Before December

December. Apparently it is supposed to mean something to me. It is part of my life after all, 31 days of it. Maybe something meaningful is going to happen but most likely not. Then why does it have to mean so much? November, this month, happens to be my internal exam. I need to see where I am academically and then use this December to do the work. To prepare for IGCSE. That is what is in most student's mind right now. Use this month to rigorously build the mental power, fill the memory palaces, and most of all not missing important details. 

However, this is where it gets interesting. We are so self-centered. This December crisis from all over the world that had been dragging on for years is still continuing. The Boko Haram cases and the girls that we all forgot about. The ISIS recruitments that is still happening all over the world. I do not want to talk about politics so I will not mention the impact of Donald Trump's success in the U.S.A election. Moreover, the on-going denial and refusal to fight global warming as some people still thinks it is a hoax. The deforestations and poisoning of our environments.

There are so many problems, yet no answers or even if there is, corporations would do their finest to undermine anything that does not profit them. For example, the 3 million tons of oil spills in the Niger Delta had devastated local people, destroyed their well-being, blundered the children's education, no livelihood in the area. Where was the government in all this? Apparently, they are too filled with Shell's informants to pass anything forward to save the people. They even harassed local people that have tried to use their free speech with their own military units.

Our world seems to be getting worse everyday. It is hard to find a glimmer of light these days. We hope for the best but we do not prepare for the worst. After looking at all these problems and cannot find a solution, I feel rather obsolete. These problems are all around us but we pretend to be ignorant as ignorant is bliss. While writing this I attempt to really find something to restore my hope in humanities and I found the glimmer of lights. But do you know what happened to those glimmers? Overcame by shadows. The complete and absolute control that people with power has over us is unimaginably huge. When you look at all those glimmers, you can even say that the free will is an illusion. All those people with ideas but no power. August had shown me that those glimmers are hopeless. However, I also notice something. Something that is rather obvious but worth mentioning all the same. Those glimmers are all separated. The dispersion of light all over the shadow, the shine brightly for a few second then was extinguished. They are like sparks rather. Those over powering shadow will put out any material that the spark is trying to light before it becomes a problem for them. I know this personally since I am Cambodian. Cambodia had been under one single powerful political party for a long time and now there is finally a competitor. In August, a Cambodian political analyst: Kem Ley who is trying to speak out had been assassinated. In gas station where there was security camera all over the place but somehow the public never gets to review it to its fullest extent. The murderer's name just happened to be Choub Somlab which mean "meet and kill" in Khmer. These all just seem too fishy and while both sides had motives to carry out to assassination it is really hard to determine which one did it. However, finding out who did it is not a problem but the main problem is to get every citizens of to unite and fight against oppression. To get everyone to march the street and fight for the people. We need to make Kem Ley's death meaningful. This is a turning point. We need a clean government.

This December has to be a December of actions. Either you fight your way for free speech or modifying your lifestyle to release less carbon dioxide, it does not matter how you do it but it needs to be done. For the future of next generations we need to do something. We can not just stand still and be ignorant while everything else is going to hell. My life alone maybe obsolete but a group of people's lives matter. We need to stand strong and fight for our world.

By Sewen Thy

P.S. Get better soon Mr. Raisdana!!

Position Paper Bend II

3 Tampines Street 73

Singapore 528705

(+65) 810 44 029

Mr. Declan MacFadden

Chair of The UWCSEA Foundation




Dear Mr. Declan MacFadden,


           My name is Sewen Thy, I am one of the many Cambodian scholars that started at United World College of South-East Asia(UWCSEA) as a profound result of The Foundation effort. As of now, the Grade 8 students at UWCSEA are discussing child soldiers and as you may be aware almost 19 million children around the world are ex-soldiers. Some are receiving the rehabilitation they deserve but some are not. UWCSEA is a really wonderful, and loving school that can become a really effective and powerful rehabilitation centre that will transform a fierce soldier into a loving educated child. Thus I propose to the Foundation to take in scholars that were child soldiers and rehabilitate them here as they deserve the rehabilitation.

