On the 13th of April, SST held its Official Opening. This day marked an important milestone in SST’s history. On this day, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam attended the ceremony along side a few other distinguished guests such as Prof Su Guaning, SST's Chairman and President Emeritus at the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Nanyang Technological University (NTU).
Presentation of token of appreciation to Mr Tharman by Dr Su
Following his arrival at the foyer, there was a lion dance performance in which Mr Tharman used a laser to wake the lions up. After that, SST’s Show Choir came out and performed the song “Celebrations”, with a short and simple guitar performance by Tan Keming and Jee Hoon.
After enjoying the two performances at the Foyer, the group of distinguished guests had a tour around the school campus. Their first stop was the exhibition centre, where students were stationed and ready to give talks to the group of distinguished guests. An interesting one was the one-minute pitch made by the student CEOs of 3 actual companies from SST’s ICT Talent Development Program in which the distinguished guests get to choose their favourite idea out of the 3 ideas and the idea with the most votes will receive $1000 to make their product real and come true.
Following that, the guests made their way to the area outside the ICT helpdesk, where they were students presenting about the Rooftop Project SST has held and what their winning idea was. After that, they made their way to the Science Laboratories where there was a simple presentation by the students of Robotics Club.
After the presentation by Robotics Club, they made their way into one of the Biotechnology Labs where they were smaller and simple presentations at each workbench. The presentations varied from Fermented Food to Microbial Technology to Animal Cell Culture and even more.
The group of distinguished guests then made their way to the canteen, where there was a flash mob by the Secondary 2 students, who danced to the song “Beauty and A Beat” by Justin Bieber ft. Nicki Minaj. Once the performance has ended, they made their way to the field where a presentation-cum-performance on P.E.T Water Rockets, which were one of the Science Projects that the students had came up with themselves.
Meanwhile, in the Multi-Purpose Hall, guests such as Parents and the Secondary 4 students started to arrive and register themselves outside the Indoor Sports Hall (ISH), where Student Councilors had asked them to sign in a booklet to congratulate SST on its Official Opening Ceremony.
They then made their way up to the MPH. Once most of the guests have arrived and settled down, the pre-ceremony concert started, with the emcee introducing the live stream of the GOH and the distinguished guests arriving at the foyer and watched the two performances at the foyer through the live stream.
After that, we had a music-mixing performance by a student, Hakeem, who had just started learning how to mix music as a hobby 2 years ago. It was a splendid performance and it received large round of applauses from the audience.
Next up, we had a performance by SST’s show choir, who performed a 4-part song accompanied by piano, which also received a loud applause from the audience. The emcee then introduced SST’s Dance Crew, where they had cool costumes that had LED lights attached to it, so when they danced at certain times, it lit up and gave the entire dance a cool effect. Another performance well done! Following that, we had SST’s very own Acapella group “Infinigrad”,who performed a medley of songs and took turns to get “Centre stage”.
Once that was over, we have the CEOs of 3 actual companies from SST’s ICT Talent Development Program to give the audience a one-minute elevator pitch to convince them that their idea was the best. After all 3 elevator pitches, the audience was asked to take out their phones and go to a specific website where they would vote for their favourite and most convincing idea. Of course, the winning idea, which would be decided by the GOh and distinguished guests in the Exhibition Centre, would receive $1000 to make their idea come true.
Once the voting had finished, the audience patiently waited for the arrival of the GOH and distinguished guests and started to have some little conversations among themselves.
On the other hand, once the GOH and distinguished guests were done looking at all the exhibitions, presentations and performances, they started to make their way to the MPH for the ceremony. Upon their arrival, the other guests who were already present in the MPH stood up and put their hands together to welcome the Guest-of-Honour and the rest of the distinguished guests.
Once the crowd and the distinguished guests have settled down, a video on SST’s Journey was played. At the end of the video, the emcees for the ceremony invited Mr Chua, Principal of SST, onto stage to give a speech, followed by Dr Su and lastly Mr Tharman. After his speech, Mr Chua, Mr Tharman and 2 other distinguished guests went up to stage, where there was a button for them to press. Once they pressed the button, the backdrop behind them lit up. The School of Science and Technology is officially open.
After the opening of the school, the four went back to their seats. Not only was the 13th of April the Official Opening of the school, it was also the day SST launched it’s school song. SST’s Show Choir was invited out onto stage, and the guests were asked to stand up for the launch of the school song. The school song started playing through the speakers and the Show Choir sang along.
Once the school song ended, the GOH and distinguished guests were invited to the ISH for the reception, where there were some performances such as a performance by the Guitar Ensemble, a few Piano performance and more, for the guests to enjoy. During the reception, Mr Tharman took his time to engage in conversations with the student leaders that were around in the ISH and some of the guests such as parents, PForSST and the teachers.
Article written by: Genevieve Foo (S302)
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