Posts Tagged ‘UWC’
[VIDEO] UWC Atlantic College Arts Festival 2012 Animation
So yesterday was the first day of the UWC Atlantic College Arts Festival 2012. One more day to go today. Both my workshops for the first day happened to be related to digital art, manga and animation in the morning followed by stop-motion animation in the afternoon. A harp back to the Media Study days at SIS. Obviously time was short, but in both sessions, we were able to produce some work with relatively quick turn-around, although rather bad in quality. Here’s some of the products:
AC MUN 2012 – Part 4
The 2012 edition of the annual Atlantic College Model United Nations conference was hosted last weekend. I was part of a gang of 5 that took up the task of organizing the conference, which had some 350 attendees. I had a sorta dual focus during organization of AC MUN 2012. On the one hand I handled most of the administrative tasks; the massive task of allocating all attendees to the right country and committee etc, talking to teachers to get rooms for committees, the website as well as a few other bits and pieces here and there. On the other hand, I also kept an overview of the conference, make sure that things were being finished.
Organizing the conference began well back in March when we learnt we had been given the mammoth task. Nonetheless, the pressure didn’t seriously turn on until we came back after Christmas. In hindsight, this probably wasn’t the best thing, but oh well. Although there were some frantic days and nights, we did manage to pull everything together and by-in-large I think the conference went better than it did last year. Of course, there are always areas we can improve on and getting prepared earlier is definitely one of them.
All in all though, AC MUN 2012 was fun and largely went quite well. Please, and now it’s time to catch-up on some sleep.
AC MUN 2012 – Part 3
One of the most interesting aspects of Model United Nations is the use of notes. At HKMUN where I started, we had internet access during the conference, which made communication quite easy. Nevertheless, we still had a significant amount of odd notes that got passed around, with the usual flirting as well as just odd notes. It was at HKMUN that I got into the practice of picking up all my notes just in case the Press Corp ever picked up anything. This time, at AC MUN 2012, I was not a delegate, so I made an effort of going round to pick up notes lying around. Some of the notes were published in MUNk, the Press Corp’s publication. There are of course numerous serious notes, but here’s a cool collection of those that haven’t been published which I found interesting nevertheless.
Read the rest of this entry »
AC MUN 2012 – Part 2
The 2012 edition of the annual Atlantic College Model United Nations conference was hosted last weekend. Since I was organizing the conference, I wasn’t able to spend as much time in committee as I wanted to. Though on Saturday I got a full dose as I ended up co-chairing the Crisis committee. We simulated Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz (thanks RCNMUN 2012) and I realized in the process of making the news articles the evening before that the situation wasn’t that stimulative as one might have thought. It mostly consisted of copying and pasting a news article and changing words like threaten to have. That was all it took. A few word changes and the world could be up in smokes. What if a real news aggregator mistyped or accidentally sent out the news that Iran had closed the Strait of Hormuz?
The crisis committee itself was fun. I ended up creating a few extra news reports than I had anticipated. I had some other stuff to sort out after lunch, but I did go back to the crisis committee about half an hour before it finished, and ended up being North Korea, introduced a few ‘interesting’ clauses and then headed off to the closing ceremony. It’s the first time I’ve ever had a crisis committee (the simulation sort, not the ‘we only knew about the topic today’ sort) so not a bad first introduction overall.
AC MUN 2012 – Part 1
The 2012 edition of the annual Atlantic College Model United Nations conference was hosted last weekend. Undoubtedly, one of the highlights for me was that we had a significant number of students from outside Atlantic College who attended the conference.
Improving on last year’s conference, the gang of 5 students who set out to organize the conference had decided that we really wanted the opportunity for other UWC students to experience MUN at AC at the same time as we hoped to attend MUN conference at other UWCs. So I was overjoyed when we learnt we would not only have 15 students from Llantwit Major and North Liverpool Academy, but that we’d also have 5 students each from UWC Maastricht and UWC Adriatic.
If nothing else, I think the possibility of experiencing a little bit of life at another UWC is a benefit in itself, let alone being able to partake in Model United Nations at the same time. I know for a fact that I enjoyed visiting UWC Adriatic as much as I enjoyed AdMUN (1,2,3,4,5) itself. The fact that I posted as much about being and going to UWC Adriatic as I did about AdMUN is testimony to that fact.
4th Term Madness
Life as normal, or as normal as it can get here at UWC Atlantic College, and with the IB. It was probably a good decision not to go to WSDC 2012, because life is getting as busy as it can get, without debating eating up time. Mock exams are starting the week after next and coursework final deadlines are starting to creep-up on me. I am spending more and more time holed up in my carrel unit studying away, and my vow not to bring work back to the house after check-in has been broken numerous times.
