REFLECTION (YungLung)
During the holidays , my parents brought me to resort world
sentosa marine life park . There were a lot of people there and we had to
squeeze our way through just to see the attraction. During the course, i learnt
many facts about the different marine animals and well as seeing them swimming
gracefully in the waters. I really enjoyed this experience and would like to go
there again. The most intriguing marine animal that i have seen is the
jellyfish as they are just made up of protein and water but yet they could swim
so gracefully in the waters as well as to protect themselves of they are out in
the wild therefore i would like to learn more about it.
Saturday, 11 January 2014
Poverty reflection( Yung Lung)
Poverty in Singapore may not be necessarily people who lines the street begging
for money to sustain a living neither be hungry people who goes on the street
scrounging food. In Singapore, people struggles with relative poverty can be
defined as income falling below the substantial amount to maintain a living in
Singapore because of the high cost of essential needs such as food etc. Poverty
in Singapore Grew from 16% in 2002 to 28% in 2013
As a result, if people have health problems and needed expensive treatment or
those with cash flow problems in their family will have to struggle to survive
on a day to day basis. Apart from this, they are also trapped in a bad cycle
which caused them to have no money or little to provide themselves a better
life. Children are often having bad education due to them lacking of
accessibility to knowledge and education, most of the time having to quit
school to earn more money.
However government have been trying hard to tackle these problems by providing
different types of financial aids and schemes for the poor and underprivileged.
Each help scheme will have its own set of eligibility and their own specific
purpose to help the people who needs it, such as housing and healthcare, or
developmental areas such as early childhood development and education, our
subsidies cover a wider group of Singaporeans. With higher levels of subsidies
for the lower income, heavy burdens for low income family may be eased.
On top of these, programs such as Workfare and ComCare provide additional
assistance to a smaller group of low income Singaporeans who need extra
support.
Programs like money-management workshops can be organized which can allow
children to understand the concept of money and how to use it wisely so as not
to waste money when they grow up and start earn their own income. Upgrading of
one's work skills and knowledge will also allow adults to have a better chance
to gain a more competitive edge in the job market, while better coping with
economic challenges.
YAY:) after the introduction, now its time for our own views!
Although most of us, including me, does not really live in poverty, which can
be a good thing for us. Most of us does not pay much attention to the people
who lives in poverty and needed our help and thus we did not spare a thought
for them just because we are not living in the same condition as them.....
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well... not much of a good sight ain't it?
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Sky high price of housing, atrocious food prices, high job competition, low
wages.... sounds familiar?
These may be the many common cause of poverty in Singapore. for low education
people who are in the blue collar industry , their wages could have been too
low to sustain a living in Singapore due to the high cost of living.
As for the old , they may have been abandoned by their children or they could
be childless. due to their old age they are too frail to work so their income
may not be enough to sustain a living in singapore.
There may be a lot of people who needed our help out there,however, we may not
have the ability to help them all as we our ownself also have to survive.
Therefore, there are some nice , low cost methods to lend a helping hand to
assist these unfortunate people.
1.We can help to donate food and daily necessities to charity organization to
be distributed to those who needed them.
2.instead of wasting our unwanted but still in good condition clothing by
throwing them away, we can also donate these to people who needed them so that
they too can enjoy some luxury that we have.
3. even a simple task like actively participating public events(similiar to
CIP/VIA) that may be held by charitable organizations to raise funds and do our
part in helping them.
4. instead of throwing away our old textbooks, we can also donate or give them
to other students whose parents may some difficulties buying their new
textbooks.
Apart from these, we are also helping them in our ability as a student such as
participating in VIA/CIP that may have been organised such as collecting
newspaper from the different HDB blocks. Most students may not have understood
the purpose of such activites and may be just doing for the sake of the VIA
Hours. We MUST understand the value learnt behind these VIAs and not be
materialistic and just eye for the hours.
Thanks to the government, we have such a clean and green environment as well as
a safe place to live in as compared to those less developed countries.We must
be thankful of what we have so we should always try to give back to society and
not be selfish, keeping all our luxuries to ourselves. We must also spare a
thought for those who have difficulty maintaining a living . Act Now, Don't
Hesitate, Help others as much as we can :)
Consolidation of Learning 17/1/14 Yung Lung
After attending these few Cid lessons, i learnt much mainly
on our observation skills for the first few weeks, such as observing the famous
picture , vulture and child, taken by kevin carter. After observing this photo,
it brings out several meaningful views that we should take note of. This picture
tells us that there are other unfortunate fellow people out there who cannot
enjoy even the basic necessecities such as food, one of such example is the boy
in the picture that kevin carter had taken.
