I have many things to say, yet I can't find the time to say them.
Life has become such a pain, yet I still have to persevere, if not for myself, then for others.
I'm tired of this kind of life I'm living, guess it's time for me to move on.
But for now I have to carry on and try to remain strong.
How poetic of me. Updates when I can find time.
Chemistry Brothers concert during JC2 lunchtime this Thu (23rd Apr) at 2pm. Come down and support us! =)
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Term 2 Weeks 1 and 2
Very drained in recent weeks so I'm looking forward to the shorter week this week, which hopefully I can get more rest.
Week 1 - March Block Tests
Mon - Settled last minute admin matters such as invigilation schedule for Tue's exam then realised there was one typo that was unchanged in the MCQ paper and in the end I got some of our team to help out in the exam store to manually change the error cos it was easier than to print an errata page and slipping it with the MCQ paper on the day itself.
It was super funny cos some of them joked that they got tricked into helping out. Anyway we assigned one "flipper" to flip the pages to the correct one so that we could just focus on changing the error. Then there was only one chair in the room so we were joking who should take the seat. I said the flipper shouldn't take it cos he's only flipping , which is not taxing whereas we need to sit so that we could write more quickly then the flipper said it is taxing and he still needs to bend to flip the papers. Somebody commented that we were having fun during painful times ("ku zhong zuo le") haha.
Towards the end, there was this moment where I had about 3 more scripts left then the flipper asked if there was any more scripts to flip and I said I had 3 and he joked, "3 only? You can flip them yourself!" And I said something like, "Aiyah, help lah, I'm harnessing the power of the team!" And he joked, "You're like squeezing every drop out of us!" All of us were laughing a lot. Anyway, we have good team dynamics so we all know we're just joking with each other. =)
Went down to Parkway Parade in the evening cos I decided it was time to get a haircut and if I didn't go today then I would not be able to find time this term, which looks like the case at the moment.
Tue - Chem MBT and as the students walked into the hall, some of them complained to me about the glaring sunlight and I joked, "Like that then can free radical sub mah!" Anyway, I never understood why students are still reading as they enter the exam venue. It will usually only stress you out and it's unlikely that the little bit that you read will come out. By exam time it should be the consolidation stage as you recall what you learnt, keep yourself fresh and get mentally prepared for the paper.
Quite funny at the end of the exam when I carried all the section A answers, which was a huge pile, cos I didn't want to make another trip then chionged my way out of the centre of the hall, much to the amusement of the students, esp those from my classes who were sitting in the middle rows.
Had a quick lunch with the team then it was 5 hours of intensive marking session from 12.15pm onwards followed by scanning of MCQ answers...
Thu - Corrections session and I was only afforded a little bit of time at the end to go through a few parts of a question and I chided LT4, esp. the students who haven't really seem to tried hard enough to understand the concepts and remember the common mistakes to avoid (e.g. phenols don't react with carboxylic acids) cos when I mark the mechanisms I came across a lot of basic mistakes which showed they didn't understand anything (e.g. producing electrophile NO2-, don't know when there's a dipole or charge, arrows pointing from e- poor to e- rich regions, don't know where the arrow starts from or ends at) then I told them the Robin Hood analogy I told my classes when I teach and they laughed and I got them to promise me that they will never make the mistake of drawing the arrows wrongly. Hopefully they stick to their promise...
Fri - Some of us ordered Mac's for lunch and there was a super funny moment cos 2 of the team was at the H1 lecture corrections so we called X and told X to ask Y (at a convenient time) whether Y wanted to have Mac's or not. It turned out that while waiting for the students to write down the corrections, X approached Y to point out a typo in the answers, then after Y told the students about it, X wanted to carry on to ask about the ordering of food but Y had the microphone in between them so X covered the microphone and asked Y with a serious face, "Eh, you want to order Mac's or not?" LOLOL. Super funny and I can imagine the scene... =P
Sat - SRP again and while waiting for it to finish I was marking some of the scripts cos I was too busy with various admin matters during the week (e.g. doing the corrections slides) to finish earlier. In fact I had only marked about half the cohort up to that point of time! Anyway, the tutors said I looked better after I got my hair cut and suggested to style my hair, which I did in the staff room, much to their laughter when they saw me after the 2nd session.
Took a break from work when I went out with the SRP tutors to Changi Airport for lunch at Popeye's! My first time eating there and the food was pretty good. I liked the chicken and mash potato! Somehow they talked about forming a band and they even came up with various possible band names beforehand, such as "SRP" (how original is that? LOL), "The Attitude Trios" (LOLOL again), and Y & H (supposed to stand for Young & Hip). Then they asked, "Mr Lau, you want to join our band?" Hahaha, super funny question. Anyway, I said maybe and then we could form the SRP Quartet, which led me to think of another possible name for the band - "SRPQ"! Super crappy man.
