Penang Trip from 17th to 21st Jun!

Today's session of the course was on overview of curriculum development and innovation from the 1990's to the present, case studies of other education systems, and trends and developments in curriculum, pedagogy and assessment and policy issues. Yes, it's pretty heavy stuff and the amount of readings was pretty disgusting =p

But it was interesting to know about the various changes in curricula and what brought about those changes so at least the readings were of some interest though reading the education systems of HK and Finland was pretty dry stuff for me... =s

Anyway, went to Penang for a short holiday with some of my friends and it was a relaxing and simple but fun trip! Shopped like no tomorrow (spent $700+ on shopping which is almost double that of what I paid for my flight tickets AND accommodation) Summary of events:

17th - had late dinner at Waraku (the fried rice was terrible!) before flying off at 10.40pm. Landed in Penang and around midnight then we got a cab to Trader's Hotel which was opposite some shady looking place called "Ye Shang Hai" haha. Joked about going in there but we never did. The hotel was not bad and the rooms were nice!

18th - Woke up and started our exploration around the hotel by trying to find some of the places mentioned in their "Penang Food Trail" brochures. Ended up with a simple breakfast at some coffeeshop and had their local omelet, roti pizza and chicken murtabak. Their drinks were super sweet though (some of them were cringing as they drank their coffee/tea and my bandung was pretty sweet also), and apparently it was a theme that recurred during our trip so those planning to go there might want to ask them to put less sugar =)

Then we walked around to find a bus that would take us to this temple called "Kek Lok Si" (Temple of Supreme Bliss) which is apparently (based on Wikipedia) the largest Buddhist temple in Southeast Asia. Finding the bus stop was a pain cos sometimes it was not obvious at all! One of our friends asked some people who were standing along the road where the bus stop was and then they pointed out that the place they were at was indeed the bus stop and we were like, "How do you know?" Then they pointed out this sign on the wall which was sooooo NOT eye-catching (it's like a grey sign on a grey wall) and there were no shelter or bus guides so it's just like some random spot on the road!

Anyway, we managed to catch a bus quickly and it was cheap (2RM for pretty much the whole trip) and the bus was pretty similar to ours except that the seats had no cushion. After we alighted, we took a 15 min walk to the place and climbed up quite a fair bit of the slope but it was a pretty nice temple and we took some nice photos and also took the ride up the inclined lift to see the really large Kuan Yin statue. Had muah chee along the way and after that we had lunch at a coffeeshop where we had coconut and prawn mee and then gelato at this place called Maxim's. Bought a cheeky t-shirt there also and even though it was pretty cheap, about $6-7, but I think I was still "chopped" and probably the price was closer to $3-4.

After that we made our way to Gurney Plaza (2nd largest shopping mall in Penang) and initially we took a bus with plans to switch to another bus but it was sooooo slow we switched to a cab and it was definitely worth it. Btw, the cabs are all fixed price (no meter) and esp since we travelled in a group of 4 it was very economical for us to travel by cabs and saved a lot of time. Anyway Gurney Plaza was the place where I started my 1st shopping spree - (1) a pair of shiny, grey working shoes (2) a dress shirt (3) a casual shirt + a t-shirt (4) a pair of berms + a t-shirt (5) a sweater + a dress shirt + a pair of jeans + a t-shirt.

Then we had dinner at the Gurney Drive Food Market where we had wanton mee, shrimp dumplings soup, popiah, oyster omelet, sting ray, and kang kong with cuttlefish. After that we kinda split up with 1 going shopping then 3 of us going back to the hotel where I watched the World Cup before we went for supper at New Lane and had satay, fried chicken wings, char kway teow and chendol. Sinful!

19th (my birthday!) - went to Zim Sum Restaurant for dim sum and it was great! Had a wide variety of food (I think more than 10 different types such as egg tarts, yam balls, chee cheong fun, cha siew bun, prawn fritters, wanton soup, century egg porridge, sliced fish porridge, siew mai, ha kow, and others) and all that at a grand cost of ....... 8RM each! (that's like less than $4) Awesome! =D

After that we went to Queensbay Mall (largest shopping mall in Penang) and it was at a very nice area where I went on my 2nd shopping spree - (1) a dress/casual shirt (2) 2 t-shirts (3) a dress shirt from Raoul (wanted more cos they had really nice designs but sadly didn't have my size) (4) a pair of black working shoes. Had lunch at this Jap place called Azuma and it served really great food! Had spicy fried soft shell crab, grilled beef wrapped around enoki mushrooms, scallops and grilled tuna - yummy!

Then we headed to our next hotel, which was Flamingo By The Beach. Watched a bit of World Cup before heading to the Hard Rock Cafe there at Hard Rock Hotel (haha what an unimaginative name) where we had some simple fare like fried potato skin and a chicken salad cos we were pretty full. My friend's told the people there that it was my birthday so it ended up with a celebration where the live band sang the birthday song and I was asked to blow out the candle as the waitress held the cake far from me haha.

20th - had breakfast at our hotel and there was nothing inspiring cos it was quite a standard continental breakfast but the standards were pretty low =p then we retired to our room to chill and ended up playing mahjong (using cards that I bought in Japan) and it was super funny but I won't elaborate here. Had their buffet lunch there and it was pretty reasonable - only 25RM for a very wide spread of food - shiok!

