Go green!

Here's a picture of a plant I got about a month ago from Ikea. At the time I bought it, it was really cute; all the leaves were standing uniformly tall like the beansprouts we eat, with mostly identical-sized round leaves.

With some tender loving care from me, it has now grown bigger. Some stalks are standing much taller, some extending to the side beyond the small pot, and the leaves are definitely larger. On Fridays, I will water it a little more, and put them in this conference room behind my office table, where it can get some sunlight during the weekend.

Isn't it ironic to know that this plant, this life, costs only $1.50? That is exactly the same price as the saucer below the pot which I bought together with it. Humans are really filling the world with cheap and useless things, consuming endless resources in the process, while neglecting to treasure those things that are alive and precious.

Congratulations!

...to our Dance and Concert Band for clinching the Silver medal in the SYF competition!

The awards show that we are really improving in our skills through the years, and it's good to know that we are developing ourselves as better dancers/musicians as we become better students too through our CCAs.

I got a silver in the SYF too when I was in the concert band during secondary school. It was a let down considering that my seniors managed that too, but somehow in my heart I knew that perhaps a year is not enough to go from silver to gold. Even I could tell that technically, my band is not able to pull off this difficult piece that our conductor choose for us then.

Nonetheless, I really treasure my experiences with the band, and my secondary school life memory revolves around my CCA's activities mostly. In the years to come after you leave PHSS, I hope you have great memories of being in your CCA too.

Love your CCA! My biggest regret is that I didn't carry on playing the trombone when I was in NYJC; that will have changed my life a lot.

(You can hear my band's choice piece Canto Forma from TRN music.com)

Poetry

I really hope you guys will end up loving poetry as much as I enjoy them!

Truth to tell, poetry is often hard to 'understand' but it will bring rewards to the patient reader who reads it over and over again. Like most good art pieces, it takes a while to learn to appreciate them - after all, there's nothing interesting about something if we 'get' it completely the first time! Simple poetry have a message, good poetry simply reflects on things, so there's really nothing much to 'understand'.

Think of poetry as verbal painting - let the words suggest different pictures to you, and put these pictures together, and let your imagination wander through all these images. Daydream with the words, think of the place, the time, the events described. That's what good poetry do, help you dream and imagine.

Just an example of a poem that I like, the kind that makes me think and dream...

Gift - Czeslaw Milosz

A day so happy.
Fog lifted early, I worked in the garden.
Hummingbirds were stopping over honeysuckle flowers.
There was no thing on Earth that I wanted to possess.
I knew no one worth my envying him.
Whatever evil I had suffered, I forget.
To think that once I was the same man did not embarrass me.
In my body I felt no pain.
When straightening, I see the blue sea and sails.