Geography of Food!

An interesting website that tells you about food (though in a UK context). Take this time to explore geography even in terms of seeing Geography in everyday things like food.

Just a foretaste of how perhaps this module will evolve. Have a great holiday ahead students!

Intel as a case study

Dear students,

as we start on industrialization, there are a few examples of industries that will serve as useful examples to cite in your answers. Go check out all these companies in your holidays. You may just fall in love with the kind of work they do. Start knowing the world of work early to have a more informed perspective on careers in future. I'm not saying you start work now as a teenager, just build that awareness!

Primary industries

• Hay Dairy Farm
• Toh Orchids
• Kok Fah Technology Farm
• Marine Aquaculture Centre (AVA, Sg)
• Qian Hu Corporation Limited
• Swee Chioh Aquaculture Holding Pte Ltd
• small farmholds in China producing fruits like Mandarin oranges in farming areas of Xiamen
• Cotton Inc (US)

Secondary industries

• Mintek (produces car brake parts)
• Intel
• Apple
• Toshiba
• Lenovo
• Creative

Tertiary industries

• SMRT
• SBSTransit
• Hutchinson (shipping)
• Evergreen (shipping)
• KPMG
• Pricewaterhouse
• StandardCharter
• Llyod and other commerical banks
• AIA (insurance)
• Hong Leong Bank
• Metro
• Tangs
• Manicure companies like Fave Nails, body slimming centres etc (and other beauty treatment service providers)

Quaternary Industries

• DSO
• Nanoscience Innovation
• Singapore Technologies
• Fuji Xerox (research)
• Shell Global Solutions
• Heuristix Lab

Quinary Industries

• Singapore Duck tours
• Chan Brothers
• Mount Elizabeth Hospital
• Jean Yip
• private educational insitutions (including our school and many others)

Remember Live Earth

This module does its best to open the eyes of students to their world. Just wanted to expand the collection of pop music associated with environment protection.

Here's Madonna's "Hey You". I understand that there is a lot of controvesy over her carbon print, but I think it is good enough that she wrote a song to try bring up awareness for our environment and her director for this music video doesn't even have her in it for obvious reasons - this song is not about Madonna, it's about the environment and the people who shape, and the people who suffer in it, the people who live in it and off it.

How to improve geographical literacy

This post is actually targeted at parents who are concerned about their child's lack of interest or literacy in Geography.

Here are some useful tips I have adapted from http://ncge.net/geography/power/family/page2.cfm and thrown in a few of my own-

Having an Atlas and maps at home for the child
An atlas is the most comprehensive and useful geography reference work. Atlas maps allow children to locate countries, and physical features. Atlases also contain data on population, climates, economies, and usually pictures that are important for understanding a country's place in the world.

Maps are the tools of the geographer. A world map and a map of Asia can be hung on the wall of your children's room or elsewhere in the home where they can be used easily and frequently. Maps are available in most book stores.

My own observations*
Getting children to look at maps more often trains spatial intelligence - something many parents and adults tend to ignore in a child's development. Getting them to improve their spatial intelligence helps your child be a better map reader when older and gives them confidence in the very spaces they need to move in and unfamiliar spaces they need to conquer!

Encyclopedias and other world information materials
Encyclopedias, atlases and publications like Encrata are now available on CD-ROM and other electronic formats. If your children have access to a computer, you may want to consider using this form of access to geographic reference works and visit websites like BBC Geography, National Geographic.com or even the US CIA factbook that publishes information on all the different countries in the world. Wikipedia is useful for most college level topics.

Modeling and picking up geographical skills
Help your children learn to use maps, atlases, and globes. Work with your children to find places on the globe or look up information in the atlases. Be a good role model by consulting the atlas yourself and talk about countries or world issues in a particular country and its region with your child. Bring your child to the National Geographic Store in Vivocity to ignite interest in the world.

Critical thinking*
While this is not exclusive to Geography, it is applicable to all social sciences, history and humanities training. Take data representation from newspapers and other publications ask your child about the categories assumed, the definitions used and the way the data is represented. Do they agree with the definitions? Is it representative? Does it show "fairness"? Are things proportionate? what is the scale? Is it drawn to scale? What is included? What is not? Why is this so?

Kids are capable of thinking. It's the construct of this thing called "childhood innocence" that we try to give these children and in doing so, we make them stupid or we handicap them longer than they ought to be. Being able to think does not mean a loss of innocence. The loss of innocence is the loss of time to play and engage and think about their world. I'm talking about "homework time" with assessment books rather than meaningful thinking conversations between parents and their children.

