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Halloween horrors in NTU
IMAGINE NTU with tentacles
hanging from walls, gruesome
body parts served as food and scary
zombies haunting the hallways of
the university campus.
That was how students and
faculty celebrated Halloween the
past three weeks — dressed up as
ghoulish characters and scaring
others out of their wits — just for
the fun of it.
Organised by Epiphany, NTU’s
English and Drama Society,
‘Fiendish Fiesta’ was housed in the
School of Humanities and Social
Sciences (HSS).
There, students from all
faculties gathered in creepylooking
costumes, shared horror
stories and read poetry.
Sarah Daud, 20, Epiphany’s
Vice-President of Publications,
said the best part of Halloween is
being able to dress up and take on
a different role.
She said, “Everyone comes to
school every day wearing the same
old things all the time. At least
during Halloween, you get to be
someone else.”
Besides HSS’s Halloween
party, students from the Wee Kim
Wee School of Communication
and Information (WKWSCI) also
celebrated Halloween. Students
came dressed as different
NTU teams embark on first OCIP collaboration
IN an unprecedented school-wide
collaboration, six teams across
NTU will work together this year
to supply a Laotian village with
clean water. They aim to furnish
the village with water dams, pipes
and water collection points.
Through this large-scale
collaboration, the teams hope to
make a lasting change that benefits
the local community.
“This project will culminate in
a tangible end product, so together
we can form a stronger purpose
when planning a project that will
truly impact and improve the lives
of our beneficiaries,” said Hall 5
expedition director, Justin Loh.
“There’s a limit to how much
help one team can render as they
usually come and go without
continuity,” he added.
The project will be carried out
by teams from the School of Civil
and Environmental Engineering
(CEE), School of Physical and
Mathematical Science and residents
from Halls of Residence 2, 3, 5 and
11. Each team will contribute 25
PHOTO | RAPHAEL LIM
SPOOKY: Children went trick-or-treating dressed in their ghoulish best.
characters such as Pac-man, Super
Mario and the Addams Family.
As part of the event, the school’s
Communication and Information
Club organised haunted trails
which, according to the club’s Social
Secretary, Shahrin Izhar, 21, scared
members to the project, with a total
of 150 people involved.
From May to June 2013, during
the semester break, the six teams
will take turns to visit Na Phong
village, each handling different
stages of the construction process.
“Students can
come together and
work with people
from other faculties
and halls.”
Ms Wendy Gwee
Senior assistant director
Student Affairs Office
The process will only be finalised
after the CEE team returns from a
reconnaissance trip, which will take
place from 7 to 12 December.
The CEE team will also design
the blueprint for the dam, which will
be built at the top of a mountain,
and pipes connecting the water
supply to the village.
even the ‘ghosts’ themselves.
“There was a first-year student
dressed as Wednesday Addams who
looked pale and scary herself but
she was still so scared during the
haunted trail,” he said.
Schools were not the only
Aside from construction, the
teams also plan to teach basic
English to primary school children
in the village school.
The idea for a big project was
conceived as there was a great
interest in Laos amongst the OCIP
teams in 2011 and 2012, said Ms
Wendy Gwee, the senior assistant
director at the Student Affairs Office.
While overseeing the OCIP
teams in Laos this year, the overallin-charge
of the Overseas Exposure
Programme (OEP), met up with Mr
Peter Tan, a Singaporean who has
lived in Laos since 1995. Mr Tan
happened to be the point of contact
for a number of projects being
carried out last year.
The guesthouse owner, who
has facilitated more than 30 OCIP
collaborations with Singaporean
organisations such as Ngee
Ann Polytechnic and Singapore
Buddhist Lodge, took Ms Gwee to
Na Phong village to explore future
project opportunities.
Ms Gwee said the idea to
supply the remote village with
water came from the villagers
themselves, who have to trek long
places where students celebrated
Halloween.
In Hall of Residence 11, the
Junior Common Room Committee
organised musical performances,
a ‘best dressed’ costume fashion
show and a spooky treasure hunt
for thrill-seeking residents.
According to resident Koh
Hui Lin, 19, decorations were
put up around the block a week
before the event to build up the
Halloween mood.
“I felt excited during the event
as I saw a lot of people dressed
up,” said the first-year psychology
student who attended the event
dressed as a ghostly bride.
“The event was a joint effort
from a lot of people, like the
cultural performance groups and
the organisers who prepared the
decorations and the food.”
The NTU faculty joined in the
festivities as well.
Halloween-inspired games
included ‘creepy Hangman’, where
balloons filled with talcum powder
were popped on faculty members.
Ms Caroline Essame, 49, hosted
a Halloween party for residents
and their children staying in
staff houses.
The party was held at the ‘Gory
Garden’, the scarily decorated
backyard of Ms Essame’s house
at Nanyang View, which was the
main attraction.
As part of the festivities,
Halloween games like biting donuts
hung on a string and wrapping a
friend up with toilet roll to create
your own mummy were played too.
After a round of games, the
children left for trick-or-treating
around staff houses, dressed as
witches, sword-wielding ninjas
and other ghoulish characters.
For Ms Essame, festivals like
Halloween mark the passing of
time in Singapore, where there are
no distinct seasons.
“Being British, I’m used to
having time marked by seasons,
and you don’t have seasons living
in the tropics,” she said.
“And I found, having lived
here for so long now, that it’s the
festivals that mark the passing of
time, whether it’s Chinese New
Year, Deepavali or Christmas. And
I think Halloween is just part of
this cycle of time.”
Ms Essame, who specialises in
creativity and child development,
added that Halloween helps
children develop social and
emotional skills by managing fear.
“Halloween is about exploring
fear, being scared, and going out in
the dark and yet getting something
good from going in the dark,” she said.
“I think playing with the rituals
of Halloween help children learn
about fear and risk, and if you go
into the darkness once, you will not
be so scared of it the second time.”
BEHIND THE EFFORTS: Tan Wa, 8 and Amanda Tang, 21, the Hall 5 Twenty One Young Hearts
Committee Vice-Chairperson in Laos Pong Song Village.
distances across mountainous
areas to access clean water.
At the Laos Night 2012, OCIP
groups that previously went to
Laos came together to share their
experiences.
During the event, Ms Gwee
noticed a “shared common interest
among those groups to return to
PHOTO | COURTESY OF JUSTIN LOH
Laos to ensure continuity.”
She subsequently opened up
the project to the floor at the OEP
briefing this year.
“Students can come together
and work with people from other
faculties and halls, for a sustainable
cause they feel passionate about,”
she said.