Jove (⌐■_■)=/̵͇̿̿/’̿’̿ ̿ ̿̿ ̿̿

To keep or not to keep...

The one thing I feel the need to preserve is the Fullerton Hotel building. Although it has been through many restoration projects changing the building from what it was originally when it was a post office, however most of the building is still in the unfaultered and faithfully cared for by restoration workers.

Personally i do not have many experiences with this building but whenever I am at the Singapore River, the first thing I think of is whether i will be able to see the Fullerton Hotel in all its glory and prowess, standing majestically beside the waters. This sense of anticipation is what makes me feel the importance of this building and through this, I feel the need to preserve this building. I feel that to many other Singaporeans and tourists even this building is an iconic landmark, even appearing in many pictures of Singapore, therefore its importance makes it worth preserving and thats why i feel the need to keep it. It will leave behind tales of our past... embodied in one intricately design work of art.

Singapore should not be complacent.

It is a world renown fact that Singapore has indeed achieved many things over the years of our existence, thought by many to be impossible, with the most obvious one being we turned from a third-world country into a first-world country within half a century. As remarkable that achievement may be, we must still strive hard, to achieve greater heights as wealth and success is like abs, they are hard to come but easy to go. 

History has repeated itself many times how a wealthy kingdom collapsed in a tragic end, even Singapore has its fair share as it is found in history that Singapore was once home to a wealthy kingdom that was housed atop fort canning which fell into a tragic end, where by when the British found Singapore, it had already degraded into a sleepy fishing village. 

To avoid deja vu from occurring, the need for us, the next generation, to strive as hard as our pioneers us paramount, and this is amplified for Singapore way more due to our lack of natural resources and having only manpower. We need to be a strong manpower, stretching the uses of our limited resources and making full use of it, to ensure our economic progression, as even countries like China which had been in front of us in statistics wise in areas which affect economic growth such as the amount of cargo our ports treat every year are starting to pull the gap. This is dangerous for us. If we go under the radar once again, we will degrade massively and will not live up the pride of our ancestors. 

Hence, we should not be complacent as a country, one Singapore, and strive as hard as our ancestors or possibly even harder.  

My China Buddy!!! (What I think...)

China has long been under the influence of the 1 child policy with it only changing to a 2 child policy just recently. Due to this fact, children of the same age in China are the only child of their parents, which I feel will make a significant impact in their character.

Firstly, I think that they may be spoiled children with China being more and more wealthy and their parents agreeing to their wishes to make up for their inability to let their children have siblings to keep them company. Secondly, I feel that they may be very shy and introverted as they are the only child and this will make them not be able to sharpen their social skills to be able to easily make friends.

Due to these 2 facts, I am afraid that i will not be able to make them my friends easily due to their lack of confidence in talking to foreign people and that even if we form relationships it would not be that close. Yet, i have been through orientation and if i could survive that and make friends with the year 1 kids within 3 days, I believe that i could be successful at making friends with my china buddy!! 

3-2-1

3 things I found out:

1) I found out that these policies which seem bad now were once essential for a country's survival.

2) I found out that Singapore also had its time when it also had implemented a 2-child policy.

3) I found out that the aging population problem is a very serious issue at hand, I knew of its existence but I just found out its severity.

2 Perceptions I have gained:

1) I found out that a decision which seemed reasonable at the time may result in a serious consequence in the future and will worry the people later on to try and solve the problem already caused.

2) I have found out that mistakes that have happened are difficult to solve after it has already occurred , evident in Singapore and in China. Hence, we should think deep into the decisions we make.

1 Question I may have:

How will the government make the people reproduce more while the workforce is still very active and little time and effort is put into the though of babies between young couples?

Chingay

In my opinion, Chingay 2016 was to celebrate the different races living together in this world harmoniously and for Singapore, to celebrate SG50 and to showcase our hopes to a brighter, more prosperous SG100. Chingay has its importance for us Singaporeans especially as we do not have firecrackers and a lot of other things due to some regulations, but Chingay brings those things closer to us, making us feel more in the spirit of the new year and hence its importance to us. 

Over these few years from its humble beginnings in 1973, Chingay has became more and more modern. This is evident as the original Chingay was consisting of traditional things seen in most Chinese New Years and some other acts, such as dragon dancing, juggling acts, clowns, stilt walking and more. But as of late, the performances all include floats decorated with a myriad of different coloured LED lights, people with costumes decorated with LED lights, motorized spinning blades with fireworks on its end which appears stunning and so on. Not only did the performances change, so did the location of where it was held. It was first held at the old Victoria School and went all the way to Outram Park, and after that first year, it moved to Orchard Road at 1985 and now, it is held at the F1 Pit Building area, utilizing the long straight of the F1 track. Chingay has also changed to include more cultures and races as the years gone by such as the 2016 one having a dedicated time for the Japanese martial arts.

I feel that this change can only occur due to the time that went by since the first Chingay performance. I say so as over this period of time, there was a technological revolution and the advancement of our technology majorly advanced. With this brings more high tech and modern equipment to be easily available for the people involved in Chingay to use in their performances, hence we see that they are all using floats with LED lights all over it, LED costumes and so on. The revolution also helped Singapore build up our economy under Mr Lee Kuan Yew's great leadership. This meant that there was space needed for Singapore to build more building for the industry and for residential purposes and this need brought about the problem of the lack of space and the need to share the available space, therefore the Chingay performance moved from place to place. As Singapore grew to a prosperous country, people from around the world came over to find new job opportunities or just seeked for a better life. Some of whom found love for this country and decided to migrate here, and with new forms of culture introduced to our country, more communities appeared. Due to Singapore having this diverse array of cultures present in such a small country, many policies were introduced to promote equality to all races and to show that, everyone had an even chance to perform in Chingay, causing the sight of even the Japanese performing in this year's Chingay 2016.


