NDP

People keep asking me if I'm okay, perhaps it's because I've was looking so zonked out by Friday. This week has been one that has been quite deprived of sleep. Had an average of 4 hours every night..goodness, how did i survive. But, once again, i survived it, thank God :)

Common test is coming up for the kids this coming week, i sure hope they are ready. Am actually more looking forward to the National Day week!! haha, feel as if I'M the kids...hah. But it's always exciting to look forward to national day..always like watching the parade on TV, makes me feel all so proud to be Singaporean.
My parents just went for the NDP preview yesterday night..dad's a mega on-the-ball photographer, so NDP is a must for him every year to practise his shots. ;) Saw the pictures when we came back after dinner, I must say, i'm beginning to really feel the spirit of national day! heh, the sea of red and white, the fighter planes flying across the sky, the BIG singapore flag :)



Here is a pic my dad took. He's a fantastic photographer ;)












Was watching our own CHS NDP rehearsal on Friday afternoon..makes me think back to the times when i was in GB back in Sec school. It was always fun to be preparing for a parade, and be displaying the best side of our drills to the school on important occasions like founders' day. Drills were such a large part of my life back then...every year, we would prepare for our drill competition that would take place after the exams. Drills to me, is all about teamwork, discipline, endurance, quick-thinking & swift, precise & smart execution. Every command that is executed is done with pride and precision. Sometimes I feel that the drill that I see nowadays, seems to be lacking in something....could be because of my own background in drills, or perhaps drills just aren't as emphasized as it used to be before. Which I think is a pity, because, there is so much that can be learnt from just doing drills alone.
Whenever I see people falling out of the ranks during a parade/rehearsal, I wonder, what's happening?! Just like on Friday's parade rehearsal alone, there were around 4-5 people whose face had turned pale and were brought out. I thought guys are much stronger physically than girls are.. I must say, I've never seen any of the girls in my company fall out last time. But of course, some of the boys could genuinely be sick. But I think a lot of times, it is due to things like skipping breakfast etc, which can be avoided. I always made it a personal duty to ensure that i'm well hydrated and had some food before some major event. So it still boils down to personal discipline.

Heh, all of a sudden, feel like going back to visit my GB company. Reminiscing about the past always makes me smile. :)

But now that i'm back to reality, it's time to pick up that red pen and mark!

busy weekend

*STRESSED*

ZZZzzzzz..

Gosh i'm so sleepy..almost fell asleep marking my Algebra class test.. All due to the utter lack of sleep since Monday. Think i have been having an average of 5+ hrs of sleep everyday.

In fact, i just fell asleep typing this post! MY GOSH..that's a signal for me to jump into bed right now. Will probably say more over the weekend...

Be gone ZoneAlarm!

YEEEESSS!!!! I've successfully gotten rid of that irritating ZoneAlarm program! (contrary to some internet discussion boards about how difficult is is to get rid of it after the horrendous program after the upgrade that caused it to start shutting off the internet access..) My dad and I were just trying our luck in uninstalling the program, since, anyway, we couldn't access the internet no matter how hard we tried to shutdown the ZoneAlarm at the bootup of our computer. We thought that since we're already so stuck, even if we get stuck uninstalling it, we'd have lost nothing.

Was beginning to get a little worried at our first attempt to uninstall it, because everything came to a halt after we pressed the "uninstall" button. The computer just didn't seem as if it was doing any uninstallation for a long time...and it was then that i remembered that...i hadn't done a backup of my files on the computer for a mighty long time *yikes*. So anyway, while i was having my lunch, my dad decided it was taking too long and just switched the whole computer off (without shutting it down!). I almost fainted.

Anyway, after 2 more tries, ZoneAlarm was finally removed!! And that's why I can happily type this entry on my desktop...whopppeeeee...

Nice to see the sun shining brightly outside my window...as opposed to the sudden downpour and rain in the cloud-ridden skies in the earlier part of this morning.

