This Blog is for the purpose of displaying the creativity, service, and action work done by Rayyan Zuberi over the course of the IB curriculum.
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Year 13 Term 1 CAS Reflections
Creativity:
Gender Studies CCA: In the future I am planning on applying for medicine. Something that I realized very early on when I was thinking of applying for medicine was the wide diversity of audiences I would likely be asked to treat. This posed a significant level of difficulty, especially in Canada, where our society contains people of all beliefs, cultures, races, religions, etc. Over the years my objective has been expanding my understanding. While I believe I have successfully done this in some aspects through experiencing and living in different cultures, people’s identities extend beyond their culture, religion and race. Thus to expand my understanding further I decided to take gender studies.
Gender studies, all in all, has been a very fulfilling course with regards to my objective of better understanding people. Our group explored gender studies through a series of case studies and then understanding more through discussion-based learning. I was extremely lucky to be taking gender studies at an international school, as in the room I had opinions available to me from people of multiple different backgrounds. Through their collective voices, I believe I learned substantially about the issues that women face on a day to day basis with respect to sexism, in social hierarchies, in romantic affairs, in popular culture and the minute tendencies in society. One particular form of sexism that I was not aware of was something called benevolent sexism. It extends to polite things such as holding doors for women, which is a commonplace event in Canadian society. Supposedly, by engaging in this act only favoring women, the men are asserting women’s position as the weaker sex by subliminally suggesting they are unable. While I still believe that idea may be somewhat hyperbolic, I do recognize it as an issue.
Something that particularly interested me with regards to gender studies is the psychological factor. Many draw on the chicken-egg type idea of whether gender is more nature or nurture, which our group discussed briefly. Another interesting idea we had was to conduct our own psychological study around gender, thus my group and I conducted a brainstorming session and planned out a few ideas for potential studies in school grounds. This allowed me to act as an effective team player as I have a lot of knowledge about the field of statistics, along with conducting experimental research.
Activity:
Warrior Fitness Training: After a year of the same old regimen of fitness, I decided I wanted to vary my program and join something new. So I decided to join the Warrior Fitness Training program run by a teacher of mine.
The program was a circuit training exercise (which was initially somewhat disappointing as I prefer supersets and strength training, as opposed to training which deals with building muscle size or losing weight. However, I really appreciated the ideology behind the group, where the idea of the “warrior code” represented persistence.
I also increased my knowledge of different exercises as this program included some methods of lifting weights that I personally had never heard of prior to joining the program. This posed an immediate challenge, however, form. If proper form is not maintained, muscle damage rather than muscle growth is resulting. Thus for my first few sessions, I was somewhat ineffective. In fact, during my first session, I rushed into one of the exercises to eagerly and ended up having to leave early with a severe cramp. However, I persevered. I watched videos online on how to do the exercises and practiced them in my free time. Eventually, I got the hang of them and did not suffer any other major injuries for the remainder of the term.
Exploring Languages: I spent much of my summer and my first term of this year trying to teach myself new languages using different language learning apps and online resources. Language learning is something that I feel will be highly valuable for my in the future, as I can contribute to my society better by acting as a medium between peoples. Furthermore, it will help me service the needs of minorities in Canada better. I decided that full fluent use of a language was not necessarily a good goal as it could take years to master an individual language, as I would have to master many unnecessary aspects of those languages that were not necessarily needed. Thus I only went as far as I felt would give me a general appreciation for that language, and allow me to have a somewhat broken conversation in it.
I started with Spanish and developed my understanding of the Spanish language quite a bit. I have a healthy appreciation for Spanish pronunciation, seeing as it is very similar to English pronunciation. The language itself takes on Latin roots, similar to English and French, both of which I speak. I rapidly made momentum, and eventually moved on from Spanish early in the Summer.
I attempted to learn Danish, a language that was more foreign to me as it had Germanic roots. I immediately had issues with the pronunciation as Danish calls for a more raspy way of saying things. However, Danish had a grammar that was strikingly similar to English, including indefinite articles (which were suffixes on nouns). This made the language readily readable. Oddly enough, Danish seemed to mimic English closely as well with regards to what nouns are. For example, bread is brød and an apple is æblet. Eventually, when I felt I had learned enough Danish for a general understanding, I decided to move on in early June.
