Leadership: diplomatic and enterprising.
· Doge Pietro II Orseolo maintained friendship with other leaderships in Europe.
o Ensures Venice’s Independence and trade, bringing about peace and stability, which in turn allow Venice to generate more income and wealth.
· Doge Enrico Dandolo led a military campaign to capture Constantinople. The success of this campaign marked the beginning of Venice’s growth as a maritime empire.
· Doge Pietro Ziani, the successor to Dandolo, led more conquests to further expand trade and ensure control of important sea routes in the Mediterranean Sea.
Reforms in Gov’t: Responsive, Responsible
· System of Gov’t adapted to meet demands of people and city-state’s growth
o 12th Cent. : Great Coucil -> better control of Admin matters
o 13th Cent. : more political structures [Council of 40, Senate] deal with more complex matters due to Venice’s Expansion.
· No one above the law, not even Doge.
o Great Coucil exercises authority by preventing corruption or abuse of power.
o Effective checks on power due to this great sense of responsibility.
Attitude towards trade: Competitive, adventurous.
· Motivated by profits, the Venetians are shrewd traders who can obtain more favourable trading terms than their competitors. This competitive edge brought them great wealth.
· Willing to travel to distant land to search markets and supplies, Venice could secure lucrative and exotic trade items, making them important traders. Wealth created made Venice one of the greatest cities of Europe.
Innovation in Maritime Technology: Galley.
· Extensive knowledge of shipbuilding allowed Venetians to design and build superior vessels able to sail swiftly over long distances.
· Oars and sails propulsion methods allowed their ships to sail where others cannot, hence facilitating in expansion of trade and territorial control.
· Pirates tend to avoid Venetian ships as they were a combo of merchant + war vessels called galleys.
Industrial Development: efficient, enterprising, innovative.
· Arsenal: backbone of Venetian Maritime Empire and power, as all shipbuilding activities are centralised here, improving productivity.
o At peak [15th Cent.]: ≥2000 craftsmen could produce average 10 galleys a day when called upon.
· Diversifying into other manufacturing industries [e.g.: glassmaking, printing] resulted in growth of a variety of manufactured goods that Venice could sell.
· Venetians started double-entry bookkeeping [enabled businessman to keep track of transactions]
o Improved on their effectiveness in accounting, made Venice a favourite trading centre.
· Giro banking helped facilitate trade as business transactions were done through banking instructions, not cash terms. [Popular with traders]
· All these improved Venice’s reputation, increases its popularity.
Overcoming trade competitions: Tenacious [persistent]
· Main trade competition: Genoa [also dependent on Maritime trade]
o After a series of war, Venice defeated Genoa in late 14th Cent.
o Venetians can now control Mediterranean Sea, brought them more international trade.
Behold, the value of pi on an iPod touch. Can you say 'iCalculator'?
Sent from my iPod touch
I logged in to my .Mac iChat account on the Art Room iMac, which is currently rendering some scenes for my OLVL project. 
The guys at ESDAA, including Nickson Fong, came down to St. Andrew' s Secondary to talk about the academy and animation, as well as Kungfu Gecko. Look! They use Macs!
*not drawn to pin-point accuracy.
.One year of mandatory French, and I could barely understand that... Damn...
Just want to get the ball rolling ......
It is a personal observation that obese kids at the junior school are often left out of running events due to their physical outlook. Get real, who wants to slow down a race where agility and speed is needed. No one loves to lose.
However, coming across to the other side of the camp.... at SASS. There is a tug-o-war when zero becomes heroes and where fats are biceps. I really hope to see events cater to these students at the junior school. Example....tug-O-war....sumo wrestling... junior judo or even boxing (that's something I learned in P3 back in 1977). Why not? A SAPTA cup for this main event. These kids are also part of a sport's day team besides being "eyed" as forwards for our esteemed rugby team. Anyone with constructive ideas?
PS : Hehe...no offence to teachers....just an observation
[taken from the SAPTA website at sapta.net
--------------
after just reading the headline, I was thinking to myself: what about a sport that doesn't just test athletic capabilities? How about chess-boxing?
In chess-boxing, you lose either through using up 12 minutes on your turn in chess, in a checkmate, or a knockout in actual boxing. /just searc online to find out more about it.
So, Chess-boxing for National Day?
Pownce is a way to send stuff to your friends. What kind of stuff? You can send just about anything: music, photos, messages, links, events, and more. You can do it all on our web site, or install our lightweight desktop software that lets you get out of the browser.
The Second: My thoughts of what Pownce is.
Well, Pownce.com is kinda like Twitter.com, if you use it, but more.
Pownce.com lets you post updates in a micro-blogging format. No character limit, unlike Twitter.
Pownce.com also lets you share files, links, and even notices to events.
It also integrates your different social networking profiles into one, by linking them on your profile page.
The Third: also an official definition outlined by the About page, but in a geekier tone.
The website is 
which is 
and we use a 
database. The servers are 
and our web servers run a combination of 
and Perlbal (by 
). File storage is supported by S3 from 
. The desktop application is written in 
for Adobe's brand new 
platform. We support 
and we're 
. We use some of the great 
Silk Icons and the 
icons by Sodafish as well as some beautiful background illustrations by artists at 
. Also, thanks to Peter Simonsson for his help with some icons!
