Date: 31 October 2009
Time: 8:00AM - 4:30PM
Venue: CR 111 & Asian Civilization Museum

Selvie's Reflections
-ABSENT-

Zhi Lin's Reflections
We began our workshop with some reflection- who, what, where, when, why, how. It struck upon me that i only have this little amount of knowledge of yunnan, and it's only two weeks away before taking the flight there. Urgency! for me, i realise that i have to take action. to know more about a little background information first then can we know more and learn more effectively :)

Then came more active session, whereby we had to voice out our opinions when questions were flashed on the screen. Like, "education project is the most important to bring the people out of the poverty cycle." (something along that line) and i was really shocked to see the difference in our team. We all have our strong point of view and hardly we can change one another's opinion. this was so evident when no one or maybe one changed his or her sides. then again, we really need to live with our differences in order to keep the harmony. moreover, the window glass, tainted window and mirror really made me think. how much do we often reflect upon ourselves? and not just by infering and describing? much more needed to be learnt i guess.

Another crux of the session in school today is to get out of school for our photo essay! it was really enjoyable. but when my rainbow group managed to get the photos based on "love" we forgot to ask for the truth. because what we typed in the essay was what we assumed. and i realised we must really plan and think first before executing. this is much more effective, especially with a clear goal in mind. :)

the musuem ended our SL workshop for today! singapore was a different country to me when i was in the museum. i didnt know singapore river was once ued for training. maybe i did learn that before but it was not that ingrained in my mind. i was exposed to all the past to all that i've never known. However, 20 minutes in each museum is never enough. What matters most is that we have to think and look things at different perspectives- the story behind each artefact etcetc.

A fruitful day today! :)

Ashlene's Reflections
I was so excited by the PHOTO ESSAY! (Of course not the one we had today as a trail at the hawker center opposite -.-)

Just that I realized how much interesting things we will be seeing in Yunnan when the Bedok hawker center is already THAT fascinating. However I was quite worried by our choice of topic, which is “passion”, ‘coz when we asked “What’s your passion? / What are you passionate about?” Almost ALL of the people would give us blank stares and mumbled to themselves, “Hmmmmm…passion…” and that was when we had to come in and cue them, or give them some possible suggestions. The other problem was that we couldn’t possibly show in on a photograph when their passion happened to be something that they were not doing at the moment, so we ended up taking pictures of them talking (and that was completely meaningless).

The photos that we are going to take in Yunnan should be informative, should be able to tell something that people do not know about them, and not pictures of villagers talking. D: I don’t know, but I guess we got to sit down as a group and discuss about the photo essay again ‘coz it’s not an everyday’s thing that we can go to some China village to take picture, I really don’t want to waste this chance.

We went to the Asian Civilization Museum in the afternoon to know more about the Chinese/Islamic cultures that is prevalent in the place that we are going to.

It has been a while since I last visited any museum and it was really great to get back there again. When I looked at those mysterious artifacts emitting a unique golden aura under the dim lights, I like to think about all the history it has witnessed. Who made them? Why they made them? For whom? Who looked/touched/used it before? It was really intriguing. But of course, strong realization of my own ignorant would then follow.

On the overall, I really enjoyed the workshop and I’m not saying this because this is a reflection or what, I really liked it ‘coz I felt I’ve learnt something, though it was hard to name it. You know the kind of feeling what you finished watching “The last lecture” or reading “Tuesdays with Morrie”? Yeah, that’s how I felt. Close enough.

Shir Lin's Reflections
Punctuality, and it tells quite a lot about us and our attitude. Just having almost the entire team late is not exactly the best thing to have, especially when our trip is just two weeks plus away. It is important to change now, and all it requires is just that little extra effort from us.
We continued with activities about the different viewpoints. I feel that this exposes us to different viewpoints and also teaches us to accept the views of others, enabling us to work together better in the future and in this case, the trip. We carried out our photoessay activity and my group chose “love” as our theme. We went around taking pictures that we think reflect our theme and worked on it. We made a mistake of not talking to the people about how they were really feeling at that point of time and to know about their own perspective. Instead, we captioned the pictures with what we think they are feeling, which is not accurate. I feel that it does not really matter to make a mistake, as long as we learn from it and actually talk to the people in Yunnan when we are doing the photoessay. I realized it’s not easy to finish the photoessay in just a short period of time because there’s a lot other things that we need to ponder over and take time to observe.
The ACM trip was to enable us to learn more about the Islam, Singapore and Chinese culture. Our first stop was the Singapore gallery. The exhibition showed how lives in the past were like, how Singapore was found etc. The Islam gallery exhibited a lot of albums on Arabic writings. I found out that they put a lot emphasis on their religion, sculptures, Arabic writings, even to the type of writing materials used. At the China gallery, I learned a lot more about the different meanings behind the porcelain sculptures and watched a video on the process of making one. It actually takes quite a lot of effort to produce one, hence perseverance is important here, and since most of the things are handmade, just a small error in any of the process will ruin the entire artpiece. We were also required to choose an artifact and ask three questions about it. And through these questions, I realized that there can be a lot of meanings behind these simple artifacts.

