Mother’s Day is coming, the day we celebrate the one who bore us for 9 months, gave birth to us, raised us and nurtured us before we even did any deserving of all that affection and care.
It can be a thankless job, and oftentimes we give them more grief than they deserve… So, TP would like to join in the celebration by putting them in the spotlight.
From today till Friday, 11 May, students can send in photos of their mothers and we will put them up online as well as on our LED wall. We are using LiveShare to create a live “photo wall” collection, and once your picture is approved you’ll see it straight on that wall!
What We’re Looking For
Photos of your mum at home, at work, on a holiday with you – anything that you feel defines your relationship with your mother.
If you also have a particularly moving story about your mother, or something that you would like to say to her, feel free to include it in.
Once you’ve created an account, search for “TP Mother’s Day” in the search bar (pull downwards if you can’t see it):
Tap on the “TP Mother’s Day” conversation.
And simply tap the camera icon to upload your photo, and you’re done! Once we approve it, it’ll be up on the LiveShare wall. Oh, and be sure to comment with your name, course and year!
2. Email
Alternatively, you can also email your photo to digitalmedia@tp.edu.sg. Make sure to include your name, course and year!
We’re running this event from today all the way till Friday, and the photos will be up till the end of next week. We hope to see your entries soon!
Inspiration is a fascinating, if somewhat strange thing.
For one, it’s nigh impossible to make inspiration happen at whim. There’s no button to press, no actual light-bulb to switch on. But if our students from the School of Design can show us one thing, it’s that inspiration is often set aflame by passion.
Our 2012 graduating cohort of Design Students had their Design Show at Vivocity from 5 – 7 April, where everyone and anyone could come in to behold upon their their final year projects and portfolios.
It wasn’t difficult to tell the crowds apart – curious passerbys would smile and coo; family members took pictures proudly; design peers and industry experts would patiently scrutinize at the various pieces with a glint in their eye.
At the heart of it all, of course, were the works of our students. And like we mentioned – it was passion that was the hallmark of the Design Show.
The projects were as varied as the diploma courses themselves. Photograph books, gadgets, websites, short films, fashion and even advertising campaigns were just some of the many projects on display. But they weren’t all there just to look pretty.
Lee Hung, from the Diploma in Visual Communications, designed and put together an entire board game – board, game pieces, rules and all – for the Singapore Botanic Gardens. The idea sprung up when her mum, a tour guide, suggested she do something for the Botanic Gardens.
Leslie, from the Diploma in Interactive Media Design, is an active beatboxer. He designed an entirely new layout for 808beatz.com, a local beatboxing community, not because they asked him to, but simply because he wanted to. It even has a whole library of examples and lessons on how to beatbox different sounds that he put together after collaborating with a friend.
Nur Syazwani’s shy demeanour is nowhere to be seen in her architectural project Marriage Makers by the River. Hailing from the Diploma in Interior Architecture & Design, her project is of a pre-marriage and marriage counselling centre. She dreams to one day get married herself, but knows the difficulties that couples can face in married life.
To have taken issues so close to their hearts and then transform them into design concepts that they’ve been trained in… it was astounding to say the least. And in every area possible – fashion, graphics design, product design, architecture – the list goes on.
Inspiration is a strange thing, but it is also infectious. There were visitors who left impressed, and there were those who left challenged. Challenged to do the same – to put their heart into their work, and then let their works change the world.
For more photos of the Design Show 2012, check out our Flickr set.
Alright Singapore, we confess: the TP Uniform prank was an April Fools’ Joke, and our most elaborate one yet. No, we’re definitely not implementing any uniforms at all, and most certainly not those gaudy red-and-white monstrosities.
We were very encouraged by the responses we got both times – our students clearly had a great sense of humour. So we decided to take it a step further this year. Well quite a few steps further, in fact.
And to quote a student who fell for our little prank, it seems that we didn’t just end up “trolling our students”, we “trolled a nation”. And it all started with one image.
