TedxYouth

Jon Lee

Jon Lee is a 13 year old Victoria KartDriver with the dream of achieving F1. His message is basically to dare to dream, and have structured plan and discipline for that. Really inspiring for such an awesome feat at his tender age.

Josiah Ng

I really liked what he has started. He is why I did the “While You Were Sleeping” initiative, which I really enjoyed though my motivation died down fast. He grew up being weird, but actually embraced this social stigma, and wore his “spandex” to be the everyday superhero.  Everyone is born for a purpose, like superhero, that if the abilities are not used, it becomes a fashion disaster, well, great power comes with great responsibility.

He also shared the UBUNTU culture, where a sociologist went to a tribe in Africa for an observation. The experiment is simple, it is simply rewarding the first child to reach the tree and back a bag of sweets. However, to his surprise, they ran for the bag of sweets hand in hand, on their motivation of UBUNTU - I am because you are. Having this in mind, he actually wanted to do something for Singapore culture, but initially flooded with the wrong questions of “who am I to do such thing”.

So my take is that, well, we must be mindful of such wrong questions. Many wrong questions are hindrance to fulfill our dreams. Question like “why as a nobody, should I do this?” or “why bother, Im a loser”, can really miss the opportunity to make a difference to the society.

Janice Wong

This speaker opens my appetite and my hunger to create art using food. She uses food as an expression to create interactive art, big scales of art, which would be constantly morphing as people consume the food used for the art. This is a really really interesting form of conceptualized art.

David Goh

What this speaker inspired me was his perspective of dreams, to actually focus on what you wanna achieve, not how, because if we fail to reach to a certain goal that contribute to our dreams, it don’t mean that the dream is gone, it just means that the method is not good, and simple take on another method, or to allocate more suitable human resource into it.

Joanne Kwok

Joanne Kwok teaches us to Settle to not Settle, which means to not be too happy in status quo, but reach out to dreams and passion, or reaching for ideal. She is now a creative director with a really cool card that could change colour by heat. She is the one that reminded is that it is no harm to be the nail that sticks out, that people would hammer down, because it will make the greatest dent, the greatest impact. Since young, she have been not choosing her life path, and ignored what she really wanted from life. Thus, after being in US, she was asked why to take on something she did not like. That made her feel that what you do should reflect what you are. Reminds me of work alienation hahas! Anyway, she eventually, after jumping here and there, joined the Yellow Octopus.

Kumaran Rassapan

He is a doctor that raised 30,000 for Hospital by climbing the Mount Everest. However, he shared about the concept about turning back. Society tends to deem people who turned their backs as quitters, cowards, and other social stigma. They brand success so highly that they do not understand the world they live in. For example, during the climb, he shared that an adult came down not reaching the summit, because he do not want his 2 sons to repeat a life without a father. In the contrary, a group of climbers came down after reaching the summit, with 7 fingers  amputated due to frostbites. He also shared that there are actually many ways to reach the summit, by hiring, by helicopter, or by climbing, and he believed that by climbing, we learn during the process, and that is actually true success.  

It’s the concept of conviction vs recognition too.

Krystal Choo

This speaker is really a convicted person. She successfully quit smoking, and started up the One Cent Movement. She believed that action is the key factor to change. She believed that success is personal, so it should not be something the society expects you to achieve. She tried delving into the events sector to improve her social confidence. She held on a strong believe that weakness is failing to Commit to your own goal. She feels that Failure is not caused by things going wrong, but Right Actions not taken. If everyone here choose to be better by 1%, collectively, this group will come out with greater feats that any 1 person could do 100%, small things do add up. SOME succeed because they are destined to, must MOST succeed because they are convicted to.

She also mentioned about a person with a dream of a lion chasing. So she would always run away from it, and probably got devoured when she collapse, and then wake up. So after consulting a lot, a pastor suggested her to turn around and ask the lion. So once, she actually turned around and asked, and her reply was “why are you running? I am your courage”.

Kuik Shiao-Yin

She is the founder of the Thought Collective, the School for Thought and Food for Thought. She shared how the magazine she designed, being thrown away, could make a difference a random girl whose father was coincidentally the KarangGuni Man, who collected these magazines. She reminded me that small things in life would mean a difference to others. She reminded me how simple greetings and chats could prevent suicides and depression, how a teacher’s words could impact a student for life and other incredible impacts on small trivial effort.

Georgina Chan

She is the most entertaining speaker so far. She got her proposal “I have no money, I have no job, I have no ring, but I love you, will you marry me?, she said “walao siao…. But I said yes, because I believe you” Anyway, so a series of random accidental events led her becoming an accidental photographer. Initially, she did not believe in herself to operate the camera, but came to accept it eventually. Thus, she shared “Believe in yourself, and the accidental things that happen to you, because there is always a purpose”.

Then, she wrote a book, and then coincidentally stumbled across a newspaper article of DBS big shot being a avid bird watcher, and requested him to come for her book launch on 9am. Strangely, he actually came, because he wanted to know the “lady who had the AUDACITY to call him at 9am for a booking that very evening”.

Btw, she shared that the National Bird is actually the Crimson Sunbird.

Daniel Wong

He is the writer of the “Happy Student”.  His simple takeaway for us is that Copernicus is right. Copernicus claimed that the Earth revolves about the sun, when the society thinks otherwise. What is means is to actually focus on making a difference to the community or society, and not for ourselves. He also shared that what most matters is the VALUE of the dream, not the PROBABILITY of the SUCCESS in terms of books sold.

Kan Lume

He seems to be more popular speaker. He shared that: Many Succeed MOMENTARILY, Some Succeed TEMPORARILY, and Few Succeed PERMENENTLY.