Anyway, after lunch we went for a short walk around the airport to look at the planes taking off and took the skytrain from T1 to T3 to walk about the new terminal and one of them asked if I wanted to join them on a Taiwan trip in June, which I agreed, so long as it doesn't clash with anything else, such as the originally planned trip to Hong Kong with my colleagues. Somebody said we could take the pics for our band album there, hahahaha.
Went back to school after the lunch break to mark again and carried about 10 classes worth of scripts home, thankfully with the help of a colleague who drove and stays near Boon Keng so I got a lift. Had dinner, rested a while and I conked out at 11pm, and woke up at almost 10am the next day before spending practically the whole of Sun marking the MBT papers.
Week 2
MBT results for myself were disappointing and I expected much more, esp. after all that I've given last term. There were a mix of mainly negative emotions apart from disappointment, such as worry (for those who seem to have tried but still can't achieve decent enough results yet), anger (for those who obviously have not studied hard enough cos I know they can do much better), and stress.
SPA lessons were very tiring cos it was the first session so going through all the criterion, tables, etc. took me about an hour plus. Here and there there were some funny moments such as the students laughing at my drawing of boiling tubes and delivery tube and some toilet jokes about the observations (pungent gas evolved). =p
Wed - April's Fools Day and I didn't have any lessons so nobody really had a chance to play jokes on me. But anyway it was a very bad day for me on a personal note cos of 2 occasions when I got chided. Though I was kinda at fault, but I felt a great sense of injustice regarding how the blame got to me. But ok lah, it's over and kinda cleared things up so I shall just try and forget about it.
Kinda flared up during my CCA cos the kids were so laidback even though I was trying to get them started on things and I scolded them, esp. the EXCO who should have more initiative in helping me out.
Fri - Had our celebratory dinner for the Science Dept at Eatzi at Eastpoint Mall and it was quite nice!
Sat - First half of SRP ended and I got the students to do some surveys and the tutors were super funny cos I told the students that they could comment on their tutors if they wished to so some of the survey slips had nice comments then they were guessing which of them were referring to which tutors. Had lunch with the tutors at White Sand's Lerk Thai and the food was ok lah but the illustrations were really deceiving cos the portions were smaller than they looked, though it was still filling for me...
Sun - Yet another weekend seems to have passed too quickly for me and I think it's v bad for my health cos my sleeping hours are v irregular and I feel tired practically everyday. Hope things get better soon... Back to work!
Week 1 - March Block Tests
Mon - Settled last minute admin matters such as invigilation schedule for Tue's exam then realised there was one typo that was unchanged in the MCQ paper and in the end I got some of our team to help out in the exam store to manually change the error cos it was easier than to print an errata page and slipping it with the MCQ paper on the day itself.
It was super funny cos some of them joked that they got tricked into helping out. Anyway we assigned one "flipper" to flip the pages to the correct one so that we could just focus on changing the error. Then there was only one chair in the room so we were joking who should take the seat. I said the flipper shouldn't take it cos he's only flipping , which is not taxing whereas we need to sit so that we could write more quickly then the flipper said it is taxing and he still needs to bend to flip the papers. Somebody commented that we were having fun during painful times ("ku zhong zuo le") haha.
Towards the end, there was this moment where I had about 3 more scripts left then the flipper asked if there was any more scripts to flip and I said I had 3 and he joked, "3 only? You can flip them yourself!" And I said something like, "Aiyah, help lah, I'm harnessing the power of the team!" And he joked, "You're like squeezing every drop out of us!" All of us were laughing a lot. Anyway, we have good team dynamics so we all know we're just joking with each other. =)
Went down to Parkway Parade in the evening cos I decided it was time to get a haircut and if I didn't go today then I would not be able to find time this term, which looks like the case at the moment.
Tue - Chem MBT and as the students walked into the hall, some of them complained to me about the glaring sunlight and I joked, "Like that then can free radical sub mah!" Anyway, I never understood why students are still reading as they enter the exam venue. It will usually only stress you out and it's unlikely that the little bit that you read will come out. By exam time it should be the consolidation stage as you recall what you learnt, keep yourself fresh and get mentally prepared for the paper.
Quite funny at the end of the exam when I carried all the section A answers, which was a huge pile, cos I didn't want to make another trip then chionged my way out of the centre of the hall, much to the amusement of the students, esp those from my classes who were sitting in the middle rows.
Had a quick lunch with the team then it was 5 hours of intensive marking session from 12.15pm onwards followed by scanning of MCQ answers...
