Haven't blogged for quite some time already. Working and studying has been taking it's toll on me. Almost every other day, I have to teach from the morning till around 3pm before rushing off to NUS for my classes all the way to the evening. The lessons are fine (in fact, I quite enjoyed it), but the travelling's sooo not. Haha. It's 3 hours worth of travelling to and fro. Terrible. And because I'm so tired after lessons to do anything, weekends become the time for me to complete my tutorials. Tutorials best reveal the great disparity between JC and uni. In JC when you look at your tutorials, there are at least half of the questions that you can do without any problems, but in uni, I can just stare at the tutorial for 2 hours and still not know WHAT the question is asking, not to mention working something out. That's engineering for you. But that's exactly what Prof Quek told us. In engineering, there is no answers! Coz if there is, then you wouldn't need an engineer! Haha. That made total sense to me! But with that comes the painful period to adapt to the university style of learning. They do not give answers. They just tell you roughly how to get started and off you go to figure something out yourself.

But anyway I'm into my last few days of teaching. Tidying up loose ends before I hand my classes over to their full time teacher. On one hand there's this bit of sadness. To be honest I quite enjoy teaching students (if they are willing to learn), coz I actually learn quite a bit from them! Coz there's this responsibility to teach the kids the right stuff, so I will actually put in extra effort to ensure that I'm 110% sure of my stuff. I was never that meticulous in JC. Haha. And my 4 classes are generally a very good bunch of kids. Just a few problematic kids here and there Oh and not to mention that it helped kick start that rusty brains of mine - after not using it for 2 years in the army. But on the other hand, I'm quite relieved that it's over. I can finally have more time to study for my upcoming exams and have more life. Haha. Social life has been vastly reduced since teaching and studying started simultaneously.

On a lighter note, yesterday's Betsy's 21st birthday party! Haha. Had a great time! A good break from all the teaching and mugging. Hahaha. Oh and every birthday party's like an CG01/06 gathering. Hahaha. Cool peeps! But hope that we can still maintain status quo once s few of the guys fly off to UK for their studies!=D

Ok after wasting some time here, time to get back to work. My first paper's on 10th June. WOW!=X

Vincent's 21st!

Yesterday was Vincent's 21st! He held a party at some condo near Lorong Chuan MRT. Quite cool since it's the first time I've been there. But before that, I met up with a few of the 01 peeps at Bugis to find Vincent's present. Yes it's quite very last minute. Anyway shopped around for quite a while but couldn't find anything suitable. So we proceeded to buy the card first before heading to Ion Orchard to get a jacket from Zara. Quite a cool jacket and it will be very useful since Vin would be going over to the UK in Sept.

Anyway we were like the first few to arrive to we helped out with some of the deco and stuff and yupz, it was indeed a great night!=D

The long but short weekend...

Busy week again. As per normal. Work in school is never ending. Apart from teaching my 4 classes, now I have to compile JC2 revision exercise. I used to think that I'm quite good at using microsoft words, until they asked me to compile. Haha. It's a frightening thing. Hahaha. Stayed back in school till at least 5pm everyday. YawnzzZ. But lucky the staffroom is far from boring. Haha. I got all my fellow reliefs seating nearby and my always entertaining Mrs Tag and Mrs Leong as my neighbouring colleagues. Haha. I actually don't mind doing all the work!=D

On Friday, I finally had my Velu's Curry! It's at Eunos CC. It's quite ulu so if not for Wahidah and Theen Yew I probably would not be able to find the place. Omg the Naan plus Gobi Manchurian and Brinjah was IMBA! Hahaha. Love it to bits. Oh and the Lassi was good too! Hmm.. I should be going back soon! Hahaha.

Oh and my scholarship contract finally arrived on Friday as well. And I tell you I was appalled by the NUS's OAM. They sent the letter out on 29th April and expect me to reply on 1 May, which is a public holiday! It's damn stupid. But thankfully the chairman of GEP emailed me earlier in the afternoon to assure me that the OAM's at fault and extended my deadline to next week. But whatever the case, I faxed my contract over on Friday already, and my mum was so kan cheong that she sent it by mail too yesterday. Haha. Anyway, the conditions for GEP is quite scary, but at the same time, very attractive. I need to maintain a CGPA of 4.5 at the end of year 3! Quite ridiculous. I cannot afford anything less than an A minus. *Sighs*. And I need to complete within 3 years, which includes a 1 year compulsory student exchange programme, and I need to continue with a post-graduate programme, both in one of NUS's partner universities, which are as follows:
-Massachusetts Institute of Technology
-Standford University
-University of California - Berkley
-California Institute of Technology
-University of Illinois - Urbana Champaign
-Cornell University
-University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
-University of Cambridge

