Essay Draft 1: Singapore government has cutting down the emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs) to fight against the global warming by improve the energy efficient usage and raise the awareness.

  The global warming issue was getting serious nowadays, which caused the glaciers in the North and South Pole were melting and the sea levels were rising. All of these global warming effects were mostly caused by greenhouse gases (GHGs) that emitted by the human activities that used to build the modern lives of today. Majority of these GHGs were emitted from the buildings around us, fossil fuels in transportations, industries and electricity generator. According to National Geographic, the rising of the temperature of the world is greatly depending on us and the best solution to prevent this issue getting serious is to stabilize the concentration of GHGs. As a result, Green Movement was become globalization around the world and Singapore government has supporting it to fight against the global warming by cutting down the emission of GHGs from industry, building and transportations.

  Singapore government has been focused on cutting down the emission of GHGs from the transportations throughout the years. According to a data from National Climate Change Secretariat (NCCS), there are about 19% of CO₂ emissions were contributed from transport in year 2005. In order to reduce the emission of CO₂, LTA was improving the energy efficiency of transport sector through varies solutions. First of all, LTA managing the vehicle usage and traffic congestion by implemented the Certificate of Entitlement (COE) and Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) to discouraged people to purchase a car. Next, LTA also continue improve and promote the public transport in order to make the public transport be the first choice of mode of transport for every people. Besides that, Singapore government also encourages people to buy green vehicles with the promotion of Green Vehicle Rebate (GVR) since 2001. Through these solutions, the Singapore government is expected to reduce the CO₂ to 14.5% in 2020. Although the Singapore government managed to reduce the CO₂ by providing an efficient transport system, but there are still a number of people refused to use the public transport due to overcrowded of the MRT during peak hours. In my opinion, LTA can try to shorter the current waiting time of the train from about average 2miniutes to 30 seconds to increase the frequency of the train during peak hours. On the other hands, LTA can also collaborate with MOM and MOE to reduce the crowd of peak hours to attract more people to take public transport. For example, MOE can release the students from school at 5PM so that can reduce the overcrowded situation during peak hours. In short, Singapore government was made public transport as one of the mode of transport for every Singaporean to reduce the CO₂ emission by the fossil fuels in transportations.

  Other than focused on cutting down the emission of GHGs from transportations, Singapore government also focused on reduce the emission of GHGs from buildings. Based on the data from NCCS, the building sector was emitted about 16% of CO₂ in 2005. To reduce GHGs emit from the building, the Building and Construction Authority (BCA) implemented the BCA Green Mark Scheme with different rating from Gold to Platinum award in 2005 to raise the awareness of sustainability as well as encourage the construction industry build more environmental-friendly buildings in Singapore. The Ministry of National Development (MND) provided 20 million dollars for this Green Mark, while BCA also provided some new grants to attract the developers build or upgrade more green buildings. Other than the incentive, according to the Building Regulations that settled up by BCA; started from April 2008, every new constructed building has to meet the minimum requirements on Green Mark standards. Though these solutions, the Singapore government is expected to cut down the CO₂ emission from 16% in 2005 to 13.8% in 2020. From my opinion, the government should also provide some cash incentive as a motivation for the designers to produce some creative ideas.

  In conclusion, the global warming issue is getting more serious and many governments from different countries are started working hard to reduce carbon emission from their own country and this included Singapore government. Throughout the years, Singapore government had work out many solutions to reduce the carbon emission from the transportation and building sectors. Thus, this is the time for every people to working with the government to protect our environment by response the call from Singapore government.

 

Reference:

National Geographic Society (1996-2014). Causes of Global Warming. Retrieved March 1, 2014, http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/gw-causes?rptregcta=reg_free_np&rptregcampaign=20131016_rw_membership_n1p_intl_se_w#

National Geographic Society (1996-2014). Global Warming Solutions, Retrieved March 1, 2014,  http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/gw-solutions

National Climate Change Secretariat (2012), Projecting Singapore’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Retrieved March 1, 2014, http://app.nccs.gov.sg/nccs-2012/projecting-singapores-greenhouse-gas-emissions.html

Draft 2 Summarize and Reader's Response of Globalization of Culture Through the Media

  In Kraidy article, “Globalization of Culture through the Media” (2002), he mentions about the western culture has impacted the globalization of culture over the world. The author also points out various debates between cultural imperialism and globalization as well as how the western countries influence the media and the developing countries. After that, he also discusses about the hybridization and he agrees with that the transnational mass media increase the hybridity that is present in the cultures over the world. Therefore, Kraidy has concluded the media could affect the "cohesion and fragmentation coexists" for globalization of culture, but not the "process of complete homogenization". 

  After finish reading the article written by Kraidy (2002), the key idea that I am going to evaluate is the hybridization. I agree with the point of view of Kraidy that the transnational mass media increase the hybridity that is present in the cultures over the world. According to the article, the cultures have been contacted through in different ways, like western colonialism, migration, or media for a period of time. In the past, majority of the developing countries were colonized by the western counties, which was induced the western and local cultures were hybrid to form a mixed civilizations and cultural forms. Simultaneously, the technologies of the global media have formed transnational images that connect throughout the world. As a result, it helps to speed up the hybridization around the world. While looking at current global situation, the global media also helps to speed up the spread of message around the world. For instance, many Asian countries started to learn spoken English since British Colonial Period, but due to the transnational mass media increase, the usage of English language has been speed up and became the world language throughout the years. Same as Japanese language, some of the countries who have been colonized by Japan were force to learn Japanese during the colonial period. However, after the world war-II, people are getting less interest to learn the Japanese, but due to the impact of global media, it helps to spread out the usage of Japanese and eventually it helps people to build up the learning interest of Japanese. In conclusion, the cultures from different countries were spread out in the past through colonialism or different ways and these countries had used the media as a tool for them to speed up the spread of cultures around the world. 

word count: 403 words

Reference:

Kraidy, M. M. (2002). Globalization of Culture Through the Media. Retrieved February 13, 2014, from University of Pennsylvania, http://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1333&context=asc_papers

Summarize of Globalization of Culture Through the Media

  In Kraidy article (2002), he mentions about the western culture has impacted the globalization of culture over the world. The author also point out various debates between cultural imperialism and globalization as well as how the western countries influence the media and the developing countries. After that, he also discusses about the hybridization and he agrees with that the transnational mass media increase the hybridity that is present in the cultures over the world. Therefore, Kraidy has concluded the media could affect the "cohesion and fragmentation coexists" for globalization of culture, but not the "process of complete homogenization".

  After finish reading the article written by Kraidy (2002), the key idea that I am going to evaluate is the hybridization. I agree with the point of view of Kraidy that the transnational mass media increase the hybridity that is present in the cultures over the world. According to the article, the cultures have been contacted through in different ways, like western colonialism, migration, or media for a period of time. In the past, majority of the developing countries were colonized by the western counties, which was induced the western and local cultures were hybrid to form a mixed civilizations and cultural forms. Simultaneously, the technologies of the global media have formed transnational images that connect throughout the world. As a result, it was help to speed up the hybridization around the world. Other than media, education system is also one of the factors that help to speed up the hybridization of cultures. For example, during the colonial period, the education system of Singapore has been influenced by the British, which majorities of the Singaporean have been educated by English. As a result, learning English and local languages together were formed the hybrid product of mixed language which known as “Singlish”. As majorities of the Singaporean have been learned English since their childhood, eventually they would also influenced by the western cultures throughout their life.

  In conclusion, the global media may not be the only factors that influenced the cultural hybridity, there might have other factors made cultures over the globe hybrid as the article had stated there is lacked of prove to support  relationship between the media and hybridity due to the complicated of the issue.

Last edited on 13 Feb 2014

An Event that has Shaped My Life and the Person I have Become

  The event that has shaped my life happened years ago. It started in my primary two when one of my teachers introduced different type of occupations to us and I get attracted by the term “Engineer”. Maybe due to my curiosity and mathematics is my favorite subject at that moment, I wanted to become an Engineer right from that moment.
   As I am only interested on mathematics among all the subjects, I have been over focus on mathematics and neglected my other subjects. As a result, my overall results have been pulled down by other subjects and I have been assigned to last few classes when I was in primary four. After being assigned to the class, I started giving up on my studies and refused to do any homework that assigned by the teachers. Everything changed when I met my primary four’s class teacher; she came and talked to me personally during a recess. She told me that one of the most important requirements to become an engineer is I should start by being a responsible person. After the conversation, I picked myself up and did my best in academia.

  My teacher transferred to another school towards the end of my primary four school year and I also managed get a better result in the rest of my primary school time. After that, I kept her words close to heart and continued working hard in my secondary school, Polytechnic, and finally get into NUS. I believe if I had not met her in my life, I would have given up on my studies half way through my study life.

(270 words)

Last edited on 12 of Feb 2014

My English Language Learning Journey

I came from a Chinese based primary school and a Malay based secondary school in Malaysia. As a result, the chance for me to speak and write English was very limited. In fact, majority of my school time I used Chinese to communicate with my friends and used Malay to communicate with friends of other races. Unlike Singapore, the first language in Malaysia is Malay language. Thus, it is normal for us to use Malay language to communicate with people of other races. Along with these facts, my English language did not improve. In fact, most of my English writings were directly translated from Chinese.

Four years ago, when I first time came to Singapore for my tertiary education, Ngee Ann Poly, I did very badly in an English module in the first semester. After that, I made myself to speak English with my friends, but it turned up I spoke a lot of “Singlish” instead of proper English. Before I got into NUS, I made use of the breaks to go online to search for some grammar study materials like “The Blue Book” (as one of my friend recommend for me) to prepare myself for the QET test. But at the end I still did very badly in the QET test and required to take ES1000 last semester and ES1102 this semester.

After enrolled into NUS, I got more chances to speak English and I hope to improve my communication skill. Moreover, I believe after taking this ES1102 module, I can improve on my writing skill, as Mr. Brad really catches my attention in the first tutorial class and I will look forward for the next 12 weeks’ classes!

(280 words)

Edited on 3rd of Feb 2014