The supposed “TP uniforms”, designed for reactions combining lots of cringing and “omg they’re really uniforms”
Some our students – co-conspirators, if you will – leaked the above image on Twitter on Tuesday and Wednesday night. This caught people’s attention, but many just thought that the image was a random joke and left it as that.
In just 2 hours, the images spread through the Twitterverse like wildfire, and we even trended 3 different phrases on Twitter at one point. Close to 5 tweets a second were appearing on Twitter on the new “TP Uniform”. Not once did TP promote this webpage online.
From just 2 tweets, our prank had gone viral. By the end of April Fools’, over 65,000 people would view our “announcement” video. At the time of this blog post, the view count stands at 82,000 views. To put this number into context, we have a total of about 20,000 students AND staff in TP.
The TP Uniforms had gone viral.
Here’re some other quick facts about the prank you might find interesting:
TP Uniform Webpage
On Thursday, the webpage leak solicited retweets from many heavyweights in the Twitterverse, including @mrbrown, @BB_See and @fakeMOE.
It’s stated Student Unity & School Identity committee was formed in 1986. Temasek Polytechnic, however, was only established in 1990. Also, ”Pinafore” is misspelled as “Pinafold”.
None of the links on the Copyright & Terms of Use-bar at the very bottom of the page work.
The webpage resides on this blog’s server, not our official website at www.tp.edu.sg – in fact, not a single mention of our uniform is made on our corporate website.
We got STOMPed on Friday, our first of 2 STOMP appearances. And no, we didn’t STOMP ourselves.
TP Uniform “Announcement” Video
The video is an effort by the TemasekPolyTV crew, and actually resides on the TPTV channel.
At 2:12, the text “01042012ROFL” can be seen next to Abdul Rahman.
At the beginning of the video, Mary Thomas mentions that the committee was formed last year, even though the website claims that it was formed in 1986.
Within 24 hours, more than 65,000 have watched the video.
But why did we do it?
Well yes, we did want to troll everyone. When the suggestion first hit the floor, you could see everyone light up, an evil grin slowly appearing on their faces.
But what was particularly fascinating, and we know this from experience, is how closely we value something as simple as wearing our own clothes to school. It’s part of our identity as polytechnic students, as TP students. It’s a statement of liberty, even, that we choose what we want to wear.
And our students didn’t disappoint us – you were shocked, bewildered and flabbergasted that something like this would even be suggested. Then you saw the uniforms, and how hideous they were. You compared them to fast food restaurants and children’s drawings, and even those who claimed to know it was an April Fools’ joke secretly were afraid that it would be really implemented.
And this entire time, you exemplified the one thing we wanted bring out – that you were strongly believed in your way of life, and you were willing to speak up for it. Then when you saw it all revealed, you laughed… and then grabbed your pitchforks.
Well played, ladies and gentlemen, well played. We couldn’t have asked for a better student body to prank, because you couldn’t have made us prouder. So yes, it’s all a hoax – you can go back to liking us again. Err. Right guys?
Two weeks ago, final-year Biomedical Science student, Siti Farah Fadhlullah, presented her project SIP/MP to an auditorium full of industry people and students from all five polytechnics.
Her project involved in the development of a microsieve cartridge to isolate circulating tumour cells in the bloodstream of cancer patients. For her research work, Farah received the Polytechnic Student Research Programme Award alongside other students from the five polys.
Siti worked at the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (IBN) with research scientists to detect cancer cells within an hour via a blood test, a processmuch faster and less painful than a biopsy.
“I’ve always wanted to do research. Since Yr 1 in poly, I’ve always thought that it was cool to be in a lab coat, pipetting small volumes of liquid and working in a real research lab,” said Farah.
