The British Bulldog

This week’s post will take us back in time to a period that many people would rather forget.  But before you delve into the heroics of Winston Churchill, here are the questions for this week’s quiz…

1) Under which country’s control would Singapore be if the Allies lost the war?

2) What did Churchill use to motivate his country during World War II?

3) What did Churchill offer to his people as prime minister?

Email your answers to asspirehubblog@gmail.com with your Name, Branch and Tutor(s) and stand a chance to win a pair of those movie tickets!

The British Bulldog

Imagine this – the year is 2013 in an alternate, a parallel universe. You wake up and after washing up, you head to the kitchen for your breakfast in the morning. As you sit, you stare at your rice, pickles and grilled fish with tiredness. It has been a long night of studying, and you have school again today. Finishing up, you move off to school, bowing and greeting every elder you see along the way. Moving into school, you look up… and instead of a red and white flag with five stars and a crescent, you see a multi-rayed sun on a white background.

 Sounds a little familiar? Maybe this could have happened if World War II was won by the Axis Powers. Singapore would not be Singapore, but still Syonan-to, under the power of Imperial Japan (this is different from the Japan we know today). Why did this not happen? Why did the Allied Powers win the war? Major credit can be given to one man – Sir Winston Churchill, prime minister of Britain during World War II.

 A quick history recap – don’t groan, it’ll be quick! War broke out during 1939 in Europe, and Nazi Germany quickly overwhelmed multiple countries in Europe. In fact, they were so quick that within the first three years, they gained control over Poland, Denmark, Norway, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and many other pieces of land. Imperial Japan also invaded China, taking control of major cities, and pushed down into South-East Asia, and ultimately Singapore, then a British colony.

 Things did not look well for the British. They were the only major power left in Europe standing against the Nazis, and her colonies had also fallen. They were also under constant bombardment. Any normal person would simply surrender to prevent any more loss of life.

 But not Winston Churchill.

 Upon being appointed prime minister, he gave a rousing speech in parliament – one of many – to stir the government into active resistance and bolster the despairing population. Part of his speech went like this:

 “I would say to the House as I said to those who have joined this government: I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering.

 You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: Victory. Victory at all costs — Victory in spite of all terror — Victory, however long and hard the road may be, for without victory there is no survival.”

Sir Winston Churchill, 13 May 1940

 And the rest, as you know, is history.

 I don’t really think that very many of us will be called upon to lead a country in a time of war, but we can all learn something from Churchill’s drive. We all have our own personal battles with overwhelming odds to fight – not in the physical sense, but battles like studies, CCAs and stress. Some days, we just want to throw it all away, crawl into a comfy bed and sleep, wishing that all our problems would be solved when we wake up. We want to be without pressure, without fear, without worry. Everything would be simple.

 However, simple is not a word life is normally associated with.

 That is where we have to take to heart Churchill’s words that once led a country, and ultimately the world, to victory. Only when we do so will we find the will, the strength, the passion to fight on despite the crappy odds, and when the battles are won, will we reap the fruits of our blood, toil, tears and sweat.

 How long will our battles last? How many are there? No one will ever know for sure, but I leave you with one quote that everyone – student, parent, teacher – should always carry with them:

 

“Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never – in nothing, great or small, large or petty – never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”

Sir Winston Churchill, 29 October 1941, at Harrow School, his alma mater

 

Trials of the Ballerina

For this week’s contest, read the blog post and send in the answers to the following questions to aspirehubblog@gmail.com.

1) What did the photograph mean to Michaela, why did she keep the photo with her everyday?

2) What was one new obstacle she faced in America?

3) What is Michaela’s goal after she finishes her career?

For this week’s blog post, we’ll follow the story of Michaela DePrince; a story fraught with seemingly insurmountable obstacles, all of which were overcome in her journey to fulfil her lifelong ambition. Though many of you may not share the same ambition, there is still plenty to learn from her.

The Ballerina

In her 18 years, Michaela DePrince has experienced more than most people do in a full lifetime. Dancing since she was 6, she won a scholarship to the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School of the American Ballet Theatre after competing against 5,000 other young dancers in the prestigious Youth American Grand Prix, an annual competition showcased in the acclaimed 2011 documentary First Position. One of six aspiring dancers the film profiled, Michaela, then 14, supplied the most heart-in-throat moments when she stubbornly danced through a case of tendonitis that threatened to end her career before it even started.

No matter how much she may ever achieve, the most stunning fact of Michaela’s life will always be that it ever happened at all. Born Mabinty Bangura in 1995 in the midst of Sierra Leone’s 11-year civil war, she was orphaned at age 3, her father murdered by rebel soldiers and her mother felled by Lassa fever. Her uncle took her to an orphanage where, although plainly gifted (she could already read and write Arabic), she was scorned and beaten for her rebelliousness. She was also ostracized for the unpigmented spots freckling her chest and neck—a skin condition called vitiligo that the women working at the orphanage took for a curse. They called her “the devil’s child.”

