More pics of the wedding

Woohoo!! My blog finally looks EXACTLY like how I want it to look like, all thanks to YH :) thanks a lot ;) My Christmas countdown timer is exactly where it should be...hee.

These pictures that you see now are all taken by one of my choirmates W's website..he happens to be and old boy of CHS! Never knew he's a great photographer until the recent spate of weddings that we started attending together.




The bunch of us choir people at the church..


















The ballroom at Goodwood Park Hotel...


















Cute little teddy sitting on top of the Ang Pao box..















This is a Q & A game session for the couple..where the ultimate goal is for the groom to do a forfeit, regardless of the outcome of the game. Haha..before you think the MCs were being evil, it was all a ploy to celebrate the groom's birthday, which was just the day before the wedding ;)










My table no. 12 :)















My choir batch..... :)

My friends' wedding

Decided to steal some of L's pics from his blog and use it to blog about my friends' wedding which I mentioned about a few days back. Am sure there'll be much more pics for me to upload later on when W gets his pictures up online..so till then, this few from L's blog will suffice ;)

S and L are my college choir friends. I've actually known L all the way since I was secondary 1..been in the same CCA all the way till we finished JC. They'd been together since the end of JC2....super long yeah?







This is L, walking down the aisle..













And this is both S and L walking down the aisle, this time as Mr and Mrs Lee ;)






Their wedding dinner was held at Goodwood Park Hotel...quite a nice cosy dinner of I think around....20 tables? I think my table was almost the youngest bunch there..since the rest were made up of relatives and perhaps, their parents' friends.

As with the tradition, both my friends sang to each other during the wedding dinner....it's always nice to hear wedding couples sing during their weddings...so sweet.....

And this is the few of us at our noisy dinner table no. 12 ;)

2 weddings down, and 5 more to go!! *hole in pocket growing as the days go by....*

Ophir (Part I)

Till I'm in the mood and have time to type out the whole Gunung Ledang expedition and my reflections on it, I shall put up pictures here and there and describe snippets of it.

Basically, this is what my Land unit, P and I scaled...

A description of Mount Ophir that we find painted on the wall of a small canteen at the foot of the mountain.

This, my friends, is a rock hill surface that we had to scale enroute to the summit. Note, there's no camera tricks in this photo. It really is quite steep.

Pretty steep wall to scale WITHOUT safety harnesses huh?

That's all for this episode of "Ophir"....till Part II.......adios amigo!

New Blogskin

Just came back from yet another wedding about an hour ago..another 2 of my peers getting married to each other after 7 years of courtship. Feel very happy for them...

Hmm..granny seems to be eating a little more..which is a comfort. But still a little on the unresponsive side...with only slight nods to indicate that she has occassionally heard me calling her (not necessarily understanding what I'm saying to her). But at least, there is that slight improvement in terms of eating. Thank God...

Just changed my blogskin today. Always wondered if I would be able to do it myself, since the previous blogskin was done up for me by an ex-student. Took about 1/3 of the day to get it up..with just one small problem..my "Countdown Timer" has gone missing. For some reason the Title for the countdown timer ("No. of days to Christmas Day") cannot be displayed. And it appears all the way at the bottom :( Just can't figure it out..what used to work on the old blogskin, doesn't work on this one anymore. Haiz. Somemore, I'm an HTML idiot..everything that appears on this blog is achieved by trial-&-error. Anyone can figure it out?

:(

Being sick is an eeky feeling. *sigh*

Upon returning from a successful Ophir trip, 2 saddening news hit me..one is, that my granny's health has suddenly deteriorated. I had only been gone for 4 days, I don't even know if she recognised me when I came home on Thursday. She had been wheelchair-bound for close to 2 years already, but throughout this whole time, she was very healthy..being able to converse simply with us, recognising us, watching TV & eating full meals. She used to love to hold onto my hands when I stretched it out to her...
But when I saw her on Thurs, she looked listless..hardly responding when I call her..not swallowing well..almost refusing to eat..slumping to one side of her wheelchair. ='( Pains my heart so much..and I can't do nuts to help. And I myself am down with flu..so I'm afraid to walk near her, for the fear that I"ll pass the flu to her, which would be disastrous. So all I can do is to pray for her...

