Sunday, November 30, 2008
Thu 27 Nov
Today is the second day of the module at Teachers' Network. I was anticipating boredom based on the first lesson, but there were two hands-on sessions to try out two new system/software so that made the lesson much more palatable. For lunch my colleagues and I ended up eating at the Cafeteria because we were supposed to faciliate the afternoon session, and we didn't want to be late. The group discussions we were leading went fairly well, despite negligible preparation.
After the lesson, I wandered off to Shaw Centre, then to Wheelock place, and eventually to Takashimaya. I stopped by Marks and Spencer en route to Borders and bought a box of cherry brandy chocolates. That is not the actually name, but it is the best chocolate I have eaten from the store. It is dark chocolate with a full cherry inside, and a brandy-filled centre. They aren't stingy with the brandy, so one mouthful does send a slight fiery tingle down the throat. It is a wonderful blend of taste, and a box of it costs $12.90. Trust me, it's worth buying for the Christmas season to give away or to treat friends.
Borders is one of my favourite places to kill time, other than Kinokuniya (which I went to when I reached Taka), because you can stand around and browse, and I always hit the games magazine section. I had plenty of time to kill because the course ended at 5 pm, and my cell group was at Bukit Merah at 7.45 pm. From Orchard, Bukit Merah was about 15 minutes away by number 14 only. I went around shopping, or rather, I wanted to spend money, but I ended up window-shopping because nothing really appealed to me. I stopped by Lucky Plaza when I was hungry to eat at my favourite eatery in Orchard, the Rabbit Restaurant, and had a mini buddha-jumped-over-the-wall set.
The irony was that when we began cell, we realized that all of us finished work early and had time to kill, so we all wasted time by ourselves individually when we could have met together for a nice long dinner or something. Argh.
Fri 28 Nov
I went to Teachers' Network for my elective for the third day. Today my colleague partner was absent, so I worked alone. I managed to finish all the tasks ahead of time, and even the mid-term assignment, which was due next Tuesday, I finished during the lesson; I'm a heavy multi-tasker. The lecturer looked shocked that I had finished, but when he checked with me what I intended to do for the final project (linked to the mid-term) he said the whole thing sounded ok. He actually asked me to reconsider because the deadline was four days away, but I told him that I would send it anyway. My principle is to do a quick and good job, so no point wasting time trying to make it perfect. It should already be A grade quality work.
For lunch, I brought my other colleague down to Lucky Plaza to the Rabbit Restaurant, and he loved the food. We made it back to the class quite late (but it had not resumed!) because my colleague wanted to check out this novelty shop to see if there were some magic tricks that he didn't already own.
After the class, I wandered off to the Heeren, wanting to do a bit of shopping. After all, I doubt I would have many opportunities to come to town. I definitely would try not to bring Jadon to such a horribly crowded area, until he is much older I guess. I walked around, and realized that I am too old for the place. Not just the fact that the people hanging around there are much younger, but I have transcended the clothes' style. I think I can still pull off some level of trendy fashion, but some stuff I really can't pull off anymore. Darn. It is time I acknowledge I'm getting old.
Sat 29 Nov
We stayed at home most of the day, and brought Jadon out with us when we went to White Sands to do some shopping at Tom & Stef, which had some storewide sales, to buy some baby-related stuff. I don't know why but Ben & Jerry's at White Sands is closed! That corner is now boarded up, awaiting renovation. This is a travesty! The other shop that closed down is Cavanna, which in my opinion sells not-so-good chicken for too high a price. But I rejoice in its closing because in its place, Manhattan Fish Market is opening! I sure hope the quality is like the ones I tried in KL before. The one at Plaza Singapura wasn't as fantastic.
I bought a couple of movie DVDs. I guess I really missed quite a few good movies thus far. After settling Jadon to bed, I watched Wall.E with my wife near midnight. It was a brilliant show, and Pixar, as usual, never disappoints (except perhaps with Cars). In some strange way, suddenly I had this warped notion to only go for second-rate movies at the cinemas. That way, I can buy and keep all the good movies instead in DVD format.
Sun 30 Nov
My wife's aunts and cousins came by to visit Jadon at around noontime, and hung around for a short while before we had to leave for service. After service, we had a combined cell meeting for the kids to finalize the details for their Christmas event before heading home.
I just finished watching Witchblade the anime. I used to read the comics from Top Cow before I stopped buying comics altogether to cut cost. Anyway it was a totally different storyline. I bought the anime from KL, but the quality was quite bad; it was 24 episodes squeezed into one DVD. The English subtitling was atrocious, but the Chinese subtitles were alright. Despite the technical flaws, the anime series was quite interesting, revolving largely around a mother's love for her daughter, amidst a ton of action. I'm not really sure how to summarize the plotline though. Essentially the witchblade is some mysterious bracelet thing that can equip the wearer (someone the witchblade chooses) with some metallic bodysuit and gives strong battlelust, turning the wearer into a fighting machine (not literally). In the show there are clone blades also, which are clones of the witchblade, so there are many battles between the original and the clones. The protagonist who dons the witchblade apparently is hired to fight the X-cons, which are basically robots made from dead people, that have gone renegade. Most of the show involve villains with some personal vendetta/quest for power that ends up sending everyone up the alley to fight the protagonist.
Today is the second day of the module at Teachers' Network. I was anticipating boredom based on the first lesson, but there were two hands-on sessions to try out two new system/software so that made the lesson much more palatable. For lunch my colleagues and I ended up eating at the Cafeteria because we were supposed to faciliate the afternoon session, and we didn't want to be late. The group discussions we were leading went fairly well, despite negligible preparation.
After the lesson, I wandered off to Shaw Centre, then to Wheelock place, and eventually to Takashimaya. I stopped by Marks and Spencer en route to Borders and bought a box of cherry brandy chocolates. That is not the actually name, but it is the best chocolate I have eaten from the store. It is dark chocolate with a full cherry inside, and a brandy-filled centre. They aren't stingy with the brandy, so one mouthful does send a slight fiery tingle down the throat. It is a wonderful blend of taste, and a box of it costs $12.90. Trust me, it's worth buying for the Christmas season to give away or to treat friends.
Borders is one of my favourite places to kill time, other than Kinokuniya (which I went to when I reached Taka), because you can stand around and browse, and I always hit the games magazine section. I had plenty of time to kill because the course ended at 5 pm, and my cell group was at Bukit Merah at 7.45 pm. From Orchard, Bukit Merah was about 15 minutes away by number 14 only. I went around shopping, or rather, I wanted to spend money, but I ended up window-shopping because nothing really appealed to me. I stopped by Lucky Plaza when I was hungry to eat at my favourite eatery in Orchard, the Rabbit Restaurant, and had a mini buddha-jumped-over-the-wall set.
The irony was that when we began cell, we realized that all of us finished work early and had time to kill, so we all wasted time by ourselves individually when we could have met together for a nice long dinner or something. Argh.
Fri 28 Nov
I went to Teachers' Network for my elective for the third day. Today my colleague partner was absent, so I worked alone. I managed to finish all the tasks ahead of time, and even the mid-term assignment, which was due next Tuesday, I finished during the lesson; I'm a heavy multi-tasker. The lecturer looked shocked that I had finished, but when he checked with me what I intended to do for the final project (linked to the mid-term) he said the whole thing sounded ok. He actually asked me to reconsider because the deadline was four days away, but I told him that I would send it anyway. My principle is to do a quick and good job, so no point wasting time trying to make it perfect. It should already be A grade quality work.
For lunch, I brought my other colleague down to Lucky Plaza to the Rabbit Restaurant, and he loved the food. We made it back to the class quite late (but it had not resumed!) because my colleague wanted to check out this novelty shop to see if there were some magic tricks that he didn't already own.
After the class, I wandered off to the Heeren, wanting to do a bit of shopping. After all, I doubt I would have many opportunities to come to town. I definitely would try not to bring Jadon to such a horribly crowded area, until he is much older I guess. I walked around, and realized that I am too old for the place. Not just the fact that the people hanging around there are much younger, but I have transcended the clothes' style. I think I can still pull off some level of trendy fashion, but some stuff I really can't pull off anymore. Darn. It is time I acknowledge I'm getting old.
Sat 29 Nov
We stayed at home most of the day, and brought Jadon out with us when we went to White Sands to do some shopping at Tom & Stef, which had some storewide sales, to buy some baby-related stuff. I don't know why but Ben & Jerry's at White Sands is closed! That corner is now boarded up, awaiting renovation. This is a travesty! The other shop that closed down is Cavanna, which in my opinion sells not-so-good chicken for too high a price. But I rejoice in its closing because in its place, Manhattan Fish Market is opening! I sure hope the quality is like the ones I tried in KL before. The one at Plaza Singapura wasn't as fantastic.
I bought a couple of movie DVDs. I guess I really missed quite a few good movies thus far. After settling Jadon to bed, I watched Wall.E with my wife near midnight. It was a brilliant show, and Pixar, as usual, never disappoints (except perhaps with Cars). In some strange way, suddenly I had this warped notion to only go for second-rate movies at the cinemas. That way, I can buy and keep all the good movies instead in DVD format.
Sun 30 Nov
My wife's aunts and cousins came by to visit Jadon at around noontime, and hung around for a short while before we had to leave for service. After service, we had a combined cell meeting for the kids to finalize the details for their Christmas event before heading home.
I just finished watching Witchblade the anime. I used to read the comics from Top Cow before I stopped buying comics altogether to cut cost. Anyway it was a totally different storyline. I bought the anime from KL, but the quality was quite bad; it was 24 episodes squeezed into one DVD. The English subtitling was atrocious, but the Chinese subtitles were alright. Despite the technical flaws, the anime series was quite interesting, revolving largely around a mother's love for her daughter, amidst a ton of action. I'm not really sure how to summarize the plotline though. Essentially the witchblade is some mysterious bracelet thing that can equip the wearer (someone the witchblade chooses) with some metallic bodysuit and gives strong battlelust, turning the wearer into a fighting machine (not literally). In the show there are clone blades also, which are clones of the witchblade, so there are many battles between the original and the clones. The protagonist who dons the witchblade apparently is hired to fight the X-cons, which are basically robots made from dead people, that have gone renegade. Most of the show involve villains with some personal vendetta/quest for power that ends up sending everyone up the alley to fight the protagonist.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Sun 23 Nov
I went to service as usual, and after service, we had a big meeting for the kids. My boys, Collin's boys, and my wife's girls were planning for the end of the year Christmas party for their friends, so we were acting as advisors for them. They needed quite a bit of guidance to get going, but after that, it became a fun process watching them iron out the nitty-gritty, with some help, of course.
