Dalat International School: Senior Scribble

By Cullno Mah January 26, Friday was the birth of a new era in Dalat history: the birth of the long-awaited Marine Biology Club and its debut. Ms. Goh, Elizabeth, and I founded the Marine Biology Club with the goal of exploring a whole other world before us with a family-like community passionate about marine life and a drive towards a better world. Focused on the ocean’s unexplainable beauty and supernatural design, we created this club to nurture true love and values of marine bio capable enough to be passed on to future generations to come. Although the club members had met once before, Jan 26 was the true debut where we ventured beyond land, to the beaches beating against the school walls. As the founder of the club, a heavy load of responsibilities lingered throughout the week, counting towards the inevitable debut. The introduction of the syllabus and the “World in Glass Bottle” project were among the list of objectives at this meeting. The top of that list was to create an envir...

By Popi Grous Over the weekend of January 26, the Middle School Island Shootout was held at Dalat. Basketball teams around the island and Kuala Lumpur competed in hopes of securing the win. In basketball, where every pass and shot is vital to their wins or losses, playing Friday and Saturday, battling it out, Dalat came through at the end, winning it all. With eight teams in the tournament, both the boys and girls teams were smiling brightly after earning gold medals. The crowd was electric, chanting and cheering, pushing both teams to do their best. The players were gaining momentum and motivation, allowing for an intense game. Both the boys' and girls' finals were against ISKL, creating an intense atmosphere.  Tony Boyd, assistant coach to the Middle School Boys' basketball team, says, “My favourite was winning in double overtime the first time we played ISKL! The boys played hard and better than I have ever seen up to this point, all of them from the 7th graders up to th...

By Michelle Morrow This past Saturday, while middle school basketball had their Island Shootout, the rugby girls headed to Bukit Mertajam on the mainland for our first Penang tournament this season. Twelve teams were competing in our division, and after 13 long hours of both playing and waiting for the pouring rain to stop, we finished first in the silver bracket.  We dominated in pool play, winning our first two games 3-0 and 2-0. We fell to the eventual tournament champions in the next game, sending us to the silver bracket. Commenting on the team’s resilience after this upsetting loss, Tia Emmanuel (10) said, “I really liked how after we lost our match and were all really sad and down, we prayed as a group about the next one and came back stronger.”  Although we faced challenging opposition in our third game, we persevered and learned from our mistakes as we won our final two HSBM National Touch 3.0 Tournament games by scores of 3-0 and 1-0.  After everyone’s games wer...

By Wei Ee Goh This basketball trip was the last and long-awaited ISKL tournament for the seniors. On the way to our trip, the bus was filled with initial excitement, quickly followed by everyone falling asleep.  Once we got to the school, our Varsity Boys team played a local KL team called Hatchers. It was an intense game, with the lead consistently changing by two points, but sadly, due to minor mistakes, we lost by two points.  Thankfully, we bounced back during our second game against Davidson with an easy win of 58-29. After the long day of traveling and playing games, we ended it by going to the same mall we go to for every trip, Intermark Mall. The Varsity girls and guys' teams scavenged around the mall to find their favorite foods, varying from Nandos, Chinese food, McDonald’s, and baguettes. The night ended with heading to the hotel, waiting for our room keys, and getting ready for the next day. Breakfast was at 7 am, and soon after, we boarded the bus, ready to play o...

By Aidan Leong Silas Latham (9) throws the ball up into the air over the heads of multiple Oasis players. As the ball seems to fall, two hands suddenly grip its leathery surface. It's Matthias Seevaratnam (10) floating in the air! He catches the ball and puts a shot into the basket before landing on the ground.  Cheers and shouts echo throughout the court as the JV boys get back on defense. The spirit of the Dalat community comes alive with parents, middle schoolers, high schoolers, and teachers all cheering on the bleachers.  Last week, the junior varsity boys and girls played in a two-day basketball tournament on Friday and Saturday. Multiple teams, such as ISKL, Oasis, Han Chiang, and Chung Ling, came to play. The JV (Junior Varsity) boys fought hard and experienced high and low moments. They had a massive victory over Oasis with a score of 66-8. They also fought ISKL at the start and had a good lead on them, but unfortunately, ISKL caught up and beat them by a few points. ...

By Isaac Beaman  After finals, students set out in an attempt to unwind from the semester. Traveling far and wide, seniors enjoy their last Christmas break and take the opportunity to grow closer to the people they will soon have to leave behind. Over the hustle and bustle of getting back to school, the best stories of break often go untold.  Reporting on the best stories was a burden that someone had to undertake.  In the calm, quiet waters of the straights of Melaka, the Silverstein's band of buccaneers set sail early one morning. With the wind in their sails and break on their calendars, they headed off to Phuket for their family vacation. Despite all the thrill and adventure of their trip, they found that their favorite moments were a bit closer to home. Elizabeth Silverstein (12) said, “I really enjoyed working out with my dad each morning on the beach and having that time with him because I am really going to miss him when I go off to college.” Elizabeth wasn’t the ...

By Lee Yee Tan The start of the second semester always gives off a weird feeling: it feels like a new school year with the appearance of a dozen new faces, but at the same time, it also repeats a familiar cycle that students have progressed through in semester one. However, returning to school as a senior this semester felt especially sentimental. The sensation of being a senior is more than just wearing light blue shirts now that it is officially the second semester of the 23-24 school year. “Coming back from break, it feels different as the realization that the start of semester two now means we are much closer to our graduation,” exclaims Jonathan Park, Class of 2024, a current senior. In the midst of juggling school and college applications, the class also has approximately five more months until having to part ways, moving into another milestone in our lives. It felt as if we were still in middle school yesterday, admiring the upperclassmen, hoping that we could be like them one d...

By Josh Morrison The show goes on! Welcome to semester two! All of us are returning for another semester of school, but for some of us this will be our last… Getting back into old classes and starting new ones always takes a second to get used to. The first week of semester two often feels like the in-between state of sleepy awareness you get after hitting the snooze on the alarm clock: the teachers don’t give out a ton of homework, everyone’s still talking about what they did over break, and the coaches aren’t going hard on their athletes. It’s a good ease back into routine. Despite the goodwill of teachers and coaches, the second semester naturally is when motivation amongst seniors is at an all time low. It’s like our attention spans have just snapped. So as a senior who often feels burned out with school, I decided to ask a couple seniors how they stay motivated to wake up every morning.  “I think it’s about intentionality,” Caleb Jun said, “I try to be intentional with the peo...