Action - Badminton (January - February, 2012)

January and February have been successful months for me in terms of action. My badminton skills are improving as I attend all my sessions punctually and consistently. I start all my sessions with short warm up periods. This warm up period is crucial in order to avoid muscle strains and injuries, and also key to starting a proper badminton match. I play all matches with complete dedication and active participation till the end.

I focused majorly on doubles matches, while only playing rare In these months, I have improved on most of the aspects in badminton. All my experiences have helped me to analyze my strengths and weaknesses in the sport. These include services (serving), smashing, hitting drop shots, smashes, overhead clear shots, placement, my unorthodox dive and 'rotating' shots, as well as tactics involving analyzing the opponents' strenghts and weaknesses. However, I still have a marginal scope to cover in a few aspects. These are variations in my shots, i.e. a kind of tactic that helps in building pressure on the opponent's by tiring them, communication with my partner, and lack of consistency in achieving my desired shot, i.e. being able to hit one shot perfectly after a few (around 5-6) shots.

The photographs below show how I have gathered experience with practice, and am improving in a variety of fields associated with match play.

Me (on the right hand side in image - wearing black shorts), applying the 'scorpion' pose for recieving a serve.

Communication with my partner played a major role in our win!

Me hitting my unorthodox 'rotatiting' shot in which I turn a complete 360 degrees to be able to hit a backhand shot while turning towards the opponents.

The scorpion pose being applied to hit a high serve.

I am now able to serve efficiently not only to safely start a rally, however, to also earn easy points by using placement and power variation.

A STRAIGHT "DOWN THE LINE" SMASH!

Me hitting a overhead clear.

Smash!

 In the photographs below, I am on the other side of the court. Hence, I am not visible clearly. However, my shots can be analyzed by viewing them through the perspective of my opponents.

Me serving from the other side of the court.

Me playing an overhead clear and placing it in between the two opponents. I was able to identify communication as their weakness, and use it to my team's benifit!

Me placing a shot perfectly and winning a point ending a long rally.

Me playing a diagonal drop shot! It is my one of my favourite shots!

Me tactically placing my service and using it to challenge the opponent.

My badminton skills are improving and I am very happy with this improvement. I will continue to play and practice badminton in order to improve myself further in the future as well.

Creativity - Guitar (January - February, 2012)

Guitar has become a new passion and hobby for me. I have practiced all the techniques that I have learnt, and can play all classical notations in one flow. I believe that this is a large accomplishment as I will now implement my playing techniques to strengthen my notation reading efficiency. 

During the vacation, I spent most of my time on classical tunes as it is a very complex method of playing the guitar, and this style is the one I will need to become very fluent and comfortable with. On the other hand, playing songs with chord progressions has become very simple for me as I have memorized all the chords and have also practiced quick transitions between them.

The classes in both the months were full of new and very interesting knowledge. I have practiced more than 10 chord songs in the class, and by commiting and dedicating myself to this activity, I have learnt to play many tunes and songs independently that I am passionate about. I have been punctual in attending all the classes and I am moving smoothly through this moderate phase of learning to play complex techniques on the guitar. It has been an exciting semester for me and I really enjoyed improving my previously gained knowledge with practice, and developing new guitar skills after accomplishing my goal of perfecting all the basics required.

I am now looking forward to continuing guitar classes in March!

Service - Library Service (January - February, 2012)

Library Service continued after the winter vacation with the same amount of thrill and enthusiasm about tidying the library and helping the community! The participants in the third quarter of the year supervised by the OSC Head Librarian Ms. Raina Lockwood are:

• Skylor Knoll (12.A) - CAS leader
• Charity Dowers (12.1M) - CAS leader
• Philipp Hofbauer (12.1A) - CAS Blog Manager
• Onkar Ashish (11.2LE)
• Satyanshu Sapra (11.2L)
• Humza Usmani (11.2L)
• Constantine Hempel (10.1R)
• Greta Rocchi (9.2S)
• Christiane Amare (8.2H)
• Tulika Khosla (8.1G)
• Alo Lenk-Walker (8.1G)
• Beda Bellugue O’Leary (7.2R)
• Sejuti Sarkar (8.1G) 

The hourly after school service session took place as usual on every Thursday. I attended all the sessions punctually and worked till the end with complete dedication. Lots of returned books had to be placed in the designated spots on the correct shelves. I worked with my "non-fiction" team members to complete this task. Later, we worked on properly arranging the books in disorganized and distorted stacks. 

I felt that the leaders had not allotted the number of workers for the respective fiction and non-fiction sections properly. As majority of the students in the service were MYP students, the small fiction area was much well organized and maintained. However, as only 4 people (including me) worked in the large non-fiction area, only a small share of the books were maintained regularly and stacked correctly.

Thus, I have suggested to the leaders that more children be moved to the "non-fiction" team in order to properly maintain the books by next month. I hope to see some new peers as a part of our team in March. 

I am also looking forward to more such busy library service sessions in March which are useful for the OSC community directly as well as indirectly!