Jin Yi's Reflections

The day was well spent although it started with a scolding.

 

Learnt a lot when we were asked questions and had to choose whether our answer was a Yes, No or Maybe. Honestly, such questions never came to me until the teachers asked us. It was more like a wake up call. How little I understood initially about the whole SL trip. It kinda pushed me to think more deeply.. how we should consider the consequences of whatever we do and so on. Also, it enables me to understand that different people will inevitably have different opinions and perspectives. But no matter how different it is, we have to live with it and stay together as a team.

 

After which there was some quizzes for all the 3 groups. This session was to help us understand Singapore more and also be prepared to know what we want to learn from the Yunnan trip. I guess its important to have a mind knowing exactly what you want to achieve after this trip because people always tend to get drifted away from their goals.. just like how in life setbacks could pull you into the abyss of ignorance. And you forget the direction you are supposed to be moving towards to. Perhaps we really have to keep reminding ourselves and not let the same mistake repeat again.

 

Attempted a short photo essay with my group. It was not easy. Sooooooooo many things to consider. Our group focused on Passion. This was a hard topic because not many people understand what passion really is, or perhaps many people define passion differently. Many associated money with passion. I guess this is more like a need which drives them into thinking that they have the ‘passion’ to earn more money. Overall, it’s just hard to do. However, it may be different if we were to do such topic in Yunnan because they have a different lifestyle compared to ours. I am looking forward to seeing their responses. =)

 

Lastly, we went for a visit at ACM. This was a completely different experience when visiting a museum. We were forced to think more, to ask more questions and share our different views in things. We were asked to link an adjective which we came up for our photoessay to a display in the museum and we were asked to ask 3 questions.

 

Haha obviously we had to squeeze our brain juices to come up with the questions and to choose specifically what we want to use to link our adjective. It was not an easy task but it kept you thinking and wanting to learn more. I guess this is the mindset we should have when we embark on this trip. To learn more. To want to know more even if there may not have an answer. It’s a spirit. A wonder that so many questions can be asked just from a very simple thing. Getting answers that perhaps may not be satisfying. And then the hunger to know more continues to spur us on to find out…
That’s all for this post. Off to meet my pw mates for op practice