Thu - Corrections session and I was only afforded a little bit of time at the end to go through a few parts of a question and I chided LT4, esp. the students who haven't really seem to tried hard enough to understand the concepts and remember the common mistakes to avoid (e.g. phenols don't react with carboxylic acids) cos when I mark the mechanisms I came across a lot of basic mistakes which showed they didn't understand anything (e.g. producing electrophile NO2-, don't know when there's a dipole or charge, arrows pointing from e- poor to e- rich regions, don't know where the arrow starts from or ends at) then I told them the Robin Hood analogy I told my classes when I teach and they laughed and I got them to promise me that they will never make the mistake of drawing the arrows wrongly. Hopefully they stick to their promise...
Fri - Some of us ordered Mac's for lunch and there was a super funny moment cos 2 of the team was at the H1 lecture corrections so we called X and told X to ask Y (at a convenient time) whether Y wanted to have Mac's or not. It turned out that while waiting for the students to write down the corrections, X approached Y to point out a typo in the answers, then after Y told the students about it, X wanted to carry on to ask about the ordering of food but Y had the microphone in between them so X covered the microphone and asked Y with a serious face, "Eh, you want to order Mac's or not?" LOLOL. Super funny and I can imagine the scene... =P
Sat - SRP again and while waiting for it to finish I was marking some of the scripts cos I was too busy with various admin matters during the week (e.g. doing the corrections slides) to finish earlier. In fact I had only marked about half the cohort up to that point of time! Anyway, the tutors said I looked better after I got my hair cut and suggested to style my hair, which I did in the staff room, much to their laughter when they saw me after the 2nd session.
Took a break from work when I went out with the SRP tutors to Changi Airport for lunch at Popeye's! My first time eating there and the food was pretty good. I liked the chicken and mash potato! Somehow they talked about forming a band and they even came up with various possible band names beforehand, such as "SRP" (how original is that? LOL), "The Attitude Trios" (LOLOL again), and Y & H (supposed to stand for Young & Hip). Then they asked, "Mr Lau, you want to join our band?" Hahaha, super funny question. Anyway, I said maybe and then we could form the SRP Quartet, which led me to think of another possible name for the band - "SRPQ"! Super crappy man.
Anyway, after lunch we went for a short walk around the airport to look at the planes taking off and took the skytrain from T1 to T3 to walk about the new terminal and one of them asked if I wanted to join them on a Taiwan trip in June, which I agreed, so long as it doesn't clash with anything else, such as the originally planned trip to Hong Kong with my colleagues. Somebody said we could take the pics for our band album there, hahahaha.
Went back to school after the lunch break to mark again and carried about 10 classes worth of scripts home, thankfully with the help of a colleague who drove and stays near Boon Keng so I got a lift. Had dinner, rested a while and I conked out at 11pm, and woke up at almost 10am the next day before spending practically the whole of Sun marking the MBT papers.
Week 2
MBT results for myself were disappointing and I expected much more, esp. after all that I've given last term. There were a mix of mainly negative emotions apart from disappointment, such as worry (for those who seem to have tried but still can't achieve decent enough results yet), anger (for those who obviously have not studied hard enough cos I know they can do much better), and stress.
SPA lessons were very tiring cos it was the first session so going through all the criterion, tables, etc. took me about an hour plus. Here and there there were some funny moments such as the students laughing at my drawing of boiling tubes and delivery tube and some toilet jokes about the observations (pungent gas evolved). =p
Wed - April's Fools Day and I didn't have any lessons so nobody really had a chance to play jokes on me. But anyway it was a very bad day for me on a personal note cos of 2 occasions when I got chided. Though I was kinda at fault, but I felt a great sense of injustice regarding how the blame got to me. But ok lah, it's over and kinda cleared things up so I shall just try and forget about it.
Kinda flared up during my CCA cos the kids were so laidback even though I was trying to get them started on things and I scolded them, esp. the EXCO who should have more initiative in helping me out.
Fri - Had our celebratory dinner for the Science Dept at Eatzi at Eastpoint Mall and it was quite nice!
Sat - First half of SRP ended and I got the students to do some surveys and the tutors were super funny cos I told the students that they could comment on their tutors if they wished to so some of the survey slips had nice comments then they were guessing which of them were referring to which tutors. Had lunch with the tutors at White Sand's Lerk Thai and the food was ok lah but the illustrations were really deceiving cos the portions were smaller than they looked, though it was still filling for me...
Sun - Yet another weekend seems to have passed too quickly for me and I think it's v bad for my health cos my sleeping hours are v irregular and I feel tired practically everyday. Hope things get better soon... Back to work!
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