Author: liu67830@gapps.uwcsea.edu.sg

Each image we take is a snapshot of a memory. A portrait can tell a life story, one that is filled with seconds of vividity. We can look back to the pictures we have taken and wonder how much we have given away. The Memory Project helped me to understand that.

The Memory Project not only helped me regain my passion for painting but for life as well. The main goal of the project is preserving the children’s stories in paintings of their portraits to hopefully bring about a better world. Reducing one’s life story into brushes of paint is hard. Not only to gain resemblance to the subject but to convey meaning in it as well. Conveying the heartfelt meaning in their memory is a challenge I might never be able to achieve but I hope to retain the same childhood experience everyone has had. The Memory Project is a testament, that through art, through the still frame of a camera, people are remembered and never forgotten.

We must always put ourselves in challenging positions to further our education and our own limits. I have done so with an incredible leap. It was with the help of a washing machine. Although I have placed myself in a spot where it may have been incredibly ridiculous, this ridiculous choice has helped me learn that it truly is impactful. In History Society, we debated on the most significant event of the 20th Century and I chose the invention of the electric washing machine. I was to argue how this almost ordinary boxed contraption changed the way the world worked. I sort of did.

The washing machine was incredibly significant. Although I do not want this reflection to turn into a reactionary retelling of what I have presented but it opened my eyes to how we can change the world. The people who invented the electric washing machine did not intend for the world as we know it to change. Their invention contributed to the rise in advanced technology readily available in our homes, women’s rights, and the effects of advertising and consumerism. I could go in-depth on how it did, but I shall save it for another time. My point is, who would have thought of its extreme influence in the world as we know it. We can create change by revolutionising the world around us for the better. The small electrification of an already common appliance helped shift our mind into a state of wonder and mindless convenience. Changing the world isn’t easy, but if we can do simple but meaningful changes to the world around us, there may be incredibly influential changes along the timeline of our lives.

Here is a link to my video:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1T6Au2LvnXWmhuMiRWp_lH3o8lvwcz50u

 

PLANT. Although it may seem mediocre in the grand scheme of things, the plant has helped me improve my skills. This plant though has a name which is hard to distinguish with its cousin. It is Cynometra Ramiflora, a plant. More specifically a tree. It seems as though the plant has helped me improve not only my memory skills but my identification and pattern recognition skills as well. It is simple, the plant is a plant but once you get to know them more, explore their habitats and let them photosynthesise in your mind you see a whole new universe of green. It is truly luscious.

 

I first came to the realisation that I had time to spend during my year in Grade 8. Having a minimal workload and a creative imagination, it was almost impossible not to do something. Ever since I conjured up the first sentence of the book, I had been on and off with it. Writing a chapter every 6 months, which, for some people, is a good pace. However, I had no direction and at the time, did not even know how to finish the story. Figuring out the details in which plotlines come together and separate was something new to me. However, when I started writing I knew how I was going to convey emotion. The book is a narrative of the protagonist’s life, specifically his visit to his old hometown of ‘Titok’ and his memories in relation to the place. I wanted to incorporate as much symbolism and metaphor into the book which is why most of the names are words that come from different languages. ‘Titok’, for example, is actually ‘secret’ in Hungarian. I quite like doing this, not only because it incorporates another layer of meaning to the place or person it is referring to, but also because it adds ambiguity to the region, something I want to keep in the book. I wanted this ambiguity mainly because I want as many people to find themselves immersed in it in their day to day lives. Although it is set particular coastal town, the slight alienation and comfort in solitary are themes I want present throughout the novel. After sitting down and deliberating on how to end the book, I discovered that it should not have a happy ending but a bittersweet one. Mainly due to the fact that the book imitates life and the reality of life is that plans go wrong and people go missing. Life is a fickle river, a river you never know how fast it goes, but you have to ride it. However, you decide what raft you ride it on.

What first inspired the idea for the story was actually a prompt in a test. It was a pair of shoes and possibly because of living on an island with beaches around I thought of a sandy background with the wilted pair of shoes. I wanted to anchor the story onto an object, so I rewrote the story from the test into the first paragraph. I took the shoes out of the story after some revising. Although I am not finished with anything. I want my tenure here in UWCSEA to be symbolised by more than just a diploma, but something for myself that I can truly be proud to have created. That’s why I came up with ‘Memories of a Day in the Summer’. Memories of a season without school and with others, without screens and with the sun, without routines and with the surprise that is life in all its capriciousness.