For the past 2 weeks during CAS Friday, I have been working on the two plays that I viewed in the previous post. I decided to actively operate these 2 plays on a real court to actually adjust and view the perspectives of operating these plays. I have been trying to be more familiar with and more consistent with these 2 plays for these 2 weeks and did it more like in a “slow-motion” form. I think I am confident to operate the plays more consistently in a slower form, but I think it could be improved after more practices and I will be able to actually use these plays in an actual game in the future and hopefully benefitting the team with these efficient plays.

Here are some videos of the “slow-motion” forms of the plays:

As I continue to work out for the next 2 weeks, I stay with the same work out list with the types of equipment needed. However, I did not go to the gym that often because I do not have that much time after school resumed from Digital Days (due to coronavirus). I tend to go to the gym 3 days per week after school started and I think it is hard to maintain that schedule since the school work and activities are inconsistent and would be hard to manage time efficiently. Moreover, another challenge that I faced was “Food”. Some of the amazing foods are just too appealing that it had negatively impacted my progress in the gym (due to excessive calories and fats), therefore, after 2~3 weeks, I did not see clear progress in this CAS experience. Nonetheless, from this CAS experience, I learned and understood the challenges of staying determined and having that perseverance to say “no” to things that you love but may affect your goals. I think this lesson is essential as I will be able to come up with a better mindset in the future when dealing with goals and ways to avoid and ignore those negative attractions to achieve my goals more successfully in the future.

For this CAS experience, I would like to participate in a fitness-kind activity which I will be specifically focusing on core muscle training in this experience. In order to accomplish it effectively, I went to a gym and use mechanical types of equipment that help to specifically improve core muscles with more efficiency. I planned a set of training lists ahead of time which I will be doing 5 mechanical types of equipment to improve core muscles. The equipment I used is for example “SBE”, “abdominal crunch”, and “V-Crunch”. Usually, I did 15 times in a set and I will be doing 3 set for each equipment. I decided to pursue better core muscles because I had taken a body test and it shows that my core is weaker than other muscles such as legs or chest, therefore, I attempt to use this CAS experience to act as a motivation to go to the gym and improve on something I am weaker at. Thus, I will have better performance while doing ball-related sports in the future.

As being the point guard of the team, it is essential to know efficient and effective plays to score on the opponent’s defensive position. Although this year’s basketball season has already ended, I would like to investigate some basketball plays that I could potentially use in the next season, which I went to research about some of the most effective plays that can be used under “man to man” defense. For the first play, it is called the “elevator door” play which it is for the shooter to get a wide-open situation to shoot the ball. The play will start at the side and end it up passing to the middle 3 point line to make the shot. The shooter will first stand at the corner position and moves towards the middle and goes up to the 3 point line. While the shooter is moving in action, two forwards will be screening for the shooter so that the defender guarding the shooter will be late to catch up when the shooter shot the ball. This play is named the elevator door because it looks like how the shooter can go through the door but the forwards, act as the elevator door, will close up that opening and block the way of the defender from catching up the shooter. Therefore, the shooter will be able to have that wide-open opportunity to shot the ball. This play is commonly used in “Golden State Warriors” since they have good shooters in the team and I believe our team can try it as well.

The second play is called “flare slip” which is aiming to create an open layup for the wing players. The play will start up at the top and the wing player will be screening a fake screen for another wing player while immediately cut into the middle after setting the screen. It results in miscommunication of the defense to be able to catch up with both players at the same time. The timing of setting the screen is essential so that the confusion of the defensive players can be made. It can be applying to our team as in high school level basketball, there will be more frequent miscommunication in defense especially in man to man defense which I believe this play will work. Thus, I will be starting to physically demonstrate this play through practices with some of my classmates to be able t memorize and be more familiar with these plays in the following years.

“Elevator Door” –

“Flare Slip”

Happy 2020, another year has passed and another year has come. 2020 has again reminded me of how time has passed so rapidly and high school graduation is one step closer to us. Let’s all hope it will be a wonderful year once again.

First of all, the first CAS experience of this year that I decided to initiate is pursuing an even more advanced level on one of my beloved winter sport: skiing. I have been skiing for the past 5 years and I am confident to say that it will not stop easily. The speed, the curving turns, or the aesthetic-liked motions are the main reasons I am so into ski. This year, I would like to learn a new skill in ski that I have never tried before which I would like to use this CAS experience as an essential opportunity to achieve this goal. The skill that I am learning is called “worm turns”, which is a skill that can be done by constant speed and an accurate posture. A video from youtube was the inspiration that I came up with this idea and it is also very cool to do such skill on a ski. Thus, I informed my ski instructor about it and we began to make lots of attempts the next day, which at the end I was actually expressed with the product and looking forward to doing some more during the next winter season.

(Here are some videos of the trials and products of this CAS experience and the Youtube video that inspired me to do the attempt.)

The first semester has ended. It is a rush, busy, and intense semester that sometimes I just could not handle it well. It was also the first semester I got in contact with CAS and is quite new for me. From initiating, to investigate, then to accomplish it, I feel like I have become more familiar with the CAS program over this semester and starting to gain the confidence to accomplish further things in CAS from now. CAS develops me to be a better person, not only benefit myself but also the others which include giving back to the community. It helps me to view things from various perspectives and to look at the world we live in differently. Thus, I am motivated and proud of the work that I have done in CAS throughout this semester.

At the start of the program, I decided to work on the activity part of the CAS experience as I am more comfortable with finding an area that I can improve on. Moreover, I have already thought of something that I could be improving on that can largely benefiting me at that point that also fulfills the requirement to be a CAS experience. Therefore, I chose to work on a specific skill that I can improve on in volleyball because I am more familiar in this area and I believe it will be more beneficial for me to start out with something familiar in order to truly understand the program. During this CAS experience, the biggest challenge I faced was finding evidence of improvement because there are several factors that can affect the result of the evidence of my improvement. Nonetheless, I overcome this challenge by recording videos and use them to be my evidence of improvement and I think this work out pretty well. As a result, the “activity” CAS experience went pretty successfully and makes me feel more comfortable during further CAS experience during the following weeks.

