Q2: Write about a time when the behavior of someone you knew/know changed drastically and inexplicably.

It was exactly 10 years.

I was flipping through my old dairy a few days ago and chance upon a page, a page where it is full of questions about her that till today, I have yet to understand everything behind all this.

I was 5 years old at that time when I first knew her at my kinder garden. She was my first friend over there and most probably the only friend that have left deepest impression inside my heart.

It was my first day in school and I was crying like any other kid, thinking that my parents are going to abandon me and throw my in some school. But then, I noticed a girl at one corner alone looking in my direction. She came in my direction, closer and closer.

Her cheeks were rosy, she was considered rather white, her smile can melt your heart and her eyes are so attractive full of water element, the most amazing thing is her eyes can tell you everything.

She said, “Hello! I am Karielle. Don’t be afraid, it is my first day attending this school too. I think we should smile and welcome this brand new day and get something rewarding at the end of this day and not cry. Be brave and let us go in together to the classroom and see what is waiting for us in there!”

At that point of time, I felt she was so smart, so courageous. I stopped crying and went in. Later, she introduced herself to me and in a blink of an eye, the bell rang and the day was over. She made me feel that going to school is a WANT instead of a MUST.

We talked everything under the sun and being with her was so comfortable. However, good thing did not last forever. It was a few months later, everything changed.

She did not smile like she used to, she did not have a positive mindset like she used to have. She pushed all the blames to the whole world except herself. She threw tantrums around and no one dared to go near her. She started to scold vulgarities and bully those who are smaller in size than her.I knew something was wrong, I knew she needed someone to tell her that, I knew I was the one in school that she can rely on now. I was determined not to let her behave like this; I was determined to change her back like she used to be. But I could not; or rather I did not have a chance to do so.

Then later consecutive few days, she became rebellious and started tucking out shirt, started not doing homework and worst of all punched a teacher.

Few days later, she did not come to school. I went to ask my form teacher about her whereabouts. All she could tell me was her father was to be blamed for the entire trauma at home.

I did not understand.

I thought all this belonged to fictitious serials frequently broadcasted on television for sentimentalists to watch and cob over, not to the real world. I guess she never expect this to cross her path and bring about such an abrupt and permanent twist in her life from then onwards-a change almost too melodramatic for her to believe a reality.

10 years later, I met her on the road.

Her eyes can never escape mine. They are just so unique that once you see it, you will never forget. She was so skinny, so pale. Inside her eyes were full of sorrows. 10 years is such a long period and naturally she did not recognize me or maybe choose not to.

Till now, I did not know the exact truth that made her became like this. I regretted not finding out and support her when she was sinking.

The only thing I know now is her change was more than just her father’s fault.

-seemui(:
(11)

" BeIng popular is essential for one to develop self confidence." Do you agree?

To be confident is to have a great deal of trust and belief in yourself. Whereas, being popular is to be liked by most people and to be accepted by others. This could boost one’s self esteem. But, I agree to a small extend that being popular for one to develop self confidence is essential.

Self confidence can be built up through various ways. For example, having a good personal appearance. Appearance greatly affects the way we feel about ourselves and also it affects how others may think of us. When we look good, we feel good about ourselves and it in turns build up our self confidence and allows us to be able to keep our attention off from ourselves. Self consciousness such as not being able to achieve what others view of us often affects our self confidence. Instead, we should not be too concern over the goals that others set for us and to be optimistic in whatever we do and also be able to take in critisms to improve in ourselves. Also, we should set goals for ourselves and not goals to gain other’s approval.

Having a supportive family is also essential in building up a child’s self confidence especially. As if a parent were to be extremely critical and over demanding of their child, the child would come to think that they are of lower caliber and incompetent. This would greatly affect the child’s confidence in being able to excel since young. Instead if the parent were to be understanding and accept and love their child even as they are, this would greatly help in building up the child’s love for oneself and their self confidence.

To be able to take risks and not to be afraid of failure is also an important element in building self confidence. In the process of failure, we learn to accept ourselves and learn to be more positive in life. Life is never smooth sailing thus I feel that every failure in life is a stepping stone to a better life. Every mistake learnt enables us to know more about ourselves. After all it’s the effort and life – enriching process that counts and not the end product. For example, I never knew that I was able to speak in front of others. Although I was forced to do so, I gained a new experience and it help to build my self confidence in being able to speak up.

The lack of self confidence often affects us to turn to being accepted by others to feel good about ourselves- popularity. Indeed, for some, being popular helps in allowing them to build their confidence as they feel that they have got friends who care about them and everyone around them are looking at them in a different light which makes them feel good and special. However, it makes me wonder if they ever feel a sense of security with their friends. As popularity does not last forever and when it wears out, others would no longer consider them as someone special and this would in turn make them feel even more inferior than before.