Ah yes, I have replaced the tagboard on my blog with the "comments" link at the end of each entry of the blog. Am very proud of it because it was seriously through pure trial-&-error that i managed to get the links back on the blog. Had wanted to do it for a long time, but then Blogger had some problems putting it into the template automatically for me..which until now i don't know why. So had to do my own experimenting again..heh..
So yups, if anyone would like to leave a message, you can do it with the "comments" link.

OK, going to start on my work. Have been down with a flu the entire weekend, and didn't touch all the work that I had brought home to do.

Peace & quiet

Too noisy on my blog, beginning to really dislike the nonsensical chatter on the tagboard. Am surprised by the utter childishness and inconsiderate behaviour of irritatingly immature tags these few days.
Getting on my NERVES.
Thanks for the suggestion to remove the tagboard, i was already considering it. It's disturbing my once simple and quiet blog.


Much better now..

scary-looking fractured arm....

Had to send one of my NCC boys to KK hospital yesterday because he fractured his arm while playing soccer during training. Gosh, that's the first time i saw a fractured arm, and boy does it look scary. It's like, his forearm was....mmm....bent......and obviously bent...kinda weirdly-shaped and all. Must have been sooo painful. : Hopefully he's better today.

Funny but the boys somehow related to me in terms of being in my form class or my CCA seem to ALWAYS get injured. I remember last year, i had to send one of my NCC boys to KK too, that was coz he fractured his toe, and the bone was apparently protruding out from in between his toes. *gross* Thankfully i didn't see it, all i did was hear about the incident, and jump into the ambulance to KK.

The Sec 1 BURST camp last year was also full of injuries from my form class too...one boy fell while running and got trampled on and fractured his arm, and another boy fell into the drain because some other itchy-handed person lifted up the drain cover behind him.

Sec 2 BURST camp this year, MOST of the injuries that happened were from my class also. I think out of 5 injuries, 3 of them were my kids. One couldn't get used to the environment there (Jalan Bahtera campsite), and had to be sent home, one had a dislocated arm and i had to deport him to NUH, another one had a scission on his shin because he fell while playing dog-&-bone & smashed against something, and the wound just didn't seem to clot up, so had to bring him to the docs the next morning. *yikes* So many of my boys had injuries during this year's Sec 2 BURST camp...*faint*

Oh wells....praying that there won't be anymore injuries....at least for the rest of this year........please?

What is wrong with ZoneAlarm??

ARRGH. I am FRUSTRATED. ZoneAlarm (my anti-virus freeware) is causing my blood pressure to shoot through the roof. First it repeatedly asks me to upgrade the software...for WEEKS it's been asking me to download the upgrade. FINE, so i download it. And i upgrade it. And lo and behold, after i upgrade it, it cuts off my internet access completely!!! Something about this "TrueVector" file that keeps shutting itself down after the software upgrade that causes ZoneAlarm to shut off all internet access. I am so about to punch the computer........*grrr*
So how is it that i can still type this entry now? I have shut down ZoneAlarm completely...which means, if a virus creeps onto my comp now...i am dead....
HELP!!!!!

1st week of school

Woah, first week of school is loaded with activities. So far, we have been preparing for Homecoming (a funfair) today for the entire week. And yesterday, we went on the Youth Day Learning Journey.
Quite a magnificent feat in my opinion, bringing the whole school out on different excursions. The different levels visited different places, and for the sec2s, we went on the Battlefield Tour. The Battlefield Tour brings the kids to places like Labrador Park, Bukit Chandu, Changi Prison Musuem & Kranji War Memorial, and it helps us get a better understanding and feel of World War II....how our forefathers defended the country and the sufferings of going through war. Each class had 2 accompanying teachers (thankfully!) and a tour guide attached to the class. Think the tour was quite a meaningful one..especially at Kranji War Memorial...where we saw the tombstones of those who died defending the country... 4000 soldiers' tombstones, and the names of 24 000 people carved on the wall because their bodies couldn't even be retrieved. We also ended off the day with a simple but very meaningful ceremony at the war memorial, in rememberance of those who sacrificed so that we can have what we have today. Think it helped the students to better appreciate what they have...









