Class Exercise

Last week, Mr. Lundberg gave us a very interesting exercise. It is about describing a setting. I love this exercise so I decided to post about it.

Nestled cosily in the botanical garden, there is a picturesque pavilion. Beside the pavilion, there is a river of cascading waters. In the crystal-cleared water, there are some koi fishes swimming gracefully and the water lilies are so beautiful. Sit on the swing on the pavilion and enjoy the gentle breeze of the wind. There is also a field of majestic lavender flowers, the fragrance of the flowers greeted anyone who went there.

The chirping of the birds, croaking of the frogs and creaking of the crickets made the whole place feel like as if they are in the woods. There is also some apple trees, the apples are as red as blood and extremely juicy and sweet.

Every morning, you can see some couples strolling around the place, some old folks exercising, some people bringing their dogs for jogging and kids running around. The morning air is so fresh and unpolluted and attracted many fauna here. This place is like a magical place to everyone who visited it and will not hesitate to visit it again.

My School

I am in my grandaunt's house now. Well, let's blog about my current school, my current school is Hwa Chong Institution and it is the culmination of the watershed merger between the former Chinese High School (founded in 1919) and Hwa Chong Junior College (founded in 1974) in 2005.





This is my school's clock tower. The clock tower was gazetted as a national monument on 13 March 1999. The four clocks were donated by Seiko. The “天下之马”means flying horse.










The school's clock tower sited in The Chinese High School (now the high school section), with a statue of founder Mr. Tan Kah Kee.







This field is located in front of the clock tower. The running track is 400 metre long. Every morning, students gather at the terraces for flag-raising ceremony.

This is the main entrance of Kong Chian Library. It is named after Mr. Lee Kong Chian, he donated a big sum of money to build new classes and buildings in our school.


This is inside the library. We can borrow all kins of materials including, reference books, story books, movies, CD-Roms, laptops, etc.

These are some other services and the maximum of seaters:

-PD LRC - 8

-Project Room - 10

-English LRC - 74

-Conference Room - 35



Compared to Kong Chian Library, Jian Xian Library is bigger that Kong Chian Library. There are about 45,000 books and 3,800 CD-Roms.

Facilities Available
-A Discussion cum Video Room (for group discussion and viewing)
-Individual viewing points for movies
-24 sets of computers linked to black-and-white printers as well as colour printers (using photocopy cards purchased from the photocopying shop)
-Laptops (please approach the library staff at the counter)
-Photocopying machines (using photocopy cards purchased from the photocopying shop)
-In-house toilets
Services Provided
-Borrowing and returning of open-shelf and red-spot materials
-Borrowing and returning of laptops
-Borrowing and returning of CD Roms, videos and VCDs
-Reservation of all materials
-Help with using computers and printers
-Help with using photocopying machines
-Help in obtaining information regarding materials
-Display of New Arrivals
-Display of various types of materials based on a monthly theme to expose students to the large variety of books available
-Library newsletters which can be found at the counter and newspaper rack

This is Kong Chian Administration Office. Like the Kong Chian library, it is also named after Mr. Lee Kong Chian.

The multi-million dollar Science Research Centre (SRC) provides ample resources to support the advanced research programmes in Hwa Chong. It serves as a one-stop facility for student research activities. The main features of the SRC include
-10 Research Laboratories for Science projects and experiments;
-A 100-Seater Theatre;
-Field Station and Special Culture Rooms for the incubation of living organisms used in Life Science and Biotechnology projects;and
-Project Rooms and Work Resource Rooms for collaborative research between students and expert-mentors.

The Ong Teng Cheong Student Activities and Leadership Training Centre(which is known by SALT centre) is named in honour of distinguished Hwa Chong alumnus and Singapore's first elected President, Mr Ong Teng Cheong, who was both an outstanding leader and a passionate supporter of the Arts. Under the Hwa Chong Integrated Programme, the Centre serves as a platform to develop students holistically, particularly in areas of the Arts and leadership excellence. Some CCA's are also held in this centre. There is also a professional Cardio room and Weights room inside it.

This is the gymnasium where students practice gymnasiums and it is equipped with almost all of the gymnasium facilities.

This is the area of Junior College.

This is the front of Hwa Chong Junior College.

This is the basketball court and beside it is our school's canteen.

( Resources: www.hci.edu.sg)

ANGLES workshop and competition

Again, it’s me, blogging in the dining hall. Now, let’s talk about the public speaking competition that my school held last few weeks. The title of the workshop is ANGLES (A New Generation of Loquacious Speakers). Every secondary one student is to attend this workshop.
On the day, we went to drama centre and Mr. Tommie Chen briefed us about the public speaking competition. Later, two seniors shared with us their experience and taught us how to present a good speech. After that, a senior ask us to go back to our respective classes and each senior is to pick a student among the classmates and he will be chosen to attend the semi-finals. Our title is “money is the root of all evil”. The best speaker is my friend, Shawn Ang De Xian. He have to attend the semi-finals.
The day had come, it’s the semi-final. We went to the auditorium to give support to Shawn. We are given one ACE handout each, and we were asked to fill it and hand it to our LA teacher. The first one who came out was Shawn, his title is ‘’speech is silver, silence is gold’’. He agrees with the title. His speech was marvelous! Then, every participant also spoke greatly.
The most important time has arrived; each participant was given 1 impromptu title 10 minutes before their speech. I personally think that Shawn’s speech is just nice because he lacked confidence. Almost all the participant’s speech is better than his because they spoke confidently. Everyone jeered the other consortiums and Ms. Laura Ng (queen of literature) stood up and scolded us for our intolerable behavior.
After that, the judges went to the library and calculated the marks. Then, they announced the prizes and Shawn won a merit but he did not get into the grand finale. The champion and the first runner-up was from the iSpark consortium, whereas the 2nd runner-up was from the Aphelion consortium, which is my consortium.
iSpark was chosen to the grand finale as they grabbed two places. Ihope that our consortium can win the next ANGLES competition.

Exams

I am so happy and excited because the test is going to be over soon!!!

For the past three horrible weeks( week 6,7,8), I have been having tests in my school for my different subjects, for example Mathematics, Language Arts, Chinese, LSS, etc. But I still have Mathematics 2 test on Tuesday. I am very scared because my maths is very bad I felt nervous during some tests because I was scared that I would not get a passing grade.

The night before Language Arts test, my roommates listened to songs which I do not really like. I can tolerate with them just listening to the music, and I would appreciate if they could turn down their volume. As I result, I could not concentrate in the LA test and I just scored C6 for the test. I would not say that it was my roommates’ fault that I scored low marks, I might as well be responsible for my own marks. But I would have failed my LA test if I lost one or two more marks!!!

Moreover, some of my roommates studied almost every night during the exam weeks. Their table lamps distracted me from sleeping. Almost every test I felt sleepy and I could not concentrate in the test. Well, I will train myself not to be so easily distracted by others and I will definitely study hard for my next test in term 2.