2020.

If anyone had known that 2020 would turn out to hold an unsettling resemblance to the many post-apocalyptic movies that we watch, I think we could safely take back our former collective hate for 2019. As the year progresses, more and more detrimental, never-seen-before events happen that threaten the safety of our global community. With the current COVID-19 situation that keeps students learning behind laptops instead of beside friends, or has touching elbows instead of hugging, has caused the entire world’s life to spin. A global pandemic reigns terror in all areas, especially America, the United Kingdom, and the EU, who lack the proper infrastructure or medical support to cater to the exponential increase of cases. It’s like, one day everything is normal. You touch lift buttons with your fingers to go downstairs and immediately rub the sleepiness out of your eyes right after. But the next moment, you’re sanitizing, washing your hands every hour and never hugging your friends.  As I sit here, not knowing whether my IGCSE exams will continue forward, at home with my sister who rushed home from College in America in the midst of her semester, I cannot bring myself to write about my successes and failures in a traditional personal statement. Yes, I have had plenty of ups and downs, but I am going to take this opportunity to sit back and reflect on something bigger than myself.

This situation that the whole world is going through: cities on lockdown, families on quarantines,  economies plummeting… I realise how extremely delicate our comfortable, priveleged lifestyle normally is, still is. Something that started China has reached the Netherlands and Ireland… I never realised the immense reliance on globalisation, the enormous rates of travel, and the incredibly complex lattice that meshes us together. The way this pandemic has spread has given me the reminder that nothing in life is certain, and therefore nothing should be taken for granted. Each one of us in this school was lucky enough to win in the game of luck. 

Another thing that has come to light is the importance of political infrastructure, including healthcare, public reassurance from the government, contact-tracing and much more. Watching how “superpower” countries deal with this pandemic (or don’t deal with this pandemic) highlights the dependency we all have on our governments or elected persons in power to take care of entire nations. Living in Singapore, the government has my full trust due to their constant transparency and duty towards their citizens. Every night I go to bed with ten more things to be grateful for. But I think of people who aren’t so lucky. We numbingly watch death tolls increase on the television. I think of countries that have seen fates like this since the beginning though. Refugees, displaced out of their home with nowhere to go, civil wars in Syria ripping apart families and daily life. What cruel game does fate play on people, and for what reason do people who don’t deserve these circumstances go through them anyway?

It is too easy, too convenient to forget about situations we are infinitely lucky not to have been born into, but it’s wrong too. And so, every day, I want to close my eyes and pray hard for anyone and everyone who needs it. 

It’s that time of year again. Nope, not Christmas, New Year, or even Summer. Its the time when we have to write our personal statement. I finally feel settled in this new normal of online school, wearing masks while going out for exercise, subconsciously avoiding other humans, or feeling all the days blur into one long, dreary day..week..month?

Quarantine has given us a lot of time to think. I always wanted more time to decide what I want to do with my life, because making that huge decision alongside exams, tests and school – it’s difficult. But, it’s like the world forcefully shoved us into our homes and said “you said you need more time? Here’s all the time you can have.” It’s a weird freedom, and it’s difficult to separate whether you should use this time to rejuvenate because you’ll never get this much free-time again, or whether you should be the most productive you’ve ever been in your life, because, well, you’ll never get this much free-time again.

So, I’ve been thinking about what I’d want to do with my life, and I think I’ve finally decided. I’ve been doing this dance, going back and forth on my decision on whether or not I’d want to do medicine. The job itself seems appealing, but once you’ve settled down. Having your clinic, having people come to you, and build a relationship – that work seems fulfilling and satisfying to me. I know I cannot work in an office all day, wondering what I’m ACTUALLY doing with my life, knowing that my work isn’t directly making someone else’s life better. I know I want to go into a healthcare profession, something along the lines of being a doctor, if not actually becoming one. I think I do have the skills to become a doctor: I care about people, I love the human body, and I want to learn more. But being a doctor is so much more than that – it’s dealing with death, high-pressure situations, weird bodily fluids, and long, cruel hours. How do you know that you have what it takes? Thinking about these things, it excites me, because it pushes me. But it also frightens me.