This weekend we had AC MUN 2012 which I was organizing and took up quite a bit of time. More on that later. Our 2nd Math IA is due today, World Lits next week and mock exams looming after that. Lots of revision to do and I’m starting to realize how messy my notes are. All the academic work aside, life at any UWC is busy as usual. Activities and various initiatives are taking their own time slots in my timetable, although I’ve come to realized that subtly and strategically dropped about a ton of stuff at the start of this term was a good decision.
Just a quick update. Time to get back to work!
Top Posts of the Year 2011
2011 is coming to a close, and PaulLau.com has grown another year older, 27 months and counting. There have been over 88,700 views since this blog began in October 2009, and over 550 posts (recall just 12 months ago, that number stood at a little over 180) which means that the “Posting at least once every week in 2011” commitment became more of a ‘Posting once a day’. It’s been an amazing year in terms of the blog, nearly 66,000 views just this year. So here’s a look back at the top posts of 2011.
1. WSDC 2011 – Team Lists [1st all time]
Part of the WSDC 2011 series, the posts resided in sidebar of PaulLau.com for over 8 months in the run-up to WSDC 2011 in Dundee, listing the team members attending WSDC 2011, at least those I could find.
2. Fire at UWC Atlantic College [2nd all time]
Other than debating, this was undoubtedly the second biggest story of the blog this year. I started this post 2 hours after the incident itself and continued updating it as a running summary of the situation.
3. TOK Essay – May 2012 [3rd all time]
Let’s just say this has not been the highlight of my Christmas holiday.
4. Fire at UWC Atlantic College – Photo Set 1 [4th all time]
The first images of the aftermath of the fire. Incidentally, April 14th was the busiest day on the blog with just under 1,300 views in just 24 hours.
5. [RESULTS] LSE Open 2011 [Tab]
A tournament I attended with David as my debating partner, joined by other Team Wales member Cat and Sarah. An amazing experience and my first peek into university level debating. You can read about what happened in my de-facto diary entry 1, 2 and see how Team Wales fared.
6. WSDC 2011 – Official World Rankings
Also part of the WSDC 2011 series, the official world rankings followed my earlier, and rather more controversial, post with my own calculations (which were quite accurate, even if I say so myself)
7. AC IB Results 2011
A good year for AC and some good results all together for my dear second years. Sadly, that puts the bar quite high for the UWC AC class of 2012.
8. [RESULTS] WSDC 2011 – Round-up
The ultimate summary of my final high-school tournament – WSDC 2011 – before I left the high-school debating scene. An amazing tournament and some unforgettable memories. Thank you to everyone.
9. Fire @UWC Atlantic College – Photo Set 2
The second set of photos regarding the Sunley fire, this time with my own photos.
10. SCMP – Profile: Chris Lee (IS) IGCSE Top of the World
A not so original post, but an article that did catch my eye, and clearly attracted quite a bit of attention too.
Honorary Mentions
I think it is worth noting at this point that although only 3 WSDC 2011 related posts were found in the top 10, and only 4 debating related posts, the next 10 posts are exclusively debating related, 8 of which are WSDC 2011 related as well. August 2011 was also the most popular month for PaulLau.com with nearly 14,000 views. A final thought: isn’t it interesting that Team Singapore, Team Canada and Team England come in as top posts on their own?
11. WSDC 2011 – Team Singapore
12. WSDC 2011 – Media Guide [UPDATED]
13. WSDC 2012 – Prepared Motions [UPDATED]
14. [RESULTS] WSDC 2011 – Round 1 & 2
15. WSDC 2011 – Team Canada
16. [RESULTS] WSDC 2011 – Break, Round 7 & 8
17. WSDC 2011 – Team England
18. [RESULTS] WSDC 2011 – Round 5 & 6
19. ASDC 2011 – Participating Institutions
20. WIDPSC 2011 – Grand Final [RESULTS] + Analysis
[VIDEO] UWC Atlantic College Time Laspe
There are numerous time-laspe videos of everything everywhere. And now there’s one of UWC Atlantic College, put together by Vegard Haveland (Norway). Here it is:
IB May 2012 Exam Schedule
The Exam Schedule for International Baccalaureate Diploma Program Examinations May 2012 has been finalized and is now available at http://www.ibo.org/documentlibrary/examinationschedules/index.cfm.
My personal exam schedule doesn’t come out too badly. I do have exams almost every day of from the 30th of April until the 17th of May. But there’s only one day in which I have two papers, and they happen to be on the same subject, so worse case scenario, I have one evening to do some final revision for each subject.