I think all of us hope that one of my boy's dad will take charge of the food, because if he does, it will be hotel chef standard. Bwahaha.
Mon 24 Nov
The TV set was delivered today! After much deliberation, I needed to install the new set in the bedroom. Just thinking of all the wires to reconnect, including the Wii sensor which I attached with powerful 3M adhesives, made me decide not to go through all that trouble. Now my bed faces a brand new 40" TV. I only heard about the bonus cut for civil servants after I bought the TV, so it was too late to regret.
After that was set up properly, I took down the serial number of the TV and headed off to Burlington Square to the agent handling the free gifts to get my $300 Robinsons vouchers and 26" TV. Considering that it was in town and during peak hours, I figured I might as well pay $30 to have them deliver the TV than lug it around, board a cab and still pay nearly that amount. I then strayed off to Sim Lim Square to put my plan into action. I eventually settled on two Philips wireless headphones for a bargained price of $250 total, bought an audio splitter and longer antenna cable and headed home. I stopped by to buy dinner back for the family, and had to buy a big bottle of mineral water.
Why the mineral water? Because the water supply was cut off. Now to make a correction to my earlier angry spoof song of Neighbourhood, the water pipe problem wasn't my upstairs neighbour's, although they were still responsible for the stomping. My wife eventually discovered that the sound was from my kitchen toilet, and it seemed to come from the adjoining unit. Now, before we could investigate further, the actual cause of the noise had deteriorated into an underground water pipe bursting!!
I don't really know for sure if it was the same root cause, but all I knew was that when the pipe had burst, the ship-horn sound stopped. After the water pipe was fixed, the water was murky for one whole day before it returned to normal. Not a good thing when you have a baby you have to make formula milk for, hence the mineral water.
Only when I went home did I realize that I forgot to buy an RGB cable, because I had planned to connect my laptop to the TV to play movies. So I went down to White Sands' Challenger to buy that and a 5m antenna cable (the one I bought earlier was still too short...darn), and a multiplug to support all that wireless stuff. Lo and behold! The system was up! The fatal flaw in this whole setup was that my laptop's DVD rom was faulty and could only read CDs and not DVDs. Argh!!!
Maybe next year's LDS should be spent on constructing a small media PC, or buy an eeepc. Wahahaha.
Tue 25 Nov
I went out early in the morning to Teachers' Network at Grange Road to attend the last elective for the Masters' course. I hope it was only for this lesson, because today felt like what I would term diem perdidi again. The lecturer was nice and all, and was willing to negotiate the assignment deadlines and even the requirements of the assignments. That was when the nightmare began, since different people suggested different things, and after wasting almost an hour, there was still no consensus. If there is one thing I learnt from today's session, it is simply this: never give your students too much autonomy to decide things.
By the time we broke for lunch, we have covered zero content, and only had ironed out the syllabus and what we were supposed to do for group work and all. Even the forming of groups was so haphazard. It was by sheer fluke he ended up with the correct number of groups he needed without giving proper instructions.
I went to lunch with my two colleagues, one of whom drove us to Valley Point (never ever heard of the place before) to this Japanese restaurant. Contrary to what he remembered though, now the restaurant charged service charge, and the prices on the menu had inflated. In the end, he decided to treat us to the meal, despite us insisting on paying.
We headed back after buying some sweets to keep awake, but the sweets failed to do their job for my colleague as he dozed off half the time. The lecturer had wanted groups to lead discussions during each session with some slides and content that he had prepared. On one hand it was more empowering I guess, but with such a tight timeline (the course was on Tue, Thu and Fri for two consecutive weeks), I don't think any of us know enough of anything to lead a really constructive discussion. I think the only fruitful part of the day was when he actually started his mini-lecture. So out of the 8 hours today, the only time that something was rightfully taught was in an half-hour span. Great.
It was like the previous sucky elective all over again, except this time round, it was a tad more structured.
Wed 26 Nov
It was a quiet day at home, spent on doing work for school remotely from home, and going out to buy groceries. The only complaint was that upon buying 7 kg worth of stuff, it started pouring on my way back, and I had to lug all 7 kg on one hand and carry an umbrella with the other. Bleah.
I went to service as usual, and after service, we had a big meeting for the kids. My boys, Collin's boys, and my wife's girls were planning for the end of the year Christmas party for their friends, so we were acting as advisors for them. They needed quite a bit of guidance to get going, but after that, it became a fun process watching them iron out the nitty-gritty, with some help, of course.
I think all of us hope that one of my boy's dad will take charge of the food, because if he does, it will be hotel chef standard. Bwahaha.
Mon 24 Nov
The TV set was delivered today! After much deliberation, I needed to install the new set in the bedroom. Just thinking of all the wires to reconnect, including the Wii sensor which I attached with powerful 3M adhesives, made me decide not to go through all that trouble. Now my bed faces a brand new 40" TV. I only heard about the bonus cut for civil servants after I bought the TV, so it was too late to regret.
After that was set up properly, I took down the serial number of the TV and headed off to Burlington Square to the agent handling the free gifts to get my $300 Robinsons vouchers and 26" TV. Considering that it was in town and during peak hours, I figured I might as well pay $30 to have them deliver the TV than lug it around, board a cab and still pay nearly that amount. I then strayed off to Sim Lim Square to put my plan into action. I eventually settled on two Philips wireless headphones for a bargained price of $250 total, bought an audio splitter and longer antenna cable and headed home. I stopped by to buy dinner back for the family, and had to buy a big bottle of mineral water.
Why the mineral water? Because the water supply was cut off. Now to make a correction to my earlier angry spoof song of Neighbourhood, the water pipe problem wasn't my upstairs neighbour's, although they were still responsible for the stomping. My wife eventually discovered that the sound was from my kitchen toilet, and it seemed to come from the adjoining unit. Now, before we could investigate further, the actual cause of the noise had deteriorated into an underground water pipe bursting!!
I don't really know for sure if it was the same root cause, but all I knew was that when the pipe had burst, the ship-horn sound stopped. After the water pipe was fixed, the water was murky for one whole day before it returned to normal. Not a good thing when you have a baby you have to make formula milk for, hence the mineral water.
Only when I went home did I realize that I forgot to buy an RGB cable, because I had planned to connect my laptop to the TV to play movies. So I went down to White Sands' Challenger to buy that and a 5m antenna cable (the one I bought earlier was still too short...darn), and a multiplug to support all that wireless stuff. Lo and behold! The system was up! The fatal flaw in this whole setup was that my laptop's DVD rom was faulty and could only read CDs and not DVDs. Argh!!!
Maybe next year's LDS should be spent on constructing a small media PC, or buy an eeepc. Wahahaha.
Tue 25 Nov
I went out early in the morning to Teachers' Network at Grange Road to attend the last elective for the Masters' course. I hope it was only for this lesson, because today felt like what I would term diem perdidi again. The lecturer was nice and all, and was willing to negotiate the assignment deadlines and even the requirements of the assignments. That was when the nightmare began, since different people suggested different things, and after wasting almost an hour, there was still no consensus. If there is one thing I learnt from today's session, it is simply this: never give your students too much autonomy to decide things.
By the time we broke for lunch, we have covered zero content, and only had ironed out the syllabus and what we were supposed to do for group work and all. Even the forming of groups was so haphazard. It was by sheer fluke he ended up with the correct number of groups he needed without giving proper instructions.
I went to lunch with my two colleagues, one of whom drove us to Valley Point (never ever heard of the place before) to this Japanese restaurant. Contrary to what he remembered though, now the restaurant charged service charge, and the prices on the menu had inflated. In the end, he decided to treat us to the meal, despite us insisting on paying.
We headed back after buying some sweets to keep awake, but the sweets failed to do their job for my colleague as he dozed off half the time. The lecturer had wanted groups to lead discussions during each session with some slides and content that he had prepared. On one hand it was more empowering I guess, but with such a tight timeline (the course was on Tue, Thu and Fri for two consecutive weeks), I don't think any of us know enough of anything to lead a really constructive discussion. I think the only fruitful part of the day was when he actually started his mini-lecture. So out of the 8 hours today, the only time that something was rightfully taught was in an half-hour span. Great.
It was like the previous sucky elective all over again, except this time round, it was a tad more structured.
Wed 26 Nov
It was a quiet day at home, spent on doing work for school remotely from home, and going out to buy groceries. The only complaint was that upon buying 7 kg worth of stuff, it started pouring on my way back, and I had to lug all 7 kg on one hand and carry an umbrella with the other. Bleah.
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Wed 19 Nov
Today was a stay-at-home day, managing helping to take care of Jadon, and doing school work. I think for this holidays, I'll be working all the way through, whether I have to return to school or work remotely from home. But the fruits of my labour should be visible by next January.
Anyway, I chanced across this awesome video.
I believe that it is a matter of time they upsize this, and make Transformers a reality! Haha. I'm just kidding. Based on my physics understanding, and mechanics of materials module in university, I doubt it is possible to build a robot like that beyond a certain size. The joints can't possibly hold the weight. Unless some new materials that are light, flexible and strong are created. Once that happens, I think I may see it become reality. Otherwise, I think the military will probably seize that technology and make some kind of spying device.
Thu 20 Nov
In the afternoon, I went out with my wife to buy groceries and other stuff, but most importantly, we went to White Sands to get...another three tubs of Ben N Jerry's for $29.90! Bwahaha.
Later on in the evening, my father-in-law came by to pick everyone up, and both families headed off to Seafood Paradise (the place I held my wedding dinner) for a nice dinner. Today was the birthday of my father-in-law and sister-in-law, and four days later would be my mum's birthday, so we thought we would celebrate altogether in one fell swoop. My wife and I bought three small cakes for them to complete the event.
