As school begins, I rarely have any chance for a service opportunity. Unfortunately due to the level 3 Pandemic Lockdown in Taiwan, my internship schedule for this year is all getting delay which means all my activities are going to be busy later on in the year (when Kaohsiung enters level 1). Another sad truth about the pandemic is the fact that I can’t play Table Tennis anymore due to the local regulations in my neighborhood but I still manage to achieve some activity by having soccer training three days per week after school.

Activity-wise, I manage to finish some drawings about the recent topic that I am really into, kittens. I draw and design the base of the characteristics on my mood and theme that I bring thought at during this period, in another word, is also like a reflection but on a painting.

The drawing completely digitally shows a kitten aroused and refused to eat his food (vegetables) that has been prepared by his owner. My concept was original that me being the cat refusing the correct judgment given by my parents (owner) simply because I don’t like or refuse to follow. Eventually, I end up with false results and want to change the ending but it was too late, sometimes in life, we don’t get a second chance. I also understood or tires to think to form a parental point of view after many events have happened as a grow up and still to this day, I still make a simple mistake. However, I can now use reflection to remind myself of the importance of following an instruction given by an elder or someone that has more experience than you, I hope I would receive many suggestions when I am researching and applying to colleges later on in my life.

As for the CAS Project, I am finally begging my group on the topic of “Restaurant Menu Translation Program”. Of course, this topic currently is still not yet being approved but once it’s approved, we are planning to use this project as an opportunity to let our local restaurant engage with the international customer flaws. As a service project, I would also be demonstrating my painting skills when designing the outlines for the menu. Hope everything goes well with that.

As the summer vacation begins, the lockdown continues… There is nothing much I can do but to complete some work indoor, alone. My Family always agree with the no pet policy where it gave us more mobility sometimes in the year to travel, but the time like this now would be nice to have a pet. So, I decided to draw one.

The cat I drew is base on the storyline of trap indoor because of the pandemic. This activity helps me understand the action of nature which would lead me to further success in the future by giving me more examples of the action cats learn from. Although I don’t have a cat, this is still a good chance to practice my new ability of painting from an image and I can use this skill set in my IB Art class.

As I begin my summer vacation, I immediately begin to work on my CAS project with my friends. Currently, we’ve come up with a result of the “Stop Motion” film reflecting one of the global issues after hours of discussion. We all hope the topic gets to let us understand the true action and motion of the mistake human have made to cause this global issue. Even though we haven’t had detailed information of what we want to do as final presentation, but I still put my hand on and try to draw a draft of a figure which I end up with an incomplete drawing.

Above is my incomplete drawing base around a Gundam, Gundams were used as war robots to destroy opponents’ major fleet in their reality, it also represents the success of technologies connecting with humans. In Gumdams case, drivers are assigned one each and may have different abilities. A figurative drawing above is harder than what I’ve imagined, in the future, I hope to draw more and use this technique in my art class for further investigations.

The CAS experience supports me in academics and my daily life by giving me the habit of reflecting. After the Dental Clinical experience during the Spring Break of 2021, I have entered a new level of spatial awareness. This ability is rather important for me since by understanding others’ feelings, I can make my life easier when comes negotiations occur. Before this understanding, I think don’t concern others’ feelings when deciding things (When I held power). But now with the support of this ability, I hope I can respect more people and don’t harm them. This ability would also boost my social network since now people think I am a respectful person, and I think overall, the Service/Activity at the Dentistry helps me to reflect daily and think where I can improve which is rather helpful to my future.

As the CAS program continues next year, I am currently planning on developing the ability to become a risk-taker. This year, most of my CAS events have been based around the same thing over and over again. Even though at this stage, I am still concerned about my future CAS plannings, but to become a risk-taker, I would like to avoid the events that had already occur this year. Being the fact that I would only repeat the activity that I would enjoy or needs it for example Beach Cleaning and with the continuing pressure of lockdown, I think I need to have more indoor activity. Currently heading in the direction of practicing new musical instruments that haven’t been blog by me for CAS.

Am I balanced as A CAS Student

The 2nd Semester of 20 ~ 21

For this semester, I end up with 6 Creativity, 3 Activity, and 2 Services. The graph is quite unbalanced and there are many reasons behind it.  The 6 Creativity originated as my CAS Project, therefore I always have enough information to include in my CAS blog about them. For activity, I am currently finding new ways to increase the number of events that occur in the blog. I used to have loads of activity but don’t know if I should blog about them or not. From my perspective, in order to include an activity, it has to be unique. For example, the Red Cross CPR training might only occur in my blog for a time. But still, working on increasing the number of Activity Blog, I decided to become a Risk-Taker next year, and of course there multiple reasons behind it, but in order to blog activities is my current number 1 concern in the future. For service, I’ve only completed 2 at the end of this semester for the reason of uniqueness. Service often requires certificated depart approval and in that case, I have to reshape my schedule for it which is difficult these days. One example can be the arguments I have with my parents when they ask me to cancel my service at JZN for family vacations. With multiple other personal reasons, I am very limited with the options of services. Also, under the current restriction of Covid – 19, most of my Activities and Services (Outdoor, Sociological) have been canceled and I still don’t know when they will be returning. To conclude, I as a CAS student need to improve to be balanced on my CAS activities when comes to blogging them, I hope next year it would not be as ugly as this year when the pandemic is over and the support of being a risk-taker.

As a CAS Activity, I’ve attend this seminar of CPR train around mid March of 2021. Prior CPR training, I wasn’t really looking forward to it since it really isn’t that important, and I don’t really have any personal experience for the needs of mastering this technique.

