RV 2J Group 5 CID: January 2014

WHAT IS POVERTY?

DEFINITION IN WORD BANK: Poverty is pronounced deprivation in well-being, and comprises many dimensions. It include low incomes, inability to acquire basic goods and services necessary for survival with dignity. Poverty also encompasses low levels of health and education, poor access to clean water and sanitation, inadequate physical security, lack of voice, and insufficient capacities and opportunity to better one’s life.

US DEFINITION: A human condition characterized by the sustained or chronic deprivation of the resources, capabilities, choices, security and power necessary for the enjoyment of an adequate standard of living and other civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights. ~ Poverty and The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights – 2001

We've always been living like young rich people, always wasting money, and not even caring about the poverty of Singapore. When our teacher told us to write a blog on Singapore's poverty line, we googled it. We got a big shock by the percentage of people living below the poverty line. This was totally different from what we expected! We thought maybe here will only be a few percent, but to our dismay, there are about one-quarter of people living below poverty line. Frankly, we only saw poverty in other countries like Africa, China, Indonesia, never would we expect that we are also one of them.

We saw a youtube video by ProjectICHAP about how different Singaporeans see the poverty of Singapore.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JsN1-R6lpLs

There is an urgent need for the Singapore government to define the poverty line, so as to prevent more Singaporeans from falling into the poverty trap and be stuck in chronic depravity. 26% earning less than what is needed to adequately survive in Singapore – S$1,500 – is no laughing matter, and is a severe case of the exploitation of the Singaporean labour force by the government. Wow, that means that every 4 people, there is 1 person living below the poverty of Singapore. A few of my friends applied for financial assistance scheme. There are also a lot of elderly, who have to find cardboards from the dumpster to sell for money. This really shocked us (to the max).

How had we been living? All my group mates asked each other this question. No doubt, we have all been wasting our food and our parents' hard-earned money. Eee, what is this, I don't want it, throw is away, this is what we have been saying for the past 14 years of our life when we face vegetables (or other food that we disliked. P.s. Sorry for the vegetable-likers but vegetables is the food majority of us don't like...). However, do we know that there are a lot of people in Singapore (not to mention the world) who don't even eat 3 meals a day? Indeed, now we know. Thus, we all agreed on one thing: Do not waste our parents' hard-earned money. There may be somedays when your family might be below the poverty line, who knows? (Touch wood, touch wood!)

(This man is begging for money) 😱😭

(This lady is searching the dumpster for cardboards to sell for money) 😱😭

(This elderly man is homeless) 😭😭

Hello everyone! We are RV CID 2J's Group 5! This is our first post on 2013 December holidays. Some of us went overseas, while the others stayed in Singapore, but those people who stayed in Singapore equally led an interesting holiday. However, most of them grumbled about the workload and the number of days they had to go back to school for CCA or other actvities. Now, these are the group members of Group 5.

Left: Leonard Sim, Andrew Bae, Tan Wen Cong, Grace Deng, HO Yoon Yee, Evelyn Ang

EVELYN ANG XIN RUI (2)

Last year December holiday, I didn't get a chance to go anywhere, as I was busy helping my family to move my house. I was moving all the way from Sembawang all the way to Boon lay for two reasons, one for the convenience of going to school and another for the convenience of my dad going to work. I was proud of myself for getting a chance to go the River Valley a high School. I loved all about the school, but there is one thing which I don't like. It is the distance between River Valley High School and my old home which is so far far away... This is my first time moving and I'm quite excited for the change. I can finally use a new bedroom although I still miss the old one. However, I was a little upset because my brother could not finish his six years of education at my primary school as he had to transfer. I loved my primary school -- Canberra Primary School... spent my six years there and now my brother couldn't get to taste that feeling... :( Anyway, now, he is going to Jurong West Primary.Now that I had moved, it has been a lot easier to go home or come to school every morning.

(the school I went for six years)

This is basically what I had done for my December holidays. Although I didn't get a chance to go overseas, I am still quite contented as to how I spent my holidays.

TAN WEN CONG (31)

Through the holidays, I didn't go overseas like many people did. To England, to Africa, to China, to Thailand... I would prefer to stay at home and play my computer games Blackshot with my clanmates.

