#7 Closure (Metaphor)

Hey all. Well, this is kinda sad. It finally hit me that this semester is going to end, and exams are drawing nearer. This also means that I only have 1 more EIR class to attend, and it will be the last time I'll be seeing Ms Faridah! :( Boo hoo!! Honestly, throughout my 2 years in TP, she has definitely been the only tutor that shows concern and genuinely cares about her students. It's hard to find a tutor like that, trust me. It's good to be able to open up and talk to her normally, which is not what I tend to do with other tutors.


Well, for this last entry, I will be linking my EIR journey to a metaphor. It's really difficult to just pull metaphors out of thin air and appropriately linking it together, especially since I am not a metaphorical person. LOL. But I'll try and I hope this works. 

"EIR is a Lemon- either bitter or sweet"


This is the phrase I will be using to describe the most important lesson that I have learnt in EIR. The reason I'm using this metaphor is because I have experienced both the fun and good moments (sweet) in learning this CDS and also gone through the hard times (bitter) . 


There were times when I felt really grateful for choosing this CDS as my life is constantly revolving around the internet and social media. Through this CDS journey, I have really acquired skills and knowledge that are relevant to me and my future in researching. This is especially so when alot of research are needed for projects (Major Project next semester!!). My tutor, Ms Faridah, is also one of the main thing that I'm grateful for. She really tries her best to help her students unlike most of the tutors I know.


However, there are also the difficult times in this CDS that I face. This is when I find it difficult to grasp some knowledge learnt as I am new to it. An example is evaluating the internet resource. I found t islightly difficult initially as I really had to analyse and go through the different criteria's when evaluating a website. Before taking this CDS, I was clueless and ignorant of all these things, I did not even know whether the websites and links I used previously were accurate, authoritative or current. What made it more difficult was that I am loaded with deadlines for other projects too and the due dates all coincide with each other. 


Overall, despite some of the hard times I have faced, I really love this CDS. I'm not even joking right now. I will really miss it. This is probably the only module this semester that I do not mind waking up at 6.40am to go to. Well yeah, I do hope me and my group mates, as well as Ms Faridah will stay in touch. Thanks for all the memories guys :)

In honour of the late Whitney Houston (RIP), let me just end off with her song. "Bitter sweet memories, that is all I'm taking with me, so goodbye please don't cry". I'll miss this CDS !!

#6 Dream Holiday

Hey all, yes, I'm back, a little late, but you know what they say-"Better late than never" . So anyway, today's topic is very interesting! Its all about the dream holiday I've been wanting to embark on. Yes, I have my fair share of travelling, I've been to places, but I have never stepped into Europe. I know this might come off a little cliché but I have always wanted to go Paris with someone special. Especially after watching those movies where bestfriends or loved ones enjoy their get-away vacation in Paris, eating at the Le 58 Tour Eiffel that offer traditional French cuisine. Mmm sounds really good!!

According to 2008 estimates, the Paris agglomeration is Europe's biggest or second biggest city economy and the sixth largest in the world.

So yes, I came across a multimedia website called Paris City (Link: http://www.paris.com/tours) and that website offers great pictures and details - all related to Paris!! Its a really nice and informative website and I recommend it for those who are interested to travel to Paris in the near future. 

I love the presentation and arrangement of the website. There are different headings and sections withing the website for users to navigate around easily. Pictorial icons and headings are also used to capture their users attention! Upon clicking the different picture icons, there will be a more detailed information of that attraction for users to know. The headings and links are also categorized appropriately such as "Food and Wine", "Shopping", "Private tours" etc (usability). There are also user support facility such as the "Contactins Paris.com" which helps users to clarify their problems or information needed in relation to the website. 

Its a really helpful site for those who intend to go to Paris! You could also see the photo tour, map of Paris and the current weather in Paris!! I'm so psyched just looking at the website! Theres even a category on recommended Paris City visits! Below is a screenshot of the website :)

The website is also easily accessible, there is no need for registration and log-ins. Anyone can visit it easily! You could also book sevices, hotels and tours through the website.