Throughout the training process of 3 hours, I’ve talked to lots of advisors on how they get into mastering the skills and one of them told me his interesting story as an Emergency Worker for the fire department. His story was about how he uses his CPR ability for 30 minutes straight (without stopping) for saving his family on a mountain, he told me “It would be best to know ever since we can’t predict the future, if it occurs, you are ready to recover it”. Although it’s not my first time hearing a quote from that, understanding the ability of CPR is a matter of live or die situation. Of course, after the course, I get to know my school better by taking a safety tour and discovering the Health Security system around us.

For March, I decided to work on a Monthly project just to take a break from the Car Drawings.

When I am deciding what should I do, I realized maybe drawing something different would help me since I still want to improve my drawing skills in the end. This separate project is base on the Sci-fi theme and instead of cars, I’ve decided to draw Space Ships. I think my Drawings are more like my visions towards the future because during the process I kept referring to the technology that can be completed within the near future of 50 years. Of course, I also consider SpaceX’s design but I still decided to add more of my elements in there. Not much reflection has been done as I create my designs, but I think good models, guidance, shortens a lot of work. If some were provided, I should always hang to it.

For the Mid _ Feb Creativity Activity, I decided to complete my incomplete drawing of an SUV that I’ve begun ages ago. Back then. the tail light design became a trend when major car brands decide to enter the war at a different period to show their technologies with in the tail light. For this car, most of the designs were used from my previous SUV designs but I still change the tail light for the touch of modern taste.

While I was thinking about what type of tail light I should draw for my Car, I came across a piece of interesting information. It talks about the importance of the “Tail Light”, its purpose, and what it should represent. And connecting back to my life in Taiwan where Tail Light was used to describe something terrible like the ghost pressuring a person with debt or the student who has the lowest grade within the class. The tail light was supposed to be different, it’s supposed to remind others that there are objects here and shouldn’t be touch, thats why most of the time they are red. Therefore different regions have a different understanding of an object, and they might not always have a similar meaning. Sometimes it connects with the culture itself.

At the end of January, I’ve done another update of my Drawings from ages ago on a Digital platform. Before working on this Creativity Activity, I questioned myself what is the principle of my drawings and how to I make myself unique compare to others. From the last Blog, I understand the reason behind why “coupe” designs aren’t selling as well as before and this is certainly a concern with Safety.

Before.  

After. 

I begin to wonder, if people only concerns with the Looks of the car and exclude any sort of safety conciseness, will the good looking car sell boost?? If all the law policy doesn’t go against the required procedures of Car safety, would people still buy them?

Therefore, added the chassis design for the vehicles that were redesigned and labeled all details in different colors. After researching the strength of chassis, I manage to focus on a design by Volvo which happens to win multiple safety awards with their products. I simply apply their concept to my design with a few revolutionized ideas being the additional layer of material that would not only add weight but cost towards the final product.

This time contracting the design base on the perspective of engineers. When putting safety into a series of considerations, safe design strategies are used to deal with hazards and eventualities that cannot be assigned meaningful probabilities, as well as to lower the anticipated likelihood of casualties. All criteria must meet basic ethical requirements for safety since is something that can also be controlled by the public. Ex: When hit by another car on the highway when staying in your lanes and following the rules, why, because that driver was drunk. Since we can’t expect others to not take good care of themselves, we might as well protect ourselves first.

For me, I think the world is balance. What that means is the fact no good-looking car is safe, maybe with more power, it’s easy to lose control of them…etc. But I think, it won’t be successful since people purchase beautiful things to enjoy, and relax. By that means that safety is everything when having fun. Therefore, I still choose to update another of my SUV’s random draw, with a larger body, it should take less impact during an accident. Again, practicing my techniques on Digital Drawings.

Around the first week of January 2021, I updated the concept drawings that I’ve complete sometimes ago. The biggest changes this time is definitely the presentation form, currently with digital drawing technique, I can make more changes in more ways.

Since the last car sketch I’ve drawn, I seek advice from my art teacher to improve my basic drawing techniques especially in proportions. One suggestion that he told me was to draw basic lines over and over again until I can draw a straight line without using a ruler which would guide me to understand the relationship between spaces formed by the lines. In addition, I add multiple details on the body panel to create detail and try to find correct proportions between the spaces with lines.

As the Creativity in CAS, I’ve learned a lot since my first experience with digital drawings back in 8th grade. This allows me to produce better art in the future and I can understand the background of digital drawings. The most efficient thing I think for digital drawings is the overcome the fear of reversing. If I drew digitally, I won’t have to worry too much about painting with the wrong brush at the wrong time. Before the Creativity Activity, I still work on the research of perspective to make sure I am on track with what I want to draw. Indeed, perspective and trends shifts within a period, and with Designs, I am really glad my ideas remain in the modern Era. But I know, it’s just a matter of time to get replaced as the concept of Coupe is dying down due to its expensive, unsafe chassis design just for looks.

As we enter Level 3 Lock down in Kaohsiung, most of my Activities or Service Events has been canceled. On the 19th of May I played Table Tennises Mainly to practice my own basic drills but most importantly is to have a balance schedule over this boring lock down period. At the same time taking breaks from all the digital learning and releases some stress. During my light practice section, I set a goal of having 150 hits without stopping to warm up my wrest which is rather important after sitting at my desk studying for a period of time.

I took me around 30 minutes to complete that goal with multiple failures during drills, and after this practice; it would not only help me improve my ball controlling technique but also take a break from all of the assignments going on. With loads of pressure from all the subjects and the unhealthy studying environment (My room), I really need a break like this to avoid diving back to my bed.