Therefore, it is my stand that being popular is not essential for one to develop self confidence. As self confidence is to trust our own abilities and to accept ourselves for what we are and not to depend on the approval of others to feel good.

issabella tan

LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT!

“I wish… I wish to be loved”, Denise thought silently as she blew out her candles. This wish, the wish she had made for every birthday she ever had. She solemnly pulled out the candle from her cupcake and brought it to her mouth. Every birthday was just the same, her and her cupcake. And every year she has to undergo the raging torment of loneliness.
She wiped off the cream from the corners of her mouth and stared blankly ahead of her. . She could almost hear the harsh whisper of the cold, icy wind. Gloomy, grey clouds were looming above her, as if threatening to stab the ground below with lightning any moment. Stretches of slumps lay beyond her sight, each dampening her mood a notch lower. Scattered groups of people, each plastered with a saddening look on their face, dragging their feet to their next destination. It all merged to paint a picture of bleakness, a depressing sight to behold.

Denise’s eyes drifted away. As she laid her eyes on the pile of garbage, she spotted a piece of red cloth sticking out from the piles of garbage. To feed her curiosity, she got up and approached it. Reaching her hand forward and ripping the garbage bag apart, Denise revealed the mysterious object. She stared at it for a long time, contemplating what it may turn out to be. As she gently brushed off the dust, her heart skipped a beat. It was a doll.

It stared back at her with its wide blue eyes. Its hair was the colour of charcoal, and its face the colour of soil. Its untamed hair fell loosely at its shoulders. Its dress was decorated with multiple patches of stains and pieces of torn cloth that hung loosely.

It was old and tattered indeed, but Denise could not tear her eyes away from it. Its wide blue eyes seemed to talk to her, as if whispering softly in her ears. Telling her that it knew what she was going through, telling her everything was going to be alright. A strange feeling overcame her. What was this feeling, she asked herself. Comfort? Happiness? Love? All she knew was that it was something she has not felt for a long, long time. All she wanted was for the doll to be hers.

She continued staring at her new found friend, observing every single detail it had and admiring it. She had always imagined herself owning a doll, dressing it up and having tea with it. However, considering her financial status, it remained to be a figment of her imagination. That is, until today. Her frown broke into a grin when the realization that she can proudly announce that she owned a doll hit her.

She motioned her hand slowly towards the doll, carrying it into her arms ever so lovingly like a mother embracing her child. She gently brushed against its cheek and smiled. “I’ll name you Yvonne. From now on, you are going to be part of my family and my best friend,” Denise said to her new found partner as she skipped happily home.
-SHEENA!

love at first sight

Have you ever had a time whereby you felt terribly at unease,your palms sweaty and your heart thumping madly? Or have you ever tried wanting to speak to a particular someone but felt that your throat had a ball within? Finally, have you really felt that you wanted something or someone particularly badly and yet it was never within your reach? Did you have this inexplicable feeling whereby you had a sudden rush of affection towards someone? Maybe that would be what some would claim to be "love at first sight".

Possibly, it is during the younger ages whereby our immature hearts would develop a slight tinge of affection to the opposite gender. We would tend to observe or even carry out dumb things for no particular reason. Some might even go to the extent of scaring the person they happened to take a liking towards. Would that be really what anyone would want? Nevertheless, we should still question some things.

Does love at first sight indeed exist?

Weighing the different factors that contribute to love at first sight, it is indeed questionable that love at first sight does not even exist at all but the hormonal imbalance at a young age. Besides, love at first sight might not even be made possible for the fact that humans are people who tend to change their mindsets very easily. As such, their 'love at first sight' might be in fact just a sudden bit of infatuation for we have no idea as to how it might result in a sudden change. Would that than become a 'love at second sight?'

However, it is not unlikely for love at first sight to indeed exist. It might just be the fact that it is something so innocent that it really does exist. As such, the question of love at first sight existing should still end with a question mark and the answer to it really does vary. Nonetheless, love is still a complicated thing.

audreyyao :D

Love At First Sight

Love can be a complicated word, Love can be a simple word. Sometimes I feel that, it is not necessary only adults can understand the word well enough. I think your heart is the best dictionary to define the word but when you truly understand love well, you will find that is has no definitions at all. It is a word that expresses feeling and feelings dosen't require any definitions.

I remembered when I was in kindergarten, I fell in 'love' a lot of times. Oh how happy was I to fall in 'love'!. Then, I said I love to go shopping, I love to crap, I love to.. I have used the word so many times that I don't really understand what it is truly about already.
When I was older, I fell in love again. This time it is with more than one guy. This time it is with a guitar, keyboard, and drums.This time, I fell in love with a Band.

And this time, I know it's love.
Beacuse my heart says so.

