life is simple: eat, sleep and play water polo

CHILDREN IN THE DARKNESS

The poem reflects on how the lives of children were during the Vietnam War. The children live in darkness and nobody teaches them how to fight or study. The children don’t have a chance to study and learn and they have no freedom. The children live in war every day, fleeing from attacks and waiting for their doomsday.

The poem is written at a soldier’s point of view, the soldier was in during the war and he was sitting in my hotel room in Saigon just before Christmas, he looked at the TV and the news was on. I did not know what the news reader was saying but in the background was a photo of a small boy with a helmet and an automatic rifle. The soldier felt that the children was mistreated and they have no freedom.

The situation and setting is during the war period when everyone is afraid and tries to escape from getting killed in the war. There is darkness everywhere and no freedom.

The language used in the poem is repetition and metaphors; I find this poem disturbing as the children in the poem have lost freedom and are escaping from death during the war. The children do not have a chance to study or be able to defend themselves.

The Nationals have started! Below are the results for the three games I have played:
HCI-ACSI 3-8
HCI-ACS Barker 11-3
HCI-Outram Sec 15-0
We lost to ACSI but won the other two games. Every game we win gives us 3 points on the ranking board and so far, ACSI tops the ranking board with 9 points and HCI and RI are tied with 6 points both. This means that the match against RI on this coming Monday is the most important match for us to advance to the finals because if we defeat RI, we will have 3 more points than them and be the second place on the ranking board, therefore allowing us to go to the finals. However if we get defeated by RI, we can only settle for a third place for this competiton. RI is a very strong opponent and their standards are on par with us. However, we have only realised that after RI played a few matches and the score was similar to ours when we played against the same teams. I feel that the RI team does not have sportsmanship because when they played a friendly match against us last time, we owned them 15-3 and now, they seem like they have improved a lot. The actual fact is that RI doesn't put in the first team and play their best during friendly matches so that their opponents would underestimate them, and then during the Nationals, they would surprise everyone by performing very well. In my opinion, this is certainly lacking integrity to some extent but I have confidence that we are going to defeat them.

I have finished the multiple intelligence test and my two highest scores are intrapersonal and naturalist. I feel that this is very accurate as I know myself very well and I like the nature. Also, I am not as good in other things like linguistic and logical because my mind is slow and can't process information that well.

Naturalist: a. Do a research on the natural habitat of mockingbirds. In your research, include the kind of flora and fauna you think exist in Maycomb and explain why the mockingbirds live in Maycomb.

Year-round the Northern Mockingbird is found in areas with open ground and with shrubby vegetation like hedges, fruiting bushes, and thickets. When foraging on the ground, it prefers grassy areas, rather than bare spots. Common places to find Northern Mockingbirds include parkland, cultivated land, suburban areas and in second growth habitat at low elevations. I think there are shrubs, trees and berries in Maycomb. The mockingbirds live in Maycomb because there are shrubs and trees for them to lay nests in and there are grasses on the ground for them to forage food from. Maycomb may also have some berries that the mockingbirds like to eat.

Intrapersonal: Who would you want to be friends with in the novel? Explain.

I would want to be friends with Jem and Scout. It is because they are fun-loving and I would have a great time being around with them. They are also adventurous and my life would not be boring if I become friends with them.

Wow... I can't believe how fast time pasts. I am going to play my first match against ASCI on this coming Tuesday. I feel very excited because the first match would already determine whether or not we get our gold medal during the finals. ASCI is very strong this year and the chance for us to win them is not very big. However, there is still quite some chance that we will win them even though they are very strong and fast compared to us. Even if we don't win them, I am sure that we would score more than the last time when we played against them (the score was 10-0, they won).
I can see myself improving and getting more and more ready for them but a lot of things are bothering me. I just can't concentrate well enough on games against seniors because I kept remembering and thinking about the facts that my parents are forcing me to quit water polo. Words cannot describe my feelings... I just hope that when I play against ASCI on Tuesday, I will be able to momentarily forget about this.

Another thing I am talking about today would be me choosing number 10 as my cap number. Recently, captain Darren told us to choose our own cap numbers and I chose number 10 without hesitation. The reason is because the main character in the manga 'Slamdunk', Sakuragi Hanamichi, inspired me a lot. He used to be one of the lousiest player on the school basketball team and despite this fact, he worked hard and trained himself to be one the the best players on the team. I chose number 10 because I want to be just like him. I used to be one of the lousiest on the team and now, I STILL AM. Thus, I hope that I can improve more and get on par with the first team players.

I went for the training on last Friday which was the Chinese New Year clelebrations and not many people attended it. After all, it was the Chinese New Year and they needed to go back to their primary schools to visit their teachers.

Don't know if I should say this but when Tai Joum saw me waiting for training to start, he told me something like he admires my resilience and determination and told me to keep it up and work hard. He certainly looked at this matter seriously and was constantly cursing specific people that did not come for training...

Anyway, during the training, we did centre forward drills and another drill in which you have to drive in with defender behind and change direction and take the ball or something like that. After that, the A Div and the alumni came and we played a game in which the A Div was in one team and all the other players were in the other team. I was not as confident as Dexter or Samuel so I didn't play the game at all...

I had a friendly match with Outram Secondary School today and it was quite enriching. The coach said that this game is to help us understand new stuff and realise what we are really doing because the pace of the game is slow, no offence though. I hoped to score at least 2 or 3 goals but in the end, I only scored one. It is nothing to be sad about though, because some of my scoring opportunities failed because of miss-pass from teammates.

From this game, I learnt that:
-I should always drive and try to get the ball and score, no matter how tired I am.
-I must be selfish in scoring goals.
-The team cannot freeze, someone has got to drive in.
-EVEN THE LOUSIEST PLAYER CAN SCORE SO GIVE HIM A CHANCE.

My coach has just said that Outram Secondary School wants to come down and have a friendly match with us! I feel that this will be rewarding for both of us because we are not getting enough match exposure yet and this game will certainly help us gain more experience. However, I feel that we should not only play friendly matches when it is near the Nationals. Instead, we should play friendly matches regularly during non-competition season to gain experience which we all lack.