I always think back to that time in Desaru. I couldn’t sleep well the whole night. I kept drifting in and out of uncomfortable slumber, feeling more tired when I would wake up. I suddenly felt my mother shake me awake: “girls? Wake up.. Papa isn’t feeling well.” I instantly felt sick but I followed her upstairs to my parents’ room, fumbling on the stairs in the dark. My dad was laying down on the bed, pale and groaning from discomfort. My sister immediately took charge of the admin work under my mother’s instructions – calling the hotel staff for a doctor (WHICH THEY DIDN’T HAVE!?!) and I got some sugar, and water for him. He apparently had fainted in the bathroom – while trying to go the bathroom – and I was trying to figure out why. I searched up the symptoms and the context and realised it wasn’t too serious (I know a google diagnosis is dangerous, but spoiler alert: I was right) and I asked him to keep his feet up so the blood could circulate to his brain. It was a weird, terrifying, out-of-body experience, but it was satisfying seeing the color slowly come back to his face, to see him talking and finally, arguing that he didn’t need a doctor (classic!).

Atleast I have some sort of idea of what type of profession I want to go into, atleast, a much clearer idea than what I had a year ago when I was writing this. Perhaps I just need time. Just like the HL Psychology decision dawned on me as the most obvious thing one morning, I hope this decision too will become crystal clear sooner rather than later.

I thought that I would get sick of this lockdown very quickly. As much as I love my family and my home, I thought I would be desperate to leave the house and see new faces after two weeks. But here I am, in the sixth (or more) week of lockdown, and for some reason- I don’t mind it. Perhaps because it’s not too drastic from my daily life, I don’t usually go out with my friends every weekend, or cycle around Singapore. However, I do miss going out to eat in aesthetic, energetic and relaxing restaurants that we had the privilege of going to. The beautiful restaurants that line boat quay, the exquisite greek restaurants in Dempsey, the Mexican restaurants in Orchard, and more, almost every weekend. But I’ve also realised that perhaps we don’t need to go out every weekend, spend so much money in a fancy restauarant, to have family time. This quarantine has forced us to think of creative ways to create the same ambiance that our favourite restaurants had, but at home. My sister and I set up the balcony with pillows, fairy lights and music to try to replicate going “outside”. We talked for 4 hours after we ate dinner, and it introduced a completely new atmosphere, which would have never been discovered if it wasn’t for this lockdown.

If it wasn’t for this lockdown, or this pandemic, my sister wouldn’t be back home from Cornell in America to celebrate her 21st birthday with us. It’s like all the things that were considered “set in stone”, like semester dates, exams, and summer internships, were taken away to showcase its fragility, and the possibility of change.

17/05/20 

For all birthdays, our family loves celebrating big. It doesn’t mean spending $500 on a yacht party. It means decorating the house, ordering a secret cake, hiding gifts, watching movies, going out to eat your favourite food, and most importantly, spending time with friends and family. On 16th night from 8:30pm – 12:00am, my sister had an online exam. She locked herself in her room, and we started to decorate the house. We put gold and silver streamers with the “happy birthday” banner draped across it, we put up confetti balloons with surprise chocolates in them and made cards, all while dancing to Bollywood music. It was such a beautiful few hours, because I felt absolutely NO obligation to do anything else – finish this homework, research this, read this book, watch this. Doing something so free of technology in an even more digitalized world nowadays was the refresher I needed. We cut the cake at 12.30am, we showed her the (surprise) video I was putting together with messages from her friends and family from all over, and we sat and talked till 2am.

Many people have told me that they don’t celebrate birthdays. I couldn’t imagine my family not celebrating them, because it brings us equal amounts of joy to celebrate others, than to be the one who’s being celebrated. Preparing for her birthday made me realise that it’s us who construct the monotony of daily life. Each day has immense potential, but we struggle to see that when we don’t take a step back from our routines. So if this lockdown’s taught me anything, its that we don’t need a fancy restaurant, a big party or anything else if each and every one of us is in the moment. It’s heartening to know that we can still create everlasting moments in circumstances like these.

I remember sitting in our family room on a Saturday afternoon five years ago, with my whole family gathered around my sister. My dad was sitting on the lazy boy, my mother on the couch, my sister sat on the floor picking at the carpet, and I sat indifferently on the floor too, daydreaming. My sister was choosing her IB subjects, and they were debating between HL Psychology or HL Physics. My parents deployed pros and cons for both, but it only seemed to fuel my sister’s confusion between the two subjects. My grade-5-self didn’t care much about the process, for I didn’t know much about the subjects, or the gravitas of the decision.

