Life should not just be about ourselves

Life.
Something I have been thinking about quite abit these few days.
Wondering if I am indeed making my life journey the best it can be.
Remembering my dreams. My hopes. My yearnings.
Not for myself. But for the world.
Have I fulfilled my promise to the world?
What have I been blessed with that I forgot to share with the world?

So I went to find inspiration - to make the direction and pathway more evident

I like the idea of a think tank.
Being the solver and following it through.
Access to Networks, Coaching and Mentoring of Management, Fundraising and/or Revenue Strategy

SO I BEGAN MY RESEARCH

Social ideas in Singapore

SOIMPACT Bootscape

Intute

Intute is an online learning platform that provides personalised homework and in-depth video solutions for just S$20 a month.
Website | Facebook | GiveAsia

NUMUNO

NUMUNO seek to expand access to personal and professional development opportunities and tools to more people, especially in the low income groups by providing affordable services such as group coaching and mentoring sessions, workshops and online lessons.
Facebook | GiveAsia

Reimagine

Reimagine aims to provide purpose, an opportunity to contribute as well as new social circles for retirees/seniors in Singapore through new activities/hobbies.
Facebook | GiveAsia

ReSewn

ReSewn aims to produce bags using selected recycled materials from pre-consumer excess textiles and post-consumer textile waste.
Website | GiveAsia

Value Greens

Value Greens aim to transform vegetables that are rejected from cosmetic filtering into vegetable powder (soup powder/spice powder/nutritional health supplements etc.)
Website | GiveAsia

BloomBack

BloomBack provides floral related training and complementary services to improve livelihoods of marginalised women.
Website | Facebook | Instagram | GiveAsia

Brydge You

Brydge You improves accessibility to non-profits & NGOs through listing on their online platform with user reviews and ratings.
Website | Facebook | GiveAsia

Favour

Favour connects anyone who needs favour to the public that can help fulfil it.
GiveAsia

Foliosparks

Foliosparks helps aspiring local talents in to get the recognition they deserve and be connected with opportunities through their online platform.
Facebook | Instagram | GiveAsia

Green Angels

Green Angels seeks to motivate adoption of reusable bags in Singapore’s supermarkets through a technology-enabled ecosystem.
Website | Facebook | Instagram | GiveAsia

Nom Vege

Nom Vege increases dining options for vegetarians by allowing home chefs to list their menus and take orders from an app.
GiveAsia

Smart Guppy

Smart Guppy provides access to free educational resources and rated tutors on their Open Education social network for underprivileged families.
Website | Facebook | Instagram | GiveAsia

The Sound Mind

The Sound Mind wants to create an unbiased music experience for every listener.
GiveAsia

Volcano Web Solutions

Volcano Web Solutions allows neighbours to share relevant local information, times, expertise and resources through an online platform.
GiveAsia

Under SeedSG Funding

1. (a) Book project Beyond50- Reimagining Singapore: detail the learning experiences and outstanding achievements of 10 featured learners. Readers will learn how they had persevered on their learning journeys in spite of barriers or obstacles posed by their diverse backgrounds and challenging circumstances.

Imagine a former primary school dropout graduating with a master degree from a prestigious school at nearly 60, or a student who left school after doing badly for his 'O' level examinations earning four degrees from leading universities, or a man who spent many years in prison before entering law school to become a lawyer. Imagine also a wheelchair-assisted university student who's also training for the Para Olympics, or a senior citizen with a doctorate pursuing a bachelor degree in a different field after his retirement.

In their stories, the learners will share how they overcame the difficulties and what they learnt from their experiences. Their stories will show us that we can continue learning wherever we are, whatever our situations and whenever we can set aside time for learning.

After the publication of the book, the featured learners will have the opportunity to retell their stories at sharing sessions to be organised for the public to attend. This way, the book will be able to amplify its reach to the community and to inspire everyone to make lifelong learning a way of life.

1(b) Book Project: Celebrate Singapore Social Enterprises

This book project is about celebrating and inspiring extraordinary accomplishments in lifelong learning by learners who had to overcome great odds to do so. The stories aim to inspire others through the learners' adversity quotient, learning outcomes and impact on others (their stories will inspire readers to think: "I can do it too").

These stories will also show how success need not necessarily be defined in terms of grades or awards but by the learners' passion for learning, focus on staying the course, determination to succeed, resilience in the face of challenges, social responsibility in applying what they learnt to help others, and other remarkable human qualities.

2. Spreading the love for electronics : 3-days 'E-gnite! Learning Festival',

In preparation for this event, we got our students to brainstorm and design electronics activities that would appeal to the upper primary students (as part of the design thinking process). During the festival, our Secondary 3 students passed on their love and knowledge in electronics to more than 100 Primary School children through hands-on and minds-on activities.

