[Seminar] Start Right, Start Bright - Optimising Childhood Potential by SBCC Baby & Child Clinic

Being a first time parents, there is already so much for us to learn about parenting, not to mention child's health and to ensure a healthy development for them. Usually, my first source of advice would be from my friends who are already mothers or from the mummies group. Now that my girl is no longer a baby but a toddler, things seems to be much easier but there's still issues such as her bad sleeping pattern, and the long hours of screen time from using the handphone that bothers me.

The thought of working with paediatricians to guard against potential health challenges has never occured to me. I'm glad to be invited to attend the Start Right, Start Bright - a Children's Health Seminar presented by SBCC Baby and Child Clinic to gain some insights from the paediatric experts. The seminar focused on educating parents from an evidence-based and medical perspective and topics like common children's health issues and optimising childhood potential with regards to nutrition, sleep and learning were shared during the seminar.

Programme Outline

Nutrition in Childhood: Optimal Nutrition Practices and Common Problems 

By Dr Nancy Tan (SBCC Baby and Child Clinic - Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition Centre)

Sleep in Childhood: Optimising Growth, School and Play

By Dr Jenny Tang (SBCC Baby and Child Clinic - Asthma, Lung, Sleep and Allergy Centre)

Language in Childhood: Facilitating Communication

By Ms Ng Jia Yue (Senior Speech & Language Therapist, SBCC Child Development)

Early Childhood Development: Optimising Your Child's Potential

By Dr Wendy Liew (SBCC Baby and Child Clinic - Neurology Centre)

The seminar was held at Stephen Riady Auditorium @ NTUC and it was a very big auditorium. My girl had a hard time sitting still during the talk, I only managed to keep her seated for the first few minutes while she was munching on the vitamin gummy found in the door gift. After that, she just run up and down the stairs with CF's daughter. Kids really have unlimited amount of energy. After the last play date together with CF and her family, I think our parenting style and almost similar and I'm glad they met up again today! I'm also happy to meet the winners of the giveaway that I've organised. They came with their kids too!

During the tea break, we were served with some refreshments and a play area for the kids! Ball pit and some carnival games stations.

I was paying more attention when the speaker was talking about sleep disorder and I learnt the importance of limit-setting sleep disorder by positive reinforcement and removal of privileges. My biggest takeaway from the seminar is the segment where the speaker discuss about what are the type of questions to ask the children. It's important not to end up asking too many questions, to give child time to answer and to choose the type of questions asked. Instead of a "yes" or "no" question, parents can ask more open-ended questions for the older child.

We need to understand that the growing mind starts from a very early age. At my girl's age, she can imitate others pretty well and already have a mind of her own. She can specifically tell me what she wants and do not want.The speaker also shared with us on the different type of learning styles such as Montessori, Reggio Emilia, Theory of Multiple Intelligences and Play-Based. Play-based is the natural way to learn, as kids will always be kids.

Thank you for the invitation and the generous door gift. It was an educational seminar although I felt the duration can be shorter and more age specific.

For more information, please visit 

https://www.sbcc.sg/

XOXO

[DBS] Imaginarium@DAX - Building Fine Cuisine and Fine Lives by Enoch Teo + DAX Office Tour

AImaginarium is a community run by like-minded innovators in DBS. A network that provides inspiration and support. The speaker this month is chef Enoch Teo of E & I Food Concepts which was awarded a grant in 2015 by the DBS Foundation as part of its Social Enterprise Grant Programme.

Imaginariums are internal events usually opened for the DBS staff but they happened to extend the invite to the external community this time round and I'm so glad to receive the invitation for this seminar.

Greeted with a hearty breakfast curated by Chef Enoch Teo himself. Having a good breakfast is a good start to the day! E&I Food Concepts is the Company that runs Garcons which sells affordable French Cuisines.

A little background about Chef Enoch Teo. Being a graduate of the Sunrice Global Chef Academy, Enoch discovered his passion in cooking at the young age of 15 when he was working at a zi-char stall. He decided to pursue his interest in French cuisine and has worked at several top restaurants such as Restaurant Andre, Absinthe, The Ritz-Carlton Millenia Singapore, The Cliff, and Bistro du Vin (by Les Amis Group) before. He was one of the winners of Concours Cuisine at the age of 19. Today, at age 27, he has set up and co-run this social enterprise, E & I Food Concepts with a partner that give a second chance by providing employment, mentorship and training programmes for ex-offenders.

However, before he became who he is now, there's actually a not so glamourous past of him that he shared with us too. Mixed with the wrong company, he dropped out of school at age 14, get involved in gangs and drugs, went into rehabilitation and lost his best friend to drug when they both agreed to turn over a new leaf. He considered himself lucky as his passion in cooking has saved his life.

Now, he feels that his everyday life is like going to the library, not on the knowledge from books kind of learning but more on the practical kind of study in life. By hiring ex-offenders, they provide them a chance to redeem themselves and that hope they need in order not to give up on themselves.