This is me and my form class, Sec 2-5. Mr YPP was the other teacher attached to my class for the day...was pretty fun... :P












This is a pic taken at Kranji War Memorial..the place is actually very very beatifully done up. You get a very serene feeling when you're there. And according to the guide, planted beside every tombstone is a type of plant/flower that is particular to the nationality of that soldier, so that that soldier would be that much closer to home. Think that is such a sweet gesture..

And these are pics of the ceremony that we had in commemoration of the soldiers who laid down their lives. On the wall is this quote that says "They died for all free men".

Yup, so that was my eventful day out at for the Battlefield Tour.

Tired already, will talk about Homecoming another time....

JJ Lin-piano performance at Singapore Hits Award 2005!

Came across this video of JJ at the Singapore Hits Award '05 on YouTube...still mesmerised by the prowess of his voice...
:)

Just JJ Concert...

Woohoo...best concert i've attended so far :)
"Live" singing all the way......superb dancing... :)





Time to sleep now............................. :)

Rock-climbing..

Went to support C in his rockwall-climbing competition yesterday in Tampines...was the first time i've seen a climbing competition take place, and of course, it was pretty interesting.

The competition limits their participants to a certain route that they must take when they climb up the wall, and they do that by using tape to cross out some of the rocks that the participants aren't suppose to cling on to & use in order to make their way up, thus increasing the difficulty of the climb.
So after the wall has been prepared for the competition, the participants are led out of their isolation room, and allowed to look at the wall for, i think, 5 minutes?
Noticed an interesting point when the climbers were all looking at the wall... The french girls from a French School immediately lifted up their hands in the air, and started a "virtual climb" in their mind while their hands acted out what they were thinking in their mind. They all looked as if they were climbing up, except that, they were just looking at the route, moving their arms & all still standing on the ground. On the other hand, the asian participants all had minimal "acting out" of their climb later, but just looked at the wall and planned in their mind. I suppose this is the difference between europeans and asians...the former just seems more open and daring...not easily feeling 'paiseh' in doing certain things... :P
So after the 5 minutes or so, they are all led back into the isolation room, this is to ensure that no climber has an advantage of planning their route more than another climber.

And then the competition begins.

One by one, the climbers attempt to scale up the wall to the highest point....
Think the most exciting part is when the climbers reach the hangover ( a part of the wall that extends out perpendicularly to the wall that they are climbing). My gosh, i don't know how some of them do it, but they can skillfully contort their way up that hangover, & still have to make sure that they do not unwittingly use the rocks that they aren't suppose to. Such strength, technique & quick-thinking is needed.

Felt quite proud of C when he was climbing! :) He did look like he had a lot of technique and strength. A pity, just like quite a few of the other finalists, he didn't manage to clear the hangover. Felt a little disappointed for him as he was aiming for top 3 positions. But oh well, i suppose there'll be other chances =)







This is a pic of C attempting to scale the overhang.




A pretty refreshing start to my day i must say... :)

Last week of hols..

I can't quite believe it, but it's the last week of the hols already. On my post-it board in front of me, lists ALL the things i wanted (& thought i had all the time in the world) to do over this 4 weeks break, and I have accomplished only.......FOUR of it. My gosh. I didn't realise how muuuuch time 9 stacks of marking would take..oh well. Now I must priorities which of the 6 remaining things i need to do first, and slowly finish the rest when school reopens..

Went for a Statistics and Probability for upper sec math course today at NIE. Quite an interesting lecturer that we have, keeps on giving us all sorts of ambigious questions to argue about and to test & strengthen our fundamental concepts. All those terminologies which are in my brain somewhere, sample space..outcomes..events...mutually exclusive..conditional probability..mutually independent....toss a coin...throw a die... all slowly came back to me today! haha.. :) Attended the course together with J and F, which made it even more fun, coz they were there to be confused together with me! Heh. But i think i'm the one who's most confused among the 3 of us :P But glad that i decided to attend this course, since i'm going to teach the topic to the sec2s soon..lotsa fun and interesting ideas learnt..

