This is the day where I stepped down from the Interact Club. The interact club allows me for a lot of experiences and certainly provided me the opportunity to join many events. Out of these many events, the two most memorable events are Preserve Planet Earth in Malaysia and the National Day Amazing Race. These two events will mark the significance of my life in the Interact Club, without further ado. Here are my reflections for Preserve Planet Earth and National Day.

Preserve Planet Earth
Supervisor: Mrs Ong Theng Choo
Date: 10th May 2008
Type of CAS: Action and Service

I felt very excited as I entered into Johor Bahru for the Preserve Planet Earth Event. I was not really thrilled at first as I did not really look forward to spend my Saturday to pick litter. However, I felt really happy after crossing the customs and I was looking forward to what will be happening later on in the day.

We reached the river in Johor Bahru and we started finding places to pick up litter. The beach was badly littered with many Styrofoam boxes, lighters, bottles and plastic bags. It is really sad to see a beautiful beach being so badly littered by people who visit the place. There were many organisms that were on the riverbank. I am glad that many people have put in the effort to help these organisms to clear up their habitat.

We picked up many rubbish at the end of the session together with River Valley High School. It was great working with the interactors from River Valley High School as they were all very amiable and both groups relied on each other to clear up the amount of garbage that was found there. It made me learnt that working together cooperatively as a team allows us to increase our work efficiency.

If there is going to be another event that is for saving the environment, I would definitely volunteer myself to join such a program. This event has motivated me to save and preserve the place that we all share a part to live in. I believe that we should all take the responsibility to keep the environment clean. I have definitely enjoyed myself very much.


National Day
Supervisor: Mrs Ong Theng Choo
Date: 2nd August 2008 to 8th August 2008
Type of CAS: Service

On 8th August 2008, the school organized an amazing race for the Year 1 and 2 students. The preparation I was assigned to do for the amazing race was to buy the materials needed for the amazing race. The amazing race involves games and activities that are related to the nation’s food, tradition and heritage. The materials that my friend and I were supposed to get were the games that children used to play with like five stones, chapteh and spinning tops. It was definitely not easy to find all these toys as they are already history and the toys that the current generation plays is PSP and DS. These toys have already phased out. My friend and I searched the whole Chinatown in search for these toys however most of the shops there tend to sell the usual souvenirs that people can find scattered almost everywhere in Singapore. We walked for a pretty long distance till we finally found a Chinatown Heritage Stall hidden in a pretty shabby corner in Chinatown. We entered in the store and finally found those few toys stashed at the corner of the store. The prices of these goods were very expensive. I guess the prices of these goods are expensive only because these have already phased out of Singapore as Singapore progresses and develops into a cosmopolitan city. I think it is good that Singapore did at least make an effort to try and preserve its heritage even though it progresses on.

On the day of the amazing race itself, I am in charge of the five stones station. In order to be in charge of the five stones station, many preparations have to be done. A video is being prepared so that students who do not understand instructions or demonstrations can follow how the video does it. Instructions have to be printed out and I have to learn how to play five stones. I think learning how to play five stones was very enriching for me. I am still very bad at the game because I cannot throw the stone upright and the stone always end up being thrown at the other side of the table or on the floor. I think that by learning how to play five stones and actually teaching people how to play five stones is quite a good experience for me because I never learnt how to play five stones before and to learn something that is of heritage significance to Singapore is also pretty significant for a Singaporean like me. I think to teach the foreigners in my school to play a game that is linked to Singapore’s heritage is probably how I can start off by being a ambassador to Singapore. It is also a cultural exchange of some sort when I realized some countries play the same game with five stones but with different methods.

All in all, I enjoyed myself being a stationmaster at the amazing race. I think I have learnt a lot as a Singaporean and I am glad to be given this opportunity.

CHOIR

After my break from choir due to my Language A2 written papers, I am elated to say that I am back to join my beloved choir group! Very unfortunately for me, I have missed out so many songs due to my break and I have to catch up with the songs that my choir teacher, Mr. Paul West have taught the choir to sing. Besides that I even forgot how to sing the songs that was taught previously.
The hairspray medley- Good morning Baltimore, I know where I've been and you can't stop the beat.

I forgot the lyrics to Good morning Baltimore and I am unable to catch up to the tune of you can't stop the beat. Hence I bring the scores home and practice using the background music from youtube karaokes. A big thank you to youtube.

Thankfully the performance went extremely well and we were given warm applauses for our performance on celefest. I am glad I did not screw up the performance but instead did a good one.

This is sadly my last perfromance for choir as I have to concentrate on IB at full scale. Vroom. I will miss Choir and singing. From Choir, I have learnt so many valuable lessons that I can never give back.


WAITRESSING
Date: 23rd May 2009
Teacher: Mrs Ong Theng Choo
Type of CAS: Service

I did waitress-ing for Celefest on Saturday and it was quite a memorable experience for me. This is because it is my first time doing such a job and also the fact that I was extremely tired after the whole event because I was really busy and busied myself with jobs to do throughout the whole time I was waitress-ing. The jobs requires me to take orders from people, clear the tables and just to add an extra job, I also did dishwashing of the wine glasses as there were no more wine glasses left for people to drink.

The parents are extremely helpful and they guided me around a lot, which I am very grateful for because at the start of the whole event I am extremely unsure of what to do. I am grateful that one parent has made it so much easier by just putting the order list and waitresses just tick accordingly so as not to waste time.

All in all from this event, I have learnt to waitress. Besides that I have also learnt to take my own initiative, not just stand there and wait for things to come to you but also help others when they are in need. This is an area in life that I need to improve on and through this event, I have definitely improved a bit in this event.

So we have International Friendship Day... I was in charge of the environmental booth. We had a lot of fun doing it. And here are the pictures: