T1 W7-8

Ok, back from another long break from blogging. Thought I'd better update before a hectic term starts soon!

Oh ya, missed out something funny about Reach Day on 19th Feb. There was this photo story competition on active aging so my CG did up something and somebody asked me how I found it when I approached them. I couldn't see it cos it was on the floor and a lot of them were crowding around it so I joked something like, "Don't worry. No matter what, you all are the best in my eyes!" A bit "rou ma" I guess hahaha.

T1 W7 (Mon) - H1 Lec was enjoyable to teach as usual. Funniest part was when I was giving the analogy about chemical equations and cooking recipes and I was sharing with them about my cooking experience with the fried rice a couple of weeks ago and how you can't just throw everything together at once but rather you need to add in certain things in a certain ratio.

I was jokingly telling them about how good the fried rice turned out and then some of them joked back, "Really meh? How you know?" Then I replied, "Cos a lot of people tried and told me that it's good! Don't believe, ask Mr Lee behind!" Then somebody joked back, "Is it cos you paid them to say that it's nice? Maybe $1? CNY Giveaway?" LOL, that was hilarious man cos they were referring to the payouts I give to students who can answer certain thinking questions in the lectures.

Tut with 10S103 was fine and I like it that quite a few of them take initiative to ask questions after the tutorials and during the lesson I can also tell that some of them do think a fair bit, which is essential for them to do well. SPA with 10S417 was painful for both I know, but I couldn't help much, save for trying to make my demo more interesting. All the SPA briefing and going through the stuff in the lab manual was never gonna be exciting and having the lab from 3.25-5pm didn't help cos they were pretty much half-dead. =s

Tue - SPA with 10S103 was a bit more lively and they were more responsive to the jokes I made and I was also suanning someone who stood on support of a wooden lab chair and was at the same height as someone else. =p

Wed - Bad day as I was sick with a bad sore throat and decided I better get an MC since I'm only missing 1 tutorial period cos there were more important things that I had to handle personally on Thu and Fri.

Thu - Tut with 10S417 was challenging partly cos they are extremely quiet, to the point that nobody answers even basic questions. Too quiet for my liking and my concern is many are just going through the lesson without really understanding what's been covered. There was once when I did get an answer to one of my questions which worried me and I didn't know what to make of it. But anyway on hindsight I felt that I should've been more encouraging and I apologised to the person just in case the person felt disheartened. After all, at least an attempt was made! Sometimes I do behave like a typical INTJ person but at least after reflection I am clear about what's do be done.

The board games elective for the JC2s that I conducted with my friend was fun! Enjoyed teaching the kids board games and thankfully it was quite stress-free after all my preparations of teaching materials and the games. The MBTI profiling for JC1s was also quite interesting and I enjoyed my colleague's explanation as well as examples of his friends who are of other profiles. Sometimes ya I admit I seem cold and aloof but it's true that often I'm deep in thought and in my own world so that's why I don't seem warm, esp to strangers. =p

Also conducted part of our Science Fiesta workshop and I was doing some electrochemistry stuff again which I quite enjoy and I felt that some parts of the experiment can be used to teach electrochem actually cos otherwise it's often very abstract to students. Personally I was quite confused about electrochemistry as a student and initially I was also not very comfortable with teaching (apparently so do many others at the start) that cos the understanding is not complete though you know how to go about solving questions, esp the standard ones.

Fri - H1 Lec was ok, gave a personal example about dilution cos I was sharing with the students about this mouth gargle that I was given and that was supposed to be diluted so the concept of dilution is very common in our daily lives. Of course another obvious example which students could point out was the preparation of drinks from the concentrated syrup. Chem is so instinctive and comes naturally! =p Also did a live demo of titration to help the H1 students appreciate the process since they don't have lab lessons though I'm trying to think about incorporating lab sessions if time permits and where applicable.