In term 1 however, I took up the mantle of a much more difficult challenge, Japanese. Living in East Asia, I decided I had adequate resources at my disposal, and joined a small community of my colleagues who were learning Japanese at the same time as me. However, Japanese is seen to be the hardest language for English speakers to learn. This is due to a combination of multiple factors.
The first is the writing system, which took consistent practice over multiple days to learn. Japanese characters are divided into 3 different sets. Hirigana, the common traditional syllabic way of writing out works, Katakana, a way of writing out foreign ideas and names (many of which arrived through trade and international interaction), and finally the most difficult one, Kanji, a set of characters of Chinese origin, used as condensed forms for ideas. I thought the division was quite interesting, as it is reflective of the evolution of Japan’s language and writing systems through foreign influence.
With perseverance, I eventually went on to be skilled at identifying and reading hiragana and katakana and was unfazed even if both appeared in the same sentence. I was extremely proud, as I gradually became more and more able to communicate with my peers. One of the highlights was when at one point, rather than by communicating normally with them in class in English, I would take small phrases of Japanese and insert them into our conversations. The interaction was not only highly valuable for me, but I felt that it helped them grow in their Japanese speaking capacities as well.
I was not fully satisfied with my ability to pronounce Japanese words with ease, and so I watched an anime series that was recommended to me called “Cells at Work.” This was valuable as I was able to imitate the characters who spoke in Japanese while reading subtitles in English. The content of the 12 episode series also contributed to widening my knowledge of biology, as it dealt with human physiology to a depth further than that covered by my IB Biology course, while remaining entertaining.
Over the course of this term, I also took a trip to Japan, where I used these newfound linguistic abilities in order to communicate. While I did struggle greatly with regards to vocabulary and kanji, my interactions with people were quite effective overall. I was quite fortunate in that I was able to communicate the general ideas of what I wanted to say, through a somewhat messy combination of somewhat broken Japanese, hand signals, and where necessary a few English phrases (although I did my best to avoid having to use it.)
Service:
Pusat Ehsan: I worked in an enrichment program called “Pusat Ehsan” where I structure and supervise activities for mentally challenged children. The children being Malay can often only speak marginal amounts of English, and so this inspired me to memorize Malay phrases so I can communicate with them better. The opportunity to learn more about the struggles of mentally disabled children, especially in such a small nation such as Brunei, was highly valuable for my understanding of the people in need. It was incredible how hardworking and loving these children were, even towards myself, a Canadian student living abroad in Brunei. I hope to use my newfound understanding and experiences with these children in the future so I can provide the best possible care as a doctor in Canada.
In particular, what I enjoyed was interaction with these children, as in the end I truly felt as though I made a difference. I saw an originally socially inert child grow to become amicable and a lot more communicative just by joking around with him every session. I saw a child who originally couldn’t keep himself from drawing within the lines of a picture grow to become more prudent, just through a bit of encouragement that was given every time he kept his crayons within the lines. Pusat Ehsan was as enriching for me as it was for these children as it showed me how a little bit of care can cause people to bloom, and in the end that is the greatest service of all.
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Term 3 CAS Reflections
Creativity:
MOOC CCA - This term I joined the MOOC CCA which is a extracurricular activity in which I would sit down and work on an online course. This is my first time undergoing an online course and so I was left with a lot of anticipation and excitement before I began.
My first step was to navigate through courses and find something interesting and new. It was difficult to find an ideal course to do, something that interested me while fitting into my career path. What I ended up deciding on was a course in Clinical Research Analysis. Clinical research is essential, as it allows you to understand new ideas and theories and could very well aid in breakthroughs in medical science.
The course taught me quite a bit about statistics and the true nature of undertaking clinical research. It gave me interesting ideas about what I want to do in the future and has really facilitated my decision to apply for medicine. The skill of clinical research analysis is one that is essential for a doctor as they need to be able to understand research in order to make the best possible informed decision.