The other news is, my HDB flat may be en-bloc'ed. Which put simply, means that it may be bought over to be re-developed. i.e. I might just be displaced from my own house soon. ='(

Feeling upset...... :(

*sick*

Too much heaty and spicy food on the trip....
*nose dripping* *COUGH COUGH* *sore throat*

*SICK*

Perak Trip, 6th - 8th Nov '06

I just came back from an NCC adventure trip to Perak. Was really fun I must say. The pic from my previous post shows the lot of us who went from the CHS Land unit, a total of 10 boys plus me. There were I think, 9 schools who went in total, and 8 officers who accompanied the whole lot. Basically, there were 3 main activities, white-water rafting, canyoning (i.e. abseiling down from a water fall!) and caving.

So we travelled for almost an entire day on the 6th to reach Perak. And to reach our campsite, we had to load up onto smaller lorries and vans coz the little roads in the village couln't take big buses. The ride in was interesting..haha..more interesting for the boys i suppose. Coz there are trees on both sides of the road, so those who were standing in the lorry were habitually getting smacked by leaves and branches that were sticking inwards towards the roads. The guys had to keep dodging and hold onto each other to maintain their balance and all... =P

The campsite was a pretty decent one, with huts for the teachers to live in, and the usual tents for the cadets to stay. There are even proper toilets and all. Nice ;) I was thinking that the officers would be sleeping in tents too..but we had little huts..though it was still sleeping on the floor, still, I was pleasantly surprised.




The cadets' tents.









See the water? That's the water that we bathe with ;)









And this is a view from the window of my little hut that we stayed in.. :)





Next morning, we set off for our water activities. Abseiling was first up. I've done abseiling more than once before, but this time round, it was going to be down a waterfall! Felt quite excited. We had to take a short ride in the lorry to get to the waterfall, and so I had a small share of being smacked by leaves and twigs along the way too..haha.

Upon reaching the waterfall, we could see that the water was quite rapid. Nice. On top of having to remember how to abseil, we also had to make sure that the gushing waters at the waterfall didn't displace our footing as we made our way down the waterfall..face being splashed by darting water. Was a really fun experience! Spent almost 80% of my time there taking pictures of my CHS cadets, using my ziplocked-bagged-camera..haha..didn't want to go home with a camera full of water you know.








My 2 boys abseiling down together.















This is me :)





As you can tell, my picture is clearer, coz the camera was out of the ziplock bag!!! *faint*
Heh, but thankfully it's more hardy than I think it is, so it's still working now. *phew*

Next up after lunch was white-water rafting. It was so fun!! The instructor just keeps giving us simple instructions and we just paddle according to what he says... "paddle forward!.....paddle backwards!....relax!...hang on!..." I must say that the particular instructor who was in my raft was a very experienced one, coz my raft hardly got stuck in our 2.5 hours journey..while other rafts were perpetually getting stuck at the rocks that were in the rapids. Think we were only stuck like...twice? ;)
But my instructor is also a tricky one..he tried to capsize our raft in the calm waters! Haha..so scheming. While we went into calm waters, he suddenly said "ok everyone go to the left side of the raft!", so my boys all gravitated to the left. And I was wondering "huh?"..coz usually we do that only when we're stuck or something. And from the corner of my eye, I can see him smiling cheekily and pulling the right side of the raft to capsize us! Haha..but we foiled his attempt...hee. BUUUT, since we foiled his attempt to capsize all of us, he decided to just yank ME (out of the whole raft of 5 BOYS and me) into the water from behind. haiz. See what it resulted in??



Scraaaaatches..got them from scraping my shin against the little rocks and pebbles at the bottom of the river when I fell in.... :|






I guess that was fun too..even though I got sabotaged....








So this is us, at the end of the rafting, all smiles :)







OK, I'm tired of typing already. I shall blog about the caving in another entry..it's now time for lunch!!!

Perak trip

my lovely new k618i..

