklesThe crazy onesThe beautiful ones
It’s been said and done,
every beautiful thoughts been already sung
and I guess right now, here’s another one
So your melody
will play on and on
with the best of own
You are beautiful
like a dream come alive, incredible
A center full of miracle, lyrical
You saved my life again
and I want you to know baby
I, I love you like a love song, baby (3x)
And I keep it in re-pe-pe- peat
I, I love you like a love song, baby (3x)
And I keep it in re-pe-pe-peat
Cursing me,
boy, you played through my mind like a symphony.
There’s no way to describe what you do to me.
You just do to me,
what you do
and it feels like I’ve been rescued,
I’ve been set free
I am hypnotized
by your destiny
You are magical, lyrical, beautiful,
and you are and I want you to know, baby
I, I love you like a love song, baby (3x)
And I keep it in re-pe-pe- peat
I, I love you like a love song, baby (3x)
And I keep it in re-pe-pe- peat
No one compares, you stand alone to every record I own.
Music to my heart, that’s what you are.
A song that goes on and on
I, I love you like a love song, baby (3x)
And I keep it in re-pe-pe- peat
I, I love you like a love song, baby(3x)
I love you like a love song.
Clié loves singing and sings at home ALL THE TIME. So I’m gonna slowly record down her singing and show her when she grows older.