Typical Sunday with a girl suffering from boredom. She sat on the sofa and like any other person, would take the remote control and switch on the television. With pictures of boring television programmes in mind, she doesn't expects to have anything that would capture her attention. She is dozing off soon, after switching the channels from some Kids Central to Channel5 and to Suria Channel...
Just as dreams were floating into her mind, something work her up. It was the strumming of guitar.

The she was me. It was me who fell head over heels, with love.

So my eyes was glued to the screen. It was a Superband competition and all the bands were competing against each other, but I just spotted the band. They were so engrossed in their music, you could see, sometimes facial expressions reveals everything. Like my mind could read theirs, they only wanted to let the rest hear their music. It's being a long time since I last saw people being so passionate about music, so engrossed in bringing out the joy of music for the rest. Probably, it was because my mum had refused to let me take up any musical instrument since young, just like how she made me take some Abacus course when I wanted to take up violin lessons. I envy them for they are able to play music freely.

"They sing, they play with just the idea of performing to their best and not beat the rest." The conclusion I came up with.One only needs to listen with your heart, you will find that every note played means something. The music they let us hear spelled P-A-S-S-I-O-N out to us. I got the message, how about you?

When the television show ended, I was searching in mind for it. I couldn't find it. I searched hard and that was it! 'Isn't there a english phrase that describes my feeling now..Is it Love at first sight?!' I found it. That feeling.

I fell hard for their passion, really hard this time.

And of course, love dosen't have any endings. I did continue to watch them on, as they grow with their music.

Nevertheless, I will never forget..how I fell in love with them at first sight.

By Debra Peh, with muchmuchmuchloves!

Dearest principals and teachers,

I am very sure that all of you have known of this policy whereby only 3 tests per week and not more than 2 tests a day is allowed. This policy is not properly carried out by all the teachers so i feel this is a serious problem that should be looked into.

At a particular time, we had up to 6 tests a week. This is overly taxing on the students as we have to little time to study. If teachers put so many tests in a week, not only will it make the students more stressful, it will also result in students not wanting to study as they are really very tired.

Furthermore, secondary 3 students takes up leadership roles in this year which means they have to plan for their CCA which leaves even lesser time to study after school ends. This adds extra burden on the students. Although the school emphasize that acadamic is more important than CCA but CCA plays a big part in a student's secondary school life.

In order for us to pass test, we usually have to burn the midnight oil to revise for the upcoming tests. Some students stay up till 3-4am which leaves them around 3hours of sleep. This will result in students dozing off in class therefore not catching what the teacher has taught for the day. Doesn't this defeats the pupose of having tests since tests are used to check whether students understand what the teachers are teaching.

In conclusion, i hope that you will look into this matter and do some changes in order to benefit the students and maximize the use of tests fully. Thank you.


PAISEH LATE WORK. HAHAHA
-SHEENA!!

SORRY FOR HANDING IN LATE, MrBenTan D:

Dear Teachers,
As you all have know for the past few months the school have been making constant reminders to the secondary four students about preparation for their preliminary examinations by sticking paper in front of the Teachers' Office etc. Personally, I feel that although the school has good intentions but this is definitely not a good solution in reminding the students on how many days they are left with in preparation of their examinations as this is rather overdoing things which would provide the wrong set of results. On a closer look, it in actual fact has many disadvantages.

Firstly, not all the students are capable of handling stress well. They have already been facing with much stress from studying for Prelims and now with these constant reminders, it causes their stress to build up as now they have to be yet reminded that they have an upcoming major exam. Although it might be effective to a certain extent in making a group of lazy students pick themselves together and start studying but to some others whom have already been working hard enough, this would overtress them even more. What this group of secondary four students need is not constant reminders but encouragment from the school to provide them the drive and power to study. This constant reminders would only serves to cause the students even more tired not just physically from studying, but also mentally.

Lastly, by posting up constat reminders, it would create a impression on the students that the school is overly concerned about their results and indirectly, the glory they would bring to the school. This in turn builds up feeling of unhappiness among them and would in turn strain the relationship between the school and the students. This certainly would bring the school spirit down and if news spread, the school's reputation would be greatly affected.

Hence, I would like the school to reconsider their purpose in doing so as it would produce undesirable results. I suggest the school could post up words of encouragment instead to give them motivation. Please take my suggest into your consideration and I would like to hear from you soon. Thank You.

Debra(6)

context: the school is enforcing a 12-hour school day(including breaks etc.)
note:[below content is purely for english assignment, nothing against the school]

Good Afternoon Principals and Teachers,

I am sure that you all are aware that the school is going to have a 12-hour per school day system for the students of Anglican High School. I have heard of many opinions all over the school, the discontentment in students and not to mention, unhappiness in some teachers. I would therefore represent the student body and voice out our opinion as I feel that everyone's voice matters.

