"So madam, where and what are your suggestions?"

I was reading the Sunday papers when I came across an article at Webthreads titled "Is this the way to punish kids?"

The parent complained that primary school children were punished by keeping them in class during recess for up to 5 days in a row or cancelling PE periods. The parent also mentioned that recess is important to the kids to avoid hunger pangs and asked if these forms of punishment acceptable and do they serve their purpose?

I was not surprised that punishments were carried out during recess times as we also do that in my school. We have a 30 minutes recess period and sometimes, kids who really misbehaves during lessons or cannot complete their work will be let off 15mins late. This is done so to give them at least 10 mins to buy and eat their food. They will not have the time to play and chat with their friends. (10 mins is a long time to eat!) Kids who decided to skip food and play with their friends and remained hungry should not complain to their parents that they are punished with no food!

For parents who do not agree to this form of punishment might want to provide some suggestions as to how the kids should be punished.
I'm listing a few of possiblilities:
1) After school punishment - Maybe clean a toilet (as a group), clears the rubbish in the canteen, etc (Kid will learn responsibilities, or he/she will learn things the 'hard' way. Isn't that what we used to do. So how have we turned out to be?)
2) Multiple but shorter punishments carried out during the recess time throughout the week? (Doesn't makes sense to me. Why punish them the whole week for something they do say, on Monday?)
3) Have parent counselling the kid at home on when to talk appropriately, why he/she is misbehaving. (Since parent feel that school is not doing a great job, maybe the parent should step in. But having said that, I believe parents should already been doing a GOOD JOB, right?)

(These are just my ramblings and my thoughts... Keep an open mind, ok?)

These 2 shots (part of a fence) were taken during noon. The sun was behind the clouds and it started to rain after 10 minutes or so.

Thi 3rd picture was taken tonight in the car after the rain when I had nothing better to do...
 

Lens Test

Took the new lens out for a 'walk' at Peirce Reservoir today. When I reached there, it was just about to rain. I had about 15 mins before it started to drizzle. The colors from the lens is of Nikon standard. I was impressed by the VR that I could take sharper pictures using normal speeds handheld.
The picture of the monkeys was taken from the car. I stopped the car at the roadside and took this picture. Turns out that it's slightly blurry. VR didn't help much since it's a moving object.
Took this picture at the multistorey carpark when I reached home. This was taken handheld at 200mm f5.6 1/80 VR=on. (I am still very impressed!!!) I couldn't have taken this using the Sigma 70-300mm APO lens. The picture would have been very blur handheld.

Nikon 18-200VR 3.5-5.6

Just bought the Nikon 18-200VR 3.5-5.6 lens. The VR is really something! I'm really sold on VR. Did a couple of quick test shots in my room at 200mm 1/25 f5.6 (with and without VR) and the picture with VR turned on is sharper than the one without VR! For what it's worth, VR really something!!! Here is a picture of the lens.

New Camera (D80) Testing

Sold off the Canon 400D a couple of weeks ago and bought a Nikon D80 instead. Still used to the functions and buttons of a Nikon. Also prefers the color of the pictures from the Nikon. Here are some pictures taken using the new camera. The lens used was a 12 year old 28-85mm Nikon lens. Go ahead and give me some comments to the quality of the pictures!