           I think you should know that these children do not know what they are doing. Each time a war is started, they don’t even have a choice whether to join or not. They are being forcefully recruited. If you’ve read Ishmael Beah’s “A Long Way Gone” you wouldn’t miss his description of how the rebels are recruiting him. They have patrols all over the area and when they find children, they would pick some of them to recruit and initiate them by killing those who weren’t chosen as their reason would be “We are going to initiate all of you by killing these people in front of you. We have to do this to show you blood and make you strong. You’ll never see any of these people again, unless you believe in life after death.” (excerpt from page 34). This clearly suggests that they have to go through a traumatic experience already before they are even recruited. Since they’ve already have a taste of killing and believe the rebels persuasion that there are no consequences of doing so but there will be consequences if they don’t do it; they will make a forceful and uneducated choice to join the force.

           It’s easy to think that every child soldier knows what they are doing, opposing to my first argument, as there are examples such as Omar Khadr, who is “the Al-Qaeda child soldier” and Ishmael was also promoted to a squad leader or “junior lieutenant” that suggest that they start innocently but then later become more knowledgeable but still continue in what they were doing and becoming a higher rank officer. Nevertheless, we shouldn’t miss the point that Ishmael stated in his book, implicitly, after being rehabilitated that he regretted it and when the war hit Freetown city, “Mohamed[his friend] and I[Ishmael] looked at each other: “Not again.” (excerpt from page 202) which clearly indicates that he never wants to go to war again. Khadr has never been rehabilitated either so how can we know if he won’t become like Ishmael? To be fair, according to rescue.org, “Since 1999, the IRC's Child Protection Program in Sierra Leone has helped facilitate disarmament and demobilization of some 2,000 child combatants, and provided them with emergency aid in our Interim Care Centers.To date, we have successfully traced and reunified 1,157 of these children and adolescents with their families and helped them with the difficult process of adjusting to life in their communities.” This also clearly suggest that at least half of the child soldiers are rehabilitated and being sent back to civilization with their family. It’s just a matter of giving them the opportunity and time to be rehabilitated.

           Subsequently, most people argue that not all of the child soldiers are being forcefully recruited or just don’t have a choice. While it might be true that many child soldiers have other reasons to join the army. To be fair even the UNICEF factsheet reveals that some children join the military in order to, “seek revenge for violence enacted against them or their families.” There is a point to be made that there are a lot of other factors involving the children choosing process, as the UNICEF factsheet also explained that “others are driven to join by poverty, abuse and discrimination.” This evidence suggest that not only they are living in dangerous situation just because of gunshots but they are in poverty so if they don’t join the force they’ll starve to death, and not just the rebels are involved in recruiting children, governments are too, thus if the rebels discriminated against them, or hurt their family, who wouldn’t want to join the government to stop the rebels? They think they are doing it for a good cause and you can’t blame a child brian to pick that choice as according to my first argument.

           On top of that, when it is peaceful, we all talk a lot about the abuse of children, child abuser or child labour recruiters, etc... are to face trial; even here in UWCSEA no teachers will ever hurt a student either physically or mentally, but why are we not considering that fact when it is wartime, children are being forced to serve the military, force to kill their own family, drugged them... these are forms of abuses,physically and mentally, and labour of children during wartime and yet we are only focusing on the part where they are killing because they have to for their own survival. On the contrary, people often argue that we should not look at it that way, they are killers, whether they are forced or not, imagine if you are the victim and that child just killed your whole family and burn down your house, everything you’ve ever worked for gone at the hand of a child, wouldn’t you want justice for yourself, would you just let that person go just because it’s a child? While this maybe true, but when you look at this who is the victim here? Just the your family or is it both your family and the child? Who is the perpetrator here? The child or the commander? Would the child face death if he/she didn’t kill your family? They never had a choice.

           After seeing all of my reasoning, I hope that you will understand that child soldiers can be and should be rehabilitated, their conscience is hard to change but it can be changed by meeting the right person and that right person is us. Therefore, I ask you to give them a chance to change back from a fierce soldier to loving child of a society that accept them and doesn’t discriminate against them.


Thank you,

Sincerely,
Sewen Thy

From Shallow Thoughts to Critical Thinking

Hiding. Thinking. Analyzing. Strategizing. Ambushing. Killing. Don’t we all do that nowaday? Everyone play video games. From “Call of Duty” to “Leauge of Legends”, hundreds of brilliant developers are piling up these video games on the market. However, just playing it virtually doesn’t seem to fit our need, thus comes the creation of LARP(Live Action Role Playing Game): Laser Tag, Paintball, Slap game, etc… These games simulated violence into the real world but in a physically non-harmful way. However, since it’s a video game simulated event, competitiveness are also being simulated; therefore, everyone want to stay alive and win thus diverting them from the shallow, depthless thought into a more critical, analytical thinking, that can make them a winner.