Even so the IB has trained me to be an inquirer and clinical research really begs the question of reliability as sample sizes can often be small or data could even horrifyingly be faked, as was in the case of Andrew Wakefield who was accused of faking his data in order to link vaccine use to the development fo autism. I hope in the future, tragedies like this movement can be avoided and experiments are repeated in order to test for full reliability.
Activity:
Personal Fitness - This term was once again another exciting term for my own personal fitness.
This term was filled with many more exploits, with my own personal development.
Unfortunately, this term had a big particular downside. It was Ramadan and due to personal religious reasons I was unable to participate in rigorous physical activities as I was fasting.
Afterwards, I quickly did my best to build up lost muscle and regrow. At home I began participating in fitness challenges as well, such as a 5 minute ab challenge in while I would do 30 second intervals of different planking positions in order to activate my abdominal muscles. I originally thought it would be quite short and simple as I do crunches regularly as part of my workout and with weights while I’m in the gym, however even still I struggled somewhat at first. The strain was similar to doing calf raises for a prolonged period of time as the intensity would activate your muscles very strongly and you would feel what is commonly referred to as “feeling the burn.”
My workout plan otherwise worked quite well, and I feel my next step would be to work out a good plan for the summer to make sure I obtain good results and maintain them. I’ve already brought out my bike ready to go.
Biodiversity: My school has an area called the outdoor discovery centre. At this location, students conduct geographical and ecological research by taking “random samples,” which include sectors on a plotter grid.
The poles that marked the gridlines in the ODC needed to be replaced, so I and a group of my colleagues worked adamantly to do this.
First we divided the work up, and decided that each of us would check a different area to ensuere poles were present. However many of these poles were trapped densely in the jungle. To avoid damaging the jungle substantially, I did my best to avoid stepping on shrubbery.
Afterwards, we stopped to discuss issues along the way. We noted that the poles, which were painted yellow, matched the forest very closely. So then we split our team into two different groups. One was in charge of plotting poles, and the other would spray paint cans to put on the poles, in order to make them more visible.
As part of the former team, I worked in order to first cut down the end of some wooden rods to a point. This way these rods could be driven into the ground to act as marking poles. Then with the remainder of the plotting group, we checked the map and appropriate gridlines to ensure that every single pole was in its correct place, while replacing all missing poles in the jungle.
Service:
Making a Difference: Cambodia - This term I continued working with Cambodia project. There were much fewer days however due to an unfortunate erratic schedule in our host nation’s holidays taking away Mondays.
Furthermore, many were busy planning a trip I would not be attending and thus I was quite alone in my role taking care of future fundraising. Furthermore, the Year 11s were ending the school year very early and would not be able to help us.
Even so, I aided in the planning of multiple more ice cream float sales and helped in ensuring the product got to students. Scheduling conflicts hit us quite hard at first as we are within a Muslim host nation and as soon as the Holy Month of Ramadan arrives we will no longer be able to publicly sell food in the manner we were. Time constraints were apparent. Thankfully I was able to help organize it all and take initiative on the scheduling for when everything needed to be done.
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Term 2 CAS Reflections
Creativity:
Extreme Maths: This term we were fortunate enough to see a huge increase in our numbers (with two Year 13 Students also taking HL Maths like myself), which was extremely exciting. But with the extra skill sets and different ideas coming into the mix, we got the challenge of significantly more difficult problems as well, not to mention an original bout of disorganization. I pushed on in Extreme Maths this term, building more on my abilities and tackling larger and larger problems.
With the new students we faced the challenge of organization. The key to solving any difficult math problem as a group is always organization. For the first few weeks we struggled as when we peer reviewed work, some portions were incoherent or there was lack of understanding between the Further Maths students and the HL students as either would sometimes use methods that the other had not covered at that point in time, without any statement of formula or as to why it works. However as time went on, our group work became more efficient as the older students, like myself, taught the newer students which form to best present their work to ensure maximum understanding.
Extreme Maths also served as a major contributor to my understanding of the HL Maths course. With the addition of the two Year 13 students, I was able to learn from two individuals a year further in the course than myself. Thanks to them I was much more well prepared for calculus when the time came to begin, along with building on my understanding of past topics. They also showed me techniques that they believed would aid me in my problem solving skills on the actual HL Maths examination.
