Attending courses, karate, departmental visits, roadshows, swimming, cooking, baking… One word to describe what week seventh is all about-- productivity!
As for the Time Management and Personal Effectiveness Course…
Mr Stuart Lee conducted the course on the basis of a time management system named 'getting things done' (gtd). One of the significant learnings was the first three steps to adopting gtd. The system allowed us to 'capture' any ideas that came to our mind, 'clarified' our tasks orderly, then 'organised' the tasks into several action categories. In other terms, it aids us in managing our time effectively and simply just get things done.
Such a course has enabled me to appreciate the importance of capturing ideas promptly as it reduces the risks of overlooking the tasks. I also became more aware of the significance of reviewing a project on a weekly basis to keep track of progress.
As for Karate training…
We have karate lessons every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at the indoor stadium. Sensei gave us our full karate costumes and our white belt! Yay! It made me feel stronger since I am wearing it. We were finally able to join the group of students in the class!
Our training put emphasis on how to do sparring (basically how to fight with each other), to improve our agility when defending ourselves and attacking an attacker. We also did a recap on Karate movements in our grading syllabus in preparations for our yellow belt examination next week!
As for Departmental Visits and Roadshows…
We resume our visits to different departments in MinDef to au fait with how the organization run as a whole. We visited the Directorate of Development and Work Services (DDWS) and Directorate of Administration and Manpower (DAM).
The roadshow for Pusat Enam Meragang was rescheduled to today. A large number of students attended, filling most of the lecture theatre. During the Q&A session, the students were very enthusiastic and asked many questions regarding the military track and its requirements.
I felt very accomplished because it seemed as though we were able to promote the military track effectively, resulting in the students' strong interest in the military track, as evident during the Q&A session.
As for swimming…
On Tuesday, we had a swimming lesson with Coach Rana at the Officer's Mess pool. We ran in the pool for a few laps as warming up before we started our swimming drills. I personally feel that this program has given me a life-long skill as I believe not every one of us can swim nor float on water (I was not a swimmer back then). I hope to continue to utilize this opportunity and be able to successfully swim with no fear in the future!
Last but not least, cooking lesson!
Today was a public holiday (Nurul al-Quran) but we spent the day productively as Ms Susie conducted a cooking lesson for us scholars! We shopped for ingredients from 10am-1pm and prepared our home-cooked sungkai from 1:30- 6:30 pm. Our menu was chicken soup, Australian brown rice, spaghetti marinara, boiled Hong Kong Kai Lan, mixed vegetables with chicken breast, crispy 'ApamBalik' and peanut buttered cornflakes. Voila!
I really appreciated the session as we learn alongside one another, and procured new skills and experiences when preparing the dishes. It can be of cleaning and segmenting the whole chicken to the techniques in cooking healthily. This will definitely benefit us when we study abroad in a few months' time.
By Lim Chai Tze (Joyce) and Saro Hakim
Edited by Hong Zi Ling
SCRBAF 2016 Scholars
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