When we got there, we noticed in the corner Mediacorp artiste Darren Lim and his wife, Evelyn Tan. I was joking with my wife that we could go over and say hi because we are fellow church mates! Of course, we left them alone, along with everyone else there, although it was clear almost everyone noticed that they were around. We ordered drunken prawns, which was still terrific, fried baby squids which were really good but I over-ordered on the portion, scallop with brocolli and egg which was delicious (I have seldom tasted brocolli so well cooked), and crispy chicken. The grand finale was two crabs cooked in their special cream sauce. That was sumptuous, especially with the fragrant fried buns, but I made a major miscalculation. My father-in-law somehow did not like the buttery taste in the cream sauce, so he ate very little. My mother-in-law was holding on to Jadon, who just wanted to be carried this evening. My wife had to keep her hands clean in case she needs to take over the baby, and my sister-in-law didn't know how to work the crab shells. So in the end, I had to extract the meat for my wife and sister-in-law, plus my own share, and honestly, eating crabs had never been so tiring in my life. Additionally, I was left to finish most of the crabs, along with my mum, because of above-said complications.
Although the crab meat was decidedly fresh and sweet, and the cream sauce was exceptional, I think I won't be eating crabs for quite a while.
Fri 21 Nov
I was expecting some guests over this evening, and the big circulator fan in the living room had turned so rusty that it was too troublesome to clean, and my wife did not want dust and rust circulating in the air. So we made our way down to Tampines to shop for some appliances. Furthermore, the small TV in my mum's room had broken down a month ago, and I know that she wants a replacement. On checking out a few shops, I realized that very few places carry CRTs (the huge TVs of the recent past) anymore, although they would be significantly cheaper. I also realized the LCD TVs, even the smaller 22" ones costed from $300 to $400.
So at Best Denki, I made the fatal mistake of wandering around, and spotted a promotion that looked really good to me, despite general financial prudence. There was a 40" Samsung LCD full HD TV going for $2499, that has a whole range of choices of free gifts, and one option was a 26" Samsung LCD TV (that would have costed $749 on its own), which I thought was perfect for my mum (in fact, much bigger than the 21" she used to have). On top of that, they gave out $300 Robinsons vouchers. Now I always knew that big stores like Best Denki would be more expensive than some neighbourhood shops, but at least they had interest-free installments with major credit cards. So while I was hunting for a small TV, I ended up splurging on a big TV that gave what I wanted for free.
The best part is that the new TV would go into the living room, which meant that the existing one had to go somewhere. And where better than...my bedroom! Bwahaha. Now in the midst of taking care of the baby, we could still watch whatever we want. But watching TV was not my main objective. Anime would be a tempting option too, but the idea that sparked off in my head was to rig up my laptop to the TV, plug in two wireless stereo headphones and watch movies in the bedroom that can be as loud as I want, without disturbing Jadon! Looks like I know where to spend next year's LDS money. Or should I get a PDA phone...? Hmm.
In the evening, my colleagues came over to play mahjong. After a gruelling six-hour session with many major swings in winnings (because we were playing using four 飞, i.e. joker tiles) ending at 1.30 am in the morning, I walked away with $14 of winnings. Another colleague ZH won $13, the next one broke even with nett zero loss, and the last one suffered the worst. Especially since she was due to wake up at 6 am, it seemed like a double whammy. ZH had won ten times of the current winnings in the afternoon with some other players, so he graciously treated us to MacDonalds for supper before calling it a day. Man, I am really itching to play mahjong these days.
Sat 22 Nov
Today was our big expedition! We were bringing Jadon out with us beyond Pasir Ris for the first time. Worse still, we were heading for Marina Square. On a Saturday! Basically pram suicide if you ask me. But we had no choice because something my wife bought was faulty, and she had to go to the Creative store to get it fixed. We spent almost an hour getting ready, packing the baby bag like we were going for some backpacking trip.
After today, I really appreciate living in Pasir Ris even more. The train door is always open, and I can take my own sweet time manoeuvreing the pram around, and find a seat for myself! It was an ordeal moving out of the train when we got to City Hall since it was really cramped by then, and there was a horde of people trying to rush in simultaneously. In fact, the two of us were so stressed (it was my first time pushing the pram) that we were planning our exit strategy for all twelve stations. One thing I noted was that nobody seemed to give way to prams especially at the MRT gantry meant for prams. I was basically standing there giving way to young folks who jolly well could have used the normal gantry. My wife suggested putting a car horn on the pram. I thought it was a good idea, except that it would frighten the baby, and probably the sound would reflect off the thick skin of the people it was meant for. I would be more for the idea of putting a long thin stick to whack people out of my way, but I guess that wouldn't be allowed.
Now that I'm a parent, in addition to my usual judgment of shopping malls by the toilets, I now also judge according to the nursing room, and Marina Square scores well on that. Although it was quite odd just now when I opened the door and saw people inside. Actually, it was my mistake. Apparently, the door can't be locked (maybe to keep out hanky-panky business) which I didn't know. So when I saw "occupied", and didn't see the bolt at the slit between the door and the frame, I opened it. In the end, a young guy and gal came out, and the guy mumbled to me that we could use the room, and that they were just changing inside. Which made me wonder what they were actually doing inside. But anyway, at least they were nice enough to come out. So this made my first changing diaper session outside of home. And Jadon did his pee-when-I-open-his-diaper trick once more. My reflexes, fortunately, were quick enough to catch the pee with the opened diaper. Nowadays, I am ready for his tricks! Bwahaha.
He got hungry halfway when we were shopping, so we stopped by Starbucks to order a coffee and a cheesecake, and get a mug of hot water to warm the milk we brought out. That was an expensive feed worth $12.10. Argh. But the hot white chocolate mocha was superb, and the New York cheesecake was fantastic! We managed to buy quite a lot of stuff (for Jadon's use actually) but I got hold of a pair of nice striped bermudas along the way while settling my wife's defective media player.
We wanted to have a quick dinner at Thai Express and leave, but Jadon woke up halfway through the meal hungry for milk. I was having this salted egg fried rice that the waiter told me was "a little spicy", but it turned out freaking hot! I was dousing my mouth with the avocado milk shake that a friend recommended me to try but I found was not as good as the one we used to drink from the (now-renovating) 216 market at Bedok. I managed to hold Jadon with one arm and eat with the other, but at some point, I had to stop and bottle-feed him, again getting hot water from the restaurant to warm the milk. So now I was left with cold hot rice (ok, I know that was a lame oxymoron), and my wife left me some of her pahd thai to dilute the spice.
All in all, it was a fruitful trip. We experimented with the pram the whole time, seeing how to negotiate up-riding and down-riding escalators, MRT train doors (please mind the platform gap!), not tailgating slow-moving shoppers, avoiding fast-moving shoppers. Jadon was very cooperative actually. He only made noise twice - when he woke up from hunger and wanted milk. Otherwise he was quiet, either sleeping or watching the world go by silently. He wasn't even scared from his sleep most of the time even when we hit bumps in the road, or jerked the pram because of bad escalator manoeuvreing on my part. Anyway, my estimation was correct. I told my wife we must flee town area at dinner time because the train would not be crowded, and I was right. To leave anywhere near 10 pm would certainly be a nightmare.
Today was a stay-at-home day, managing helping to take care of Jadon, and doing school work. I think for this holidays, I'll be working all the way through, whether I have to return to school or work remotely from home. But the fruits of my labour should be visible by next January.
Anyway, I chanced across this awesome video.
I believe that it is a matter of time they upsize this, and make Transformers a reality! Haha. I'm just kidding. Based on my physics understanding, and mechanics of materials module in university, I doubt it is possible to build a robot like that beyond a certain size. The joints can't possibly hold the weight. Unless some new materials that are light, flexible and strong are created. Once that happens, I think I may see it become reality. Otherwise, I think the military will probably seize that technology and make some kind of spying device.
Thu 20 Nov
In the afternoon, I went out with my wife to buy groceries and other stuff, but most importantly, we went to White Sands to get...another three tubs of Ben N Jerry's for $29.90! Bwahaha.
Later on in the evening, my father-in-law came by to pick everyone up, and both families headed off to Seafood Paradise (the place I held my wedding dinner) for a nice dinner. Today was the birthday of my father-in-law and sister-in-law, and four days later would be my mum's birthday, so we thought we would celebrate altogether in one fell swoop. My wife and I bought three small cakes for them to complete the event.
When we got there, we noticed in the corner Mediacorp artiste Darren Lim and his wife, Evelyn Tan. I was joking with my wife that we could go over and say hi because we are fellow church mates! Of course, we left them alone, along with everyone else there, although it was clear almost everyone noticed that they were around. We ordered drunken prawns, which was still terrific, fried baby squids which were really good but I over-ordered on the portion, scallop with brocolli and egg which was delicious (I have seldom tasted brocolli so well cooked), and crispy chicken. The grand finale was two crabs cooked in their special cream sauce. That was sumptuous, especially with the fragrant fried buns, but I made a major miscalculation. My father-in-law somehow did not like the buttery taste in the cream sauce, so he ate very little. My mother-in-law was holding on to Jadon, who just wanted to be carried this evening. My wife had to keep her hands clean in case she needs to take over the baby, and my sister-in-law didn't know how to work the crab shells. So in the end, I had to extract the meat for my wife and sister-in-law, plus my own share, and honestly, eating crabs had never been so tiring in my life. Additionally, I was left to finish most of the crabs, along with my mum, because of above-said complications.
Although the crab meat was decidedly fresh and sweet, and the cream sauce was exceptional, I think I won't be eating crabs for quite a while.
Fri 21 Nov
I was expecting some guests over this evening, and the big circulator fan in the living room had turned so rusty that it was too troublesome to clean, and my wife did not want dust and rust circulating in the air. So we made our way down to Tampines to shop for some appliances. Furthermore, the small TV in my mum's room had broken down a month ago, and I know that she wants a replacement. On checking out a few shops, I realized that very few places carry CRTs (the huge TVs of the recent past) anymore, although they would be significantly cheaper. I also realized the LCD TVs, even the smaller 22" ones costed from $300 to $400.