During the second lesson where we were told to observe
two photos of people begging for money. This activity indeed allowed me to
further understand the importance of not judging the book by its cover. We must
always observe as carefully as possible and not miss out any important minute
details. It is always important to view a single photo at different angles and
analyse it carefully to determine what message it is conveying. In the tasks
assigned that week, i also learnt the importance of researching as well which
allowed me to go in depth and understand the poverty situation in singapore. In
the course of researching, i understood that we are far more fortunate than
people living in other countries especially those living in less developed
countries. We should start cherishing whatever we have now and stop lamenting
that we cannot get the best or the things we wanted as there are people with
much less fortunate lives than us.
After these three week, a lot of ideas and their
importance sank into me. These lessons made me understand that we should think
broad and deep into the subject and not look at the immediate effects of the
subject that we are looking into, this will cause us to make the wrong decision
as we continue to look further into the subject. We must also observe carefully
for the different clues, evidence etc. to make a deduction and conclusion on a
particular subject. For example when we meet a certain problems in our daily
lives, we can look at the different angles and survey the difficulties
carefully and thus in this process deriving at a most effective solution to the
targeted problem. We must not just look at the straightforward angle but think
deeper and "hit the nail on its head"
~Yung Lung
Chingay Reflection (Yung Lung)
我们这里是新加坡,我阿爹系海山街住过... heard of this familiar song? Yes you're right its the
uniquely Singapore song,麻雀衔竹枝, created by Liang Wern Fook. Hmmmm. thought of something
else that is uniquely Singapore?
Yea I am now writing about another uniquely Singapore
parade- Chingay Parade. And yes! the song is the one that we heard when we were
heading to out seats at the Chingay parade. This is the second time I have to
chance to catch this parade life! I am so nervous about this chance to watch
the parade. it is very honoured to be given this unique chance.
Greeted by a sea of dancers, donning colourful dresses and
costumes, I am so looking forward to what kind of performance that they will be
putting up for us to see! After some entertainment by the emcees for that day,
the parade slowly started and the whole area begin to come to life with
students cheering happily, blasting music escaping the large sub woofers- all
bringing us into the mood of the parade!
Different type of floats together with a whole group of
accompanying dancers appeared one by one. I was mesmerised by their graceful
dance moves and the coordination displayed in the dances which I myself
normally hard to do so even with just 3 people. The performers had really put
in a lot of effort judging from the spectacular performances they have put up
for us. This parade allowed me to harvest lots of understanding of different
important live values and dances of the different type of culture.
As no good things come without a history, i was also shocked
to learn about Chingay Parade's transformation! It was actually
part of chinese new year celebrations and was normally solely performed by the
chinese but yet it has now transformed into "rojak" with the
different types of culture present in just one parade!
This opportunity to head to a live performance of
Chingay really allowed us to bond as a class and also allow to step out of our
comfort zones. This opportunity is also and eye opener for me! This was
exceptionally memorable experience with the parade ending with a spectacular
fireworks display. Sadly it was put up on our side and cant really sit down and
view it comfortably though... I really hoped that there will be more
opportunities for us to participate in eye opening events. Don't you feel the
same too? Join us if we have another chance.
Feeling about the presentations (YungLung)
Well... These two weeks my friends were all presenting on
the Chingay parade that we participated last month! I am looking forward to
their wonderful presentations but as the saying goes, nothing in this world is
perfect and practice makes improvements.
There is room for improvement in their presentation as what
Mr Chua had pointed out After all those preparation we made, its finally the
chance to present it to our class, we are so nervous about it. However things
did not go smoothly, things did not go as planned for some parts, for example,
one group member stated that she wanted to do an extra point but however she
decided not to in the actual presentation, how annoying it is for the person
who did the slides an't it!
Furthermore, we actually forgot to say our reflections, what
a waste, thrashing our efforts down the drains resulting in lesser points
maybe?
Overall I personally feel that other groups
presentations were relatively good especially Tiffany's group, with their deep
reflections and feelings, allowing us to catch a feel of how much they have
enjoyed or disliked the Chingay performance. Speaking of this, i also learnt
new ways of expressing our own opinions which can be convincing for us
audience!
This presentation also brought up a huge number of
learning points for presentations and content wise. for me, I personally
received a comment that I was too monotonous. Luckily, I was quite familiar
with my script thus i was able to maintain eye contact with my classmates.
rather than just learning from my weakness, we also learnt about the different
weakness that were brought out by other group's presentations, for example,
standing posture, voice projection and other types of presentation skills that
is necessary for us to learn.
These series of presentation also allowed my to mature my
confidence in myself too! I prepared a script and even decided to read off the
script, however i will compromise eye contact thus i actually made up a
"new" script on the spot and spoke pretty smoothly( though a bit
monotonous...). As such i found a new form of confidence in me and subsequently
i did the same with other presentations!
I was glad to go through this series of presentations
because I benefited greatly form it especially building up my confidence and
presentation skills. I personally hope that there will be more of such chances
for us to polish our presentation skills and learn from our mistakes improving
our skills everytime we have a new chance
The Forbidden Palace.