However, this website does not come from an authoritative source, it is by a private company run by travel enthusiasts that love Paris and all it has to offer. Although it is stated that their team has expanded to 21 professionals from hotel, internet technology and marketing business, there are no names or pictures of these 'professionals' to proof that. I will be quite wary of booking hotels and tours from this website though. But other than that, I trust that the pictures and details regarding the attractions in Paris are accurate!

I chose the evaluation criteria of "Presentation and arrangement", "Authority", "Usability" and "Accessibility" as my evaluation criteria for this website as I feel that these 4 are the most important criteria to me in evaluating a website. These criteria are the most crucial for me to give an overall view of such websites. 

Other than evaluating the website, I came across some pretty neat photos to share with you guys. Here you go! Hope you enjoy it! 

1) Saint Germain Des Pres

2) The Palais-Royal

Well, if you ready my #4th blogpost regarding Second Life Virtual game, you would have noticed that I had visited 'Paris' in Second Life too, with my group mates. I must say, there is a vast difference seeing the view of Paris in Second Life and in the website I was just discussing to you guys about! The pictures in the website are more sharp, detailed and nice contrast of colors. Whereas, in Second Life, some of the images doesn't even consist of any color and they are not much details or places to navigate around in, in Paris. The view of Paris in Second Life does not have that exciting feel I had as compared to website. Well, maybe I'm being bias, but I'll let you be the judge of that with the screenshots I'm about to present to you of my Second Life experience in Paris.

Au revoir et de prendre soin ~

#5 Invisible Web

Hey, so it's been a while now since I last updated my blog (More than a month I guess?)This is so as I've been enjoying myself during the term break week and, when school started, projects were all due. You can't imagine the hectic schedule, deadlines and stress. I guess I'm not complaining, I guess I just have myself to blame haha. Well, most of the projects are done now. 

Anyway, in week 11, after the term break, we did Practical 6 of EIR, which is all about Invisible Web. So most of you guys must be wondering what in the world does the term "Invisible Web" means. Invisible Web could also be referred to as Deep Web. This is so as the World Wide Web/information content is not part of the Surface Web, which is indexed by standard search engines.

So, the invisible web that we visited was none other than the TP SPARK Digital Library Portal. This portal can't be accessed by just any Tom, Dick or Harry (LOL). You have to be a TP student. 

Once we entered SPARK, we had to choose 2 relevant databases suitable for our research topic. The 2 databases I chose was EBSCOhost and ScienceDirect. My research topic was the impact of smoking on youth.

For EBSCOhost, the content declared who the authors were and the organisation they come from, thus it’s credible. They showed the methods on how the study was conducted (through 918 adolescent study participants who were followed from the 9^th to 12^th grade). E-mail address as well as address of organization are stated. Provided statistical analysis and demographics. Provide full pdf.The content declared who the authors were and the organisation they come from, thus it’s credible. They showed the methods on how the study was conducted (through 918 adolescent study participants who were followed from the 9th to 12th grade). E-mail addresses as well as address of organization are stated. Provided statistical analysis and demographics as well as full pdf files.

As for ScienceDirect, it provided the author and the date the article was available. Only provide an abstract, need to pay to get full pdf.

Other than EBSCOhost and ScienceDirect, I also visited ebooks database on  OPAC (found in TP's database). I managed to find some information regarding my search topic(mentioned above). I found a book which provides all information regarding tobacco smoking. It provides the electronic version of the book itself. Tobacco use and the related health effects, quitting smoking and Tobacco control and marketing. This is one of the picture I got from the electronic book.

As shown above, the book is very detailed. It provides a wide, diversified scope of tobacco smoking such as how it affects the body (uses illustrations and diagrams to attract people). It also provides the copyright details and author as well as the myths and misconception of smoking.