Usually, I play when I'm free and bored. I have self-control in myself, and only allowed myself to play for some hours, thus, this doesn't affect my grades in school. - __ - Finally, I got the chance to go out with my gaming clan as a clan outing. At first, I thought that they were going to be delinquents like tv drama often displays. They actually turned out quite surprising! One of them was even married...（≧∇≦）There was also someone who has the same age as me~ Y(^_^)Y For the rest, their age ranges from 17-21,some studying at poly, some studying at jc. Although all we did was play the game as a clan in a lan cafe, but at least I got some photos of them and I think it was all worth it （^人^）

Of course, interesting stories were told~ "There was noisy group of gamers behind him. As time passed, they got noisier until I can't take it and I screamed 'DIAM LA'! That moment, everyone in the lan cafe stared at me and I continued to play my game" - The married guy spent $2.10 in total for the trip, while they spent $10++ $_$.

However, I really wanted to complain about the teachers. Is December holiday even called a holiday? (although I played some blackshots) I would rather call it December Work-liday. I've only rushed (and finally finished) my homework a few days before school reopened...

HO YOON YEE (8)

This December holiday, I went to Taiwan for the first time in my life. The trip lasted for 10 days, from 11/11-21/11. On the first day, my family and I boarded the plane with the tour group we were joining. It had been a long time since I took a plane! It was going to be a four hour flight to Taiwan. Once we arrived we met our tour guide and took a maglev train from Taoyuan airport to Hsinchu. The train was really smooth and fast. It got dark at around 5:30pm and we headed to Fengjia night market for dinner. I ate a cheesy potato a bowl of noodles and sour plum powder sweet potato fries for dinner. It might sound like a weird combination but the fries were really delicious. That was the end of my first day in Taiwan.

The next day, we started to head for Taichung. We visited the famous Sun Moon Lake, Wen Wu temple and Birthday steps. I learned a lot about Taiwan, like the 921 earthquake that destroyed the very place that I was at, and the proper way of ebonite ring and leaving a temple in Taiwan. My favorite was the Birthday steps, which were very interesting. We had to walk down a flight of steps, each step had a date on it and famous people who were born on that date. The steps started at 31/12. After lunch we started to head up to Alishan. Along the way I learned a lot about the history of Taiwan during the Japanese occupation and what they were doing up there at Alishan. Alishan is a mountain deep within the mountain range, so to get there we needed to bypass many other mountains. We stopped at FenQiHu, which is a old train stop, that is part of the long railroad leading up to Alishan build by the Japanese. Most of the railroad had been destroyed by an earthquake and is no longer in service. FenQiHu is a small town that is rich with history. Back in its heyday, whenever the train arrived, the locals will try to sell their lunchboxes (with food) to the people on the train. We tried the traditional train cakes there. Finally, we reached somewhere near Alishan. It's was quite chilly and as I have never experienced this before it felt weird. We followed our tour guide for a tour of the Alishan forest park. There were many interesting features there. For example, only two kinds of trees grow there and it is because of this quality wood that the japanese hacked down many trees and sent them down the mountain via train. We saw trees that grew from the same root, trees that looked like various objects and trees that were more that 1000 years old! I was amazed that, even though the temperatures were quite low, my nose was not blocked and it fact I could breathe better. We also went the Tropic of Cancer 北回归线, where hot meets the cold! Wow!

When we come back from Taiwan back to Singapore, we bought some souvenirs stamps. I learnt a lot from my Taiwan Trip!

GRACE DENG ZHEYUN (7)

2013's December holidays was not really a thrill for me, basically because I have a lot of homework (trust me on that), and I have to return to school for CCA extra practices and prepare for TTK competition (Design and Technology). Not to mention that since December holidays is here, I have to resume my violin lessons which spent me quite a lot of time. :((

And, I am starting to learn piano since November! The pieces were easy, but it took me quite a long time to master it. I am learning piano at Christofori Music school every Saturday morning. The teacher tried to find at least one similarity between us to break the ice. And at last, our similarity is that we came from the same primary school --Rulang Primary School. Is that even counted as a similarity (even though we really came from the same primary school)? For these two whole months, I played Minuet in G Major by Bach (1 page only), Für Elise (For Alice) by Beethoven (4 pages long!) and some piano practices. Then, on 15th November, my parents (took a half-day leave) and I went to the Christofori Garage Music Sale and bought a piano. Although it's a sale, but the prices before and after are about the same. Finally, one week later, I can finally throw away that keyboard and have the piano. I don't really like my keyboard as it have some "muted" sounds and the hand tapping feeling is different from a piano. My father even said that if I am used to playing keyboard, then when I suddenly have to play piano, my fingers will break. I don't know if it's true or not, but I'm lucky that I don't need to face this problem now that I have a piano at home!

