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...

I believe in Karma

The week started off really shaky - in every sense of it. First was work. For the first time 29 gave me quite a big problem. Haiz. I scolded them on Tuesday in hope that they will read through their lecture notes more thoroughly and do their tutorials/assignments. After lesson they came to apologise to me for their bad attitude in class. And so I was optimistic about Wednesday. So Wednesday came. And to my dismay, tutorials were still only half done and assignments still no where in sight. So once again, that lesson was more or less wasted. I didn't want to go through the tutorials since most didn't even attempt it. It's not me to give free answers. So I just completed the last qn on Binomial and that's it. Sometimes it's really quite frustrating. I know 29 is a weaker class in terms of their abilities in grasping math concepts, so I actually go much slower in class in hope that they will get what I'm explaining. In addition, I give them the most consultations after school and the least assignments. I also try to strengthen their foundation 1st before attempting to stack more content on them. But they don't seem to know how to help themselves! 29's the class that I really don't want to scold, but I guess that's the thing I should do to wake them up. Sian.

Ok that's only half the sian-ness. 12's giving me headaches too. I gotta admit 12 is actually a good class. Just that there are 4 of them in the class that's totally disruptive and they are extremely influential. They make their surrounding peeps equally rowdy. I scolded them on Wednesday too! You know it's extremely tiring to scold 2 classes consecutively? But I just had to do it. More than half the class did not do their assignments/tutorials, so I made them do on the spot. Tutorial time wasted again. Their civics tutor was like asking me to throw all those that don't do tutorials out of the class. But I'm still quite reluctant to do so. I'm still quite optimistic about the class.

To end off my misery, on Wednesday, Imperial College sent me an email to fully withdraw from my place there! Just in time to add fuel to the flame. You know most engineers aspire to get a place to study in a top engineering institute like Imperial College, but for me, I have a place there but I'm giving it up just because of my stubborn-ness. I didn't want to just get any scholarship just to go there to study. So my parents suggested to fund my education at Imperial. But my stubborn-ness got in the way and I turned them down. Damn that email made me think whether it was the right choice to turn down such a prestigious engineering college. In front of my parents and friends, I probably say that I'm fine with going to NUS to do my engineering and business double degree, but down there, there's always that little bit of regret. Anyway I got over it and carried on with my life.

But life's quite fair I guess. After losing some things, you are bound to gain some in return. An email from NUS encapsulated all my wishes and aspirations:

1 April 2010

                                                                                                                                                            Sent by email: pengsoon89@hotmail.com

Dear Mr Tan Peng Soon (HP 91760704),

Offer of Admission to the NUS Global Engineering Program

Congratulations!  We are pleased to inform you that you have been offered a place in our Global Engineering Program (GEP) to pursue Chemical Engineering. Your academic abilities, involvement in co-curricular activities, personal qualities and passion for engineering have demonstrated to us that you are deserving of admission into the GEP. We also note your potential with regard to leadership in the future, and this aligns with our Faculty’s desire to nurture Engineer-Leaders

As there have been many highly qualified applicants for the limited number of places in the Program, competition for the GEP has been very keen, and the GEP Selection Committee has had to be very discerning in reaching its conclusions. We are confident that you are deserving of admission to the Program and trust that with the help of the mentor who will be assigned to you, your experience in the GEP will prove to be exciting, challenging, meaningful and a defining phase of your learning journey.

             

If you have not already received a letter from our Office of Admissions offering you a scholarship, then one is on its way and should reach you soon. We would appreciate it if you could kindly let us know whether you will be accepting our GEP offer by 1 May 2009 (email to Miss Devi at engvdevi@nus.edu.sg). Please feel free to share with us any feedback you might have, and should you need any clarification, do contact me by email or telephone. Do note that you have to drop out of the DDP to be placed under the GEP.

Once again, congratulations on being offered admission to this highly competitive and prestigious Global Engineering Program. I look forward to welcoming you to the Faculty and seeing NUS enable you to realize your full potential.  

With best wishes,

Professor Quek Ser Tong

Chairman, Global Engineering Program Committee

Faculty of Engineering

National University of Singapore

1 Engineering Drive 2 #E1A-07-03

All of a sudden, all my dreams became reality! Firstly, I got into the GEP. And that means a hell lot to me. Firstly, I will get an exchange programme to a good partner University which I hope is Imperial. Haha. That will be in 2012, just in time for the London Olympics. Haha. Oh and Vincent  and Joe should be there too, so I can save on an accommodation! Haha. Sounds damn cheapskate but I need it. Secondly, I have a chance to do my Masters at a renowned engineering college of my choice after my Bachelor's! That's way beyond my imagination! Totally a surprise for me. I told my Dad about this and he was like "serious?" I guess my Dad can understand how difficult and much of a dream to study at top engineering colleges like Massachusetts Institute of Technology, California Institute of Technology, University of California at Berkley, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign and Imperial College London. To my dad, that was a dream that never came through. But my chance is here and I really hope that I can really get into one of these top engineering colleges to do my Masters. Thirdly, I applied for a few scholarships with EDB and ExxonMobil and I didn't get them. Instead, now NUS is offering me a bond-free scholarship! And only my masters is bonded! I can  finally fulfill one of my dreams of being financially independent! Fourthly, it reaffirms the decisions in life that I've made for myself thus far. Whether it's about my stubborn-ness that turned out to be beneficial, or every little detail of my life. It's amazing how things can turn for the better in just one single email!

And I'm telling you good things do come in packages. Haha. After reading that email, I went to class feeling happy as ever, and taught happily! Haha. I did not scold 12 yesterday! Coz they surprised me by doing their tutorials and assignments. And although I called for their files last minute, almost all of them brought it! It's amazing. Haha. Anyway feeling all satisfied, I managed to cover quite a bit in class. Haha. Then I went to 07. As per normal they are an absolutely dear class. Haha. Always looked forward to this class. Haha. Almost everyone's complete their assignments/tutorials. Haha. I treat them more like my younger siblings. Haha.

And after that, it was Sports Day! Haha. All new staff had to join and yupz, it was quite fun I must say! Haha. Yes It definitely must be bored just watching, but joining in is really fun! Hahaha. And surprisingly (or not), I got a medal for running in the 8x100m staff race! Hahaha. Nothing really competitive but it was really good entertainment. Haha. Reached home pretty late but it was indeed a long but really happy day for me. Haha. Haven't felt this happy since my A Level results 2 years ago. Haha. Life's all fair.

And this is why I do believe in Karma=D