Tag Archives: Culture Club

Campus Living, Clubs, Cultural Events, Life at Nanyang

Happy Belated Easter – An Egg Hunt on NTU campus

April 13, 2016 Laura Melina Loeven

On April 11, the Cultural and Social Club together with the Beer, Wine and Liquor Appreciation Club celebrated Easter, the resurrection of Christ, which is the most important and oldest festival of the Christian Church.

On this occasion, the MBA batch of 2016 was invited to join an amazing race: a very competitive, but colourful egg hunt as per the tradition of celebrating Easter.

All participants did not wait long to run for the eggs, looking everywhere on campus to find the precious trophies. While some were extremely fast filling up their egg baskets, others could only find a few. But once the winner of the egg hunt was determined, all eggs were of course shared equally among all participating teams in order to start the egg coloring.

Back inside the event venue, everyone got very creative and came up with various egg designs from rainbow colour or striped egg, to drawing smileys and spider webs on simple unicolour eggs.

During this fun activity, traditional Easter snacks and drinks were provided, leaving the group with a stomach full of chocolate Easter bunnies, chocolate eggs and Haribo fruit gums.

It was a truly enjoyable event with lots of fun and a great opportunity to share some traditional Easter customs!

Campus Living, Clubs, Cultural Events

Happy St Patrick´s Day – keep calm and go green!

March 24, 2016 Laura Melina Loeven

On Sunday, March 20^th, the beer, wine and liquor appreciation club and the cultural club co-hosted an event to celebrate all things Irish!

The day started off with a get-together at the Nanyang MBA campus, where beer was dyed green, in keeping with the festive spirit. All those who attended either wore green, or as close to green as they could find.

Soon after the green beverages were finished, and all hands were covered in color too, a bus delivered the even participants to a spot just outside of the Fullerton Hotel in downtown Singapore. Taking a left from the hotel, and crossing the Cavenagh Bridge, the dressed-up crowd saw, and heard from far, bag pipe players wearing what appeared to be Scottish kilts. But lacking an Irish participant, the MBAs were not familiar with Irish culture, and were happy to explore a new culture while decorating themselves with the free give aways: balloons, shamrocks, hats, rattles, – all in green.

Equipped with all kinds of Irish paraphernalia, the student group was on time to watch Singapore´s very own St Patrick´s Day parade – but the parade was not! Waiting for thirty long minutes in SG´s hot and humid weather, the exhausted MBAs ended up finding shade under a tree, determined to not leave before the fun started. Of course, as soon as one of the group members decided to go and get water for the thirsty bunch, the parade started! Having missed the start of the parade, the newly found St. Patrick fans hurried to follow the musicians in the parade back across the Cavenagh Bridge, dancing to the many playing bag pipes, and an assortment of drums.

After a short fun march through downtown Singapore, it was decided to move on to the open air festival at the Battery Rd, stopping at a burger place. There, the hungry folks were not only gifted some festive green hats from the wait staff, but also treated to “Seven Nation Army,” among many songs, including a few Cranberries hits, by the band playing on one of the many stages. Only after the band stopped playing, it was time to return to NTU campus. What a fun St. Patrick’s Day event!

Campus Living, Clubs, Cultural Events, Life at Nanyang

Chinese New Year – Gong Xi Fa Cai

February 23, 2016 Laura Melina Loeven

Ready to ring in the Year of the Monkey?

First, some important information about Chinese New Year in 2016:

According to Chinese Five Elements Horoscopes, this is the year of the red monkey, which contains 2 elements: Metal and Water.

Metal is associated with gold.

Water is associated with wisdom and danger.

This forecasts more financial events in the year of the Monkey, according to the wise predictions of Economics Professor Lee. And, if one wants to have good returns on financial investments, one will need to outsmart the Monkey.

Metal is also connected to the Wind. That implies the status of events will be changing very quickly. So think twice before making changes for your finances and career!

On the 31^st of January, the MBA cohort of 2016 celebrated the year of the red monkey with a unique cultural experience for all foreign Nanyang MBA classmates.

The event was initiated by one of the Singaporean MBA students, Kevin Tay, who volunteered to share the festive mood and atmosphere of the lunar New Year. Along with the fellow Chinese and Singaporean students Isaac, Wenduo, Veronica, Steven, Darren and Sheng Jie, he put together an entertaining and educational event program – in just 10 short days!

In order to have an authentic experience of how Chinese New Year is celebrated in its own unique way in Singapore and China, the team planned were 3 highlights to the event:

The evening started with a wonderful presentation which explained the mythical origins of “Nian”, the Chinese word for “Year”, and how Chinese New year got its traditions.

