Lee Min

                                    Lee Min self introduction
My name is Lee Min and I like reading books about the past and my favourite subject is English. I look forward to going to China this year and interacting with the students there as I wish to see their learning environment and also because I was unable to go to China when I was in primary school due to the haze. I like going to other countries to get to know some of their culture and learn their culture. I dislike people cutting queue because it is really unfair to the people who queued up before they did and I will seldom stop queuing or switch to another queue after waiting for a long time as I will waste all of my time if I do so. I like sports like floorball and captain’s ball and played it with my friends from primary school during after my PSLE and during the school holidays. I also like to run and joined the track and field CCA in my primary school. However, I joined NCC this year because I want to get fitter and try to get gold for the NAPFA test. I really look forward to this year’s CID and I believe it will be an interesting one.





#extraordinaryrv
                                   Extraordinary RV

I think the heritage room is a place that is extraordinary in our school because it represents our school's history and contains things given to us by people from other countries as well as things like older designs of the school uniform given by students from previous batches. There were also brief descriptions of the principals of this school which are quite helpful in helping us get to know a bit more about them but unfortunately, the room is locked and we cannot enter it to check out the history of the school. I think that a good way to learn more about the history of our school, this room will be quite useful. During the RV 60 celebration, many ex-students from our school went to the room to check it out and I believe the items in the room like the book containing the names of pupils from every batch brought back memories of their school days. I think that this room is locked because it contains very valuable items and the school does not want the students to tamper with the objects as it will be impossible to find many items if they are damaged especially the objects received from other countries which cannot be replaced. I will definitely come and visit this room if it is opened to find out more about the items in the room like the people or place who gave them and why. Thus, this room is our school’s history which is very important; therefore, it is extraordinary in the school.

                               Poverty and happiness

 I think that being rich and being happy are related but there are more important factors that can affect a person’s happiness. A few factors are the things we do, how much time we spend with our family and what we do during our free time. We can do meaningful things like helping out at the SPCA and we will feel happy at the end of the work because we helped some people or animals and spent the day meaningfully. For example, in primary school when our class had to go to an old folks’ home in our school’s neighborhood and perform for them. At first, I did not want to go as I felt that it would be a waste of my time but at the end of the day, I was very happy as I knew I did the best I could to cheer the elderly up. Spending time with our family members is also important because they are the people closest to us and will help us in what they can most of the time. Therefore, spending time with our family members will let us cherish the moments we had together and make us happy. Working on our hobbies will also make us happy as it is something that we are not forced into doing and enjoy doing it. It may also be a relaxing way of spending our time. For example, playing musical instruments may make people feel more relaxed and relieve their stress. Being rich may not necessarily make us feel happy as shown in the comparison between China’s and Singapore’s citizen where China citizens are not as rich as Singaporeans but are a lot happier. Being rich may make some people happy, for example, those who like to show off their wealth to others. However, majority of people who are rich are not happy because they will probably spend their entire day from morning to night working to earn more money and end up reaching home very late at night when everybody has gone to sleep. This will reduce communication between the person working and the family may not even interact if they manage to spend time together. Reaching home late at night will also reduce the time people can spend on their hobbies and will also make them feel very tired and probably grumpy if someone talks to them. Thus, being rich does not necessarily mean it will make people happy.






                                           Chingay reflection
  The purpose of Chingay parade 2016 is to celebrate Chinese New Year as well as the legacy that our founding fathers and Mr Lee Kwan Yew had left, this explains “Lights of Legacy”. It is also to mark Singapore’s first year from SG 50 to SG 100 which the organisers hope that we will work together to make a brighter future for Singapore and explains “Brighter Singapore.

