Subjectif…

So the four day Victorian Affair kicked off with a pretty interesting day surrounding the topic, “Leadership”.

And yes, it isn’t easy trying to stay awake when it’s eight friggin a.m in the morning and I really rather just snooze for another five minutes, but I must say, the talk by Rina (correct my spelling?), a very inspiring woman who is visually challenged, brought across a meaningful message. While the talk was a tad like a Christian sermon (not that I have anything against it, in fact i enjoyed it that way!), the message was clear: we can ALL be leaders. What’s so cool about the speaker is that she’s blind, but she leads groups on community trips to Vietnam, meets the Prime Minister, argues for traffic concessions for the disabled and the “list-of-wonders-Rina-can-do” goes on. (On an totally unrelated note, she looks like she is probably 30-40 years old, but she shocked us by telling us she is really 53.)

WOAH.

While some of us weren’t taking the talk too seriously, I think the majority of us were truly impressed and definitely inspired. So, here’s to any of you who are down and out and feel like you would never be a
“somebody” or a “leader”: if someone with circumstances like Rina’s is able to beat the odds, then so can you!

Speaking about beating the odds, I have a major klutzy gene and today, I’m proud to say I managed to master the running man move from the flash mob dance (though i probably still look like a crazed woman having some space-time problems) Don’t you guys just wonder how those dancers make those “superman, superman” moves look so absolutely energetic and cool, while the rest of us less-talented individuals struggle to look less alike that orang utan stretching out to get a banana from the tree to-the-left? Nonetheless, I think the flash mob is going to be one of a kind.

Who else is looking forward to DAY 4?

Tell us how excited you guys are about The Victorian Affair by leaving a comment below!

I love this job. Really! Its naise.

But alas, like everything else, there are occupational hazards associated with doing this too.

(1) We’re Ordinary People

The average Subjectif Writer (SW) has a small to mid-size circle of friends that he or she is close to. This makes it a little difficult to write articles sometimes, because it is imperative that the subject matter is something that the larger school population can relate to.

(2) We have short attention spans

SWs think of ideas for many articles, only to scrape them midway through composition due to writer’s block. Its kind of like writing many screwed GP essays, or like writing notes to people that you never get the gumption to send.

This writer feels like that last line just revealed some going-ons in this writer’s personal life. Btw, this is another occupational hazard.

(3) The “speed-of-transmission” problem

We try not to have them. But sometimes, factual errors show up in our articles, and if not rectified quickly enough, many lay eyes on them.

Ultimately, dear reader, we must tell you that it is intimidating writing for the massive school population. However, we believe in the power of words and we hope that our life experiences, observations and insight coupled with our words will give you some personal joy and value out of our articles.

- A Subjectif Writer

According to our dearest wikipedia, “Agape” the Greek word, translated into English is known as “Love”. Yes, us the IP1s had a fun-filled and lovely week last week.

On Monday, we went to East Coast Park where we kickstarted the events of Agape week. The theme was “Know Thyself” and we sat along the beach reading stories in our Agape booklet. The story “Realer than You” by Christopher Barzak really touched my heart. It was about this boy, Elijah from America having to migrate to Japan and how he was unable to adapt. A series of events actually happened and in order not to spoil the story I shall not tell you the ending!!

From the story, I learnt that people put on masks to protect themselves or to make themselves more popular or for other reasons. This makes them very “fake” and the person would most likely be uncomfortable, not being able to be his/her true self. One should always be comfortable with the image/personality you present to others or there may be dire consequences like suicide. This session allowed us to reflect on ourselves, whether we put on masks and whether we are comfortable with ourselves.

Then we had a talk by Ms Dilys from Eka training on “Beauty WithIn and WithOut” where she told us about inner and external beauty. People can be easily made beautiful externally, through means like make-up, digital imaging and plastic surgery. External beauty may be important but isn’t internal beauty of greater significance? What we see may not be the truth and it is most important to be happy.

