This holiday, I…
by Ramblestiltskin
As a student taking the English Language Elective Programme (ELEP) at Anglo-Chinese Junior College, I was given the chance to intern for NTUC FairPrice for 2 weeks. I was assigned to the Corporate Communications department to find out more about the use of the English language in the workplace. To be specific, most of the work I did concerned FairPrice’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). You might be wondering, what is CSR? I was not aware of the term myself; until I came to FairPrice.
Posted 1 week, 6 days ago at 5:56 pm. Add a comment
Welcome to 2012
by Althea T.
Well, it’s a new year – 2012 to be exact, in case you haven’t caught on yet. And with a new year comes some new year’s resolutions.
Posted 2 weeks, 3 days ago at 5:57 pm. Add a comment
Out with the Old, in with the New
We’re finally back! Happy New Year to everyone and a (very belated) Merry Christmas. Did you miss us?
It’s that time of the year again when whether we like it or not, we have to say goodbye to late night jaunts, long sleep-ins and carefree days. Okay so maybe that is a bit of an exaggeration. Still, there is a lot to look forward to this year here at ManiAC (and school as well).
Posted 3 weeks, 1 day ago at 5:54 pm. Add a comment
The Best is Still Unwritten. See you in 2012!
2011 was a year filled with many firsts, memorable moments and understandably bad days here and there. But alas, c’est la viѐ and one has the choice whether to dwell on the positive or the negative. Moreover, though this may seem rather off tangent, I’ve always felt compelled that Thanksgiving ought to be celebrated by all countries. Hence, I choose to end my last post (for the year that is) on a high note and focus on the highlights of my first year here at ACJC as well as to incorporate all the things I have been thankful for this year.
Posted 2 months ago at 7:36 am. Add a comment
My last post : the meaning of maniAC
by Nicholas Wong (for the last time)
Earlier in the year, I was making a plug for maniAC by inviting people to our Welcome Tea – at that point I mentioned ‘memories and news in AC’. Apparently people got the reference, because after that most of my friends were telling me ‘So that’s what maniAC stands for!?’
No, actually. I made it up. maniAC does not stand for ‘memories and news in AC’. Yes, it’s less of a let-down than telling people ‘Uhh, actually, maniAC doesn’t stand for anything’, but I can’t take credit for that, nice as it is.
Because maniAC doesn’t not stand for nothing - in the spirit of political correctness, maniAC stands for you, student of ACJC! Conceived several years ago by our teachers at ACJC, maniAC is a blank slate, a canvas for you to project yourself onto – you with all your psychological ubiquity, your characteristic penchant for spectacle and your craving for artistic affirmation, unsatisfied by Facebook.
'If I got a penny every time I heard that question...'
To really tell you what ‘maniAC’ means would be like asking Dylan Thomas what ‘Rage, rage against the dying of the light means’ – it defeats the point of writing it in the first place. That’s not to say it’s excessively difficult or vague. Logic: literature, in this case a poem, is a form of expression – therefore, the poem tells you the message. If the author intended you to come to him and ask him ‘What does this mean?’, he may as well have written it in plain terms. Interpretation, not an absolute truth, is the aim here.
In much the same way, to ask what ‘maniAC’ means would be to defeat the purpose of naming it as such in the first place. If it really just meant ‘The ACJC Blog’ then don’t you think that’s what they would have named it? The point of ambiguity is to have many interpretations, more often than not personal to each individual.
If you asked a Physics student…poor you.
Many people asked what on earth the ending of Inception meant. If you asked a Lit student, then your head would spin less; they may have told you that it doesn’t matter whether (spoiler alert!) Dom Cobb is dreaming or awake at the end, but that he chooses to accept it as reality (he walks away from the top rather than watch whether it falls, and finally goes to his kids, whose faces he couldn’t see the whole time). Here it’s the same.
Take it however you want. It’s not wrong to ask what it means, but it’s wrong to expect any one absolute answer. So, to my maniAC juniors – if anyone ever asks you that question, point them here! Problem solved.
maniAC has, for me, meant a lot of learning. And I’m thankful that every year we manage to find another small, close set of students who carry the CCA on. We’re small but we’re consistent and in the years ahead I’m sure you can always count on maniAC to deliver everything ACJC students want to deliver. To me, maniAC means ‘memories and news in AC’ but to anyone else it could be ‘mad auntie noises in a canteen’ for all I know. And what with its connotations of imbalance and insanity, accentuated by its unconventional use of capitalisation, maniAC really is the kind of thing you could go crazy for.
Pictures:
- Dylan Thomas – http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/tm/2009/01/09
- Spinning top – Inception (2010)
Posted 2 months ago at 3:31 pm. Add a comment
Graduating Class of 2011
by Olga Bessarab
Graduating invites one of those feelings most people like to term as being ‘mixed’.