Beside having a social cause in his business, he has also implemented a self-ordering system for menu at the Timbre+ outlet. This is quite an essential innovative move to prevent orders from being taken wrongly due to the loud music playing in the background at that outlet.

A great sharing for the day. It goes to show that no matter what kind of past a person had, if there's a will to change and with some stroke of luck, good timing and meeting the right people, one's life can be changed too.

Shortly after the seminar, we had a short tour of the DBS Asia X (DAX), 1 Fusionopolis View. It's a rather new, modern and open-concept office. How I envy the staff working here. It seems like they are always in a group doing brainstorming together.

The first innovative thing that we were introduced to is this smart fridge from CryoWerx. It's locked and to use this, one have to scan a QR code to unlock the door, once you've grab the food you want, you close the door and payment is automatically deducted when the door close. Was told that many staff were intrigued by this and tried to break the system but failed.

The special corner for those on special projects and only this area has a doors that keeps outsiders away.

Next, we were introduced to the POSB Smart Buddy which is a wearable watch for kids to make payments at school. This allows the parents to manage and monitor their kids spending and savings. This technology is the first in Singapore and is currently on pilot at Anchor Green Primary and St. Joseph Junior.

Another innovation from DBS is this Virtual Assistant called KAI. KAI is a conversational artificial intelligence (AI) platform that allows consumers to bank "conversationally" with them on Facebook Messenger. The days of conventional logging in to banking mobile app might soon be replace with a simple chats on FB.

This POSB Video Teller Machine (VTM) operates 24/7 and will be launched at multiple locations this April. Customers can perform transactions such as getting a new debit card or internet banking token instantly. Real-time support from a customer service officer via live video-streaming is provided should customers require assistance. Another good initiative to give customers access beyond the banking hours.

 Moving on, is this huge, interactive big screen known as the DBS Location Analytics. This simple interface allows users to understand the micro and macro transaction patterns in different areas of Singapore.

After touring and understanding more about these different initiatives that DBS will be rolling out, I felt really amazed that beside banking, they are constantly improving and innovating themselves. This is indeed in-line with the Smart Nation that Singapore is transiting into. My next post would be on another great DBS innovation called the DBS FasTrack, using mobile app to order and pay for food and receive notification to collect your food. Sounds interesting? Check out my next post.


XOXO

Photography Seminar by National Gerographic Photographer - JOE RIIS + Launch of the EOS Young Photographer Awards

Attended this exclusive photography seminar by National Geographic Photographer, Joe Riis on a lazy Sunday morning with Jess.

It was held at the LASALLE College of the Arts, The Singapore Airlines Theatre. Both of us find the architecture here rather interesting so we took some photos here. It's Joe Riis first trip to Singapore and it's my first visit to the LASALLE College of the Arts.

**Note** 

All photos below are credited to Google Search

For more information on Joe Riss and his work, please visit:

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/explorers/bios/joe-riis/

and

http://www.joeriis.com/

 A short bio about Joe Riis. He was born and raised in South Dakota on the Great Plains and is currently the youngest wildlife photojournalist for National Geographic. At only 29 years old this year, he has already won an Emmy in 2011 for his pronghorn cinematography which was featured in National Geographic Channel's Great Migration series.    

In the seminar, he shared with us some of his vast array of experiences of photographing the wildlife animals. 

Every photo tells a different story. From this seminar, we are seeing the wildlife through the lens of Joe Riis. For the Grand Teton pronghorn migration, it actually took him two years to complete this project. The photo above shows the antelope's feet getting caught in a fence. He believes that through these photos taken, it will helps to create awareness for the wildlife. 

For example, creating a better route for the animals to migrate. I remember one slide shows how initially the animals have to cross over a road full of cars to get to the other side and it's quite dangerous but after a few years, they built a bridge for them to cross over.  

Before he start on any project, he would first familiarize himself of the place first. To see what are the routes the animals would usually take. A wide angle lens camera is usually used to capture the background scenery too. For this photo, he set up his camera at this particular spot and leave it on with motion sensor for a few days. It happened to capture a lot of different animals coming to this spot. 

The Gobi bears project is what he is working on now. In fact he will be going back to Mongolia after this Singapore trip for another 5 weeks. That's life of a wildlife photographer for you. After the seminar, there's the Q&A session. This is by far the most active Q&A session. There's just so many questions thrown at him from the ground which he tackled quite professionally. There's questions like what setting he likes best, whether he will try to mount a camera on an animal to get the animal's perceptive, etc, etc. 

Contest website: 

http://www.celebrationofcolour.com/

This photography seminar was organized in support to the launch of the EOS Young Photographer Awards, an initiative between Canon and the National Geographic Channel. 

The contest is open to all aspiring young photographer between 13 to 25 years old in Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia from 28th March to 3rd June.  

This is the summary of the attractive prizes!!! Seriously, if I'm not over-age, I would definitely join this contest. 

 Share some of the photo tips which Joe Riis shared during the seminar. So true, I think I'm gonna practice and bear this 6 sentences in mind! 

Good luck to those who are joining and may the best photo win!