During the course of this term we begun the challenge of The Cambridge Sixth Term Examination Papers in Mathematics, commonly abbreviated to STEM. These are the examinations given to student who with to pursue an Undergraduate Degree in Mathematics from Cambridge, one of the most prestigious universities in the world, famed for being highly exclusive in their admissions process. Many of these past papers proved to be fairly difficult, some going beyond the abilities of the combined sum of our group. But we persevered. Using extensive research, finding often obscure formulas, and dividing ourselves into groups we trialled different methods for solving the same problem. We graphed patterns. We filled entire boards with lines of solving. We went along until we had a eureka moments and we finally solved it. The satisfaction of successful, coordinated teamwork was well worth the effort. Even more so the problem solving skills and the new ideas we encountered in doing so that in the future I can apply to my future assessments.

Model United Nations: This has been my second term as part of the Model United Nations. This term has been filled with excitement with the addition of new students, many of which have never taken part in any form of formal debate.
This term was once again excellent for myself in building myself as an individual, taking the opportunity to go up and give some form of speech every session. I have built up my confidence to the extent where I can suddenly improvise a speech and still sound as though I have a great deal of depth in my knowledge of the topic. In the future, especially when giving public speeches, I can thank the MUN CCA for my rapidly growing ability.
I also taught new students how to debate and tried to push for them to more actively join into debate. There was a bit of initial difficulty getting them involved, but with some strategic cheering and loud clapping I successfully got more and more individuals up on the stand. I even went so far as to meet one of the newer students after our sessions from time to time to discuss MUN and give him pointers before our next upcoming summit at the BGIC Conference.
I held more of a focus on my own country in this term, looking specifically at Canada and trying to learn more about delegation as a Canadian citizen. I learned quite a bit about our country as a whole, even as a Canadian as it highlighted regional beliefs like pro-anti GMO, as I had to struggle to show the conflicting regional beliefs within Canada and push along a blurry federal front to show support or opposition to resolutions.
Service:
Making a Difference - Project Cambodia: I saw a very busy term with Cambodia Project this term. With additional brainstorming and pushing on with prior ideas we had extremely productive sessions with quite a bit more proactivity.
One of the biggest events held this term in relation to Project Cambodia was the our ice-cream float fundraiser. One of the issues Cambodia project has faced is that other volunteer groups often monopolize the sale of a certain product, for example the Borneo Project has completely monopolized drink sales and thus we often have to work around that. For this reason, after running through multiple possibilities and calculating the return based on how much we have to spend, along with assessing probable supply and demand for our different ideas, we came down to the idea of creating ice cream floats to sell. We sold mainly to the Middle Years and created a float production chain in which I was taking out the ice-cream and putting it into the chosen fluid by the customer. Then another member would apply the sprinkles and the chocolate on top. We very quickly sold out of everything, making at least $1000 dollars in profit for Cambodian healthcare and education from just this single fundraiser.


We pushed forward with our idea for an international cookbook. We sent out our initial emails promoting the cookbook in this term, with a general focus on parents who we believe will make up the largest demographic out of all the buyers. Furthermore we had a Middle Year’s Student take care of creating the emails as to teach them to build professional emails like we did in the previous term. We also began drives to collect recipes throughout the schools by setting up our format for the cookbook, thus we get recipes containing all the information we need for the cookbook. I hope to next term begin announcements to houses, starting with my own house, IBIS (subjectively the best house at Jerudong International School.) Furthermore, we hope to begin the production process as well of the cookbooks, to the best of our ability. I have already spoken about the production process and the printing of books with Mrs. Dickinson in charge of printing yearbooks for the school, who is much more experienced with this than anybody affiliated with Cambodia Project. I have learned many of the pit traps and gotten very solid advice from her for the upcoming term of production.
Activity:
Personal Fitness: This term I became much more involved in the process of my own fitness and the activities I was committed to at the gym. I also learned quite a bit more in my own time to become better at lifting weights and optimize what I gain from my time at the gym or outside of the gym.