So at Best Denki, I made the fatal mistake of wandering around, and spotted a promotion that looked really good to me, despite general financial prudence. There was a 40" Samsung LCD full HD TV going for $2499, that has a whole range of choices of free gifts, and one option was a 26" Samsung LCD TV (that would have costed $749 on its own), which I thought was perfect for my mum (in fact, much bigger than the 21" she used to have). On top of that, they gave out $300 Robinsons vouchers. Now I always knew that big stores like Best Denki would be more expensive than some neighbourhood shops, but at least they had interest-free installments with major credit cards. So while I was hunting for a small TV, I ended up splurging on a big TV that gave what I wanted for free.
The best part is that the new TV would go into the living room, which meant that the existing one had to go somewhere. And where better than...my bedroom! Bwahaha. Now in the midst of taking care of the baby, we could still watch whatever we want. But watching TV was not my main objective. Anime would be a tempting option too, but the idea that sparked off in my head was to rig up my laptop to the TV, plug in two wireless stereo headphones and watch movies in the bedroom that can be as loud as I want, without disturbing Jadon! Looks like I know where to spend next year's LDS money. Or should I get a PDA phone...? Hmm.
In the evening, my colleagues came over to play mahjong. After a gruelling six-hour session with many major swings in winnings (because we were playing using four 飞, i.e. joker tiles) ending at 1.30 am in the morning, I walked away with $14 of winnings. Another colleague ZH won $13, the next one broke even with nett zero loss, and the last one suffered the worst. Especially since she was due to wake up at 6 am, it seemed like a double whammy. ZH had won ten times of the current winnings in the afternoon with some other players, so he graciously treated us to MacDonalds for supper before calling it a day. Man, I am really itching to play mahjong these days.
Sat 22 Nov
Today was our big expedition! We were bringing Jadon out with us beyond Pasir Ris for the first time. Worse still, we were heading for Marina Square. On a Saturday! Basically pram suicide if you ask me. But we had no choice because something my wife bought was faulty, and she had to go to the Creative store to get it fixed. We spent almost an hour getting ready, packing the baby bag like we were going for some backpacking trip.
After today, I really appreciate living in Pasir Ris even more. The train door is always open, and I can take my own sweet time manoeuvreing the pram around, and find a seat for myself! It was an ordeal moving out of the train when we got to City Hall since it was really cramped by then, and there was a horde of people trying to rush in simultaneously. In fact, the two of us were so stressed (it was my first time pushing the pram) that we were planning our exit strategy for all twelve stations. One thing I noted was that nobody seemed to give way to prams especially at the MRT gantry meant for prams. I was basically standing there giving way to young folks who jolly well could have used the normal gantry. My wife suggested putting a car horn on the pram. I thought it was a good idea, except that it would frighten the baby, and probably the sound would reflect off the thick skin of the people it was meant for. I would be more for the idea of putting a long thin stick to whack people out of my way, but I guess that wouldn't be allowed.
Now that I'm a parent, in addition to my usual judgment of shopping malls by the toilets, I now also judge according to the nursing room, and Marina Square scores well on that. Although it was quite odd just now when I opened the door and saw people inside. Actually, it was my mistake. Apparently, the door can't be locked (maybe to keep out hanky-panky business) which I didn't know. So when I saw "occupied", and didn't see the bolt at the slit between the door and the frame, I opened it. In the end, a young guy and gal came out, and the guy mumbled to me that we could use the room, and that they were just changing inside. Which made me wonder what they were actually doing inside. But anyway, at least they were nice enough to come out. So this made my first changing diaper session outside of home. And Jadon did his pee-when-I-open-his-diaper trick once more. My reflexes, fortunately, were quick enough to catch the pee with the opened diaper. Nowadays, I am ready for his tricks! Bwahaha.
He got hungry halfway when we were shopping, so we stopped by Starbucks to order a coffee and a cheesecake, and get a mug of hot water to warm the milk we brought out. That was an expensive feed worth $12.10. Argh. But the hot white chocolate mocha was superb, and the New York cheesecake was fantastic! We managed to buy quite a lot of stuff (for Jadon's use actually) but I got hold of a pair of nice striped bermudas along the way while settling my wife's defective media player.
We wanted to have a quick dinner at Thai Express and leave, but Jadon woke up halfway through the meal hungry for milk. I was having this salted egg fried rice that the waiter told me was "a little spicy", but it turned out freaking hot! I was dousing my mouth with the avocado milk shake that a friend recommended me to try but I found was not as good as the one we used to drink from the (now-renovating) 216 market at Bedok. I managed to hold Jadon with one arm and eat with the other, but at some point, I had to stop and bottle-feed him, again getting hot water from the restaurant to warm the milk. So now I was left with cold hot rice (ok, I know that was a lame oxymoron), and my wife left me some of her pahd thai to dilute the spice.
All in all, it was a fruitful trip. We experimented with the pram the whole time, seeing how to negotiate up-riding and down-riding escalators, MRT train doors (please mind the platform gap!), not tailgating slow-moving shoppers, avoiding fast-moving shoppers. Jadon was very cooperative actually. He only made noise twice - when he woke up from hunger and wanted milk. Otherwise he was quiet, either sleeping or watching the world go by silently. He wasn't even scared from his sleep most of the time even when we hit bumps in the road, or jerked the pram because of bad escalator manoeuvreing on my part. Anyway, my estimation was correct. I told my wife we must flee town area at dinner time because the train would not be crowded, and I was right. To leave anywhere near 10 pm would certainly be a nightmare.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Instead of ranting and raving my complaints, I thought it might be more calming (and creatively amusing) to spoof a song that feels somewhat related to my frustration. So I present to you Neighbourhood, modified from Space's original song lyrics. Sing along, if you know the song.
NEIGHBOURHOOD
Who lives in a house like this?
Who lives in a house like this?
In number 37 there lives a nice old man
Who likes to use the water from the public tap
There’s a group of PRCs who just moved in next door
And started barbecuing in the corridor
Ohhhhh if you find the time please come and stay a while
In my HDB neighbourhood
The upstairs neighbours are a bunch of dinosaurs
I can hear their stomping footsteps right through their floor
Their water pipes have problems but they left it unfixed
So when they turn the tap I hear the horn of a ship
Ohhhh if you find the time please come and stay a while
In my HDB neighbourhood, my neighbourhood
My, my, my HDB neighbourhood, my neighbourhood
My, my, my HDB neighbourhood
Who lives in a house like this?
Who lives in a house like this?
There’s a pianist upstairs who plays all day
It feels like I’m always in a hotel café
In 578 there lives a drummer boy
He plays so loud it's clear that he’s out to annoy
Ohhhh if you find the time please come and stay a while
In my HDB neighbourhood, my neighbourhood
My, my, my HDB neighbourhood, my neighbourhood
My, my, my HDB neighbourhood
Who lives in a house like this? (Who lives here man?)
Who lives in a house like this?
There’s an erhu player who just joined the trend
I think the three of them can form an eclectic band
There’s a guy next block who blasts his Mandarin pop
It’s louder than a siren but he just wouldn’t stop
Ohhhh if you find the time please come and stay a while
In my HDB neighbourhood, my neighbourhood
My, my, my HDB neighbourhood, my neighbourhood
My, my, my HDB neighbourhood
NEIGHBOURHOOD
Who lives in a house like this?
Who lives in a house like this?
In number 37 there lives a nice old man
Who likes to use the water from the public tap
There’s a group of PRCs who just moved in next door
And started barbecuing in the corridor
Ohhhhh if you find the time please come and stay a while
In my HDB neighbourhood
The upstairs neighbours are a bunch of dinosaurs
I can hear their stomping footsteps right through their floor
Their water pipes have problems but they left it unfixed
So when they turn the tap I hear the horn of a ship
Ohhhh if you find the time please come and stay a while
In my HDB neighbourhood, my neighbourhood
My, my, my HDB neighbourhood, my neighbourhood
My, my, my HDB neighbourhood
Who lives in a house like this?
Who lives in a house like this?
There’s a pianist upstairs who plays all day
It feels like I’m always in a hotel café
In 578 there lives a drummer boy
He plays so loud it's clear that he’s out to annoy
Ohhhh if you find the time please come and stay a while
In my HDB neighbourhood, my neighbourhood
My, my, my HDB neighbourhood, my neighbourhood
My, my, my HDB neighbourhood
Who lives in a house like this? (Who lives here man?)
Who lives in a house like this?
There’s an erhu player who just joined the trend
I think the three of them can form an eclectic band
There’s a guy next block who blasts his Mandarin pop
It’s louder than a siren but he just wouldn’t stop
Ohhhh if you find the time please come and stay a while
In my HDB neighbourhood, my neighbourhood
My, my, my HDB neighbourhood, my neighbourhood
My, my, my HDB neighbourhood
Monday, November 17, 2008
Thu 13 Nov
Today was Good Neighbour's Day! We were supposed to stick on a sticker and go to our void decks at 7.15 pm and pray for our blocks with whoever else sticks on the sticker, and this movement is a collaboration across churches. When I went down, I saw nobody. Not accepting the apparent possibility that I'm the only person in one of the Love Singapore churches living in this area, I scouted around the surrounding four blocks.
Let's not even talk about nobody wearing the sticker; there was nobody around at the void decks at all! It was complete desolation. So I went around prayer-walking on my own. A bit disappointing, but a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do, eh? Even if it's all by his lonesome.
Fri 14 Nov
I went back to school for some meetings with vendors, and to settle the final nitty-gritty of the Project Work stuff. It was a bit of information overload, and the whole process made it very clear that I was involved in yet another arduous, time-consuming big project in school.
Sat 15 Nov
I went out to White Sands' Coffee Club with my wife to have lunch, and meet up with Shups, Elaine and Weiling. They were coming over to visit Jadon actually. I had a Very Posh Baked Rice (I like the corny name), which was essentially lobster bisque on the rice with cheese, and two clams. Still, it was delicious. I think Coffee Club, for an establishment that seems to specialize in beverages and desserts, has excellent main courses. Shups had this softshell crab and spaghetti in miso-base gravy, which was good value for money and tasty. I will definitely try that dish the next time I go.