And of course i've got a new tatty bear blogskin. :D Never knew there were so many billions of blogskins out there.... I love the tatty bear! (And no, it's not because i do not know how to spell "teddy bear", Tatty is the bear's name ;) ) haha..there's actually a story as to why the bear is called Tatty bear, and even explains why its got a blue nose. But i'll leave that for next time :P Anyway, it was quite fun trying to toy ard with the HTML template for the blog...though at times i was just cut-paste-preview-undoing repeatedly to see what the codes actually do to the blog just to employ some trial and error to get what i want. A little frustrating at one point, coz i just couldn't get the blog to look like what i wanted it to look like, and all the codes look like gibberish to me...but after a while, with many tries, and consulting the Blogger Help, managed to get 99% of what i wanted :) Quite proud of myself, haha...must say that at one point, trying to figure out the html codes became a slight addiction for me over those few days. hee. Doing up the blog was a part of me acting in denial, coz i just didn't want to do my marking..heh.

OK, gonna finish my LAST 2 Qns of my LAST stack of marking!!!

P.S. A picture that i really love, my 2 good friends and i at the reknowned, Angkor Watt in Dec 2004.

2 sms' & an email...

I guess this is best..
Thanks... for everything.

More about this hols...

Has been quite an eventful hols..so this is more of a photo blog to just talk a little of the fun stuff that took place during hols..
Started off the last day of school with the long-awaited Sec3 adventure camp at Taman Negara in Pahang..this is a pic of some of my colleagues who went along.. :)
And these are the boys that were in my group...we just had our breakfast at a floating restuarant and we were waiting to take a boat across to Taman Negara for our 4 hour trek and Tree top walk =)















Straight after sec3 camp was my NCC annual camp held in school...pretty fun, managed to spend lots of time with my boys. This year we included rock-climbing into the camp, quite a good move i think ;)
On the left are ex-leaders of the unit, and on the right, are some of the present leaders of the unit :)
Haha, they are all trying to look taller than me......

Yups, so that was how i spent the first week of hols!

Khop Kun Khaa!

JUST went to thailand with my friend D, just to relax and rejuvenate before school starts again. Was fun, and Novotel Siam is quite a nice hotel to stay in.














This is the hotel room, obviously not much can be seen, coz we're blocking almost everything. Haha, that's the trouble with travelling in twos, you gotta take your own pictures by stretching out your arms. Hehe..















This next photo is of us sitting in a Tuk Tuk, a non-airconditioned taxi. Quite a daytona ride i must say.. our taxi driver dropped us off in the middle of the road! I think it's because we refused to pay him the 70Baht that he quoted us, and only offered him 40Baht...haha..














This is of us in a boat...it's a form of transport in Bangkok still.. Interesting boat ride we had. Think the boatman must have thought that we were weird because we got on the boat, only to get off at the next stop that's like less than 5 minutes away...














This is us, back at Singapore airport...can you see that we're sleeeeepieee..... it's about 11.15 pm by the way...


OK, that's all for the holiday.
One and a half weeks left!!!!!!

4 day week galore

I'm utterly pleased with the 4 day weeks we've been having over the past month or 2. If i'm not wrong, we've had a total of, 4?? Including this week's that is ;) Because of polling day, all school's are given one day off in lieu. So every school has the right to declare one day off for the whole school, excluding Mon and Fri's.

But i suppose 4 day weeks has it's disadvantages too, like losing lessons with the classes that falls on the holiday. But not to worry, my pre-empting skills are getting better. I have started borrowing extra lessons from colleagues to cover the lessons that i'm losing since 2 weeks ago, so, i'm still quite on track in terms of finishing up what i need to for this term ;)

Today's a nice beautiful sunny day. I love sunny days, coz it makes the whole day feel chirpy. Though there was a slight shower just now, it's all bright and sunny right now. Yay! Half preparing tomorrow's lesson now, and then going to go out and do some marking with a colleague. Force myself to sit still and mark, hehe.

Holidays in 2 weeks' time!!!!!

4 day week!

