Appreciating our City in a Garden - NParks 50 years of Greening Singapore Music Video

Just helping Nparks to promote their music video here since I have collaborated with them on numerous occasions.

 

"To commemorate 50 years of Greening Singapore, NParks produced a music video to reach out to more Singaporeans to appreciate our City in a Garden. Local singer-songwriter Lorraine Tan specially composed a song to mark this signicant milestone and there are special appearances by popular Youtube personalities Dr Jiajia & Big Bro, Ch 8 TV actress Paige Chua (who volunteered to film this), as well as our lovely otters and hornbills J. "

 

The link is here -  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCy3irgxj7U

Water testing strips: a quick and easy way to monitor water quality

To most people unfamiliar with water quality monitoring (WQM) techniques, testing your water may sound like a frightening proposition, filled with scientific jargons, chemical names and strange equipment.

Fortunately, there is a quick and easy way to test your water without sending your water samples to a commercial lab which can bite off a chunk of your budget and take time from submitting your samples and receiving your data.

If you have been holding your breath, here is your answer - water testing strips. The instructions look simple to follow. No messy and hazardous chemicals to handle. No heating and special sample preparation needed. Most strips simply require you to dip them into your water sample, take out and wait for some time (typically a minute or so) to the colour to develop. Match the resultant colour against a colour chart and viola! Instant water quality data. (The longest time I waited was about 10 minutes for the chloride test. I have not used the bacteria strips but most still need the typical incubation time e.g. 48h.) If this sounds like your DIY urine glucose testing strips, you are absolutely right.

On-site tests can be done with these guys with no lag time that can allow reactions to interfere with your results.

There are various suppliers for these strips but the one I tried came from Hach - a well recognised company for water analysis. There are strips for pH, hardness, alkalinity, iron, copper, ammonia, nitrate, phosphate, chlorine, chloride and even arsenic and bacteria. But in case we get too carried away with the WQ parameters that can be tested with these strips, keep in mind that WHO drinking water guidelines have about 200 parameters so there are still many parameters not available for testing on strip.

Another limitation of strips is the precision of your results. It may only give you a range of say, 0-5, 5-15, 15-30 ppm (parts per million). For the strips testing for bacteria, the result is a simple present or absent. Sometimes that is not good enough to tell you whether the water is safe, tolerable or plain dangerous. And for research purposes, you need a more definite figure to plot your trends or perform your statistical analysis.

Nevertheless, if you keep in mind their limitations, water testing strips are a great (quick and easy) method to test your water. Use them for preliminary tests or perhaps as screening tools to check if further and more precise analyses are necessary.

Figure: Water testing strips normally come in bottles like these. This make them extremely mobile - no bulky equipment and chemical containers to cramp the space in your travel bag. Each bottle usually has a colour chart on it exterior. Notice the colour chart on the leftmost bottle.

Figure: 5-in-1 testing strip. Each coloured square tests for a separate WQ parameter.

Kampung Temasek

I have the privilege of being invited to Kampung Temasek (KT) located in Johor, Malaysia (near Ulu Tiram). It is designed to be an outdoors learning centre, open to school activities and corporate workshops.

On my part, I am checking it out as a potential location for my school's outdoor activities and a potential site for green projects. It turned out that they are looking at implementing a rainwater harvesting programme for their visiting groups. Currently, their huts are harvesting rainwater for toilet flushing but more can be done, especially when large groups go over and these large groups cannot fit into the huts. Also, rainwater can be used for more applications than just toilet flushing e.g. washing of dishes and hands. Naturally, washing of hands and dishes will require a better water quality compared to toilet flushing and irrigation so a treatment train will probably be needed. Of particular potential is their main hall which can be modified into a giant rainwater collection device.

Figure: 2 of the 6(?) huts. Notice the raised above ground architecture for ventilation and avoidance of floods. Also, check out the solar panel on the roof of the hut on the left. Unfortunately, solar power is limited due to the heavy cloud cover in the tropics. Rainwater is harvested for toilet flushing in each hut but in my excitement, photographing this unit has simply slipped my mind. (Side note: KT is still tied in to the grid and water supply for the area. Sanitation is provided by septic tank.)

Figure: The main hall with nice sloping roofs. Great for rainwater harvesting. We may not even need all 4 sides!

Figure: The kampung style of lighting

Figure: The eutrophic pond where students do their confidence jump together with ducks and geese

Figure: Our highlight of the day. 1 of 2 banana plants we transplanted to a location we believe to be more suitable than the original one. Partial shade, raised ground, soil is well drained yet still moist

Figure: A not so green practice. Solid waste is disposed by burning on site. Without municipal solid waste collection, this is a common practice in rural parts of Malaysia. A partial solution will be to compost the biodegradable waste, producing compost for the vegetable on site. But this idea MUST BE sold to the local caretakers on its merits in contrast to the extra work of composting vs. burning.