Had our Science Fiesta finale and I really enjoyed watching the "egg-cite" competition cos it was so interesting to see the various segments and those who participated were very enthu about it so it was v fun indeed. Basically apart from the usual egg-drop where students must try to prevent the egg from being broken after a 3-storey fall using various materials, they then had to navigate the egg in a carrier via the flying fox method to another location, drop the egg by releasing it from the carrier, then navigate the egg in another carrier through this zig-zag course in the pool and finally place in on top of a high tower. I was absolutely intrigued by some of the designs!

Went to Miss U Cafe for dinner with 2 friends and it was shiok cos we just chilled out on the couches there and had a good dinner and somehow we ended up talking about relationship matters, which was interesting. There's still much for me to learn about the complexities of the female mind despite my past experiences hahaha. But ya, that's why I prefer my simple life now rather than make things so complicated with relationships unless the right person comes along. =)

Sat - Parents' Orientation Session and we came to school for Ms Lai's speech as usual before I met up with some of the parents, which was good in order for me to touch base with them early.

Sun - Met with YH, Nina, HX, Sup, and Samantha (a newcomer to our outings!) to celebrate YH's birthday and we ended up at Soup Restaurant cos I thought it'd be good to have something healthy and I kinda missed eating the Samsui chicken. Didn't realise that the vegetables there were not suitable for our star though cos apparently they were all cooked with some kind of meat or oyster sauce, which is also not allowed, to my surprise. So poor YH had to make do with eating dessert and birthday cake - my bad, sorry! We'll eat something nice next time! Anyway talking about the birthday cake, the waitress was like soooooo NOT discrete can... Ask us so openly whether we want to serve the cake already and we were so stunned we just mumbled yes and laughed. Then later on she asked about other stuff about the cake. =p

T1 W8 (Mon) - Had Tut with both my H2 classes and again 10S103 was a lot more responsive to some of the jokes I made during the SPA briefing in an attempt to liven things up, such as the medical exemptions and 'T' grade. I was also joking with them about how they found my "sister" cos my friend who covered for me last Wed also shared the same surname then they were laughing about it. They wanted me to go through everything with them again cos they said the pace was too fast then I joked, "You sure? Or are you just delaying time? Cos seems like it was too easy for you that's why the teacher went faster. I can do it again but that means I may have to take up your self-study period later." Then suddenly a lot of people seemed to be enlightened and some gave this sheepish grin. Quite a funny bunch of people and I see a lot of potential in them so hopefully they will give in their best also. Tut with 10S417 was again very tiring though I saw some very small improvements in their response so I need to go reflect again on what can I do to excite them.

Had my first experience of conducting a Council Nominee Interview and it was quite fun! Having been through two interviews before in my life which were fairly stressful, it was good to be able to be on the other side to give others stress haha =p No lah, I'm a nice interviewer who doesn't make things difficult for others and I'm just looking for honest responses which showcase the nominees' inner thoughts and behaviour. We were particularly impressed with one of the nominees and personally I was amazed by that nominee's ability to handle all kinds of questions in a very mature way. That's the kind of people I'm looking forward to work with in Council!

Wed - Tut with 10S103 and I went in with something to entertain them. I just learnt that morning that I would have extra tutorial periods since our lab periods next week were converted to tutorials so I could actually go through the MCQ Quiz that I gave them yesterday. So I went into class with a poker face and asked them, "Class, I have good news and bad news. What do you want to hear first?" More seemed to want to hear the bad news so I said, "The bad news is... Today we will NOT be going through redox tutorial. Now I know this is bad news because after yesterday's tutorial on redox I know you all have prepared the next few questions and are eager and excited to learn about redox but I'm sorry to have to disappoint you." Then some of them started to cheer, which I kinda suspected cos they have a chem test on Thu on mole concept so I also had doubts they would've prepared a lot cos there were quite a few difficult questions that they needed more time after the hints I gave ytd. Then I told them the good news is that I would go through the MCQ Quiz I gave them ytd. After a short pause, somebody asked, "Isn't that 2 pieces of good news?" And I was like, "Duh? I would think so!" Then somebody asked, "So there's no bad news at all lah?" And I'm like, "Yes, there isn't. I just said that cos I wanted to joke with you all only." So funny leh, some of their reaction. But quite cute lah =p