It was a wonderful learning experience for all as the big brothers and sisters from Hong Kah Secondary School taught the students from Jurong, Yuhua, Keming and Lianhua Primary Schools how to fly a drone through an obstacle course, build an LED Terrarium from scratch, programme robots and design their very own mini music pianos using breadboards and electronic circuits.

This project was very meaningful to us as our students get to contribute back to the community and foster the spirit of lifelong learning by teaching upper primary school students applications on electronics. We also hope to expose primary school students to electronics and to ignite their interest in this subject area and bring about a multiplier effect in electronics education.

3. Project Hackable is a series of workshops that engages participants in a hands-on learning experience to build low-cost, DIY assistive devices for persons with disabilities, while raising awareness about disabilities and how technology can enable and empower those with disabilities. Through these workshops, participants will pick up basic technical and soldering skills, and apply these skills for a good cause. You will also learn more about disabilities and the disability sector in Singapore, and how assistive technology can enable and empower those with disabilities.

In our 'The Hack-a-Toy' workshop, you will learn to build a low-cost, DIY accessibility switch for children with special needs. Used with commercial off-the-shelf toys, these big button switches enable children with special needs to play and learn through play.

In our 'Hack-a-Mouse' workshop, you will learn how to build a low-cost, DIY switch adapted mouse for persons with disabilities. By adapting the mouse to be activated by big button switches, this DIY switch adapted mouse enable individuals with severe physical disabilities to access computers independently.

In our 'The Hack-a-Toy' workshop, you will learn to build a low-cost, DIY accessibility switch for children with special needs. Used with commercial off-the-shelf toys, these big button switches enable children with special needs to play and learn through play.

In our 'Hack-a-Mouse' workshop, you will learn how to build a low-cost, DIY switch adapted mouse for persons with disabilities. By adapting the mouse to be activated by big button switches, this DIY switch adapted mouse enable individuals with severe physical disabilities to access computers independently.

Project Hackable provides the community with the opportunity to learn more about the disability sector in Singapore while learning basic technical skills at the same time. Through engaging the public on a highly interactive, hands-on workshop focusing on using technical skills for a good cause, we seek to build a culture of lifelong learning through skills-based volunteerism, and encourage our participants to consider volunteering their skills to help disadvantaged groups in Singapore.

Our workshops also facilitate working adults to volunteer by providing an introduction to volunteering and a stepping stone to greater involvement. Skills-based volunteerism fosters and encourages lifelong learning as volunteers, using their expertise and doing what they enjoy, are exposed to different environments and contexts that they would not otherwise have encountered, allowing them to learn more about themselves and the communities around them while enhancing their skillsets.

4. Workshops Combine art and engineering

combine both engineering and the arts into a simple mechanical model that children can build independently.

In our beginner series of workshops, children will be taught how to assemble ice cream sticks and a syringe hydraulic system to form a mechanical arm. Children will be encouraged to come up with creative and functional uses for the arm thus transforming it into a blank canvas for their imagination to run wild.

For our advanced series of workshops, older children will build 'Judobots'- a mechanical model that uses syringe hydraulics to power a lifting arm and pivot.

NTU Startups

Glow in the Dark
Glow in the Dark is a social enterprise that provides premier enrichment workshops fully and independently conducted by the Visually Handicapped of Singapore. With a vision for enabling individuals regardless of circumstance, we aim to provide meaningful employment for the Visually Handicapped.

Value Greens

Value Greens seeks to provide an alternative food product which can provide consumers with the same nutritional value as vegetables and fruits. This product will be in powder form, made from ugly vegetables or fruits that would likely be thrown away by farms and wholesalers in Singapore due to cosmetic filtering. Hence, we hope to not only convert these ugly vegetables and fruits into a product that is easily consumable but also to educate the public about its value.

Value Greens aspires to make our social footprint in the area of hunger and malnutrition. Our product can be made accessible and affordable for masses in less developed countries while providing comparable nutritional value found in fresh vegetables and fruits.

Reflections: Innovation Challenge 2018

Having been an entrepreneur for close to 14 years of my life, I have seen people making it big then to suddenly go missing and those who persevere and make it to the end. And it all boils down to spotting trends or problems that requires solving or just standing the gap of needs or opportunities and making it a learning opportunity. True that it comes down to luck but also to determination and being relevant. So then what makes one relevant specially so when everything seem to be undercut by the word TECHNOLOGY, ARTIFICAL INTELLIGENCE AND MACHINE LEARNING. 
Some which we just try to belong to but know nothing of. 

