Photo Challenge

School Spirit

this picture depicts our RV spirit. The students are showing their love for the school. They had to take quite a long time to assemble to form the Chinese characters, working and trusting each other to complete the beautiful image. We were really convinced that the RV spirit had been shown here as the seniors are leading the juniors in the picture, showing our seniors compassion for the juniors. I am sure it was a difficult task to line up in this manner so the communication must have been very efficient.

Life

This picture depicts the life section of the Straits Times. This section of the newspaper contains as the name suggests, stories that we can relate to our lives. It talks about famous people that tell their stories in their lives that can be good or bad. From the stories we can often learn about the life skills and how we should be like in certain circumstances. It can also contains comics that can help us relax as relaxing is important in life and this lets us escape the stress of our life.

Happiness

Fear

The picture depicts a beautiful scene of a cherry blossom. But if you look carefully, it is actually made up of red, bloody handprints forming a bloody Sakura tree. At first glance, you would think that it is a beautiful cherry blossom but when you look carefully, you would find it creepy seeing red handprints all over the window. The truth is, the students actually left their handprints filled with red paint on the windows of the school. The reason of doing so is that they wanted to show their gratitude towards the school which is going to be demolished soon. 

At first, we felt flabbergasted but after knowing the story behind it, we felt our hearts throb.

A picture speaks a thousand words, you'll never know the truth. Never judge anything anything by its cover, even in your daily life.

Poverty in Singapore

In Singapore, it is unlikely to find beggars lining the streets or see starving children walking the pavements, scrounging for food. Instead, we do find people selling tissue papers or performing on street. Most of them, or rather all of them are elderly, handicapped or both.

Singapore has a fast pace of life, with the success of Singapore's fast growing economy, many Singaporean are able to benefit that. But there are also those who lack behind, those who can't keep up. They then faced poverty. Although, they are not as poor as those in other countries, they still led a tough life. 

In Singapore, the government has set up various help schemes and even organizations (such as the CDCs) whose roles include helping the less fortunate of our society. But even with those aids, poverty in Singapore had grew from 16% in 2002 to 28% in 2013. Why? In my opinion, the growth is caused by a poverty cycle. When the adults faced poverty, they have little or no means to make their life better. Their children will get caught in the cycle. Their children might not be able to do better than their parents due to the lack of proper education because they might drop out of school to work. To supplement the family’s income. To put food on the table. Hence the cycle continues and more and more people get involved. 

I think that the only way to escape poverty is to work hard. If you are still a student, study. Study hard and make a bright future for yourself. If you are an adult, work. Work hard to support yourself and your family. 

However, it's another story for elderly folks who faced poverty. They might be abandoned by their children or any circumstances beyond their control. Even if their want to escape from poverty, they can't. Although the government is already helping them by giving out food donations, but that's not enough. I think that if each and everyone of us can lend a helping hand, help them, help them learn new essential knowledge, them can be saved. Let's not forget about them. They might be already abandoned by their own children, let's not abandon them as well.

"If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich." - John F. Kennedy 

Nathan's Holiday

I went to New Zealand. When the plane was touching down at Queenstown, the window revealed the amazing scenery of rolling hills and scattered trees. Lavenders were everywhere and small houses were built along the hills. My family stayed in a cottage and we enjoyed our stay. We went to Milfred sound and other interesting places. We also went to lake tekapo. The view of the lake with a starry night was indescribable. After that we went to rangoria to stay at a farm. The sheep there were cute and friendly. But the farmer was friendlier. They made a wonderful breakfast and explained what farm life was like. Wellington was bustling with activity with all the cars and people, after an enjoyable trip we went back to Singapore.

    In Church of the Good Sheperd, Lake Tikapo

   Queenstown Lakes

    Queenstown Lakes

    Plane to Wellington

    Hill in Queenstown

As a nature lover, it was a perfect trip for me. I think the rolling hills and clear lakes are truly beautiful. I feel that the people who live there are living in paradise, an island full of nature. I could sit and watch the scenery for hours . I have learnt that nature can be truly that beautiful, unlike Singapore. I learnt many things like patience, planning and other things. I had to plan this journey with my mother so it was even more enjoyable for me. However, the preparations were tedious and difficult. Finding a good place to stay or a nice place to go was hard enough. Putting in the price was even worse. And the worst was not able to go there and you have to change everything due to problems. Overall the trip was not only enjoyable but moreover, it was a learning experience.