Thu - Had our common test and Tut with 10S417 was better, at least I felt there was more response and thinking! Also had time for a little bit of bantering cos I was randomly calling out 6 index numbers of the students as I wanted people to write their answers on the board so after I called the numbers I asked them if they actually knew their numbers, which apparently they didn't know. So I started calling out the names of those 6 students and they were surprised. "You mean you know all our index numbers?", they asked. And I'm like, "Like, yeah!" Then I started calling each student and their index number and they were like soooo amazed it was soooo funny. They were like, "How do you do that?" And I said, "I've been taking your attendance for so long already, it's strange if I don't remember!" Quite strange but at least it's one of the rare moments I see them getting all hyped up about something so that's good to see. =)

Had our 2009 JC2 Chem team dinner at Rice Table at International Building and before that I made a trip down with my friend to the famous temple (I think it's called "Si Ma Lu Guang Yin Miao") to pray for the students cos the A Level results were due the next day and I felt uneasy about things. Funny thing was that we met YH and her mum and there and apparently YH also saw HX there earlier. Talk about "ling shi bao fo jiao" indeed =p

Anyway dinner was great and we had a good time talking about stuff. The dinner was really to commemorate all our efforts last year which I think was astounding - the number of things we did and hours we spent and I think in a way we were concerned where to go next if things didn't turn out well so we were keeping our fingers crossed.

Fri - Release of the A Level results and it was yet another anxious morning waiting for the results to come out. When it did we were soooo excited and also delighted that the results were beyond our wildest imagination. At last all our time and effort seemed to have paid off big time. On a personal note, there were some disappointing results but overall the results were much better than I had hoped for and I won't let those dampen the celebratory mood. No doubt there were the tears of joy and sadness as I have been accustomed to seeing so it was really about helping people to handle their emotions and see how things go from here.

Went out for dinner at Swensen's with YH, SM, SX, and Hazel (squeezed into a cab to get there and it was quite funny) to catch up and enjoyed the Earthquake though it was sinful! =p

Sat - Our annual Road Race and again I thought about not running and again I ended up running haha but it felt good after that as usual. Went out for lunch after that with about half my CG for some class bonding, which I really felt was necessary cos over the years I've seen the importance of class spirit in building up a good culture of studying and doing well. Tried to get to know them better and went to jalan a bit around Tamp One before going down to my friend's place for a little MJ. Sad to say, I had a small loss, despite the thrill of making my first ever "Thirteen Unique Wonders" (Shi San Yao).

Ok, that's it for now. Sleepy! Will try to update soon (I hope)!

CNY; MJC REACH Day; LAN Outing; 08S201 PAE Outing

Been a bit lazy to blog again haha cos nowadays weekdays tend to be v busy so weekends I just feel like resting. But well, it's now the hols so time for updates!

T1 W6 (Mon) - CNY was not spectacular. Just the usual going to my gran's place, followed by an aunt's place and then an uncle's place. Watched a lot of people playing blackjack but I'm not a fan of that so I didn't play. I just don't find it fun to play a game that's largely based on luck. For all the argument that you can count the cards and playing based on probability, you're still pretty screwed up if the cards are against you cos you're forced to draw cards. For poker I can still agree that there's a fair element of skill in terms of knowing when to follow, raising stakes and the psychological games that is involved. But even then I wouldn't be playing poker at low stakes since all those skills become irrelevant - nobody is going to pull out of a show hand if there are just a few dollars at stake.

