Spreading awareness by being a BALDIE

A few weeks ago, we had our Amnesty International Headshaving Event. Nowadays it seems to have become the new trend for people to shave their heads for charitable organizations in order to raise money for them. Perhaps it is not the norm worldwide but for me, coming from Singapore, I am rather accustomed to seeing bald men and women at certain times of the year. In Singapore, a yearly event that takes place is 'Hair for Hope'. Island-wide, a huge number of Singaporeans come together, male and female, young and old, and shave their heads to show their solidarity for cancer patients and also raises money for cancer research. 

Coming to AC I wasn't that shocked by the idea of shaving one's head for charities, but I can't help but admire the people that did. I did seriously consider shaving my head, knowing that the money raised, especially by girls would contribute a substantial amount of money to the charitable organisations of our choosing. However, my fears of what might unwittingly happen due to stepping into the shaving unknown outweighed my decision to lose locks for money. 

This year we saw a rather large number of people, especially girls, who shaved their heads for Amnesty. And though most of the students weren't shaving their heads, many of us still wanted to get in on the razor action. We all gathered in the comfort of the coffee lounge to witness the de-hairing of our friends. The coffee lounge was packed and soon the auctions to see who got to do some shaving began. In order to raise even more money than the amount each person had preliminarily raised individually, the Amnesty team always gives the honour of balding someone to the person who agrees to donate the most money to that soon-to-be baldie. Hullabaloo is probably the most accurate description of the atmosphere in the coffee lounge as overexcited friends and dorm mates fought for the razor. 

It was not long before the first few razors roared into life and the great de-hairing began. One by one, my fellow ACers lost their mops to friends and dorm mates who had slightly maniacal glints in their victorious eyes. A trend of leaving on tufts of hair, some with obvious shapes (e.g. a moustache) also developed. All in all, it was an evening of fun, laughter and lots of hair. For me, I can now say that though I will probably still not be shaving my head next year, I will definitely be supporting all the brave and special people who do.

"I don't consider myself bald, I'm just taller than my hair' - Lucius Annaeus Seneca

The UWC cycle

Today, Friday, October 25th marks the start of October break for all UWC students. Yesterday, my dorm mate Maria said that she was told that they started the October break because everybody fell sick during this period. Whether this is a fact or myth, I'll probably never know, but it definitely applies to me. Yesterday night, I was running a fever of 38.1 degrees celsius which is why I am now resting in bed and have time to blog. 

Being the last week of school before the one week break, there have been many different events that have taken place. In this post, I am going to focus on our activity cycle. As mentioned in one of my earlier posts, we have to do both activities and service as part of our AC Diploma. However, while you remain in the same service faculty for your 2 years here, activities change every 5 week cycle. This gives you a chance to do activities that you might not be able to do because your service faculty does not offer it.

For the last cycle, I was part of the Atlantic College News Network, more commonly known as ACNN (so much more swag). Our activity comprised of writing summaries of big news stories. Most of the time we focused on current issues and events, but I also did a couple of interesting stories that I was passionate about. I covered the shutdown of the US government, the shooting in D.C., the 'key' to happiness and a few more stories. I was really glad I managed to do the activity because I greatly enjoy writing (definitely not evident from me blogging as often as I can (; ) and it was a good way to keep up with current affairs. This pertinent need to find ways to keep up with global news will be explained further when I share my new activity for the upcoming cycle. I must say I will enjoy ACNN, there was something very professional about being given a deadline and a story to chase!

The other activity I did was yoga. Since coming to AC, I must admit that I have not been too physically active. Then again, I have daily walks to get from one place to another and weekly (sometimes bi-weekly) walking trips to Llantwit, so I think I'm not doing too badly. Which is why I was rather pleased to have some form of exercise as an activity. I definitely enjoyed yoga as it was a way to just push out all the chaos of AC life and focus on the simple things, like not thinking and breathing. 

For the new cycle, I am in the school's Amnesty International youth group and Newsflash. I have attended one session for each of my new activities and so far think I am going to have a great time! At Amnesty we plan fundraisers to support the organisation which due to its NGO status, depends heavily on donations to survive. We also discussed various human rights issues and shared our opinions on them. The wonderful thing about having such global diversity at the college is that everything can bring something personal from their own country's to the table. 

Newsflash is also very enjoyable. Each week we will be focusing on a big news story and sharing again from our own country's perspective the views we have on the stories. This week we focused on Edward Snowden. What was interesting was that while we did focus greatly on the whistleblowing story, we eventually branched out into country's security policies. As I said earlier, it's really necessary to find ways to keep up with global issues here. I had thought I would become a lot more aware of current issues here, but that's not the case. Everybody here is always on their feet, there's just no time to read the newspapers!

Well that's my activities for you! I can't wait for the next 4 sessions I have and know that they will be both great fun and great learning experiences! But for now... OCTOBER BREAK!!! 

And a little quote I couldn't help but crack up after reading, " I once wanted to become an atheist, but I gave up - they have no holidays!" - Henry Youngman