Heh, in case you guys are wondering whaaaaaaat in the world the previous post was about..I put up that post from my phone! haha..it failed initially..but after W helped me with it, I managed to get the post up..so cool right? :) Oh yes, those 3 little fellas smile at me everyday in the staffroom.. =P

Quite happy yesterday..I managed to sell off my silly nokia phone at Toa Payoh..quite a good price it fetched :) And then at night, I bought the sony ericsson k618i. Sorta comes with a free bluetooth set! So it's quite a good deal I must say..

Now I just gotta get used to the new way of sms'g.............

Work!

Please work!

Last day of school..

Yesterday was the last day of school. A day that was filled with mixed emotions..

I always thought that I'd be so happy that last day of school was here, because that meant that I can finally really take a good break, and rest. I never used to have dark eye rings, nor even eye bags for that matter. They are a rare commodity where I am concerned. But over these 2 terms of school, I actually had BOTH at one point in time. And eye rings on many other occassions..that just shows the extent of my tiredness sometimes. So definitely, end of term means the beginning of good rest.

So on one hand, I'm happy. But yet on the other, I felt a little sad, because... I was "letting go" of my form class. Don't know if it's called emo (a relatively new word that I picked up from students recently), but I'm definitely a sentimental person. Was thinking through the night before, what I should share with them as a class before I dismissed them. I was never good with such things, saying farewell speeches to big groups and debriefing and stuff. So decided to write my class a little note of parting words instead. Initally I had wanted to bring my guitar in and sing them a portion of Corrine May's song as my parting words...the lyrics were something that I thought, I really wanted to say to them.... But as I thought about it, I decided against it..I think I wouldn't be able to finish singing it in a composed manner.

Before ending the day, I asked them, "Anybody has any last words to say to the class before we go?", thinking that, not many would want to stand up and speak to the entire class, BUT I WAS SO WRONG. One by one, they came forward..and shared with the class personal thoughts..about how we started out as 1-5..about how they bonded together over the course of this year..about the ups and downs...about the numerous nicknames.. We went on and on for i at least 1/2 hour..one of them even cried. That really touched my heart so much, that they had such deep bonds with one another.

There are many things that I want to say, but I didn't know how and when to say to them. So I shall say them here.
To my form class:
I never told you all, but you are quite similar to my own secondary 1 class when I was in secondary school. Fun-loving, cheeky, NOISY, makes our teachers angry, (with the exception of a few who were superbly fierce), always having a fun time in class, very very close-knit with fantastic class spirit. My class was notorious for being superbly noisy, and we were ever punished as a class, to write an entire essay on "Why we should not make noise in class" because one of my teachers could hear us from the other end of the corridor (my class was at one end of the corridor). On a few ocassions, i think we made my form teacher cry out of exasperation. You guys remind me so much of that class I was in. NOW I know what my teachers felt like, because I am now in their shoes.

It was a challenging task given to me, to be form teacher of the class. From last year till this year, there were many ups and downs...laughter and tears as well. I remember last year, how our class didn't really feel together. But this year, you guys slowly came together, and I am very proud to say that at the end of the day, you guys have come out as a CLASS, bonded..and genuinely concerned for one another.

Contrary to what some of you may think, I have never, and I repeat, NEVER, thought that we were the worst class in the level. Whoever gave you all that impression? I never told you all, but I always maintained that my class is one who are not malicious, just overly noisy and having too much fun sometimes...on the whole, the class is made up of people who are actually nice and real individuals. But of course, having too much fun has repercussions, which means you sometimes exasperate the teachers, including me. Sometimes, I really do feel like strangling some of you :P But know that in the things that I do, I do them with your interests at heart, though sometimes, it may feel otherwise.

Hearing all that you all shared yesterday really warmed my heart. Class spirit was something that worried me for some time, but yesterday was a most wonderful conclusion to the 2 years. Thanks for being a part of my journey. I have learnt a lot over the past 2 years..and also made my fair share of mistakes. Thanks for enduring through my mistakes. I hope you guys have learnt a lot of important lessons too.