Chilled in the room again before going for a swim and then went to try parasailing which was soooo cool! The only bad part was that it was very painful for me apparently cos I didn't know how to adjust the harness properly but had a great view up there and it was very cooling also. For those who don't know, parasailing involves you being tied to a parachute and then a ski boat pulls you so that you'll fly up (need to do some other stuff like running and lifting your hands up - some physics stuff).

Went out for dinner and we took a long walk (unintentionally) to this food centre called Viva and again we had another feast and I had my favourite Yang Zhou fried rice and we had fried chicken wing, oyster omelet, satay, sting ray, and Thai coconut - another sinful meal! Went back by cab and watched World Cup again before sleeping cos we were so full!

21st - same hotel breakfast again then chilled before going to Island Plaza which was pretty pathetic cos it was quite devoid of people and many shops were not opened. But still managed to buy a dress shirt there in that little bit of time that we were there before meeting up with this cab driver whom our friend got acquainted with earlier and he took us to buy some local food like the Ghee Hiang tau sar piah (there's another one with similar name which is also supposed to be really nice) and other local snacks. Brought us to have sea food dinner and it was a great last meal in penang - chilli crab, mantis shrimp (very interesting species - first time that I ate it) and some species of garoupa.

So that's it for my Penang trip - very relaxing with a lot of good shopping and good food! =D

End of Jun holidays! =(

K, 2 months since my last post! Term time gets too tiring and just wanna chill during hols hence my delayed updates. Kinda bad considering one of my resolutions was not to procrastinate! =( Anyway England is out at last after a dismal performance and just as well. Hope Brazil and Portugal go out also after I wasted a good Fri night with my army friends at Chijmes watching the most boring soccer match in my life!

Quick update - went to Penang for a short trip from 17th to 21st (which was during my bday also) - details in next post. Been attending this course since Tues (22nd) and lasts till this Fri so a really tragic end to my holidays. T_T Course has been fairly interesting though, except maybe for Tues' session which was on economics (rethinking singapore's economic growth strategies, fiscal policies), singapore's social challenges and social safety nets, racial and religious harmony in Singapore.

Wed - Learning Journey to Internal Security Department (ISD) Heritage Centre was very interesting! It was certainly an eye-opener to see/listen to some of the stuff on terrorism (all the various plots and attempts) and my favourite part was on espionage and finding out all the interesting cases that actually took place in Singapore! Always thought that such stuff was all in the movies but actually it's very real and the videos and stories of espionage were fascinating, likewise the cool design of the venue - the presenter opened up a secret room by twisting the air-con remote on the wall - how cool is that! =P

Went to SMU after that (which is where the rest of my course is held at) to listen to lectures on overview of security in Singapore. Very entertaining presenter which made an otherwise very dry topic more bearable.

Watched Glee at night and I love the show! It's sooooo funny and I love it cos it's about teaching, great singing and dancing - things that I enjoy doing and watching! =D

Thu - Today we went into Strategic Overview of Education Issues and it was interesting. My favourite part was the debate on an educational issue about a fictitious scenario ("All primary schools should go into single session immediately starting from 9am and ending at 5pm") which raised up a lot of interesting points and gave a lot of food for thought. Came up with an interesting argument/analogy regarding children playing in school and outside relating animals in zoos and in the open which entertained the groups. The debaters were also pretty funny so it was an enjoyable discussion! =)

Fri - Today we went into Educational Leadership and again it was another interesting day with activities to help us suss out the learning points from various case studies involving some of the principals and the issues they face as well as the decisions they made.

After that I went to ArtFriend to buy some stuff to make for the kids (wanted to make prizes for those who topped the CTs and also in preparation for those who top the MYE) before meeting my army friends at Chijmes to have dinner and watch the Brazil-Portugal match. Ended up at La Viva, some Spanish restaurant there and spent quite a bit there. Had 2 mocktails, 2 dishes (codfish - one of my fav - and seafood stew) and some finger food during the match which was BORING! Service wasn't great and we had to wait quite a while before we were served esp when we asked for ice water =( Food was just ok lah. Anyway, good to catch up with them since I've not met them after one of them flew to Australia to study Law and one of them got married recently so was asking him about his married life haha.

Sat - back to school for consultation with H1/H2 kids and spent a good 5.5 hours teaching. Draining but quite fun also. Sometimes you wonder what they've been doing when they ask some of the most basic questions but it always feels good when you see the kids being enlightened at the end of the day. Hopefully they can translate their learning into results though. But you can tell from the kind of questions asked whether they can make it for MYE already or not and I think there's prob a lot of work to do after MYE! =s

Had a quick lunch before going back home to rest and then going out again for dinner to celebrate my birthday (belated) as well as going for karoke at night. =)

Sun - Gymmed as usual but we had LJ along this time since he's back for holiday from Australia. Hilarious to hear him moan as he went through all the exercises. Funniest part was prob at the end when we were doing abs and we started out with crunches. At about 20 I told LJ we normally do to 100 and he burst out laughing cos it was so ridiculously painful haha. Spent a much longer time in gym before having lunch with Jon and treated him cos he helped train me to pass my IPPT (yes, I passed my last window!). Then I went to buy Toto for prob the 1st time in my life (can't recall buying before) cos Jon said it's $5.5m draw tmr so just thought I'd try my luck with $2 haha.

Got home and ended up napping till almost evening then had dinner and tried to do some work. Tonnes of stuff for me to do and I still have to go through the readings for my course tmr - xian! Oh well, better get back to them. Try to update tmr night!