Last term one of the biggest issues I found in term one was form. I often struggled with doing exercises with free weights with perfection as free weights have generally been fairly new to me in comparison to more traditional work out machines. The biggest issue with free weights is the fact that your muscles have to balance the weight along with lifting it, and this can often cause injury if the centre of gravity of the weight is pushed up in the wrong direction or in the wrong location. To remedy this I watched quite a few videos on free weights in my free time to learn more about the correct form and getting better at doing exercises. The available machines however were fairly easy for my and I continued to utilize them for cardio.


Another issue I found was that often at the start of my gym session I often felt a little groggy as there had been so much time since my previous session. When I started, there would always be a light initial pain as the lactic acid built up. To help aid this I decided to bridge the gap between my sessions. On the weekend I would spend an hour every Saturday doing a fairly basic regime requiring no weights whatsoever. I would start with a 100 meter sprint, followed by pushups to exhaustion, crunches to exhaustion, bicycle kicks to exhaustion, a five minutes of lunges and five minutes of squats. I would repeat this about three to five times which would take up the space of about an hour. This bridging helped keep me in shape and helped me get ready for my next session.
Next term my goal is to increase the amount of legwork I do, such as calf raises and quadricep exercises as to better my running ability to keep in shape for Track and Field. Regularly over the weekend I bike but personally I would really like to build on my Track and Field abilities, along with my Cross Country abilities as those were my sports of choice last year.
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Term 1 CAS Reflections
Creativity:
Extreme Math - This term of Extreme Math was extremely entertaining. Extreme doesn’t do the activity service, it was beyond extreme. Not only were we consistently learning to do problems I’d never seen before, taking on some problems that took some mathematicians years to solve. With a mix of A-Level and IB students in the group I got to see a very diverse skill set. The way the two courses cover material is very different which made Extreme Maths even better. The A-Level students were able to bolster our weaknesses and we were able to bolster theirs. A good example that I often refer to is when we were doing a very complex problem involving the multiples of numbers. The IB students made a large grid and were working their way through tally charts and were steadily making their way towards the problem (as we were all math students.) Whereas, all the A-Level students in our group were also taking computer science. And thus with a few lines in Python, a fellow A-Level student solved in second what probably would have taken us the whole 2 hours.
I also participated in the UK Senior Maths Challenge, an enormous worldwide event. This was my first time participating in an examination ‘challenge’ and it was very interesting. My colleagues and I spent hours doing past papers preparing and our administrator gave us many different questions to help us build the mental flexibility to deal with the various problems that could be given to us. We were made to prepare for anything that came our way, and we were. Practicing with new formats and new questions was probably the biggest benefit to me, as it helped me build my problem solving skills which is essential to my core as well as my daily life.
As of late, we are working towards preparing for RITANGLE challenge. Once again, we're working with a whole different set of problems. However, RITANGLE is a team sport, which is really nice as once again we have that integration which we’ll have when we compete. By working together to solve problems, we can complete much more than we could as an individual part. It also has assisted some of us in making our work more clear so everyone is able to understand it and build on it.
Senior Model United Nations - MUN is something that I feel is essential in my day to day life. MUN gives me the opportunity to go out and debate on real world issues and explore different perspectives. I’m from Canada, and I have travelled and lived all over the world and have met people from every corner of the planet, but the nice thing with MUN is that when you receive a placard with a new nation, you truly have to try and become those people and try to share their points of view. It’s been really eye opening for me and its taught me a lot about the world, and you can really further understand why people feel a certain way about a topic just by immersing yourself into a nation.
In MUN we’ve also explored a wide variety of topics in the perspective of the United Nations, which is very interesting for me. Most people don’t realize how formal debating works or how large organizations like this come to compromise. I believe it’s essential for people to know how their government and how their bodies of authority work, so they can make informed decisions and be part of an ever growing world. Going through formal debating and learning first hand is an experience that will live with me for the rest of my life.
Also, MUN is extremely fulfilling. Going up on the pedestal and giving a strong speech, followed by formal debate is always really fulfilling as you drive the direction of debate and you are truly contributing. Even more fulfilling is seeing the nervous individuals going up, cheering them on, and seeing their eyes light up after they hear the applause at the end of their speeches. At the end of every session, as a group, we all grow a little bit closer and everyone gets a little bit more skillful in debating.
