Toy Story 3; Course updates for Tue to Thu

Just watched Toy Story 3 last night with the crappy boys (Jon and co.) and it was really enjoyable! Laughed for at least 50% of the movie I think (1 h 45 min show) and I recommend everyone to watch it - MUST WATCH! So funny and prob the best movie I've ever watched =D

Liju was sooo funny cos he was complaining that he couldn't get his popcorn (which was the reason why we went to Cathay from PS) and DS was sharing with me that apparently I'm a legend cos he met some ex-MJC students taking the same course as him in poly and the first they asked him was if they knew me. Hahaha, so strange but flattering... =P

Dinner was funny also cos I was giving them some rebus puzzles that I came up with during the day and I was quite impressed with myself that I could think of such crappy but intellectual stuff. =P Got some feedback from them also on some things to improve on and I shall compile them so that I can use as them to entertain the kids before lessons start =)

Course updates - Tue and Wed were really enjoyable cos our trainer (Francis Tan) was really, really good. Had a lot of interesting experiences to share and he was really good at teaching and distilling out the learning points from all the activities he planned and whatever we did he always had something to teach us that we could apply to our work and workplace environment - excellent facilitator who is passionate about his work (he's about 60+!) and keen to teach us also outside of the course hours.

We started out on Tue doing some simple activities (like folding your arms and separating into groups those that fold left over right and those that fold right over left) to warm up and for him to introduce some terms like preferences, choice, norms, compliance, commitment, etc. so that it was easier for him to get across his points later on. Then he taught us some self-awareness stuff based on this Harrison profile test which we did some time back before the course started cos we were given our reports which showed us our strengths/weaknesses/preferences in many different areas. Then in the afternoon there was this really interesting activity regarding planning and there was one part where we had to all close our eyes and line up in a particular order which was not made known to us earlier. Later on we realised we had to line up according to birthday and birthdates and initially we tried to do some form of communication (we were not allowed to talk) by clapping and got some movement but eventually we all failed. That got us to do a fair bit of thinking regarding our planning and communication...

On Wed morning we started off with some warm-up exercises that he used to energise us and at the same time link it to the development of our dynamic and gentle traits by linking them to the complementary muscle groups used in the exercises (e.g. biceps and triceps). Also linked to
accommodation to others and stretching ourselves when working with others. We also ended up doing something that I learnt from Jon, LJ and DS that came from Big Bang Theory and I was quite thankful that I learnt that crappy stuff from them! It basically involves putting your two hands together and twisting them with the middle fingers pointing at opposite sides. Was so interesting watching others do and see how the trainer tried to get us to teach the others in various ways - quite inspired to do something similar for my kids during Chrystal next term esp when reflecting on the MYE =D

Then we did an activity that involved grabbing, negotiating and managing and it was funny to observe how the different people played their roles though I already had some ideas about some of the learning points. The people were so engrossed in their roles and the negotiation process was hilarious. I was aghast though when I heard from him that some other groups (as in other corporations) were so fixated on certain aspects such as grabbing resources that even though a lady put her body on top of the resources, some people still tried to grab them from under her body. That's TOO competitive!!!

We also had another very fun activity after lunch which involved passing balls to each other with certain criterion written on them that dictated how we were supposed to do it and he taught us about target setting, restructuring of teams and processes and other stuff which I thought was a fun game that could be used for class bonding and orientation.

The most interesting thing was that, as someone pointed out, we were very engaged and had a lot of fun even though the games were very simple but mainly I believe it's because of the learning points that the trainer could extract out of us so hopefully I can use some of those activities to teach the kids also... =)

Today marked the last day of my course and we went to UPS to look at how things were done there and it was quite interesting to learn how much earnings per share was compared to Fedex and DHL, whom I (and prob many people) had the impression were "bigger" companies but apparently UPS trounced them hands-down. Quite interesting to learn some of their processes which could be linked back to education but it was all v. rushed and the tour of part of the warehouse didn't really connect with what we were doing in education.

Back at SMU and we ended up preparing for the group presentations and thankfully we already chose 3 very good presenters so that I didn't have to feel stressed. Never liked to present except for chemistry and teaching stuff that I feel more at home with... So anyway that's the end of my course and overall it was an eye-opener to a lot of government stuff and I'm here I've gained a wider perspective of things which hopefully I can apply in my future work. Gonna rest now - very tired esp after only 4 hours sleep last night and I may be going out to watch soccer later...