Burnt.

It's probably the 4th or 5th day of the NTU Sports Camp and a couple of us headed down to Pasir Ris Park so that the participants could have a go at the windsurf equipment. Things didn't start off too smoothly; it took Collin and me awhile to find the exact location and we were late for 30 minutes for making U-turns all over, I realized I'd forgotten to include the U-joint in the equipment packing list two minutes after arriving at the beach, the Chinook boom that I'd packed was too big for the 6.5m sail that we were using for the day... everything was horrible and I felt terrible for screwing up.

Titus, thankfully, made his way to East Coast and saved the day. I'm going to treat this as a lesson and not repeat the same mistakes again when sports club comes to us for help again next sports camp.

Pink Martini - Sympathique

Cute! The lyrics, when translated, relate to something more sad though. I think French's a beautiful language... one of these days, I hope I'll be able to pick it up again.

On a diet... with Nam Kee's Chicken Rice Restaurant and Icekimo

You guys are probably never ever going to believe me again for that, but I really, really do want to lose some weight; drop a few kilos by the end of the year and keep a more healthy weight. I've been cutting down on food consumption; two meals a day instead of three (because I wake up so damned late, and ice-cream's not considered a meal), and not over-eating whenever I can.

I really liked stuffing myself silly at the dinner table; sometimes it was plain greediness, and other times I just thought it was wasteful not to finish up. Keeping fingers crossed that I'll stick to my "no over-eating policy"... and the guys will no longer have to joke about my harness ra.

___

Dieting issues aside (:p), I headed down to Thomson with Shir, Simin and Kwunhok for dinner last night. We ended up at Nam Kee's, a chicken rice restaurant along the long stretch of food places at Thomson, before getting a few pieces of cheesecakes/brownies to share from a shop hidden in a secluded corner and finally settling down for ice cream at Icekimo.

The interior of Nam Kee looks like one of those traditional and really old-school kopitiams, but it's fully air-conditioned. It felt very much like one of those (and probably is) family restaurants where the entire family comes together to help with the manning of the shop.

water chestnut and lime juice

Apart from their specialty, chicken rice, they also serve some zi char dishes like Ma Po Tofu, Sweet and Sour Pork, Fried Omelettes, Fish, Sambal Kang Kong, etc etc. We ordered half a roast chicken, half a boiled chicken, some greens and a Ma Po Tofu.

my favourite condiment for chicken rice

The chicken was nice, but not the nicest that I've had. The meat was tender, most of the time, but there were times when I thought it was a little dry... or maybe it was just the breast portion (not a big fan of chicken breast meat).

check out the matching blue

Our Ma Po Tofu and greens weren't too bad either, like what I said earlier, it's a lot like what you'd get from zhi char stalls at kopitiams; familiarity.

our tofu; quite a variety of ingredients in there

the spread

There were a few more close-up pictures that I took of the chicken but I deleted them by accident. Anyway, the food's not bad on the whole, but don't expect anything too mind-blowing. Our bill came up to $46 for the four of us; pretty reasonable since we had two more dishes apart from the chicken.

iceberg.

We moved across the road over to Icekimo for some ice-cream post-dinner. I just realized there's quite a few ice-cream shops sprouting up all over the island... and that said, Icekimo is one of them. I thought the Banana and Walnut combi that KH picked was rather nice; and I sort of regretted not picking the more quirky Guiness Chocolate Chip flavour. Ohwell, I guess that calls for a second visit soon.

ps. I watched Slumdog Millionaire (online) finally; I like it and I shed a tear or two when I saw all the nasty things that poverty drives people to do and the unfairness of society sometimes.

Picking up the beads again...

While I was at Kaka's place for the last time last week, I saw a whole bunch of interesting stuff that his mum was going to give away. Items that were either too much of a hassle to bring back to Hong Kong since they could easily get them there, and I saw this:

It's the most colourful abacus I've ever seen, and all that colours make me really happy! I asked Kaka if I could have that and he said okay, so here it is on my study table right now. I used to go for abacus classes at the community centre when I was much younger, probably Kaka's age, and I remember enjoying those classes a lot.

I can vaguely remember what I've learnt; but I guess I sort of stopped at subtraction back then. Looking at some online tutorials, I'm hoping to get back some of that memory, and also learn how to multiply and divide with the abacus.

Anyway, I think it's really a great way to get kids interested in mathematics; the interactiveness of it all. If only there's a way to get most of them kids in schools to learn how to use the abacus, I suppose it'll help sharpen their minds much more.

