The difference in styles of education in different schools is astounding. All schools start out with pretty much the same vision. To develop men and women of great capability, imbuing in them leadership qualities and core values which the school has identified itself with.

And though the end is similar, the process is so different. Cos of the 6 yr programme that more and more schools enjoy, privileged students are able to experience many different things from their counterparts. For one, CCAs can run all the way to sec 4 as O levels has become a non issue. This extra year, to me, makes much of the difference. I don't know about the rest, but I feel I have suddenly matured much from the gap btwn sec 3 to 4. I guess having responsibilities thrust upon you really does work (well sometimes).

But I still feel the current programme to be lacking.


And why the heck am I blogging about this?! shit so much stuff in my mind....

Argh.

YAY. Now I'm going to US and UK this year. All in the month of June. After 5-6 yrs of not going anywhere cept Ubin and Sentosa, I finally get to go somewhere overseas. Wooo!

The belated first post of the year!

School started on 4th Jan, 2 days ago. Went for DID (Dialogue in the Dark) on day 1, where we basically went through what it felt like to be a blind person. My group was the last to go in, so we played some games with other groups while waiting. We played stuff like Pictionary. If you don't know what it is, I shall explain. You get a word, and you have to draw something out without any letters/numbers, and hope that someone guess it right. But in our case, we had to draw blindfolded. And man was it hard. I got the word (or rather phrase) 'Star wars', and intended to draw 2 light sabers. But since I was blindfolded, the handle was totally out of proportion and looked really weird. So I drew a star and Melvin guessed it right. yay! lol

After that, we drew pictures blindfolded. This was done in pairs, and one was blindfolded. The one not blindfolded would have to guide the person blindfolded by telling him what shapes to draw where, so that it would form the picture. I was supposed to draw an Octopus or sth, and it was quite ok in the end. Mad drawing skills ftw!

The last thing we did was trying to get safety pins out of a box of rice blindfolded. The other guy would instruct you. And it was hard, cos you cannot feel the safety pin from the grains of rice.

Finally we went into the exhibit. And it was quite cool. We were guided by a visually impaired man, and were even given those canes the blind use to navigate. It was really an eye opener (no pun intended), as it was really dark (you can't see your hand in front of you) and we only could follow his voice/instructions. It was cool too, as there was among other things a rocking bridge, a statue of Stamford Raffles, A boat along Singapore river (where we took a 'trip' down the 'river'), a real Yellow Mazda (what the guy said), fruits and vegetables that we quite hard to recognise and a cafe where we bought cookie and beverages ( paying and eating in the dark).

The next day, we went for laser shootout. You could use 2 guns, a lighter SMG (I guess) at 1.8kg and a heavier rifle at 2.2kg. I tried both as we had 3 teams, and since only 2 teams could play at any one time, all teams played twice. There are 3 sensors they stuck on the harness which you donned at your neck, and one on your gun, so basically you could shoot at your opponent's upper body or gun to hit him. Everyone could be hit 7 times, be4 you die and have to go back to base to be revived. The number of deaths is the score of the team; the lower the better. We won both rounds, winning team A ( we were team B) 24 something to 34, and team C 25 to 60+. However, overall, we had 49 deaths, while team B had 47 deaths. So we lost. Dammit. But overall it was a really fun experience. Having NCC people in our team helped alot as they were quite experience with these kind of shooting things.

I finally had real lessons today. Just normal stuff.

I have 2 new form teachers, Mrs Lim Jee Nee (like genie in a bottle), and Ms Stephanie Lee. Mrs Lim just came back to RI, here 3rd stint here apparently (so says my PE teacher), while Ms Lee is a new Philosophy teacher, really young (maybe late 20s?) Both are really nice, since they take CLE and Philosophy anyway.

Tomorrow's Raffles Trail, and I have to miss it cos of HSSRP. When I was Sec 1 I didn't even visit the Red Cross Booth, and now I will never see it. sad luh.

Today it dawned on me what history is. I was looking through msn histories with some of my friends. I always thought that history is to look at past mistakes, so we do not make the same one again. I guess thats true, but now I feel more importantly is the interpretation of the subject at that point in time. What did he/she think? How did he/she feel? And from there, find the logical flow to his/her decision. Most people decide through logic, no doubt with a mix of feelings and biasedness, but logic nonetheless. If you can understand what he/she felt, saw, then u can understand what circumstances forced that decision.

Most decisions were deemed the best one at that point in time. No sane person would want to choose a wrong one that would mark his personal or even country's downfall.

So i guess that understanding people's intentions behind decisions is the more important role of history. That's my view.

Yea, my blogs pretty dead.

I guess its overdue to blog about RCYC. A great learning experience, I finally experienced how good pms are supposed to be. Hopefully I can translate that into something that the pms can use in the unit in the future.

Made many friends along the way. To me, the RCYC campfire was the best I've ever had. That's a real campfire man, not the ones I had before.

I finally understand why there are people who love campfires.

And I got into National Geographic Competition! (I think its Geobee) Yes! Going to California in June, representing Singapore, dam cool. And only 3 people in Singapore get to do that. Plus the trip is sponsored by MOE ( I think), which makes it even better.

Lots of stuff coming up. Events and programmes to plan, stuff to study...

extra la.