APhO 2014 in Singapore

The 15th Asian Physics Olympiad (APhO) 2014 will be held in Singapore, from 11- 18 May.

The following 29 countries are participating in APhO 2014.

Australia	Azerbaijan	Bangladesh	Brunei	Cambodia
China	Hong Kong	India	Indonesia	Israel
Kyrgyzstan	Laos	Macao	Malaysia	Mongolia
Nepal	Philippines	Romania	Russia	Saudi Arabia
Singapore	Sri Lanka	Syria	Taiwan	Tajikistan
Thailand	Turkmenistan	Uzbekistan	Vietnam

Students who have been selected to represent Singapore in the upcoming APhO are:
Francis Wang Fan, NUS High
Qu Xinyi, NUS High
Gideon Lee, NUS High
Guo Bohao, NUS High
Mark Theng Kwang Hui, HCI
Theodore Yoong, HCI
Chan Jau Tung, RI
Lim Yong Hui, RI

Last year at APhO 2013 held in Indonesia, Singapore bagged 3 Gold, 2 Silver and 3 Bronze (refer to post). Hope this year's team will do Singapore proud by achieving good results at APhO 2014!

ESIP Scholarship

Lim Li took the Integrated Programme Scholarships Test (IPST) on 15 February 2014. She has been awarded the Edusave Scholarships for Integrated Programme Schools (ESIP) which has a tenure of 4 years, from 2014 - 2017.

Singaporean students who are admitted to Independent Schools and who have not been awarded the EESIS scholarship based on PSLE T-score (the cut-off point varies from year to year, and may range from 258 - 264) could apply to sit for the IPST at the end of Secondary 2. Those who did well in the IPST will be awarded the ESIP.

There are 2 components of the IPST - English and Maths. There are IQ/logic reasoning types of questions (all are MCQs) in both English and Maths papers.  The duration is about 2 - 3 hrs. There are several sections - English has a few sections, and Maths another few sections.  Each section has 20-30 questions; students will complete one section at a time, within a time limit. For the English sections, the question may list a few vocabulary words and you have to find the odd one out.

Euler Mathematics Competition 2014 Questions

Lim Min and Lim Jeck took part in the Euler Mathematics Competition 2014 organized by NTU, last Saturday. The result will be released on either 12th or 15th April.

1-Dish Meals

As I am a lazy cook, I simply love to prepare 1-dish meals. Below are my favourite 1-dish meals which I cook for my family.

Bak Kut Teh with chicken drumsticks, mushrooms, spinach, peanuts and dumplings

Fried Tung Hoon with pork, long beans, spinach and eggs

Glutinous rice with pork, mushrooms, peanuts and fried small onions

macaroni soup with cai sim, long thin mushrooms, carrots and beef

porridge with minced pork/chicken, spinach, sweet potatoes and peanuts

spaghetti with carbona mushroom sauce, minced pork, spinach and tomatoes

spaghetti with tomato sauce, minced chicken, spinach and tomatoes

spaghetti

steam boat style

western style - chicken platters with bread and fried eggs

HP Spectra TouchSmart Ultrabook

Lim Min's Nanyang Scholarship came with a one-off computer allowance of S$1,500. Yesterday, she bought the above notebook computer from IT Show, for S$1799. It weighs about 1.4 kg. Her current HP i5 notebook, which was bought in September 2011 using Lim Jeck's SMO prize money (see blog post here) will be handed down to Lim Li.