I deplore the use of numbers to define achievements. In using numbers as a shorthand, a tool of abstraction, we paradoxically reduce and magnify the subject, thereby inexorably distorting it.

Case in point: Assigning a numerical grade to an examined essay is subjective and reductive. No two examiner will read and interpret the essay in the same way - perhaps one would see insight and astuteness whilst the other sees inconsistency and bias. At best an essay can only be said to have merit or demerit in a multifaceted way, where each opinion is equally viable. Numbers will never be able to accurately distill the essence of an essay, nor can individual essays be compared above aspects of factual accuracy, subject content and grammatical forms.

Disclaimer: I believe the reductive nature of numbers can only be said for disciplines which are inherently subjective, such as in literature, history, aesthetics, ethics, social sciences, etc. (which is why I used the term "essay"). Numbers quite accurately represent achievement where there is a "correct answer" (at least one that is the prevailing view held by the larger community) in such subjects as mathematics and the natural sciences.

Another case in point: Rankings, revered numbers that induce obsession in some people and institutions, are examples of the misleading, reductive nature of numbers. They seek to establish a clear, unequivocal hierarchy of achievement or value, where there might be complexity and ambiguity. College rankings, that which drive many college-goers to the point of obsession, are especially arbitrary and misguiding. Some college rankings give weight to college prestige/reputation or student satisfaction, and such aspects that cannot be objectively determined. Moreover, how does one determine which factor of college rankings should be given more or less weight such that an objective comparison can be made between colleges? Clearly this is an impossible task as the value (and hence weight) of each factor must be personally determined by the college-goer, and as such a college's value differs by the individual. Perhaps rankings are good shorthands to gain a broad, albeit shallow, approximation of value from which further in-depth assessments can be made, but they should not be treated as more than the subjective opinions they really are.

I lament the fact that in my pursuit of college admission, my chances lie squarely on my "stats", the numbers which define my achievements. Sure, I did extremely well in my SAT and above average for my GCE 'A' Levels, but I hardly consider them my strongest suit nor the defining culmination of my years of general education. It might sound hypocritical to say these numbers don't matter in the aftermath of arduously working to achieve them, but I truly feel that they really don't, or at least not as much as others might make them out to be. Yet the truth is people will judge me based on these paper achievements which both minimise my achievements (through abstraction) and magnify them (through comparison with other abstract numbers). Such superficial interpersonal assessments, that which is systematically encouraged and perpetuated through modern society, are perhaps what led to the preponderance of people being locked into what Thoreau so aptly called "lives of quiet desperation", whereby people associate their worth and achievements to the superficial and arbitrary - from prestige in college, to brand in material goods.

Spent almost 3 days optimising my website for search engine optimisation (SEO).

It was a most tedious task, owning as I know only the most basic of HTML.

I am using SH404SEF, a free Joomla! extension, to create search engine friendly (SEF) URLs. It is able to automate the creation of metadata tags, keywords and descriptions for each article; able to insert h1 tag to every contentheading tag of titles of each article; has security component. Its other features are as follows: "It works with or without .htaccess file. Fully Joomfish compatible. Caching system for high speed and very small DB queries overhead. Support many components natively but uses also sef_ext from OpenSEF/SEF Advanced. VirtueMart, Fireboard, Community Builder, mosetsTree, HotProperty, Sobi2, Docman, myBlog, iJoomla Magazine,News Portal, Remository and more supported natively. SSL switch, automatic 301 redirection from non-sef to sef and from Joomla SEF to sh404SEF, insert Google news style numerical ID,.. Many backend parameters to control URL construction behavior."

Initially, I had trouble getting the SEF URLs to redirect to the actual article links. Lots of 404 errors. I tried tinkering with the configurations at the backend and redirecting the links manually through the directory in phpMyAdmin, which did not work. Eventually, I think what worked was enabling the default .htaccess file from Joomla, which is a strange solution as SH404SEF is supposed to work without .htaccess by default.

And then the sitemap, Joomap, gave me double entries for my categories. I had to experiment with the menus, sections and categories to finally fix it.

My Expose gallery did not work with SH404SEF initially. After tinkering with the configurations again, I "fixed" the problem by skipping default settings for SH404SEF for the Expose component.

The most difficult problem of all was the insertion of h1 tag function, which caused my website logo to disappear. Finally fixed it after a lot of trial and error coding of template html and css. At least I gained some perspective of how the html and css function to create the frontend display. Ultimately, my mistake was to include the SH404SEF option of converting h1 tags to h2 tags in a page which messed up code.

Recommendation!

I recommend the following website!

http://validator.w3.org/

Just enter your web address and it lists out all the html errors ("markup validation of Web documents in HTML, XHTML, SMIL, MathML, etc")! Simple!

I had 26 errors previously and I managed to bring it down to 1 so far.

SEO-ing a website is hard work!

The 8th National Youth Achievement Award (NYAA) Gold ceremony was held on 3rd October at ITE (East).

It was a rather grand event. His Excellency, President S R Nathan, was the Guest-of-Honour!

Really have to admire his endurance. He stood for about an hour to personally shake the hands of each award recipient.

Glad I had the opportunity to talk to the President and shake his hand! It is a great honour indeed.

Got the chance to meet up with the other Interactors who won the award as well. Desmond Chan is overseas studying at the University of Wisconsin, so I was the only guy from my batch there representing RJC.

Took a group photo with the other award recipients with the President.

Finally, I am officially a Gold Award Holder Association alumni!

From this, I am moving on to other projects. With my efforts, I will surely make a positive difference!

I have been doing community service since secondary school as many of my peers have. This is a subject close to my heart, perhaps because I have been brought up to believe there is a social need and that I can make a positive difference.

A part of me wonders each time I do community service, especially ad hoc projects, if I am doing it to serve the community, or if I am doing it for the recognition or paper achievement. I ask the same question of my peers in my mind when they win a service-related award, and when I do.

I know it makes no difference to the beneficiaries because the help rendered is the same regardless of the motivation. Perhaps it is a convenient relationship between willing parties - beneficiaries receive much needed help and donations, service providers gain from extra curricular recognition and testimonials. The contribution is not to be undermined, since they make a significant difference is so many beneficiaries' lives.

Yet, I believe the motivation is important to the volunteer, because the experience then has a framework of honesty and genuine compassion. All the incentive given by the government in the form of extra-curricular credits and university admission credits do benefit volunteers by giving them a chance to get involved in the social service scene where they might not otherwise do. But this hinders volunteers from truly finding that empathetic spirit that serves for service sake, as there will always be that nagging doubt that the reason to help is selfless. Some volunteers might discover their passion for service, but others might confuse service as a means to an end, and eventually cease being concerned about the community. The latter would be a pity, I have realised, as contributing to the betterment of society can give one's life so much meaning.

I do not believe all service volunteers volunteer for selfish reasons - so many individuals volunteer much time and sweat to make a lasting social contribution. These are the people who are my role models. People like Elim Chew, Melissa Kwee, Jack Sim, Saleemah Ismail. I do think greater emphasis should be placed on lasting, sustainable projects. Because service contribution should be a long-term contribution and not a mere fling at one's convenience. Thinking long-term would also re-emphasis the beneficiaries who will still have their needs at the end of the day, when the ra-ra enthusiasm stops, when one gets tired (as people do). When that happens, rather than disintegrating as ad hoc projects do, the project can be sustained by new volunteers who can continue to make a difference.