According to “The New Yorker” article, a strategical role-playing game called “Killer” has been an important end of year ritual for a school: St. Ann’s. “Initially, each team… the school becomes a souk of intelligence-gathering and disinformation.” By having this complicated information from each source, it’s really hard for any player to distinguished from the reliable information; thus, in order to acquire the legitimate details, each players must think critically about their sources and therefore, helping them to hone their skill.

In addition, one of the prospective participants, Willis Cohen, had taken his critical thinking and analyzing skills to the next level. The prodigious team that tried to kill Cohen came up with a strategy “The idea was to use a cell phone to call the Cohen’s landline… using Dominic’s [his teammate] Caller I.D. … The call went through. But Cohen’s mom … had been tipped off.” This suggests that Cohen had brilliantly analyzed his enemy team, made an educated guess of their next move, and came up with a backup strategy before they could strike and slipped through his enemy undetected.

“[Willis Cohen] (he) woke up and, as usual, hopped a neighbor’s fence and exited through a neighbor’s house. He caught a livery cab on Amity Street and headed north to Heights. He knew that he was in trouble when his driver refused to raise the windows.” Likewise, this indicate that the Gaisford team had nit-pickingly studied and analyzed their prey habit. They knew exactly what time Cohen will catch a cab thus they cooperated with a cab driver and got the opportunity to take down Cohen. It would take high level of intelligence and critically thinking skill for anybody to develop such a plan and execute it well like they did.

Now some might argue that this is the kind of training that sociopath/psychopath need as it is violent and they can hone their critical thinking skill which undoubtedly will cause trouble for us in the future and if they went into committing the “dark digital fantasy” they would indeed be shallow thinker because they allegedly think that they can run from the police. While this maybe true, there is no real proof that the police found anything relating to the connection between criminal and video game. Plus, when being splashed, shot by paintball or tagged with laser, most people just laugh it off thus psychopath may actually lose taste in killing.

As can be seen, the positive distraction that characterized game provide for young adults can really benefit them. Critical thinking and analyzing skill, let alone making our world safer, are only parts of the benefit. It’s a game after all, play it with sorrow and you will feel hate, play it with anger and you will feel vengeful, play it with paranoia and you will feel confusion, play it with empathy and you will feel compassion, play it with love and you will feel flattery, play it with hope and you will feel positive, play it with humor and you will feel joy, play it without bias and you will feel peace, don't play it at all and you will not feel a thing.

For speech, click here.

By Sewen

The Maze Runner: Author's Craft

             This world is full of problems. Some are not easy to solve but none are impossible. We have to solve them because that’s what we live for. There are only two types of people in this world: those who have given up and those who endured and succeeded. In the book “The Maze Runner” by James Dashner, these characters face so many problems. The maze imprisoned them. The Grievers threaten their lives every time they set foot in the maze. Dashner uses the Gladers to symbolize people who are persistent problem solvers.

             In the beginning of the book, the Gladers thought that the maze was impossible to solve. The maze kept changing at night, it’s enormous and dangerous at night. They kept going in but no one ever found an exit before sunset. Dashner also put the Griever in the maze to make it harder than it had to be. The Grievers are terrifying mechanical beasts. Its “stung” give intense pain and extremely dangerous poison; if you don’t get the antidote and go through the Changing, you won’t make it. Every Gladers that face the Griever never even thought of standing up to it, they just give up hope when they see it. Until Chapter 21 when Thomas and Minho was stuck in the maze at night. They ran at first but then they tried to send it off the cliff and it worked. On top of that, when Thomas and Minho returned they told the council their story and Thomas came up with a plan. Forty people agreed with Thomas and came along. They fought with the Grievers and they won; however, they lost 20 people.The rest of them exited the maze. The author is trying to say that if you meet a small obstacle like the Griever, you stand up to it and if you still failed but you don’t stop trying, you will succeed in the end.