No more mess at the create post page

I meant to update more but my "Create New Post" page was in a mess for the past few days; icons disappearing and so on. Looked online for the solution (apparently it's a singnet problem?), and I finally managed to get the page to load normally again after some online help that's been circulating.

Anyway, two of my tutees have finally gone back to Hong Kong on the 23rd; they're not coming back for the next few years so the odds of seeing them again are pretty low. They're my very first students in tutoring, and I have been really lucky to have been able to teach them, even though they can be super annoying at times. I've heard of stories whereby students don't click with their tutors, or parents that are really demanding and stingy from friends, and I can only count myself lucky that I've had it much easier than them.

we were having breakfast together at the dining table; that's kaka after trying to imitate a dog's way of eating... sigh boys.

My tutees' mum has been nothing but nice to me, always offering to prepare breakfast/lunch/snacks for me when she knows that I haven't eaten, never fails to give me tuition fees on time, hands out treats on special occasions (mooncakes, red packets, dumplings on birthday celebrations) and even gave me a big box of Rocher. She left me her HK number and welcomed me to look them up if I happen to visit Hong Kong in future so that we can go yum-cha together.

the Chans and me, at the balcony in their Tanjong Rhu condo.

On the last tutoring day I had with them (that's 20th July), I got them some pastries from Emicakes and she insisted that we sit down together to eat them. I gave all of them a big hug before bidding the final goodbyes. Never thought that the time to part will be so soon; I guess I was sort of caught off-guard. Will definitely miss having them around...

On the day I turned 21, I headed down to Orchard Plaza for my monthly waxing appointment... and, visited the tattoo parlour (8 Volts) next door. I've been contemplating (for the longest time ever) on what my first tattoo should be, and I finally settled on Ai (love), amongst a tiny dolphin and a nautical star.

My artist, Jeremy, printed out the stencil and transferred it onto my right hip after applying some cooling lotion; it left behind a purple-blue outline of what and where my tattoo was going to be. I looked at it in the mirror abit, and decided it was a little too big for my liking. Got Jeremy to print a smaller stencil and he wiped the original one away. Once I gave the green light, he got the tattoo chair ready and had me lie down on my side.

He started off with relatively shorter and less painful 'strokes' as he did the outlining. It felt like something really sharp was digging into my skin and I squirmed in the chair for a bit before I got used to that sensation. The shading wasn't as painful because he used a needle with a rounder and thicker tip. He talked to me so that I could keep my mind off the pain a little, and was constantly checking if the pain was bearable for me.

We were done in 45 minutes and he took a few pictures of my freshly inked hip. I thought it was quite cool how the Ai character was imprinted on the paper towel with my blood as Jeremy wiped it away. After so much talk about it, here's a picture!

can't reallys see all that blood eh?

It's healing right now, but a few of my shirts and shorts have been stained; the wound gets wet everytime after I shower. I've been trying to pick at the dried-up bits but I think it'll take me a few more days before all the scabs fall off.

Headed down to JB the day after with some windsurfers and it was a food-filled day.

my slice of carrot cake with a candle. cute.

KTOWY night-out on Thursday and I had a big surprise. I thought we were having dinner at Lagoon Food Centre, but I saw them in the little pavilion instead. They'd prepared some food the whole afternoon and cabbed down carrying all that barang so that everyone could have a good time.

I just realized WJ got cut off.. hee

I know they really put in a lot of effort in all that preparation and I feel really lucky to have them love me like that!

look at my sushi 'cake'! they did it all by themselves!

I couldn't stop smiling after seeing the 'cake'; I have really cute friends who come up with the most creative ideas.

all smiles here and tears moments later... haha. got a hair-cut, if you can see!

Instead of a cake-smashing session, they decided that it's a better idea for me to finish up a sushi with a wasabi-smeared bottom. The group was definitely generous with the wasabi and I could feel my nostrils and throat on fire after I managed to shove it down my throat on the third attempt. JM managed to capture the super unglam moment on video, no less. Maybe I'll put it up one of these days; so that you can hear me scream in protest.

it was a great amount of sushi; I had whatever was leftover from the night for lunch and dinner the next day.

We ended the night in crazy snapping frenzy; rushing for timed shots, jumping around and lots of laughter in between and games with forfeits like sushi-eating, sushi-eating and sushi-eating hurhur. I love you guys!

