27 May update.

Let us see. Well, I would like to apologise for not blogging about my usual thoughts. I have been busy from school, friends and life. I can’t be in so many places at once right?
Lastest in Singapore this afternoon: My classmates got news of the first H1N1 CONFIRMED case in Singapore. Nombor Uno! Now, we Singaporeans( and sooner or later one of us has to admit it) are very very….how do I put it? Paranoid? There is a slang word that would be much more appropreate I feel but firstly I am not confident of the spelling, two, who ever is not Singaporean might not have a good understanding of the word used.
We are rather paranoid.When the number of H1N1 cases in American increased we went crazy and went to orange alert. Now we are at yellow alert. According to the Ministry of Health we aren’t going back to orange alert until there is a wide spread of cases in Singapore. How many people is considered wide spread? I am just hoping I don’t come down with anything. ANYTHING. I have

AWARE: should we beware it or not?

So the Singapore Goverment is trying to standardise sex education. I may be wrong but that is what I get from reading the article about AWARE this morning. One Principal disagreed with the programme because it went against his schools values.

I feel that there should be some guidelines but schools should be given the oppertunity to teach their students in any way they see fit. I am very very grateful I am in an all girls school because if I were not, I have no idea how I would sit through a sex ed class.

I am going to do more reasearch on AWARE and let everyone know about it and my views. Now, my thoughts are still a little foggy. If you have any infomation or would like to share your views on sex education, drop me a comment below or email me at cheyenne_phillips@hotmail.com

Mas Selamat’s capture

WHAT CAVE HAVE YOU BEEN LIVING IN CHEYENNE???

This was the wake up call my good friend, shelle gave me yesterday when she figured out I didn’t know they caught Mas Selamat on the 1 of April however the reports came out this yesterday morning in local news. I am equally as shocked. According to the Straits times, Mas Selamat used an ‘improvised floation device’ to Swim across Singapore waters to Malaysia shores on the day he escaped through a toilet window. Also, this is the third time he has escaped from anywhere.When he is brought back to Singapore he will be sent back to Whitney Road Detention Centre which is way way different from the one he escaped from over a year ago. He was planning things for Singapore and that was the scary bit.

Although the Leader of the JI group might have been captured, I know that I can’t just walk around, my nose in the air and think everything is going to be okay. That is stupid. Now I might have been a cave all this while but I am so not stupid! Singaporeans or actually the people of the world can’t look at this situation lightly. We have to be alert and vigilant. The treat of terrorism is very real.

In fact, I dare to bet that on every world leaders desk there is this huge messy file labeled TERRORISM!

simpsons earth day

My Darling DRAMA MAMA juniors

Dear Diary,
I don’t believe it. After watching them work hard, shed the tears and sweat, they days of staying back extra late, the sleepless nights to finish home work and study for tests, my darling drama juniors received a sliver for their Singapore Youth Festival Competition(SYF)  in the Central Judging. With a standing ovation, the biggest round of applause ( according to the secondary ones) and the sliver award, my darling DRAMA MAMA juniors are ashamed. The moment my Katrina told me, I ran down faster than ever to find disappointed looks and broken hearts.As we made our way to the AVT where Ms Teo, Ms Tan, Mrs Koh, Mr Flanigin and Madam Nora, students peered at us as they made their way down to the hall. We were drama girls. We made ourselves known. Now, it was known that our SYF results were not to expectations. In the AVT, I was the only non-SYF member and I shared when Mrs Koh asked me to, my feels. I told everyone there how I cried when I didn’t get in, how much I was worried about them during their SYF practises. How much, if I was on stage, getting a standing ovation, no matter what part I played, I would be the happiest girl on earth. I cried with them. I was proud of them. They may have broken our chain of gold (on paper) but they didn’t break the chain of our success and entertainment and also the chain of pride I have for them in my heart. I believe the teachers and staff of SACSS would agree with me.

I wrote the above text during lessons because it was bugging me so much. 9:40 am. It was bugging me like crazy. I just had to get it off my chest. After school, I joined in a meeting between the SYF cast and the leaders. I was invited into listen and for support. Some were still upset but I believe we ended up getting everyone believe that we were proud of them. They did amazing. You know what? I won’t even try to describe how well they did! They entertained. They had fun. To me I don’t care about the silver. That standing ovation was the prize they should be crying about. They should be crying tears of joy.

Let me this way. 4 people said they were a silver while they might have been 200 people in the audience. 200 people gave them a standing ovation. Now, 200 people thought they were fantastic while 4 disagree.

You know what? Look at the numbers. I think they add up nicely.

Research Topic 1: School

So, my school is trying to get us to prepare for Orals and essays. School happens to be a topic. So this post is about my views.

The reasons why I like school? Well, there are many reasons. School gives me the opportunity to make friends and grow and learn with and about them. I also enjoy learning new facts and information about the world around me. I enjoy working with different classmates and learning their strenghts and weaknesses so that I know who I can work with. School is a very good environment to express talents and is an environment which lets students make mistakes and learn from them easily.

However, the long school hours ( even after the recent adjustments to my school’s timetable) and the different social cliques are the down side of school. School is so much like work life. Students can not enjoy the joys of childhood. Students are exposed to the idea of perfection that having  decent childhood is not easy.

