Poverty (Isaac)

During the last CID lesson, 黄老师 taught us about poverty. She started by showing us two pictures,one of a man whose is homeless and all belongings stolen,and then other a women and her baby. No matter how prosperous and rich a country is ,poverty is something which cannot be avoided. The population living in poverty in Singapore increases from 16% to 28% from 2002 to 2013. Poverty means the person lack the mean to satisfy their basic needs,eg food. Its sad that behind a rich and colourful city, lays a population with more than a quarter living in poverty. The rich gets richer and the poor gets poorer. It is shown that Singapore only spends 17% of its GDP on the public while the government of France spends more than half its GDP on its people. Back to the lesson, we were told to give either person a dollar. It was a hard choice but the women with the baby just seems to be the clearer choice to me,as she has a baby. Then we were told their background stories. The man was indeed homeless ,while the women was part of a ring and their money earn through begging will be given to the ring master,a bit like a scamming but in this case, the women is indeed poor. This lesson taught us about poverty and also that we should get a clearer picture before making a judgement on something.

Poverty (YinnYi)

During the second CID lesson, we were showed two different picture, one man holding up a sign that said he had been robbed, and only needs money for one phone call. another shows a woman carrying a baby and is standing nearby a man wearing a suit. We were told that we could only help one person and were told to choose between them.
Most of the class chose to help the mother and the baby, including me. I felt that it was really tough on this mother as she has to fend for herself as well as another child. However, we were showed the background story. The man holding the sign has actually really been robbed and doesnt even have enough money to fend for himself, and just needs a phone call to inform his family about his whereabout. But behind the scenes of the woman with the baby, she was actually a group of syndicates who would get children from different households to act pitiful and to get much more money.
After hearing both their background stories, i felt really cheated as the lady used children to make us pity her even more, and our money would get cheated away. but she could always keep some part of the money and use it for herself, and if i had given her the money, i would naively think that she kept it for herslf instead of giving the syndicate as after all she has herself to look after for.
Through this CID lesson, it taught me to look at the background story of things, and to get a clearer picture before taking action. ive also learnt that we should not conclude based what we only see, but learn morre instead from different people first.

-YY :)

Poverty (WeiNing)

18.01.2015

         This post is about my thoughts on the cid lesson about poverty. We were showed two different images: the first image is about a male beggar with a cardboard stating that he is very poor and has no money. His valuables had been stolen and needed money to phone a call. The other image is about a lady carrying a young child, begging for money from a male passerby. The question given to us is who would we give a sole dollar we own to. Even after knowing the two's background, I still chose to give neither of them. I chose not to give. Who knows what might happen after you give this dollar? And, would this dollar really make a significant difference? I may seem inhumane but I would rather not give than to give one of them. The only time I would give them a dollar is when i have two try and when I can hand them one dollar each. Whenever i face such people, I always try to avoid them. to be very honest, it has never crossed my mind that I should give them money. Rather than money, I would rather choose to give necessities like food, clothes or anything else but money. 
This is my honest opinion and view regarding the beggars and their background. However, even though I choose not to give either of them, I realised that what we might see may not be the truth. The image is just the surface, but most importantly we need to look beneath the surface. Do not conclude what you may see for the first time, learn more and find out more before getting to to conclusion.

fatning :)

Holidays (YinnYi)

I did many things during the holidays, but out of all only few has left impacts on me. i went to Borocay, Philipines for 5d4n. as i went to the beach, the water was extremely clear and there was fishes swimming around. i tried parasailing for the first time and the boat pulled us along as the wind blew against the parachute. From a height that tall, I could see the whole island of borocay and the sea seemed endless. Although it may seem a little terrifying, but it is really fun once u experience the thrill of parasailing.

Another activity that left a very deep impression of me was orientation 2015. I was part of the 46 facils that were chosen for this event. We had to stay overnight in school for one night, and our OCs created a whatsapp group for all facils to bond and there was so many messages coming in per minute that some fellow facils phone lagged and the app could not be opened. When I walked into the room where all facils were supposed to be gathered, it was really awkward, and there were so many faces I couldn’t reognise. But after 2 days of cheering, dancing, playing, learning with them, I made a a lot of new friends, and forged strong bonds with existing friends. I found friends that I could relate everything to and they were just for me when im alone. After the training, I was really looking forward to the next training, which was about 1 month later. Throughout the next few trainings, I got to make even more friends, and got to know facils that were in the same family group as me. We learned new dances, new cheers, new values… we got really high at times, dancing to songs and just dancing to everything. I remember playing games and there was one that I could remember clearly. Our family group had to use toothpaste to draw out something that represents us and we drew a mother and a child with the words “长不大” on it as it was our group name. however, after we all finished drawing, our final task was to put all the toothpaste that were squeezed out back into the tube. 

We all had a hard time trying to put everything back and ended up having toothpaste all over our hands. After that, our ocs explained that this game was to teach us that words spoken are very hard to take back, and even if it was taken back, it would still leave a mark behind. This game has taught me to be more careful about my words when talking to friends, or seniors and I would thus phrase my words carefully before saying them.

Very soon, the actual orientation arrived, and the morning of the first day, I was in charge of taking attendance for my facil class 1H. while taking their attendance, I asked them a few questions and I found out they are very open, and willing to talk to me even though they wasn’t sure who I was at that time. During the whole orientation, 1H surprised me even more by cheering along with cheers, and being really high and dancing to songs as well. 

