Ytd's workout wasn't as intense as it was meant to be cos LJ ponned the session haha so it ended up with a light workout which was just as well for Boxing Day I guess and with my lack of proper sleep, my performance was dismal... Tue's one promises to be different though but I suppose it depends if LJ turns up haha.
Had a last-minute dinner arrangement ytd with some secondary school friends whom I've not seen for some time and we had steamboat buffet dinner at Joaquim's Buffet Restaurant at Suntec and I thought it was just so-so for the price we paid ($30). The seafood wasn't exactly awesome and I don't think the prawns and crabs were as fresh as I expect them to be - the meat wasn't really firm like some of the ones I've eaten elsewhere. Wouldn't be going back there anytime soon I would think.
Anyway, seems like the few of them have been dabbling in stocks and my ex-bridge partner who's currently a doctor at the blood bank has been taking exams related to becoming a property agent, which we thought would be an interesting move given that he could provide medical consultation services also to set him apart from the other property agents haha. They were discussing also about some of the rich people who really live it up and they heard stories of their friends about people who played at our casinos for like 100k, 200k, 400k per hand (of blackjack I think), which is just insane. And they also talked about people who bet their factories when they play golf and they even have the lawyer ready at the venue so that right after the golf match they can transfer the factory immediately... Seriously rich! But I wonder sometimes how happy some of this people are if they need to resort to such measures to keep themselves excited and entertained. I get pretty excited already just playing 20/40 mahjong lol. They also mentioned about casinos providing escort services and apparently they have a list of numbers to call for escort services for various nationalities, quite an interesting industry I must say...
Ok, time for some really late updates that I missed out in Oct/Nov:
(1) JC1 Bash on 8th Oct - Had our JC1 Bash in school which was a little different from the last few years. It was a mass BBQ session which we co-organised with the CGEB (CG Chairpersons Executive Board, for those who have been out of touch with our leadership positions) and also had a mini-concert with performances by the students and also myself with another teacher. We sang this song called "Celebrate You" by Corbin Bleu which we thought was quite an appropriate song for the occasion cos it's to celebrate the end of the promos. Then I went to do my work until nearing the end of the event when we helped to clear up and by the time we were all done it was past 11pm! The turnout was ok I think - supposed to have 250+ people but it didn't look like it... But at least it looked more lively than the previous JC1 Bashes and it probably helped that we worked with the CGEB so that they tried to get more of their classmates to turn up...
(2) Ankle injury on 9th Oct - So after that late night due to the JC1 bash, I overslept for the soccer training the next morning and cabbed down to MJC so that I wouldn't be extremely late. Was pretty angry with myself already for oversleeping cos I wasted like $20 for taking the cab and also cos I had told Jon and company to join us so it felt worse that I was late. What's worse to come was that having played barely 10 min, I managed to injure myself in one of the stupidest way - I was shaping to shoot when I was blocked and I sprained my ankle when both our feet hit the ball at the same time. I felt the sharp pain and it was terrible though I managed to limp around then but it got worse as the day went on and I had to hop around and get support from Jon and De Sheng to eventually make it back home. Anyway, a few days after that I saw a Chinese sinseh and I can say the treatment was utterly excruciating - the way they pulled and twisted my ankle to try and relax it, poked needles around the area where there was a blood clot and then used this thing to squeeze out the blood. The second time was even worse and the guy used this wooden stick to press hard around the area - it was seriously $%&*# pain and I don't think I ever want to visit a sinseh again! The injury's pretty bad though and I probably have some serious ligament damage cos even now, about 2.5 months after the incident, I still feel a pain around the area and my friend said it's likely to take some time to recover especially at my age. Tragic! Ya, so that's why I haven't been blogging in Oct cos I was too angry to write about that...
(3) Post-promo corrections - Very xian week and the kids just didn't seem to be really in the mood to listen probably cos they were nervous about the results and it didn't help that I wasn't in a good mood either cos of my injury so it was really kinda xian...
(4) Good food galore! - Had a lot of good food from 21st to 28th Oct where we went to feast and chill out at places like Miss U Cafe (at Simpang Bedok), Imperial Jade, Wine Company (at Dempsey's Hill), One Rochester (around Buona Vista), Sun's Dining (at Central), and Peach Blossom (at Pan Pacific)... Eating spree!