Sec 3 is going to be different, more demanding, more juggling to do with work/CCA/play. Learn to prioritse and make the best of your next 2 years yah? It will pass as fast as these 2 years did, and before you know it, you would have graduated. Guard your friendships with each other, and continue to support one another, even though you may be in separate classes next year. These friendships are what will last a lifetime.

To end off, here are the lyrics of the chorus of Corrine May's song (that I planned to sing for you, but didn't in the end.) I have changed a little bit of it to fit our context. It's called Fly Away.

You can fly so high,
keep your gaze upon the sky.
I'll be praying every step along the way.
Even though, it breaks my heart to know that we will have to part,
I love you too much to make you stay.
Baby fly away.

Take care you all.

Leehom Wang - Kiss Goodbye

Here's the MTV for "Kiss Goodbye", one of my favourites :)

Lee Hom concert

Yesterday night I went for the Wang Lee Hom's "Heroes of the earth" concert at the Indoor Stadium...I must say I'm impressed by him. In addition to his good voice, he can play like a godzillion number of instruments! Ok, maybe not a godzillion, but he played the guitar, piano, drums, violin and er hu in his solid 3 hour concert! And I don't mean play as in, play like an amatuer, as if he just picked up the instrument for the concert. He plays them all very well..*impressed*
Think my favourite part of the concert was the accoustic portion, where he was accompanied only by 1 simple drum, and 4 guitars. Very nice, and the audience sang loudly with him, and
IN TUNE. Haha, you know how screaming fans can be like, when you watch them on TV, they basically, SCREAM the song, with no regard for the pitch sometimes. But yesterday's audience was so on pitch...niice... =)
After the concert I went for supper with my friends, yummy satay and sugar cane drink =)
Shall see if I can find a nice clip of his concert on YouTube and put it up in the next post.. ;)

Term 4, week 6

I can't quite believe my magnificent feat over the past weekend..
Maths paper was last Thursday, the last paper for the exams. And we had to get all the marking done by Monday, Tues morning the latest. Haha..382 students, each student 28m worth to mark..that's....10 696m worth of questions that i accomplished!!

During my intense marking period, I actually found a nice place to mark, called ICEKIMO. It's a little ice-cream place located at Sin Ming, which has a lot of interesting home-made flavours. Nice cosy little place, with not too many people..
















I was quite sure I took a photo of the shop, because I thought of blogging about it, but seems like it has mysteriously disappeared from my phone. So all you can see now, is a picture of my worktable at Icekimo ;)

Woohoo...*pat on my back*.... =) I still cannot really believe how I did it... After my whole week of stress, I can finally relax a little today. *phew*
Have been super tired out..plus drowsy medication doesn't help..felt like a walking zombie over the last 2 days... Like just now, I was trying to do something on the computer, and I found myself dozing off every few minutes! Goodness me, so the next logical thing I did was to jump into my bed. Heh..

Last week was farewell assembly for the sec4s..for the first time, I'm sending off one of the classes whom I have previously taught before. Brings a lot of memories...and a lot of feelings too.. It's always heartening to view the powerpoints that the teachers put together for their classes, the encouraging "last words" before they are officially off school, and the speeches.

But I think this year there was a slight difference, there was a song item by some of the teachers, mostly sec4 Form teachers, and after that, the teachers invited the whole hall to stand and sing "I Believe I Can Fly". I must say I didn't expect an enthusiastic response from the boys, but to my pleasant surprise, they actually stood up and some even joined arms and swayed to the music..and everyone sang so loudly and in one voice at the chorus "I believe I can fly...I believe I can touch the sky.." It was a touching moment for me, and even as I think about it now, it gives me goosebumps. The enthusiasm in the singing showed me camaraderie, school spirit, and a heart for CHS....it felt like, we were a family..something that I sometimes feel is lacking in the school, the school spirit. But it was nice, to send off our sec4s on such a high note..to see that, at the end of the day, they still loved the school.
So yup, that's my 2 cents worth on farewell assembly.

Just 6 days to the last day of school..wonder how I'd feel on Thursday...afterall, it's my last day with my first ever form class in CHS..