Alvin and Steph came over as well, and after they spent some time being amused by Jadon, we played mahjong. Haha, I hadn't played for so long my fingers itched for it. Besides, I wanted to test out if it were possible to have the mahjong table in the living room for playing instead, and apparently my day bed was tall enough to function as one seat and there was enough space to play. This was important since my guest room would become the baby's room eventually. Anyway, I lost money, though not exactly a lot. The tiles were relentlessly bad, and my wife witnessed the catastrophe. Still, it was fun to play again.
In the evening, I headed down to Sheraton Towers to attend my colleague's wedding. The ballroom had an interesting L-shape, and the food was decent. The sharks' fin was a bit disappointing, with relatively little fin, and the waiter who served us was polite but a bit slow. Which was important because in this banquet, they divided the food and served each one a portion. What he did poorly was when he chopped up the fish, he didn't pour the gravy on the individual portions, so the fish smell was still very strong. The dessert (last dish) was very unique. It was half-an-egg-shaped chocolate shell, with chocolate mousse inside it, and chocolate beads on top. The highlight was the video that my colleague and his brother-in-law did. It was an interesting black-and-white Charlie Chaplin style telling of how the couple got together, proposal, and the process of getting a place, choosing a gown, and etc. Rather comical and well-done.
Sun 16 Nov
I went to service as usual, and was early enough to buy an ice kimo from Daily Fresh along the way. Today's sermon was talking about excelling for God, which was a topic I had been drilling my boys very now and then. My G12 brother Collin was out of action today, so I ran a combined cell at Eastpoint.
Mon 17 Nov
I went back to school in the morning to have a meeting (the above-mentioned arduous project), and we talked from 9 am to 12.10 pm. I had to fly out for lunch and back again by 12.30 pm for another meeting to review the chemistry programme for the through-train students, and to see if we could tweak it to be even better for next year's batches. After that I rushed back home to drop my stuff and went out with my wife because...
It's our one year wedding anniversary!
Time really, really flies. And never would we have expected that by the one year anniversary there will be a son to commemorate it with us. Anyway, for convenience sake, we left Jadon at home with my mother-in-law. My wife and I headed down to Suntec. We passed by many shops along the way that we made a mental note to visit again, but our top priority was to catch an early-enough movie. I managed to get tickets for the 5.20 pm Quantum of Solace, and we quickly went to grab an early dinner at Ministry of Food. Apparently, there is an outlet at the fountain area, and I was curious whether it was as good as the Bugis Junction one (which I think was the first outlet). The food was still delicious, but somehow I thought the hot stone rice at Bugis Junction was better. Anyway, the fume hood system at the Suntec branch didn't seem to work well enough, so the fume smell was strong. I also prefer the ambience at Bugis Junction.
After the early dinner, we went to watch the latest James Bond movie. The cinema was very empty, and had about five other couples around only. Unfortunately, that also meant that it was freezing cold in there, and considering I was wearing a t-shirt, berms and slippers, I was almost frozen stiff. This moment made me appreciate the temperature and comfort of the Downtown East cinema we usually go to these days, if we go at all. The movie was still good, although compared to Casino Royale, this one was shorter, and less emotional. In any case, the current morphosis of James Bond seemed to be almost zero reliance on technological gizmos and very much in-your-face ruffian hitman in a suit. The interesting thing is that the main Bond girl didn't seem like the typical Bond girl. She could pretty much fight on her own, and in the movie, James Bond didn't sleep with her at all! That might be a first in itself. What I do like about the two new Bond movies is that there seemed to be a shadowy villain organization in the background that was pretty much a mystery, and there is now some continuity in plot between movies. The previous Bond movies were all come and go, with a special villain (or villains...or villainess) created for each movie. Quantum of Solace actually was a continuation, and there seemed to be a prospect of further unravelling of a plot in future sequels.
After the movie, we did a bit of shopping at Levi Strauss, and I got myself two pairs of jeans and a t-shirt, for $99.90! Darn good promotion. My wife bought a pair of shoes, and some stuff from The Body Shop as well. We stopped by Marvellous Cream to have ice cream, and it was good, but quite expensive. I got the large (two scoops worth) with a chocolate waffle basket for $10.30. I think nowadays I so hardly shop that each time I hit a mall, I am sure to pump money into the economy. Heh.
Today was Good Neighbour's Day! We were supposed to stick on a sticker and go to our void decks at 7.15 pm and pray for our blocks with whoever else sticks on the sticker, and this movement is a collaboration across churches. When I went down, I saw nobody. Not accepting the apparent possibility that I'm the only person in one of the Love Singapore churches living in this area, I scouted around the surrounding four blocks.
Let's not even talk about nobody wearing the sticker; there was nobody around at the void decks at all! It was complete desolation. So I went around prayer-walking on my own. A bit disappointing, but a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do, eh? Even if it's all by his lonesome.
Fri 14 Nov
I went back to school for some meetings with vendors, and to settle the final nitty-gritty of the Project Work stuff. It was a bit of information overload, and the whole process made it very clear that I was involved in yet another arduous, time-consuming big project in school.
Sat 15 Nov
I went out to White Sands' Coffee Club with my wife to have lunch, and meet up with Shups, Elaine and Weiling. They were coming over to visit Jadon actually. I had a Very Posh Baked Rice (I like the corny name), which was essentially lobster bisque on the rice with cheese, and two clams. Still, it was delicious. I think Coffee Club, for an establishment that seems to specialize in beverages and desserts, has excellent main courses. Shups had this softshell crab and spaghetti in miso-base gravy, which was good value for money and tasty. I will definitely try that dish the next time I go.
Alvin and Steph came over as well, and after they spent some time being amused by Jadon, we played mahjong. Haha, I hadn't played for so long my fingers itched for it. Besides, I wanted to test out if it were possible to have the mahjong table in the living room for playing instead, and apparently my day bed was tall enough to function as one seat and there was enough space to play. This was important since my guest room would become the baby's room eventually. Anyway, I lost money, though not exactly a lot. The tiles were relentlessly bad, and my wife witnessed the catastrophe. Still, it was fun to play again.
In the evening, I headed down to Sheraton Towers to attend my colleague's wedding. The ballroom had an interesting L-shape, and the food was decent. The sharks' fin was a bit disappointing, with relatively little fin, and the waiter who served us was polite but a bit slow. Which was important because in this banquet, they divided the food and served each one a portion. What he did poorly was when he chopped up the fish, he didn't pour the gravy on the individual portions, so the fish smell was still very strong. The dessert (last dish) was very unique. It was half-an-egg-shaped chocolate shell, with chocolate mousse inside it, and chocolate beads on top. The highlight was the video that my colleague and his brother-in-law did. It was an interesting black-and-white Charlie Chaplin style telling of how the couple got together, proposal, and the process of getting a place, choosing a gown, and etc. Rather comical and well-done.
Sun 16 Nov
I went to service as usual, and was early enough to buy an ice kimo from Daily Fresh along the way. Today's sermon was talking about excelling for God, which was a topic I had been drilling my boys very now and then. My G12 brother Collin was out of action today, so I ran a combined cell at Eastpoint.
Mon 17 Nov
I went back to school in the morning to have a meeting (the above-mentioned arduous project), and we talked from 9 am to 12.10 pm. I had to fly out for lunch and back again by 12.30 pm for another meeting to review the chemistry programme for the through-train students, and to see if we could tweak it to be even better for next year's batches. After that I rushed back home to drop my stuff and went out with my wife because...
It's our one year wedding anniversary!
Time really, really flies. And never would we have expected that by the one year anniversary there will be a son to commemorate it with us. Anyway, for convenience sake, we left Jadon at home with my mother-in-law. My wife and I headed down to Suntec. We passed by many shops along the way that we made a mental note to visit again, but our top priority was to catch an early-enough movie. I managed to get tickets for the 5.20 pm Quantum of Solace, and we quickly went to grab an early dinner at Ministry of Food. Apparently, there is an outlet at the fountain area, and I was curious whether it was as good as the Bugis Junction one (which I think was the first outlet). The food was still delicious, but somehow I thought the hot stone rice at Bugis Junction was better. Anyway, the fume hood system at the Suntec branch didn't seem to work well enough, so the fume smell was strong. I also prefer the ambience at Bugis Junction.
After the early dinner, we went to watch the latest James Bond movie. The cinema was very empty, and had about five other couples around only. Unfortunately, that also meant that it was freezing cold in there, and considering I was wearing a t-shirt, berms and slippers, I was almost frozen stiff. This moment made me appreciate the temperature and comfort of the Downtown East cinema we usually go to these days, if we go at all. The movie was still good, although compared to Casino Royale, this one was shorter, and less emotional. In any case, the current morphosis of James Bond seemed to be almost zero reliance on technological gizmos and very much in-your-face ruffian hitman in a suit. The interesting thing is that the main Bond girl didn't seem like the typical Bond girl. She could pretty much fight on her own, and in the movie, James Bond didn't sleep with her at all! That might be a first in itself. What I do like about the two new Bond movies is that there seemed to be a shadowy villain organization in the background that was pretty much a mystery, and there is now some continuity in plot between movies. The previous Bond movies were all come and go, with a special villain (or villains...or villainess) created for each movie. Quantum of Solace actually was a continuation, and there seemed to be a prospect of further unravelling of a plot in future sequels.
After the movie, we did a bit of shopping at Levi Strauss, and I got myself two pairs of jeans and a t-shirt, for $99.90! Darn good promotion. My wife bought a pair of shoes, and some stuff from The Body Shop as well. We stopped by Marvellous Cream to have ice cream, and it was good, but quite expensive. I got the large (two scoops worth) with a chocolate waffle basket for $10.30. I think nowadays I so hardly shop that each time I hit a mall, I am sure to pump money into the economy. Heh.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
I just saw this video on TalkingCock.com, and it is hilarious. Actually I come across many funny videos routinely, but I just had to share this one. It is a spoof on Matrix movie (quite well-done one at that), and a direct dig at Microsoft.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Sun 9 Nov
I went down to Expo earlier today because I thought I was doing usher duty. In the end, there turned out to be some form of miscommunication, and I wasn't down for duty. So I had to abandon two of my boys and G12 brother Eric. With the spare time, I had a good chat with my network pastor, talking about babies and hamsters. After service, I had a brief cell group at Hall 9, and also discussed with Shawn, who is my colleague and church mate, about the upcoming Christmas party that we were considering to have. Still need to work out logistics though.
