Final Reflection Post on Service: Urban Gardening

Urban Gardening has been fun and exciting. Through this service, I have progressed quite a lot and have learnt much about gardening and sustainability. Although I had a vague idea that green rooftops were sustainable I wasn’t exactly sure why or how. Green roofs act almost as an insulation and so a building doesn’t need as much air conditioning as it would normally do. In addition, although Singapore has no winter season, green rooftops also act as an insulator to the cold during winter. Thus they reduce energy costs and the Urban Heat Island effect which is a process in which urban environments absorb heat making the hotter than the surrounding rural areas.

Green roofs also provide shade, remove air particulates (as in pollution, especially carbon dioxide) and produce oxygen. They last twice as long as normal roofs and reduce and sometimes slow stormwater runoff. So this is what I have been contributing to school and what I have learnt about green roofs in urban environments and sustainability.

Furthermore, I have developed many group skills such as communication, leadership and organisation which is needed to maintain a healthy garden and a well-contributing group. I have also learnt a lot about gardening which includes gardening skills such as transplanting, propagating, fertilising. Or tools such as the difference between spades and shovels, and what a hoe is used for. I have also learnt different types of plants and what they need or provide through research such as how beans (image below) grow fast, release nitrogen into the soil and need to grow on something:

I have learnt a lot more about plants and something interesting that I have learnt is how asexual banana plants will grow smaller banana plants around the main one, which started happening when I transplanted a banana plant to my bed:

Moreover, not only have I been contributing to environmental sustainability but I have also used the garden for other purposes such as giving fruits, mainly papaya, to Fresh Fruit Friday, a service aimed at providing fresh fruits for migrant workers. I have also been planning on providing vegetables to another service which aims to provide fresh vegetables to the school community, and planning to give information sessions to parents on how they can make their own garden, especially grow their own food. This service has in somewhat inspired me to be more environmentally aware and I have started to grow into my passion for the environment.

 

Below are some photos of the evolution of my and my partner’s garden bed.

              

 

Final Reflection Post on Skills: Playing cello in a Symphony Orchestra

For my NYAA I started my activity in September of 2017 and finished in October 2018. However, I am still in the orchestra and I hope to continue through my High School years. The orchestra has taught me many things and most of all has been a lot of fun. One of the most important skills in an orchestra is listening to other musicians, and I have developed this skill and have seen the impact on my listening skills.

Furthermore, every piece that we practice requires a lot of practice and having the hard-working mentality has been very helpful in my academic classes. In addition to that, I have grown as a musician, being able to play a variety of genres and also expand my knowledge of music. The orchestra has inspired me to play or at least inspire me to play other instruments. Nowadays, I sometimes record a piece on a piano and then play it while I play the cello piece. Although it is great to play solo, I  believe playing in an ensemble such as an orchestra makes the music experience so much more engaging and fun which is why I have tried to play multiple instruments to get that feeling. This makes music much more engaging and fun. My grandmother came and visited us in December and January of 2017/2018and we played together as an ensemble (she the piano and me the cello) for some Swedish tunes which were extremley rewarding and fun, especially in front of a crowd.

Thus, I think it is safe to say that I have made a quite considerable amount of progress as a cellist, and a musician in an orchestra or an ensemble. Finally, through the variety of pieces/genres (we have played rock, pop, classical, scene music, and more), we have played and from previous ensembles and orchestra from previous schools, I have now explored new genres of music for cello and piano. Right now, I am playing Bohemian Rhapsody by the queen on both piano and cello and have started composing new pieces of my own creation inspired by other pieces or from my imagination. For the future, I would like to play other instruments such as the French horn, drums, bass, saxophone, flute and more.