Past year papers..

It's now mid-way through the examinations, and my mathematics paper is upcoming next week. The LAST of all the Sec 2 papers, Thursday 12th October. So I'm currently busy doing up all the solutions of the numerous past year papers that I've given to my classes as a form of revision.

Sometimes I think I'm torturing myself, why in the world do I give them so many papers to do in the first place?! Now I've got to do all the papers myself so that I can upload the papers.
Initially, it was not my intention to upload detailed solutions to the papers, since all the papers come with final answers. But a few guys have come up to me to ask for them, so...I guess I'll just put it all up for the greater good. So here I am, spending my whole weekend doing sec2 papers..haha..

Came across an interesting blog post just now on a teacher's blog (not from my school).
Just thought I'd share it with my readers.. :)

Explaining 'wayang'

You know how, when you need to explain certain local terminology to a foreigner, words like kiasu, yao gui or even shiok, that you struggle to find the right words to articulate the rich and multi-dimensional facets of the word and you end up giving examples, hoping that the kwai lo will get it?

So now I think we have a new term we need to explain to our hapless friends : wayang. Used pretty extensively recently in the press, I'm sure the uninitiated needs some help here to fully appreciate what all the fuss over this word is all about. Let the English teacher here offer some examples :

1. Wayang is when your high class friends, who live in private property and hardly fancy taking walks in your crummy estate, suddenly turn up at your humble HDB flat, and offer to scrub your floor. You wonder what's their hidden motive and think, "Wa, what's all this wayang about?"

2. Wayang is when your father tells you he's going to work out a pocket money policy for you, and you go into a serious anxiety attack because he looks like he's really going to implement it this time (after all he's told the whole clan about his plan and he looks very confident it'll work and save him a bundle). Then suddenly, when you threaten to drop out of school if he cuts your allowance, he backtracks and says, "Actually, implementing the pocket money policy would be a huge administrative burden. I think maybe I won't do it after all." Then you can say, "Wa lao, if I know you wayang so much, I don't need to get so worried la."

3. Wayang is also when you sit in a coffee shop and let off steam to some of your kopi tiam acquaintances about your anal retentive boss. Then next day, you discover your kopi tiam friend has reported your remark to your boss and now you have to apologise for what you said in an unguarded moment or your career would be at stake. To which you can then utter, "Wa piang, you listen to me like a friend, now you bite me back. You very good at wayang hor?"

4. Wayang is when you change the script according to what direction the wind is blowing. Like for example, 71 years old is too old, but 83 is not. In a wayang, actors can improvise his lines as he sees fit.

5. Wayang is when you call certain people Normal, when actually what you mean is they are not Express, Gifted, Special or take a special kind of transport (like through-train). In a wayang, you give names to people so that they sound nice and it helps you to enact your story with more convincing power.

Anyone who can contribute better definitions or examples of wayang, please enlighten us so that we, as well as our foreign friends, can better appreciate the complexities of this lovely Singlish word.

Taken from http://trisha-trisha.blogspot.com/

More happy pics..

Just another post to post more happy pictures up....this is F and W, signing their marriage certificate during their church wedding..warms my heart to see them smile so happily.. :)




















This is R and H beside me, my close friends, one from sec sch, the other from choir in JC...we were all from the same choir in JC the 3 of us :)
























My choir friends from JC..all of us served in the comittee back then... :)
















Think my friend looks so good in her evening gown!







Okie, time to sleep..................goodnight.................... :)

2 Happy events...

woah..been a full week since I went on MC..and guess what? I'm still not fully recovered. This is quite out of the norm..coz usually I would have recovered even before I finished half the medicine given to me. But this time round, even way after I finished my medication, I still look and sound a little unwell. Hmm...maybe it's the stress..

Past 2 weeks have seen 2 happy occassions pass....one is the birth of my friends' little baby girl called Samantha...


Don't you think she's very adorable...everyone say 'awwwwwwww'... :)










The other happening event was my friends getting married. They'd been together for 8 years, and finally, tied the knot last Saturday. Just attended their wedding dinner yesterday night at Marriot Hotel.