Oh, and I just discovered the Macro function on my camera after SK asked me about me some days back. Here's a mini dream-catcher that JM got for each of us during his recent Taiwan trip!

I have an uncle; he used to be one of my favourite uncles until he became a parent, and I got into NIE. He's got two kids, a girl of 7 and a boy of 5.

I haven't been talking much to him of late, but "stupid MOE policies", "tuition teachers not doing much", "kindergartens too much fun for kids to learn anything" and topics like such make up any one of the conversations that we have.

He's usually asking if I've heard of so-and-so policy that MOE's just come up with, fills me in with what it's all about, and then starts criticizing it as though there's really no point in carrying them out.

Only yesterday, he asked if I've heard of some MOE literacy assessment programme that his daughter's school's just introduced. I said no, and he went on to question the need for the programme, and why are they only doing it in the later part of the year, why can't they do it at the start of the new year, etc etc.

Seriously, if I knew why, I'd probably be sitting in the education minister's seat, won't I?

I replied politely (only because he's an uncle) that it could be a new policy that's only just drawn up, and of course he was unsatisfied with my answer. I'm from NIE, I'm a teacher-to-be, of course I must know what are the uses of all these stupid policies.

He goes on to complain about how poorly his girl is doing in school, only achieving 70+ instead of his expected 90+ in exams, and how he doesn't approve of his boy having "too much fun in kindergarten". He's not even in primary school, for christ's sake!

The way he speaks scares me, a lot. Am I going to deal with parents who are all like that in future?

Are they all going be so competitive (read: kiasu), constantly comparing grades of their children, questioning the teaching methods of schools and teachers, and have the final say in what should or should not be taught in schools? Are they all going to expect teachers and schools to promise something and deliver something that's 10 times better?

I am absolutely terrified by the thought of that happening.

I've always thought my Dad was bad enough (insists that I should spend all my time studying, but nice otherwise), but I think I had it much easier than the two poor kids.

Children growing up in such environments, I can predict exactly what they're going to turn out to be. They grow up feeling they're never good enough for their parents, have crushed self-esteems because they never seem to be able to live up to their parents' expectations, and have extremely competitve natures. Oh, and joyless childhoods.

I really hope my uncle will just let his two kids grow up the way they should and want to, instead of setting so many expectations for them. It gets tiring for both the kid and the parent, and too much pressure is never a good thing.

And so I turn 21

To be dead honest, it didn't feel very different from the 20th... Not that i'd have it any differently. No big party because I really suck at entertaining so many groups of people simultaneously. I chose to have dinners instead; first up the durian buffet with the primary school clique, and then with my family at Conrad. Will be having dinner with the KTOWY gang tonight, and Ham's dinner appointment should be fixed sometime soon. Is it any surprising that I'm celebrating with food? Not really hmm..

And I did something that i've always wanted to do on my 21st. I got inked; and I almost couldn't believe I was finally getting it done until the tattooist placed the stencil onto my body. It was slightly more painful when he did the outlining, and the colouring was really a lot less painful. Will post up a picture or two and talk more about it soon.

Headed down to JB for a walkabout with some of the windsurfers yesterday, and I think the place is so much more developed than i'd imagined it to be. Little wonder why so many singaporeans are flocking there every weekend for the cheap groceries and fresh seafood feasts.

ps. there's something wrong with blogger; the posting page's all jumbled up. Is it only my browser, or are you guys having the same problem too?

Awesome much?

The first one blew me away with its magnificence; the music worked too. Made me super emo and it also made me feel like jumping in for a swim, petting the whale sharks, just blow bubbles and fin all around.

The second video will surely make you smile; it's cuteness beyond words, though I don't usually listen to these kinda songs.

The First...

21 didn't feel too different; blowing out the candles.

The Primary School Clique had my first 21st birthday dinner with me on Saturday. We had the durian dinner buffet at Cafe Vic and it was great! I saved the spaces in my stomach (after breakfast) just for it, and I wish I'd saved more! I managed to trick Jon twice in the night too, while playing eating/drinking games; can't remember when was the last time anyone did that, and I couldn't stop laughing when everyone else did too.

Thank you so much for all the time and effort, I really appreciate everything very much! It's been 10 years since I first knew you guys, and who'd expect time to fly by so quickly. I'm really lucky to have every single one of you as friends and I hope we'll be laughing till we end up in tears 10 years from now. Big fat hug to the few of you!

isn't she pretty?