During orientation night, I cried halfway through the video montage showing all photos that were taken during this whole orientation. During that time, I felt that I was really lucky to be part of my juniors first few days in rv, and I felt that I have impacted them in one way or another. I knew that I would talk to fellow facils lesser and lesser after orientation, but I didn’t want this bond between all of us to die. I have made really really close friends and didn’t want them to leave after everything.

At the last day of orientation, I received notes from 1H, and someone even specially drew out a picture for us. As we had a mass rap web in the band room, one of the facils took this chance to thank everyone that participated in orientation, and the year1s, were really touched and most of them were already in tears. Afterwards , it was part of rv’s tradition to let year1s write letters to their parents, while the facils were just crying non-stop.

Up unti now, 1H has never stopped giving me endless warmth, and they are really really bonded, thus fulfilling my own self goal. When asked, all of them wanted to be facils when they are in year2, and that’s when I realized how much facils impacted them. Ive really really learnt a lot from this whole orientation, including teamwork, and social awareness. This so far has been the best thing tat has ever happened to me and if I could I would like to be part of orientation 2016 again. 

Holidays (YueSan)

I went to Thailand on my holidays, specifically Chiang Mai. The most memorable parts of my holiday was when I went to a hot spring, and went to the famous Elephant Park. At the hot spring, the water had a distinct sulphur smell, and a few women were selling eggs that were boiled beforehand in the hot spring. I went to the source of the hot spring, and gingerly dipped my feet in, but the heat soon became unbearable and I stepped out of the hot spring. At the Elephant Park, I saw a performance from trained elephants, who drew trees on a canvas and danced to music. At the end, we were allowed to feed the elephants sugar cane or bananas that could be bought, or pay a small token to have a picture with the elephants. After that, we went rafting, which was extremely casual and relaxing. The most exciting part of our visit was riding the elephants, and we went two at a time. The sensation was akin to riding on an extremely slow roller coaster, as the elephant slowly plodded down hills and into rivers. The ride was jerky, and even though we had safety rails, it was a rough ride, and certainly not one I was eager to try again, but definitely an experience to remember. After my visit, other than opening my eyes to new things, I also saw a lot of poor beggars trying to earn a little money to sustain themselves. It made me realize how fortunate I truly am, and helped me count my blessings.

Poverty in Singapore (YueSan)

Poverty in Singapore is fairly rare, but usually at MRT stations, you can see a few buskers busking for some money. Even though Singapore is a first world country, we should not forget the poor people that need our help financially because of it. Poverty should be a concern of everyone, not just the poor, and we should play our part to eradicate it by contributing to charities, etc. Every little helps, no matter how insignificant, to a greater whole in total.

Holidays (Isaac)

While,my holiday has been pretty boring.Its mostly the same everyday.I didn't go overseas :(

For the first month it was mainly cca and children's camp,where i helped out yet. I think we actually have more fun then the children there. It certainly feels better that i have upgraded and helping instead of the one playing. We shouted till our voice is hoarse and my limbs aching.The kids plainly had more energy then us. It was a super tiring experience,but i guess it was worth it as long as the kids had fun.

Camp Helpers

                                                                  Balloon family,all died.


I would say the main highlight of my holiday would be my church camp. I spent 4 days 3 nights there. It was quite a new experience as our phone is taken from us for the most of the camp. Surviving without a phone is actually not that hard. We played a lot of games from literal ice breaking to playing hide and seek at 2 am in the morning.We had a lot of fun. On the third day, it was time to give something back to the community. We went to houses of dialysis patients and helped them cleaned. In the first house, there was a freaking tonne of spiders.(If u know me,I kinda am scared of them.) After cleaning ,we sat there and listen to the old man telling us about how he is forgotten by the society and so on. After cleaning houses, we went to sing Christmas carols to patients in the dialysis centre, some even patients teared up and sang along with us.I really enjoyed my time there. I would definitely do it again if I had the chance

The campers

Find me if u can

Holidays (WeiNing)

18.01.2015

           The holidays felt like it went past really quickly, although we actually had a whole two months to enjoy and relax after the stressful eoys. During the holidays, I spent most of my days in school, having badminton trainings. It was tough yet satisfying, and since we all knew that competition was starting as soon as school starts, we were all very worried about it too. After many weeks of training, I finally head on to my adventure in Europe. I travelled to three countries in the Europe continent, Italy, Switzerland and France. I had many "first times" in Europe. First time riding a Segway roaming about in the streets of Florence, first time running off a cliff, first time being on a parachute and many more. The parachuting was the most memorable one was parchuting. Because we had to allow the parachute to rise and float in the air, we had to run off a cliff. It was quite a challenge for me as ran off the cliff. It took me great courage to be able to jump off. In the air, the scenery was breath taking I could see all the three natures on earth, the mountain, the water and the sky. I doubt I would be able to see such a scenery anymore. This truly allowed me to get rid of my height phobia and it was such a a great experience. This was a small little part of what I did during the holidays and I shall share till here only. Hope you enjoyed reading :) 


fatning :)

SELF INTRODUCTION (YinnYi)

Hi Everyone!! I'm Lee Yinn Yi and I'm from NPCC. We hope to share our views and experiences on this blog :)

-YY

SELF INTRODUCTION (WeiNing)

Hello everybody!! I am Wong WeiNing from Rvhs class 2F. I'm from badminton and I hope to bring everybody who visits this page a new world of CID 2. 

fatning :)