The discipline system in my school to be perfectly honest is not what I would consider an effective system. My school believes in the RESPONSIBLE THINKING PROGRAMME. Basically, when I student breaks a rule, they are sent to the RESPONSIBLE THINKING CLASSROOM ( which is air-conditioned!) to do RESPONSIBLE THINKING and hand in their form to the teacher and not have to return to class. They can take their time to ‘think’ about their actions. Which means they can just go back to class at the end of the lesson. This is so ineffective because students take up class time which they wanted to do in the first place. Also I doubt people who misbehave in class deserve air-conditioning. A better solution would be after school detention. It takes up students free time which they will try to avoid happening. Also, the room used shouldn’t be air-conditioned. A disciple system needs to affect them negatively for them to learn.

A vision of students today

The wars we fight

Freedom Writers and the diary of Anne Frank show such inspiration, bravery and courage and everyone of us look at them and go ‘Wow. They went through a lot. They were fighting a war’. Let me ask everyone this. Aren’t we fighting a war? Aren’t we all fighting an undeclaired war? We might not be using violence. We might not be physical in our wars. We are all at war.

Hear me out.

How many of us are going through family problems? How many of us are facing problems at school? At work? Bullies? Gangs?

How many of us are fighting a war with ourselves?

How many of us feel like we have the whole world on our shoulders and at any time, the moment we show weakness, the world would come crashing down?

If you don’t face that, you are either one lucky human being or not human at all. The problem with conflict and war is that it is all around us. We sometimes don’t see it or refuse to see it or we just become the ignorant creatures we can be and ignore it all together. Everyday, we all fight wars. I fight a war everyday. I fight a war with no one else but myself and I know that some annoying person who reads my blog will irritate me tonight or tomorrow. But I really don’t care.

My friend is in one of the most complicated wars I have ever seen. And I don’t even know how to help. She is going through so much and all I do is stand there fighting my own war. She fights a war to be with her family, to protect herself from her family. She fights this war to want to know what being a ‘family’ is all about. It is almost a year since she changed coustody and now I don’t know if I did the right thing insisting she do it. And out of everything else I have to handle, I beat myself up everyday because she is my best friend.

I beat myself everyday and that is one reason for my war. Now, I am fighting for more. I am fighting for respect. Directing my cast and getting respect from them isn’t my problem. Anyone want to know the real reason why I took up this? I wanted the challenge. I wanted the challenge to prove to the adults of my parish that our youths are capable. They say our youths are not active. We aren’t involved. We are respecting our faith. Look. Look at what our youths are putting up. Look. Listen. Listen to their voices. Listen. Listen to the way they praise. Listen to the way they sing. Listen to their words.

Some wars are shared. The respect I want from the adults is what all teenagers want. Don’t believe me? Look in your parish. In your place of worship. In your community. In your neighbourhood. In your city. In your state. LOOK in your COUNTRY. Look in OTHER  countries. Look world wide. Adults believe that anyone who is not working is incapable and hence shouldn’t be given a chance to earn and gain respect. Step in our shoes for a second, will you? You don’t get it. We constantly are told indirectly that we need to prove ourselves. We feel that way. We need to be the best we can be, for our friends, for our families and for the benifit of the whole entire world. We have so much to prove.

People say do your best. It is ok if you fail. Do your best. Be your best for it is all we need. And you do your best and you do fail and you see it in their eyes. The disappointment. The sadness. Everything is gone. And those are the people who believe in you. For those who don’t well, they expect you fail. So you have to make those who believe in you proud and prove those who don’t wrong.

See the war we are fighting….I am fighting.

Freedom Writers.

That is what we are. We should all be given that title.

Target Setting

So, like, my class didn’t do fantastically well for our COMMON TEST WEEK. And ….we might just be the death of our teachers. Now everyone is talking about target setting.

Hmm…

Yeah. I forgot about my target setting.

Sigh. I hate target setting. I want all As. I want  be a genius.

But when I set targets, I have to write out what to give up, what I want to improve on….blah blah blah.

ok. time to get started.

Things I want to improve on

1. MY A MATHS!
2. My physics
3. My chemistry (DEFINATELY)
4. Improving my study methods
5. To keep focused and concentrated

Things I need to sacrifice

1. my social life.
2. my free time
3. my laptop time
4. my tv time
5. my weekends
6. oh man….can i just simply say my whole life?

oh well….

all As…..just remember that!

What it takes to be a leader!

Every time my principal talks to my school, she always mention the words ‘leader’ and ‘inspire’ and she will always throw in the occassional ‘please girls!’ I guess, my the reactions of my school mates, that most find her morning lectures are scholdings. I would beg to differ. Ms Martens ( a principal like this deserves credit doesn’t she?) has granted us our greatest wish we wanted for years. To be treated like an adult, to be treated with some maturity. And by the looks of it, many still think we did something wrong.

I love it when my Principal or Vice-Principal talks to us. I don’t take them as boring lectures about our behaviour or our attitude. Most of the time I don’t see it as we did something wrong. In school, you are suppose to make mistakes and learn from them. No point NOT learning.

Back to my point. My principal always tells us to be leaders. Easy right?WRONG. According to her, to be a leader, you need to inspire, you need to be true, you need to be responsible. You need to have this long list of qualities to be a leader. Let me brea it down which I feel is the most important one.

You need to inspire. You need to motivate the people you are working with to do what you want them to do. You need to inspire for people to do something. Anything. This applies to everything and not just work and school. When you blog about inspiring things and situations and you make someone want to do something, you are a leader.

So go on everyone. Be leaders of the world.

Inspire.