I don’t know about other people but this past week has been made up of flashbacks. Seeing some of my OG mates in school immediately threw me into thoughts of that first Orientation in 2010, dancing and cheering in the hall, full of hope and worry for the two years ahead.
Posted 2 months, 1 week ago at 2:24 pm. Add a comment
SMRT Adventures
by Randomosity
I hope I don’t get sued for my title. This post isn’t a jab at SMRT per se. You of all people should know that I try to make every single mundane moment of my life entertaining. And, well, who wouldn’t want to know the tremendous amount of FUN I had on the MRT this morning? I mean, I even got to experience the adult peak hour! (Hear the sarcasm.) And no, I did not oversleep. What kind of person do you think I am?
To cut a long story short (because we all know I can write a few hundred words about Nothing, and I really want to get to that), there was some issue with the train/ track. Here’s what mind-boggled passengers were hearing:
Station announcer: “Passengers going towards Pasir Ris, please board the train at Platform A. Passengers going towards Joo Koon, please board the train at Platform B.”
Posted 2 months, 1 week ago at 3:18 pm. Add a comment
Let the Hunger Games Begin!
By Deleitier
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins: A Review
It’s been a few months now since the last Harry Potter film hit theatres, yet I bet many of you (like me) still suffer from post-Potter depression. However, brace yourselves my fellow Pottermaniacs (no pun intended) as a new adventure series is set to claim your hearts and minds the same way that The Boy Who Lived did a decade and a half ago.
Posted 2 months, 1 week ago at 3:09 pm. Add a comment
Blink
by Ang Yue Jun
Close your eyes.
Imagine, for a moment, your first step into school. Think back on the first time you sat on those green chairs in the hall, when your OG first got together. Of campfire, of the mass dance. Think of the first time you walked into your new class, of the people you sat next to. Of the first time you met your teachers.
Posted 2 months, 2 weeks ago at 3:23 pm. Add a comment
Real Steel
by Randomosity
Real Steel is the kind of movie that, at first glance, you decide to watch because it has the incredibly talented and ruggedly handsome Hugh Jackman starring in it. (In my opinion, at least.) I’ve always wanted to use the phrase “ruggedly handsome”. By ‘first glance’, I really mean a short glimpse of the movie poster at one of those bus stop sign thingies (they seem a little small to be called billboards) as the bus pulls out rapidly in an attempt to prevent me from seeing half the poster. So I guess ‘first glance’ really translates into “a short glimpse of HALF the movie poster”. I’ve never even seen the trailer, but I scurried to the cinema on the first day Real Steel was screened.
I was actually looking for a brainless action flick. After all, I can only study for so long. I guess my thoughts went like something like that: buff, beefy, ruggedly handsome guy starring –> Hugh Jackman = Wolverine = action –> robots in the poster –> transformers-style movie with lots of action and no brain needed
Posted 2 months, 3 weeks ago at 3:20 pm. Add a comment
What You Missed So Far
by Deleitier
So here we are, Term 4 Week 6. For the JC1s, we breathe a sigh of relief for having survived the Promotional Exam Weeks; however, our dear JC2s breathe a sigh of the battle weary—anxious to finally complete their last hurdle: the A-levels. Which brings me to the question: so what did happen during those weeks that we, the students, were in hibermation (read:mugging)? Well, there were a few noteworthy events during the exams period, namely:
ACJC Attains Prestigious Awards
Posted 3 months ago at 3:18 pm. Add a comment
Where have all the ACSians gone?
by Ramblestiltskin
Is it just me or are the corridors emptier nowadays? What’s more, when I walk around school hallways at 3p.m. (still very early for people to be going home) I would probably hear a pin drop. The usually overflowing canteen and candeck is sparsely filled too. When I need to find a friend, I have to text or call the person and hope that he/she picks up the phone. You might be wondering, where are the students of ACJC? Based on personal experience, I can safely say that I know where everyone is hiding, or rather, mugging. Nowadays, the top 4 student hotspots in ACJC are:
Posted 3 months, 2 weeks ago at 1:01 am. Add a comment
A Local Education
by Randomosity
Anyone who has ever had any ambition whatsoever to study overseas, outside of Singapore, no doubt made plans practically eons ago. From the time you enter junior college, there is talk after talk on overseas universities, the application procedure, the requirements, the cost of living, other random things you need to know that you currently take for granted because you’ve grown up knowing them here… All this is almost spoon-fed to you by the school. Amazingly convenient, isn’t it?
But what if you never had this intention? I certainly didn’t. I had everything planned out. What course I wanted to take. What I needed to do. The qualifications I had to obtain. Everything in Singapore, of course. I even had my co-curricular activities planned out—which choirs I planned to join after the A-Levels.