(5) Review of Bioshock 2 - Bought this game cos it looked interesting and seemed to have good reviews (though not as good as its predecessor it seems) and though it's a FPS, it's pretty different from the rest in the sense that it involves genetics and DNA stuff so apart from the normal shooting using guns, which is pretty much what every other FPS is like, you can do other cool stuff to the enemies like electrifying them, freezing them, setting fire to them, bewitching them and shooting insects at them. Plot was quite good though pretty convoluted and there are also alternative endings so there's some replay value. I also like the achievements section which seems pretty common nowadays to give gamers a sense of satisfaction but the downside was the multi-player didn't seem to be able to work. Finally I liked it that I had no problems throughout the installation and gameplay (it's so basic but important to me so that I don't get upset over such things) so it's a 8.5/10 for me =)
(6) Review of Batman: Arkham Asylum (Game of the Year Edition) - Another interesting game and this one's an action game which was really enjoyable, especially so if you're a fan of Batman (and I'm not but I still love the game). The plot is simple - basically The Joker allows himself to be caught and brought to the prison but it's all part of an elaborate plan where he's set up a trap for Batman and unsurprisingly, he manages to escape and hence begins Batman's search for him to bring him to justice. Some of the best parts of the games - (a) ubercool fighting sequences which are quite frequent and can be rather challenging at times - whether you're fighting some of the tough bosses or involved in a mass brawl with 20 over guys which makes you feel like Bruce Lee cos you'll be dishing out some combo moves and can do stuff like throwing Batarangs to stun, pulling people in with your Batclaw, stunning people with your cape, throwing people, evading them by somersaulting over their heads, countering their attacks, and doing instant take-downs. It's really challenging but you get a great sense of satisfaction when you pull off the combos and make the baddies eat dust hahaha, not to mention the slow-mo when you perform the finishing move. Sometimes you also need to use stealth and perform silent takedowns to avoid setting off alarms so it's not all just brute strength. (b) Thanks to The Riddler, there are also plenty of intellectual challenges as you try to find some of the items that he has hidden and solve some really interesting riddles which requires you to use lateral thinking and even skilful positioning to solve them. Again I get a kick out of solving questions so this was a huge plus point for me! (c) A list of really interesting achievements which were challenging and fun to perform (although frustrating at times especially the fighting ones) and there are also quite a few challenges which tests your speed and skill and you can see how you rank in the world!
All in all, a very unique game which allowed me to learn a lot more about Batman and perhaps the only downside is that we didn't get to hear about Robin nor fight with some of the really iconic villains such as The Penguin so it's at least a 9.5/10 for me - awesome!
(7) Staff Dinner on 12th Nov - Theme was "Masquerade" and I went to this shop called "Masquerade" (surprise surprise) which was quite near my place and around Lavender to find something and got myself this simple silver mask but I would never go there again nor advise anyone to go to that shop for a mask cos it's extremely expensive - $15 just for rental of that mask! Many of my friends bought masks for a much cheaper price so oh well, lesson learnt! Dinner wasn't great - we were at Carlton Hotel (NOT Ritz-Carlton) and the food quality wasn't exactly the best... Nevertheless we had fun amongst our group and some of my friends said I looked scary with the mask, dunno why haha.
Went to City Space after that for drinks and chat and somehow my friends ended up talking about introducing female friends to me though I wasn't that keen and the other interesting thing was when a friend offered to do some fortune-telling for us through palmistry. I normally take such stuff with a pinch of salt but he was surprisingly accurate (or at least at that point of time) and he told me that I will only have a "transient relationship" and not get married so I asked him how long is that "transient relationship" and he said 5 years, which was spot-on haha so we were quite amazed. Then he predicted another 2 of my friends which also appeared to be true so it was all quite fascinating stuff haha.