Well, that's it for today. Stay tuned for the upcoming posts :) 

Cheers

#4 Second Life :)

Hello everyone! Wow, it has been quite some time since I last blogged. Well, dont blame me, my assignments and projects are seriously overloading and taking a toll on me. Life of a second year student :( Anyway, lets get busy talking about my Second Life Experience the other day ! :) Honestly, this is the first time I am actually playing an online virtual game haha Oh wait, if you consider my less-than-a-week experience playing MapleStory then Second Life would be my second virtual game haha. I am just reiterating the fact that I am new to this virtual game and I have to say, I am not really good at it. Firstly, I tried logging on to Second Life a week earlier to familiarise myself with it and there was a major problem teleporting! I could not teleport, everytime I tried to, a pop-up will appear saying that I have been logged out. After the fourth try, I was very agitated and decided to ask my friend for help. She logged into Second Life and invited me to teleport to Temasek Polytechnic and join her there. Lucky for me that worked out quite well :)

Alright, so lets get on to my experience of Second Life with the Hong Kong students that Tuesday night. So, when I reached Temasek Poly Island, there were already quite a fair bit of people. All of them were confused and were asking each other whether there were anyone form HKPolyU there. Seems like all the people there were from TP. After a few minutes, some HKPolyU students started replying. However, there were so few of them that the TP students were trying their best to get hold of one. Suddenly, a guy chatted and said "Hello DhirahTP(me) I am from HKPolyU". I was seriously so excited that he was the one who initiated the conversation. He then "offered friendship" via SecondLife, and we chatted in a private chatbox. Below is a picture of the scene I mentioned.
His name was Ahun, and we got off to a very good start. We started off with general questions like hobby, diploma and age. Most of the time, I am the one asking him questions haha. Ahun is 25 years old, loves to play football (just like most of the guys I know haha) and he is pursuing his Masters in IT. His dream holiday is Japan as it has nice sceneries for him to admire. He is also a free-thinker, does not belong to any religion.

He then asked me if I had Facebook, after much chatting, he added me on Facebook. So, we are now friends on Fb! Interesting, I then realised his name was actually Alex Hun! We chatted some more and he told me (exact words) "Singapore has strong power" haha. I think he is referring to our government and the stability in our country? I'm not really sure. He said that there are alot of talented people and people obey and stick to the rules here in Singapore. He then continued and told me he wants to try to work in Singapore as the technology and finace here seems very good. He was the only responsive HKPolyU student in SecondLife to me and my groupmates. Below is a conversation we had regarding Singapore as I had mentioned. Oh! I forgot to add on that he loves Taiwan Pop Music :) 

After much chatting, we got down to some, well more serious topic, that I was supposed to ask him for my EIR assignment.

Q1)  Is it ethical to use social media for harmful effects (eg cyberbullying, impersonation, terrorism, violence)? Why?

Alex (aka Ahun) said it is not acceptable to use the social media for such stuff as it is not morally right.

Q2) How can you use Social Media in a more responsible way?

He told me to use social media in a more responsible way, one must avoid watching non-moral things such as videos of terrorism, bullying or violence on the internet. There should be a warning followed by deleting or blocking accounts that spread fake messages or news to cloud the minds of other people.

Q3) How do you protect yourself from bad effects of Social Media ?

He said to avoid yourself, do not ofter give out your personal information on the web.

After much chatting, my group, together with Alex (aka Ahun) went to our dream holiday destination. It was a unanimous decision and we agreed on Paris. I had problems teleporting, it took quite some time before I could finally teleport. My groupmates helped me :) Below are the pictures taken at Paris Rive Gauche. We walked around saw different activities as those side-walk artist going on and some nice scenaries.


 





We also visited the Dubai Women's College (picture above) haha we wanted to have some fun and really explore SecondLife. We took a longer time (2 hours!!) than the allocated time given to us. Alex (aka Ahun) was so sweet, he sticked with us throughout our whole experience in SecondLife.

