Creativity-

Drums

Playing music instruments has always been there for my family, my mum playing the piano and my sister playing the violin most of her life. I think because I have always been listening to my sister playing the violin a lot in the house and hearing my mum or her teacher telling her that she made a mistake, my ears have become really good at listening to music pieces on when there is a music that, when I play instruments, I am person who tends to go back to the beginning of the piece when I make a mistake, or I don’t feel comfortable playing it continuing from the mistake. For music instruments I started off from following my sister’s footstep of playing the violin when I was 7 years old, playing for at least a year and a half but I later on did not like playing the violin as much as I lost interest. Then I transitioned to playing the piano which I only continued for half month, I was enjoying it but I was only able to play properly on my right hand as it was my dominant hand so when I would try to practice using my left hand to play the other side of the keyboard I always would make so many mistakes making me really frustrated that I ended up disliking it and quitting. I ended up not trying to learn another instrument, but I was told by mum that it was good to learn an instrument to play for fun, so I then started playing the drums at Music Matters where I have been playing for at least 2 years. I have played in ensembles and mini-concerts since the music matters have held every 6 months to share to the parents and other audiences what the students have learned in that year. I have been always been either playing pop or jazz music the most as it has either a slow or mid-fast pace but I want to improve my skills in drumming that the goal I have chosen is to play more rock pieces as it is much more fast pace which is hard to do as because it’s so fast there are so many notes to hit for a single piece. I also want to improve on my confidence in drumming as I always played beats that were commonly used in songs that I was really scared in improvising my own beats thinking that it would sound weird, so I hope to improve my confidence in playing more improvised beats.

Activity

SAISA Swimming

Swimming has been a sport that has been stuck with for most of my life as it first started off as leisure swimming when I was 3 or 4 years old, where I would come to the OSC swimming pool and get taught by Mr. Stanley, as I got into grade 5 I was introduced to SAISA swimming by my friend; Andrew and go into my first SAISA. For the past 6 years, I have been in the SAISA swim team going to Bombay/Mumbai, Chennai, Muscat, Amman, and Kathmandu. I have been training for SAISA swimming every year, going to swim training in OSC, KWA club (Sri Lanka), PEAK training camp (USA) and OVAL club (Japan), strengthening myself physically and mentally which has benefits for not only swimming. Last year in the 2018 SAISA swimming competition held in ACS; Jordan, I was in the 15-19yrs boy’s age group where we were looking to break three relay records that have been held by groups in previous years. We won 2 first places in the relay for 4x50m free and 4x50m Individual Medley and 1-second place in the 4x100m free losing to ACS to milliseconds, we were, however, lucky to acquire the record for the 4x50m free. This year with the slightly same group of 15-19yrs boys minus 1, I hope to break all 3 relay records with more than 2 individual medals. When I was in the 13-14yrs boy’s age group on my relay teams final year being in that age group we were able to break all 3 relay records and if the 15-19yrs boys break all 3 relay records I will be proud to say that my team and I hold the 13-14yrs and 15-19yrs boys 3 relay records, altogether a relay record of 6.

TISSL Swimming

TISSL; The International Schools of Sri Lanka swim meet, is another swimming competition held at the Sugathadasa swimming pool including most of Sri Lanka’s international schools. This swimming competition like SAISA goes for 3 days but I consider this meet much more competitive as there are more than 12 schools and some of these international schools have Sri Lankan swimmers for their school. However, last year my relay team were able to for the first time get the first place in the 4x50m free relay beating Gateway College (Colombo) by a few milliseconds. This year we are hoping to come to the first place to more than one of the relays except it is a bigger challenge now that we have moved up an age group meaning we are the younglings in that age group with other relay team powerhouses.

Karate

Karate has been another sport have done for most of my life starting when I was 5 years old, starting it off from after school activities as a practice of self-defense however through the years I had found another place to practice this sport out of school. Joining R.J. Edward’s Karate Training Center, I have done karate for at least now 10 years going through many tests in order to go up the belt ranks; white, yellow, orange, green, purple, blue, brown 1, brown 2, brown 3 and finally black 1. My goal at first in karate was to build strength and agility, but now that has been going through the belt ranks, I have made a goal to reach the first black belt level and then the second black belt. The black belt test occurs every 2-4 years, so I have to train as much as possible to prepare myself for the exams.

Service

Housing and Habitat

This is the first year being in the Housing and Habitat service, so I would like to contribute as much as possible in things like the planning and preparing of the event that Housing and Habitat hold every year like Home Run, but also in the creation of chairs that the previous Housing and Habitat have started to make for some of the locals schools that don’t have these items. My goal for the contribution of this service is to create a website for the service since I found out that this service was one of the services that were missing a website, so I hope to help and create a Housing and Habitat website. I would like to also help in improving the Housing and Habitat’s social media platform as they have Facebook but it hasn’t been used so I would like to use it as a place for the people of OSC and others to know what the Housing and Habitat are wanting to do, might even try and make other social media platforms for the service group. If not social media or website, I am hoping to help the team with the planning of the homerun as I would like to be helping with the video making, also I hope to help the service finish building the chairs for the Janoda Foundation school.