This week is a 4 day week, thanks to Good Friday :) Feels great that there's a long weekend..
Went to support my school's volleyball match yesterday..boy was it exciting! First time i caught a 'live' volleyball match, and first time i saw a volleyball being kicked upwards using the leg! Gosh, i never knew that a volleyball player is actually allowed to use any part of their body to hit the ball...
Too bad our basketball team was playing the semi-finals game at the same time as the volleyball match, if not i would have definitely gone down to support the basketball team too. AND, on the same day, in the later part of the afternoon, our softball team was playing a match too. A pity i was involved with judging a competition in school, if not i might have considered walking across the road to see the team play. Wish our school field would be ready faster so that we can see the softball team play on homeground again. Walking across the road to support them feels a little....funny.. I'll proabably be the only one there watching the match.
But anyway, we won ALL three matches ;)

Supporting the matches makes me think back to the good ol' MGS days...screaming and shouting for friends playing in the matches. The love for the school, the camaraderie with friends, the great sense of pride and belonging......those were the days....


*Yawn* Tired already...

Term 1 Week 10

Glad that we're finally in week 10. That means, next week is the March break. Cross country's over, my house, 3rd. Very happy for G because after so many years of low morale, her house has been crowned Cross Country champions.

Keying in of marks this time round was a breeze. Somehow I managed to set deadlines for myself and my students such that I will not be in a super rush (as I used to always be) when it was time to get the marks keyed into the school cockpit system to get them processed for the report books. I had all my marks checked and signed the week before it was due, and had them all nicely uploaded into the cockpit ahead of time. So proud of myself. But I think it's mainly because of a slightly reduced load due to the teaching of music.

Teaching music is.....a good and bad thing. Good thing is that, there isn't heavy marking and tests. Bad thing is, sometimes, it just becomes discouraging to teach it because students just aren't keen to pick up the instrument. No matter how hard you try, they seem to be engaged in some other activity which they find it more meaningful than picking up the instrument that you're trying to introduce to them. 4 WHOLE WEEKS i've spent teaching a class how to play ONE song, and they still cannot play it. *sigh*

Tomorrow is the basketball B division finals, and my school's playing! I'm excited to watch them in action, always feels good to be there to support my school. Will talk more about it soon.

Back to marking...

Sleep recuperation

9 hours of sleep feels good. Wish I had the luxury of sleep during the week as well...but that is almost impossible. Every weekend seems like Operation Sleep Recuperation...and it's only half successful most of the time. Afterall, how can one recuperate for 5 days of lost sleep in only 2 days?

Managed to finish marking that stack of assignments for 1 class, which means i have 2 more classes to go. Am trying to rush out the marks for my kids to check by the middle of this week so that i can take my time to key in the marks for their report books. Preliminary marks show that some of my kids will fail by a mark or two...which is a total pity because they could have made up for it just by being more consistent in work. When will they ever learn, to be responsible for their own life. It IS afterall streaming year, but they act as if they are still freshmen in secondary school, all oblivious. Sometimes i give them so many chances i get angry with myself. WHY should I pamper them?? Why should i get angry, go through the trouble of chasing people for work, extend deadlines again and again? *sigh*

Many new things happening.. new timetable, new trainee. New timetable gives me 5 whole periods on Fri, that's 250 min of lessons. *faint* Thank goodness this friday is the annual X-country competition, 250min less of talking! New trainee is causing me to worry, she's taking over my weakest class. I'm not doubting her teaching ability, i'm just worried about the class' absorption ability to a new teacher for the worst of all topics, ALGEBRA. 3 whole chapters of algebra, the basis for sec3 and 4. Will have to see what i can work out to monitor their progress closely for the next 9 weeks.

The sky outside my window is cloudy. I'd much prefer a clear blue sky..clouds make the sky look moody, and makes me moody too.

Going back to my algebra...

First post...

Just kind of curious about blogging so starting one to try it out. Funny 'cause I thought I'd never want to journal aloud online..so just trying this out to see how it goes.

Just popped in to get started...will go back to my marking now..