SINGAPORE – Were you born in the year of the horse? Then be prepared to wake up very early this Feb 3, which marks Li Chun, or the beginning of spring in the Chinese lunar calendar.

Many Singaporeans believe that depositing money into their bank accounts on Li Chun day will help boost one’s wealth and prosperity for the rest of the year, and long queues usually form at cash deposit machines and banks islandwide on the day.

A feng shui firm, Chang Consultancy, has released a timetable of the ideal timings to bank in money, based on the different zodiac signs.

Read also: 8 things you must do during Li Chun

So unfortunately for those born in the horse year, the best time to deposit money is in the wee morning hours of between 3am and 4.59am, which is their ‘very auspicious’ period. It is also ‘auspicious’ for them to do so between 7am and 10.59am.

There are also ‘lucky colours’ that each person should wear, according to the firm. Those born in the years of the tiger, rabbit, monkey and rooster should wear green, while all others should be decked out in red.

The feng shui firm also advised people to avoid making deposits during the “unlucky hours” of 5am-6.59am and 5pm-6.59pm.

Aside from banking in money, Li Chun is also associated with a number of other traditions. It is said that those who manage to balance an egg will be guaranteed good fortune.

However, two fengshui practitioners told The New Paper last year say that the idea of lucky deposits on Li Chun is a myth.

This year, the Chinese New Year marking the year of the rooster begins on Jan 28.

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2016-02-04 18:14:14

Photo Gallery

8 things you must do during Li Chun

Source: BH, The Straits Times, Wikimedia Commons, The New Paper

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2016-02-04 15:07:00

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Queues form to deposit money on ‘auspicious’ Li Chun

Source: The Straits Times

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seanyap@sph.com.sg

Ten new proposals to promote the learning of English and mother tongue among young children have received grants from the Lee Kuan Yew Fund for Bilingualism.

The projects include a bilingual children’s television programme produced by Mediacorp; a YouTube edutainment series run by ex-TV host Diana Ser; and the translation of English picture books into Chinese, Malay and Tamil by publisher Epigram Books, The Straits Times reported.

This brings the total number of proposals which the fund has supported to 45, with $10.3 million in grants awarded, the Education Ministry said yesterday.

The Lee Kuan Yew Fund for Bilingualism was launched in 2011 by former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew to promote bilingual teaching and learning.

To date, it has received over 220 proposals.

Education Minister (Schools) Ng Chee Meng, who is the fund’s chairman, said: “The fund will continue to enhance the pool of locally developed and culturally relevant resources that support bilingual teaching and learning.

“We are now exploring new frontiers with novel projects like a bilingual television programme and an online video series.

“We hope such new initiatives will provide more interesting and interactive experiences for our children’s learning of mother tongue languages,” he added.

The fund is also looking to develop a reading series for children aged between five and 10.

Yesterday, it launched a call for proposals to develop a “systematic set of mother tongue language graded readers for pre-school to primary school children”.

The content of the readers should be set in the Singapore context and feature local elements that will allow children to better relate to the story, it said.

Details can be found at www.bilingualism.sg/call-for-proposals/call-for-proposals.

This article was first published on Jan 4, 2017.
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When she chose to study in a polytechnic, she never imagined flying to Dubai for a dream internship.

Miss Vythiswari Muralli, 19, is a third-year sustainable urban design and engineering (SDE) student at Ngee Ann Polytechnic’s (NP) School of Design and Environment.

She did a three-month internship with DP Architects, one of Asia’s largest architecture firm.

She told The New Paper: “Dubai is home to many iconic structures designed by famous architects. So, when my lecturer informed us about the internship, I jumped at the opportunity.”

INPUT

She thought she would not be handling much work as she was an intern. But she was surprised when her supervisor, the associate director of the Mena (Middle East and North Africa) region, with 27 years’ experience, asked for her input on the design of commercial buildings and hotels.

“I was asked how I felt about building facades, their decorative elements, and what I thought could be done to make them better. I was honoured because I was only two years into architecture,” she said.

Miss Muralli assisted with 3D modelling, drawing floor plans and did site analyses and reports.

She said: “Some of the projects I worked on are going to be built soon.

“I feel really proud of myself as I played a part, and it is my first step as an architect.”

She added that her brief stint in the working world opened her eyes to the industry, and the course had equipped her with the relevant skills she needed.

“In school, when we had to do 90-page site analyses, I complained a lot,” she said.

“But during the internship, I realised what I thought was small was actually relevant.”

DP Architects has also expressed interest in hiring Miss Muralli full-time after she graduates.