(8) Wedding Dinners - attended 2 weddings in Nov - (a) an NIE friend who's teaching chemistry at Dunman High (his wife is also a chem teacher there). Wedding was at "The Legends" at Fort Canning Park and there was quite a good spread of food, which made me feel I underpaid! There were like only 5 people at our table cos many people didn't turn up so there were plenty of food for everyone! Met another NIE acquaintance there and her husband (both also teachers - I've seen so many teacher couples!) and 2 of my NIE friend's uni classmates, one of whom is in the petrochemical industry and the other is a financial analyst... (b) my fellow council TA in MJC whose wife is also a teacher and also a council TA in SAJC (another teacher couple!) Wedding was at Sheraton Hotel near Newton MRT station. They showed really funny videos of their story and also the wedding rituals and I expected that since he's always the joker amongst us... =)
(9) Class Chalet from 14th to 15th Nov - my CG booked a chalet from 14th to 16th Nov actually but nobody stayed on the second night so it got cut short. Only met them for a few hours cos I had a wedding dinner on the 14th so I didn't go that day and met up with the councilors to discuss about orientation on 15th afternoon so only went for the dinner. Most enjoyable part was playing WII which I lugged down from my friend's place back home and then brought out again and we enjoyed playing the popular games like Raving Rabbids, Mario Kart and WII Tennis - though this time the biggest laughs came from tennis because of all the screaming and grunting and dramatic movements as we went for the shots haha.
(10) OGL Publicity, Interviews, Briefing, Camp - Finally, throughout these last 3 months we have been busy with all the preparations for Orientation 2011, which btw is called "My(Space) 2011" as we used it as a pun for the website and also to denote MJC as the student's own space.
Started meeting with the councilors in charge of the OGL Camp to kick-off preparations for publicity and recruitment, getting ready the presentation slides, posters, and forms, then came the sorting out of forms to prepare for the interviews, preparing the interview process to try and see what's the most efficient process while working harmoniously with the House Comm at the same time, analysing the results, getting feedback and discussing with the relevant people and finally doing our first cut of the selected OGLs. Learnt a lot during this process of interviewing and I helped to do a proper and detailed AAR so that hopefully future council TAs and councilors will have a clearer picture of the problems and my thinking process. I think too often even though AARs have been conducted, the way they are discussed or noted down is so sketchy that the learning points get lost and forgotten by the time it reaches the next batch and I hate it if all the problems we faced and solutions agreed upon don't get through to future batches cos it would be a huge waste of time.
Had some problems even after our first cut cos some people wanted to drop out or supposedly had to drop out due to certain issues and we have plans to tighten this process in future to avoid such situations. Had my main OGL briefing and apparently I was a little scary cos I was very strict and then we broke up the OGLs to the various sections that they were in charge of. In the weeks to come, we went for recce trips for our MMM segment and then soon to come we were busy with getting all the logistics ready, the food arrangement sorted out and also tidying up all the proposals for me to submit the camp file to the VP. All pretty stressful stuff I must admit and I'm never a fan of admin work but I've grown to learn to deal with stuff and it has been really interesting to see all the issues that can crop up when managing such large events.
The camp itself was pretty ok, some bad behaviour occasionally esp with littering and I really feel that there are so many immature students in this batch esp the guys who do all kinds of stupid crap stuff that puts themselves and others at risk or just makes things unpleasant for everyone. Had to scold people at times which wasn't nice but no choice cos they were just asking for it. There are definitely much more improvements that need to be made over this few weeks before school starts so that orientation will go smoothly and our councilors also need to step up and be more confident cos I think too many are getting pushed around by others and not pulling in their weight... The good side is that I think some of the activities and games were really fun and refreshing so it should be pretty enjoyable for the freshies though my concern is the running of the event and for our councilors to be proactive in rectifying things if there are any screw-ups or unforeseen circumstances during the orientation itself...
Ok, these are the main things that happened in Oct-Nov! Will update again tmr if I think of anything else interesting... Meeting up with Jon and company tonight for some post-Xmas dinner and my next few nights are also full with dinner appointments so it's time to chill! =)
Monday, December 27, 2010
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Belated Merry Xmas!
Hope everyone had a great Xmas ytd! Had a pretty simple day on Xmas and essentially did just 2 things - gaming and sleeping. Played DOTA through the night for like almost 14 hours and then just conked out for the next 11 hours... Not the healthiest of lifestyles but it was good fun playing =)
Anyway, think it's almost time for me to lay off the computer gaming soon (again) though I just barely started on Tues. Been playing like almost every night till late and it's kinda unhealthy unlike in Australia where it's so boring I sleep at 10-11 pm haha. K, updates!
