After a long hiatus… MasterChef Yang is back with a new season!
Cooking lessons have been popular among CNYSP scholars for years. When we, the Holistic Development Portfolio, surveyed scholars last year, more than three quarters looked forward to having us organise cooking lessons again. In fact, it was the most popular choice out of the other possible events we listed.
Perhaps after their experiences in a sterile, pristine lab environment, which at times feel foreign, the scholars may be craving for a similar hands-on experience, but with a warmer and more familiar environment.
This year, the focus of MasterChef Yang is local cuisine. As part of the CNYSP curriculum, scholars will get opportunities to travel overseas for exchange and Final Year Projects. Living abroad for months, they are bound to crave for local delights. What better way to enjoy them than whipping up these meals by themselves? They will also make friends overseas, and with these recipes in their belt, they can prepare them for their hosts, spreading Singapore’s food culture.
This time around, the Holistic Development Portfolio is organising 3 different cooking sessions within the campus, at our very own culinaiRE!@Tanjong. We have invited Chef Priscill Koh (@taitaichef) from TaiTai Chef Academy as our Culinary Trainer. Having worked with our campus’ Residential Education to organise culinary workshops for 4 years, she is no stranger to NTU. Jovial, entertaining and meticulous, she sure knew how to infect us with her passion for food.
Our first session, MasterChef Yang Episode 1, was held on 7 February 2022. It featured learning how to make Roti John and Burbur Cha Cha. In this 2-hour session, Chef Priscill explains how to efficiently and skillfully prepare both dishes at the same time. Aside from just teaching us the different culinary methods, she explains the origin of the food, spreading the appreciation for local cuisine.
Did you know that Roti John was said to be created for British sailors who were craving for hamburgers back in the 1960s? However, as local Malay hawkers had little impression of hamburgers, they created “hamburgers” with a local twist: minced meat and sliced onions placed between French loaves, topped with eggs and followed by sizzles of ketchup and chilli sauce. The name Roti John embodies our colonial history with even its name being a mix of the East and the West.
I’m sure most readers are no strangers to Burbur Cha Cha, a starchy dessert thickened with coconut milk and topped with sago pearls. It may seem like a simple dish but it actually takes hours of preparation. In fact, Chef Priscill had been boiling the sago for 2 hours before the class itself. In her iteration of the desert, Chef Priscill is scrupulous to use less sugar. In order to ensure the dessert remains rich in flavour, she uses ample amounts of yam and sweet potatoes. The end result is a fragrant, delectable treat.
During the session, participants were entertained by Chef Priscill’s demonstrations – particularly impressed by how she skillfully sliced the Japanese Cucumber into diagonal strips. As a bonus, she introduced the participants to her homegrown micro-greens, such as Jade Bok Choy, for use as garnish, and even explained how to grow them.
At the end of the session, the participants were proud of their creations (and voracious to try them). Leaving the kitchen with rumbling stomachs, they cannot wait to try their self-prepared feast.
Do keep a look out for our next two sessions coming your way. We will be preparing different dishes and we hope you are curious about what they are. Until then, see you!
On the 27th of January 2022, the Holistic Development Portfolio organised its second Brown Bag Session, this time with Ryan Poon sharing on Public Speaking.
Did you know that around 70% of us fear public speaking? It is normal to experience some form of stage fright or anxiety when speaking in front of crowds or in formal situations. During the session, Ryan breaks down the essence of public speaking and how to tackle it on a step by step basis, with hopes that we can present with confidence.
Sharing many useful tips from how to prepare for the presentation, through understanding the audience and context as well as injecting humour, to improving one’s confidence through body language, Ryan reiterates the key idea that we can become better at public speaking through deliberate practice.
Ryan also showcased many counterexamples to help us better understand what not to do for a presentation, and naturally weaves humour into the presentation, earning lots of laughs from the audience.