             Furthermore, the author let the Gladers be “stung” by the Griever to demonstrate to the reader that no matter what hardship you endure in the time of solving the problem, it will pays off in the end. In the book, Dashner told the reader that every time the Gladers got “stung” by the Griever they get the serum and they go through The Changing and then they heal. When you get stuck with a problem you don’t keep going with the same way; you need to stop and change your strategy then try again. The Changing, in the story, let the character remember their past but also intense pain that have been left by the Griever. Thomas wanted to remember so he got himself stung on purpose and he went through the Changing then he came up with a plan that work successfully. In other word, the author is trying to tell you to endure hardship that is in front of you, it’s always pays off in the end. That’s why Dashner added The Changing to the healing process when getting stung by the Grievers.

             However, some people might argue that the maze, rather than the Gladers, is the main symbol of the story and it symbolizes the whole problem that we face everyday of our lives. The maze kept changing which tell the reader that our problem are changing as well. There are Grievers in the maze that represent people who keep making the problem, or the maze in the story, harder. That certainly can be true; however, it doesn’t account for the way the story goes, it isn’t about the problem itself but about the people who solve it. The maze is created for the Gladers for an experiment by W.I.C.K.E.D(a group of scientist that work together to study the Gladers’ brain and how they react to problems that seem unsolvable and study the brain wave so they can find a cure to the disease). It is about finding people who is truly persistent that will solve the problem no matter how bad the situation is or how many people they lose. From the beginning throughout the end, the author talked about Gladers themselves: how they thrive to find the solution, how some of them being scared and give up and how they succeed in fighting back.

             All in all, Dashner thought that we all need to solve the problems we faced and he encouraged us not to give up, stay calm and act accordingly to guarantee one hundred percent success. If you don’t get it the first time, you altered your approach and try again.

By Sewen

Theme of The Maze Runner: Decision Making

              In society there is constant change everyday. When a problem is solved, new ones arise. Ideally, we all should work to solve the problems and to make the world a better place and to do that the right decisions must be made. People, however, have interesting ways of making decisions and sometimes it’s really hard to know if you have made the right or wrong decision. The book “The Maze Runner" by James Dashner takes place in a dystopian world which is a maze that was created by an organization named W.I.C.K.E.D. (World In Catastrophe: Killzone Experiment Department) that used selected boys to study their brain functions to produce a cure for a disease called The Flare. This disease occurred in another dystopian world that Dashner had created. However, nobody really knows if this is the perfect solution for the problem, but they go with it, even though not everyone in the society agrees with it. So, one theory is sometimes you need to trust your instinct and ignore what your brain or society says in order to solve problems.

              In this book, Minho, who is the leader of the runners and Alby who is the leader of the Glade were going to see the dead Griever (a mechanical beast that was part of the experiment). Minho had reported that Griever was dead, but then later turned out that the Griever was not dead and it “stung” Alby. They couldn’t travel really fast and reach the gate at seconds before sunset. They had to reach the gate before sunset, because it closed at sunset, when the Grievers would come out. Thomas was at the gate but didn’t know what to do but decided on his instinct that he would go out of the Glade and help the two. Later the gate closed right after Thomas had ran out. At that moment Minho was scolding him for how stupid he was instead of working on a plan. Minho was losing hope and still shaking when he told Thomas that they needed to separate so they would have a better chance of survival. However, Thomas didn’t do so, he trusted his instinct and tried to help Alby by tying him up on the trees where the Griever might not spot them. His plan succeeded. Later that night when Thomas reunited with Minho they figured out a trick to send the Griever off a cliff and Minho trusted his instinct this time because he saw Thomas did it and it worked, so he went on with it and succeeded.

              Later in the book, after getting stung on purpose Thomas went through the changing and called a gathering. He remembered everything(everybody’s memory was removed when they were put into the maze) and he had a plan but that plan would take away many people’s lives but he trusted his instinct and told it to them anyway. Later the leader Newt agreed to it and took Thomas and 40 other people to the hole that lead to the exit. In the end, twenty of them were killed but the rest succeeded and exited the maze.

              However, not everybody agreed with the W.I.C.K.E.D’s way of solving the Flare. W.I.C.K.E.D was responsible for putting pressure toward the children by putting them in the maze and even killing them. At the end of the book, a group of people that were tired of the W.I.C.K.E.D’s way, got into the lab and killed the crew and rescued the kids. W.I.C.K.E.D may have been harsh toward children but they were the only scientists that could have been able to solve the problem while the other group were just ordinary people with guns who used their instincts and thinking that by putting W.I.C.K.E.D to a stop the children would be alright, but if they couldn’t find the cure the people will suffer and so will the children. Certainly it could be said that if they use their rational mind they could have figured that out. While that is a good point the author clearly favor the use of instincts for decision making like the critical moments in the book when Thomas ran out into the maze to save Minho and Alby and actually found a piece of puzzle that lead to escaping the maze.