Random Research
Artificial Intelligence (AI) are Human-like capabilities such as understanding natural language, speech, vision, and making inferences from knowledge that will extend software beyond the apps. Explains how it can be used to build smart apps that help organizations be more efficient and enrich people’s lives
create your own visualizations based on real data
Build, evaluate, and optimize machine learning models; including classification, regression, clustering, and recommendation.
intuitive approach to building complex models that help machines solve real-world problems with human-like intelligence

Okay I digress. 
So this all came about because....

I was honored to be invited as a reviewer for the projects in Innovation Challenge 2018 and it dawned on me how there are simple answers. and. we actually do not need to think too far to try and make an impact. We just need to see the existing problems and serve with our heart to want to make the world a better place.

The best ideas does not need to be BIG But instead those that make an impact in someone's life. So to share (hopefully) it was not meant to be a secret what I felt was the best idea. 

Problem: Elderly inability to reach for items on the shelves.
Solutions: To install a lever so the shelves can rotate - the elderly can do some physio exercise while spinning the lever and at the same time do things independently themselves.

AWESOME idea right?

Side note: I chanced upon this course outline that I found quite interesting
Shall go and research about it. $530 for this course. Also not very expensive but I better make sure I have some interest before registering

Overview of Artificial Intelligence (AI) involving Machine Learning Tools and Techniques

• Predictive Analytics
  • Modeling Techniques: Decision tree algorithms, Regression and Neural Networks
  • Case Studies: Predictive analytics and applications on the human resource sector

Applications of Regression Modeling: Making sense of advanced regression models

• Multiple Linear Regression
• Binary Logistic Regression
• Applications of regression in payroll and claims analytics
• Applications of regression in compensation and benefit analysis

Advanced Artificial Machine Learning Algorithms and Models

• Predictive analytics - Neural Network: Case Studies and its applications
• Pattern discovery – Segmentation and Cluster analysis
• Association Rule Mining - Sequence Detection modeling: Case Studies and its applications

Model Evaluation

• Misclassification and Accuracy measures
• Average squared errors

Model Deployment and Model Management

• Best Practices and applications

Case Studies and Applications

• Increasing Employee Engagement using Text analytics
• Organizational risk management in attrition analysis: Identifying potential employees who are at risk of leaving the organization
• Visualizing data and information for better Staff Management and risk profiling

Food review: Xian mei yong tau foo at bishan s-11

People who knows me understands im quite picky about my food. So when my blogger friends invited me down for  a meal at Xian Mei Yong Tau Foo at S-11 directly opposite the bishan mrt station i was initially sceptical. But.. im glad that i was proven wrong and had a satisfying and affordable meal. 

Xian Mei Yong Tau Foo prides itself on its handmade Yong Tau Foo and its unique soup base. You can opt for their Laksa Yong Tau Foo, Yong Tau Foo Noodle Soup, Yong Tau Foo Dry and Ma La Yong Tau Foo. Oh yes, according to the owner, they are the only store with Ee Mian as one of their noodles AND their chili is self-created.




My friend tried the Laksa base which I tried. Its not too thick which makes it light on the stomach and not too jerlat which was something I feared. And I think it goes well with the Ee Mian because the sauce kinda gets absorbed into the noodles. 



As for me, I went for the safe choice of clear soup broth. And the only thing that could go wrong was if they used lots of MSG which thankfully they did not. 

For the ingredients, I loved how they had some china side dishes (Example the seaweed as seen above). And before I forget to comment about their chili, which I felt would have made all the difference. Not spicy or 'xiang' enough -And I would have loved if there was the iconic soya beans to add to my meal. 

Owner was very friendly though and recommended us to add in the Fried tofu Skin which made everything ever more yummy. I mean who can resist that! And friendly owner makes everything great! I believe if I wanted more soup base, they would also be Okay. (Don't say I say one ah! And you. Don't. be. greedy. la - haha)

I was tempted to go for another plate of Chee Cheong Fun Yong Tau Foo but I knew my stomach wouldnt be able to take it. Would try that next time!

WHERE:
Xian Mei Yong Tau Foo
Block 504 Bishan Street 11, #01-04 Singapore 570504
Opening hours: Daily - 9am to 9:30pm 

SSEAYP journey (ship for the south east asia and japan youth expedition)

So the opportunity of being sseayp is here again. And i think it would be apt for me to share my experiences on this 2nd year anniversary.

Before i begin here is the link to join. Only a few days left to closing date.

Keen to experience different cultures and gain valuable global perspective? Or looking to make new friends from around the world? And represent your country for a worthy cause.

Join them for an exciting journey on the Ship for Southeast Asian and Japanese Youth Programme (SSEAYP)! :D

Apply by 30 April 2018. Head over to bit.ly/sseayp2018 to find out more!
#sseayp2018

So the question many practical people asked me is what is there to gain? My answer to them is what is there to lose ? And thats its important to go there with the excitment to learn. To learn more about another country. To learn what interests the youth/young adults nowadays. To learn and have the opportunity to practice another country language. (This part i regret the most not doing) . Its indeed the soft skills that you pick up and of course learn more about yourself on this journey.