“After my SIP/MP experience with IBN, I really understood the world of scientific research. It wasn’t as simple as donning a lab coat and holding a pipette in my hand. The experience was totally different from the practical lessons we had during our curriculum time. In IBN, a lot of autonomy and independence is given to students on attachment. We plan, design and execute our own experiments. We had to find our own protocols and modify them according to our experimental objectives. We were expected to learn the principles and steps of carrying out a particular lab technique or equipment, unlike in school where we are given a readied protocol and all we had to do was to follow instructions and perform the experiments.”
Farah’s advice to juniors who are interested in pursuing a career in research is: “Pay attention during practical lessons and train your pipetting techniques as well as other lab skills as you’ll have to rely heavily on them during your attachment”. According to her, good lab techniques will contribute to the quality of results one produces and this in turn will result in others having confidence and trust in your data/results. “This will definitely have a positive impact on your work standards… you’ll produce a good MP report and leave behind a reputable profile with your host organisation. So next time when you’re seeking employment, your attachment company will welcome you back with open arms!”
Having spent nearly six months in IBN, Farah says she has learnt a great deal about life values. Research isn’t a field for everyone who does science. It takes a lot of mental strength, tolerance, discipline, time, sacrifice and most importantly, one must have the passion for research. Long working hours and difficult experiments are part and parcel of the world of research so she advises that one think very thoroughly and be very sure before deciding on a career in research. As she so aptly sums it up…”If you love what you’re doing, you wouldn’t mind spending the whole day alone with cells in a lab because you strongly believe that in the end, it is great work that you’re doing!”
Farah has already secured a place at NTU (Biological Sciences) and is now waiting for NUS to release their application results before deciding on which university to go to. After her undergraduate studies, she plans to either continue doing research or work in the science-healthcare industry before pursuing her PhD.
For a while now, we’ve hinted at a secret project that we’ve been busy planning for on Twitter and Facebook.
Last week, we finally unveiled it – TemasekPolyTV, a brand new YouTube channel fronted by two of our very own students, Samuel and Rushdy.
This channel is dedicated to showing an insightful, and entertaining, look into life as a TP student. Our friends, juniors, parents, relatives and even teachers have asked us before – just what happens in TP? Why does everything think we’re Singapore’s most vibrant poly? How different is polytechnic life from secondary school life?
So we figured that the best people to answer that question are our very own students.
Samuel Driscoll (Sammmydee, and yes with 3 m’s) is a Year 1-going-on-Year 2 student from the Diploma in Business Process & Systems Engineering, and yes, many of you would’ve already recognised him. He’s Electricladyland8 on YouTube, of “SoSingaporean” and “Angmoh Speaking Chinese” fame.
Rushdy Abdul Rahman (ZunnyD) is a Year 1-going-on-Year 2 student from the Diploma in Communications & Media Management (CMM). He’s no stranger to hosting – he’s emceed for our Open House, TPRAWKS and many other events. He’s also got his own channel on YouTube where you can see behind the scenes’ footage and previews of upcoming episodes.
And yes, the “ang-moh” speaks like a Singaporean (which he is), and the Malay speaks like an “ang-moh” (he’s Singaporean too, but was schooled overseas in international schools).
Behind the scenes, we have David Sun (above) and Donovan Taim (below), both Year 2-going-on-Year 3 students from CMM, our highly talented crew that have shot, directed, recorded and pretty much pushed this project from concept to reality. Did we mentioned they’re highly talented? Because they ARE.
These 4 are the pioneers of TPTV, and we are ridiculously excited about the project. In under a week, we’ve already garnered over 750 subscribers and 6000 video views on the teaser alone… Just… wow.
Various students and staff have helped us through this project as well, and we’d like to especially thank the TP Cliquers, the DPA students, the TP Dragonboat team, Booklink (the TP Bookshop), the TP Library, CMM, the School of IIT for all your help!
So go Like the video, Subscribe to our channel and give comments on what you want to see on TemasekPolyTV.
This is the start of something awesome, and we want YOU to be a part of it.