From this structure i can infer that the rulers are
wasteful.Resources pooled in to build the palace could have been used to
support and help poor farmers and peasant who can barely survive and yet the
imperial rulers used these resources for their own interest which more than
half of those buildings redundant or extra large. Even a family of 6-7 can live
in such a small HDB flat but yet the imperial rulers built a single palace for
each concubine... What are they thinking? Its clearly a waste of
resource.
It also shows that the rulers were irresponsible.Being
the ruler of the country, the emperor should be thinking of the welfare of
people and yet he went to have someone to build such a big palace and yet poor
people can barely afford a house themselves. It clearly shows that imperial
rulers are not doing their job.
They were also being selfish by building the palace
for themselves and used funds from taxing the people. They used so much funds
to build the palace that they could not upgrade their army and protect the
people. It also a waste of manual labour of the builder.In the past, there are
no machines the aid in building the palace. It all rely on manual labour and it
is dangerous to construct high buildings. By building extra or redundant
buildings, labour of the people are being wasted.
The Forbidden City displayed the bad attitude of the
imperial rulers of being inconsiderate rulers and selfish, self centered
people.
China one child policy(Yung Lung)
What is child policy? It is the official the family
planning policy,the population control policy of the People's Republic of
China. Yes this may seems to be a solution to China underlying problem but upon
giving it a deeper thought i felt very sad and infuriated
No child in the world should be living in loneliness
after they are born. With the one child policy, children cannot have siblings
and would feel very lonely without a playmate. I feel terribly sad that
children have to go through this due to the policy. Apart from these it also encourages
infanticide. Who on earth does not deserve a chance of living? This policy
indirectly causes parents to destroy their child's chance to see the beautiful
world especially when the fetus is a female one. Furthermore, it also
cause a larger work force strain.
This policy is very unfair to the common people and
will cause them to be unhappy because they have to give up their second child
destroying their first child's playmate causing them to be lonely. furthermore,
this policy did not seem to achieve its goal since the population of china is
still growing which now is the second largest in term of population. With
reference the lone child as mentioned earlier,I feel that it is at a
disadvantage for them because they will not have a companion to accompany them
through their growing years furthermore this will more likely to cause this
lone child to make friends with bad company because they may be desperate for a
friend to accompany them. for those parents out there in china who were
affected by the one child policy, how sad to deprive your child from companions
and destroy a wonderful childhood every children should have, its very heart
breaking ain't it?
There is even a more heartbreaking point prior to not
having a second child- killing female fetus as people want male to
carry on the family line. This is much more heartbreaking, don't you think
so? Rather than fulfilling its main purpose, it brought about
more harms to the citizens and children.
I hope other types of population control measures
will be implemented instead of ways with disadvantages for the children and is
ineffective in achieving its intended purpose
China-economy ( Yung Lung)
China now ranks second in terms of total GDP. With 3,854,082
square miles, there will be a lot of spaces for office buildings, residential
and commercial building and there are a lot of space for other economic
activities to be conducted. Furthermore, the rental,labour and tax rate are in
low rates there thus attracting more companies to set up factories there to
manufacture their products. Apart from this, china has a population of 1.3
billion which will result in more economic activities because salaries will be
lower, attracting firms. With this larger number of favtories, carbon emissions
will be higher , thus air quality would be lower and pollution problems will
worsen drastically.
I feel that china should put in more effort in
limiting carbon emissions. They could have set more strict emissions standards,
conduct more frequent checks on factories to see whether there
is any firm that violates the law using inefficient way of
production. Carbon emission is so harmful! Causing global warming which has
countless of adverse effect on us and environment!
If global warming worsens, even by a 1 degree, huge adverse
environmental will surface as a result. The people of Carteret Islands
have already became environmental refugees due to global warming effects!
China should really put in more effort to curb emission rates.
China should start to limit carbon emission to make the
world a better place to live in, Think of this, with the increasing amount of
carbon dioxide and air pollution, people will develop eye irritation and
respiratory problems. How can these people even enjoy the growing economics
with deteriorating health? At such economic growth can be slowed down in order
to protect citizens' health rather than a rising economy which people cannot enjoy
peacefully.
True that health is an important aspect that we should never
ever overlook, i do not blame china seriously. Since she is a developing
country, she should not compromise economic growth by using higher cost clean
and green production methods which reduces emission of
air pollutants into the atmosphere
Although the government is largely responsible for the
increasing air pollution, i think that factories owners play an even important
part because most of them may have the ability to make use of greener energy
source but yet they chose to use the cheaper but least
environmental friendly coal.
We should always think win-win. We should not
compromise people's health just to obtain a higher economic growth. Everything
must be balanced even though i admit that economic growth cannot be
compromised. This can be achieved like what u haved stated earlier, setting
more strict regulations to mitigate pollution issues and even make an effort to
reduce emissions of air pollutants and carbon dioxide!