Tue (21st Dec) - ended up in the gym early with Jon and LJ and had a good workout after my time in Australia then I followed them to this shop, Phoon Huat, where they sold stuff for baking and I think I shall try my hand with something really simple like making jelly since everything is prepared so just need to follow some simple instructions and I should be able to get it done! Oh and I decided it would be too sad to start work so early on Tue so I chilled and just played com and watch TV haha.
Wed (22nd Dec) - went out in the late morning to donate blood and it was all quite chop chop stuff - not many people donating at this time of the year I guess! Then went to Clarke Quay to walk around - Central doesn't have much interesting stuff - before heading down to Funan cos I wanted to buy a computer game before school starts.
Thu (23rd Dec) - played DOTA in morning before going to school in the afternoon to return the survey forms for the Australia trip and I saw 3 of our students from the trip doing their holiday homework in school! I was like, wow, they are so hardworking haha and I never did that when I was in JC! Met up with Jon and LJ and we went to Roy's place to play MJ - it was good fun but it was 2 of the longest 'poks' I played - almost 5.5 hours! I showed them the statistics template that I prepared recently and they were quite amazed and it was funny to see their expressions haha. Went to Bedok Interchange's hawker centre for a late dinner and we had this Hokkien prawn mee which seemed to be very popular, BBQ chicken wings (which we agreed seemed more boiled rather than BBQ), and oyster omelette, which was pretty good stuff. All that variety and a drink for just $8 - you never get that in Australia!
Fri (24th Dec) - played DOTA (again!) before going out for standard Xmas Eve dinner at my aunt's place around Buona Vista. Some of my relatives were discussing about the ugly Singaporeans and what they do at the wet markets and supermarkets (e.g. sneezing into a tissue and putting it in the stack of vegetables - yucks!!!) and bad drivers. My uncle was telling us about this funny story where he was driving at night with my cousin and there was a lot of space on a wide road and he drove past this car. Suddenly the lady driver started horning furiously and made obscene gestures at him and then proceeded to overtake him. The irony of it all? When she overtook them, both of them saw this sign on the back of her car saying "World Peace!" LOL, what a joke. But ya really, I think there are plenty of rude Singaporeans and many more who lack decent manners and I can't stand it sometimes. People who take things for granted and lack the decency to thank others or to apologise for mistakes and stuff...
I think it really has to do with our society and lack of proper parenting and teaching of values and it reminded me of this incident during our CIP on Monday where some boys were really rude and on reflection now I regret not taking a firmer stance on things but I have a tendency to try to take things easy which also means I tolerate too much nonsense sometimes and that has its pros and cons. On the one hand I tend to not blow up at people and I like to try and stay happy but on the other hand, people tend to get away with bad behaviour. I realise that I really do think through a lot of things when I make decisions and I tend to go less with feelings so I usually only feel something when I have thought through it quietly. Anyway if I had thought through this earlier and acted the way that I would have wanted things to the boys would've had the crap scared out of them I think. Logically I would have just grabbed them, smacked them and scolded them fiercely and I would the next time I find myself in the same situation... =p
Probably gonna try and sleep soon again though I don't know if I can having just woke up a few hours ago. Have an intensive workout later so I should get some more rest. Updates later today!
Anyway, think it's almost time for me to lay off the computer gaming soon (again) though I just barely started on Tues. Been playing like almost every night till late and it's kinda unhealthy unlike in Australia where it's so boring I sleep at 10-11 pm haha. K, updates!
Tue (21st Dec) - ended up in the gym early with Jon and LJ and had a good workout after my time in Australia then I followed them to this shop, Phoon Huat, where they sold stuff for baking and I think I shall try my hand with something really simple like making jelly since everything is prepared so just need to follow some simple instructions and I should be able to get it done! Oh and I decided it would be too sad to start work so early on Tue so I chilled and just played com and watch TV haha.
Wed (22nd Dec) - went out in the late morning to donate blood and it was all quite chop chop stuff - not many people donating at this time of the year I guess! Then went to Clarke Quay to walk around - Central doesn't have much interesting stuff - before heading down to Funan cos I wanted to buy a computer game before school starts.