Following that,  we went to Plaza Sing for our <<1911>> movie. The whole theatre was filled with IP1s and IP2s. The movie was about the revolution in China in 1911, and Dr Sun Yat Sen’s contributions. It was quite a good movie and those who are interested in China history should go catch it!

On Tuesday and Wednesday, we had workshops on “Blood Ties”, “5 Love Languages” and Agape forum. For the “Blood Ties” workshop, we learnt that minor arguments can strain relationships and different parents have different ways of controlling and nurturing their children. The “I” message is useful when you want to express your emotions without using “you” which can be quite accusing.

Do you know about the 5 love languages? If yes good for you, if no the 5 love languages are ways that we show our love or feel loved. The 5 love languages are 1. Quality time 2. Words of Affirmation 3. Acts of service 4. Gifts 5. Touch (non-intimate). It is good to find out your love language and others’, so you will know how to show your love for others.

We also had a talk on image mastery by Ms Jill Lowe. She taught us about the three stages of beauty: lusting beauty, lingering beauty and lasting beauty. Of course lasting beauty is the best stage of all and we also learnt how our hair, footwork, clothes style and colour affect our image and how people see us. It was a really interesting session as we got to know more about fashion trends and listen to the experienced Ms Lowe and her life events.

Thursday must have been everyone’s favourite day. We all went to Cedar Girls’ School to cook! The dishes cooked were seafood pasta with marinara sauce, tomato and mozarella lasagne, corn and yellow pepper bisque and chocolate fondant! Sounds very delicious doesn’t it? I bet everyone loved the chocolate fondants the most! Of course there was learning through the process too! We had to work in sixes to prepare the dishes. This allowed us to experience teamwork with people from different classes with it not in the project work context. After the cooking session in Cedar, we had a “movie with friends” session where we went to watch movies with our friends!

Finally came the last day and we were all quite sad that Agape week was ending and next would be the return of scripts. Oh the horror! The girls and guys each had a session on growing up, into women and men.

Mrs Chua used various artistes’ examples like Selena Gomez and Lindsay Lohan etc to show us the transition of a girl to a woman and how the metamorphosis may go wrong somewhere and instead of a butterfly, a moth is created. She also let us listen to a very very very old song by Britney Spears “I’m not a girl, not yet a woman”. Ms Chua gave us useful advice and I especially found the survey through sms at the end of the session very cool.

Agape week may have ended but I’m sure most of us have benefited from the various talks and workshops. It has been a really enriching week and now it is time to prepare for VIP Symposium 2011!

Here is the video I\’m not a girl, not yet a woman (click on the link) Enjoy!

With the launch of the new iPhone 4s, you should have heard of the revolutionary, game changing software that is Siri.

And what exactly is Siri?

According to Apple, Siri is an intelligent personal assistant that helps you get things done. It’s revolutionary, and no one has done it before.

ORLY?

Really Apple?

Now where have I seen Siri before…..?

It all seems so familiar!

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VS

Oh damn, Google did that with Voice Search huh…

And have I mentioned the Notification Centre?

Such a piece of work! Such innovation! You’ve really outdone yourself Apple!

Oh wait.

Oh. Oh right they didn’t invent that either.

But hey, who cares right? Apple totally revolutionized the camera on the iPhone 4s!

IT’S 8 FREAKING MEGAPIXELS! IMAGINE THAT!

vs

(Yeah right you can totally tell the difference between the two pictures. See if you can guess which one is the 8 megapixel one, and which is the 5 megapixel one!)

But wait what about that phone that came out not long ago…. That Korean phone…

Right, the Samsung Galaxy S2. 8.1 megapixel camera.

(In case you were wondering, here’s how a photo taken with the SGS2 looks like.)

You still can’t tell the difference can you?

*Okay I’m running out of options to justify my purchase of an iPhone 4S.

Whatever man, Apple could sell anything with and I in front of it and millions would still buy it.

Case closed.