Enc Week Blog

  'Experiencing another's culture may open doors that were previous closed ... but the choice to walk through those doors is entirely up to you.' Looking at this quote made me think firstly, what exactly is culture. Well, research tells me that culture is an art or cultivation that manifested overtime. It is the ideas, customs, and social behaviour of a particular people or society.

 Objectives of EnC week:

I think that the whole objectives of this Week is to make us embrace and enjoy the other cultures and welcome them with open arms into our own culture. Because in River Valley Highschool, we have mostly only Chinese students so we cannot experience the other rich cultures that frequently. So this week is to let us understand and learn the other cultures instead of "forcefully" accepting them into our multi racial society.

 During EnC week the school brought us on an interesting learning journey to kampong glam and little india where many people visit for the richness in different cultures. On the first day of EnC Week, the school invited malay dance instructors to come teach my class malay dance and other classes other types of cultural activities like Indian dance and Music. The malay dance was really enjoyable and knowledgful, the dance instructor told us that in Malay dance they incoorperate part of the chinese martial arts, their own and the whole dance tells a beautiful story. The malay dance as a culture, just like Singapore itself, incoorperate different culture which compliments each other and make the dance all the more better. This really fulfilled the objectives as i had learnt that when we learn to accept and embrace each other, we compliments each other's strength and make a better community.

Day 2-5:

On day 2 to 4 we went on a trip to kampong glam and little india. We were told to research different things during the 4 days we were there and my group chose food. Malay and india food are awfully similar as they both revolve around the fragrant spices.

These are two of the few spices we found, the mustard seeds and dried chillies. There are also spices like Coconuts and corriander seeds. Malay uses the coconut to make food like nasi lemak and the indians uses the coconut food to make curry. Malay also included what us, the chinese always use, the soy sauce to enrice their flavour in the food.

this is a picture of a mosque we visited in Kampong Glam. "Masjid Sultan Mosque"

When we entered this mosque, it looked really big unlike other mosque. Interesting fact is that the reason why the interior of the mosque is big is because, it was planned and constructed by an Irish Architect which made the interior like a catholic church which increases the size. It really surprised me because an Irish man constructed a muslim mosque even though they are 2 different religion. 

Second fact is that under the golden glass dome which represents luck and prosperity is actually glass bottles. Because in the past, people who were poorer and could not afford to contribute to the cost of the construction, they contributed glass bottles instead and now it is on the mosque itself. This was a very heartwarming fact because even thoughs the muslim people who started this project, accepted the poorer with open arm and take any contribution they could take and still put it on to the mosque. This shows how much the muslims are bonded as a religion and it really touched all our hearts.

   Because we only spend 1 day at little india there was'nt enough time to explore everything but we had alot of fun. We went into a hawker centre which sold alot of different food from the range of chicken rice to chicken briyani. I chose to try the prata there as it was part of the indian culture, in the curry i could taste the spices and it was not that spicy as they had to serve people from other races too.

We also took turns to explore the Indian street arcade in Little India and there were alot of shops that was selling hanna tattoos but sadly i did not have the time to get it. The hennas represented good luck and it looked really nice. But i wish we had more time to explore the little india and the streets especially with out groups as there were too much to explore.

The most Impactful Lesson:

It is definitely the culture of the muslims. What drives their culture and religion is their integrity. The muslims have to fast for 1 month, have ablution done before entering the mosque and they have to do 5 prayers a day. They do not just skip any of this as they have a strong sense of integrity. If they accidentally miss a prayer or accidentally eat during the fasting period they will just find another time to do it and they will complete it all the time. Ablution, an act to cleanse themselves before they enter the mosque, muslims have intergrity to not do the wrong and scold vulgarities as these make their whole body dirty, muslims try their best to restrict themselves from this through integrity and cleanse themselves everytime during ablution.

Conclusion:

During this whole trip, my group and i faced the whole 5 days with positivity and humbleness to fully experience the other cultures. It definitely released our religious barriers and we could enjoy ourselves alot and at the same time enjoy ourselves. I wish that we had more time to explore places like the masjid sultan mosque by ourselves to find out more about the places itself as we had not enough time to do so.

As my school only consist of mostly chinese, i do forget about the other races sometimes but after this trip, i learnt to be more sensitive towards the other cultures and try our best to embrace each other as much as we can.

Even though there were times that the trip was really boring, EnC week has been really fruitful and we could learn alot of different new things as we approached it with open mindedness.