Starting off the new year The holidays are over, and with it brings the last leg of the NYAA. I’ve already completed the requirements for healthy living, and my final reflection for that will be at the end of this post. However, my service goal is still ongoing, and so in this post, I’ll be detailing some of the new changes as well as my reflections and reactions to them.
Service Since the Cerebral Palsy Alliance Singapore service was cancelled, at the beginning of the year I was challenged with finding another service that aligns with my goal.
My goal: To make those with disabilities in Singapore feel more accepted by society through volunteering for them, communicating with them and building a relationship with them.
Thankfully, however, there are plenty of organisations that the school partners with that deal with this issue! Finding a new service that would apply to my goal, therefore, wasn’t very difficult, so I picked ‘Fitness with Hougang Care Centre’ as my new service. This service, through student-led fitness and wellness related activities, helps those in Singapore with mental disabilities and conditions, such as dementia or schizophrenia. (I’ve already talked about how the term disability can be applied to many many things, so it should lose its negative connotations.)
This service I feel connects to my goal because I think that wellness is also an essential part of acceptance and empowerment, which will help those at the Hougang Care Centre feel like a real, important part of society. The fact that sessions are student-led encourages communication and relationship-building skills, so I think that part of the service allows me to progress towards my goal.
And in the few meetings we’ve had, I’ve tried to get to know the service and the specific actions it takes to maximise my impact. We even had a guest speaker from the Hougang Care Centre come to one of our sessions and talk to us about what the people at the centre need, enjoy and how best we can help them – through being energetic, communicating clearly and showing our passion. I think this also connects to my goal.
However, since I am switching service, I feel a little burdened knowing that this was not what I originally intended, but bumps along the way are normal, and I’m ready to put my all into this new service.
Healthy Living Now that I have completed the requirements for Healthy Living, I’m free to look back and reflect on how it went for me, as well as some of the things that I would like to continue with. I think that doing NYAA introduced me to a lot of new things that I can continue doing to improve my own wellbeing and quality of life.
I feel that music has really become an essential part of me since I started the goal, and I find myself turning to it whenever I am in doubt. Even though music is quite academic for me, I also found that it could be part of my leisure life. I also learned lots of ways to deal with the pressures of academic music, like finding pieces that I truly enjoyed to play and discovering my true music taste, or finding new exercises that I can do to improve my technique and therefore make me a lot more confident in my abilities, lessening my nerves. I did a lot of performance, inside and outside of school, and this has also boosted my confidence. It has shown me that I can forgive myself for making mistakes and accept that even though I made a mistake, it is definitely not the end of my path in music.
So, I think that I will continue pursuing music, whether as a hobby or a career, and take these skills that I’ve learned and continuing to use them in life, applying them to my exams as they approach as well as my career aspirations and inside service!
Conclusion Even though the end of NYAA is approaching, I will take all the things I’ve learned from Healthy Living with me into the rest of my life, and I will continue to put my all into service as I always do. I’m looking forward to receiving the award!
Above I’ve inserted the recording of my reflection for the end of the year. A couple of things that I want to add:
Firstly, this reflection focuses mainly on the past. Below are my plans for progress toward my goals over the summer and in Grade 10.
I’m thinking about also volunteering at CPAS (Cerebral Palsy Alliance Singapore, where I do service on Mondays) with my family to gain more insight into other age groups who have to cope with Cerebral Palsy and what more I can do to help the kids as well as other people. I’ve really wanted to introduce my family to the service that has taught me so much.
I’m planning to continue learning the guitar as well as the piano, and at some point pick up the violin. It’s a lot, but learning new instruments is really fun and I love being able to play a diverse range of songs. The guitar has been so much fun and I’m hoping that the violin will also offer a wide range of opportunities for reducing stress, learning about music and enjoying and relaxing myself.
During the summer, I’ll be trying to access music and instruments as much as I can. Since I’m visiting one of my closest friends, who also plays the piano and her father plays the guitar, I’m hoping I can get some valuable practice and performance time in then.
At the beginning of Grade 10, I’m going to be doing a large ensemble, which will be my first large ensemble performance. I’m excited to see how I’ll react and it’ll give me more performance practice.
I’m planning to take my Grade 8 exam perhaps in the middle of Grade 11, or at the end of 2020. This means I can start working towards my diploma towards the end of G11 or in G12, and that means I might be able to teach in university.