In the past, when the first Chingay parade was organised, the purpose was to address the issue of the citizens’ feelings towards the ban on fireworks as the fireworks accidentally started fires and injured people. Many people felt that the ban would dampen the festive mood during Chinese New Year as setting off firecrackers was the one of the tradition of the Chinese to start of a new year and the Chinese would do this to celebrate the New Year because they believed that the firecrackers would scare the evil spirits away . To cheer up the general public, the People’s Association and the Singapore National Pugilistic Association jointly organised a street parade from Jalan Besar to Outram Park featuring the signature floats, lion and dragon dances, stilt walkers, and many other Chinese performances. I think that this is indeed a good idea as it will bring the New Year’s festive mood; however it does not include many Indian and Malay performances which does not show that we want other races greatly involved in the Chingay parade. Only until 1977, more Malay and Indian groups joined the parade to mark a major precedent in the overall flavour of the parade into one which has become largely multi-cultural in character and in 1987, an international flavour was added to the parade when a group from Japan participated for the first time. I believe that many contingents from other countries also joined the parade since then. I think that Chingay 2016 has changed greatly since the first Chingay parade because, from a parade with a purpose to bring back some cheer to the public and the festive mood with a performance performed mostly by Chinese, it has progressed to become a multiracial performance with different purposes every year. Having a multiracial performance is necessary so that we do not make other races feel left out if we restrict them from joining, this is also important because we are a multiracial country and we should do what our pledge says “regardless of race”. From celebrating our multiracial country to honouring our founding fathers, I personally think that Chingay can teach the public many valuable lessons and it is very useful for students to be more educated through this programme. Therefore, I believe that this parade was really helpful to us and let us reflect about things like why we should honour our forefathers. I think that the organisers wanted to change the purpose of this year’s parade as they wanted to teach the public that we should not take what our founding fathers’ made Singapore into for granted. We should always be grateful that our forefathers had dedicated their life to building Singapore and changing it into one of the most highly developed country in the world. For example, Mr Lee Kwan Yew who made plans to develop our country and had to make decisions which would affect how we would progress. If it were you, would you want to take up this challenge which would affect your future? If it was not for them, we would never be able to enjoy living in such a wonderful country where we can find almost anything we need anywhere in our country.

In my opinion, I think that the organisers have successfully fulfilled their purpose. The floats have light bulbs on it, representing the theme of this year’s Chingay parade, “Light’s of Legacy, Brighter Singapore”. I believe that a lot of money was spent on the costumes and designs of the floats as there were many volunteers participating in this event and different floats to represent different clubs and races. This tells us that the organisers want to express the theme as well as our multicultural society to be understood through the different floats.  The dragons and stilt walkers also brought back the Chinese New Year’s festive mood for the Chinese. Therefore, I believe that the organisers have successfully fulfilled their purpose.

       Should Singapore be complacent in her achievements?

Singapore should not be complacent in her achievements even though we have accomplished many things as there are other countries catching up or overtaking us now, there are also always ways to improve and make our country a better place. If we are complacent and do not do anything to improve our country, we will quickly fall behind many countries. For example, Shanghai's container port became the world's busiest port after widening its gap by 1 million boxes with its closest rival, Singapore. The huge gap shows that the people in Shanghai may have a good strategy to get more ships to call at their port and we should learn from them so that we can improve too. For example, a stream of Chinese  Communist Party from China as well as 97 Chinese students came to Singapore to study and learn more about Singapore's experience so that they could improve their country. The fact that such a big country like China would be willing to come to a much smaller country shows us that they really wanted to make their country a better place by learning from others. The haze has also affected Singapore a lot especially when it stays here for a long period of time. We should find ways to make the air fresher and clear away some the haze so that people will not fall sick so easily. If we are complacent and do not do this, the haze will very dangerous and deadly to those who have asthma or other breathing problems. We should also not be complacent because only then, we will work on more things that will aid us in the future. For example, we had our longest dry spell in Singapore in February 2015. Our lives would have been disrupted if it was not for our desalination plants and NEWater plants. We were not complacent and planned for a margin of safety beforehand, thus, we were able to endure the draught without having to ration water. As the climate is changing, more heavy rains and draughts are expected to happen and we must be prepared for it. There are also many ways to improve our country as no place is perfect, thus, I think that the government's plans and campaigns like promoting and developing other means of transports so that we rely less on cars and striving to become a "zero waste" nation shows that the government is not complacent and tries to find places that can be improved. Everyone should also do their part to help make these visions come to life as mentioned by Mr Lee Hsien Loong as Singapore is our home and if we do not work together to improve it, who will? Singapore is also learning from China as China is as good or maybe even better than Singapore, it is important to do this because every country has their own strengths and weaknesses and China's strengths may be our weakness, so we should learn from them or they will become a lot better than us as they learn from our strengths. We could also become irrelevant if we do nothing as mentioned by Dr Tony Tan, thus we should not be complacent as nothing is perfect and the number of achievements we have are insignificant compared the amount of improvements we can make to our country.






                                   Future merlion
I drew the Merlion above all the buildings as I believe it will look like that in the future. Due to the fast rate of global warming, the icebergs will melt quickly and in a few years time, most of the icebergs will melt, leading to a significant rise in the water level. As the Merlion will be covered by the water because of this, the construction workers will rebuilt the Merlion above the ground level. The Merlion will also be a large hologram so that the whole city can see it from afar.  As it is in the sky where there are planes flying, the Merlion cannot be solid and therefore, I drew the Merlion above all the buildings as a hologram.

