Sibo's blog – Page 17 – Random stuff about this and that…

A little consideration goes a long way

I know I am a kid and am not really supposed to have strong opinions about stuff but sometimes I do get mad.

Like yesterday… some dude came and stood right next to where I was sitting outside and blew his smelly cigarette smoke all over me. He could have easily stood somewhere else – away from me.

I made coughing and choking noises but he carried right on. So I had to move.

Isn’t it against the law to make kids smoke?

I know you are not supposed to smoke in the car if you have children – so shouldn’t that apply to other places as well?

Then I nearly got flattened by a bakkie that did not stop at the pedestrian crossing. The cars on the other side had stopped and people had started to walk already, but he just screamed through without even looking. He was talking on his cell phone.

One of the other ladies who also nearly got smooshed yelled something rude at him and shook her fist.

It’s against the law to talk on your cell phone and drive – isn’t it? For exactly that reason… you don’t concentrate properly. Zebra crossings are supposed to be a safe place to cross. What is the point if cars don’t bother to stop?

I watched a lady pushing a wheelchair try to manoeuver through a door. First she opened the door and was about to push the chair through when the door blew shut.

So she had to squeeze around the chair and try and push it open again. It blew shut for a second time. There were lots of people sitting near the door but they just watched her struggling. In the end I leapt up from three tables away and held the door open for her. She was very grateful and gave me a big smile.

What is wrong with people? Why can’t they help each other and be nice.

We all live in the same space and yet everybody is just rushing around, swamped in their own lives, too busy to take time out to smell the daisies or take note of when another fellow human being needs a bit of help.

It’s so sad.

Be nice people.

Sibo

Stay well

I’ve come to the conclusion that we all probably just take our health for granted. I know that the powers that be are always telling us to look after our bodies, but when we are feeling healthy it seems like a silly thing to have to worry about.

Until we get sick. Then it is a really big deal and we are sorry that we did not pay more attention.

Here are some of the things that you can do to look after your body.

After all… you only have one.

Eat less sugar. Sugar is bad for you on so many different levels. The worst thing is… they sneak it into all sorts of different types of food and you don’t even realise you are having sugar.

Like baked beans! Who would have dreamed that a tin of baked beans has sugar in it?

The problem with added sugars (like sucrose and high fructose corn syrup) is that they have no nutritional value at all and yet they contain a whole lot of calories. This is why they are called “empty calories”.

Instead of grabbing chips or sweats eat healthy snacks like fruit and nuts. Try and drink water instead of carbonated drinks that are full of sugar.

Exercise is also a way to stay healthy. For one thing – it reduces stress and anxiety. So next time you are going to write an exam or something, go for a walk or a bike ride (or you could hula hoop) before hand– it will make you feel calmer and more in control.

Exercise boosts creativity. Plus it helps you sleep better. Never mind that – it also makes you feel great and look good too.

A significant benefit of exercise is that it strengthens your heart. This is very important. If your heart does not beat properly – it can cause all sorts of problems.

Exercise strengthens your bones. Means you won’t break them so easily and for those who have broken bones already – you know it is a huge pain in the butt and really inconvenient.

Exercise makes your brain work better – this means it makes you smarter! It can even make you a better reader.

They say that if you exercise 150 minutes a week it will add years to your life. That’s not so hard to do – is it? Just over 21 minutes a day.

So… all we have to do is eat less sugar and exercise to help our bodies stay healthy. Easy peasy!

Stay well

Sibo

Back to school

Sjoe! I can’t believe that the holidays are over and it’s school time again.

This year started out a tad on the sucky side. I overslept and mum had to come and wake me up the first day. I had set my alarm clock because Wayne and I wanted to get to school long before the bell rang.

Somehow I did not set the alarm properly and instead of waking up nice and early to get ready peacefully and calmly – I ended up being in a big fat rush.

First I buttoned my shirt up wrongly and then I could not find my socks. Totally ridiculous because I knew I had put them out the night before. They were all neat and tidy on my chair with the rest of my uniform. In my hurried scramble they had rolled off under my desk. I had to grovel around to find them which took extra time.

I ended up snarfing down a piece of toast for breakfast instead of sitting quietly and enjoying my cornflakes. Plus I forgot to pack in my lunch and mum had to come charging down the garden path in her dressing gown. This really annoyed her. She does not like going outside unless she is properly dressed.

Wayne was standing at the gate tapping his toes. He too was not impressed that I was late.