Thu (23rd Dec) - played DOTA in morning before going to school in the afternoon to return the survey forms for the Australia trip and I saw 3 of our students from the trip doing their holiday homework in school! I was like, wow, they are so hardworking haha and I never did that when I was in JC! Met up with Jon and LJ and we went to Roy's place to play MJ - it was good fun but it was 2 of the longest 'poks' I played - almost 5.5 hours! I showed them the statistics template that I prepared recently and they were quite amazed and it was funny to see their expressions haha. Went to Bedok Interchange's hawker centre for a late dinner and we had this Hokkien prawn mee which seemed to be very popular, BBQ chicken wings (which we agreed seemed more boiled rather than BBQ), and oyster omelette, which was pretty good stuff. All that variety and a drink for just $8 - you never get that in Australia!
Fri (24th Dec) - played DOTA (again!) before going out for standard Xmas Eve dinner at my aunt's place around Buona Vista. Some of my relatives were discussing about the ugly Singaporeans and what they do at the wet markets and supermarkets (e.g. sneezing into a tissue and putting it in the stack of vegetables - yucks!!!) and bad drivers. My uncle was telling us about this funny story where he was driving at night with my cousin and there was a lot of space on a wide road and he drove past this car. Suddenly the lady driver started horning furiously and made obscene gestures at him and then proceeded to overtake him. The irony of it all? When she overtook them, both of them saw this sign on the back of her car saying "World Peace!" LOL, what a joke. But ya really, I think there are plenty of rude Singaporeans and many more who lack decent manners and I can't stand it sometimes. People who take things for granted and lack the decency to thank others or to apologise for mistakes and stuff...
I think it really has to do with our society and lack of proper parenting and teaching of values and it reminded me of this incident during our CIP on Monday where some boys were really rude and on reflection now I regret not taking a firmer stance on things but I have a tendency to try to take things easy which also means I tolerate too much nonsense sometimes and that has its pros and cons. On the one hand I tend to not blow up at people and I like to try and stay happy but on the other hand, people tend to get away with bad behaviour. I realise that I really do think through a lot of things when I make decisions and I tend to go less with feelings so I usually only feel something when I have thought through it quietly. Anyway if I had thought through this earlier and acted the way that I would have wanted things to the boys would've had the crap scared out of them I think. Logically I would have just grabbed them, smacked them and scolded them fiercely and I would the next time I find myself in the same situation... =p
Probably gonna try and sleep soon again though I don't know if I can having just woke up a few hours ago. Have an intensive workout later so I should get some more rest. Updates later today!
Monday, December 20, 2010
End of Young Leaders Summer School; Class CIP
Finally back home in Singapore late last night! Got cut off from the internet since my last post (cos all our log-in accounts were prematurely suspended) hence I couldn't update anymore! Anyway the last two days were very slack cos the programme more or less ended with the valedictory dinner on Fri and it was really just chilling out and going shopping!
On Sat, we brought the kids out for lunch at Mekong Vietnam and then went to the DFO where I bought 2 pairs of Aldo shoes! They are like omg sooooo comfy! I always took a look at the Aldo shoes in Singapore but even on sale their cost is usually in the high 100's or 200s so I never bought them but I bought 2 this time cos one was like 100 Sing dollars and the other 65!
Came back for a supposed BBQ dinner which didn't turn out to be a BBQ but anyway it was actually pretty decent. We had already discussed with the kids though about going out for dinner so after we snacked on some of the dinner food provided we went down to Lygon Street and we wanted to bring them to the nice Italian restaurant (it's called Tiamo) that we were brought to by our host but it was just too full (need to make reservations if you want to go there!) So we just walked along and in the end we found ourselves at another Italian restaurant called Donnini's which served quite decent food and the kids quite enjoyed the lasagna and pasta (though the pizza we had was quite salty due to the salami and anchovies) =)
On the way back we were discussing about what to do since the internet was not available and in the end we decided to play "Ice and Water" (essentially what I used to call "Police and Thief" in my time!) which was very fun! It's pretty much like catching so if you're the catcher and you touch the others, they turn to "ice" and must stay there till they are saved by the others who touch them and turn them to "water". Had good fun for about an hour before I succumbed to cramps lol. It was agonising though and a result of vigorous running with barely any warmup. Gotta learn that I'm not young anymore! Anyway, I chose to be the catcher so that I can moderate my running as I was afraid that my ankle would give problems but good thing was that it held up ok though there was slight pain at the end. Hope to recover fully soon!