Their condition is that I have to complete my master's in any one of the above universities in 1 year, which is damn scary coz they are all elites in the field of Science and Technology. And I need to qualify for the course by my own merit. Gosh. The next couple of years will be a hell of a time for me. (In a good way or not, only god knows.) All these terms and conditions are already freaking me out. The only consolation is that everything is free - school fees, living allowances, computer allowances, overseas allowances, etc. So once school starts in August, my only job will be to study my life away, and not anything else. Haha. But my life will be pretty interesting I guess. I will spend years 1 and 3 in Singapore, and years 2 and 4 overseas - it will be a great experience for me. I'm looking at exchanging in Europe coz then, I get to tour Europe! And probably vincent, joe and ming wang would be in London so I can chio them along for a holiday or two! Hahaha. As for my master's, I will be aiming for MIT, but lets just see how it goes! Haha. UC Berkley is fine with me too! =D

This weekend's freaking busy for me, despite it being a long weekend. Yesterday was my neighbour's house warming party and their kid's 1st birthday! Haha. So yupz, went over to his house for some good malay food for lunch. Not long after that, I had to go over to my other neighbour's house for Mother's Day celebration dinner! Gosh all the food is killing me. Haha. And I missed lots of my TV programmes! Haha. How I wish my day was longer than 24 hrs!

Gonna celebrate Maurice's birthday later at Vivo with the Army guys. And we're gonna watch Ironman 2! Woohoo! Haha. And tmr gonna sing k with john, ye wei and li si. Haha. It's gonna be an activity-packed weekend for me. So that's all for now.=D

More work, new gadget and wait... where's my Velu's Curry?!

Really busy week. Or rather it's quite slack for the first half of the week and super busy for the next. First up, on Monday I rushed to Parkway after my consultation at 4pm, in hope to upgrade my mobile phone plan and get a phone upgrade as well. I just can't stand my Nokia N97. It's far too laggy and BIG. Haha. So I was looking at getting the Nokia X6 32GB.

Read the reviews on youtube and apparently it's way better than the N97 in the sense that it has a capacitive touch screen and it's processor is way more efficient than the stupid N97's. Oh and it's way thinner than my N97. So it's all that I want in a phone. Haha. Heck the camera since I already have my Powershot S90. (but then again, N97's camera's really bad too.. Plus the flash-flooding.. gosh..) So happily, I queued up at the Hello Shop to upgrade my plan. Queued for like 30 minutes before they tell me that the X6 32GB was out of stock! And the only had the X6 16GB... in PINK! Oh my tian. Couldn't the staff tell me earlier?! Queued so long and they tell me it's out of stock. Super sian. Feeling totally dejected, I went home. On the way home, the idea of e-shopping struck me! Haha. I totally forgot that Singtel had an online store in which I could order my phone and have it delivered to my house.. for free! It's so convenient! Haha. So I happily went online to place my order and they were super efficient - they sent it to me in 2 days! Awesome service. So I received my X6 on Thursday. Just awesome. 

Ok I had to curb my curiosity to explore the phone coz I had tonnes of work to do! Thursday the JC1's had their very first Math Lecture test. Test for students means a hell lot of marking for tutors! Yes a hell lot. Haha. I've got 100 students x 4 questions each = 400 questions for me to mark! Terrible. That's in addition to their terrible handwriting, line after line of nonsense and my ever increasing blood pressure. Oh and not to forget assignments that they hand in to me regularly! Haha. Ok this time round, the test results were rather encouraging I must say. Maybe the test's pretty simple, but 2 of my classes maintained while my other 2 improved tremendously! 07 is as per normal impressive. 12 improved tremendously! I'm sooo impressed with them! Despite them giving me the most problems, they proved that they are as capable! 29 improved tremendously too! Although they're still my weakest class, but they are catching up fast! So encouraging! Now my 10 and 29 are almost on par. 10 is actually worrying me. I had so high expectations of them but their results are just on par with my Arts class 29. Maybe it's because they've been pretty average so far so I didn't really pay much attention to them. I guess it's time I shift my attention to them before they do worst for their next lecture test. More work to do!