Mon 10 Nov
I went back to school with my wife today. She had some unfinished business there, and I had to go back to key in the Project Work scores for my groups since Friday was unsuccessful because of network issues. I managed to log into the MOE intranet without problems, but somehow the printer network was having problems, so I spent quite a lot of time before I could print out the verification summary.
Jadon kept our sleep short last night with his usual shit/pee/milk regurgitation three-hit combo, so when we went home in the afternoon, we slept almost till evening without eating lunch at all.
I managed to finish two anime series recently. The first series was a rather old one called Gunslinger Girls, which I bought from KL a while back but had not managed to watch. For an anime about teenage girls who were injured in accidents or severely ill recruited by a corporation and fitted with cybernetic limbs and eyes to be trained as skilled special agents / assassins in a special division seemingly linked to the Italian Police (the anime was set in Italy apparently), the whole series was highly mellow, poignant, and melancholic. Amidst intense action, the anime explored the relationships between different gunslinger girls and their instructors (each pair was called a fratello or siblings), and the background and experiences of the girls.
The second series was Afro Samurai, which was a really punk piece of animation. I didn't know of its existence until I stumbled on its review on Anime News Network (my favourite site to find anime reviews and recommendations). I was surprised that it was voiced in English, and by Samuel L Jackson and Kelly Hu no less! As the title suggested, it was about an afro samurai's journey for vengeance. Apparently there were two legendary headbands (Numbers 1 and 2) that the world's most powerful warrior and second most powerful warrior had. The story's protagonist watched his father (then the number 1) get defeated and beheaded by a gunslinging fighter (then the number 2). The number 2 headband was robbed from the kid, and he needed it to challenge the number 1. Simple story, but there were samurais and some weird technology involving robots and mystical mambo-jambo. The whole show was just full load of blood and gore, dismembered body parts. But the animation was solid, and I think the current Wii game I have called No More Heroes seemed to have drawn its inspiration from this anime.
Tue 11 Nov
It was a peaceful day at home until I was summoned back to school to settle something. While I was there, I made full use of the time and settled a gazillion matters, since I didn't really want to keep going back (but I still need to return on Friday for two meetings). On the way back, I went to NTUC at White Sands to buy some fresh milk, and when I passed by Ben n Jerry's, I noticed this poster that made me go, "Are you for real?"
Three tubs of Ben n Jerry's ice cream for $29.90.
Bwahaha! The usual price is $44.70, and I know for sure that wasn't some marked-up price to swindle me, because I bought three tubs of ice cream from them before at that price. So all Ben n Jerry's ice cream lovers out there, go whack the tubs before the promotion ends on 23rd November!
Wed 12 Nov
I stayed home today, only to get frustrated. I love my current apartment, except its horrible affinity for water-related problems. Last year, the window somehow leaked, and after the fault got pushed around from HDB to Town Council to and fro several times, the eventual conclusion was that there was nothing I could do about it except to spend money on my own to apply sealant to cover up what otherwise was shoddy gasket workmanship when the building was done in the first place. Worse still, that part of the wall under the windows that the water went into was hollow in the design, so it allowed for water to be trapped and retained there even! I know at least the neighbour above my unit suffered the same fate, and I had visited her apartment before and saw the damage to her built-in cabinets.
My balcony too had some leakage somewhere, and the floor was wet, and the wetness had a thick white substance that looked like leached paint or something, and I could not figure out the cause. Or rather, I had not begun tearing up parts of the balcony to investigate if it was aircon piping leakage, water seeping in from outside, roof leakage, and etc. A while ago, when we got a part-time maid to help clean our toilet windows, when the washings went down the wall above the balcony roof, it seeped through and leaked at the part the roof joined the wall. My interior designer assured me that the roof was done to HDB specifications and it would certainly keep out rain, which was true, and that water wouldn't hit that part of the wall, which was also true.
Unless that water wasn't rain.
My block was going to be repainted, so the workers did a massive washing of the whole block's exterior. As a result, my balcony roof leaked at every part that joined the wall. The roofing company's boss came down to take a look and told me that it was because of the way the water was sprayed and some other things that I thought might be bullshit, but he remarked that the white stuff on the floor may be because of rainwater seeping in through the exterior walls because it was brick and mortar, which was not the first time I heard it, and that was something to be looked into, I believe. So I will begin my little inquiry soon to interview every household staying at my block to find out if it was a common structural problem. Then I'll see how far I can take this up to. My wife is even more up in arms about it than me actually; she is certainly feisty when she fights for her rights.
Personally, I never liked the way HDB seemed to push all faults to renovation companies / house owners / town council. Can one individual (or rather, couple) challenge a mighty government-linked corporation, I wonder?
I went down to Expo earlier today because I thought I was doing usher duty. In the end, there turned out to be some form of miscommunication, and I wasn't down for duty. So I had to abandon two of my boys and G12 brother Eric. With the spare time, I had a good chat with my network pastor, talking about babies and hamsters. After service, I had a brief cell group at Hall 9, and also discussed with Shawn, who is my colleague and church mate, about the upcoming Christmas party that we were considering to have. Still need to work out logistics though.
Mon 10 Nov
I went back to school with my wife today. She had some unfinished business there, and I had to go back to key in the Project Work scores for my groups since Friday was unsuccessful because of network issues. I managed to log into the MOE intranet without problems, but somehow the printer network was having problems, so I spent quite a lot of time before I could print out the verification summary.
Jadon kept our sleep short last night with his usual shit/pee/milk regurgitation three-hit combo, so when we went home in the afternoon, we slept almost till evening without eating lunch at all.
I managed to finish two anime series recently. The first series was a rather old one called Gunslinger Girls, which I bought from KL a while back but had not managed to watch. For an anime about teenage girls who were injured in accidents or severely ill recruited by a corporation and fitted with cybernetic limbs and eyes to be trained as skilled special agents / assassins in a special division seemingly linked to the Italian Police (the anime was set in Italy apparently), the whole series was highly mellow, poignant, and melancholic. Amidst intense action, the anime explored the relationships between different gunslinger girls and their instructors (each pair was called a fratello or siblings), and the background and experiences of the girls.
The second series was Afro Samurai, which was a really punk piece of animation. I didn't know of its existence until I stumbled on its review on Anime News Network (my favourite site to find anime reviews and recommendations). I was surprised that it was voiced in English, and by Samuel L Jackson and Kelly Hu no less! As the title suggested, it was about an afro samurai's journey for vengeance. Apparently there were two legendary headbands (Numbers 1 and 2) that the world's most powerful warrior and second most powerful warrior had. The story's protagonist watched his father (then the number 1) get defeated and beheaded by a gunslinging fighter (then the number 2). The number 2 headband was robbed from the kid, and he needed it to challenge the number 1. Simple story, but there were samurais and some weird technology involving robots and mystical mambo-jambo. The whole show was just full load of blood and gore, dismembered body parts. But the animation was solid, and I think the current Wii game I have called No More Heroes seemed to have drawn its inspiration from this anime.
Tue 11 Nov
It was a peaceful day at home until I was summoned back to school to settle something. While I was there, I made full use of the time and settled a gazillion matters, since I didn't really want to keep going back (but I still need to return on Friday for two meetings). On the way back, I went to NTUC at White Sands to buy some fresh milk, and when I passed by Ben n Jerry's, I noticed this poster that made me go, "Are you for real?"
Three tubs of Ben n Jerry's ice cream for $29.90.
Bwahaha! The usual price is $44.70, and I know for sure that wasn't some marked-up price to swindle me, because I bought three tubs of ice cream from them before at that price. So all Ben n Jerry's ice cream lovers out there, go whack the tubs before the promotion ends on 23rd November!
Wed 12 Nov
I stayed home today, only to get frustrated. I love my current apartment, except its horrible affinity for water-related problems. Last year, the window somehow leaked, and after the fault got pushed around from HDB to Town Council to and fro several times, the eventual conclusion was that there was nothing I could do about it except to spend money on my own to apply sealant to cover up what otherwise was shoddy gasket workmanship when the building was done in the first place. Worse still, that part of the wall under the windows that the water went into was hollow in the design, so it allowed for water to be trapped and retained there even! I know at least the neighbour above my unit suffered the same fate, and I had visited her apartment before and saw the damage to her built-in cabinets.
My balcony too had some leakage somewhere, and the floor was wet, and the wetness had a thick white substance that looked like leached paint or something, and I could not figure out the cause. Or rather, I had not begun tearing up parts of the balcony to investigate if it was aircon piping leakage, water seeping in from outside, roof leakage, and etc. A while ago, when we got a part-time maid to help clean our toilet windows, when the washings went down the wall above the balcony roof, it seeped through and leaked at the part the roof joined the wall. My interior designer assured me that the roof was done to HDB specifications and it would certainly keep out rain, which was true, and that water wouldn't hit that part of the wall, which was also true.
Unless that water wasn't rain.
My block was going to be repainted, so the workers did a massive washing of the whole block's exterior. As a result, my balcony roof leaked at every part that joined the wall. The roofing company's boss came down to take a look and told me that it was because of the way the water was sprayed and some other things that I thought might be bullshit, but he remarked that the white stuff on the floor may be because of rainwater seeping in through the exterior walls because it was brick and mortar, which was not the first time I heard it, and that was something to be looked into, I believe. So I will begin my little inquiry soon to interview every household staying at my block to find out if it was a common structural problem. Then I'll see how far I can take this up to. My wife is even more up in arms about it than me actually; she is certainly feisty when she fights for her rights.
Personally, I never liked the way HDB seemed to push all faults to renovation companies / house owners / town council. Can one individual (or rather, couple) challenge a mighty government-linked corporation, I wonder?
