The spirit of the campus.

This is my room in Prince George’s Park (PGP). I have been thinking about what is the place I want to be in the most, the place I feel most comfortable in. And after thinking about it for a long time, I still come to the conclusion that it is my room, a piece of this world where you can, at least temporarily, be lost in yourself. I cannot think of a place I love to be in more. The atmosphere is brilliant. Even though the room is small, the windows which stretch the whole height of the walls allow daylight in wonderfully, making the small room comfortably lit and welcoming to be in. This really brings home to me the importance of providing adequate daylight for comfort in a space. I think it’s important to live close to the school, which is why I absolutely have to stay on campus. I think that positive energy dissipates the further you go away from the school, just like how the vibrant energy dwindles as you move further away from the city. I think this has very important implications, if my opinion about this is right. The whole structure of our country should change. The new towns are doing nothing,
they are just satellite communities of living quarters that will never amount to anything in terms of contributing to the creative energy of our nation. In this age and time when the government is putting so much energy into promoting the arts and making our city a vibrant, ‘renaissance’ one, it should consider how to link the various new towns to the city, spiritually, architecturally. It’s no use to plonk new settlements everywhere on new areas on the map, when they’re so removed and alienated from the energy of the city. I feel nothing when I’m in the so called heartlands. I feel lethargic. I feel meaningless.
In school, I feel the vibrancy, the force which pushes me to move on, to study, to work. The whole atmosphere tells me this is the place I should be in, at this moment in time. When I look out of my window at night, 2, 3, 4am, all I see are lights. In school, no one sleeps at night. Students never sleep at night. This is the spirit of the school, just like the spirit of the city that never sleeps.

Ho See Jia