              To conclude, in order to live happily, make the right decisions, and shape a better world, we need to give our instinct more voice, but we need to use our rational mind too. Everything exists for a reason and if we don’t trust our instincts it’s like not using part of ourselves and the same thing applies for our rational mind. You have it, you use it. However, consider doing what your instinct come up first.

By Sewen

Divergent and The Maze Runner Comparative Essay: Decision Making~People and Instinct

              Decisions have tremendous impact. One good decision can save your life; however, just one bad one can also destroy your life. It is made by everyone in their everyday life. How people are making decisions though are very interesting. It had attracted the attention of researchers, scientists, and mostly authors. Two authors, Veronica Roth (author of “Divergent”) and James Dashner (author of “The Maze Runner”), are both interested in the topic but have rather different perspective of the process of decisions making.

              In the beginning of “The Maze Runner”, Dasher illustrated how people make decisions by their instinct. Thomas, the protagonist who lived in the dystopian world of the maze, instinctively ran outside the gate at sunset to help Minho and Alby from the danger that is outside even knowing that he too would be trapped outside in the maze and face the same danger. (The gate closes at sunset and at night in the maze there are the mechanical beast called “The Griever” that can”stung” you to death.) Even while being trapped in the maze, Thomas didn't panic because his instinct told him not to and he even saved Alby’s life by tying him to the ivy leaves on the wall of the maze. He himself also escaped the danger by instinctively working with his momentum and the Grievers’ momentum to escape them, if he just run without deciding to do anything because his rational mind told him that if he failed his own momentum he would tripped and then the Griever would kill him, he would've been killed.

              On the other hand, in “Divergent”, Roth demonstrated that different people make different decisions. She is doing that by categorising the people in the city. The Erudite make decisions based on logic, consequences and the big picture. The Candor make decisions based on the truth and only the truth. The Amity considered kindness, forgiveness, the truth and most of all peace before making a decision. The Dauntless make decisions based on justice, benefit, and reward, even it’s risky they'll take it. The Abnegation don’t think about themselves while making a decision, they think about other people and if the decisions that they are making will benefit people as a whole. The aptitude test also tells the reader that what you are define what you’ll do during the test. In the attack dog part of the test, Amity will pick chess as their weapon because they don’t believe in fighting with the dog, Dauntless will pick the knife because they want to take the risk and will fight for it if it’s justice; however, the Erudite won’t chose because they are curious about why do they need to choose one of the object and when the dog came they would lie down because they know the characteristic of the dog. Also when the dog attack the little girl Dauntless and Abnegation would sacrifice themselves and jump in front of her to save her while other factions would just stand there. One more part of the aptitude test is the bus. There is a man in the bus asking the tester if they know the wanted man that would kill the man on the bus, the tester will feel like they know the man in the picture. The Candor will tell the truth in that situation no matter what and the Abnegation would tell the truth too because that mean they can save the man’s life; however, other factions wouldn’t tell the truth.

Throughout the book “The Maze Runner”, Dashner uses third person narration to elaborate further that everybody trust their instinct. “He knew he should run into the Maze and help, but the rule about not leaving the Glade was seared into his mind.” (Excerpt From: James Dashner. “The Maze Runner.” iBooks.) This line worked very well because it clearly shown instinct is telling Thomas what to do if it’s in first person, it would be like “I should run into the Maze and help but the rule about not leaving the Glade is seared into my mind. However, in “Divergent” Roth uses first person narration because it signified that people are different and so are the decisions they are making. “I am not Abnegation. I am not Dauntless. I am Divergent.”(Excerpt From: Veronica Roth. “Divergent.” iBooks.) this moment of realization clearly had done the job well because If she uses third person narration, it would be: She is not Abnegation. She is not Dauntless. She is Divergent. It wouldn’t have sound as strong as the first person narration.