We thought about running but then remembered that it’s not good to run in case you trip and land up in the road. So we walked really fast.

It was great to see our friends again. There were also some new kids lurking around on the outskirts of the hubbub going on in the playground. They looked all shy and insecure.

Shame – it’s horrible to be a new kid at school and not know anybody. Wayne, Lizzie and I went and chatted to them. Turned out that one of the new guys is in our class and he’s really nice.

It’s great to know that there is a whole year ahead of us where we can learn new things, meet new people and do different exciting stuff. Our new teacher is quite nice too.

Hope your first day at school was good.

See you next week.

Sibo

Cool word of the week.

Word: Hubbub
Meaning: A noisy situation
Example: The hubbub in the class room quietened down when the new teacher walked in.

New Year’s Resolutions

Hi Everybody!

I hope that you all had a happy and peaceful festive season. I can’t believe that it’s almost time to go back to school.

I decided to make some New Year’s Resolutions – not too many because it is always hard to keep them. We usually start off with such good intentions and then get lazy or we just can’t be bothered. In fact, a few weeks into the year it seems like most or all of them have fallen by the wayside.

I decided to keep mine really simple as well.

I’ve written them out and stuck them up on the wall by my bed – so I can remember them each day.

Smile at a stranger every single day. (More than one is even better.)
Be grateful for all the lovely stuff that I have (even if I sometimes wish I had something else).
Be nicer to Mum and Dad. (I can only have one hissy fit a week.)
Make friends with kids who look lonely at school.
Save as much water as I can. (Turn the tap off when I brush my teeth.)
Remind Mum to recycle more. (Even if it means taking stuff out of the trash.)
Ride my bike to school at least 3 times a week

See! They are not really hard ones – are they? I should at least manage to do half of them.

The smiling stuff is really easy – and you know – people tend to smile back at you, which makes you feel good.

Number 6 might cause me to have some of my allotment of hissy fits with Mum. She gets fed up when I remind her to recycle – but I’m not ready to give up yet.

Number 7 might be a bit hard too, especially when it’s so hot. But the exercise is good for me and it saves my Mum petrol. Plus my friend Lizzie and I have great fun cycling to school. We are very careful because there are lots of hooligans driving around on the road who don’t always worry about bicycles.

They seem to think that we don’t have any right to be on the road – but we do. Although some cyclists just cruise straight through stop signs or red robots – they don’t bother to adhere to the rules of the road or traffic signs.

That’s just silly.

Hope that 2016 is a great year for all of us.

Be happy

Sibo

Festive decorations

It’s that time of year when school is finished and kids are on holiday. The first few days are fun because you don’t have to get up early and can spend more time in bed in the morning, but if you are anything like me – after a few days you start to get a bit bored.

Some friends are lucky and go away on holiday for the festive season, but lots don’t. The thing to do is to find ways of keeping busy.

One way is to make cool decorations for your room or house.

If you get a group of friends together – it’s even more fun. Plus sometimes you can pool your resources and then share – like buying spray paint, glitter and stuff like that.

Try making a bowl of popcorn – either on the stove or in the microwave (yes – you can eat some of it). Obviously you don’t put any salt or butter on the popcorn that you are going to use for your decorations. Ask your mom for a needle and some thread and string up length of about 60cm of popcorn. Make sure to secure it properly at both ends so that it does not fall off. You can also spray these with some gold or silver spray paint to make them look even prettier on your Christmas tree.

Other easy and cheap decorations to make are paper chains. Find an old magazine or use crepe paper and cut strips of paper (about 2cm wide x 15cm long). You can either staple them or glue them together to make a long chain. You can experiment making them wider or thinner and see which ones you prefer. Have a competition with your friends to see who can make the longest chain.

Paper beads are also fun to make. Take a strip of paper (2cm wide x about 7cm long) – roll it up tight into a tiny skinny little tube (you can use a tooth pick to roll it around) and then stick it down with a dab of glue. Once the glue is dry you can paint your paper beads different colours and string them all together to make your room or tree look pretty. You can even sprinkle some glitter on them whilst the glue is wet – to make them all shiny.

Remember – you can make your own glue by mixing flour and water into a paste (not too runny and not too thick).

Have fun,

Sibo

Crowdfunding for Sibo Looks Right.

A couple of months ago (sjoe – so long – time really does fly) I told you I’d found out about a weird way to make money.