Saturday, November 08, 2008
Tue 4 Nov
It was back to school for more marking. I actually managed to complete all the marking by 2+ pm, so I was the first to finish. I decided not to break my arm, so I left the transferring of the comments to the actual Assessment Instruments to another day. I was feeling a bit worse, so I thought I would give myself a two-day break and return on Friday. Anyway, I still needed to consult my moderator to get a green light for my marking and submission of scores.
I went off with my colleague who gave me a ride to the Hougang area. I met my NIE supervisor to discuss my dissertation draft at his home. He was nice, having bought some birds' nest for my wife (who also has him as supervisor), and after finalizing the last bits I had to do to complete the dissertation, I hung around to chat a bit. Alright! Graduation is in sight. One more intensive module during the holidays soon, and the modifications to the draft, which is quite a lot of work actually, since I didn't get the format and organization correct. After that, I caught my one hour bus ride back home.
Wed 5 Nov
I kissed 80 bucks goodbye in the afternoon when some workers from Barang Barang came to fix my dining table. Actually, only the adhesive came off, and one leg broke off from the glass. Apparently, this table should be lifted and carried rather than dragged, with a couple of friends accidentally did during the baby dedication last Sunday. Well, we learn something new every day. So the workers came, put adhesive on the detached leg, helped check the other two legs, and used this portable ultraviolet light thing to speed up the adhering process.
In the evening, my wife and I headed down to Bedok where my colleague (also my church-friend) picked us up to go down to Bukit Merah for leaders' meeting. By the time we reached home by MRT, it was 11.30 pm. These are times I desire a car.
Thu 6 Nov
I went to Bedok with my wife to get a foot and back massage at 康生. Man, I don't know if it was the PW marking, or handling the baby, but this time round, everywhere was aching, and painful when massaged. I find it really amazing how accurate the nerve points and acupoints are. The points were all linked to different body parts or organs. I checked with the guy the ones that were really painful and when he told me where they linked to, they all were accurate. One point the guy said linked to my throat area, and I was having sore throat. Another point he said was linked to the joints, and in the last week, my ankle hurted right when I woke up in the morning, and sometimes the knee cap too. He advised me to consume some glucasamine, and I think I would consider if the problem persists. Another part that hurted he asked me if I ate a lot of meat, which I definitely did. Chinese medicine is amazing stuff.
Jadon is really active nowadays. When he is awake, his limbs are moving almost nonstop. The sounds he makes are getting more varied every day, except his cry for milk, which is still telltale. Dang, the boy is so cuuute.
Fri 7 Nov
I went back to school to meet my PW moderator, and after checking the reports I submitted to him, we found that my marking was spot on, so I began the arduous task of writing the comments into the Assessment Instruments. It was slightly worse for me because I typically try to annotate with more comments since my handwriting can be very small if I want to, so I had a lot more words to transfer than some colleagues. I did all 20 reports in one sitting, and I regret not going to the massage today instead. I think even though we don't get paid for doing this work, unlike 'A' levels invigilation, maybe they could give us a spa or massage voucher or something, because intensive marking really hurts the neck and back. Heh. Like it would ever happen.
I took a look at this year's chemistry essay paper. Not very straightforward, and as I warned my students, they really did throw in weird never-seen-before reactions to test application skills. Technically the content tested wasn't tough, but the questions make you stop to think for a while. The level of integration in the questions was exactly what I expected, with organic chemistry worked into almost every question. I hope everything done so far was sufficient to mentally prepare them for something like this.
In the afternoon I went down to HobbySg at Katong with my Magic-playing colleague. We had been itching to try out a mini-tournament known as drafting for some time, so today we finally tried it. Drafting was different from the prerelease that I typically attend because the latter is a sealed format, which is playing with the cards you get randomly, but the draft works this way. In a table of 8, each person opens a pack, chooses one card he wants, then passes it on to the next person. So you get a card pool for your deck that way. It was amazingly fun because of the decision making when you choose a card. The best part was that I opened a rare foil card worth about 12 bucks, and the registration was $16, so I almost got back my money with a single card. I traded it for a non-foil version of the same card, and took $7 in.
After you open a total of 3 packs and passed around, you form a deck from the card pool you chose. The 8 people then play against each other in four pairs first. Now the $16 pays for 4 packs, three of which had been opened during drafting. The last pack is an ante pack. If you defeat an opponent, you get one pack from him. The four winners of round one then split into two pairs to fight one-on-one, and then it is the final round. I came to this draft as a first-time newbie (not to playing but to drafting) prepared to be fodder. Amazingly, I won the first round, played against my colleague in the second round and won, and according to the veterans there, nobody plays the third round, and the two semifinalists will usually split the points (there is an international ranking points system, very much like Yahoo! games and the like) and the prize, which is a special foil card. The other semifinalist and I sold the foil to an interested played for $6 and split the money equally. So essentially I earned back $10 out of the $16 I paid, including the earlier sale I made, and I got the cards I drafted, plus three packs (one was my ante pack, and two packs from the first two rounds). Good deal. Out of kindness, I let the other guy record it as his win, since the points don't really matter to me. I think his ranking should be much higher than mine, so if I record it as my win, I think he loses more points than the other way round.
Frankly, drafting is addictively exciting adrenalin rush. In sealed, if you get bad cards, you can't do anything about it. Drafting allows you to use your gamer's judgment to choose what cards to pick, and that is an interesting skill to develop.
Unfortunately, I only played one draft flight since I don't want to be home late. Apparently, these usual customers play till midnight and beyond sometimes, playing several flights in a row. Scary. I doubt any of them are married...
Sat 8 Nov
A quiet day at home, spent on baby, napping after medication, anime and some Wii.
It was back to school for more marking. I actually managed to complete all the marking by 2+ pm, so I was the first to finish. I decided not to break my arm, so I left the transferring of the comments to the actual Assessment Instruments to another day. I was feeling a bit worse, so I thought I would give myself a two-day break and return on Friday. Anyway, I still needed to consult my moderator to get a green light for my marking and submission of scores.
I went off with my colleague who gave me a ride to the Hougang area. I met my NIE supervisor to discuss my dissertation draft at his home. He was nice, having bought some birds' nest for my wife (who also has him as supervisor), and after finalizing the last bits I had to do to complete the dissertation, I hung around to chat a bit. Alright! Graduation is in sight. One more intensive module during the holidays soon, and the modifications to the draft, which is quite a lot of work actually, since I didn't get the format and organization correct. After that, I caught my one hour bus ride back home.
Wed 5 Nov
I kissed 80 bucks goodbye in the afternoon when some workers from Barang Barang came to fix my dining table. Actually, only the adhesive came off, and one leg broke off from the glass. Apparently, this table should be lifted and carried rather than dragged, with a couple of friends accidentally did during the baby dedication last Sunday. Well, we learn something new every day. So the workers came, put adhesive on the detached leg, helped check the other two legs, and used this portable ultraviolet light thing to speed up the adhering process.
In the evening, my wife and I headed down to Bedok where my colleague (also my church-friend) picked us up to go down to Bukit Merah for leaders' meeting. By the time we reached home by MRT, it was 11.30 pm. These are times I desire a car.
Thu 6 Nov
I went to Bedok with my wife to get a foot and back massage at 康生. Man, I don't know if it was the PW marking, or handling the baby, but this time round, everywhere was aching, and painful when massaged. I find it really amazing how accurate the nerve points and acupoints are. The points were all linked to different body parts or organs. I checked with the guy the ones that were really painful and when he told me where they linked to, they all were accurate. One point the guy said linked to my throat area, and I was having sore throat. Another point he said was linked to the joints, and in the last week, my ankle hurted right when I woke up in the morning, and sometimes the knee cap too. He advised me to consume some glucasamine, and I think I would consider if the problem persists. Another part that hurted he asked me if I ate a lot of meat, which I definitely did. Chinese medicine is amazing stuff.
Jadon is really active nowadays. When he is awake, his limbs are moving almost nonstop. The sounds he makes are getting more varied every day, except his cry for milk, which is still telltale. Dang, the boy is so cuuute.
Fri 7 Nov
I went back to school to meet my PW moderator, and after checking the reports I submitted to him, we found that my marking was spot on, so I began the arduous task of writing the comments into the Assessment Instruments. It was slightly worse for me because I typically try to annotate with more comments since my handwriting can be very small if I want to, so I had a lot more words to transfer than some colleagues. I did all 20 reports in one sitting, and I regret not going to the massage today instead. I think even though we don't get paid for doing this work, unlike 'A' levels invigilation, maybe they could give us a spa or massage voucher or something, because intensive marking really hurts the neck and back. Heh. Like it would ever happen.
I took a look at this year's chemistry essay paper. Not very straightforward, and as I warned my students, they really did throw in weird never-seen-before reactions to test application skills. Technically the content tested wasn't tough, but the questions make you stop to think for a while. The level of integration in the questions was exactly what I expected, with organic chemistry worked into almost every question. I hope everything done so far was sufficient to mentally prepare them for something like this.
In the afternoon I went down to HobbySg at Katong with my Magic-playing colleague. We had been itching to try out a mini-tournament known as drafting for some time, so today we finally tried it. Drafting was different from the prerelease that I typically attend because the latter is a sealed format, which is playing with the cards you get randomly, but the draft works this way. In a table of 8, each person opens a pack, chooses one card he wants, then passes it on to the next person. So you get a card pool for your deck that way. It was amazingly fun because of the decision making when you choose a card. The best part was that I opened a rare foil card worth about 12 bucks, and the registration was $16, so I almost got back my money with a single card. I traded it for a non-foil version of the same card, and took $7 in.
After you open a total of 3 packs and passed around, you form a deck from the card pool you chose. The 8 people then play against each other in four pairs first. Now the $16 pays for 4 packs, three of which had been opened during drafting. The last pack is an ante pack. If you defeat an opponent, you get one pack from him. The four winners of round one then split into two pairs to fight one-on-one, and then it is the final round. I came to this draft as a first-time newbie (not to playing but to drafting) prepared to be fodder. Amazingly, I won the first round, played against my colleague in the second round and won, and according to the veterans there, nobody plays the third round, and the two semifinalists will usually split the points (there is an international ranking points system, very much like Yahoo! games and the like) and the prize, which is a special foil card. The other semifinalist and I sold the foil to an interested played for $6 and split the money equally. So essentially I earned back $10 out of the $16 I paid, including the earlier sale I made, and I got the cards I drafted, plus three packs (one was my ante pack, and two packs from the first two rounds). Good deal. Out of kindness, I let the other guy record it as his win, since the points don't really matter to me. I think his ranking should be much higher than mine, so if I record it as my win, I think he loses more points than the other way round.
