22 Feb 2025 - Online Preliminary Contest for NOI 2025

The Online Preliminary Contest for this year's National Olympiad in Informatics (NOI) took place today. Each school may register any number of students for this contest. All contestants who achieve a non-zero score will receive a Certificate of Participation.  Based on the results of the Online Preliminary Contest, the top five or six contestants from each school will be invited to participate in the Final Contest.

Javier did pretty well and will likely be participating in the final which is held on 22 Mar 2025.  He was awarded Bronze last year and his target this year is a Silver.  All the best, Javier!

15 Feb 2025 - Chingay Parade @ Heartlands

Over the past weekends, there were Chingay Parade at various heartlands in Singapore.  Today it came to Ang Mo Kio.  Though the weather was a bit wet, it did not dampen the festive mood of the residents.

There were performances by various groups of all ages in front of Ciyuan CC.

It was followed by the key highlights of the night, the colourful Chingay floats.

Of course, how could a CNY celebration be without lion dance and dragon dance?  These "lions" and "dragons" were lighted up beautifully at night.

Watch the following videos for various moments of Chingay Parade 2025.

8 Feb 2025 - Discovering something new every now and then

We were at Kovan area this afternoon and saw a grand opening of a Braised Duck Kway Chap shop.  There was lion dance performance, and a small crowd gathered around to watch the performance.

We then strolled toward Kovan MRT station and came across below art sculpture.  We had frequented this area for quite some time but we had never noticed it.  We didn't even know there is actually a Hougang Heritage Trail here and below is a part of it, which depicts a scene in the former Simon Road market.

2 Feb 2025 - Waxing Crescent Moon with four visible planets

Tonight, a waxing crescent moon and four naked-eye planets (Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn) will be visible together in the sky.  With my iPhone, below are the best that I could capture.

2 Feb 2025 - Another CNY gathering

We had one last CNY gathering to attend this year and the venue was at SAFRA Choa Chu Kang.  

We booked a private function room, which came with two bowling lanes, an electronic dart board and a KTV system.  Not a bad place to have such family gathering.

1 Feb 2025 - TJC@Bedok had been completely demolished!

CNY is not over yet and we visited my cousin's place at Bedok today.  Her place is just opposite of TJC's original site.  However, the entire school compound had now been demolished.  The construction of new school buildings will take 4 years, which means Javier will not be able to experience the new school as he would have graduated by then.

Below is the photo of TJC before it was demolished.