Age: 14
My interest includes playing soccer, water polo, swimming, and cooking. I also love to watch movies, and my favorite movie is Real Steel as it shows the importance of perseverance and courage through the main characters, Charlie and Max Kenton, where they took on the leading champion of bot-boxing, Zues, with their robot, Atom. The best thing about this movie is that it merges human morals into sci-fi, making it more acceptable and interesting to audiences in many age groups.My favorite series of books is The Power of Five by Anthony Horowitz. It is a story about 5 children who are the "gatekeepers". There was a huge fight between the human race and evil creatures called "the old ones" 1000 years before the story took place, where the 5 gatekeepers won the battle, and trapped the old ones in another dimension, by placing 2 "gates", one in Yorkshire and another in Peru. In the story, the 5 gatekeepers were reborn, and all were teenagers. However, followers of the old ones still exist, and they are trying to open the gates so that the old ones can rule the world again, thus the gatekeepers have to stop them. Personally, I think that action stories are nice to read, especially those by Anthony Horowitz, as he is able to capture one's attention. He does not include too much suspense such that readers become uninterested, but has just the right amount of suspense to grip the readers. Once, I was indulged in one of the books that I kept reading without knowing that it was already 12 midnight. The storyline is also filled with surprises and twists, which just makes me love it even more.
Since young, I have had many aspirations. As all young kids, I aspired to be a firefighter when I was in kindergarten. As I grew up, I became very interested in sports cars and fighter planes, and aspired to be a airplane or sports car designer. Currently, I aspire to be an IT professional or application developer, due to my huge interest in Info-comm.
Though I do not have much thoughts for the future, I do feel both concerned and excited when I step out of school, into the society. I feel concerned about the competition for jobs, especially where we have many foreign talents who we need to outshine, in order for better occupations. However, it is exciting to know that we have to live on our own pay and expenses, instead of relying on our parents for our daily needs, and this means that we have to give our best in whatever we do, in order to maintain a comfortable lifestyle.
In the past two years since I have entered HCI, I have done projects that gave me a totally different experience from projects in my primary school. I have gone through two times of the project competition in HCI. Last year, I teamed up with 3 other friends to invent a shoe sole that could keep the shoe cool while one was running. We found out that when most people run or do sports, our shoe soles tend to get warm, and this would lead to blisters on our feet. Thus, our invention, an extra layer of sole, is able to be kept cool for a long time, reducing the possibility of getting blisters from running or playing sports. Also, it is made of silicon, thus adding to the cushioning of the shoe. The final product we made could be kept at below 15 degrees Celsius for more than 2 hours. However, the judges did not feel that it was good enough, as we did not test it by using it while exercising. This reflects that we have not been thorough enough in the development of our product, though I do feel that this is a good thing, as it shows us our shortcomings, thus it will be easier for us to improve on them.
This year, I was grouped with another 3 friends, and we came up with a resource development project named "Hope Gaia", which encourages the public to save the earth by becoming vegetarians, through our very own step-by-step plan. We also whipped up some vegetarian recipes and posted them on our website. Though we did not manage to clear the finals round, I felt that it was a good effort on our part, and it was a good experience learning how to share the workload equally in our group in order to get the task done on time.
Through these two projects, I have learnt the importance of teamwork because it only takes one person to complete his work late, to delay the whole group. Besides this, I have learnt that creativity is important, especially when we want to impress the judges with our website designs, presentation etc. I feel that these projects really benefit me, and I feel that it is of secondary importance whether we get into finals or grand finals, but it is the learning process which is most important.
One of the things that I am fairly good in is Chinese Calligraphy. Though I am not in the Hwa Chong Chinese Calligraphy club, I still occasionally practice on my own. I started learning Chinese Calligraphy since I was 9, and I have won quite a handful of prizes since then. Some include a 2nd Placing in an International Chinese Calligraphy competition, and a 3rd placing for a National Chinese Calligraphy Competition. Though many people think that Chinese Calligraphy is boring, I feel that it is the satisfaction in completing a piece of writing that excites me, as it shows that at least I am able to keep focused for an hour or more.
These are some of my writings:
Other facts about me:
I am from the Hwa Chong Water Polo team, and I am a goalkeeper. As I am a rather weak goalie, I have to train hard in order to make it to the first team when I play in Sec 4.
I love music, and I am currently learning how to play the guitar. I have recently scored distinction in Grade 1 guitar, but I am aiming to pass grade 5 by the end of Sec 4. I feel that learning how to play a musical instrument and being proficient in it is essential, because playing and making music is a skill which can last us for life, even when we get old, we still have our own music to entertain us. Other than learning how to play the guitar, I have composed a song before, and entered the NEA ECO Challenge with it. Though I did not win anything, I feel it was very satisfactory to be able to compose my very own song.