Group Photo

First group photo! ☺

Yinjian's Holiday

I went to sentosa this holiday. When I reach there with my friend, it was very hot so we decided to stay in the shade. My friend decided that we go visit the sea aquarium and so we went to queue. It took us 1 hour to buy our tickets and when we went in, we found out we had to wait very long before we enter the aquarium. About half an hour later, we went in and saw lots of different kinds of fish and were mesmerized by it, it surely was worth the wait! When we went to the big aquarium, to our surprise,we saw three small shark each biting each other's tail while swimming. Finally we exited the place and we went back to our home.

Hui Wen's Holiday

During the December holidays, I went to my friend's house to celebrate two of my friends' birthday. We planned a surprise for them, not telling them that we are actually celebrating their birthdays. As we have to buy the presents and the cake on the day itself, we have to split the job between the 5 of us. We arranged the two birthday girls to meet the 3 of us while another 2 of my friends went to buy and prepare for the birthday party. When we reached the house and met together, the birthday girls found out that the house was beautifully decorated with balloons and cards and they were pleasantly surprised. We began to give all the presents to them and we ate the cake after singing birthday song. It was a shame that the cake was wasted as not many of us ate it.

There's a dog in my friend's house and two of us were scared of it. We found out that it would not come near us when we hold a balloon and we used it as a protection from the scary dog. We chatted a lot and treasured the time we spent together. I love the times when we laughed and played crazily together and hope that we would be together as a family together:D

I also went to USS and Adventure Cove with my family and had a great time there. However, I hurt my toe in Adventure cove :'(

Other than that, I spent my holiday at home using my iPad whole day:P

Linli's Holiday

During the holiday, i went to Adventure Cove with my friends. The bad thing is that i can't swim so i can't join my friends for some activities. So i was fa-ing there watching my friends. We spent the whole afternoon there and night out for dinner. I also went to EOY cosplay festival 2013. It was interesting to see so many cosplayers gathered at one place. Furthermore, i coincidentally met my senior there. It was so awkward since we kept on bumping into each other and we are not that close.  Also, together with my friends, we planned a surprise(?) birthday party for two of our dear friends.

Party time!

I've spent many days going back to school for CCA related stuff. I also spent a enjoyable day at East Coast Park with my CCA-mates. And i learnt how to cycle! Yay!! 

at ECP!

  

I went to an outing with my friend and seniors and we watched movie and spent the afternoon together. Altho' at first we've planned to go bowling, however, we didn't go in the end. 

taken during the outing =)

On 28 Dec, we've ROD (retirement of duty) for our year 4 seniors. That day was quite enjoyable but we ( yr1s ) got ourselves 200 punishment for our not-up-to-standard-attire. *cry*

The ROD!

I spent 30 hours doing community service for my CCA. But in my group, I'm the only yr 1, the rest are yr 2s so once again, I'm fa-ing. T^T

I went overseas to visit my grandparents too. It's quite interesting other than the fact that it was freezing cold there.

Other than all these, I spent the remaining time lazing around being productive.

- Zhang Linli

Juandalin's Holiday

Even though it was the holiday, I only got the chance to go out during the last few weeks. It was a bad idea as that period was supposed to be rushing through my homework like another typical student. Fortunately, I managed to finish everything. =D On 30th December, I went all the way to east coast park from the west for my CCA outing. Well, I had borrowed a hoodie from my friend and it was extremely thick with long sleeves. 0-0 At least I didn't faint from heat stroke. While waiting for the seniors to arrive, my "hoodie party" with 4 friends took a hoodie pic with the sea as our background. ( Weird people we are ) I had a memorable time there, from being a newbie in cycling to a ... professional?? ( That was because my friends were holding on to the bike XD ) After all the sweating, we had our highlight of the day, BBQ!~ ( Food <3 ) Bad thing was, the rain. We had stationed ourselves around the pit, with our open umbrellas, shielding the food. Time passed quickly and we were playing in the shallow waters of the sea. We tried doing a jump shot but the camera quality wasn't that great. In the end, we settled for holding sparkles. It was a long day but the fun was worth it as we squeezed into a taxi. The next day, I went shopping for Chinese New Year clothes with my mum. As much as I love shopping, I hate it. All the walking and queuing up for the fitting room were horrible. Though it sure felt great as I pulled out clothes, one after another, from the racks. The funny moment came when i bought a pair of sneakers and the lady at the counter gave me a huge bag. It was so huge I could fit another four pairs of shoes inside! That's mostly what I did during the holiday besides being on the bed with my iPad and charger.