I believe this is the cover photo of my friends' photo album..which somehow I didn't get to see... But I think it's so sweet... "We love, because He first loved us"..












And this is the bunch of us from my JC choir.. (Notice how my silly friend's big head has blocked half my face though there's SOOOOooo much space on the left of the photo for him to stand...grr..)






1 week to exams and 4 weeks to end of term!

=(

my goodness...teaching with a sore throat is no joke.... I must say this is the worse sore throat I've gotten ever since I started teaching. Voice actually went hoarse and cracked quite a few times today. Of course it doesn't help when the students that you are teaching couln't care less that you are already struggling to project your voice and continue with their own conversations....

*AH CHOO!*

i'm sick....*ah chooooo**cough**sneeze**sniff**throat pain**muscleache*
Gosh, haven't been so sick in a long time. Don't even know how I caught this bad bout of flu. Wouldn't have deteriorated into such a bad flu if I had been able to see the doctor yesterday afternoon. But due to an utterly immature and irresponsible person, I was unable to because he caused me to miss the opening hours of the clinic. So here I am, at home the entire day today. Thankfully I only have 2 periods of lessons today..

Piggies talk..

Hi, we're the rest of the piggies on Miss Chow's table......oh wait, there's been a most recent addition to the family! Look out for him soon... ;)

Comments?

I was recently told that it was difficult to leave comments on my blog because the person has first to have a blogger account...seems like i set the comments settings as such some time ago. Heh, so I went to change the settings recently so that even if people do not have a blogger account, they can leave me comments.

People who read my blog will realise that there have been no comments so far. Or so i thought! Haha, actually there were comments a month back!! Hahahha...but I never realised it because I think when blogger alerts me of the comment, the email gets sent to the JUNK mail in my email, which I usually only browse through and then delete all of 'em. So I missed those comments a month back...haha...but nevertheless, I finally realise they were there, and they are up on the blog now..which you probably can't see coz it's on a post that's so long ago. Haha...but I'm glad I finally noticed the comments... Thanks for commenting :)

CHS Inter-UG Paintball Competition 090906

Just before school re-opened, the CHS Inter-Uniformed Grps Paintball Competition organised by the PE Dept in CHS took place at Singapore Orchid Country Club (SOCC). The UG officers didn't have to be there, but I thought it'd be nice to be there to render support to my boys :) J and I were the only 2 teachers there, besides the organiser himself, R.

As usual, I am actually kinda blurr as to whether I've ever been to SOCC before, so the night before I went to check up on the street directory to make sure that I didn't lose my way there. Lo and behold, when I reached there, I realised I HAVE been there before, hahaha, for my friends' wedding on 31st Dec last year. =P

Anyway, I should have taken my own advice and slept a while longer...reached SOCC at about 9am, and everyone was having their safety briefing. Then after that, we still had to wait around somemore for setting up stuff, for drawing out the knockout systemm blah blah, so the whole thing started only i think, late 9+am. Heh. I should have slept till 9am then left the house at 9.30am...would have made it there just in time to see my NCC(Land) team play.

The competition is as such, 2 teams are sent per UG, Team 1 and 2. All the team 1s will play in a knock-out system, and same with the Team 2s. Then there'll be semi-finals and finals.
Each game has 2 rounds, and to win a round, would be to do 2 things: 1) Shoot down 2 targets over on the enemy side, and 2) Steal an ammunition box from the border of your "enemies".

So this is a picture of my boys planning their strategy on how to best accomplish those 2 things in order to win a round. (I am so utterly impressed by this Picassa program that enabled me to do this collage! Heh, love the effect. =P)

This is my team of boys from Land. And (those from CHS) guess who's itchy hand is that spoiling my nice photo...

This is attempt no. 2 at taking the same photo...spoiled their attempts at being itchy-handed once more, which explains why everyone's like laughing and distracted coz I had to wait so long to snap the shot! silly boys...haha...

See what I mean by itchy-hands!?! SIGHZ....