#3 Online Shopping ;)

What a great day today! I did my 3rd activity online today for EIR. It's an online shopping spree!! We were given a situation where we were given "$500 SGD" to spend on an online shopping spree and purchase items we have always wanted to buy! I'm beginning to find this CDS more and more interesting everyday. I often hear my friends complaining about their respective CDS and I'm sitting there all like "I'm so happy with my choice of CDS" :)

So anyway, lets get busy with the online shopping! Some people may say that $500 SGD is not enough for online shopping, but with all the things you can buy at a discounted price on Groupon Singapore, I think we can get a couple of good quality things! Yes, so I decided to pay a visit to http://www.groupon.sg/ :)

I was looking through the different deals and the first item that caught my eye was the 30 minutes flight simulation on Airbus A320! It had a 50% discount and I only had to pay $34.75. Therefore, I am left with approximately $465 for the rest of my online shopping.

I have always been interested in flying and my ambition is actually to be a pilot for SilkAir. Currently, SilkAir is the only Singapore-based airline that takes in women pilots. When I saw the advert for this deal, I was totally excited! I didn't even know that an experience like this is open to public. I've only experieced a flight simulation once, back when I was in the NCC Air Girls CCA in my secondary school. It was a really great experience, this would be the perfect opportunity to re-live my wonderful experience.

Alright, moving on to the next item I will be purchasing is a White Gold Plated Necklace. It will be a really sweet gift for my mother when I see her for her birthday. 

It costs around $35 SGD after discount as you can see in the picture above. Currently, I am left with $430 SGD to spend.

After spending some time in Groupon Singapore, I decided to go to http://www.alldealsasia.com/. I was looking through the different deals and something came to my mind when I saw a deal for the best ergonomic chair. My dad has always been complaining about his office chair in our house, this would be the perfect gift to get him on New Year's Eve so he would stop whining over the chair. Right now, I am left with $220 SGD.

So the next item I am going to purchase is a kit to tone my stomach area and get the perfectly nice women abs I have always wanted :) It costs around $193.70 SGD, which leaves me with approximately $26 SGD left.

With the $26 SGD, the last thing I am going to do is probably just get a good relaxing foot massage at La Beau. I have always wanted to try and have a massage at that place, but its expensive. Finally got a good deal of it on All Deals Asia (Singapore) :) After the 91% discount, the price for the massage is only $20, which then leaves me with approximately $6 SGD left.



I had a great time doing this activity! Goodbye for now :)

#2 Hobby/Skill:They say "Only you know what your good at"... Do I? ;)

Hello everyone! Its good to be back (although I've been gone for only a day haha) . Honestly, this is the first time I'm actually committed to writing and enjoying it, surprisingly. I used to own a blog a few years back, but things got out of hand so I decided to deactivate my blogger account. Well, let us not get into that matter now haha.

Anyway, yesterday's EIR lab session was fun. Miss Faridah briefed us about our E-learning week next week. We will be interacting with the Hong Kong PolyU students via SecondLife. It's a virtual world where we will be having conversations with our groupmates and the HKPolyU students. We will all be in Avatar form (our virtual characters and names). Our group will then decide on a certain state, such as Paris, to go to in SecondLife. I have a feeling that this would be a pretty interesting and unique experience as I have never (ever) registered or be in a virtual world game concept like this before. Besides the SecondLife briefing, we also ceated our first EIR blog.

Well, let me now get into the topic of my blog today. Most of you will be wondering what today's blogpost title actually mean. It's actually about a hobby or skill that I have. Some people once mentioned to me that "no one can tell you what your skill is except you because only you yourself know what exactly your good at". Well, that is absolutely true. Whether others notice or appreciate your skill is a whole other story. It's weird that I took quite some time to figure out what exactly my skill and passion is. Finally it hit me, my skill is actually inline skating! I was once in the Temasek Inline Skating team, however, I did not continue.I do my own practices at East Coast Park with my cousin.She will pick me up from home and we will take a drive to East Coast Park and practice different moves or try and skate as far as we can. I am not a professional, it is just a skill I acquire. The difference between inline skates and rollerblades is that inline skates have 2 to 5 polyurethane wheels which are arranged in a single line. This design creates greater speed and better maneuverability than roller blades.Below is a picture of a V500 inline skate.