No doubt, we all are not robots. We are humans, who will feel tired, be it mentally or physically. Students who get 'privileged' to sit on the chair all day long and not doing anything except when the subject teachers give some work, are already feeling tired of listening, what's more the teachers? The teachers are supposed to teach, stand and get the attention of the students. If students shut their mind out when the teachers are trying their best to teach them, I personally see no point or purpose in continueing the lesson.

I really do not see a need in extending school hours beyond the normal timetable since students will not concentrate after their lunch hours, which is around 12-1pm. During this period of time, if lessons still continue, not only do the students need to try their very best to listen in class, they still have to battle to open their eyelids in order not to sleep. As learnt in biology, it takes at least 4hours to digest the food we have eaten after each meals. This means that the body cannot do so much things at a time and thus will end out trying to digest the food and our brain will therefore shut out. Then by having lesson after lunch will be of no use since no one will be listening and this will waste the teachers' effort and time.

Furthermore, by extending school time to 12 hours per day, does it mean that we will end school at 6.30pm or even later? This clearly means that there will not be time for our CCAs. The MOE enforced so much on CCAs, but now if we extend school time, it means there will not be anymore time for CCA. Our CCA achivements will in turn drop drastically and we only have the acedamic performance to support the school's reputation. But we have to always look ahead, what if the students' acedamic standard is not there? Does that mean that we will no longer be a SAP school?

Lastly, I really hope we have the "TEACH LESS,LEARN MORE" policy. This will benefit the students as well as the teachers.I hope the school will look into this matter as it is currently affecting students from the school.

Thankyou.

-seemui(:
[11]

Dear Teachers,

My purpose in writing this speech today is to hope that the school management board could enforce upon all uniformed groups to have water parades before all of their vigorous activities. As students, we should always take it upon us to be extremely careful about our well-being in our years of schooling. Recently, there has been a huge event coming up namely the National Day Parade whereby the uniformed groups would all display their drills. Nevertheless, there would be a long period of time whereby they are expected to stand still under the hot sun without fidgeting. Although this is an annual routine, i hope that the school would enforce upon these uniformed groups the necessity for water parades.

Firstly, water parades would ensure that the people participating in these activities would not suffer from heat exhaustion whereby they dehydrate due to the lack of water. Water parades would be great as it helps to maintain a certain amount of liquid within the body even if they are unable to take in a constant supply of water. As such, it would help to minimise the possibilities of the students suffering from heat exhaustion. I strongly believe that the student's well-being would be more important than any other factors and i do hope that the school management board would think so too. These students health would be entrusted upon us once they are within the school premises. Therefore, these students health and safety should be our first-hand priority and water parades should be enforced upon all uniformed groups.

Secondly, water parades would also be a sort of discipline for these uniformed groups. In these uniformed groups, discpline is supposed to be one of the most important aspects. With water parades enforced, these uniformed groups would slowly begin to have the basic discipline within them and by so carry these discipline with them in whatever aspects of school. This is therefore beneficial to all, be it students or the school. Thus, enforcing water parades would be good and a superb way of maintaining disciplinary actions within the students of our school.

In conclusion, i do hope that the school management board would take up the action of enforcing water parades in all schools for their different uniformed groups so as to make sure that their health comes first in any matters. Thank you.

audreyyao (20)

the Green MILE! i thot tt that was a great movie. although rated M18, the executions wasnt as disgusting as i thot it wld be. aft watching the movie, i realised tt we shld not take the lives of others for whatever tt they hav done wrong in the past if they hav repent. though in reality, they must face the music n accept their punishnment.
i think Percy is such an idiot n tt del did not deserve such a horrible treatment frm him. how cld he hav "played" with the execution when its such a serious matter. n he caused him to sufffer intense pain when he did not even deserve it. but percy got his retribution serve him right! haha! though i thot tt he deserved more for all the bad things tt he hav done. lk wantin mr jingles dead, squashing mr jingles when its jux a mouse and it did not even disturb him. smashing del's fingers n mocking at john coffey for being huge. the prison shldn even hv allowed him to take up tis job as it is not a game. where u keep mocking at the inmates "abuse" them.
paul edgecomb is such a good n thoughful prison guard who thinks about his inmates. he knew tt john coffey was innocent n did all he could to prevent him frm sittin on the Old Sparky. he trusted him. i felt a sense of injustice when he was being executed as he was innocent. he was a miracle that was send frm god for he had extrodinary power n he was able to heal one frm all illness. n he tried to save the 2 little girls frm dying but he was not able to. but their parents mistook him for the murder n charged him. it was obvious to paul n the others tt he was not guilty but nothing cld be done to save him frm old sparky. it was such a wrongful dead. the judge did not clarify things properly before sentencing him to death.

will they be able to ans to the society for makin a wrong judgement n cause a life to be loss esp. if it were to be someone who had special powers n the ability to heal ppl? also if they were to admit their mistake what can be done? for an innocent life has already been loss.

* issabella