I got my first present this year from Doug. He's in Thailand right now, so he had it mailed to me probably a week back? I know you'll be reading this when you get back so yea, just want to let you know it's really sweet and thoughtful of you, to remember that Ariel is my favourite Disney princess and even piece a 1000-piece puzzle together for me. Thanks for that, and I really love it! Will hang it up on my wall one of these days, promise!

there you have it, the first puzzle I've ever received from anyone.

Do you have a favourite Disney princesses too?

I haven't really been able to make up my mind between Belle and Ariel; Belle wanting more than what her small town has to offer and Ariel, what the human world is all about. I love their strong (and sometimes stubborn) characters so damned much.

Someday, I'm going to get myself inked with a mermaid tatt.

Leaving.

I cannot move on until I learn to let go.

Random & Random

I polished off two little boxes of cherry tomatoes in the past two days, and I think I found the perfect healthy night-time snack. I love it when the cherry tomatoes split right in the middle as I bite into them and the slimy (for lack of a better word) contents spurt out in my mouth. Yums.

Headed down to MOF at Marina Square on Saturday after windsurfing with David and Lijun, and I ordered the sashimi bento in the picture above. I just wanted to put a picture of it because it's just so colourful! Anyway, I think it's great for lazy bums like me who sometimes find the need to cut/mix your rice and the dishes a chore. I liked it.

We were playing around with the colour swap function in my camera and we decided to make ourselves look fairer! I think David underwent the biggest colour change hur. Anyway, the macha shake in the picture is delicious! The green tea & ice-cream combination works quite well together; it doesn't end up cloyingly-sweet like most other shakes.

Two more days of lesson observations and I'm done with secondary school, hopefully!

It's getting really boring for me now because of the classes that I've been assigned to; so far a secondary four Express stream class, and a secondary five Normal Academic stream class; both preparing for O Levels and Prelims. Mostly, it's just going through comprehension passages so there's not much teaching going on. I was really looking forward to the secondary one Drama classes because I believe it'd be much more helpful and interesting, so you can probably imagine my disappointment when I learnt today that drama classes are cancelled because of social distancing. I ended up watching Coraline and Confessions of a Shopaholic in the trainee teachers' room.

Some secondary school...

2 days into my observation stint at the secondary school and everything's fine so far. The classes that I've been to are relatively more well-behaved as compared to the classes that some other trainees had (fighting in class!), and nope, no relieving of class, much to my relief.

The culture and environment is so different in a neighbourhood school as compared a SAP school; especially in disciplinary matters. More than half the school would probably have been caught for inappropriate attire if my previous discipline master saw them in their colourful headbands, ankle socks and tucked-out shirts. It's been quite an eye-opener so far.

ps. I've been having so much of those canned lychees that I almost forgot how delicious the fresh ones taste.

Colours

link

Quite interesting. But as usual, you shouldn't read too much into this sort of thing, just have fun clicking and move on. Anyway, I like how it says that "I know who I am and what I want"; I do know exactly that I don't know what I want! But I disagree with the parties thing, I'm not exactly into planning...

So what's your colour? Do share!

Friday Night!

No salsa tonight but I went skating with Siao tonight, and the most embarrassing thing happened! Hahahahah I'm not going to stop laughing at it for years, I'm sure. We had some fries from Carls Jr (I declare it my favourite fast food place for fries!), so the exercise part didn't really work.

Cleaned the car a little too. I went up all the way to the highest level of the multi-storey carpark where there were no other cars, parked right in the middle of the level and got down to work. Have you tried cleaning a car? It's a really tiring task; you need to pull out the floor mats, vacuum them, wipe the seats, the dashboard, grooves where you never knew existed...etc. There's just so much dust in all those hidden places! Good experience though, since I don't get to do this so often... and I would like to think of it as a little contribution for the family car.

I love Friday nights!

Choices we make

"So why did you go into teaching?"

This is one question that I've constantly been asked, especially when I'm meeting new people. Don't know if I've said it before, but I'm just going to share it with you guys anyhow.

To be dead honest, I never (ever) thought that I'd end up in teaching some day, back then in the CCHMS days. I would scoff at friends who liked the idea of marking tonnes of horrendously-written assignments, having to face rebellious students, having students nickname you behind your backs... the list is non-exhaustive, but I guess these people who I laughed at in the past will be laughing in my face pretty soon.