I feel that the organizers have successfully fulfilled this purpose as when i went to the performance that night, i saw the many segments of the performance showing the different aspects of our nation, the different races, different groups of people and that strongly came at me that Singapore really emphasizes the need for racial harmony and equality. During the performance, slowly the sense that the new year was coming sneaked up on me and unknowingly, I had a sudden urge and excitement for the new year. So personally, from my experience i can safely say that the organisers successfully fulfilled their purpose.

My personal takeaway from Chingay was that it was fun. This is the first time i am properly watching the performance due to the many years of me brushing it off as a waste of time and i can say that this was not a waste of time. The moment i stepped onto the seating area, i felt that that was going to be a great night and my instincts did not fail me. The acts went by one by one, with the commentator on the speaker, everyone taking out devices to take pictures... the atmosphere was honestly great! The fact that all of my friends were there made it way better! For me, i hope that my juniors would be able to enjoy this privilege and one of a kind experience that i went through as in my knowledge, the last year year 2 batch did not go for Chingay, which is sad and is a wasted opportunity. This feeling is also amplified by the fact that i was a facilitator for 1C this year along with Jensen.

Poverty and Happiness

To me, I feel that poverty and happiness are not related, that being rich does not necessarily mean you are happy. I say so as China, which has an experincial well-being of 4.7 and Singapore's being 6.5, has a higher happiness index than Singapore with China's happiness index being 44.7 and ours being 39.8. This shows that even without money we can lead much more happier lives than people with much more money than us.

I feel these results accurately portrays the type of lifestyle here in Singapore. Here, people strive hard to earn more money to lead their dream lives of sports cars, big houses and much more luxuries. This causes people to work till thier limits, puting huge amounts of stress on themselves and resulting in their happiness to drop. But in China, the people there are just working for the sake of earning enough for their survival, meaning that they do not need to stress themselves out just for them to be able to afford lavish lifestyles.                                                                                                                                                                       

Reflection on RV60

First of all, I think that the students are all too shortsighted. If we share even a bit of the farsightedness of our school leaders or even any of our seniors, those complaints of us being tired just cause of going home late and having the need to rush to finish our homework would not appear. This is because we would be thinking of the end product and not just the current sufferings and learn that our hardwork has a sweet end to it. We will also see that we are going through many unique experiences along the way which we will cherish in the future like how i am cherishing it now. The RV60 practises were really insufficient as we still had some mishaps during the actual day and i feel all these could have been avoided with just more practise put into this event, and this could only happen with more time put into the practises. I personally suggest that we should have start light practises at the start of term 3 such that we do not neglect our studies yet we have ample time to practise for RV60.

Secondly, I feel that this celebration was important to me as it allowed me to hone another skill that i have learnt and it also helped me to gain new and unique experiences by which i live by and cherish as "those were the days..." . This was also important for the school as it allowed he school to showcase to our alumni and all our seniors out there how far we have come to where we were maybe during their time and since our humble beginnings. This can also help to instil in the students a sense of school pride in all RVians and let them bleed RED and BLUE blood.

Lastly, I am proud that my school is able to pull off such an amazing feat of hosting and organising such a large scale mass display in our school compound. I am also deeply proud of my school's ability to come from a hardly noticed Chinese school to a recognised and established school.

Unique RV

This photo is not exactly new, in fact it was a bit more than 1 year ago when I took this picture, but the reason I chose this picture as the picture to showcase how unique River Valley High School is because I am going to be the facilitator of 1C soon and this brings back memories when I was being facilitated by students from RV myself. Back then, I thought: its so cool how we are being brought around orientation by facilitators and they made the experience much more enjoyable and memorable, I wish to be like them in the future and be a facilitator myself to bring the same joy to my juniors. Yet, now I am here as a facilitator of 1C..... it has been such  a long time and for me to achieve my dreams makes it really unique. RV's idea of having facilitators is really unique by itself as it helps to instill a sense of responsibility and leadership in students being in the role of "facilitator" and it allows students experiencing the orientation to feel much more open as they are led by their own seniors who would have already experienced what they would in the future and not led by teachers who are much more scary to interact with especially because they are new to the school. I believe in the team for O1'16 to make O1'16 to be as great as or even better than O1'15 to let our juniors have a very enjoyable time!!! O1'16 will be great!

Self intro
Hello I am Jove Tan, I am from class 2K and my register number is 31. I was from Bukit Panjang Primary School and I live at The Linear, which is right beside the Bukit Panjang Downtown Line 2 MRT station, yet that does little to benefit me sadly. Being a facilitator for O1'16 of class 1C I inevitably feel nervous yet I have confidence with Jensen, Yu Yang, Chuan Yi, and Joyce we can do it! I hope that this year will be a fun year at least for CID and that new experiences will be made from which I learn skills to help me in the future.I am in concert band for my cca and for rv60 I am part of the festive drums. For my holidays I spent most of my time at home but for 5 days I was in Hong Kong. It was fun there as my family was there without a tour group which is unique for me as most of my holidays are with tour groups. Finally, I chose this picture due to my love for shooting games and dogs( but more to cows).