by Lee Chin Wee (14A01B)

Opinions are rather strange things. Trapped and stewing within the confines of our head, they are but isolated thoughts. Spoken and shared with a few close friends, they start to gain some character – sharpened by dissenting views and polished over time. But when broadcasted to a wider community, that’s when opinions really come into their own – they gain the power to persuade, to entertain, to wound, and to move. After all, the world doesn’t owe us a duty to listen to what we think.

As the official student journalism society of RI, Raffles Press aspires to be a platform where our members can make their voices count. We meet once a week, from 2.00-3.30 pm on Wednesdays. While our training schedule may seem low-intensity, rest assured that our reach is anything but! The annual RI yearbook features dozens of event write-ups from our very own members. The revamped Rafflesian Times, a collaborative effort with the Communications Department, goes out to thousands of alumni all around the world. Word of Mouth, our online publication, reaches out to over 2,000 regular readers on a daily basis – we regularly hit more than 60,000 views a month!  Who knew that contemporary accounts of student life could be so popular?

But honestly, beyond the self-congratulatory statistics, there are many significant intrinsic benefits that can be reaped by joining Raffles Press. As a club, our philosophy is that the rewards you reap should be commensurate to the work you plough into the CCA. The more articles and projects you’re willing to participate in, the more fulfilling your time as a Press member will be. Don’t just take our word for it – think about the last good article you’ve read on the internet. Perhaps it inspired you to take action, or at least encouraged you to think more about a particular issue. We’re giving you the chance to touch someone’s life instead. It could be a poignant feature on a former Rafflesian drug addict, an Appreciation Week piece on one of our cleaning staff, or simply a heartfelt article about a service learning trip – it’s all up to you to decide.

After all, Press is a CCA that seeks not to compete but rather to collaborate. We’ve forged strong working relationships with the Communications Department, the Students’ Council and the Photographic Society (just to name a few) in order to enhance the Rafflesian Experience. Through our CCA Previews, we have given traditionally smaller and less publicized CCAs a platform to bring their message across. Through our Please Mind the Platform Gap series, we provide crucial information to ease the transition to Year 5-6. Through our involvement in the Rafflesian Times, we have injected a strong student voice into an otherwise corporate magazine. Many of the initiatives that Press has spearheaded over the past two years have been founded on the simple premise that student voices matter the most. We firmly believe that Raffles Press provides the dialogue needed for a stronger sense of Rafflesian community.

Here at Raffles Press, we also take the personal development of our members very seriously. Members can expect their training sessions to be occupied by external workshops, internal lectures and the occasional field trip – the last one was to the Wee Kim Wee School of Communications at NTU! This year, we plan to invite a number of prominent journalists and mainstream media experts for the purposes of club enrichment. Better writers will also get the chance to mentor less experienced members from both Press and Publications (the Year 1-4 equivalent), honing their writing skills in the process.

This year, we intend to hold selection trials for the club, which will take the form of a simple English competency test as well as a short interview segment – hopefully not too daunting a prospect, especially because we intend to accept over thirty new members in 2014. Do look out for scheduling details on the CCA registration page itself.

Consider joining Press if you have a flair for writing. Consider joining us if you’ve always wanted to be a journalist. Consider joining us even if you simply want to play a part in shaping the school community. Join us so that one more voice can be added to our chorus of opinions.

Bill Shankly once said, “Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I assure you, it’s a lot more than that.” For many people, football is something that they gather together to kick about an air filled ball into a net, or settling down in their living room to catch a glimpse of Manchester United versus Liverpool on the television. To us, this sport is much more than that. Joining football and playing football, entails joining a family of equally passionate football fanatics who give their hearts out to emulate their footballing heroes, trading skills that may seem impossible to accomplish and demonstrate their innate ability with the ball on their feet.

Coming off second place in last years National Schools competition, this year, we will be trying our utmost best to reach the top and to topple the reigning champions off their throne.