Called crowdfunding – remember?

When lots of people give small amounts of money towards a project in order to make it happen.

My friend Ginny is actually doing one of these campaigns and so far they have raised R47,450 towards our book on road safety. That’s not too shabby hey?

Their tipping point – this is the amount of money that you have to raise to be able to keep all the money that you have already raised towards the project – has long since been passed.

In their case, they want to raise R140,000 in order to print 3000 “Sibo Looks Right” books on road safety and give them out free to schools and libraries around South Africa. Their tipping point was R25,000. When they reached that amount they knew they would be able to make an e-book which they will be able to share with many kids and their parents around the world – never mind only in South Africa.

Thanks to an incredibly generous donation from Nash Nissan in Alberton they passed this tipping point in just three days of starting their campaign. How awesome. These guys really care about kids and road safety.

You could donate too – if you wanted to. They call them “rewards” and for just R100 you could get your name written in the back of the book to show that you care. You’d also get the e-link to the book to read and share.

This is cool – another of the “rewards” is if, for instance, you had a motor dealership – you could have your logo in the book. And maybe challenge other dealers that you know to also contribute towards the project. It’s only R300 – not that much to show that you really care about road safety. Hey? These are great marketing opportunities. Even if we only reach the R80,000 mark – we’ll be printing 1000 books. Then you could have some of the real books to distribute to your local school – with your logo on it.

Check it out. You might also want to raise funds like this one day.

Remember, in the meantime… look right, look left and look right again before crossing the road.

Be safe,

Sibo

World HIV AIDS Day

On the 1^st of December it is World HIV AIDS Day.

Hai Sibo! I hear you say. What does a little girl like you know about HIV AIDS?

It all started when I found out that my friend Lizzie’s brother is HIV positive. Strangely enough – because her brother is positive – a lot of people thought that it was bad to be friends with Lizzie.

What a lot of rubbish!

It’s okay to be friends with people who have family members who are HIV positive. It’s also okay to be friends with the people themselves who are HIV positive. In fact they really need friends – lots of them. It can be seriously depressing to find out that you have been diagnosed with such a thing and having all your friends run away from you is the last thing on earth that you need.

It’s terrible to think, in this day and age of social media, television, radio, cell phones and goodness knows what else – that people still think that they can get sick just by being in the same room as somebody who is HIV positive. Or by sitting on the same toilet, or using the same dishes. Or drinking from the same water fountain or using the same gym equipment. You can hug or kiss a person who is HIV positive and hold their hand too.

Sometimes when the person’s employer finds out that they are HIV positive they even go so far as to fire them – just when they need their medical aid and all the support that they can get.

You need to eat the right food – good nutritional stuff that builds up your body – no junk food. We shared our veggies with Lizzie’s family. It’s important to eat lots of fruit and veggies. But then it’s important for everybody to eat fruit and veggies – not just those who are HIV positive.

Okay – so Lizzie’s brother was stupid. He’d been doing drugs and got the virus from sharing a needle with somebody who was HIV positive. Doing drugs is wrong – we all know that. Not only using needles but sniffing, snorting, smoking – all that stuff is just silly. Plus it’s a waste of your good hard earned cash and it messes your life up so much more than you could ever imagine.

Visit my website and join our readathon on 1^st December. You will be able to read Sibo Thinks Positively – free of charge. On your computer, cell phone, tablet or whatever!

Be nice people,

Sibo

Some tips to help you study for the exams!

If you are writing matric – then this is probably too late for you – but for the rest of us, it might help.

Do some exercise before you write you exam – according to scientists, exercise boosts brain and memory power. They reckon 20 minutes of exercise before you write your exam can help a lot – try hula hooping!
If you read something out loud (okay – don’t try this in the library where you are supposed to be quiet) you are 50% more likely to remember it, than if you read it quietly to yourself.
One of the best ways to make sure that you have learned and understood something – is to explain it to somebody else. Ask one of your parental agents, a sibling or a friend to hear you out.
Create mental connections – Steve Jobs famously said “Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something”. Worth a try hey?
Draw diagrams to help you see the information. This creates a visual memory in your mind – which is easier to remember than just words.
Make yourself flash cards for a quick memory buzz. Then you can quickly test your knowledge of key concepts, definitions, quotes and formulas using these flashcards. You can look at them when you wake up in the morning – or while you eat your breakfast.
Take short study breaks. After 45-50 minutes – take a 10 minute break. If you study for longer than this your focus is diminished.
Strangely or not – they recommend changing the places where you study. Don’t always sit at your desk or the dining room table. Sometimes you will learn more if you go and sit under a tree outside!
Do not stay up all night before an exam studying. Getting a good night’s sleep will reinforce all the stuff you have learnt during the day.
Study in a group. This can help you gain extra knowledge or insights.
Reward yourself for studying with a treat. For every so many pages you read (out loud) you can allocate yourself one smartie (because… you are becoming a smartie pants of course!).

