Month: November 2015

World HIV AIDS Day

Face Book 13

On the 1st 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 1st 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!

Sibo studying

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

Sibo having a shorter shower

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.

James

People Protesting

Sjoe! There was fun and games on the TV last week.

Well, I know it was not really on the TV but that was as close as I came to it.

All those people protesting about University fees going up so much that they would not be able to afford them. But it seemed to me that they behaved in a very calm and controlled way instead of burning and destroying things. That always makes me mad. What’s the point?

Hope it gets sorted out soon.

I’m just a little kid – but it makes sense to me that the Government should invest in their youth. Just because you don’t have the money to study further does not mean that you should not be able to do it.

It excludes people from reaching their full potential.

Somebody might be really clever and be able to come up with an innovative idea or plan that helps save the country somehow, but instead they never get to even try. That would be really sad.

I keep wondering why nobody has come up with a plan for solar-powered traffic lights. Or if they have – where ever are they hiding it? Especially in Gauteng where the traffic is busy and the sun shines brightly most days.

Those suckers would just keep on working – never mind whether Eskom was alive or dead.

Then we would not have traffic jams and we would not be late for school. It always feels like such a silly reason to be late for school… Sorry I’m tardy Miss but the robots were not working! She always looks at me like I’m fibbing when I’m really not.

But I was thinking… if we are all going to have an opportunity to study further one day and learn lots of lovely new and exciting things, then we should better pull up our socks and start working really hard to get good grades. Probably Universities and Technicon’s will be full and so they are going to choose people with good grades first because it shows that they want to learn.

No more chatting, I’m off to do some revision now.

Good luck to all the matrics who are about to start writing exams soon.

Sibo

Cool word of the week: gripe
Meaning: protest, grumble, moan
Example: The students were all having a serious gripe about the hike in university fees.

Sibo standingMe with my socks pulled up!