                                Pre-trip reflection

I hope that I will be able to find out the history of the places we will be visiting such as the Kun Opera Museum about how the artefacts in the museum can tell the story and history of Kunqu as well as what kinds of buildings are built by Singapore and China in the Suzhou Industrial Park and a deeper understanding of why Singapore and China wants to collaborate and develop this park together, and why the China government wants to build the park in Suzhou and not other parts of China. What makes Suzhou so special for this important park to be built there? I would also like to find out from citizens living or working there about how their life is like in China, whether their lives are tough, do they have to work or study for long hours, do they earn a lot of money? This will help me to compare their lifestyles to Singaporean’s very easily and asking these questions during the trip will not require me to ask my friends what they found out from the people they interviewed in Suzhou and Shanghai, these questions will also help me to clarify any doubts I have. I also hope that I am able to make full use of the time that I will be spending at my buddy’s home as I will get to find out about the living conditions of a family. I may also share my experience with other friends and hear about the homes of the other buddies to know what the average living condition of a family is so that I can get fairer results. I would also like to find out more about Suzhou Lida secondary school’s education system so that I can compare what they are focusing on to Singapore’s focus. For example, I would try to compare their timetable to our school’s timetable and compare the duration of the lessons to see if they invest more time in languages or are balanced in all subjects. I would also like to bond with my buddy as well as my classmates during the activities in school and in places like the museum. I would also take opportunities in the supermarket in Suzhou to find out about the prices of their products and compare them to the products in Singapore so that I can find out the price difference and about their cost of living. 

Year 2 Suzhou OELP
Name	School	Class	Stream	Period of Internationalisation Experience	Country of visit
Lee Min	River Valley High School	2G	Integrated Programme	20 May to 26 May 2016	China
Reflections:   I chose to go on this trip so that I can learn experience the life of my buddy in China as well as visit and see the museums and places of attractions firsthand. I also chose to go on this trip as I will be able to bond with my friends and understand them better as I have seven full days to spend with them. I decided to take many pictures of Suzhou and Shanghai as I would be able to use them in my homework as well as to keep them as memories so that I can remember the time we spent as a class in Suzhou and Shanghai. I also decided to observe the place more carefully so that I can learn more about the life and living environment of the Chinese in Suzhou and Shanghai. I hope that I can learn more about Suzhou’s heritage sites and the artefacts there as well as to learn about China’s education system and the living conditions of the Chinese at Suzhou. I also hope to learn more about the attitudes of Lida Middle School students and compare them to students in our school. In Suzhou Lida Middle School, their school canteen has many ropes that form a line to the store so that students will not cut queue. I believe that Lida Middle school does this to let their students cultivate a good habit of queuing up and also to show to visitors like us their good behaviours. I think that this is a good and effective method that will ensure that students will be served on a first come first serve basis and it should be implemented in Singapore schools as many students cut the queue in Singapore, making it unfair for the students who queued up first. During this trip, our tour guide has told us many stories and the history about artefacts and the historical sites. For example, she told us about the story of 九狮峰, a rock in 狮子林was given this name by Emperor Qianlong as he saw the rock with the heads of nine lions. She has been very resourceful as she could give a clear explanation and answer to most of our questions about Suzhou and Shanghai and I think that everyone has gained information, not only about the places we visited, but also about the infrastructure in Suzhou and many other things from her. One fact that I have learnt during this trip that has impacted me the most is that the Chinese ask for money in exchange for singing a song. I think that the Chinese like those who row boats at Mudu Water Town should not do this even though they do not earn much money from their job as singing these songs is supposed to be their culture and they should not be performing their culture in return for money as their culture should be enjoyed and heard for free. This trip has let me appreciate Singapore students more as they are quieter than those in Lida Middle School and I will be more appreciative of the quality of air in Singapore as the air in Suzhou and Shanghai is polluted quite badly compared to Singapore. I hope that Singapore will ensure that we are able to continue developing and at the same time, have a good quality of air so that Singapore and progress. In China, I have learnt about China’s culture as well as the history of the places we have visited in China. I have also learnt more about the life of those living in China like my buddy’s and I have learnt many things regarding their school from my buddy, for example, the secondary two students are all dismissed at 4 pm every day and their CCA sessions are held during their last two periods of school and each period is 40 minutes with a break of around 10 minutes. I think that this trip has taught us many things and has corrected some of my wrong impressions and thoughts about the Chinese in Suzhou and Shanghai as well as clarified some of my doubts. We have also managed to learn some new skills like sewing and I think that the teachers have put in a lot of effort to plan this trip and make it as interesting and enriching as possible for us. My friends have also made this trip more lively and enjoyable by interacting with one another and the 30 to 40 minutes bus trip from one location to another would have been boring if my friends were not around. I would definitely want to go on another overseas trip like this together with my friends again if I have a choice.