Although ability in football is greatly appreciated in every squad, talent can only go so far as how hard they work for it. Here in football, selection is not only based by your natural ability with the ball, but how much you want to play and your passion in joining this sport. Here, we also have the best teachers in charge, with the ever-passionate Mr. Lee, our biology and economics maestros Mr. Ganison and Mr. Sunderaj, and coupled with our revered coach Mr. Philippe Aw, trainings will definitely be the activity that you look forward to every week!

Our trainings are held about thrice a week, with most days allocated to field training (Hooray to five-a-side matches!) and improving our skills on the ball. Of course on the rainy days or on the days that the lightning alert magically sounds, physical training, or PT, commences, which entails a rigorous workout of stairs training, core training and jogging around the campus. Then again, you better pray that it does not rain before training, lest you arrive home with a bag full of smelly, mud stained garments that your mom will most definitely be displeased at.

Have I mentioned that football is a family? Joining football means joining a team of brothers that share with each other interesting (sometimes crude) anecdotes that never fail to make us laugh, or simply having a meal at the nearby S-11 or the Sky Garden at J8. Walk past the tables near the Hodge Lodge, and you’ll hear the most raucous and noisiest bunch of people, mostly made up of the footballing team. The bonds that we have in this footballing team are strong, and although the time that we may spend together may be short over these two years, but it is the feeling of friendship and camaraderie that we have built up on the field playing football that will stay with us for the years to come.

Come join us! Be it that you’re a footballing god that may rival Cristiano Ronaldo, or that you’ve never touched a football (but always wanted to), football is the CCA that you would most definitely be welcomed into!

Raffles Modern Dance is a tightly-knit CCA that never fails to inculcate the love for dancing in its members. It has a warm atmosphere with every dancer playing a vital role in the team. In Modern Dance, the dancers are exposed to the unique style of their resident instructor, Low Mei Yoke. Madam Low prepares the dancers for important events such as the biennial Singapore Youth Festival (SYF), as well as, major school events such as Raffles Rhapsody. Weekly trainings and self-improvisation classes constantly improve the technicality of the dancers. Furthermore, the dancers are given a chance to choreograph their own dance pieces during non-SYF performances. This allows them to explore their fullest potential and creativity.

There are numerous opportunities for Modern Dance to perform each year and these platforms serve as a great way for the dancers to improve their stage presence. In 2013, we took part in the Singapore Youth Festival and attained a Distinction for our item titled ‘In or Out’. Other performances include in-house events such as Open House and Take 5.

During term time, Modern Dance meets twice a week, on Mondays (4.00 – 6.00) and Wednesdays (3.00 – 6.00), for a total of about 5 hours. However, nearing the time of performances, trainings may increase to three times a week and trainings may be extended. During the holidays, trainings will be conducted during the earlier half of the holiday.

Modern Dance requires auditions and the selection process consists of two stages. The first stage requires participants to learn a set of choreography and the second stage to improvise according to any music played. However, participants may be asked to prepare a short routine as well. Selection into Modern Dance is based on the participants’ ability to learn quickly and their overall performance.

Apart from gaining performing experiences, the dancers will learn an important element in Modern Dance – chemistry. Modern Dance comprises movements that are interdependent between dancers. It focuses on expression and emotion. To foster inter and intra batch bonding, Modern Dance also has outings throughout the year, for instance to watch dance performances together. We are also planning to have a bonding camp in April.

As Martha Graham once said, “Dance is the hidden language of the soul”, Raffles Modern Dance is truly a CCA that allows its dancers to push beyond their limits and mature into even greater dancers.

Club Automatica

Club Automatica is just the place you’d want to be if you enjoy either manipulating Physics theories or playing with technology.

We are formed by 2 divisions – Quanta, which deals with Physics, and robotica, dealing with robotics applications.

