Tue 29 Nov

I stayed home the whole day to finish some work, and only went out in the evening. Sherry mentioned something about affordable jackets of Asian cutting (i.e. slim fit) at Heeren, and I decided to go take a look. I was thinking that since I will be the best man for Adrian's wedding next year (to be more specific, one of the 3 best men...hmm...I'm still wondering why there are 3...?), as well as emcee for another friend's wedding nearer the end of the year, I might as well get a cool-looking jacket. I didn't want to tailor or buy a suit, because they all look way too serious, i.e. businessman-like. In the end, I bought one somewhat blazer-like black jacket which looks pretty cool, and the fit is excellent. And I decided to split the cost in three, and make Adrian and the other friend each foot a third. Bwahaha. By right the marrying couple should provide everything what. So far, every wedding of closer friends I've attended or helped out in has been so.

Wed 30 Nov

Today is the ICCE conference at NIE. We went down early to set everything up, and we heard mention of the minister of state for education coming around to visit. We hung around...and we hung around...and we hung around. No minister leh. Essentially, we rotted almost the whole day there. The only thing that kept me humourously sane was that the booth next to us (from Radin Mas Pri Sch) had some highly energetic kids running around. They had some music program to showcase, so they were rapping away, and danced a little, looking extremely cute. Some of them kept coming over to talk to us and play with our tablet PCs. The way they talk and all is so cuuuuuute! They were a well-behaved bunch, and were very entertaining to have around. Only issue is that one of them broke our tablet stylus (that costs about $80), but no one pursued it. I bumped into quite a few friends who were in NIE for various reasons, conference or otherwise.

The only things I remember of today are cute kids and eating a lot amidst boredom. Despite having the food that was allocated to us, I missed the NIE canteen's mee goreng from the economic rice stall enough to buy a packet after eating the lunch. I shared it with my colleagues, and they were all fairly impressed, probably also because they didn't expect there to be anything worth eating in NIE. Sigh. These two words are becoming far too common to be used to describe my days during this holiday: diem perdidi.

I went back to school today to do manual labour. I started the day with cleaning up a fish tank. Yes, a fish tank. Why in the world would I have anything to do with aquariums? It's because I kenna arrowed to help out in this ICCE conference coming up on Wed. Actually, it was quite fun cleaning the fishtank. But I don't think I like fish enough to want to do this often. Heh. Other than that, I had to help transport some banners and all, and help to set up in the far, far away place of NIE. The good part of this is that I got myself a free meal from my HOD at Thai Express. The pineapple fried rice was delicious!

After we were done in NIE, I went to another far, far away place (West Mall) to meet Huijun. We had dinner at this restaurant Mayim, which serves chinese cuisine. It had xiao long bao also, and la mian in many varieties. We had some deep fried spare ribs too, and later on some desserts. The mango and pomelo sago was superb! And it wasn't as cloying as the one at Crystal Jade. The food overall is actually quite good, and I was pleasantly surprised because I've never heard of the restaurant before.

There was nothing much to do at West Mall actually, so we decided to catch a movie last minute. We took a gamble on Prime, which turned out to be so-so only. The jokes in the dialogue are generally bland, but the situational humour at certain points was hilarious. The premise was interesting, but it had a bland ending, in my opinion. I can't discuss the ending much without spoiling the show, so I'll leave it at that. What I didn't like about the show was the numerous sex scenes. There wasn't many that were explicit, but counting the implicit ones, there were just way too many to make the plot credibly good. But that wasn't the part I didn't like; what I felt uncomfortable with was how casually the sex seemed linked to the idea of love, which seems like such a prevalent Western norm these days. This is the very reason why I would give due credit to movies or serials I watch that do not contain sexual content, simply because it is rare to find a healthy movie these days from Hollywood that does not reek of sex or sexiness. Love and sex are two separate entities, and the latter shouldn't necessarily follow the former as the movies make it out to be. Anyway, I think Meryl Streep, who has put on a lot of weight since her heyday, still is a rather credible actress. So is Uma Thurman, who looks significantly older, but still wields exotic prettiness.

I haven't got enough time to blog in the past few days, so here's a three-day summary of what has happened...heh. A long and detailed post to make up for my days of absence. Bwahaha.

Wed 23 Nov

The course I was attending was finally over by lunchtime! Somehow the theory part really dragged on and on, and wasn't particularly helpful. Again, the same facilitator saved the day, and crystallized a very clear and concise summary of what was taught, and in the end, I think I did walk away from the course with something useful. I wonder if they ever had auditions for people who are supposed to share in these sessions...hmm...

A whole big group of us - Tearle, me, Lena, Lisa, Cyrene, SK, and YP - went down to Katong Shopping Centre to eat chicken rice, on Lena's recommendation. Considering how my mum nags at me not to eat any chicken due to bird flu, I sure ate a lot of it since Mon. The chicken rice was good, although expensive. The usual plate is $4, which is more than even food court prices. However, it comes with free-flow of achar and salted vegetables. Good quality there, but they got my orders mixed up, and I ended up eating drumstick meat instead of breast meat, the latter being my staple favourite. All the physics teachers went down to Bugis to watch Harry Potter after the meal, and I dropped by Suntec for a while before heading for cell group in the evening.