Frankly, drafting is addictively exciting adrenalin rush. In sealed, if you get bad cards, you can't do anything about it. Drafting allows you to use your gamer's judgment to choose what cards to pick, and that is an interesting skill to develop.
Unfortunately, I only played one draft flight since I don't want to be home late. Apparently, these usual customers play till midnight and beyond sometimes, playing several flights in a row. Scary. I doubt any of them are married...
Sat 8 Nov
A quiet day at home, spent on baby, napping after medication, anime and some Wii.
Monday, November 03, 2008
Thu 30 Oct
Today proved to be a very long day. I was in school early in the morning to go through Project Work standardization meeting for Written Report marking. After marking SPA for a good four years, the notion of standardization and moderation is already second nature. But it still is exceedingly time-consuming. Fortunately, the session ended punctually, and I was heading down to ACJC with my colleague when we got a couple of phone calls to ask us to go pick up some stuff that was forgotten. So those two phone calls made us walk to and fro on campus, and we were perspiring profusely in our long-sleeved shirts by the time we were done.
Why long-sleeved shirts when school was technically over? Because we were attending a Best Practices sharing session alongside our college leaders. I didn't expect the event to be so well-attended, so I was glad that I made the slides for my college leaders really professional. In fact, one lady who was part of the SEM team that evaluated our college commented that my slides were really corporate and professional.
For the main event, I was expecting the keynote address by this director of CPF customer relations to be boring since it looked like it was full of technical information, but I must say, that man was impressive. He didn't have the scholarly demeanour, and came across as a layman, with a Singlish accent and imperfect English to boot. However, what he had was excellent delivery and public speaking skills.
He began with good humour, somewhat self-debasing at first, but earnest. He didn't read out what were on the slides, but filled in with lots of background, context, personal experiences, and best of all, funny anecdotes. Not only did I learn a lot from his presentation skills, I picked out important content and learning points that suddenly changed my paradigm in my current big project. Blood brudder Yuren was there too, and coincidentally, his wife was the emcee for the event. Yuren said something profound when he pointed out that what was more impressive was not the CPF speaker, but his bosses, because they were able to see beyond the rough surface and identify a practical and effective worker who could make director.
My colleague and I were essentially there to listen to other schools' sharing on the college leaders' behalf, since they were presenting. Heh. We were done only by 6+ pm. Sigh.
Fri 31 Oct
The marking has begun! I returned to school early in the morning to start marking. It went slow (relatively, for me), so I only cleared five groups. I had to check with my moderator to ensure that I was on the right track, which thankfully, I was. I decided to call it a day in the afternoon, and went for a haircut that was long overdue before heading home for dinner.
Sat 1 Nov
I spent the whole day at home with my wife, helping out with the baby, and finding time to watch some TV and play some Wii. In the evening, I cleaned the hamster cages, which was my main contribution for the day.
Sun 2 Nov
I woke up early in the morning to prepare for the guests. Today, my cell, my wife's cell and our pastors were coming over to do a baby dedication, which was essentially praying blessing for Jadon. We had a short time of worship before everyone shared what they wanted to bless Jadon with. My pastors got my mother and mother-in-law over to share as well, and my cell leader prayed on their behalf. Then I prayed over Jadon (in Mandarin!), and my wife as well (in English, translated by her pastor), before both pastors prayed a concluding benediction.
After a quick lunch, I made my way down to service. Today's sermon was about God's economic order, and the necessary values to have to eradicate poverty. It was interesting, and senior pastor collected a special offering for Love Singapore as well, which I guess was a practical application of his sermon. What I found enlightening in particular is his analogy to simplify the concept of the current financial system on the brink of collapse. He said that to understand what is going on, imagine that you are playing mahjong with three other players, and each of you brought $10 with you. So in reality there is only $40 worth of money to be won. Suppose you lost all $10. Instead of stopping there, you play on, and further losses are just owed. And that happens for everyone. At some point, there will end up with, for instance, $400 worth of winnings. Now nobody dares to stop playing, because the people who owed more than $10 had no money to pay. This just kept building up till one point when someone could not continue anymore and the game ends. Now the reality that there was only $40 in total kicks in, and the whole illusion of over $400 of apparent winnings collapses.
I had a long conversation with two of my boys for cell group after service. One of my boys, Shiyi, returned to cell group after a long sojourn, and I thank God for that. Lately, I realized that what I shared in cell was not the theological expositions that I usually do but very earnest heartfelt sharing, since it was quite eventful recently.
Mon 3 Nov
It was back to school for PW marking. I had breakfast with a colleague, and went on to continue my marking. I managed to cover seven projects today before I called it a day at 2+ pm, and went to meet my wife to go to Downtown East. I wanted to pamper myself with a buffet, even though my throat and stomach were both unwell the whole day.
We went to Nihon Mura, and I had my usual big portions of sashimi and handrolls. I avoided most of the fried stuff in the menu, unfortunately, so that my throat condition didn't deteriorate for fear that I would pass on some virus or bacteria to my little Jadon. I didn't even dare to carry him the whole of today. I tried to catch a nap to recuperate, and I popped a handful of Difflam throughout the day, but it didn't seem to work.
Sigh. I suddenly realized how much I love to carry and hold my baby now that I couldn't.
Today proved to be a very long day. I was in school early in the morning to go through Project Work standardization meeting for Written Report marking. After marking SPA for a good four years, the notion of standardization and moderation is already second nature. But it still is exceedingly time-consuming. Fortunately, the session ended punctually, and I was heading down to ACJC with my colleague when we got a couple of phone calls to ask us to go pick up some stuff that was forgotten. So those two phone calls made us walk to and fro on campus, and we were perspiring profusely in our long-sleeved shirts by the time we were done.
Why long-sleeved shirts when school was technically over? Because we were attending a Best Practices sharing session alongside our college leaders. I didn't expect the event to be so well-attended, so I was glad that I made the slides for my college leaders really professional. In fact, one lady who was part of the SEM team that evaluated our college commented that my slides were really corporate and professional.
For the main event, I was expecting the keynote address by this director of CPF customer relations to be boring since it looked like it was full of technical information, but I must say, that man was impressive. He didn't have the scholarly demeanour, and came across as a layman, with a Singlish accent and imperfect English to boot. However, what he had was excellent delivery and public speaking skills.
He began with good humour, somewhat self-debasing at first, but earnest. He didn't read out what were on the slides, but filled in with lots of background, context, personal experiences, and best of all, funny anecdotes. Not only did I learn a lot from his presentation skills, I picked out important content and learning points that suddenly changed my paradigm in my current big project. Blood brudder Yuren was there too, and coincidentally, his wife was the emcee for the event. Yuren said something profound when he pointed out that what was more impressive was not the CPF speaker, but his bosses, because they were able to see beyond the rough surface and identify a practical and effective worker who could make director.
My colleague and I were essentially there to listen to other schools' sharing on the college leaders' behalf, since they were presenting. Heh. We were done only by 6+ pm. Sigh.
Fri 31 Oct
The marking has begun! I returned to school early in the morning to start marking. It went slow (relatively, for me), so I only cleared five groups. I had to check with my moderator to ensure that I was on the right track, which thankfully, I was. I decided to call it a day in the afternoon, and went for a haircut that was long overdue before heading home for dinner.
Sat 1 Nov
I spent the whole day at home with my wife, helping out with the baby, and finding time to watch some TV and play some Wii. In the evening, I cleaned the hamster cages, which was my main contribution for the day.
Sun 2 Nov
I woke up early in the morning to prepare for the guests. Today, my cell, my wife's cell and our pastors were coming over to do a baby dedication, which was essentially praying blessing for Jadon. We had a short time of worship before everyone shared what they wanted to bless Jadon with. My pastors got my mother and mother-in-law over to share as well, and my cell leader prayed on their behalf. Then I prayed over Jadon (in Mandarin!), and my wife as well (in English, translated by her pastor), before both pastors prayed a concluding benediction.
After a quick lunch, I made my way down to service. Today's sermon was about God's economic order, and the necessary values to have to eradicate poverty. It was interesting, and senior pastor collected a special offering for Love Singapore as well, which I guess was a practical application of his sermon. What I found enlightening in particular is his analogy to simplify the concept of the current financial system on the brink of collapse. He said that to understand what is going on, imagine that you are playing mahjong with three other players, and each of you brought $10 with you. So in reality there is only $40 worth of money to be won. Suppose you lost all $10. Instead of stopping there, you play on, and further losses are just owed. And that happens for everyone. At some point, there will end up with, for instance, $400 worth of winnings. Now nobody dares to stop playing, because the people who owed more than $10 had no money to pay. This just kept building up till one point when someone could not continue anymore and the game ends. Now the reality that there was only $40 in total kicks in, and the whole illusion of over $400 of apparent winnings collapses.
I had a long conversation with two of my boys for cell group after service. One of my boys, Shiyi, returned to cell group after a long sojourn, and I thank God for that. Lately, I realized that what I shared in cell was not the theological expositions that I usually do but very earnest heartfelt sharing, since it was quite eventful recently.
Mon 3 Nov
It was back to school for PW marking. I had breakfast with a colleague, and went on to continue my marking. I managed to cover seven projects today before I called it a day at 2+ pm, and went to meet my wife to go to Downtown East. I wanted to pamper myself with a buffet, even though my throat and stomach were both unwell the whole day.
We went to Nihon Mura, and I had my usual big portions of sashimi and handrolls. I avoided most of the fried stuff in the menu, unfortunately, so that my throat condition didn't deteriorate for fear that I would pass on some virus or bacteria to my little Jadon. I didn't even dare to carry him the whole of today. I tried to catch a nap to recuperate, and I popped a handful of Difflam throughout the day, but it didn't seem to work.
Sigh. I suddenly realized how much I love to carry and hold my baby now that I couldn't.