Five years later, we sat in the same family room for the same purpose, except instead of my sister choosing, it was me this time. What was HL Econs and HL Math for my sister was HL Bio and HL Chem for me. I knew I had to take them, because that’s what I wanted to do. But deciding on the last HL was difficult for me, as I toyed between HL Psychology and HL Business Management. Now that I look back at it, I can see that I already knew what I wanted to do, that the decision should’ve been easy. But, when you know the weight of the decision you’re about to make, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. I didn’t *enjoy* enterprise per say, but I was good at it, somehow. I didn’t want to let go of my logical, managerial skills that I knew I had by going for a “science package” (bio, chem, psych). But, I’ve always been passionate about psychology. Since middle school I had been borrowing books about the brain, the way humans think, etc. How was I to ensure I wasn’t missing out by choosing one or the other? I started considering the likelihood of getting a 7 in that subject, the way the marks are curved, “how much would I have to memorise?”, and so much more. I scrambled for any advice that my IB friends could give me. I internally rolled my eyes at “do what you’re passionate about”, because I need to get above a 40, so… marks > passion, and I knew Business Management was easier to score in. I finally made a spur of the moment decision when my English teacher asked me why I was not taking HL Literature. And although I always had a special affinity towards descriptive writing, I knew we would do none of that in IB. I also am not particularly fond of literature, and neither am I superbly great at it. But somehow, I wrote it down and got it signed, no discussion, no evaluation. A big, rushed, spontaneous decision, perhaps to make up for the bounteous overthinking I was doing over the past two weeks.

HL Bio, HL Chem, and HL Literature, SL Chinese, SL Psych and SL Math.

I submitted my form and forgot about it, holding on to the comfort that I still would have the flexibility to change my decision in the future. If I didn’t like it, I would swap psych and English. But I realised that the option to swap out was becoming less and less of an “if” circumstance, and more and more of me trying to just delay the reality that I wanted to do HL Psych.

Yes, it is hard to score in. Yes, I will need to memorise a ton of case studies ON TOP of biology memorisation. But anytime I have a chance to research science, I always gravitate towards the brain. How we think, how we’re raised, why humans act the way that we do.

And so, ignoring my mother’s (quite evident) disappointment that I no longer will be taking English – she’s a poet – I emailed the school about my decision. And I feel great. Because, I know that I will love the subject. I have a pure passion for it, and I am revved to go.

It’ll be hard, but if anyone can do it (get a 7), I hope it’ll be me.

I don’t believe it would be in our best interest to make actors “immortal”.

Firstly, if we use AI to “immortalize” actors, it would close a golden door of opportunity for the future generation. People are born with a talent for acting and develop not only the passion, but the ability to work extremely hard. However, if we “immortalized” actors, we would not be able to see how the skills are developed through the years. It would cut down on all opportunity for the future generations to come. Just because we would not need new actors, doesn’t mean that there are people who suddenly don’t want to become an actor.

In addition to that, I believe that actors are just people, who do a job just like anyone else. They go to work everyday, but the only difference is that they work in front of a camera, it makes them a celebrity. If we “immortalise” them, it shows people that you need to be famous to have any importance in the world. Actors and actresses teach us beautiful lessons through artistic creations like movies, and shows, however it is no reason to provide “immortality” to them and not to others.

AI is incredibly close to real life, but it will never be as full of emotion as we humans are (at least not in the near future). Even though AI could recreate the actors’ skills to incredible accuracy, it would not be the same. It wouldn’t be the actor’s legacy anymore, because it isn’t them doing it anymore. I would like to believe that humans would want their legacy to be carved by them, and not touched or carried on by AI.

List of Traits

My goals for this year are:

• This year I would like to expand my comfort zone, and make new friends.
• Push my comfort zone by trying new things, new activites, services, etc.

Academic Goal:

• Try to not procrastinate, and do homework the day I get it.

I think that tv/film you consume definitely makes you more biased towards others. TV shows and films show the life of another person, and they might be different or as similar to you. If they have contrasting lives to you, it is always eye-opening in a way, since shows and films always delve into that person’s lives, usually with depth. With Shows and films getting more realistic to life (obviously based on the genre), people are going to be able to see things from different perspectives, which is important since you’ll be able to relate and connect with people you might not have with before. This will also make you aware of different types of people, because movies and tv shows can depict people who have contrasting personalities to you in a way that’s relatable.