Thu 24 Nov

I went back to school for an IP meeting. The syllabus I was preparing was finally out, although after the meeting I realized I still need major changes. Haha, a rookie like me is still too inexperienced to have a clear enough big picture of the whole syllabus. Anyway, it was quite an informal meeting, and we were snacking along as we discussed. I'd better revamp my topic's syllabus quickly...the next batch of designs are coming in to be worked on. I hope I will have enough time to breathe in the coming weeks. Things look bad.

Anyway, I fled school as early as I could, because it was...my mum's birthday! I met Sherry and a mutual friend for a quick lunch in Bedok, and we had delicious wan tan mee (I still find it hilarious when I see signboards that say Wanton noodles...). In the evening it was to Ding Tai Fung for dinner! For the past couple of years, I had brought my mum to Crystal Jade Kitchen for her birthday, and this time she wanted something different. Good thing we headed to the Paragon outlet early enough, and swiftly got ourselves a table. Here's a shot of some of the food we ordered, camera courtesy of Sherry.

















I forgot to take a picture earlier when the food just came, so the container doesn't look particularly full. The xiao long bao was nice, and this time round, I found it better than Crystal Jade's. We had fried rice, zha jiang mian, stewed beef noodles, sweet and sour soup, 10 pcs xiao long bao, 6 pcs siew mai, and 2 pcs yam bun. A bit too much for 3 to finish, but I did most of the hard work of eating. Bwahaha. Here's a shot of my mum and I; my hair's getting quite long I notice...

















We went to have a stroll down Orchard Road to aid digestion of the massive dinner. My mum and I were reminiscing about the time I was a kid, when my dad was still around, and brought us every Christmas to take pictures of the lights. The decorations were a lot more extravagant then, and I distinctly remember a year where a gigantic balloon of Santa Claus stood outside Wisma Atria, and another year with Disney characters, specifically, Mickey Mouse and company. And what do we have nowadays? Just a lot of lights and Christmas trees. Yawn. Like this shot:

















Of course, I'm not saying that the decorations aren't nice, but I think it used to be more spectacular. Or maybe when I was a kid, they were more impressive...I can't tell. We strolled down eventually to the Haagen Dazs at Marriott Hotel for dessert. I am really, really supportive of that promotion I have been talking about on my blog. This is the third time I'm having the same thing this month! We had the panna cotta with raspberry sundae, along with three more scoops of ice cream, and I got my mum a blueberry cheesecake with a candle on it. Here's a shot of me, captured in a silly expression when I was starting to sing my mum a happy birthday song.
















And this is what the frequently mentioned panna cotta with raspberry sundae looks like. It is supposed to be served in a waffle cone, and looks better than it does on a plate like this one, seriously.

















Obviously my mum was happy at the end of the day, and proceeded to boast all about it to my various relatives as she is prone to doing. On a side note, I managed to convince her why sometimes it is necessary to spend more money on higher quality food, e.g. ice cream. Hehe.

Fri 25 Nov

I don't believe it, but I'm back in school AGAIN! Short of last Wed when I deliberately chose not to return, I have been going back to school everyday since the holidays began, or, for three days, was at Teachers' Network for course. I think it will get progressively worse as I grow in experience and get assigned even more responsibilities. Bleah. The reason I had to go back was to meet two vendors. One in the morning, and one in the afternoon. Guess what? It was diem perdidi all over again. The school was supposed to be renewing the subscription to our online portal, and with usual procedures, we had to invite vendors to quote their offers. We noticed two very cheap offers, which came with relatively few details mentioned, and therefore we invited them down to do a demonstration for us. It turned out that the first company made a mistake, and quoted us thinking that we are going to use it for 400 students (which is why it was about a quarter of what they rightfully should offer, because we have about 1600 to 1800 students). The second company actually quoted us correctly, but after we saw what they had to offer, we realized why the quote was so cheap. Give me one full month to read up on more sophisticated html, and brush up on what I remember of SQL, and I'm absolutely sure I can come up with something more comprehensive, user-friendly, with better functions, and most certainly, much better looking. I can't believe I wasted almost one full working day on this. Argh.

In the evening, I was at the airport. I haven't been there for quite a while, and I noticed some changes yet again. Our cell brother Eric has just returned from Wallaroo, overseas military training in the land down under, and we went down to receive him. We went for supper at Blk 85 Bah Chor Mee place, and had a big supper while listening to all the amusing tales that came out of the division exercise. Sshhhhh. I can't talk about the stories here, else I may get slapped with a warning from Mindef. Adrian gave me a ride back, and we had quite a long talk about many things. At least, a satisfactory way to end the day than how it started.