Simple Mathematical skills*
Start a database of foods that your child eat on a day to day basis and eventually compare the data from week-to-week to month-to-month so as to teach time-interval studies and probability of their food preferances on a certain day. Including other data will eventually teach cross-referencing!

Get them to do a tabulation of their allowance money - have them to remember how they spend their pocket money and analyse their expenditure. This sets them thinking about analysing simple statistics but also act as a foundation for them to understand country budgets when they are way older. The act of data collecting and tabulation also instill discipline and routine when required. Award them treats when they do a good analysis. It should not be toys but their favourite foods or activities.

Simple acts like this can prep your child a long way. This mathematical skill actually helps your child in social science analysis.

Exam tips

Hiya 2007 cohort,

This is an informal note basis.

As you prepare for your exams, please remember to drink water and study smart!

For those not identified as part of the "34 students", I have some extra handouts printed and stuck outside my pigeonhole for those who are interested in it and do not want to print out the soft copy from Espace folder.

Also, do note that you can sign up for consultation slots from 2 May afternoon (after 1.30pm) once I settle the slots for the weaker students. That is if you want to and you have done the practice questions to ask me questions...

We live in Singapura!

Hi class,

It's not really related to what we study in this module but it is more related to what I'm researching on. This interesting song "We live in Singapura" is a very interesting alternative view of what Singapore is like and is an expression of national identity.

Listen and enjoy. It really is very original.

Singapore the best place in the world for Asians to live

I took this article from http://www.eca-international.com/Asp/ViewArticle2.asp?ArticleID=150 after catching sight of it in tomorrow.sg.

Students can think about this while we go through lessons on urbanization...