She said: “I am so grateful I decided to study SDE in NP, because I never expected I would experience so many things. I thought I would simply study and graduate, but I got to visit many places such as Milan, Rome, Bali and Bandung for study trips and workshops.”

Head of office of internship and careers in NP, Ms Christy Chung, said a polytechnic education is very industry-focused.

She said: “Poly has a close connection with the industry, and coupled with applied learning, graduates will be industry ready.

“A poly education is interdisciplinary in nature as it mimics the real world environment.”

bxliew@sph.com.sg

This article was first published on Jan 4, 2017.
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Despite scoring eight points for his N levels and qualifying for the Polytechnic Foundation Programme (PFP), he chose to go to the Institute of Technical Education (ITE) instead.

Mr Rayner Eng, 19, took up a Higher Nitec in mechatronics engineering, a two-year programme, at ITE College West.

He graduated with a perfect grade point average of 4.0 last year, and was awarded the IES Engineering Award.

Sponsored by the Institute of Engineers (IES), Singapore, it is given to the top graduate from an engineering course.

Mr Eng told The New Paper: “My seniors in the PFP said it was mostly theory-based. So, I decided to go to ITE because it would provide me with the basic hands-on and fundamental skills of engineering, which was what I wanted.”

The first-year aeronautical engineering student at Singapore Polytechnic was inspired to be an engineer as he was an avid robot collector as a child. He joined his school’s Robotics Club in Primary 4.

PROJECT

In his first year at ITE, he and two classmates were shortlisted by lecturers to do a project for Wildlife Reserves Singapore and the Singapore Zoo.

They had to find a faster way to slice fish for animal feeding, shows and training.

Mr Eng said they created a machine with five blades that sliced fish into six pieces in six seconds. It can slice up to 90kg of fish in an hour.

He added: “The project took about seven months to complete, and was tedious as we had to create everything from scratch.”

They had to present their computer-aided draft to their lecturer for approval before buying materials to build the machine.

He said: “We presented about seven times, and each time there were minor details that needed to be adjusted. I was quite frustrated but we managed to perfect it in the end.”

Their invention won three awards – the Energy Innovation Challenge in 2015, and the Lee Kuan Yew Technology Award and Tan Kah Kee Young Inventors Award last year.

Mr Joseph Heng, senior lecturer-mentor at the mechatronics engineering department in ITE College West, said: “He went to ITE to get a strong engineering foundation, and ITE has offered him that.”

bxliew@sph.com.sg

This article was first published on Jan 4, 2017.
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After 10 months of scriptwriting, midnight shoots and tedious editing, Temasek Polytechnic’s (TP) digital, film and television graduates’ short film, Vengeance Is Mine, clinched gold at the 18th Digicon6 Asia Singapore Awards.

The 15-minute film is a thriller about a husband who finds a package containing the finger of his mistress on his doorstep.

Calling themselves Dark Owl Pictures, the team is made up of director Siti Rahmah, 22, producer Nur Shahira, 21, director of photography Matin Akmal, 21, editor Maria Tan, 23, and production designer Joycelyn Yeoh, 23. They graduated from TP in 2015.

Vengeance Is Mine started out as the group’s final-year project in TP.

Miss Rahmah told The New Paper: “Before we even started on the script in April 2014, I had 17 versions of the story.

“I got together with my groupmates and discussed how to make the storyline more thrilling and realistic.”

Their script went through 27 drafts, after much vetting from their lecturer and mentor Andrew Ngin.

In post-production, the team had to brainstorm how to produce the sound of a shovel smashing into a head for a particularly gruesome scene.

Miss Rahmah said: “I initially wanted to try a melon instead, but we decided that a smashing a cabbage would sound better.”

They also made many props from scratch, including the severed finger and a coffin.

When the short film was done in February 2015, Mr Ngin was so impressed with his students’ work that he sent it to take part in the 18th Digicon6 Asia Singapore Awards, an annual short film competition held across Asia.

Miss Rahmah flew to Japan and represented the team at the award ceremony on Nov 19 last year.

“When they announced that Vengeance Is Mine won gold, my knees were shaking. I was trying so hard not to trip as I went up on stage,” she said.

Mr Ngin, who has worked on local television shows such as Fighting Spiders and Growing Up, said he was surprised by the win.

He said: “Doing a thriller is not easy, because it relies heavily on story-driven suspense.

“They had to use their storytelling to keep surprising the audience.”

bxliew@sph.com.sg

This article was first published on Jan 4, 2017.
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