After accomplishing the first CAS experience, I began to work on the “creativity” and”service” category of the program. These 2 categories are more unfamiliar to me because it requires me to actually step into things that I might not face in my life before. For example, I decided to work on marimba mallet selection for my second experience and it was something I have not done before since my instructor always helps me to choose the best combination of mallets for a specific piece. I think this experience fulfills the principle of being a risk-taker and an open-minded person in the IB learner profile. I started to try new things for this program and being creative to come up with ideas in order to fulfill a sense of creativity in my experience. It is a tougher experience for me but ultimately, it was another successful experience that helps me on getting to know things around me on a deeper level. Furthermore, the “service” CAS experience I have accomplished this semester lies at the very end of the semester. It was also a MUN experience and it was the first time I decided to initiate this type of conference. By being an admin for the conference, I get to help people that were in need of my committee in order to make the whole discussion and conference work more efficiently and better in many aspects. It was a big take for me to step into an unknown area which is completely new to me. However, I was able to accomplish a lot of things throughout the conference and helped lots of people which I truly sense the joy to be able to help people when they really needed it. It develops me as a thinker and communicator to be able to be cooperative with the team and everyone at the conference.

Lastly, I am glad that I get to accomplish each category of the CAS experience this semester which I feel comfortable to be on the right track to keep a pretty good balance in accomplishing different kinds of CAS experience in this program.  After working on this program for a semester, I began to discover the meaningful elements of this program and looking forward to achieving more goals in the future.

During this weekend, KAS hosted a Model United Nation event and I get to experience this type of event for the first time in my lifetime. I have never been involved in such a MUN event because I did not have the time to actually put effort into investigating it in the past few years, which I feel more excited about this event. I was involved in the conference with the position of admin which my job is mostly helping the committee to run more efficiently with high-quality teamwork and job distributions. It was a fun and meaningful experience as I get to know more about the Model United Nations more such as the global issues being discussed and the skills that can be developed through such event. Although it was a tiring weekend and lots of effort were put into in when there are lots of other school works going on as the semester is ending soon, I feel like it is still worth it to be part of the event and to be involved in something new that can also be consider as one of the CAS experience. I did learn things from it especially from helping people during the conference found out the importance of cooperation and teamwork between connections of people around the world.

Over the past 2 weeks, I have been working on filming videos about my performance on marimba with different mallets. It is a new challenge for me because it is my first time to actually use more advancing equipment to record a music video. As I had mentioned in the previous post, I will be using a special microphone to assist me in recording a better sound quality music video called “RØDE VideoMic Pro” in this CAS experience. The usage of this advanced microphone went quite successful as it is able to record more detailed sounds and make the sound of the marimba smoother and more realistic. The filming process of this CAS experience went successfully and I am able to use this CAS experiment to identify the difference of sounds between mallets throughout my recordings. Overall, I feel like MKA-S7 is the most suitable combination specifically for this piece Bach: Cello Suite No. 1 in G major, Prélude, nonetheless, this CAS experience really helps me with having a better sense of how the mallets sound and ultimately improve my marimba performance in the future.

Here are the video recordings for this experience:

The 2019-20 Volleyball ACAMIS tournament has ended just at the end of October. It has been a great session and I am even more thankful to be able to play with every single person in the team. Although the result did not meet our ultimate goal, I am still grateful I was able to give all I have in volleyball throughout the tournament. I had a great tournament and had a lot of great memories. I met some of my old friends from the last ACAMIS tournament and made some amazing saves throughout the game. The only disappointing part of the tournament is that we did not achieve our initial-set goal, which is to win back our first ever champion for the school.

It is somehow disappointing that I did not get a chance to make a “pancake” during the tournament. The reason for that is because I did not want to take any risky try that could possibly lose a point in such an important tournament. I become more mature in the mental aspects to be better on being more “high-pressure resistance” throughout games. Moreover, I realize the importance of how mental resistance connects to physical performance in sports and it is such an essential factor that could alter the performance of an athlete during games. Thus, I became aware of the reality of an athlete. It is hard and intense. Although you put so many efforts during practices, the final performance in the game is still the ultimate determination of how people see you. Whether you practice or not, your performance in the game is still the determining point to make you shine or not.

Continue on with my second CAS experience, I will be selecting various kinds of mallets to perform the piece, ultimately to find out the most suitable combination of mallets. I will be choosing from a specific group of mallets that are made by a composer named “Keiko Abe”. Although the mallets she made are all in white, the ribbons on each of the mallets symbolize different softness of the mallets which directly affect on the sounds that the mallets could produce on marimba.

Unfortunately, I do not have every pair of mallets made by Keiko Abe since some of them are quite similar and create only little contrast. Therefore, I will be choosing 4 pairs of mallets to play the same piece and find the most suitable one specifically for that piece, but also having the sense to determine the sounds that different mallets could produce on marimba. The 4 pairs of mallets are each named: MKA-04(yellow ribbon, hard), MKA-06(green ribbon, medium-hard)), MKA-S7(light/dark blue ribbon(medium-soft), and MKA-09(purple ribbon, soft).

I am still deciding whether I should play a section of a long piece or just dedicated it in one short piece. At this point, the initial desired piece that I will be playing is Bach: Cello Suite No. 1 in G major, Prélude. Thus, I will be finding the most suitable mallets to play for this piece, ultimately identifying and determining the sounds of different mallets which benefits me on further investigation on marimba performance.