In 1999 everything changed. Elaine DePrince and her husband, Charles, adopted Michaela and Mia, Michaela’s best friend from the orphanage. Both girls were 4. On their first night together, Elaine ran bubble baths in the hotel bathroom and laid out the new clothes and shoes she’d brought, to the great delight of both girls. But then, Elaine recalls, something odd happened: Michaela began systematically ransacking her mother’s luggage.

“All the clothes and toys I’d brought were pulled out of the suitcases,” Elaine says. “At that point, neither girl spoke English, but I could tell she was looking for something. Finally, she ran into the bathroom and brought me this grimy picture of a ballerina torn from a magazine that she’d carried around for months.” The picture had convinced Michaela that everyone in America went around on tippy-toes all the time. She’d been searching the suitcases for her new mother’s ballet shoes.

“I found the magazine lying on the ground outside the gate of the orphanage,” Michaela says. “I’d never seen anything like that before, so I took the cover off and put it in my underwear because I had nowhere else to put it. I brought the rest of the magazine to share with everybody else, but I kept the picture with me every day until I got adopted. It kept me going and believing and looking forward to something, because I was going through so much at the time. I thought I was just worth nothing and nothing’s going to happen. This person in the photograph symbolized hope for me. It was something I hadn’t felt for such a long time.”

The photograph disappeared when a suitcase went missing on the flight to the United States, but the dreams it embodied remained alive. Michaela says just the memory of the picture was enough to keep her going through seven years at the Rock School for Dance Education in Philadelphia, then two more at ABT. “I’ve had my bad patches where I wanted to quit ballet, but I would say to myself, this is what I’ve been dreaming of for so long, and this picture has kept me going so long, I really need to keep trying. Nothing else has ever made me feel like that.”

Growing up in the warm embrace of a big family—the DePrinces have reared 11 children, nine of them adopted—Michaela never lacked for encouragement. But in America, she faced a new enemy: the blinkered racism of the overwhelmingly white world of classical ballet. “It was very hard sometimes,” she says, “because I knew I deserved a role, but they wouldn’t give it to me, because you just never saw a black Marie in The Nutcracker or a black Cinderella. But it’s pushed me to do better and work harder.” Ultimately she did find colorblind teachers, especially at the Rock School, where artistic director Stephanie Wolf Spassoff encouraged not only Michaela’s talent but her desire to be an agent of change: “She wanted to break barriers, and to do that you have to be very good. I think she is that good. When you watch her dance now, it’s as if the music were breathing through her.”

After First Position came out, followed by an appearance on Dancing With the Stars, Michaela found herself famous enough to be stopped on the street by strangers. It made her uncomfortable. “I was overwhelmed with the fact that people wanted me to be the perfect role model and were expecting so much,” she says. “I just turned 18. I think I want to be a role model, but I don’t know if I actually can be. I’m not really an adult yet, so they need to understand that. It’s a lot of pressure for me.”

Her road map may be sketchy, but she knows precisely where she wants to wind up: as a dance company’s principal ballerina. Once her career is finished, she hopes to start a dance school in Sierra Leone: “All kinds of dance, not just ballet. I just want to share what I have with the kids there, to give them a piece of what I have. We’re all here for a reason. We have to finish what we were meant to do, even if it is something little.” Her modesty is as becoming as it is unbelievable, since it’s so plainly impossible to imagine this determined young woman ever settling for “something little.” She’s dreamed big all her life and seen dreams past all imagining come true. Why would she stop now?

Defeating the Decay of Memories

Before we start off this week, we would like to extend our congratulations to the winners from last week’s blog quiz!

Clemen Liu from AV branch and Tan Jia Jun from Jubilee branch!

For those who weren’t so lucky, fret not! This week’s entry also comes with a quiz with similar prizes!

Read the following entry and answer these questions:

1) How much information is retained after one day (assuming the student does not spend time revising?)

2)  Start your first review after 10 minutes of a two hour long session. True or False?

3)  How should subsequent reviews be done?

Email your answers to aspirehubblog@gmail.com for your chance to win prizes!

Defeating the Decay of Memory

Well, now that you have the perseverance of Colonel Sanders, you must be wondering how on earth you are going to squeeze all the information you have learnt in school into your brain!

Defeating the Decay of Memories is just the article you need to read. Although it’s not as simple as plugging a brand new 100 GB hard disk, you’ll see magical things happening to your memory if you pay close attention to this article . Here is the secret:

The decay of memory capacity is such that an hour after obtaining new information, approximately fifty percent of the facts that were initially clear in the mind may have been forgotten. A day later nearly everything related to the memory may have evaporated.

A graph is drawn to show the way in which people forget information: a sudden, dramatic downward curve starting about five minutes after the initial exposure to information. This assumes that full attention was given to the spoken or written materials, with understanding; obviously if little attention was paid or the material was not understood, there would be little to be remembered! The amount of forgetting passes the fifty percent mark at one hour and falls to 90% after a day. The curve then levels off at about 90 – 99%.

Now do you know why you don’t remember everything that you spent the entire weekend memorizing? How do I then turn this curve around and increase the amount of remembered facts with the passage of time? We all agree that this enormous drop must be prevented; otherwise, all our sacrifice and effort would have gone to waste!

