Tuesday, October 30, 2007
It seriously feels weird to be blogging so infrequently, and for consecutive weeks no less. I think my current days are spent almost entirely on sorting out wedding-related matters, from writing wedding cards (I happened to get really traditional invite cards that require writing in formal Chinese, and many, many pieces of information), to updating a master list for RSVP before I hand it over to Collin, my coordinator, amidst other matters, trivial and otherwise.
Last week's highlight has to be Friday, where it was the last day of school! And what a last day it was. I had a presentation to do for my Masters' tutorial, and I went first. The bad thing was that there had to be a change of venue, so I was in this unfamiliar place, with classmates streaming in (the problem with going first - latecomers!), and worse still, staff from MJC who came in and out to paste stickers on the tables because the room we were using was an examination venue to be. The absolute worst had to be the fact that the assessors wanted us to keep to a strict 15 minutes, which was hardly enough. This was the unfair part, because last week, we had a classmate who went on for 45 minutes. Not that I have that much to present, or want to take that much time, but the feeling of being rushed, and having someone waving to you 'time-out' does not really help, especially when we were originally supposed to take about 20 min for presenting and 5 min for Q & A. So when the time for TJC's year-end dinner came, it was such a relief. We went to Trader's Hotel, which coincidentally had JJC there as well, and I met my friend, Huijun, there. The food was alright, but I finally broke my record - the first school lucky draw that I did not win anything. Worse still, I left the lucky draw coupon in my shirt pocket, and it ran, and now my poor Muji shirt has a yellow stain. I hope colour bleach helps.
The weekend came and went. I had cell group with my boys at Eastpoint. I figured I could probably find a quieter place with nicer food, and save the time and money by hopping on the shuttle bus out while it was available. My fiancee's girls and a friend of theirs came by to learn to play mahjong (no money involved for minors of course). That was interesting, but nowhere entertaining without stakes involved. I think after playing with joker tiles, I find every game too slow without them.
I spent Mon and Tue sorting out more wedding stuff, and finally posting out the first batch of wedding invites. It is amazing how many people are actually impossible to locate even with email and handphones. Or take ages to reply. I wonder if my fiancee and I are taking too much upon ourselves to do, because I don't see other friends being so involved or busy during the process. Or is it merely a grass-is-greener-on-the-other-side syndrome?
Last week's highlight has to be Friday, where it was the last day of school! And what a last day it was. I had a presentation to do for my Masters' tutorial, and I went first. The bad thing was that there had to be a change of venue, so I was in this unfamiliar place, with classmates streaming in (the problem with going first - latecomers!), and worse still, staff from MJC who came in and out to paste stickers on the tables because the room we were using was an examination venue to be. The absolute worst had to be the fact that the assessors wanted us to keep to a strict 15 minutes, which was hardly enough. This was the unfair part, because last week, we had a classmate who went on for 45 minutes. Not that I have that much to present, or want to take that much time, but the feeling of being rushed, and having someone waving to you 'time-out' does not really help, especially when we were originally supposed to take about 20 min for presenting and 5 min for Q & A. So when the time for TJC's year-end dinner came, it was such a relief. We went to Trader's Hotel, which coincidentally had JJC there as well, and I met my friend, Huijun, there. The food was alright, but I finally broke my record - the first school lucky draw that I did not win anything. Worse still, I left the lucky draw coupon in my shirt pocket, and it ran, and now my poor Muji shirt has a yellow stain. I hope colour bleach helps.
The weekend came and went. I had cell group with my boys at Eastpoint. I figured I could probably find a quieter place with nicer food, and save the time and money by hopping on the shuttle bus out while it was available. My fiancee's girls and a friend of theirs came by to learn to play mahjong (no money involved for minors of course). That was interesting, but nowhere entertaining without stakes involved. I think after playing with joker tiles, I find every game too slow without them.
I spent Mon and Tue sorting out more wedding stuff, and finally posting out the first batch of wedding invites. It is amazing how many people are actually impossible to locate even with email and handphones. Or take ages to reply. I wonder if my fiancee and I are taking too much upon ourselves to do, because I don't see other friends being so involved or busy during the process. Or is it merely a grass-is-greener-on-the-other-side syndrome?
