HW for Oct 28

Going into grade 12 reflecting on my Grade 11 CAS experience I feel very happy about all that I have done. I managed to do all 3 CAS compenents including A CAS project. For Creativity I started an activity, neuroSoc with my classmate and participated in the MUN club. Activity I participated in Kahaani, Yoga, and meditation, and for Service I participated in urban gardening. My CAS project could be considered as either service or NeuroSoc because as a leader in both activities I had to be very engaged and plan ahead. My CAS experience thus far has been very rewarding and gave me many opportunities for leadership. I have found that I am much more confident in leadership positions and feel excited to try new things.

We are currently facing a global epidemic. More than 1.4 million people have suffered and the numbers are still rising. Singapore has officially started lockdown 2 days ago (on Tuesday 7th April). I feel Singapore was very hesitant to start the lockdown because of how dependent their economy is on services. The Singaporean lifestyle is very consumer-based and requires people to be shopping and working. When the first case came to Singapore months ago the government didn’t make much of an effort to control it and relied solely on temperature screenings. As the cases increased they left casinos and theme parks open. I can, however, understand why the government was very slow. Many Singaporean citizens who work in low paying jobs like hawker centres or other retail industries rely on their wages to survive in this expensive countries, some of them live in small populated HDB’s putting them at risk of catching and spreading the virus. I think being on Lockdown is going to be especially hard for them because some of them rely on their weekly income for basic supplies. I think the government really struggled with the trade-off between financial struggle and health struggles. I think Singapore can’t afford to be complacent with their rules because once the virus starts spreading it is likely going to spread very quickly. We are starting to see that happen, at this time there are 1,623 cases. I feel like the after-effects of this virus is going so much worse than SARS as the total SARS cases got to 238 with only 33 deaths. We have surpassed the cases but not the deaths. I feel like ex-pats like myself are lucky in the sense that many of our parents have the ability to work from home and the fact that more of us live in private condominiums which are arguably safer as they are less populated.