Couch Potato week

Think I haven't been a couch potato for some time. That is, of course, attributed to my work during the term. But being one for too long, also makes you feel bored...in other words, SIAAN.
Haha..ever since I came back from Ophir (somehow I still don't feel like blogging about Ophir just yet), I had been spending a lot of time at home. Over the past week, other than attending a friend's wedding on Mon, and 2-5 & 2-4's BBQs on Wed and Thurs evening, I think I spent the rest of the time being a couch potato & channel surfing at home. Heh.
Personally I consider that a good sign..because I recall that 2 years ago, during the Nov/Dec break, I was feeling stressed out every day as I was so worried about my lesson preparations for the following year. Such was the stress of being a beginning teacher with only 6 mths experience, couldn't really take a proper break even during the hols. So being able to chill out and be at peace with myself for spending time to chill, tells me that I have matured somewhat as a teacher, and able to take time to rest when I should. Afterall, like what all my more experienced counterparts say, WORK can never be finished...

During the couch-potato-week, I decided that I wanted to play the guitar and sing some songs. But, lo and behold...............Murphy's Law sets in................................














I suppose I could still play with 5 strings out of 6...but that's super irritating. So after playing for 5 minutes, I gave up.

Ended the couch-potato-week by going to one of my favourite hangouts, MusicDreamer Live! Cafe at Marina Square.

Most people will probably know this place as Ai Qin Hai, a nice little cafe tucked at one corner of marina square. I love it because of the nice ambience and 'live' singing that's available every night. The cafe opens for business from 6.30pm to about 10.30pm or 11pm..and almost every night, 2 teams of singers/musicians will sing to the audience, 'live'. The teams also take song requests from the audience, which makes it all the more interesting..always nice to hear them sing the song that you requested for. =P Local singer Cai Li Lian & her husband are regular singers at this little cafe too :)

OK, after a week of couch-potato'ing, am glad that I'm finally starting on some work after resting well for one week. Spent some time in school over the past 2 days..tidying up my table and filing up all my materials. Am proud to say I'm 95% done with packing my table!! Haha.. Managed to prepare some materials today too :)

It's currently 2.20am, and...gosh, I'm not the least bit sleepy. This is BAD, I'm tuning my body clock later and later...eeks..gonna have such a hard time tuning it back when school re-opens.

Perak Expedition (Part II - Caving experience)

On the last day of the Perak expedition, we went caving. The initial part of the caving was...very tourist-y. The guide showed us many many rocks which apparently looked like animals, people, etc. Well, some resembled what the guide said it looked like, others....just left us clueless. We walked up and down using man-made staircases and pathways, surrounded by railings that were very helpful, especially when we were walking down loong staircases. Some photos from the cave..not too clearly taken as the camera flash was not strong enough.



























Think the real fun began when we got off the man-made pathways and walked into the dark.....onto sandpaths. Our first adventure, was sliding down this slope.



Looks quite easy? Yeah, now that I look back. But when you first saw it, didn't look all that simple. But the guides made it quite safe, because there was a guide mid-way down the slope (at where the torch is in the photo) to make sure you slid down the right way, another guide at the bottom of the slope to catch you as you slide down :)










After the slide down, our next adventure was "squeezing" through this hole in the ground! Haha, thankfully all of us were slim enough to go through it. Actually, the hole is pretty deceiving...looks quite small, but actually isn't that small afterall ;)














That lead us to the next exciting part of the cave, the WATER. The water was pretty cooling, a little cold in fact...and looked pretty clean... Thankfully the people who went last year already warned us about water-proofing our torches when we went caving...so I was well-prepared with my water-proof bag for my torch and camera. OTHERWISE, both would have drowned later on..














Initially, the water level was ankle-high as seen above. As we went deeper, the water level rose to our calves..and our cave ceiling seemed to be going lower and lower..which means, after a while, the only way to continue exploring the cave, was to literally be waddling/crawling (almost swimming!!) in the water. Haha..no wonder the need for water-proofing. I remember I bumped my head once or twice while crawling in the water, because I didn't see the rock in front due to my cap *ouch*.

(Well, obviously there aren't pictures of us waddling nor crawling since my camera is safely tucked away in my waterproof bag =P )

I think we waddled and crawled for maybe...20 minutes.
Took our rest at a more open area of the cave before we headed back out into the light... :)














Exiting the cave marked the end of our expedition in Perak!
All that was left of the trip was a nice lunch waiting on the outside of the cave, as well as a nice bath at a toilet where we had to pay RM 1 to use.

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....