Through captivating storytelling, smooth animations, use of highly relatable examples and apt dramatisation, Ryan showed us what it means to be an engaging and informative speaker, telling a story to his audience.
Now equipped with knowledge on how to tackle the beast of Public Speaking, will our scholars be better placed to handle presentations for their research projects or OFYP in the future? Only time will tell.
On the 20th January 2022, the Holistic Development Portfolio organised our very first Brown Bag Session with a focus on First Aid.
The Brown Bag Sessions are a new initiative, a peer-sharing platform for scholars to come together and impart various skills and knowledge, interests as well as share about causes they are passionate about.
The first session is hosted by Goh Kaixuan, who was an ambulance trained Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) during his National Service (NS). Still fresh out of NS and reservice, he had recent first-hand experience in administering first aid in response to medical emergencies, making this sharing session invaluable.
The session covered basic first aid principles as well as treatment of minor injuries that first aiders do. In this 1.5 hour session, Kaixuan covered topics ranging from cuts, bruises, sprains, and burns to electrocution as well as choking and drowning. There were also various demonstrations and hands-on learning experiences for the participants to carry out bandaging for bleeds and slings for dislocations and fractures.
The participants found the session to be engaging and the session was occasionally filled with laughter. They also liked the casual yet informative nature of the session and being able to freely ask questions at any time. Now equipped with basic first aid knowledge, we hope they are more confident in helping others during emergencies.
With the conclusion of the first Brown Bag Session, we hope you look forward to future sessions.
Cultivating My Money Tree is a return to form as scholars embark on their quest to understand investments better with the aim of developing financial literacy.
Cultivating My Money Tree was held on 28th October 2021, over Zoom due to COVID-19 restrictions.
This 2 hour workshop was held in partnership with Mr Lionel Teo from Great Eastern Life Assurance. As a university student himself, Lionel was able to provide insights into investing as a student, making this workshop extremely relatable for our scholars. He simplified major investing concepts with the use of relatable metaphors and analogies, such as grocery shopping.
The workshop covered Index Funds, Mutual Funds, and a plethora of investment strategies, like Goals-based Investing, Dollar Cost Averaging, Core-Satellite Investing and Thematic Investing. In the second part of the workshop, the participants had the chance to deepen their knowledge through a hands-on activity. Each participant filled up an Excel File created by Lionel, which includes a questionnaire determining their Risk Appetite, Reverse Financial Calculator and Portfolio Management Template. It was definitely an enlightening session for our scholars as they learnt more about themselves.
Last but not least, there was a Kahoot! session at the end, which helped to consolidate the key learning points through active recall, and the top 3 scholars got to walk away with $10 GrabFood Vouchers!
Now that our scholars have learnt to cultivate their money trees, will you too?
Conducted by Mr Leo Tan from the Career and Attachment Office, the Resume Writing Workshop held by the Holistic Development Portfolio provided great insight into what employers are looking out for in a resume.
Besides going through the content required in a resume, Mr Tan also engaged us by provided samples of resumes from different people, which gave us a chance to put ourselves in the shoes of an employer. By making us see things from the perspective of a different stakeholder, I was able to understand first-hand why certain resumes are particularly attractive to employers while others are not.
Our scholars looking at example resumes.
Furthermore, Mr Tan was also able to provide pointers for writing a resume for research attachments, as it has different requirements from a normal job-seeking resume. Given the research-focused nature of the CN Yang Programme, this special consideration was especially appreciated.
The workshop also included a segment on LinkedIn. Besides teaching us some basic functions, Mr Tan highlighted the usefulness of LinkedIn as a tool for professional communication, especially in the age of digitalisation.
Mr Tan giving important pointers about writing resumes, take note!
I thoroughly enjoyed and learned a lot from this session and I’m sure the other scholars in attendance did too.
The CN Yang Scholars’ Club (CNYSC) is set up and run by the scholars of the CN Yang Scholars Programme. The management committee is elected by the scholars on an annual basis.