Good luck in the exams!

Sibo

Cool career of the week: chemistry teacher

A chemistry teacher can inspire students to explore chemistry by challenging them to create an effective, eco-friendly cleaning solution.

Water crisis

Sjoe! It’s been hot lately.

Very very hot. Usually we would have had quite a bit of rain by now – but that is not the case this year.

In fact, it’s so bad that certain areas in Gauteng have been put on water saving programmes. Like they are not allowed to water their gardens between six o’clock in the morning and six o’clock in the evening. This makes a lot of sense – if you water when the sun is shining it just evaporates and the water is gone.

You are also only allowed to wash your car with a bucket – no hose pipes. Hose pipes waste lots of water when it comes to washing cars. Anyway – who cares if cars get a bit dirty when we are having a water crisis? Much more important that there is water to drink and bathe in than cars are clean and shiny. Or I think so anyway.

People are not allowed to fill up their swimming pools either. So if you are lucky enough to have a pool in your garden – swim nicely in it. The sun will suck up enough water without you wasting it by jumping in and splashing out lots of water.

Remember all the old basics – turn the tap off when you are brushing your teeth. Have a shower instead of a bath. And make it a quick shower too.

If you put a brick (or even half a brick) in your toilet cistern – it uses less water.

Make sure there are no leaky taps in your house. It does not seem like a few drips would matter much but you’d be absolutely amazed at how quickly they add up into litres and litres of wasted water.

Also, fill your washing machine up with clothes when you do a load –half loads are a huge waste of water.

You can spray a bit of water into a fan and stand in front of it – it’s a great way of keeping cool.

Water is very precious – we are using the same stuff that the dinosaurs used. It’s a cycle.

You can go check out the water cycle on my webpage if you are interested http://www.sibo.co.za/page12.html

Remember every drop counts!

Sibo

Career of the week: hydrology

Meaning: a science dealing with the properties, distribution, and circulation of water on and below the earth’s surface and in the atmosphere.

Cool Careers

I was thinking… if we are going to be able to study further – then we have to know what to study. Right? In order to know what to study – we need to know what type of career or job we want to do. We only have one life and a lot of it is spent at work – so it’s important that we like what we are doing.

Some people figure this out early in life – they love animals and want to be a vet. Or they have a passion for planes and want to be a pilot. Some kids are hell-bent on becoming a world renown surfer or soccer player or rugby player. I know one kid who is only 6 and can tell you without a shadow of doubt he wants to be a palaeontologist. Most people can’t even say the word – let alone know what it means.

However, many of us don’t have a cooking clue what we want to do when we are big. This isn’t a bad thing. It’s also okay to change your mind from time to time when you learn new exciting stuff and realise there are different opportunities attached that could form potential career choices.

The main thing is to be careful that you make sure you have the right subjects at school.

How? I hear you howl. How do we take the right subjects if we don’t know what they are?

True – it’s tricky!

A safe bet is to always take maths as one of your subjects. Maths is one of those things that one sometimes feels like dropping because it seems a bit hard or not really necessary. In fact – it’s very necessary for lots of careers. If you don’t have matric maths there are some doors that are so firmly shut there is no easy way to open them again.

I found out the other day that science centres can help with career guidance. Sci-Bono Discovery Centre in Jozi has a very awesome career guidance centre and it’s free. You can just walk-in and find out about jobs and careers that you never even dreamed of. However, for career assessments and career counselling they do prefer if you make an appointment. It’s a professional service and they don’t want to you to be disappointed if you arrive at the centre and all the staff are already busy. adminofficecareer@sci-bono.co.za or call (011) 639 8450/8476/8479.

Check it out.

Sibo

Career of the week: palaeontologist

Meaning: a scientist who learns about the forms of life that existed in previous geologic periods, mainly by studying fossils.

Example: My friend James wants to dig up dinosaur bones and find out more about them.