Today is a wonderfully cool day, with only a light drizzle. Perfect for sleeping in, lazing around in bed, and doing absolutely nothing.

But no.

I had to drag myself out of bed to go to Teachers' Network. Incidentally, last night was the first night this whole year I could sleep without switching on the fan in my room. I think I radiate too much heat out of the surface of my skin usually to survive without perspiring madly to leave the fan off normally. Did I learn anything useful today? Quite frankly not much. But it has planted some thoughts in my head, and I internalized part of what was thought that I assessed to be helpful to my own curriculum planning. Beyond that, I was just waiting for the next break to come. Today, another smart aleck was discovered! At one point, the two smart alecks had a rather heated argument about smart aleck 1's comment about science being unbiased. Duh. Science unbiased? A scientist who researches on evolution carries an inherent bias of Godlessness. That's a spiritual bias. How about cultural bias? If JJ thompson was not born in England, would he have come up with the plum pudding model of the atom? I say, if he was Italian, we would have been studying the pepperoni pizza model of the atom or something.

Again, I learnt the most in the subject group session, where the same facilitator (as yesterday) was back with us again. Now this woman clearly knows her stuff. To date, she has answered almost all of our difficult queries with great clarity and insight. Although, all things considered, today's topics, in general, were not as useful. I give credit though to the fact that today's presenters involved the course participants in a whole ton more of discussions than yesterday's. Apparently my blog-voiced complaint has been suitably addressed; I believe they do realize the flaw of yesterday's presentation style - bored us to tears half the time.

I decided to give in to temptation after I reached home and had dinner. I napped, to make up for the sleep I should have gotten in the morning. Now back to work I go~

I went to Teachers' Network today to attend a course, the first of three days' worth of it. Essentially, it is a sharing session about how to teach gifted/high ability learners, which my HOD thought it appropriate for those of us teaching the Integrated Programme next year to attend. The most exciting things up to 3.45 pm were the tea sessions and lunch. Now I wasn't deliberately being an inattentive student, but I just found it strangely ironic that here were some experienced GEP teachers trying to share with us how to design curricula that is engaging, student-centred, and all, and the style they chose was merely lecture style, interspersed with a couple of games and activities. I was half asleep throughout the first session until we had to do this IQ kind of test for them to profile us, and I thought I needed to wake up a bit for it, but I finished it in less than half the time, and got full marks. Duh. Lunch was good chicken rice, the highlight of the day.

There was also one teacher who was a smart aleck, raising questions and challenging the presenter at many points with absolutely useless comments and points mostly. I was going like 'urgh' every time I hear his voice. I still wonder if all the times we overshot the scheduled timing was because of him. In fact, I felt like I underwent a history lesson (of assessment tools for intelligence), followed by two English lessons (the presenters used examples of teaching English, presumably their speciality). Only after 3.45 pm during the small group discussion did I actually learn some thing useful. The facilitator for the discussion of the chemistry group was very, very good. I learnt a few things from her, just from the way she got the discussion running, and prompted us to share. She also helped to illustrate and crystallize some of the points made during the unengaging lessons, and it actually shifted my paradigm somewhat. I suddenly had a clear idea of what I want to do in my syllabus planning, and felt inspired. In fact, it suddenly became clear to me how to merge all the various models of lesson-planning with the system TJC has. I shall make it the kianseh cycle...bwahaha...now all I need to do is make my name into a nice acronym. Heh.

Now for a couple of reviews. I just finished the Korean drama serial Full House. I think I'm a bit slow to catch on. I think about a third of the people I know seemed to have already watched it, but in any case, the show is great! It is hilarious, and quite romantic. It is an extremely decent show, compared to our local channel 8 dramas which usually feature a rape per serial, with only two kissing scenes in the whole 16 episodes! This is the evidence of strong storylines - no need for sex to catch the attention of the audience. The leading actress Song Hye Kyo is pretty, and very amusing in her role. The two leading guys are quite good looking, although the supporting guy is much more suave, I think. The main thing I like about the show is the wardrobe of the cast. The clothes they wear are just outright good-looking, especially the men. I am very much inspired, but reminded of two sad facts: 1) I am not tall enough, good-looking enough or have a good enough build to pull off the clothes that well, although I think I can get away with some of them; 2) I don't have the money to buy that kind of stylish apparel.

In essence, it is an excellent romantic comedy, well worth the time to watch the 16 1-hour long episodes.