That just about covers it! Thanks for reading and listening, and I hope you, my reader, have a great summer!
Since this month was short, and I was ill for half of it, I’ve combined both my reflections from Service and Healthy Living into one!
This month in Service… I’ve felt a lot more comfortable interacting with the students at CPAS this month. Despite the fact that we’ve only had so many sessions, I think that the impact this service has had on me has been profound, and I realise that I’ve obtained such important practical knowledge that will help me for the rest of my life.
Something that I’ve found really intriguing is that the students won’t laugh whenever we laugh, they would only laugh when they themselves simply found something funny. It makes sense, also, when they laugh at something. Their sense of humour is as simple as the rest of us. Perhaps one student will flick something off the table accidentally, and another student will find that funny. There is nothing else that affects their sense of humour, only them. However, lots of psychological studies take place where people tell jokes that aren’t even funny, but the fact that other people are laughing makes it funny, but this isn’t the case.
This makes me think. There is no such thing as a disabled person, is there? We are all disabled in some way. I wear glasses. One of my friends sprained her wrist. That counts as a disability.
All in all, I think that I’m really starting to see these kids as individuals. I’ve been really striving to stop thinking of them as ‘Kids with Cerebral Palsy’ but more as just ‘kids’ who I’ve been spending time with and who I’ve been making friends with.
This month in Healthy Living… I’ve been giving my practice schedule a lot more thought. In piano masterclass, we’ve been focusing quite heavily on skills and technique. I’m no virtuoso, but I know that my skills and technique definitely need working on, as I’ve never really given them the attention and priority that they deserve. This means modifying my practice schedule in some way to include more workouts for my fingers but also to give some structure to my practice.
One of the modifications I’m thinking of making is time. I don’t practice for long at all. Most of my practice sessions are from 20 – 40 minutes, and with exams around the corner, I don’t have time to practice every night. So, I’ve been thinking of rigorously timing myself for exactly 40-minute practice sessions at least 4 times a week. This gives me lots of time to work on my skills as well as my pieces. Practicing a lot more at home also means I run the risk of listeners, which will help curb my performance anxiety even more. I also think that putting a schedule in place will restore some order to my practicing life and relieve the element of chaotic, stressful practicing.
I’ve also been thinking of buying a ‘piano finger exercises’ book to warm up my fingers before I start playing pieces and to further develop my virtuosic side. This will help me feel confident about playing more difficult pieces; I want to show myself that I have the skills to be able to execute this piece perfectly.
In conclusion, I think that I’m going to work towards my goals in the best way I can while approaching exams and the end of the year. Please look forward to my end-of-year reflection in Grade 9! Thank you for reading!
This month in service with CPAS (Cerebral Palsy Alliance Singapore) I’ve really been focusing on building my relationship with the kids. One might think that this wouldn’t be that rewarding in terms of learning, but actually, every single session has been an experience extremely valuable to me.
One of my main takeaways this month is that when you trust someone to do something, they’re a lot more likely to do it. Because you trust the kids to give you an answer when you ask them something and they see that trust much more clearly they’re more likely to give you an answer. I realise that this applies everywhere, even in our ordinary lives. Trusting the kids to feel empowered about themselves shows when you interact with them, and they see it despite the fact they can’t communicate back, or they feel it on some primal level, so working on that means that they themselves will feel more empowered and therefore more accepted. This trust in the relationship is what I would like to continue building.
When it comes to next steps, I’m thinking about doing some volunteer work at CPAS with my family to further learn about the capabilities of people with CPAS and other truths about the world and the psychology of the human mind, and how to properly treat people. I think that working with CPAS has really shown me what it really means to be extremely conscious of another person, and putting their needs above your own, which is something that I view as important in my life.
Otherwise, I’m really looking forward to working more with that kids at CPAS and learning about how to help them more.
How does religion affect Bhutanese people’s
daily lives? Grade 9 Bhutan Expedition Exploration
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Featured image depicts Tiger’s Nest Monastery (Paro, Bhutan)
Some say that “If you didn’t go to the Eiffel Tower, you weren’t in Paris.” In the mountainous, mysterious country of Bhutan, they say that “If you didn’t go to Tiger’s Nest, you weren’t in Bhutan.” If you’re wondering, Tiger’s Nest is a monastery located on a clifftop 3100 metres above sea level. The hike there is 4 hours up, 3 down. It’s definitely not like the Eiffel Tower.