FINALLY, a nice one with LESS itchy hands....but notice that i suddenly grew horns!? Sigh..

Yay finally, Land Team 1 preparing to go into action. First up against us is NCC (Air) Team 1.
OK, finally pictures to show the action!! It's quite an interesting sight to see Land 1 play Air 1, coz they are ALL wearing the army No. 4 uniform. Which makes it really look like war!! Haha...this is Land Team 1 in action :) Unfortunately, for Team 1 we lost one round, and disqualified the next round coz we managed to get the ammunition box, but didn't realise that one of the 2 targets was still up. Nm, well done for first try ;)

This is Land 2, who got through to quarter-finals. Quarter-finals was quite exciting, ending in a draw with Air team. So to decide the winner, there's a shoot-out of 6 shots. A pity we lost in the shoot-out, but nevermind, I'm proud of my guys for having gone this far :) And most importantly, I think it was quite a lot of fun for them too :)

This is the shoot-out between Air and Land in quarter-finals..

Yep, so that was it. Quite interesting to have the UGs do a paintball competition I must say. :)

2 more weeks to exams guys!!!

Technology jinx

My handphone is less than a month old, and I have already sent it to Nokia Care Centre to have it repaired. I just bought a 1 GB thumbdrive on Teachers' Day and it hangs my tablet PC when I plug it in. Isn't technology supposed to make the lives of humans easier and more time efficient????? ARGGGHH!!!

:(

Rock-wall climbing on 25 Aug

*Phew*
The Sept break is finally here. So relieved to be able to sleep a minimum of 8 hrs before i pull myself out of bed...with the option of jumping right back in.haha....

Last saturday, for the first time i went to climb the rock-wall at Yishun Safra along with S, C, L and 3 of L's colleagues. Had been a long time since I last saw L, and it was fun catching up with her. The walls at Safra are much higher than the one in our school, one being 18 m tall and the other being 25 m. If i'm not wrong, the one in school is about 10 m in height. Below are some of the pics of the walls....





















This is the 18 m tall one, which is the first one that I attempted to climb. Has been such a long time since I last climbed, so was feeling a little nervous. Plus the wall is so much taller than the ones that I've climbed before...PLUS, I was super sleepy and tired from the previous week of marking. Haha...but nevertheless managed to reach the top of this one, though it took me a little longer than usual...heh..




















This one is the 25 m wall. Looks scarily tall doesn't it? I also think so, haha.. Was quite reluctant to try it actually, coz it looks SO difficult!! So I actually took a loooong rest after my first climb to watch L, S and C climb before I finally went to climb this one. Think i managed to scale more than 3/4 of the wall...quite an achievement to me. :) Can you actually spot a person on the wall? That's L climbing ;)


























This is a picture of the 18 m wall (again) but this time shown with the wall attached beside it called a "chimney". The chimney is more challenging than the normal walls because there are hardly any handholds to cling onto as you make your way up, just lotsa cracks to slip your fingers into.. and NOPE, I didn't try to climb it.














This is C climbing the chimney, see the way one has to twist and turn the body in order to manouvere upwards??






















This last pic of the walls there is an interesting one. It is lined with STYROFOAM! It's a wall that's meant for training up ICE-CLIMBING. That's why the guy on the wall is holding this hammer-thingy that is used to pierce into the foam before he kicks his spikey ice shoes into the wall to move upwards. Pretty interesting...I've never seen this in Singapore before..














L and I looking triumphant after our climbs :)















After climbing and a quick shower, we're off to crystal jade for lunch and catching up with one another.. :)

More pigs?

More piggies...haha...these 2 posts showcases 3 out of 6 "permanent residents" of my office tab1e...:)

Flying pig!

Whoever said pigs can't fly? =P

Term 3 Week 10

Wooohoo...we're finally reaching week 10 of Term 3. Has been a most challenging 2 weeks that has gone past..both physically and emotionally. Events that happened has made me think back to the days while i was in secondary school..I wonder if my class and I ever changed any of our teachers' minds about their teaching career...hopefully nothing that we said and did affected them to that extent. Don't worry, I still enjoy my job and the kids, just that events that happened have made me reflect a lot.