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
If any of you have been regularly checking this blog for updates, I'm sorry I have been too busy to blog frequently. I don't even have enough time to keep up with my anime titles.
Last week was a frantic rush to finish writing testimonials for my graduating civics students. That was particularly exhausting, as I wanted to help as much as possible by writing more, but there are some cases where there was nothing much to write about. It felt like there were a million and one things to do, all bottle-necked because of my reservist training.
The past few days have been intense wedding preparations in terms of confirming the guest list, consolidating email addresses of friends to send out the eInvite, and of course, designing the eInvite and physical postcard invite to begin with. Monday I went down to Di Gio Bridal to collect the wedding album, but in the end, I discovered typo errors in the poem I wanted inside the album. What I cannot understand is how there can be errors when I gave them the original poem on soft copy? It should merely be a copy-and-paste into Photoshop process.
Hopefully next week I would be able to take a breather since the school is officially closed for the teachers without year-end duty, and unlike cases I have heard about some other colleges, it is fortunate that the leaders of TJC take special care to spare people getting married from such arrows. Neither do they force teachers to come back for half a day to do 'admin' work.
Last week was a frantic rush to finish writing testimonials for my graduating civics students. That was particularly exhausting, as I wanted to help as much as possible by writing more, but there are some cases where there was nothing much to write about. It felt like there were a million and one things to do, all bottle-necked because of my reservist training.
The past few days have been intense wedding preparations in terms of confirming the guest list, consolidating email addresses of friends to send out the eInvite, and of course, designing the eInvite and physical postcard invite to begin with. Monday I went down to Di Gio Bridal to collect the wedding album, but in the end, I discovered typo errors in the poem I wanted inside the album. What I cannot understand is how there can be errors when I gave them the original poem on soft copy? It should merely be a copy-and-paste into Photoshop process.
Hopefully next week I would be able to take a breather since the school is officially closed for the teachers without year-end duty, and unlike cases I have heard about some other colleges, it is fortunate that the leaders of TJC take special care to spare people getting married from such arrows. Neither do they force teachers to come back for half a day to do 'admin' work.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
The 3D2N outfield was bad. Really bad. The morning started out cool, which was cool. And then it rained in the late afternoon till the night. Although we did not have any night mission except to laager, setting out vehicle camouflage when the huge camouflage net was soaked with rain was tough and demoralizing. Since the ground was wet, all 12 of us had to find some way to sleep in/on the vehicle, which essentially was bad sleep. In the first two days alone, we did three dismounted attacks, i.e. walked a lot. Armour is supposed to punch through with the armoured vehicles then the troopers sweep the enemies. I couldn't believe that we did not do a single mounted assault but did three dismounted assaults that saw us through a stream, mud, and all. Third day was supposed to end early with a delay mission. Who could guess that the Chief of Armour himself came down in the afternoon to see us, and we had to redo a mission for his sake, because he thought it was not good enough (worse still, it was apparently not due to any mistakes of the troopers).
That afternoon and the next day was heavy maintenance, including the annual become-a-coolie routine. This time round it was to clear and dig mud out of the drain in the vehicle washing bay. The mud is one foot deep, in a drain that's about 40 m long, in case you cannot imagine how disgusting a chore it is. The only good thing was that we got a nights' off on Thu night, and my platoon mates came down to my house to play magic. Surprisingly, one of my old kakis for magic actually became nostalgic suddenly, and requested us to bring cards in camp on Sun night. Out of nowhere, we had a full gang again.
On Sat, we met to go to Comics Mart at City Hall to buy cards and play there. It was a genuine surprise that their interest was actually sustained. We played till evening before I went home. Sun and Mon were days of rest, interspersed with finalizing of some wedding details.
Today, I went back to work, overwhelmed by hundreds of emails to clear, lots of administrative tasks to settle, and facing a four day deadline of testimonials for my class. With lessons still ongoing. Argh. It didn't help that there was a farewell concert as well. I don't know why but somehow this time round, I don't feel much about the farewell. In 2005, I was really quite sad to see my three classes leave. Right now, I don't feel anything close to that kind of sadness. I don't know if it's because I don't teach a large part of my civics class, or that I have only one class graduating instead of 3, so the effect is diluted, or that the class somehow has not really endeared itself to me, or that the class was still outright cheerful as usual, and did not seem the least affected by the last day of school. Worse still, halfway through the farewell concert in the auditorium, we were interrupted by Mediacorp's roadshow, and we were graced with the presence of Joanne Peh, Jessica Liu, Alvin Ng, and Pierre Png. I think whatever emotional atmosphere prior to that was instantly shattered by excitement and stargazing madness. Frankly, I think the farewell concert was an absolute failure because of their appearance, but of course, it was a treat for the kids, I'm sure. I think I'm more saddened by the fact that I don't feel as sad as I think I should be, considering that this is my first civics class, than their leaving.