Club Vision
“To nurture a group of passionate, skilled students able to push boundaries in robotics and Physics through creativity and innovation”

ROBOTICA

In Robotica, we deal with all things electrical and mechanical. We use different platforms to build our own wonderful creations. From simple kits like Lego NXT (yes, the plastic blocks brand, but much much cooler stuff, check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0-hmiCIShE) and VEX (for larger, metal robots) to more adventurous ones like the open sourced Arduino as well as propietary systems such as Joinmax! However, the club is not just about what we do, it’s more about how we do it. Innovation and creativity are indispensable in our arsenal of tools. In a sea of indistinguishable mechanical contraptions, we strive for the beautiful solution, poised as the guiding light for the robotics scene worldwide.

Our training sessions are fully student-run. But don’t worry, we have adequate qualification and experience, having been through up to 8 years of robotics competitions nationally and internationally. However, our individual brilliance would count for nothing if we didn’t share. Thankfully, sharing is one of our favourite activities (making robots come first). By teaching one another, as well as our juniors (through RARE, an initiative for Y5-6s to teach our Y1-4 juniors), and sharing with whoever wants to listen through our Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Club-Automatica/325436347581930). This way, we can pass on the knowledge and passion that we have for Robotics to our fellow enthusiasts personally!

Of course, we apply these skills in the plethora of competitions we take part in such as Robocup Singapore Open & National Junior Robotics Competition. This way, we are able to pit our skills against others and expose ourselves to a variety of solutions.

1) RoboCupJunior Singapore – Awards:
1st for Dance Challenge – Individual Team Secondary
1st for Dance Challenge – Super Team
1st for Soccer Challenge – Soccer Open League Individual Team (here’s a link to the videos of the finals where we beat ACSI 18-1 first half: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=945JS0hvFzA, second half: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxDzak2tu3g&feature=c4-overview&list=UU7DpTAK4xH0-Mq9bNsVJTEQ)
Best Achievement Award

2) NJRC – Awards:
2nd for Best Research
3rd for Entrepreneurship award
Distinction Award – tertiary category

If you’ve got the interest, then that’s all we need! No prior experience is needed at all. As a close-knit bunch of robotics enthusiasts, we’d gladly guide you from lost soul to at least good enough to build and program a simple robot (personal commitment and enthusiasm is definitely a plus point to have to be good).

If you already have the experience though, why not join like-minded people like us to further your skills and try out new ideas! Who knows, you could be the next Dean Kamen Kenneth Chow (chairman, kenneth_chw@yahoo.com.sg).

In 2013, we had our division sessions every Wednesday, 2.30-4.30. This coming year however, the training day and timing are subject to change, based on our members’ availability. We’re extremely flexible about it as we believe that it would be a waste to lose out on our exciting sessions only due to schedule conflicts.

Fact of the day: All our members have won at least one first placing trophy in a competition this year, definitely an added incentive to join us.

By Ho Xiu Lun and Joelle Chong

Picture this. The lines are drawn and the stands are filled. You smell the grass and feel the sun fuel you. “Play ball.” The crowd roars as you step up to bat and this is when the adrenaline kicks in. With a triumphant swing, you send the ball soaring through the sky and clinch the victory by bringing home the winning run. This is softball.

We play for the (g)love of the game, training three times a week under Mr Nelson Lim, our wise and experienced coach. Our coach has been with us for over 20 years, training countless batches of champions. Year after year, Raffles Softball has performed remarkably, with the ‘A’ Division Boys defending their title for the past three years, and the ‘A’ Division Girls bringing home the title the year before and coming in third runners up last year.

You can also expect various exciting overseas training opportunities to countries like Thailand, Australia, Malaysia and beyond. Not only so, annual tournaments such as the SRC-SBSA Softball Carnival and AIA-SBSA Kallang Softball Open provide us with ample opportunity to hone our skills and bring us closer together as a unit.

In Softball, you’ll find in your team mates a second family, one who shares the same passion as you and will always have your back. Our teachers-in-charge are one of the most dedicated around and so is the softball alumni who spares no effort to go the extra mile, sacrificing their time to assist us during training.

If you have any experience playing softball or are interested in picking up the sport, we welcome you to be part of our softball family!

Softball: Where the good steal.