These 2 weeks has seen me drowning in marking, because of the need to key in the marks into the system to be processed for the kids' report books next week. So on top of lessons preparation, lots of time spent on marking till late. In fact, was so tired that when i was suddenly told that i was duty officer for Land last Fri, all I did was to go down for the parade at the beginning of training. I always made it a point to actually go down during the trainings itself (besides the opening parade), just to familiarise myself with what's happening and the cadets, as well as to get to know more of them...basically, to be around and be more involved in the training, and not be an elusive mdm. But physically i was just too tired on that day, and thus i left them all to my able leaders to take the entire training.

Marked marked marked marked marked, and finally keyed in all marks by this Friday. YEESSSS!!! Keyed in all the marks already. Felt so relieved that i almost felt as if the Sept hols has started...hahahhahaha...as if. But nevertheless, it is only a week away ;) Looking forward to the break..think the kids also need a break. Has been a long and tiring Term 3.

Went Rock-wall climbing at Safra yesterday morning...shall talk about it in the next post. For now, I have to prepare my lesson on CONES.

Continuous Improvement....are you up to it?

I am having gastric now, and have been having it for the last 2 hours since 3.30pm...was supposed to release my form class at 2.10pm, but couldn't do it till 3pm..thus lunch came at only around 3.30pm.

Over the last 2 days...my class has been reading the devotions to the school.....of all topics, on the topic of continuous improvement. I wonder if it is really so difficult to strive for continuous improvement, to strive to a greater height without falling back too much, to be responsible for one's own actions and words, to be aware of how it affects others, to be mature young men, to be appreciative of others' efforts.
Does eveything that one does only have the word 'ME' in mind...do "OTHERS" ever come into the picture?

I have slowly come to realise, that being overly patient and accepting is actually harmful to others, contrary to what I used to think. I thought that patience, care and reasoning can spur and encourage people, but I suppose I am wrong. What I have realised is, patience, encouragement and using reasoning does not work in all situations....that sometimes, a deterrent or consequence is a better way to get an idea across. Which i feel is a sad realisation...


“Maturity begins to grow when you can sense your concern for others outweighing your concern for yourself.”
~ John MacNaughton

NDP Happenings... (Part II)

Was abandoned by my old friend on Tuesday (she was suppose to meet me for dinner), so i decided to drop by Marina Square on my own to listen to people sing at Music Dreamer Live! Cafe...always loved listening to 'live' singing. Other than being able to listen to a whole night of live singing and accompaniment by very good instrumentalists, I also got to catch the fireworks display at Marina Bay from Marina Square. Was nice...seeing the fireworks.... here are some pics of the fireworks :)



Actually felt quite upset with my friend for cancelling on my last minute....but I suppose something good did come out of my "being abandoned" by my friend.... :P

NDP happenings.. (Part I)

On Tue 8/8, CHS celebrated National Day with our very own parade, must say the parade looked better than at the rehearsal, which is a great sign ;) Felt proud to see my Land cadets marching as smartly as they could. Thumbs up :) But could be a tat better still :P Some pictures taken with my new phone of the parade..




While waiting for speech day to start, a few of us decided to take some pictures of our national day coloured clothes :P

my cute cousin & niece

Was at the Popular Sale at Singapore Expo today, to see if i can pick up anything for my office. Was pretty crowded.. while i was walking around , i actually saw some parents pushing their baby prams while they were shopping around. Not a very good place to be bringing babies I thought, since it's quite crowded and noisy. But amazingly, the 2 babies whom i walked pass were both sleeping very soundly amidst all the noise and crowd! Haha, so cute. Makes me think about my own cousin and niece, both very cute too. Below are two pictures of my cousin and niece...they are both mega cute and have fantastic PR skills :) Always makes the adults around them smile and grin whenever they are around ;)

This one is my cousin from Hong Kong...only 8 years' old but sometimes talks like an adult...heh..
And this is my hyper cute niece..her name is Joy, and very appropriate because she's such a crowd pleaser, always brings the people around her lots of joy.