Izzah's Reflections
I initially had been wondering what we were going to the museum for; thinking that we were going there to study the heritage of Yunnan to better familiarize ourselves with the place. However, it surprises me, now that I look back, at how the visit to the museum was more than just a visit. By choosing the artefacts and explaining our choices, different topics were discussed with even more in depth (for my group at least) and it taught me several good lessons.
But before that, the photo journal section was an enriching part of the session. I have never done a photo journal before this and hence, was unsure of how to do it. Luckily, we were doing it as a team so it was not so bad. But, even as a group, we still got the way of doing a photo journal wrong as we did not discuss about this and took it that it would come naturally- since we thought that we just have to put what the people in our pictures have said in the captions of the photo + all the rush that we were in, we were unable to come up with something better. However it is from our mistake that we have learnt how to do a photo journal in the proper way; capturing the essence of our photos through the captions that tell the story of the people in the photos. Hence to do this right, we therefore have to interact with the people beforehand before we are able to really connect the picture with our captions. As simple as the task may seem, it actually involves a lot more preparation work.
Going back to the start of the meeting, reminders came (hopefully not to late) that made us aware of how urgent the situation is given the closeness of the date for take-off for the trip. This might not have been discussed very much by us as a team but I feel that many of us have taken this opportunity of being on the team as if it is a given. We must remember the initial stages of going through the interview and how much we had wanted to be on the team at the start of the year. By keeping this in mind, we can then better push ourselves and do the best for the team by having a sense of urgency and work better as a team.
Moving on, the trip to the museum was especially refreshing as my personal trips to museums before this were never this meaningful. Many would just go to the museum, look at artefacts and displays in awe, and then go home. But for this particular visit, I had personally learnt a lot more.
Firstly, the general lesson learnt, or reinforced in me rather, was that different people have different views and takes on certain issues and it is important for us to recognize this fact and be broad-minded as well as accommodating to others because ultimately, not everyone can agree with one another but they must then agree to disagree. This is especially applicable to us since we will be visiting a foreign land whereby certain practices may be different from those in Singapore and we learn to respect the people and their practices despite the differences. I feel that by being Singaporeans in itself, we are rather capable in this aspect as we are already exposed to different cultures and practices and are quite well-trained in terms of being able to respect others despite our differences.
Secondly, an important lesson was that sometimes people need reminders to remind them of who they are and their purpose for being where they are. For example, as I looked through the Islam gallery, I found that I was still very much in awe of my religion and realized how much I still did not know about my religion despite being a Muslim for 17 years! And that sort of reminded me that in the process of hectic lifestyle- with school and juggling the various commitments, what keeps me going is God and I have to be thankful to Him and do my duties to Him faithfully.
Another thing was if knowing or showing is more important. For example, if you know very well that filial piety is very important but you do not show it, then what is the point? In this case, I personally believe that showing is therefore more important as filial piety is actually practiced and hence, can serve as a model for the younger generations. However, at times, taking a step back and not showing what you know would benefit you more. As a general example, if you know how to solve a certain problem and instead of spoon-feeding a group an telling them how to solve the problem, just by taking a step back and allowing them to tackle the problem on their own, you may find that the group has shown you there are indeed many more ways of tackling the problem than what you already know.
Similarly, certain things that we thought had only one perspective to them could actually be viewed in different ways. In the museum, some of us thought that being content was an absolute situation to be in i.e. when we are content, it means that we have everything that we have ever wanted and therefore are happy. But others have actually viewed it differently in the sense that you can be content without having all that you want by acknowledging the fact that you can never get all that you want as human’s wants are never ending. By acknowledging this fact, you can then choose to be content with whatever you have because your wants are not necessarily needed.
In short, perspective was the main issue in this session and it has certainly taught my group-Onion- a great deal through the various activities of the day. It is then not enough to only bring this with us to Yunnan but also to apply it in our everyday lives as such lessons are important in life skills.

Fiona's Reflections

Jia Ming's Reflections
During the first reflection, we learnt the different perspectives of people. Some people are visual, analytic and reflective attitudes toward objects. this is important for us to know because we need to understand if our opinions clash. Rather than convince each other which opinion is superior, we need to understand that all the team members have to depend on each other, and if we have to spend time ironing out our misunderstandings, we will be ineffective and inefficient as a team.

Furthermore, the variety of opinions is useful for the generation of ideas and strategies in Yunnan. For example, different opinions are able to be considered, and between the different perspectives, we can come up with better and stronger programmes and contingency plans within the Yunnan trip.

At ACM, I definitely saw the Chinese culture from a different perspective. We saw the rich heritage of China (spanning more than 5000 years), and in contrast to the Singapore gallery, which was a mere few exhibits, we can see the major differences between the two nations: China has a far more rich heritage, deep culture and advanced philosophy. Hence, rather than entering that nation as 'superiors generating change', we definitely cannot upkeep this attitude. We should see it that our trip to China is into a nation of much to teach up, and we need to be humble in our guest country.

During the Islam exhibit, I learnt the base of that religion. Islam itself means 'peace', and hence, the current media stereotype and biasness as well as racism, we need to remember that we should not judge a religion based on its violent extremists, rather, on the true merits of its philosophy and teachings. This is important for our Yunnan trip as we not only need to understand their cultures and respect them in Yunnan, a Islamic majority, we also need to understand that religion affects not only their tradition, but their general way of life - by finding balance and peace in their actions, and seek refuge from sin and be righteous in their actions.

While I am not a man of religion, being an Atheist, I learnt that today, when in Yunnan, I will respect the Islamic philosophy, because its is meritorious and definitely its teachers and guide us to be better people. The project has definitely been beneficial to me, holistic in its ways, through mindsets to even being empowered by the many experiences I've been through throughout the Yunnan Experience.