Omg I sound like a real teacher now! Haha. But I guess whatever job I land myself, I really want to put in my best effort, especially when dealing with education. I guess it's because I'm a perfectionist, that's why I'm doing everything I can despite relief teaching being only a temporary job till end may. Anyway I sat down and marked for like 4 hours on Thursday after 5 lessons (my busiest day) and only managed to mark 3 classes worth. Once again, due to my stubborness, I brought home the other one to mark and yupz, I managed to complete it.=D

Ok and the work didn't end there. Had a long day on Friday as well. Had tutorials with all my 4 classes. Basically just returned them their tests. Pretty relaxing lesson coz it's just going over their mistakes and nagging at/encouraging them. Bought a few packs of chocolates to encourage those who improved. I guess these little gestures really work better than whatever a teacher says. Haha. Anyway I had to miss Velu's Curry because of the Parents Forum in the evening. Thank goodness for the rain, so the turn out was not as good. Haha. I had to speak and share my experience as a student then, and it's my first "lecture" so to speak. Haha. Damn weird to hear your voice through the mic. Haha. Thank goodness my nerves didn't get the better of me. Think I did decently =D Haha. Anyway towards the end it's more of a sharing session so it was pretty fun actually. Haha. Enjoyed it. Haha. But I got home really late.. Around 10pm and without dinner! Haha.. I want my Velu's curry! It looked sooo good in the photos! Haha. I shall plan for it this Friday! Haha...

Anyway this weekend's strictly for relaxing! Haha. And not to forget, exploring and playing with my new gadget! Haha. Downloaded lots of stuff into my X6 and realised how cool is nokia's "comes with music" software. Unlimited download of music! How cool is that! Haha. And there's both English and Chinese songs. Really cool. But the not so cool part of it is that my PC's quite lousy so it lags and lags. Haha. But what the heck, as long as I can get the songs that's fine. Oh and did I mention the stereo headphones that comes with the X6 is really good! Haha. Quite compact but the sound quality is fantastic! Haha. I like.. =D Anyway playing around with the phone, I realised that it's not as good as the Iphone I must say, but it's ok for me. I don't need all the fancy widgets and application in phone. All I need is a phone that user friendly and call/sms friendly. And Nokia fits the bill! Haha. I'm liking my phone more by the days. Haha. Oh and the red and matt black is damn cool.=D

Ok I'm going for my run later. Didn't run on Thursday coz it was raining and coz I had tonnes of work to do. So I need to go for a jog to lose my excess calories later. Haha. But it's raining again, so I have to wait for the rain to subside before I can go.

Oh tomorrow I've got to leave school earlier again. Have to head to NUS for my pre-admission medical checkup. I think me and john booked the appointment at 3 plus. So gonna leave way before that. NUS's not that near TJC I must say. Hahaha. This week's back to tutorials as per normal. So should be a pretty relaxing week. Hope everything turns out well.

Mid-term reflections

Another week has passed and it's mid-April already! Another 4 more months and I will be back mugging my life away at NUS. Quite looking forward to it actually.. being a student again. Being on the other side of the fence has been quite a roller coaster experience thus far. Starting out, I seem to have quite a high expectation for students that I will be teaching, coz after all, they belong to the top 8% of the cohort. Like any one that enters the profession of teaching, you would want to make a difference in their lives. But that passion would prove to be rather short-lived. There are times where you feel great coz the students come and tell you they enjoy your lesson and begin to love the subject. Then there are times where throughout the lesson, the stare at you as if you are speaking in a foreign language, and in no time they simply drift off to lala land. But the one thing that I never did expect is that I would meet such a great bunch of peeps in TJC - CG00/10. Formed by pure spontaneity, coz we were amazed by the size of the relief teachers/interns group in the college, we represent almost every department and subject in the college. Despite that, we simply got along real fine and in fact, great! Haha. They are the people that make your life so much better after being tortured by (some) students. Haha. They are great lunch khaki's too! Haha. Oh and the math and science department staff are also super nice people! Unlike... Ok that's not important... These are just some random mid-teaching stint reflections...

Ok back to life. The J2s got their PW results back on Friday and it was awesome! 82% A and 99.8% A-B rate. I'm superbly proud of the college for this man! Haha. Although it's not my results and a far cry from the 7% A rate from my batch, I'm not feeling the least sore. It's great to see how the college rebound from setbacks. Congrats to all the J2's!

Yesterday was TJC's dance concert! Haha. But before that, the peeps from CG00/10 came over to my place for lunch and just to chill out and relax. Haha. Pictionary's damn fun! =D Anyway after all the fun and laughter with pictionary, we headed down to Republic Polytechnic for the dance concert. And to get there, we took the newly opened Circle Line! Haha. Yes just coincidentally, 17 April was the opening day of Phase 2 of the Circle Line and we were among the first to travel on it! *Excited* Haha. 

