Module

POETRY REFLECTIONS

After The Lion Dance by Chris Mooney-Singh: This poem is talking about a man who works part-time as a lion dancer and he is probably not well-to-do. He controls the head of the lion, and he is waiting for a cab. Without the body, he feels very lonely and vulnerable when faced with people who do not appreciate the culture of lion-dancing. This poem tells us that everybody needs someone to support them. All of us need a partner to be there for us, to make us feel comfortable and believe in ourselves to perform well.

Excuse Me, What Is Your Race? by Esther Vincent: In this poem, the poet questions her race, her heritage and her roots. She thinks that Singaporeans care a lot about what race people are. She is Sinhalese but to her, race does not matter much. The author has a mix of races in her blood, so to her, race is not that important because it is just what your ancestors’ races were, and that just makes up your origin. However, your race does not define you as a person. It is good to understand other races’ cultures better and not just your own.

old house at ang siang hill by Arthur Yap: We could see a conflict between heritage and traditions, and development and urbanisation. The rich heritage of Ang Siang Hill is seen as being irrelevant and unimportant in modern day Singapore, as seen as from “so what if this is your grandfather’s house/ his ghost does not live here anymore/ your family past is / superannuated grime”. This also reflects how there is a lack of empathy among Singaporeans for their traditional culture.

Chai by Marc Daniel Nair: This poem stimulates a migrant residing in Singapore, who had a feeling of nostalgia for chai, tea from his homeland, India. In order to remember his roots and history, he drank chai to familiarise with it. However, in Singapore, the tea, chai, cannot be found easily. Once, the author bought tea bags home, thinking that they were chai. It never really tasted the same as what he just tasted was teh. Hence, in conclusion, he really wants to reconnect with his fathers’ land. After reading the poem, I felt that the author is really desperate to get a taste of his hometown just to reconnect with it. It also reflects on how the migrants feel in Singapore when they cannot find something that reminds them of home. Some of our group mates felt like this before as they longed for dishes that were only available in China. Singapore has also tried to solve this problem by having restaurants selling food from other countries, in order to satisfy their cravings.

Initiation by Alvin Pang: This poem is about a father teaching his child how to fish. This also shows a love from a father as he is teaching his child how to be independent. We think this poem is something many people can relate to as our parents teach us many life skills that will stay and help us throughout life. We also think that we have to learn how to be independent as we cannot rely on our parents, teachers or peers to spoon-feed us for everything. We must learn how to deal with things by ourselves as this cultivates a good habit in us. We must also learn to fight our own battles and solve problems by ourselves.

Neighbours by Alfan Sa’at: This poem is of a Malay lady criticising her Chinese neighbour. She scoffs at the Chinese lady’s children and her skills, saying how “Her children eat Maggi after school every day” because she does not know how to cook. She also says that because of that, the Chinese lady’s children are in “normal stream and the younger one can’t spell her name.” At the end of the poem, the Malay lady talks about the way that she and her neighbour hold their keys to their homes in tight, clenched fists, then slamming the bolt shut, indicating that these neighbours are not very harmonious. I think that we neighbours should criticise each other’s wealth, race or religion. We should all live together in peace and harmony. This way, we will all be happier and we will make more friends.

food modelling

We learnt different techniques to make food models. This module really helped us because we were able to see the different ways to make a food model and how the outcome of each method looks like, so that we can choose the appropriate approach to making our own food model in order to make it more realistic. In the end, after looking through the different methods, we decided to use jumping clay because it is easier for us to shape the food model using it, and we can make it 3D style, making it look more realistic. It is also not too difficult to make, like origami paper which requires a lot of creativity as it needs a manual.

小贩文化

今天我们有一个关于小贩中心与其重要性的讲座。我们从这个讲座学到了很多东西。我们学到了应该好好地保留小贩中心的传统美食，因为这样，我们就可以教导我们的下一代关于传统美食的知识。下一代的年轻人也需要懂得自己的根源。在演讲中，我们被以前多种多样传统美食所吸引。我们的组员丽恩告诉我们虽然她是个华人，她去不知道娘惹糕是什么，并没有吃过它。我们看了一些关于年纪大的小贩的视频。那些视频很令人感动。在视频中，他们说道有些有名的传统美食店铺没有人接手。他们的孩子认为当小贩没有在公司里当白领赚钱赚得多。这就设他们不想接受的原因。对于下一代来说，这真的是一个很大的遗憾，因为他们无法品尝如此美味的传统食品。但另一面，有一些年轻人同意并坚持要接手他们父母的生意，即使他们的父母不想让他们那么辛苦得当小贩，他们的父母认为比起当小贩，他们应该做一些不是那么辛苦，而能赚到更多钱的工作。所以说我们是否会将小贩文化保留至下一代呢？我们认为这仍是一个值得争议的问题。最后，我们组仍然相信并希望小贩文化可以一直流传下去。

Globalisation

Globalisation refers to the process by which businesses develop international influence. During the post module, our teacher told us about McDonalds. It has been infuenced globally and has changed the way of our eating habits. McDonalds is even richer than a country! Although it is sold worldwide, different food are sold in different countries. In Singapore, we have the Nasi Lamak burger. This is a hybrid between western food and local food food. We call this glocalisation. Glocalisation has its pros and cons. The pros is that it can encourage people to taste and try the actual traditional food. On the contrary, it can case people to like fast food even more and dine on it every day. This educates younger generations on cultural food in a modern way, to make them more interested.

Unfortunately, despite how good the food globalisation brings to Singapore is, globalisation causes a very serious problem. It leads Singapore one step closer to the risk of losing its traditional food culture. As many youngsters prefer the Western food to traditional Singapore food, they will constantly eat western food and our food culture will likely be forgotten. Therefore, after listening to this talk, we as a group were more motivated to spread awareness on preserving our local cuisines to prefer its extinction.

“Nasi Lamak” burger from Mcdonalds.