That afternoon and the next day was heavy maintenance, including the annual become-a-coolie routine. This time round it was to clear and dig mud out of the drain in the vehicle washing bay. The mud is one foot deep, in a drain that's about 40 m long, in case you cannot imagine how disgusting a chore it is. The only good thing was that we got a nights' off on Thu night, and my platoon mates came down to my house to play magic. Surprisingly, one of my old kakis for magic actually became nostalgic suddenly, and requested us to bring cards in camp on Sun night. Out of nowhere, we had a full gang again.
On Sat, we met to go to Comics Mart at City Hall to buy cards and play there. It was a genuine surprise that their interest was actually sustained. We played till evening before I went home. Sun and Mon were days of rest, interspersed with finalizing of some wedding details.
Today, I went back to work, overwhelmed by hundreds of emails to clear, lots of administrative tasks to settle, and facing a four day deadline of testimonials for my class. With lessons still ongoing. Argh. It didn't help that there was a farewell concert as well. I don't know why but somehow this time round, I don't feel much about the farewell. In 2005, I was really quite sad to see my three classes leave. Right now, I don't feel anything close to that kind of sadness. I don't know if it's because I don't teach a large part of my civics class, or that I have only one class graduating instead of 3, so the effect is diluted, or that the class somehow has not really endeared itself to me, or that the class was still outright cheerful as usual, and did not seem the least affected by the last day of school. Worse still, halfway through the farewell concert in the auditorium, we were interrupted by Mediacorp's roadshow, and we were graced with the presence of Joanne Peh, Jessica Liu, Alvin Ng, and Pierre Png. I think whatever emotional atmosphere prior to that was instantly shattered by excitement and stargazing madness. Frankly, I think the farewell concert was an absolute failure because of their appearance, but of course, it was a treat for the kids, I'm sure. I think I'm more saddened by the fact that I don't feel as sad as I think I should be, considering that this is my first civics class, than their leaving.
Sunday, October 07, 2007
I was wrong on the point that I may get to blog more often in camp. This time round, although I have some rest time, strangely enough, no one else wanted to go check their email or something. The training wasn't too tough for this week, and I managed to sleep more during this week (army is well-known for waiting time) than about two weeks of my normal routine. One fun part of the training was this LOAC (Law of Armed Conflict) thing, which basically had some people posing as civilians or enemies, and we were supposed to clear buildings and other urban things. I guess the SAF wants to train all the soldiers to be able to handle peacekeeping roles? Anyway, the part that involves clearing a building feels like real-life Counterstrike. Haha.
Speaking of Counterstrike, a bunch of us went to an internet cafe during a night's off to play Counterstrike. Another night, we played pool. It's an annual reunion of sorts anyway, which was fun. Interestingly enough, my old magic kakis suddenly felt nostalgic and talked about getting together for a Magic the Gathering gathering. I think army training must have been quite boring because I have nothing much to blog about.
I'm heading back to camp later already. So much for a 5-day work week; I was released from camp only on Sat noon. Sigh. Tomorrow I'll be on a 3D2N outfield (sounds almost like I'm going on a holiday or something), which is the toughest part of the in-camp training.
Speaking of Counterstrike, a bunch of us went to an internet cafe during a night's off to play Counterstrike. Another night, we played pool. It's an annual reunion of sorts anyway, which was fun. Interestingly enough, my old magic kakis suddenly felt nostalgic and talked about getting together for a Magic the Gathering gathering. I think army training must have been quite boring because I have nothing much to blog about.
I'm heading back to camp later already. So much for a 5-day work week; I was released from camp only on Sat noon. Sigh. Tomorrow I'll be on a 3D2N outfield (sounds almost like I'm going on a holiday or something), which is the toughest part of the in-camp training.