When I applied for a place in university sometime after I've graduated from TP last year, NIE was my pretty much the fifth and last choice. I'd wanted to get in NTU's maritime studies so badly because I thought it'd be pretty cool to be a ship broker few years down the road or something along that line (I wasn't even sure of what I wanted to do!), but I guess I just wasn't good enough. NIE offered me a place instead, but I wasn't too keen because of the reasons that I've listed in the previous paragraph... and students in NIE had the reputation of ending up in NIE only because their grades aren't good enough for other courses in NTU, SMU and NUS (however we want to defend ourselves, it's true to some extent). While that really may be the case for some of my school mates (and me), I've met people who have been thinking of becoming teachers since many years back; people who are in NIE because they want to be (the people I used to scoff at).

My options at that time were 1) to wait for another year before I apply for maritime studies a second time (you know how much I hate waiting, don't you?), 2) enrol at the Australian Maritime College (my parents weren't really supportive), or 3) take up NIE's offer of a free university education, receive monthly allowances for a period of two years and be guaranteed a job when I graduate. It's not hard to see which one I picked.

Fellow NIE schoolmates and classmates always have stories to tell about how they were inspired by some teachers whom they've been taught by in the past, so much so, that their lives were changed (for the better hopefully) and that works out to them aspiring to change the lives of others too. Sad to say, I've met some really nice teachers, teachers who'd go the extra mile for their students, but no one's ever left such a great impact on me that made me want to teach. I don't know how true the stories are, or are they just saying for the sake of saying, because, I'd really just stumbled onto this path.

But I'm not complaining, for making that decision to take up the offer. Everything's great so far, and I think I'm extremely happy where I am right now, having met so many nice people from school, and experienced what I've just experienced in the observations. It's not going to be a smooth ride (for sure!), I'm sure there're going to be killer papers coming up really soon, and my future kids will probably be giving a hell lot of headaches in time to come, but really, I think I'd be able to manage all that.

My life hasn't been changed by teachers or anything like that, but I do hope I'd be able to make some difference in my students' lives when I start teaching. It's going to be a fun ride, let's all hang on tight!

Teaching Observations

Third day into the whole experience thing, and so far, everything's been great. We really don't do anything much apart from observing how the teachers conduct lessons, and giggling to ourselves when the students say something funny, or when your fellow NIE schoolmate says it.

The food that's being sold in the canteen are served in really small plates and bowls, and they're all just so cute to look at. Hur. And I really enjoy the (incredibly cheap) $1.50 meals that I've been having for the past few days.

Anyway, I guess H1N1's been pretty disruptive to lessons so far. Apart from the usual twice-a-day-temperature-taking procedures, students are required to sit in columns (seating arrangement during examination periods) so social distancing is maximized (seriously, what bullshit). It's really tough to carry out group discussions with their current seating arrangements, but I guess the teachers are finding ways to work that out. And speaking of which, they have all been really helpful to the trainees; always ready to offer advice when we needed any, and it makes me feel a teeny weeny bit of guilt since I'm having trouble trying to keep myself awake in classes sometimes (some things just don't change hur... ha).

Apart from trying hard not to fall asleep in class, I've been thinking about how I'm really looking forward to teaching my very own class when the time comes. I can imagine myself standing at the front of the classroom, imparting knowledge to my students, punishing them when they make mistakes, die from suppressing laughter just because they're so damned cute sometimes... I really can do this!

ps. They look really small sitting at their desks when we walk about in the classrooms, and I feel really powerful overlooking them like that even though I'm really not teaching. Hur hur.

ohh.. why did you have to break my heart so?

and the boy goes nande nande! ha!

It's a joke.

Get out of my life already.

Is this some kind of sick joke that someone up there is playing on me?

Mental Block

Sorry for the lack of updates. I'm not feeling my blogging-self for the past few days; in fact, I even thought about stopping altogether. I've been having a lot of thoughts, thoughts that I'm unable to translate into words here. I'd really like to talk about them here, share them with you guys but I also realized that some things are just not meant to be shared so liberally on a public internet space. Not that too many people are reading, but still...

Anyway, over a week late for this but it's just going to be a few pictures of the first KTOWY overseas trip... to KL. To be exact, just 5. I'm using Picnik to resize the pictures and it only allows me 5 pictures per upload, so yeah.

KLCC, better known as the Twin Towers, or Petronas Towers?

Guess who got made up... I still cannot help but laugh out loudly (to myself when I see the individual shots)

our first ride in Genting...

the Viking, love this.

and finally, a group shot outside Golden Mile.

I'm so looking forward to the end of July.