This only showcases a small part of the reverence the Bhutanese have for their many, many monasteries hidden behind tree-topped peaks, and rock faces thousands of metres high. The Bhutanese people believe in Mahayana Buddhism, the type of Buddhism that dominates central Asia, but these mountain people have added their own twists and created their own legends, centuries-old tales that have been sheltered by the protective walls of the mountains, and kept safely in the rural towns and villages ensconced in trees. and still take part in Bhutanese people’s daily lives to this day.
In fact, Bhutanese people are always free to visit the monasteries, (well, during visiting hours, that is) and many often do. According to our guides, on weekends and holidays it is very common for people to visit monasteries to meditate and/or pray. When faced with the large, usually bronze statues of the Buddha, they press their palms together above their forehead, in front of their lips, and to their chest, each gesture in succession, and then bow down to worship the large, majestic statue in front of them. They also believe in gods, and oftentimes beside the Buddha you will see smaller (but still impressive) statues of various different gods. Some temples contain statues that represent the Buddhas of the past, present, and future (the present being the main statue in the middle), and others depict gods of longevity or important deities that vanquished demons. Tiger’s Nest, arguably the most famous monastery in Bhutan, was built for a man who rode to the cliffside on a flying tiger, to fight a demon that was terrorizing the people.
People can even visit the temples and monasteries where the King holds his court. Yes, Bhutan is governed by men sitting inside the walls of monasteries, which once again showcases the importance that Buddhism has inside Bhutan. Every major monastery, or dzong, holds a big festival for one selected month of the year, where music, dance, and drama take place to teach the people about Buddhism through legendary myths. Thimphu, the capital of Bhutan, has its festival during September, and all the 100,000 people living there come to Thimphu-dzong to celebrate and learn about a religion that has infused Bhutanese culture for the ages.
However, religion and culture in Bhutan is not all song and dance. It would be untruthful for me to report that the culture in Bhutan wouldn’t offend many people. It can be extremely sexist. The following example describes a central legend in Bhutanese culture, and I say now that some may be affected deeply by these next few paragraphs. Now is the time to look away, if the issue of consent triggers you deeply.
One of the most common Bhutanese myths involves a ‘divine madman’. In Eastern Bhutan, young men take the stories of this ‘divine madman’, who was a great mythological figure that lived thousands of years ago, and then translate them to their own lives. The ‘divine madman’ was thought to be mad, as his name suggests, as he taught Buddhism in a way the Bhutanese people had never seen before. According to the stories, the ‘divine madman’ subjugated a fearsome demoness, and taught Buddhism using his three values. Unlike most stories, he did not value purity, honor, or anything of the sort, no, he valued women, alcohol, and the phallus. This is why the Bhutanese thought he was mad. However, the stories of his escapades involve the subduing of demonesses, which gained him the admiration of the people. I shall leave you to connect the rest of the dots yourself.
Some may have already heard of ‘phallic symbols’ decorating the walls of Bhutanese houses, and models of phalluses lining shop shelves for tourists to buy. The monastery of the divine madman’s brother, blessed by the divine madman himself, is the final resting place of the main demoness the divine madman subjugated, and is also known as the temple of fertility. Married couples go to this monastery to pray for the blessing of children.
The national sport of Bhutan, archery (which women do not participate in) also showcases these three values. When the man hits the target with his arrow (some targets are 150m away), female dancers perform a ritual song carrying jars of alcohol, another one of the divine madman’s values.
Another way the divine madman stories really affect the Bhutanese people’s lives resides in the harshly steep slopes of the Himalayas of Eastern Bhutan. The Bhutanese young men, in the spirit of the ‘divine madman’, climb the walls of the houses of the girls they like, and break in through the windows, to chat and get to know the woman who lives inside. It is deeply rooted inside Bhutanese culture for the girl to consent to such things.
It is difficult to see such things in our modern world. We have come a long way from pitting slaves against each other to fight to the death for entertainment, but it could still be argued that we have not come far enough. Subjugation of our fellow human is the snake that slithers through the whole timeline of human history, even now, and this trip to Bhutan let me catch a better glimpse of the scales of such a beast. I hope that in the future, we will finally see the whole body of this serpent, and prevent it from injecting its venom into civilization.