I caught Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire just now. Considering how so many friends have told me that the show sucks/isn't that good/disappointing, I actually found it not that bad at all. Or maybe they successfully lowered my expectations so much so that I found it not bad. Hmm...food for thought. The special effects were of course spectacular, although I found the trailer for Narnia before the movie started more spectacular, and the storyline was, well, not that surprising. I think I have come to one conclusion after four movies. In Harry Potter movies, the people who look like good guys tend to be the villain revealed at the end, and the people who look like bad guys tend to be innocent. Once you subtract away the key people like Dumbledore and the more permanent professors like Snape, and the good friends Hermione and Ron, you kinda know what's the twist at the end intuitively. Much like M. Night Shyamalan's movies. A bad point about this movie was that many parts seem truncated. There were many parts that seem to have some kind of gap, and I was left thinking 'whatever happened to him/her before/after this?' Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on your perspective, I had not read the books prior to this, so I need not do any comparisons with the book version to test for inconsistencies. And is it my imagination or are the movies really, really getting darker and darker? I think the books are, actually, so maybe the movies are just accurate representations. Movies 1 and 2 were fine, and by movie 3 things got darker. More wicked looking monsters/villains. Good guys seem nearer to death on many occasions. Then by movie 4, a non-prominent good guy dies (oops, hope my vagueness makes this not a spoiler). I wonder who will die by movie 5...

Singapore is a small place indeed. I don't know how many times I've said this, but I really have a knack for bumping into people. My student on a bus, a church friend at the cineplex, spotted an ex church friend but too far to say hi, and then the best one at supper: I was getting a seat when I turned around and saw a Uni friend, same batch as me, therefore 2 years younger. Then her boyfriend came back, and it's a JC friend, same age as me. Everybody is linked to everybody. Friendster definitely has its basis correct.

I went for a jog in the morning, and I concluded I jog too infrequently still. There doesn't seem to be much improvement in stamina. Now that my chin-ups have improved after installing the chin-up bar in my room, I wonder if ironically now the running will falter.

I spent the afternoon trying to churn out that new syllabus. I only just checked my mail, and saw an attachment from my level head. Apparently, he has attached a sample of what we are supposed to produce by Thu, and it looks horrendously detailed. And what did I do in the face of such adversity? I went to take a nap. Praying for inspiration after I wake up, of course. I think the Lord has been very gracious to me lately. Probably because I was saying that He is biased, after seeing all the nice things He did for shups! so far, so maybe He was making it up to me. Heh. Anyway, I woke up with some amount of inspiration, and I came up with about 40% of what I need to do up by Thu.

And the procrastinating me decided to reward myself with a break, so I went off to meet some friends, and make some new ones in the process, in the evening. I went to Max Brenner at Esplanade, and had the fondue for the second time. Good stuff. Although I think the milk chocolate doesn't taste that fantastic. I wonder if the milk chocolate can be swapped for dark chocolate. Hmmm...I also voiced out this thought I had in my head for a while already, and someone actually went to test it out - to barbecue the marshmallow over the tealight candle (used to heat and melt the chocolate) flame first before dipping it in the chocolate. After one flaming attempt where the marshmallow went out in a blaze of (bluish) glory, the remaining ones were successfully roasted. I am curious to try the fondue in Haagen Dazs though...the one with the ice cream cubes. Sounds promisingly delicious. Someone also mentioned a cheese fondue, which sounds extremely tempting. Argh. I'm hungry again just blogging the thought.

My blogging still seems intermittent. I think the whole non-teaching world is under the impression that since right now it is the holidays, teachers must be very free. If that is so, why can't I find enough time to blog daily as I usually do during school term time? I had way too many comments along the line of 'wah, now you must be very eng'. Say that to me in mid December, and I might agree with you. If you say that to me before then, risk my ire.

I had initially planned to devote the whole of yesterday to the planning of next year's curriculum (my assigned topic) for the Integrated Programme, and then I was summoned back to the school. The company in charge of installing our new card readers for door access is ready to commission them. So a few colleagues and I had to be around. Since we are all back, we went on to do some evaluation of various companies who had responded to our call for quotations for our Learning Management System, and server maintenance. So I spent the whole morning to early afternoon sorting out such administrative tasks. I think as a teacher stays in the profession longer and gains more experience, his workload of administration just slowly escalates. I am way behind time now, and I am in dire need of brilliant inspiration to do up the syllabus.

Today, only half my cell turned up. Ironically, now that they are most free during the school holidays, I see less of them. I managed to get hold of 2nd row premium seats for the upcoming Magic of Love performance in Dec! Bwahaha. Anyway, I think most of my students should have finished their exams, so I'll ask them if they want to go as well. Student rate is only $4! And this is a magic show that is staged in many countries around the world...unbelievably affordable. After service, my cell group went down to play pool. I really miss playing pool. The last time I played was probably 3 weeks back, which is a long gap, considering that I'm always insisting on training harder. The first couple of games were terrible, but after that I picked up good form, and in one game, I got in 8 consecutive shots! I'm not sure if that is considered clearing the table though, since it was not me who made the opening shot. I won enough games against J to feel satisfied with today's play though.