If only my brain worked like this… I would get my As!

In order to accomplish this, a programmed pattern of review must take place, each review being done at the time just before recall is about to drop. For example, the first review should take place about 10 minutes after a one-hour learning period and should itself take 5 minutes. This will keep the recall high for approximately one day, when the next review should take place, this time for a period of 2 to 4 minutes. After this, recall will probably be retained for approximately a week, when another 2 minutes review can be completed followed by a further review after about one month. After this time the knowledge will be lodged in Long Term Memory. This means it will be familiar in the way a personal telephone number is familiar, needing only the most occasional nudge to maintain it.

Review of Work	Time Taken
After one-hour and ten minutes	5 mins
1 day later	2 to 4 mins
1 week later	2 mins
1 month later	2 mins
6 months later	2 mins

The first review, especially if notes have been taken, should be a fairly complete note revision which may mean scrapping original notes and substituting for them revised and final copy. The second, third and fourth etc. review sessions should take the following form: without referring to final notes, jot down on a piece of paper everything that can be recalled. This should then be checked against the final notes and any corrections or additions to what has been recalled should be made. One of the most significant aspects of proper review is the accumulative effect it has on all aspects of learning, thinking and remembering. The person who does not review is continually wasting the effort he does put in to any learning task, and putting himself at a serious disadvantage. Stay tuned to the next study skills tips entry where we will explore effective note-taking methods.

Credits: ‘Use Your Head’ by Tony Buzan (published BBC 2005, ISBN 0-563-48899-9)                 Power   Reading- Mind Development Course 5 by Gregory Mitchell

Finger Lickin’ Good!

Welcome to Expanding Horizons.!

As part of our monthly Movie Ticket Giveaway, finish reading our first blog post and email the the answers to these questions to aspirehubblog@gmail.com and you could walk away with 2 movie tickets!

1) How many herbs and spices are used in Colonel Sander’s secret recipe?

2) How many restaurant owners turned down a chance to sell his fried chicken?

3) In one sentence, tell us why you should receive our movie tickets!

Theme of the Month – Never Give Up!

While most stories on perseverance  tend to put the spotlight on Thomas Edison’s relentless pursuit of the modern light bulb, today’s entry will focus on another story of perseverance and success; one that is closer to our hearts… and stomachs.

Finger Licken’ Good. For those of you who were around before Popeyes and Texas Fried Chicken stole the show, this was the phrase which brought instant salivation to fried chicken enthusiasts all over Singapore. This was the slogan for Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC). While many of us are certainly familiar with their succulent chicken saturated with artery clogging oil, few of us know the story behind this franchise.

How did KFC become so famous? Who is this perennially cheerful, white-haired man on the wall of every KFC outlet?

That man is Colonel Sanders, founder of  KFC.

Colonel Sanders was born with a passion for cooking. For those of you still puzzled by his name – nope, he was never a real colonel in the army – that title was bestowed upon him by a governor who enjoyed his chicken. Anyway, Colonel Sanders spent a large part of his life working in a restaurant. It was there that he developed his ‘secret recipe’ for fried chicken. (which, by the way, is still a ‘secret’ till this day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KFC#Secret_recipe) Although his restaurant started out successfully, things eventually took a turn for the worse and it eventually failed when he hit the ripe old age of 65.

Broke and desperate, he took his the only thing he truly had left – his secret recipe – and started searching for anyone willing to invest in it. Over the next two years, he spent countless nights sleeping in the back of his car, pleading with many restaurant owners to purchase his mystical formula. Eventually, after approaching 1,009 business owners, he finally found a man who saw the potential of what he had, and quickly invested in it. Within a year of putting his fried chicken on the menu, his restaurant sales tripled, sparking off a worldwide frenzy which eventually  brought his secret recipe to over 17,000 outlets in 117 countries, earning as estimated US$15 billion in 2011.

Many people in this world have great ideas and great potential. What makes colonel sanders so different? Persistence. Despite being old and broke, he never gave up his dream, knowing the only way to achieve what he truly wanted was by continually taking action to fulfill it. Instead of sitting back, hoping that his recipe would somehow make him famous, he went out and approached every restaurant owner he knew. He realized that the only thing he could do after being rejected was to try again, but with each try, he improved the way he spoke, the way he tried to make restaurant owners see the potential of what he had.

So… How does this help me?

Admittedly, selling a delicious chicken recipe and studying for your mid-year examinations are very different pursuits. However, we should not let this difference belittle the importance of being persistent in whatever we do. No matter how tough our academic journey seems to be, no matter how badly you have done, or think you will do, giving up is always the worst possible course of action.

Real persistence entails continually taking action to achieve what you want. Without action, persistence becomes blind hope.

How then, shall we go about achieving what want? In next week’s blog entry, we will explore tips that are both practical and effective in helping you improve. In the meantime, you can always send an email with questions or comments to aspirehubblog@gmail.com.

On a final note, for those of you whom I have unwittingly made hungry by all this talk of juicy fried chicken, KFC does have a home delivery service, but remember to go easy on the fried chicken skin, and wash your hands before you lick them!