NIE NST Creative Writing Program

This weekend Liyana & I attended a 'Creative Problem Solving' course which is part of a 5-month creative writing course sponsored by Sime Darby Properties Sdn. Bhd. QM should have joined but her mom didn't let her. It really is a shame.

In total, 43 kids attended. Our group consisted of representatives from SMKBJ -- Liyana & I -- and kids from Bandar Melawati -- I think it's Bandar. We called ourselves 'The Frozen Ones' because we were right under the A/C and it was FREEZING.

The first day, we didn't do that many 'group activities' so to speak. Today, we had to built our dream town that also solved these problems
  • Pollution
  • Flood/Drainage
  • Weather/Greenhouse effect
  • Traffic
  • Crime
  • Social Problems
One of the girls; Amal immediately said 'no cars'. So in our town, everyone cycles, skates or rides electric vehicles. The houses are powered by solar energy and the town's facilities are powered by a turbine in the man-made lake. As a result, there are zero carbon emissions from our town. This approach also tackled traffic and the problems weather/greenhouse effect issues as there is no traffic and there are zero carbon emissions. All energy is generated locally and cleanly. We didn't even built a dam because we didn't want to flood any wildlife and such. At least, I didn't.

For the drainage, we put everything underground like in Paris -- much to Amal's pleasure.

To deter crime, our town has its own police station. Furthermore, we built a lot of street lights high off the ground so that people cannot damage them and this keeps the street and surrounding areas well lit To prevent theft, no vehicles are allowed in the town so thieves will have a hard time getting away.

To curb social problems during the weekdays, the school is built on one side of town with houses surrounding it. Then, there is an open space between the police station and the town center -- which is on the other end of town -- so that in case any delinquents try to cross, they'll be caught. At night, curfew is enforced.

We wanted to build a small housing lot, a school, police/firefighter station, hospital and a town center. Just a few things. The town center was the hardest to build. Mainly because it was tricky to decide on the design. In the end, Amal & Liyana went random and modeled it after a bee hive. It was actually a really cool design. Congrats to Amal & Liyana! Great job! Everyone did a fantastic job! I want to apologize to all members of The Frozen Ones for nearly wrecking the road.

Thanks to everyone's hardwork, we managed to come in tied for second with another group; Duck & Cover at 14 points. Monatwa Monkeys came in first with 15 points.

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