Singapore the best place in the world for Asians to live, says ECA International - 03 April 2006
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Poor air quality in Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur cause fall in ranking
High living standards make Singapore the most favourable place in the world for Asians to live according to the latest Location Ranking Survey on expatriate living conditions by ECA International, the world’s largest membership organization for international human resources professionals, serving a global network of over 4000 HR professionals in 1500 companies in 35 countries.
Singapore claims the top spot because it offers residents a good quality of living, scoring favourably in most categories. High quality infrastructure and health facilities, combined with low health risks, air pollution and crime rates make it a very desirable location in which to live. And the cosmopolitan make-up of Singapore adds to its appeal.
Kobe is the only other Asian city ranked in the top 10, ranked fifth behind Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra. Making up the top 10 are Auckland, Copenhagen, Vancouver, Wellington and Basel.
Yokohama and Tokyo are the other Asian locations to feature in the top 20, ranked 11th and 14th respectively. They are followed by Hong Kong (32), Taipei (60), Macau (64), Bangkok (69) and Kuala Lumpur (72). Shanghai, 89th in the global ranking, is considered the best Chinese city for Asians to live, beating Beijing because of its more favourable climate and lower levels of air pollution.
Baghdad came out as the worst location to live, followed by Kabul and Karachi. Their position at the bottom of the rankings is largely due to the high risk to personal safety and lack of adequate infrastructure and facilities.
Culture, language and proximity to an expatriate’s home country also affect the overall scores which are used by ECA member companies to establish allowances which compensate expatriate staff for the difficulties of living in their assignment location.
“Although Singapore is top for Asians, it comes in at only 58 for Western Europeans. Although still a great place to come to, distance from home, differences in culture, language and climate all make it harder to live here than Basel, for example, which comes top for Europeans," explained Lee Quane, General Manager of ECA International in Hong Kong.
Movers and shakers
Quality of living is on the up in most Chinese cities, with Xi’an showing the greatest annual improvement although it remains the worst-ranked of all the Chinese cities covered by ECA’s survey. Infrastructure, health facilities, goods and services, recreational facilities and housing are the areas that are seeing the biggest improvements across the country. However, locations in China still have a long way to go before they offer residents the same living standards afforded to residents in Singapore and Japan, with high levels of air pollution a particular complaint amongst expatriates.
Scores for Phnom Penh and Vientiane have also improved this year, as they have done for the past couple of years. Both have seen a growth in the expatriate community in recent years as they have become more open to foreign investment.
Hong Kong dropped down the rankings this year falling from 20th to 32nd. Its fall is due to an increase in the levels of air pollution, with the number of hazy days rising every year as polluted air from an increasingly industrialised Guangdong province affects the city. An increase in the levels of air pollution caused by forest fires on Sumatra contributed to Kuala Lumpur slipping 11 places this year. Flash-flooding and landslides also affected its overall hardship score.
“It isn’t all good news for Asia,” said Quane. “Although Singapore is ranked the best city in the world and many Asian cities recorded improvements in their score, only five Asian locations make the top 50. This shows that living conditions in most Asian cities is lower than those in their European and North American counterparts. What’s more, the drop experienced by Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur shows that the rapid pace of development in Asia, which is attractive to so many people, is also having a detrimental impact of living conditions through by-products such as pollution.”
ECA’s biggest ever location ranking survey scores 257 locations worldwide according to categories that include climate, prevalence/impact of natural disasters, health facilities and risks, transportation, the quality and availability of goods and services, accommodation standards, education, recreation, crime and socio-political climate. Culture, language and proximity to an expatriate’s home country also affect the overall score. The scores are then used by ECA member companies to establish allowances which compensate expatriate staff for the difficulties of living in their assignment location.
About ECA International
ECA International is the world’s largest membership organisation for international human resources professionals, serving a global network of over 4000 HR professionals in 35 countries. The leading provider of online data, software solutions and advice for more than 1500 international companies, ECA’s innovative approach has been providing cost-effective solutions to international HR management since 1971. For more information, please visit http://www.eca-international.com.
About ECA’s Location Ranking Survey
The Location Ranking Survey is carried out on an annual basis. The rankings above and below are made by comparing the factors listed above for 257 locations worldwide on an Asian base.
ECA‘s Location Ranking Survey is delivered through ECAAdapt, part of its Assign suite of HR information tools. ECAAdapt offers a transparent and detailed system for calculating location or “hardship” allowances for expatriates relocating to a new country.
ECAAdapt allows users to select region-to-city allowances or city-to-city allowances, so that depending on your policy the system reflects the level of detail that required. ECA’s system provides an immediate “banding” for the host location, based in part on the circumstances of the home location. With the banding comes ECA’s recommended allowances, expressed as a percentage of home gross salary.
ECAAdapt also gives breakdowns of the scoring given to a number of different categories contributing to the overall score which translates to banding and allowances. Categories include climate, health services, isolation, social network and leisure facilities, infrastructure and political tensions.
The best locations in the world for Asians to live
2005 Rank
Location
1
Singapore - Singapore
2
Australia - Sydney
3
Australia - Melbourne
4
Australia - Canberra
5
Japan - Kobe
6
New Zealand - Auckland
7
Denmark - Copenhagen
8
Canada - Vancouver
9
New Zealand - Wellington
10
Switzerland - Basel
The most difficult locations in the world for Asians to live
2005 Rank
Location
257
Iraq - Baghdad
256
Afghanistan - Kabul
255
Pakistan - Karachi
254
Algeria - Algiers
253
Haiti - Port-au-Prince
252
Angola - Luanda
251
Palestine Territories - Ramallah
250
Mauritania - Nouakchott
249
Uzbekistan - Tashkent
248
Sudan - Khartoum
The best locations in Asia for Asians to live
2005 Rank
Location
1
Singapore - Singapore
2
Japan - Kobe
3
Japan - Yokohama
4
Japan - Tokyo
5
Hong Kong - Hong Kong
6
Taiwan - Taipei
7
Macau - Macau
8
Thailand - Bangkok
9
Malaysia - Kuala Lumpur
10
Thailand - Chiang Mai

Urbanization: Going down the streets of different cities

Jakarta:

Go down the streets, it's almost like I'm in Medan City!




Fly over Jakarta. the low atmospheric clouds is probably air pollution.




Walk down a street in New York




How do you feel about the 2 different places that you have seen here? Talk about it in class!

Population Websites

Hi students,

As we go through concepts and definition in population, remember these are only starting points. Population changes are very dynamic and is very important to development as it concerns the distribution of economic benefits and affect people's welfare directly.

Here are some websites for your surfing for this time period.

The Population Reference Bureau - you may want to check out the new 2006 population data sheet under quick links to look at the current population situation around the world.
http://www.prb.org/

UN Population division - Department of economic and social affairs
UN Population Division

A linking point between population and the next topic, urbanization - most of the people we see being added to the world are in the ELDCs and they will be in the big cities in these ELDCs.
http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/WUP2005/2005WUP_agglomchart.pdf - Get the report here