To learn how to start skating is quite a difficult process for some people. You have to know your centre of gravity, balance yourself, stride and stop when your with your skates. The main key is courage and determination. It is perfectly normal if you keep on falling to the ground and scrape your skin. These things happen even after months of practice.

Firstly, you have to start by getting down on your hands and knees (just like a crawling position). Slowly raise your left leg followed by your right leg with both of your palms on the ground stabilizing you , similar to a frog position like the picture below.




After you get into this position, form a V-shape with your blades and slowly stand up.

This is a sample of how you should form a V-shape before standing up.

Once you've learn how to stabilize yourself when you get up, try lifting up one leg after the other and start stomping on the ground (at the same spot). This will help you fimiliarise yourself with your skates and also give you the confidence to push off and start skating. After your confident enough, you can start pushing off from one leg to another and start skating!! :) Skating is not something you can be good at within a day, it takes a lot of practice and falling down for you to learn. The trick is not giving up, once you fall, get back up and try it over and over again until you get the hang of it.

Tip:

-Do not straighten your leg when you skate, bend a little at your knee joint and push off with the leg that your more comfortable with (most of the time it's not your dominant leg).

-Once you feel like you are gonna fall, lean forward with your palms open and not backwards. This will lessen the pain and the injuries.

Have fun trying :)

#1 My very 1st EIR Blogpost- Self Introduction :)

Hello everyone!!


I'm Nadhirah, but most of the people I know call me 'Dhirah'. Guess it's because my name is either too long and has like three syllables or it is just hard for them to pronounce my whole name, haha but it's fine, I love that name and grew up hearing people calling me by that name :) I am from the Engineering School, Diploma in Integrated Facility Management. It's a combination of both the hospitality and aviation industry. If I'm not wrong, we are the first diploma to offer facility management in both the hospitality and aviation industry.


Now, lets move on to getting to know more of me :) I'm the type of person who is easy going, loves to laugh and loves people who can make me laugh. Honestly, I laugh at the most stupidest things, haha some people said that laughing adds like a year more to your lifespan. True or false? I've yet to find out. I love to travel around too, more for leisure and relaxation. sometimes for historical knowledge. For those of you who are interested in building up your knowledge in History, I recommend you to go to Turkey. There are many  UNESCO world heritage sites and historical ruins there that are preserved for tourists. Below is one of the photos I took with my phone of the ruins of the Library of Celsius in Turkey. It is pretty nice!

My favourite past time is downloading episodes of some American TV series (that has not yet been shown in Singapore) to my laptop and watching them. Some of the TV series I usually download are Glee, 90210 and Drop Dead Diva. That's a pretty boring past time for some people I guess haha. However, other than that, I do occasionally go to East Coast Park for rollerblading. I love rollerblading, it really trains and helps you define your thigh and calf muscles. So those are basically the 2 things I normally do during my past time. If I am bored or having horrible mood swings, I usually listen to my favourite singer, the one and only, Katy Perry. I really love all her songs and her new album "Teenage Dream". All her songs really speak to me and they have a really nice beat. I personally feel that she is a real artist, true to herself and her songs has a tad of some personal experience she has gone through.
                          



My favourite hangout place is actually at Arab St, which is located near Bugis MRT (just a five to ten minutes walk). Other than some of the Sheesha sessions I have with my friends, we also love the variety of food such as the Egyptian/Middle Eastern cuisine or local Singapore food there. If we are lucky, we get to catch the belly-dancing performances held every alternate Friday night at a restaurant there called Cafe Le Caire, it's a very interesting type of dance and the atmosphere is just so incredible. The best time to go there is at night, as most of the shops and activities there start in the evening. Below is a photo of me and my friends eating at Cafe Le Caire one evening during fasting month. Notice that its a different dining concept than other restaurants in Singapore. We, diners, get a unique experience of sitting on the floor and eating from low tables, similar to some of the concept of dining in Middle Eastern countries.
                              

The picture above is a snapshot I took with my phone of one of the belly-dancers, Asena :)

So that's pretty much me :) Stay tuned for more posts, but goodbye for now :)