Over the past two months, I have missed out on the Pasir Ris Fair and Sunday recycling because of flight dates. I was pretty troubled by this not only because I was required to participate in these events, but that it was an experience that I needed.

Recycling is a daily chore for everyone back in Taiwan. My family members and I took out the recycled garbage when I was still in elementary school (we used to live in old-fashion apartments). Differing from what we do in Singapore, putting all wastes in a bin, we had to sort garbages into bags and wait for the garbage truck to come. As I kid, I was excited about anything, and a garbage truck that sings Für Elise by Beethoven somehow motivated me to do the chores. And yes, garbage trucks in Taiwan play classical music when they drive by neighborhoods to collect trash! 

Back to the topic, I have never participated in a massive cleaning event like Sunday Recycling. All I have seen so far are photos taken by my fellow service members as they walked through the HDB corridors and mountains of wastes. I knew it could have been a great experience, but now that I missed it, I started thinking of what I can do for my service. I realized that the service group did not have a proper portfolio when I looked at my CAS portfolio, and so I thought to myself, why not just work on that?

After coming up with an idea for a portfolio, I chatted with Ms.Lee, one of the supervising teachers in the service group, and she agreed with me. We all knew a proper portfolio is needed to replace the complicated google drive that had everything in it (pictures, statistics, funds, and timetables). Thus, on March 16th, I initiated this project with other leaders and assigned roles to each member. Learning Outcome 3 – Planning & Initiating activities.

In the midst of this, the school noticed us that the semester would end earlier because of the Coronavirus pandemic, putting us on holiday starting March 19th. This news was quite frustrating as we have multiple upcoming events, but we are not as worried as we have something to do. The work progress is also better than expected – meetings on Google Meets and doing work using Google Docs. I think this is a good thing for my service group, that we are not backed down by the pandemic and rather making our work much more organised and communication much more efficient. Learning Outcome 4 – Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experiences.

The first task is to look through the entire google drive, which contains a cluster of information. It’s not that the seniors before us were unorganized, but the number of things this service does and the fact that it has been created for more than five years now. Over the next few weeks, we will be working on google docs, agreeing on the categories we will need, and how the new google drive will work with the digital WordPress portfolio. Meanwhile, our supervisors will ask for a WordPress site from our school, and hopefully, we will receive it during the holidays.