A long time ago, a mythical monster has terrorized the peace of villages every year; however one day, a wise old man prepared fireworks and red decorations. When the mythical monster Nian came, the loud noises and bright decoration managed to scare the monster away. This was how the Chinese New Year came about and ever since, the people love to gather with loud noises and red, the colour that symbolizes luck.

Next, the event´s MC, Shen Jie, started the celebration with Yusheng (Chinese Salmon Salad). This is a tradition unique to Singapore and Malaysia. Everyone gathered around platters containing the mixture of grated carrots, radish, pomelo salmon slices, and garnishes it with sweet plum sauce, spices and crunchy ‘pok chui’ crackers. Each ingredient represented blessing, fortune and good luck.

an introduction to CNY traditions in Singapore

The MBA students then equipped themselves with chopsticks, and started tossing the salad as high as possible while shouting, “Prosper”, “MBA”, and all the wishes for the New Year. It was definitely a vibrant & joyous atmosphere, just like how Singaporean families & friends do it. Huat ah!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOPW-wjBhcY

To kick off the last activity, the most exciting highlight of the night, Kevin instructed all participant on THE game to play for Chinese New Year – Mahjong 101.

From the basics to the complex, advanced rules, Kevin explained the art of tile building to bring all students up to speed for a series of gambling. It was quickly evident that the gambling module involved a high level of strategic planning, patience, keen observation skills and critical decision making – and certainly invigorated the competitive spirit of the MBAs.

students at the gambling tables

The topics covered in the quick Mahjong lecture included superstitions and quirky practices, such as wearing red undergarments to maximize luck. At the end of the evening, the top scorer in class was Ms. Aki Narita, sweeping a staggering 7 out of 8 games. Then, Anshul, Gauri and Aditiya also topped their respective tables.

All in all, the event organisers hope that everyone who attended not only learnt more about Chinese traditions, but really got to experience the full atmosphere, activities, food and liveliness of this festival.

Special thanks to everyone who attended, and the organizing committee for a job well done. Indeed, we strongly believe that in many years from now, the highly diverse MBA cohort of 2016 will still gather and practice the skills learnt from this cultural module, Mahjong 101.

Campus Living, Clubs, Cultural Events, Life at Nanyang

Merry Christmas – Santa Claus at NBS

December 14, 2015 Laura Melina Loeven

„Have yourself a merry little Christmas, let your heart be light. From now on, our troubles will be out of sight!“

On the last weekend of the year, the NTU MBA batch of 2016 came together for an early Christmas party. Midway through the second trimester and with the upcoming winter break approaching, everyone was excited to not only celebrate the birth of baby Jesus according to Christian tradition, but also a successful first half of the MBA.

The Social and Culture Club jointly with the Beer, Wine and Liqueur Appreciation Club had invited for an end-of-year Christmas party and put in a lot of effort to make the event as authentic as possible by setting up a Christmas tree, playing modern arrangements of traditional Christmas songs and ordering an abundance of mouth-watering food, including traditional festive dishes such as stuffed turkey and gingerbread cookies.

The long queue at the buffet speaks volumes about the exquisite taste of food on the buffet, which was washed down with hot mulled wine and chocolate mousse. „I have never had hot wine before. I don´t know why, because it is so delicious“, said one of the participants who celebrated their first ever Christmas party.

Having fed the crowd, Santa fulfilled its duty and distributed the presents that the many „Secret Santas“ had placed under the beautifully decorated Christmas tree. The newly elected Santa Clause, Yuji-San(ta), did an excellent job in helping everyone finding their gifts, and his voice even over drowned out the rustling of wrapping papers as the presentees unwrapped their tokens. The many voices yelling „Merry Christmas“, asking „Who is my Secret Santa?“ and even more „Thank you´s“ were perfect evidence that giving gifts, as small as they may be, truly spreads happiness.

The wave of excitement over identifying everyone´s Secret Santa only came to an end when the organiser crew called for a final activity of the evening: a gingerbread house competition.

The crowd split up in three groups to build houses of gingerbread cookies, which were judged by its stability and the creativity of its decoration. During the next thirty minutes, the teams were busy mixing sugar paste and stacking cookies in the most efficient way. What a tricky task!

The winners clearly stood out of the masses: only one of the three house stood against all shaking test, and even resisted the crash tests carried out by competitors. „This was certainly more difficult than it looked“, the struggling teams claimed while removing remains of powdered sugar from their hands.

While the looks of the edible houses differed, all participants left an equally delicate mess of sugar paste, gummi bears and jellybeans. Still, nobody minded cleaning up the sugar-covered event venue, as Christmas really is all about sharing the joy and moving troubles out of sight. Might as well cover them in sugar.