Some people might argue that in “The Maze Runner” Dashner want to illustrate how people act on their rational instead of instinct because at the end of the book Dashner demonstrated how a group of people act on their instinct and produce disastrous result and if they had just use their rational mind they would’ve figured out that they are not scientist and they can’t solve the problem and they can’t restore the world condition. However, their instinct may also told them that if they rescue the kids they can just let the kids live on with their life and there will be a generation with the immunity to the disease; therefore, solve the problem instead of putting the kids live in danger and watching how they react every seconds. In “Divergent” some people might also argue that people in “Divergent” make those decisions not because they are different type of people, they make those decisions because they are under peer pressure. For instance, when each family want their child to choose the same faction as theirs because they want their child to stay with them and when Caleb told Beatrice “We should think of our family.” “But. But we must also think of ourselves.”(Excerpt From: Veronica Roth. “Divergent.” iBooks.) Maybe Beatrice pick Dauntless because those words that Caleb said push her not to take Abnegation. However, this line “My mother told me to save them. Because of that, and because I am Dauntless”(Excerpt From: Veronica Roth. “Divergent.” iBooks.) clearly stated that she picked Dauntless because she is Dauntless not because of Caleb’s word or anybody’s.

In life, decision is an important aspect. Choosing your job, your school subjects… just because people around you or your friends pick History doesn’t mean you have to pick History. Everybody is different, you make your own decisions, they make theirs. Don’t fall to the peer pressure, be like Dauntless and fight it, be like Abnegation and help other around you to make decisions that they want to make, be like Amity and forgive your friends and be kind to them, be like Candor and never lie to your friends, and most of all be like Erudite, be smart and live your life but don’t ever forget about your instinct.

By Sewen

Online Scam

Imagine, as you browsing around the world looking to buy the new iPhone 6 that had just been released and there’s a pop-up saying “New iPhone 6 for sale! 50% DISCOUNT!!! CLICK HERE TO BUY ONE NOW!!!” Then you click on it and it ask for your credit card info and said that it will be delivered to you by tomorrow. However you waited for a few days but nothing arrive. After that a few days later you found out that someone had been using your identity to buy things online and now your account balance is going down from S$10000 to S$0.

Yup: you are a victim of online scam.

A lot of people is vulnerable to this kind of crime. When this kind of scam happen in a small community, people lost trust. Likewise, a friend of Akanksha Shukla had once been a near victim of a scam. The girl was trying to buy a dog and a stranger email her online and told her that he has a dog to sell. After a conversation online with the man, they agree to meet up at an unconfirmed location at midnight and he demanded around $1000 and their credit card detail. Akanksha’s friend ask her parents and then her parents asked the guy to go to a coffee shop in at noon instead but got no reply. After asking a few people, they figured it was a scam. From the moment they are scam, they would never buy anything online again.

To find out more, the reporter interviewed Adrienne Michetti, Digital Literacy Coach at United World College of South East Asia. “People have different understanding of what that means. There’s marketing which is really clever or unethical like there’s unethical marketing but is that a scam?” she said. “I think there’s some fuzzy line between what is a scam and what is legal marketing that’s just unethical.”. “For example, a scam is where, you know, someone taken your personal private information and use it to take money from your bank account or something like that, whereas legal but unethical marketing might be when you’ve been asked to ‘click here for a free iPad but in order to get the free iPad, you have to send these five other email to your friends’ kind of thing.” she said.

Online scam is one of the biggest security issue, according to Ms. Michetti, everyone is online even the most undeveloped country, people still have mobile technology to get online. According to Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), in 2013, the IC3 receive 262,813 complains from internet users which resulted in the lost of $781,841,611, which is a 48.8% increase in reported losses since 2012 ($581,441,110).

A lot of people had been a victim of online scam, some even died tracking the scammer, according to consumer.ftc.gov. In this 21st century, we can’t afford to lose any money on this kind of scam, we need to take action. The first step to prevent it from happening is to become more knowledgeable yourself, according to Ms. Michetti. You need to know who you’re dealing with. For example, what’s their physical address is? What’s their phone number? If you are contacting a company make sure you know someone in the company that you can contact and know exactly where the company is. You also need to keep track of every purchases that have been made with your credit card, see if someone had been using the credit card to buy anything and if there is a delivery report to somewhere you can easily track the scammer. We also need to identify the circumstances that allow that crime to happen, is it because the security flaw in a software? Is there someone sitting too close to you that they can see your PIN? and find a solution for it. The government should also take action on this issue, according to Ms. Michetti. The government should consider promoting education about the use of technology lower the rate of the crime.

However, if you think you are a victim of online scam,report it to the police immediately so they can track the scammer in time. Found IP. Hacker Jailed.