Service:
Making a Difference: Cambodia - This one was mostly in the title. Every single time I walk into Cambodia Project I’m always happy to know I’m driving some change and making a difference. Usually, every day goes pretty formulaically. I walk in, we have a short discussion about progress, and we all go immediately to our projects and diligently move forward. Everyone has their piece of the puzzle and we all come together at the end to complete our final product. One of the best things I believe we have with Cambodia Project is the diversity of year groups of students. In my other extracurricular activities we’re mostly a group of Year 12s, but with Cambodia Project we also have quite a few Middle Years students. Thus, we have the opportunity to teach them new skills and act as role models.
For International Week, after working hard for weeks in planning, getting supplies, and advertising (we helped the Middle Years create some very professional looking posters using digital software and made it even more effective using a data we found on effective advertising), we finally were ready to go out and start fundraising. International Week is a week to celebrate all the different cultures all around the world as we here at JIS are a very diverse school. We found this to be the perfect week to sell ice-cream to raise money to aid the Cambodian people and help to raise a bit of awareness of the situation in Cambodia as many people really have no idea.
Currently we’re working on another brilliant idea. An international cookbook. We hope this will help to engage the school community to celebrate cultures all around the world and assist us in raising money for children in Cambodia. It’s extremely fulfilling work and I’m excited to continue it in the future.
Activity:
Personal Fitness - Balance. I feel like this activity is essential for me keeping a good balance in my life. Going to the gym is something I like to enjoy on a regular basis. It’s been rigorous but looking at my BMI I’ve definitely made results. Generally I like to start with a 10 minute warm up on the treadmill. Warming your muscles up and getting prepared to keep a constant heart rate is essentially for a good work out. Afterwards I usually circuit train, starting with my arms as I’ve just worked my legs. I like to finish with a good superset on 1 or 2 muscle groups as it really puts pressure on those muscles and leads to faster, better results.
These days I feel the hardest thing is probably learning form. Working out, especially with free weights, does have potential for injury if you don’t do it properly. I’ve been re-evaluating a lot of my form as I’ve noticed sometimes my soreness lasts longer than it should, and I fear that might be due to bad form in some of my exercises. Of course, I’ve developed a lot and learned a lot of new types of exercises, but I really have a need to practice the form on some of the newer ones.
Combination of Activity and Service:
Temberong Trip - Brunei has been an adventure for me since I arrived here. But never have I been able to have an experience like this one.
Temberong is an area in Brunei famous for its indigenous tribe, the Iban. It’s also very well known for its lush jungle and wildlife, and the unique lifestyle therein. I had the amazing opportunity to visit, see all of the above, participate in the Iban lifestyle, and even help them out.
The trip to Temberong was long and difficult as a result of its location. To get to the village, first I went on a long bus ride to a nearby dock. Then I travelled by boat for a few hours, marvelling at the crocodiles and other animals that can be found in the river. Then we arrived at another dock nearer our location only to get on another bus before our final destination, an Iban campsite. We stopped at a local farmers market on the way for a break, giving me a chance to try local Brunei dishes and Bruneian mango.
After arriving at the campsite we took a long, difficult climb through a jungle where our guide told us all about the wildlife, traps the Iban tribe used to catch animals, and uses of wild plants. It took quite a bit of teamwork and perseverance as the Bruneian jungle is very muddy and riddled with plant life that you can get tangled up in. Very often you would be catching someone about to slip or giving words of encouragement as some people were not as used to the strenuous levels of activity we went through. Nearing the end, I realized that our group had broken into two and a significant portion of our original team was left behind, so I volunteered to run back through the jungle path and find the remainder of our group. Then I aided them and did everything I could to help them get back to the front after checking to see if all were present and whether any were injured. Fortunately I had no worries in that department and I was able to get them all out of the jungle safely.
I was astonished to see how much diversity there was from vines that could be used as a water source to bits of poisonous leaves that were used to kill fish in bulk for consumption. We heard from the Iban that there were a lot of scientific efforts to map out all the plant life in the jungle as it had major medical implications. In an anecdote we heard of somebody who got sick in the jungle and hospitals failed to treat him for months, but after a simple tea type remedy, that person was cured and no longer suffered from disease. As someone who wants to be a doctor, it had me thinking about research projects I could undertake to better humanity and possibly even discover new/easily accessible pharmaceutical compounds to treat illnesses that humanity has so far been unable to resolve.
