Creativity: Piano Lessons

            Today, I played pieces no 13 and 12 from the Bach book. I need to play bot with greater accuracy. For number 13 especially, I need to learn to play the song faster. I again played Humoreske which I still need to practice.

Service: Teaching English Club

            Today was the last meeting of the Creative Writing unit. As we did with the previous unit, for this last meeting Mr. Peter was again present as a guest. For today’s meeting, the participants of the unit had prepared short stories. The aim of this meeting was to share the stories that they had written. Again the desks were set up in a circle, and one by one, those who came read the stories that they had written, or at least parts of the stories, since we had limited time to listen to all the stories. Most of these stories were works in progress, but they all have well developed styles, with a clear premises if the participants chose to finish the stories.

            After each participant shared their story, we went around giving them feedback and also mentioning our impressions of their work. All in all, I was quite impressed by the variety of styles that we saw. Everyone had a distinctive style and there were a variety plots too. There was even a work without a clear plot that more of just brought you through this experience, more like. I feel that the different styles and storylines that we witnessed showcased that really anyone can write if they put themselves to it.

Service: Habitat for Humanity - Fundraising

            Quite a number of things have happened since my last blog post. Firstly, shortly after we came back to school, we began selling the bracelets during lunch and break times. We quickly found out, however, that it was becoming increasingly difficult to find time to fund raise, what with preparing all the products and what not, with the immediately busy schedule of grade 12, and the fact that the majority or our group are involved in the year book committee (not including myself) which has just started up and is at the moment requiring a large amount of work. With things only likely to get busier over the course of the school year with all the IAs, EE, TOK, etc., and based upon the amount of money that we have been able to raise so far, it became quite unlikely for us that we will be able to raise the required 30 million rupiah to finance the building of one complete house, especially keeping in mind that Habitat for Humanity will also have its own deadline regarding when they need to receive the donation by. As such, we have agreed to instead donate just as much money as we manage to put together, and join in an upcoming event held by Habitat for Humanity called “28uild” where we will be helping to build houses at a local community. We will pay for the registration fee for the event partly using the money that we have managed to fundraise, as well as donating our personal funds, donate the remainder of the amount that we managed to fundraise to Habitat for Humanity, for them to use to continue help build houses for the less fortunate throughout the country. In this way, we will still be helping a family (or families) receive better and more adequate housing through Habitat for Humanity, though we have not managed to raise enough to singularly pay for the building of a single house for a single family.

            The “28uild” event that we registered for was held on this day, October the 18^th, 2014. The event was on this date to coincide with the national “young adult” day as a way to ask us the young generation to help make a change. After we arrived at the site of the event, we witnessed a simple opening ceremony that the committee had put together. We then got ready to build. There were many other participants in the event, beside ourselves, and we were all divided into groups that were sent to different building sites. We learned that the building process has already started throughout the nearby area, and more than one building was being built by Habitat for Humanity. These “sites” for the buildings were at various stages of construction, and depending on the site that you are assigned, you work on a different aspect of the building process, from the very initial laying of the foundations, to the final step of painting the walls of the finished buildings. The participants of these events were divided into groups to be distributed to the various building sites. My friends and I decided that we should stick together, and so we went with a building group that was large enough to accommodate all of us that were present.

            The site that our group was assigned to featured two sections/posts that have to do with the earliest step of the building process, which is laying out and raising the foundations of the building. The first section/post was the digging of troughs in a marked area for the foundations of the building. Once the troughs are dug, rocks are placed within the troughs, and cement is mixed and poured into the spaces between the rocks, forming the foundation for the building. At the other post, we were building rectangular metal columns for the building, by attaching metal rectangles to long metal rods using metal wires that we twist with pliers. The long metal rods are placed inside the metal rectangles, so that there is one metal rod inside each corner of the rectangle. The metal rectangles are attached to the metal rods at intervals along the whole length of the metal rods. This therefore creates metal columns. While some attached the metal rectangles to the metal rods, others shape short metal rods into the metal rectangles using tools.

            For myself, I first helped at the second post described above. I worked on fastening the metal rectangles to the long rods. Though there were quite a lot of us (approximately 6 of us I think working together on one column) it was quite a time consuming job, especially at the beginning when we were just getting the hang of the job and were still making a number of mistakes, such as not tightening the wires used to attach the metal rectangles to the rods tight enough, or leaving to much extra wire afterwards. At first, we had to redo a few of the connections that we made.

            There was a lunch break, in which we ate food that we had brought ourselves. After the lunch break, we continued with our work. At first, I picked up where I had left off with the work of creating the metal columns. Later on though, I migrated to the other post, where they were setting up the foundation for the houses, when they were pouring in the cement and helped out there. Personally, I own up that I was not as productive after the lunch break as before it. I also felt that the event ended quite quickly, but I think that that was due to the fact that most of the participants have to travel back quite far from the Habitat for Humanity site back to the place where they met up. We were more fortunate as the location of the site is closer to home for some of us.

            All in all, it was a wonderful experience. It was definitely something new, and really enjoyable I felt. I think that I would enjoy being part of a similar event.

            Aside from going to this event, as we have planned, the money we managed to raise we donated with Habitat for Humanity to aid them as they continue with their work.

Creativity: Piano Lessons

            Today I played the Humoreske once again. I still struggle to play the song smoothly because of the constantly “jumping” I like to call it, left hand. I also need to work on piece 13 by Bach, before I can try no. 12.

Service: Teaching English Club

            Today was the second meeting of the second unit of English Club that we are hosting this year. This second unit is Creative Writing. Though I am not one of the specifically appointed PICs of this unit, I will still be present at meetings as much as possible, and help out where I can. I mostly observed those in charge for this second meeting, as they lead the meeting, and the participation of the people who chose to sign up and join the Creative Writing unit. During this meeting, desks were arranged in a circle, and participants were given a prompt. The prompt today, was the picture of an apple. They then were given time to write a short piece based upon the prompt.

            Towards the end of the meeting, everyone shared what they had wrote based upon the prompt, or the ideas that circulated in their heads triggered by the prompt. We saw a myriad of different approaches, and it was interesting to see the different ideas that blossomed from the simple prompt of an apple. It shows that just starting at something simple, there are a lot of creative ideas that can sprout, and a lot of different approaches and personal styles can be taken.

            I’ve always enjoyed reading, and creative writing is pretty much akin to that. It was a simple meeting that I felt was quite enjoyable, and gives a platform for participants to write creatively and share what they write.