I just got my bill from Citibank, and right now I'm a little angry. I was sent a bill concerning the annual fee for Readicredit, which I don't use at all. I called to request to terminate it, not for the sake of goading them into waiving it, but they offered anyway. After some thought, I decided to just take the waiver and forget about it. The lady over the phone realized that my other Citibank cards also require renewal, and she said something about a promotion to waive the first year's subscription charges and all, and she said she'll do that for all my cards. So I thought that was it. And then came a bill, with a late payment charge for my Readicredit account. The current bill that came in had all the subscription charges in as well. I'm pissed off not only at the lady, but at myself also for not taking down her name. Including the penalty, which I got because I thought she handled it, the extra charges add up to about $240. It's during moments like this I wonder why I bother getting credit cards. Technically, I think I can survive just fine on using NETS. Argh. Now I have to waste time calling in to settle this. I hate wasting time on such trivial nitty gritty stuff that shouldn't be there to waste my time in the first place. Bleah.

Yesterday, I met my spiritual great-grandpa Ps Eugene for 5 minutes. Although I had to wait about 50 min to get that 5 minutes, it was great talking to him. He gave some pretty good suggestions to tweak the tribe t-shirt I'm designing for my network, and he actually remembered my face, which is rare in itself, considering how big the church is. So exciting! I hope the t-shirt will turn out great. I've tried my best to make it look fashionable enough to wear out. After that, my spiritual grandpa Ps Yeang Cherng brought me to eat this Beach Road Prawn Noodles that is, as famous stalls usually are, not at Beach Road, but at Upper East Coast Road. Food was excellent, but not cheap. We then looked for a coffee place to hang out, but after I told him about the Haagen Dazs promotion, we went there instead. He liked it enough to want to bring his wife to try it. I think Haagen Dazs should give me commission; I've been telling many people about it. We had a long and good talk about many things, and I'm really glad I can relate directly to him. I always feel like there's a lot to learn from the man every time we meet up to talk.

Today now marks the day I've said the sinner's prayer with someone for the second time (first time actually in English!). The very first time was with my mother, who I ineloquently led through in Mandarin, and I can't really call that a roaring success because she is still not that receptive. Today I led Sherry through the sinner's prayer. She has walked through her little journey of faith to get to this stage, and it's amazing how all the little things add up once you see God's hand in them all. In all honesty, I think I merely reaped where many of her friends and colleagues had previously sown in faith and prayers.

On a vain note, I bought 4 shirts and 1 pair of jeans from Queensway Shopping Centre! Not trying to do free advertising again, but I seriously think that place is the place to go to for guys. Nowhere else in Singapore can a guy find a shopping centre where most (almost all, in fact) of the apparel shops sell menswear. I walked around the place, and I find myself thinking I can practically buy the whole place out. Ok, maybe I'm exaggerating, but there are really many funky designs at reasonable prices there. The only thing that stopped me from blowing more money than I should was the thought of my angry mother, arms akimbo, staring me down and scolding me for buying clothes till my wardrobes cannot fit, and there is no more space to hang them anywhere, not to mention that out of hangers. I was a bit reluctant to go there originally, because the last time I went (long ago), the t-shirts sold there seemed to be mostly from Thailand. After I went to Bangkok once, I concluded the quality of the t-shirts there is too poor, and not worth the money even though the cost is fairly cheap. The other day I passed by the place on my way to Ikea, I realized that now the clothes there seem to be brought in from Hong Kong mostly, and maybe Japan, which shows a good difference in quality. When I want to buy casual clothes, I know where to head first now. Bwahaha.

I have so much work piled up awaiting my attention, and I just feel so uninspired to do anything. This is bad. Really bad.

Diem perdidi. Another day wasted, in latin. I was awoken by my AVC student today, who told me that I needed to go down to school to sign some papers. Apparently one of them went directly to the principal to request to borrow a G5 Mac to do video editing for a School Video Awards competition they are participating in. Frankly, I don't know whether to admire him for his blatant disregard for red tape, or to scold him silly for (once again) going straight to the principal to request for things without going through me or my fellow in-charge. The least he could do was to inform either of us, to keep us in the loop. This is the second time that this happened:

HOD IT: Hey, principal asks you to do this-this-that-that, can?
Me: Ok sure.
HOD IT: By the way, did you know that your student went to principal to ask her for that?
Me: Huh? When?
HOD IT: I also dunno. Principal told me, and I got a shock.
Me: Yeah, I'm shocked too.

It's weird though, how everyone just asks which school is this fella from, and when I say 'Oh, from RI', they all go, 'Oh, it figures' or something to that effect. Weird stereotype to have, but I think this guy just has a low EQ. Frankly, he is extremely capable, and I think if he just polishes up his EQ, he would make a potent leader. But as it is now, he is trampling over everyone else to get things done. I've talked to him about it before, and I thought he improved, until it happened again.

Anyway, so I went back all the way to school, just to sign a paper to loan out the G5, only to find out that actually there weren't any papers to sign. What my HOD IT wanted me to do was to supervise their moving of the two macs they want to borrow to the music block where they were doing their stuff, and make sure they fix everything up properly. So I opened the computer labs for them, and they booted up every mac to find the ones that supposedly have the FinalCut software that they needed, which my HOD IT said we had. Guess what? None of them have the software. I rang up and looked for several people to check, and turns out that no one has ever installed or seen the software anywhere in school before. In the end, we concluded that there was no need to borrow the macs anymore because there weren't any software that they could use. Then we went to hunt for Adobe Premiere so that the students can use it on the PCs in school. I was directed all over to various people, only to find out that those who have it have really outdated ones or that they have no idea where the software is.