At night I took a shower under the stars and ate a typical Iban dinner, before proceeding to sleep in a tent in the wilderness, the way the Iban may have camped after a long trek through the jungle.
The next day I had the amazing opportunity to participate in traditional Iban activities. Our first job was to catch something for us to eat that night. I spent hours enjoying myself fishing, using live bait on bamboo rods. Unfortunately, the currents were particularly strong on this day and it wasn’t possible to catch any fish. However a good friend of mine was lucky enough to catch an eel, which even the Iban thought was quite odd.
I did target practice with blowdarts as well, practicing my accuracy. In my group, I never missed and almost was always on target, except for one unfortunate time where the wind deflected my shot entirely. Traditionally the Iban would use blowdarts which are poison tipped in order to attack rival tribes or to hunt.
I also went to the Iban fields to help them harvest their crops and spent quite a while going from spot to spot looking for the indications of a ripe plant and struggling to pull out particularly deeply rooted fruits. In the end it was quite rewarding as all that natural produce went to the people of the Iban. Then we watched as they showed us how to produce bamboo chicken, a recipe of welcome borrowed from the Iban and used in many prominent Malaysian hotels and restaurants.
The Iban told us stories about headhunting, an ancient warrior practice or theirs and after a visit to the oldest lady of Brunei, she told us all about how she used to live as an Iban woman decades ago, along with her various traditions.
On the final day, I planted cuttings of plants and helped the Iban move their boats from one side of their campsite to another. This took a lot of teamwork was well as we had to coordinate our movements accordingly and bolster those who didn’t have a lot of strength.
Then we went to visit the salted egg farm that belongs to an Iban business woman. Salted eggs are a highly valuable part of Malay culture and are a traditional food I have never seen anywhere else. In the farm we saw the animals that produced the eggs and had to opportunity to discuss how it was for an indigenous lady to develop a business in a rapidly developing nation.
Then with teary goodbyes, I retreated back the way I came. I was very happy to have had the opportunity I did to help out the Iban and develop as an individual by participating in various activities. I learned quite a bit and all in all it makes me excited for my return to Canada where we are blessed to have an amazing Indigenous Community as well. I hope to learn much more about plants and their uses for modern medicine in the future as well so I can contribute to saving as many lives as I possibly can as I grow older.
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Activity: Personal Fitness
I believe that your life has to be balanced to truly succeed. That balance is maintained by regular physical activity. In Personal Fitness we spend time in the school gym, working to build muscle and keep myself working out while working with IB. It will take a lot of determination, pushing every rep making sure to always make it into my rep and weight range. I am excited for another challenge.
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Service: Making a Difference - Cambodia
One of the most important things that I’m doing this term is Cambodia Project. Cambodia is a country that was heavily damaged by dictatorship and war, and thus many of the inhabitants live poor and without an education. To help create a future for these people, I am working with Cambodia Project to raise money for schools and hospitals in Cambodia. We’re helping to raise money for education to help the next generation, as they will be the ones to spearhead Cambodia into a new era.
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Creativity: Senior Model United Nations
I will be undertaking MUN for the first time as well. I feel that public speaking is an essential ability that everyone needs to have to be successful. I am also excited to learn more about the United Nations, one of the most influential political bodies in the world. After meeting with the US ambassador to Brunei and hearing about the importance of diplomacy I feel like this passion could also stem a career.
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Creativity: Extreme Math
This term I’ll be taking an interesting extracurricular called Extreme Math. We’ll be doing rigorous activities that go far beyond a textbook and into the realm of fun, analytical and complex problems. It’s my first time taking an activity like this, and I’m really excited to learn all the new ways of solving problems (and possibly even taking them to apply in my regular courses.)
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Hello everyone
The purpose of this blog will be for the CAS work over the course of Year 12 done by myself, Rayyan Zuberi. I hope you enjoy reading through and seeing what I have been up to.
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