Tue - Had our chem dept gathering at a friend's place. Played Wii and it was fun, esp when I won at Wii Tennis and Raving Rabbids. During lunch, I was eating prawns and as I was removing the shell of a particularly bouncy prawn, it sprung out of my hand and landed onto my white bermudas - not a pretty sight. So anyway I was forced to change into a pair of shorts, which looked weird esp when I went to send ZY off at the airport at night. Told her I would wear an outfit that was completely contributed by her (my specs, t-shirt, berms, and shoes) so as to commemorate her as my fashion consultant before she flew off to study in Aus so it was a pity that the accident happened haha.

Wed - Finally the start of tutorials and was busy marking mole concept tutorials. Aimed to start this new cycle on a very positive note so I recorded all my comments for their tut and also made those who had problems see me for my "pep talk" so that I can show them I mean business.

Thu - Conducted my first Chrystal lesson regarding our personal values and I thought the activity was quite interesting and it was also interesting for me to relook at the 5 most important values that I wrote down in my Chrystal journal during the workshop that we had, I think, 2 years ago.

Interesting because when I first looked at some of the values as I skimmed through the list, I thought they would be amongst my 5 values but apparently they weren't. So anyway, my 5 values are: Happiness, Strength, Love, Health, Service. As I showed my class the values as well as my reasons for choosing them, I remembered why I do some of the things I do. For example, I don't like to scold students cos I like to be happy and scolding generates a lot of unhappiness for everyone involved. I will still do it if the need arises but as far as possible I try to avoid.

Anyway, most of them had very typical values amongst their 5, which include family, friends, health and happiness and they asked me why I didn't put family inside. I just told them that different people face different situations and anyway in a way love is quite all-encompassing and it can include family and friends so it's not like I totally don't value my family. All-in-all, I quite enjoyed the session and sharing with the students so that we get to know each other better. =)

Fri - MJC REACH Day and I went down to school for Kapap as we set a record in the Singapore Book of Records for, I think, the most number of people performing self-defence. We then went off for lunch at Liang Court where we had Jap food at this place called Marutama Ramen Restaurant. Tried their zhao pai Marutama ramen and it was pretty good but not worth the price imho so don't think I'll be going there again esp since there are so many good places with Jap food.

We went down to St. Hilda's Community Services in the afternoon for our CIP and taught the elderly there some Kapap moves, played Bingo and sang CNY songs. Quite meaningful and it felt better than our trip to All Saints' Home two years ago cos they were more appreciative so it felt good.

Had dept dinner at Parkway Parade's Swensen's and I enjoyed my Wagyu beef fried rice and malted milk shake, which was extremely sinful. Went for karaoke after that and nowadays it seems less enjoyable than our previous sessions. One thing for me is that I don't like to listen to the same songs being repeated so I tend to get bored nowadays and I prefer trying out new songs.

Sat - LAN outing with Jon, ZT, and Galvyn and lunch at Aji-Tei at PS was pretty decent. Had a blast playing L4D with them and it was insane. We played through all 5 scenarios in the campaign and it was super fun as we hacked and shot 10000+ zombies (serious, not exaggerating) over the 7 hours. That's the longest time I've played LAN but I really enjoyed it since we've not done that for a long time and also cos I like the team play elements of the game, esp during the final missions of each scenario.

Sun - Met up with some of my ex-students from 08S201 (PAE) and had dinner at Just Acia which was unbelievably cheap. They have this offer (I think till end of May this year) where you can have a 1-for-1 deal for some set meals and free flow of drinks and ice-cream. So I paid just $4.35 which is like dirt cheap for all the food. Highly recommended!

We headed off to play pool after that and it was very enjoyable also. Played pretty decently and the funny part was when I ended up coaching some of them at a separate table that was closed. They were joking that I was like conducting SRP for pool and I was very structured in my teaching as I went through the basic concepts haha. Anyway I'm not great in pool but I just like to share my knowledge and experience so I enjoyed teaching them.

K, that's it for now. Very tired actually though I took an evening nap but I promised someone I'd blog tonight so here it is! Haha, shall update more tmr =)