On the previous day's debrief, I was elected as the IC for day 3 starting from 9 am. I was kind of nervous since I was not sure if my classmates would listen to me-they were never the type that could listen to another student's authority for long. Luckily for me, I could learn from the previous ICs' mistakes, so I did not do a terrible job. I hurried up my classmates when they needed it, I shushed them when they were too loud, I tried to make sure they behaved when in public. To my delight, they listened without complaint, which was quite unexpected. However, since I was hurrying those at the back, I did not have much opportunities to go to the front to listen to our tour guide in the museum, instead sticking at the back to hurry my classmates. That is also one of the reasons why I do not want to be the IC for more than one day, as I will miss out on a lot of points. At the end of the day, the other's thought that I did a decent job, and I was happy about that. I also appreciate the hard work that the ICs put in every day, which is why I made sure to listen to the IC carefully the next day.
Day 5&6: In the morning, we headed out to Suzhou from Nanjing. Our guide, Alice, told us that the trip would take around 2 hours. To entertain ourselves, we decided to hold an onboard Karaoke. It was very fun and was a bonding experience for our class. I discovered that many of my classmates could sing very well! When we visited the Silk Factory, we learnt that there was a big difference between real silk and fake silk when exposed to certain elements. We also got to try stretching out the silk for making blankets by spreading out and pulling the silk from all directions. Boy, was that tough! I personally was very surprised that the silk was so tough. After that, we had our lunch and proceeded to Shanghai. Due to traffic congestion, the trip took almost 3 hours, rather than the 1 and 1/2 hour trip that was expected. This caused a funny situation where our class were not controlling our behavior as almost all of us had to pee. I definitely learnt to go to the toilet before going on long trips. We went to xxxx where almost everything sold there was fake. Even though some of the fakes looked 'real', there was an obvious difference in quality for some, and the prices for others were simply too low for the product to have been genuine. In fact, I was pretty sure that some of the 'products' were non-existent in their packaging because there is no way that a pair of headphones would be sold for only 20 yuan, even if the exterior looked very convincing. As they say, 'don't judge a book by it's cover'.
Day 7: This was the last day of our trip. And it just had to be the last day where I would get my classmates into trouble. My roommates and I woke up late and, with me being the slowest, I made caused them to have to be in push-up position longer than they should have-no, they never should have been late in the first place. I should not have 'let my guard down'(as Mr Chua put it) and woke up as early as the other days. After breakfast, we visited the Shanghai Volkswagen factory and headed out to 海底捞 for lunch. I personally am very grateful to the teachers for arranging this for us as this was not part of the itinerary. After that, we headed to the airport(with onboard Karaoke once again), said goodbye to our guide, and flew back to Singapore. Throughout the OELP trip, I feel that we have progressed in terms of behavior and have learnt many things. Some examples would be when we visited the Ming Xiaoling Mausoleum and came across the stone sculptures. This sculpture below, was supposed to be a sculpture of a unicorn, but it looks nothing like the unicorn we know of. For the first time, I realized just how different the people of the past's thoughts were.
Another thing that I experienced was that I had to revise my impression of several of my classmates. One example would be Marcus, who seemed to be irresponsible and an airhead at times, but was really responsible as an IC. In fact, he had to be the IC for two days instead of one but he did not complain at all! This OELP trip has truly been beneficial and taught me many lessons and I look forward to any such trips in the future.(Post for days 1&2 are below)
I'm just an ordinary guy who likes reading and talking. For those who know me, yes I like talking. Surprised? I usually talk a lot with people I'm really comfortable with (people I've known for at least 2 years). Not surprising really, seeing as my name is 星言, literally meaning talking star. My surname is 赵, something that I am quite proud of. I prefer speaking in English, as my Chinese is only average in RV.
To end things off, here is a quote that I am quite fond of:
"If a King doesn't lead, how can he expect his subordinates to follow?"— Lelouch Vi Britannia (Code Geass).
3,2,1 reflections:
3: In order to control birth rates, countries implement policies like the one-child policy in China. I also realized that the growth of a population in a country can actually affect education greatly. Such rapid changes due to policies will also always have trade-offs.
2: There are families in China who prefer sons over daughters. Due to the one-child policy,parents actually abandon their daughters or abort them, which is really sad. They would abandon their own flesh and blood just because of their selfish desire to have their family name be carried on.
With only one child in each family, China will have an aging population which causes schools to not have enough intakes. Such changes are apparent in other parts of the economy, causing the divide between upper and lower classes in the economy to become wider.
1: Are there conditions in the policy where the fine that the rich have to pay is more than that of the poor? If not, the rich would find paying off the fine easy and would have more children, defeating the purpose of the policy.