Essentially, I spent two 40-minute bus rides (to and fro) only to end up doing nothing constructive for my students. They did pass me the script to the video they are doing though, and I think it's very well-written. I sure hope they win a platinum award for the effort they are putting in. And I threw in a thousand bucks off various budgets to support their expensive equipment for filming, on principal's approval of course, which they obtained by going to her directly the first time.

...

Hmm the next paragraph will sound like I'm advertising for Haagen Dazs, but in any case, I just went there earlier on, and there's this UOB promotion going on. I assume that almost every working woman with a credit card will own a Ladies' Card, and some guys should have UOB cards too. There's a promotion on this flavour Panna Cotta with Raspberry, and for $7.90 you get two scoops ice cream - 1 scoop Panna Cotta with Raspberry (which tastes like a delicious version of the conventional raspberry ripple you can get from roadside ice cream uncles) and 1 scoop Raspberry Sorbet. Be forewarned though. The latter is amazingly sour. Avoid it at all costs if you have gastric problems. Mixing the two together though tastes excellent. The best part of the deal, which is why I'm even posting this is that you get 3 scoops of ice cream, any flavour, thrown in! So 1 scoop Panna Cotta, 1 scoop Raspberry Sorbet, and 3 scoops of your choice, for $7.90! This has got to be the best value for money I've ever gotten out of Haagen Dazs in my life. I happen to like sweet stuff, especially ice cream, hence the excitement. I hope this is not just for the Esplanade outlet, which I went to, though.

The sugar overload is to prepare me for the gruelling hours and days ahead in which I have to churn out the syllabus for one topic for the year 2 through-train programme, attend a 3 day course, help out for a 6 day conference, and etc, by end of Nov. So for those who think teachers get two months of holidays a year to just enjoy life, think again.

Yesterday, after service, Collin, J, Adrian and I went down to Mr Bean's cafe to have a chat. Apparently, my guess was right. Collin suggested hanging out at a cafe instead of playing pool initially, and I thought he had something he wanted to talk about. It turned out exactly so. We spent a couple of hours talking through the whole process running through his head. I'm not sure if our 'counsel of the saints' proved useful, but at least I'm sure we offered a different spin on the issue at hand.

Today I accompanied Sherry to our colleague's church, because it was the graduation 'ceremony' of the alpha course. There was a simple buffet lunch for the event, and they actually prepared certificates for the participants. It's a nice little affair. I think the blessing of a small church is really a more family kind of warmth that appeals to some people I guess. I like that kind of atmosphere each time I visit BBTC, but I think I'm born and bred in FCBC, so the only word that exists for me is 'dynamic' and 'cutting-edge'.

We caught Just Like Heaven in the evening. It's a nice romantic flick, with a fairly simple plot that needs a bit of a stretch of imagination since it deals with something...spiritual. Still, it's quite a wholesome show. I don't quite like Reese Witherspoon's look still though...not that pretty I think. We had dinner at Ichiban Boshi at Wisma Atria. The teriyaki salmon I had was average, and had a fishy smell to it. Salmon sashimi was average quality, much like Sakae Sushi. The wasabi was potent though, and the lime sorbet dessert was excellent. Although, it kinda reminded me of Wall's ice cream, Tutti Frutti in particular, if i remember the name correctly. All in all, not quite worth the price, unless I go there just for the lime sorbet. Heh.

Today (Fri) is the day where I finally bid farewell to Project Work. I'm done transferring all my comments and marks to the official forms, triple-checked through everything, and keyed in all the scores into MOE's computer system. Yay!

I made my way down to Parkway with Sherry to meet our colleagues SX and HS for karaoke session at K Box. While I was there, I saw two of my students from one class holding hands. I didn't know they were a couple before this, I think. Later on I bumped into them, and they were not holding hands by then, so I said to the guy, "How come now not holding hands liao?" He had this shocked look, the girl looked embarrassed, and after they walked off some distance, the guy turned around with a frown on his face. I'm so eeevil. We had fun at KTV! SX is truly karaoke queen, and we all agreed that we will dispatch her to perform next time should there be opportunity in school events. My voice sounded slightly hoarse throughout, and I suspect that the spice in the food yesterday did leave some effect on me. At the end of the session, I sang my guts out (to the amusement of the rest of them) to some Shin songs, and I left with a worse sore throat than when I started.