 

Anyway the MRT station at Paya Lebar is awesome! It looks super classy, just like that one at Changi Airport! Hahaha. Niceee. Anyway just on a random note, the Circle Line still doesn't really shorten my journey to the North. It took me like close to 2 hours to get to RP. Damn long... Yawnz. Amazingly, it's so much faster to travel to the West than to the North. Haha. Just a random note.

The RP auditorium is really nice! Other than having non-existent legroom, the place is quite classy and nice.. I like. But the dance concert was actually just slightly above average. Not that I'm qualified to comment, but just by looking at the synchronization of dance steps, it's quite average. But on the bright side, the atmosphere was good and I did enjoy the concert. Haha. So yupz, it's still worth the tix.

After that was dinner/supper with the peeps before cabbing home with john, matthew and eugenia. Haha. Awesome but extremely tiring day. Yawnzzz.

Today's Sunday.. The day to slack around at home=D

做我自己

今天观看"超级星光大道6”时，听到了曾治豪演唱Alin的“做我自己”，让我有所感触。
 


环境能改变一个人的性格... 原来是真的。我真的好久好久没骂人了，真没想到会在学校骂人，很不像我的作风。当老师真不容易！因为我不久前也是学生，所以我多多少少能体谅当学生们的压力。就因为这样我才没那么计较他们没准时完成功课，或在班上比较不专心。但他们至少应该表示他们的努力啊！有些学生真的很过分，害我要说重话！骂人真的是个很不简单的事，因为骂了他们后，自己的心情也变得一样差。真不划算！但相反的，要是不骂而让他们放肆，又算不尽责。这就是所谓的 ”进退两难“。还有，在每一班里大多数的学生都是好的，但因为有了那几只害群之马，害了他们也遭殃。对那些好学生说重话真的非常非常的难受。嗨... 当学生的永远不会了解当老师的有多伟大与困难。我呢... 总算体会到了。这样不是真正的我。

做我自己... 真的更愉快。

Clash of the Titans

Long weekend again! Haha. Ok this time my weekend was well-spent. Met up for dinner with the Army guys on friday, and also to celebrate Ji Xiang's and Jian Hui's 21st birthday. Haha. Ate at this Wang Jiao HK cafe at Bugis. Haha. The food was pretty decent, but the thing that caught all our attentions was the special milk tea! It's DAMN BIG! Haha. And it came with super big straws. It's damn funny. Hahaha.

Yes that large vase in front is actually a CUP of milk tea. Haha. Very interesting. Anyway after that we simply walked around and catch-up with life. Haha. All of us are quite fortunate in the sense that we are all employed! Haha. And doing all sorts of jobs. Haha.

Anyway yesterday was CG00/10 outing! It's a 2-part Clash of the Titans! Met up with the gang at PS to have lunch before going to The Cathay to watch Clash of the Titans. Personally I felt that it's quite an average movie. Some events did not felt too logical to me so it was a bit strange. Haha. Anyway the theatre was so cool!=D

After movie, on the way to the bus stop, we chanced upon this Mio-TV roadshow or something. It was about soccer that night.. Man U against Chelsea! Hahaha. So Theen Yew and Felix took the chance to take a photograph with them.-_-"

Anyway, after that we took a bus back home to Siglap.

But before that's DINNER! Haha. Settled down at Pizza Hut at Siglap for dinner. The cheesy crust pizza was damn good and sinful! ahaha. All the cheese! Had a really good dinner before heading to my house for the 2nd installment of Clash of the Titans! Chelsea and Man U! Haha.

For the entire match, we were like watching Felix's and Theen Yew's expressions rather than the match coz it was so damn funny! Hahaha.

I think this picture's priceless man! Hahhaa. Felix's a die-hard Chelsea fan! Oh and Chelsea won 2-1! Quite as I expected. LOL.

Hahaha. Anyway Ser Yang, Theen Yew, Shiying and Eugenia had a stay over at my home yesterday. It's was a damn funny night! *Keeps in suspense* *Gossips gossips gossips* LOL. Had barely a nap before waking up early today for breakfast at Macs (and more gossips)! That's the nice thing about having a mac right in front of my house. 24 hours a day food is available! Haha. Anyway the weather has been rather erratic, but more towards the rainy days. The weather's ideal for sleeping...

Anyway after sending them off, I went back home for prayers and breakfast part 2 with my family and cousins. It's great coming together once a while to catch-up on life. So nice.

Now I think I need to get my hair cut. It's getting far too long. Haha. But first, pray for the rain to stop.

Now time to stop bumming and go back to working...