Today at 9 a.m., students at Taipei American School participated in a lengthy five-minute Code Red Lockdown drill, an exercise designed to simulate how students should protect themselves if an active shooter managed to infiltrate the campus.
In Taipei, which the blog “Nihao’s going?” referenced as the city where “the heat is more dangerous than the crime”, an active shooter situation is highly unlikely. Students engaged in the Code Red Lockdown rather half-heartedly, reluctantly peeling themselves away from their laptop screens, knowing that in these precious five minutes they would fall behind the curriculum once again. Many first period teachers echoed the phrase, “We have a lot of content to cover today.”
To make good use of your time during the Code Red Lockdown drill, here are a few things you can do:

1. Play chopsticks with a nearby classmate:

A lower school classic, chopsticks is a nice and quiet game perfect for a drill like this. Little organization is required: just nudge the person closest to you and hold out your index fingers. If they don’t understand what this gesture, you didn’t want to play with this uncultured oaf anyways.

2. Play three-way chopsticks with two nearby classmates

On the contrary, perhaps you will find that not one, but two classmates are equally bored as you are. In this five minute time span, you can probably attempt to play three-way chopsticks, and manage figure out that it doesn’t work by the time the drill is over.

3. Pushups

This activity is inspired by the rumors regarding Upper School principal Dr. Richard Hartzell and his alleged spontaneous 20-pushup workout during a previous Code Red Drill. True or not, there are few more fitting opportunities to to start your arms day.

4. Practice gratitude

Last but not least, as you think about how you could be spending these few minutes doing more important things, consider that there was a whopping 14,415 firearm related homicides in the United States compared to the 128 in Taiwan in 2016—perhaps this statistic will be of some aid to you when searching for your dream college.