We then headed down to Aloha Loyang where we had this school dinner kind of function. I had thought it was a barbecue, and some thought it was fish-n-chips night, but it turned out otherwise. I had a lot of the potato salad, which had this nice cheese thing in it, and after two rounds of it, I think I had enough carbohydrates for tomorrow too. There was lamb, beef, chicken and salmon too, but I think the lamb meat was the best. I had quite a full meal after two rounds, and a dessert consisting of apple pie with vanilla ice cream. The whole evening can be described by one word mainly - bridge! It was so nostalgic playing bridge again, reminiscent of JC days where we used to play a lot of it all over the school, almost daily. It was fun in a way, but there wasn't much interaction beyond the little cliques that formed. A pity though...no one was staying overnight, despite the rooms being available. Originally, Lena, Evie and I wanted to stay over and play board games or something, but one by one pulled out, and eventually, the plan was reduced to supper at Blk 85 eating Bak Chor Mee and oyster omelette. Unbelievably, after all that potato, I could still eat. *burp.

I went back to school at noon time because I went for a jog in the morning first. I had set aside a couple of hours to fill in some documentation for the project work marking, and I thought it would be enough. I grossly overestimated my writing speed. I think I'm too enthusiastic as well, because I wrote many comments for each report I marked (on a draft score sheet), and now I have to transfer them all onto this official pink form. I wrote for 2+ hours straight, and I couldn't take it. 2+ hours may not seem like a lot, considering that I survived 3-hr papers of essay writing before, but then for these pink forms, there are a total of 3 ply, and we have to write hard so that the carbon copy transfers everything onto the last ply. My arm was aching by the time I transferred 14 reports, and I decided that I would leave the final 8 to tomorrow, and the keying in of marks. In all honesty, what a waste of time. And paper.

I then met up my HOD for my work review, the thing that determines my performance bonus in March next year. I really feel blessed having her as my Reporting Officer (RO), because she is humourous and light-hearted, making it very comfortable to talk to her openly. It is even better that she is a staunch Christian (married to a pastor some more!), so I was discussing with her some of my concerns not just as a subordinate to superior, but more of one Christian to another. She offered me some valuable advice, and shared with me her own journey, which shifted my paradigm somewhat. God had called me to a wonderful profession, and planted me in a wonderful environment indeed. I await the onslaught of challenges next year with great anticipation, and I will rise above it all, by faith!

In the evening, there was a department dinner, paid for by the school. We went to Kintamani Restaurant at Furama Riverfront Hotel. It's an Indonesian restaurant, buffet style, and the food was quite good, except that almost every single dish was spicy. I didn't expect anything otherwise actually. Oddly enough, I stomached it all fairly well, and went for a couple more rounds. The beef curry was excellent, and the keropok (dunno spell correctly or not) was addictive, especially the fish crackers. A few of us actually wanted to go down to K Box afterwards, but all things considered, we thought it was too late to go down, and none of us will stay to 3 am to make full use of the package, so we postponed the session to tomorrow afternoon instead, where at least one more colleague can join us. Hopefully the spice hasn't killed my throat.

I have heard from various sources, students and tutors alike, that the chemistry paper, and quite a few other papers, was surprisingly difficult. I think I need to pray a lot harder then, and may my students rise above adversity.

I finished my Project Work report marking! All things considered, I took 4 half days (about 14 hrs total) to finish 22 reports, 3000 words a piece, not including appendices. I remain a super fast marker! Come SPA or Project Work, I can tahan! Bring it on! I did not give a single report a grade in the lowest (of three) bands, and in all fairness, I wasn't lenient. I think the students really did a pretty good job, and it shows in the report. Sure, some of the ideas might seem ridiculous or not workable, but suspending such judgment, the work that these 16 or 17 year-olds has produced is of good quality. It was a tedious thing, but it wasn't much of a pain. Some of the reports were genuinely good reads. I actually picked up some trivia from there which is quite interesting. I shall give myself a break tomorrow, and work from home. It's too much of a hassle spending more than one hour of travelling time to and fro.

I attended a colleague's wedding in the evening at Marina Mandarin. The food was very good! Especially the cold plate and shark's fin soup. However, there were 12 persons per table, and for me with my monstrous appetite, I walked away still feeling hungry...which is probably why I just had a bowl of cup noodles. It's tough being me. What I found most interesting was that the couple actually shot a video of how they met, fell in love, and how the guy proposed, mixed with some gu zhuang scenes for the story. It was very entertaining, and quite novel, and I was going to give the couple credit for not employing the typical girl-baby-to-adult/boy-baby-to-adult/meet+group-photos/couple-photos sequence, but they used it later anyway.

Ok, time to continue praying for my students. Especially since tomorrow is the chemistry paper!

Another day in school, therefore, another long day. I was in school in the morning, and met two students for consultation. By now, since tomorrow is the maths and bio paper, there are not many students looking for me. It is a little too late to be looking for me, I think. It's not too late for me to be praying for them though. One student actually asked me to pray for the coming exams, although I couldn't tell if he was serious or joking. I replied him that I would be praying for all my students anyway. I finished marking 7 project work reports by early afternoon, leaving me with 6 for tomorrow, and no more! I thought my progress was pretty slow, considering how fast I usually mark SPA, but other colleagues were rather impressed, so I take it that nobody reads and write this fast typically. Heh.