And most importantly you met with people who have gone through numerous of interviews. Just to be there. Chosen through thousands of people just to get that opportunity. So that said alot of them whom i have met inspired me. Friends who were from indigenous provinces who made it their mission to educate and to share their experiences through multiple projects. Friends who had social causes they were passionate about either in business , education, culture and environment who then further their passions by embarking on projects to make the world a better place. And also just simple things such as being reminded by the things i have taken for granted. For us to travel is just like a holiday but to some its an experience thats difficult to come by and it reminded me that its not about what you have but about what you do with the resources you have and how much heart you have for a certain cause to give what you have limited or not.

Oh yes maybe your fear is sea sicknesses since this expedition is close to 3 months on the sea.  And it is a valid fear. For me thankfully the sea sickness only became real on the ship returning back to japan. The good news is you can enjoy yourself all the way there since the sea tide is usually in the same direction as the ship so it isnt that shaky and i guess the number of people on board made it more stable somewhat.
Oh. Anyway you will not be on the ship all the time. This expedition stops at 3 countries each time ( for me i stopped at vietnam thailand singapore and indonesia - our time was 4 countries)  and you get back on land (haha back to civilization where you get internet and social media  - which i believe is a lifeline to those who thrive on it ) For me it felt lovely to be unconnected. To truly communicate and talk to the people around. No link to the happenings outside. No worries. No stress. Just absorbing the beauty of this expedition.

So what do we do on land and what do we do on the ship. Simply said on land we interact with the locals nation countrywide and on the ship the representative of those countries.

So was it worth 3 months away?!?!? Some of you would ask me

If you are a person like me who thrives on knowledge learning, I think the topic you choose will influence how you benefit from it. We must understand that everyone comes from different walks of life and of different ages and point in their life. And that this program primarily focuses on mutual understanding and sharing. Not on coming up with a research paper.

What was precious was the friendship formed. Knowing more about my strengths and weaknesses. Toning down my pride. Being open to learn and most important listen and to respect. And truly just being there gave me time disconnected and just. Reflecting. On what i want to do. What i can do. And more.

Oh oh oh! So i forgot to answer the part on what do we do onboard.
There are sharing of ideas, presentations and also culture workshop exchange - culture singing eg anime, wayang , language learning and how the language came about, the daily life culture eg making kopi the traditional way, designing local hats etc - i love these sessions the most.

And every time we are back on board, we get to appreciate the performance by different countries. For them to tell the story of their homeland. To tell of their culture. To tell of their future.
It feels like back to the old times of camping . Love it !

Oh and how I miss seeing the sea and the sun rise the minute I wake up!

And one of the most important and key thing why i would go back on the ship- the star gazing night. I cannot describe how amazing it is. But to lie on the deck of the ship watching the stars in the middle of the ocean a blanket of darkness and the ship rotating with the stars placing being explained. AWESOME!!!!!

Do pm me if you have any other questions to ask :) i need to head out to work now hahahahahaha

Singapore youth conference 2018

Thanks for invitation.

Enjoyed myself at singapore youth conference - a collaboration between paym and nyc. 

So the first workshop i went to was about leadership and discovering your purpose and your story. 

The format was inspired by marshall ganz where it requires one to think about what affectes you in life that made you be who you are today and that determines your value and purpose. 

I was very inspired by the sharing by the participants as it reminded me that contributing and giving back is always a choice. Regardless of your background. Regards of what you have gone through

 Because everyone who has a story might inspire. Because time doesnt cost. Ok that said it might cost something to others. But aint it all about rearranging your schedule around it. But as my mum says not some people feels overwhelmed when they are in the situation and prefer to just give financially. Sure by all means. 

The main thing is do something.

My second workshop was on our national day pledge. I still remembered when i was living overseas and also when i was on the ssseap ship saying the pledge always made me feel like crying. Its like a prayer for singapore each time i said it for what we were and what we are to be

We, the citizens of Singapore,
pledge ourselves as one united people,
regardless of race, language or religion,
to build a democratic society
based on justice and equality
so as to achieve happiness, prosperity
and progress for our nation

So the question arise. What is the pledge to us. So we each chose an area of interest. For me i chose we the citizens of singapore

It was an open conversation

 Our concerns our appreciations our present our future our people etc etc

And i was glad it was filled with people asking how we could each contribute to the promises of the pledge in our own way - our voluntary our schools our workplace our family our neighborhood our community and more. Noone asking if our government should do more. Noone asking if policies can be changed. Its all about ourselves making the change. Because that can see a greater impact. Because this is our nation and our people.