Opinion

Commentary, Opinion

Are You Truly Enjoying Life? (The Photo Dilemma) 
Reading Time: 6 minutes

By Sophie Sim (27S05A) 

All photos courtesy of Orlando Khoo (27S06F) unless otherwise stated.

Scrolling through my camera roll, I see all the events I’ve been a part of, all the outings I’ve been on. But if asked to pick my favourite event, I would hesitate. Because even the best pictures on my camera roll are rarely the best memories of my life. 

The most fun moments of my life would come out as the most blurry, low-res pictures ever: where someone’s eyes are closed, when the lighting’s terrible, and nobody is posing properly. 

It’s these moments when nobody cares about whether the photo turns out “glam” or not, or whether to post on “spam” or “main”, when the only thing on everyone’s mind is just laughing, crying and even bickering with one another, when we feel that we are living for ourselves, not to showcase to anyone else. It is at these moments that people have the time of their lives.

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Commentary, Culture, Opinion

Yes Justin, It’s Finally Clocking To Us 
Reading Time: 5 minutes

By Jaden Lum (26S05A)

Bieber Fever is back.

In recent years, it’s been suspiciously latent, lurking in the shadows, waiting to break out yet again, and now, out of a desert in California, it’s swept the world once more—this time, in full, unapologetic, RnB-and-pop-entwined force. 

For those unlucky (or lucky, if you’re a snob) enough to test negative, here’s the rundown: 

Coachella has been no stranger to hosting some of music’s most legendary performances. Whether it was the 2012 hologram that summoned Tupac back to life, the pomp and pageantry of 2018’s Beychella (a portmanteau of Beyoncé and Coachella), or Lady Gaga’s massive, vibrant, stupefying sets just last year, the festival has become synonymous with not just spectacle, but innovation too. 

This year, however, was different. Or at least, for one of the headlining acts, it was. 

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Humour, Opinion, School Life

One Must Imagine the Year 6 Happy
Reading Time: 7 minutes

By Nicole Lee (26S05A)

A not-so-pleasant reality is that in Y6, there is a light that always goes out. With A-levels around the corner, it’s very normal for the average Year 6 to experience a sense of impending doom, accompanied by the constant feeling of dread. 

Sometime last week, I had a conversation with my GP tutor about the concept of Year 6 despair. “Suddenly you can tell that Year 6s walk with a bit more tiredness (and) solemnness”, he laughed mirthlessly, “they become more focused… it’s like (in Year 5) they don’t understand they need to know things but by Year 6, they’ll be like: oh, we really need to know this”. 

In Year 5, we had orientation, new classmates, and exciting events. Above all, we didn’t know what was coming for us, which is a stark contrast to that of the Year 6 experience—you actually have to lock in now. 

“You’ve got multiple eyebags stacked on top of each other.” 

Year 5 Junior 

Anyways, on the idea of Year 6 despair: sure most of us have it, but how does it manifest itself? There are many ways your week can go wrong, but for simplicity’s sake, let’s move along to the common denominators of despair in Year 6.  

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Commentary, Culture, Op-Eds, Opinion, School Life

The Case for Google Apps : Why They Are *Objectively* Better (For School)
Reading Time: 7 minutes

By Dara Tan (27A01A)

I nearly screamed aloud on the first day of orientation, in the middle of the lecture hall, with all of the 300-odd new JC students there. 

Why? The new school emails had just been passed out to all of us, and to my abject horror, we would be using Outlook. As a pure Google user, I was miserable. I would have to download all of the Microsoft apps (OneNote, Word, Excel etc.) and get used to an entirely new ecosystem. 

But then I stopped panicking for a while, and thought, Maybe Microsoft is just a JC thing. Maybe it isn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Maybe I can like it. (Spoiler alert, the answer was a vehement no.)

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Movie Reviews, Opinion, Raffles Reviews

Project Hail Mary: A Ship Full of Grace
Reading Time: 4 minutes

By Irene Eva Thomas (26A01B)

Warning: Contains spoilers.

Set in the context of decades of cynical and complex sci-fi films, Project Hail Mary, based on Andy Weir’s novel of the same title, had two choices: to align with or stand in opposition to this canon. The stakes were high for directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller—they were faced with expectations from fans of Weir’s novel and the self-proclaimed ‘sci-fi connoisseurs’, those who hail (pun not intended) the likes of Interstellar and Alien. 

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