I don't know since when, but there is a sudden craze for Hunger Games 2 and Frozen in Singapore. I wanted to watch both, but my father said that Hunger Games 2 is too violent and watching violent movies is not good for our "health", so I can only watch Frozen. However, watching alone is too boring no matter how interesting the movie is. There are two days (Monday and Tuesday) which my mother took a leave break from her work to just relax at home which coincides with me who suddenly falling sick on Monday! Actually, I felt the symptoms of it on Sunday. I felt nauseous, dizzy, no appetite for anything since I got a fever. On Monday, my friend asked me if I wanted to watch Frozen the next day with her since her mother allowed her to watch. At the same time, my brother returned from NS (he returns every Friday and goes every Sunday) and he introduced me a web that can watch almost all movies. www.watch32.com From there, I watched Frozen. It was magical! I loved both the females in lead--Elsa and her younger sister Anna. This is a story about them stopping the winter which will go on forever. I absolutely loved their singing part! Their singing skills were absolutely brilliant! This is my favourite one!

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=g9-rEEj-1uE

This is what I had done during the holidays. Although I didn't go overseas, staying in Singapore is still quite fun for me!

LEONARD SIM BAO HUA (30)

I didn't go anywhere during my holidays so I spent most of my time on gaming. Let me tell you what 'most' means. If a lot means 4 to 5 hours, then most means 7 to 8 hours-- one-third of the whole day. There's no need for any exclamation mark. Although there are a lot of homework, I always procrastinate until the last minute, thinking I still have time, just play one more round... But it's a miracle that I finished all my homework on time! I usually play Blackshot or Left4Dead. In Blackshot, the old world ended at precisely 11:22pm, on the fourth of December, 2033. Nations begun aggressively expanding their borders, seeking more resources to create an ever bigger clone army. The entire planet soon became embroiled in an unprecedented world war. Mostly made up of real human armies who had sought shelter in underground command posts, they soon aligned themselves with the major corporations that emerged from the ashes.

Equipped with only old world weaponry that survived in the underground bunkers, these armies for hire would soon become embroiled in the next big battle between the corporations - the race to rebuild the human clone soldier. This is my favourite game, and it is popular among young male teenagers, including me. This story outline immediately caught me mind since I like this type of bloody game. I was serve for the NS in a few years time so I need to be 'mentally' prepared to serve NS.

Though being mentally prepared is a good thing, I also need to be physically prepared. Besides going to school for extra basketball training, I also train myself at about two hours per week. I will run in my neighborhood for about 5km and do some push-ups. I will try to keep myself fit by being strict to myself.
This is basically how I spent for my December holidays.

ANDREW BAE JONG SEONG (22)

I played basketball with LEO and teammates. I played BLACKSHOT same as LEO. I went to Europe. Paris and London. Very fun. Unique experience.
For this December holiday, I had been playing computer games like Blackshot with my good friend Leonard. (I don't want to explain what's Blackshot, Leonard just explained earlier if you scroll up 0_0, all that I can say that it's a nice bloody game.) For the main part of the holiday, I had been on a trip to Paris and London of Europe. I took the planes countless of times so don't expect me to describe what happened there... It's just that my ears gets uncomfortable.. --> not the main point..

My family and I went to London first. It was freezing cold, though I was 'armored' with clothes, I still feel like I'm wearing only a T-shirt there! It was so cold that I didn't want to get up from bed even when it was 9 already. Finally, my parents pulled me out of bed, saying that I shouldn't just 'slack off' my holiday which was quite expensive. Thus, we shopped in London. When we were hungry, we just ate in the restaurants which were surprisingly expensive! I could hear my parents grumbling out how big the hole in their pockets were. Haha!
Finally, after a few days we went to Paris. And, I got to meet the Eiffel Towel! It was 324m high! I could hear my parents exclaiming about what a beauty it was. The Eiffel Tower is an iron lattice tower located on the Champ de Mars in Paris. It was named after the engineer Gustave Eiffel, whose company designed and built the tower. The tower has three levels for visitors, with restaurants on the first and second. The third level observatory's upper platform is 276 m above the ground, the highest accessible to the public in the European Union. Tickets can be purchased to ascend by stairs or elevator to the first and second levels. The climb from ground level to the first level is over 300 steps, as is the walk from the first to the second level. Tiring! My legs felt like they were going to explode anytime.

Next, we went to Louvre Museum and had the chance to see the famous masterpiece of 'Mona Lisa' by Leonardo da Vinci! There was a crowd in front of the masterpiece. However, I could see clearly that wherever I went, her eyes would follow me, which creeped me out! *Shiver..

I learnt a lot from this December trip to Europe and hope to have more of this again!

RV 2J Group 5 CID

Thursday, 16 January 2014

What is school life like in RVHS?

Photo Challenge

Poverty in Singapore

Thursday, 9 January 2014

December Holidays

These are how we spent all our holidays!