Written by Sewen

Problem With Kids That Don’t Fit In

Life being an 8th grader is fun for a lot of people, having a lot of time to hang out with friends with less homework, well unless you are someone who don’t have anybody to hang out with, life can be really frustrating.

Imagine staying alone with just books, piles of books, in front of you, just studying and stressed yourself out with no one to talk to. Once you see someone walking past you try to get their attention to get to talk to them but they just walk past and didn’t say anything or even look at you, then you assume that they don’t like you so you give up trying to get their attention. You start to feel like you’re a loner, that nobody like you, that nobody ever include you in their life. This feeling start to grow and you feel so desperate that you would do anything to have a friend.

That is where the problem started, some of the kid think that joining a gang would let them hang out with the group of people who are in it. There are 2 kinds of gang, one that help each other and another that is cause chaos throughout the community. The problem is that most of the kids that have the above experience often end up in the gang that are good for nothing but destruction, the gang that take drugs and cause trouble for the community. Eventually they would grow up in the environment that inspired destruction and chaos and become a criminal of some sort.

As an example in an anime call Naruto, there are 2 characters that experienced this, one is the 1 tail jinchuuriki (jinchuuriki are the term that describe those who has tail beast sealed inside them), Gaara of the Sand and Naruto Uzumaki, the 9 tails jinchuriki. Gaara had been hated in his village and had no friends whatsoever this feeling make him negative and make him live just to kill and Naruto is quite similar in his childhood, he had no friends and everybody avoid him and make him feel like he’s a parasite but until he met his teacher Iruka then they become like father and son and after that he made other friends as well so his life had been better since then, but if Iruka didn’t talk to him or include Naruto in his life Naruto would be just like Gaara. However, at a ninja tournament Gaara met Naruto and after they get to know each other, Naruto get the feeling that he knows Gaara’s pain and then include Gaara in his life and then Gaara started to change as well. He started to help the people in his village and then he became the leader of his village(The Kazekage). Is it very hard just to be like Iruka to Naruto or Naruto to Gaara? Of course not. By helping the kids we can also prevent the chaos from happening. Include them in our life. We can make a great change in their life by just becoming their friend.

Written by Sewen

Tampines House Assembly (TH Assembly)

Tampines House Assembly on 9/9/2014

On Tuesday 9th September, in the canteen of UWCSEA East Campus Gabriel Abad, director of boarding, started the TH Assembly.

He talked about the Tampines House problem. According to Gabriel, a lot of people have locked their doors to their rooms for not necessary reasons. “Doors must remain unlocked at all time except when you need some privacy,” he said “that mean unless you are changing or Skyping with your relative and so on.” he added. After that he talked about the boarding trip to Wild Wild Wet on Sunday 14th. “I heard a lot of complain from grade 11 and grade 12 that they have a lot of work and that is why I picked that Sunday.” Then he talked about Reach, the online boarding house management system. “All leave request must be confirmed first before you can leave the boarding house.”

Then Marcel Campbell, one of the house parent and the catering committee, had talked about dinner time. “We’ll be starting a new tradition in 2 weeks time,” she said “and to those who take dinner to your room please come and eat at the canteen.” She said “ If you spend just 10 minutes eating and talking with other people, it would be great, but if you just take your dinner and eat it in your room, you would be a bit stressful because you just do your work and not being sociable.” She also talked about the UWC Day Special Dinner on 22nd of Sept and she would like all of the boarders to go the dinner. After that Gainluca Mancini, a scholar from Italy, had talked about The Boarding Environmental Stewardship Team. “The Boarding Environmental Stewardship Team (BEST) will transform green ideas into action. We will work with our boarding community to improve our home environment and put sustainable practices in place at Tampines House. BEST is lead by boarders for boarders who take responsibility for minimising our impact on the environment with a focus on waste minimisation, energy and water conservation, as well as green spaces.” he said. He also asked if anybody want to join the team and if they want to, contact him.

Finally, Cosme, a grade 11 student at UWCSEA East campus, had made a suggestion to the Boarding House Council about grade 11 study time since the grade 11 study in the library for 2 hours but grade 12 study in their own rooms. On that account, Cosme had asked a grade 12 student to volunteer to reflect on their study time in their room, Sia, a grade 12 student at UWCSEA, come and talked about it but time wasn’t on their side so Cornelius, one of the house parent, end the assembly and tell everyone to go to study time.

Written by Sewen