I had an Integrated Programme (IP) meeting in the afternoon, and suay suay kenna arrowed to take down minutes. I'm not sure when I have to type out the minutes, but I think I'll procrastinate till tomorrow at least. Next year will be super exciting. I am deployed to take IP year 2, uncharted territory. I'm surprised at the deployment a few days earlier when told, because I still feel quite green at this, and I don't trust myself. God, You'd better equip me for this...You were the one who called me into teaching one hor. I kenna another arrow to help out at some conference thing end of Nov to the start of Dec, and now I am sure my holidays are packed out more than the school days. Too ironic for me to bear, honestly.

In the evening, I caught Sky High. This is a wholesome family show, for sure. No violence, other than the non-gory superhero kind. Nothing sexual, except a couple of kisses. Clean and healthy movie, no doubt, coming from Walt Disney. It's a typical teenage flick, and I think it can be summarized as X-men meets Harry Potter. The plot is fairly predictable, but filled with likable characters, albeit a little cliche. It has some good family values worked in, and almost a social critique (on education? social strata?) based on the hero/sidekick thing, if you want to give the scriptwriters some further credit. Out of the movies available now, I think this one is not bad at all.

I bought 4 shirts today, from the same shop! I think so far, that shop has earned quite a substantial amount from me. I think everytime I stepped in there, I have at least bought 1 shirt. One of the shop assistants there actually recognizes me, but he wasn't there today. I think I will wear one funky shirt to my colleague's wedding on Tue. Hehe. Hmm...I think I'm spending into Dec's bonus way in advance. Yikes.

I went to BBTC with Sherry in the evening. Our colleague Mrs Chua invited her to this church anniversary dinner, and I got implicated to accompany her. There was this moment where everyone in the church was supposed to take a picture together, so we gathered at the basketball court, facing the adjacent block of flats. The photographer was actually in one of the flats, at the 12th floor I think. I don't think any face can be identified after the picture comes out, unless the camera is super duper powerful, but it felt like a fun activity. I was telling Mrs Chua, when she asked, that there's no way FCBC could try that; when we had our combined service at Expo, we were bursting at the seams. No camera is wide-angle enough to capture that I think.

For supper, I finally tried the cheesecake at the Cheesecake Cafe at Siglap. It's really gooooood. I almost went in a couple of times, but there was always some change in plans. Today I finally got to sample the cheesecake, which many friends raved about. It's worth a revisit definitely.

Considering I've been blogging everyday for the past weeks before this week, my infrequent posting this week seems testament to the fact that my (so-called) holiday period is in fact busier than my normal working day. I was marking project work reports from morning till noon, whereby I grabbed a quick lunch and continued marking for a while more before I met students for consultation sessions all the way till 5 pm in the evening, whereupon I had a meeting about the thru-train programme. That ended at 6 pm, and I snuck off to mark one more report (I completed 6 today!) before the farewell dinner for the principal at 6.30 pm. Honestly, I don't recall having such days when I was actually teaching. I mean, from 8.30 to 6.30 pm today, I only saw a half-hour break for lunch.

We had a nice buffet dinner in the school canteen, a humble affair indeed, probably due to budget constraints. There are quite a few staff leaving, including our principal and vice-principal (the latter had left earlier, but we all thought she would come back soon, and it turns out otherwise) who have been imported by HQ MOE. There were a couple of teary-eyed farewell speeches from the two of them, and sincerely moving at that.

After the dinner, Evie, Lena, Sherry and I headed down to East Coast Lagoon for a drink, many games of daidi, and later on, supper. I think I desperately needed to unwind. The days have been too long and draining. Marking all those reports are a mental strain because of the sheer content that one has to read, in addition to scouring the whole long thing for points to award credit or otherwise. I'm just glad it should be over early next week. If I can handle 6 reports today, which makes up half the time, I think I would probably take another 2 days to wrap up everything. If all goes well.

The morning was packed with consultations, and the afternoon was packed with project work report marking. I only managed to clear 3 reports today, but more thankfully, the report I sent to my colleague for moderation survived it with a one mark difference only, which means that I am marking similarly to my moderator. Actually, after marking, I'm quite impressed with the work that some of the groups produced, and some of their proposals tickled my funny-bone a little. Entertaining reads (I mean it in a good way).

I went to Carrefour to buy a couple of nice photo frames. I've been 'commissioned' once again, this time to draw the portraits of the current principal and the ex vice principal, the former leaving, and the latter left a while ago. I suppose my HOD couldn't think of anything to give them that they would lack, so tasked me to draw their portraits, framed properly of course. I have a baaaad feeling that after they are presented with the portraits, I will have a big target sign painted on my forehead, and I will get requests for my drawing. I can imagine being asked to draw for charity next year for some fund-raising event, for instance. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that my colleagues don't immediately think of exploiting me. I wonder if I can put 'portrait drawing for principal and ex vice principal' in my work review under contribution to the school...hmmm...