Chingay Parade:
Even though it was just a rehearsal of the actual thing, everyone was still very excited to watch it. Even though it was awkward showing our enthusiasm at first, we all warmed up to the gestures and cheers and went along with them in the end. Everyone also received a goodie bag, which contained a light bulb, some snacks, clappers and a pom-pom(the things cheerleaders use). The mini light bulbs were meant to be worn by us after we switched it on. The flashing colors matched really well with this year's theme "Lights of Legacy, Brighter Singapore". The performances were colorful and exciting. I particularly loved the part where there were two singers standing on the stage that could be raised into the air. Another one of my favorites would be the mass display where performers of different countries and backgrounds would perform together. I feel that that performance was a representation for us Singaporeans, different people united by our country. At the end of the performance, some floats went by and confetti was flying in the air. That was a truly marvelous ending to the performance. This whole parade truly helped us to bond together, even if we were of different races, cultures or religions. This is the Singaporean spirit.
Poverty and Happiness:
They are definitely two different things. Sure, you may argue that with poverty you have headaches over debts and all that but at this is a minor factor in happiness. Happiness is defined by the feelings you get when you are around the people you love and doing the things you like. Poverty only makes it slightly harder to find happiness, but you can still find it easily as long as you appreciate what you have. Being rich also does not necessarily mean that you will be happy. For example, you may be rich, but need to work a lot and rarely take breaks or spend time with your loved ones. Such a life is definitely not happy. Even when faced with hardships, all you need is your loved ones and appreciation to find happiness.
For RV 60:
I still have trouble adjusting to life without the RV60 preparations. Back when it started, I, along with most of my friends, hated it. We were all kept so busy and we could not see the point of getting ourselves involved in a celebration where we should be the ones watching the celebrations. Our teacher-in-charge, all of the teachers, actually, knew that we did not like it. They told us to try to be positive and see that we were doing this for the school, and influence each other with positive outlooks on this matter. The first few time I heard this, I thought that it was complete and utter b*******. After the third time though, I decided to stop complaining, if only to stop the teachers from nagging at us. The seniors also showed up rarely at first. I myself went on a holiday with my family during the full-dress rehearsals in December. Somehow we managed to pull through and did a wonderful performance. When it was over, everyone was celebrating...and we got too carried away and got scolded for going back to the holding area late. Now that everything is over, I can honestly say that I miss the rehearsal days as they were actually very fun and, if given the chance, I will not hesitate or complain to participate in something like this again.
Photo in school:
To be honest, I think that the whole school can be considered extraordinary as not all secondary/ high schools can have a campus like ours. Out of the all of them, I think that the canteen is actually the most extraordinary one of them all. It is located just behind the school field and track, and provides a good view( for me anyway since I can see if my friends are playing soccer and join them after finishing my food), is located near the year 1 block( so that they don't get lost finding it the first few days) and the fact that it is a big common area for all RVians. At RV, we do not have a standardized recess/ lunch time for each year, so it is very common to see students from each year in the canteen at the same time. It provides opportunities for students to talk to their friends from different years( like I do sometimes) and prevents a barrier from building up between students from different years. You also get to see students talking, laughing and generally getting along with each other which helps them relax, even if they do not realize it. Before I end this presentation of sorts, I feel that I should mention that I actually wanted to do the Science Garden as that is another favourite of mine, but seeing as my group mates have already done it, I decided to go along with the canteen. Also I am grateful to those who actually read this whole paragragh, and thank you for visiting our blog.
Days 1&2: All of us in 2J were really excited. The airplane trip was not very long, it was a little more than 5 hours. I managed to keep myself entertained and did not seem disturb the other passenger or Mr Zhong(he was sitting next to me), which is a good thing. A few of us forgot our OELP file on the plane due to our excitement. Even though we were all excited, we should have kept a lookout for each other to make sure that none of us left our things behind. We were also not very well-behaved in public due to our excitement and really caused trouble to our class chairpersons who were our IC for that day. During the second day, we went to the Nanjing Bole Middle School(Secondary School?). We had to revise our impressions of China students as they were not quite what we expected--they did not all raise their hands when the teacher asked a question even when they had an answer, for example--and we attended 2 of their lessons. A good thing was that we were not rude to the teachers or our buddies. We then visited the Yangtze River Bridge and the Fuzimiao Commercial Area. A bad thing was that we were behaving worse than we did the day before and we had to have the teachers remind us to behave during debrief. Any one of us could have just asked the others to quieten down and the gaps when walking, but we did not. We gave our commentary for our IC of the day and went to sleep after that.
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