On Sunday we went to Queen Victoria Market again to finish our last-minute buying of souvenirs and for me, spamming money on macadamia nuts though I had run out of cash so I had to borrow money from my colleague. Then we went back to finish packing and we were off!
During the flight I caught 3 episodes of "Big Bang Theory" (like finally!) which were hilarious and I learnt a lot about survival by watching 2 episodes of "Man Vs Wild" (it's really good and I marvel at the guy's ability to do all the stuff and eat practically everything from raw crickets and lizards to the most disgusting thing I've seen - deer droppings, which apparently have a lot of nutrients). I also watched a documentary about hoarders (I thought my family was bad but those hoarders were crazier) and 2 episodes of "The Hotel Inspector", which gave me some insights on running a hotel. Fascinating stuff really and I should probably go back to watching more TV to learn more about life!
Reached Singapore at 9+pm and by the time we got out, returned the kids to their parents and reached home, it was already 11.30pm! But I'm just glad to be back in my home sweet home and my messy (but clean and non-dusty) room! =)
My reflections on this trip - the food in the college wasn't always the greatest and the food in Melbourne (and I think generally in Australia) is pretty expensive and it's hard to get good and cheap meals like those at our hawker centres. The transport was so-so but ours is much cheaper and I feel more efficient. I'm not a fan of the weather there cos I didn't like it being so cold (there are quite a few who loved it though). The strengths are probably the people who are generally friendlier (e.g. the drivers also will tend to let you cross at the small roads where there are no traffic lights) and also the great outdoor scenery that they have (though you have to travel quite a bit)... Overall I think it was a pretty enjoyable trip where I learnt lots of stuff and had quite a few unique experiences... =) Oh ya, one last thing I forgot to mention - the lifestyle there I feel is really v slack, as many others would prob feel also compared to life in Singapore and we were joking about it when we were in Melbourne Zoo also cos most of the animals were like sleeping from about 3+pm onwards and the mosquitoes and flies there move sooooo slowly... =p
Then for today I woke up at about 7+ to go for our class CIP at Club Rainbow, which was near Chinatown Point. Surprisingly I was very much awake and didn't feel tired throughout the day and it was quite an enjoyable and meaningful activity as we interacted with the kids and they wrote and drew their Xmas cards and decorated the gingerbread man that we had bought. It was my first time decorating gingerbread man and dealing with cake icing and the process was quite fun!
Also learnt something new from one of the kids there cos he picked up some stuff on yo-yos so I learnt today that there are two main types of yo-yos - responsive and non-responsive. The responsive ones will return to you after releasing when you tug at it (it's like the "normal" ones that you prob have seen before) but the non-resposnsive ones won't and hence you need to use certain techniques to pull them back which allows more room to do those yo-yo tricks that you see sometimes cos there is a greater control. I think it's quite cool and if I have time I'd like to learn that too! =)
After that I carried on from Australia with my shopping spree as I went to Plaza Sing and bought 4 shirts from this new place called "Flexor Empire" which had quite funky clothes and I bought some cos trying to be more interesting / fashionable in my dressing haha.
K, shall just gonna chill today then I'm gonna get cracking on work tmr! What a busy "holiday"! =s
On Sat, we brought the kids out for lunch at Mekong Vietnam and then went to the DFO where I bought 2 pairs of Aldo shoes! They are like omg sooooo comfy! I always took a look at the Aldo shoes in Singapore but even on sale their cost is usually in the high 100's or 200s so I never bought them but I bought 2 this time cos one was like 100 Sing dollars and the other 65!
Came back for a supposed BBQ dinner which didn't turn out to be a BBQ but anyway it was actually pretty decent. We had already discussed with the kids though about going out for dinner so after we snacked on some of the dinner food provided we went down to Lygon Street and we wanted to bring them to the nice Italian restaurant (it's called Tiamo) that we were brought to by our host but it was just too full (need to make reservations if you want to go there!) So we just walked along and in the end we found ourselves at another Italian restaurant called Donnini's which served quite decent food and the kids quite enjoyed the lasagna and pasta (though the pizza we had was quite salty due to the salami and anchovies) =)
On the way back we were discussing about what to do since the internet was not available and in the end we decided to play "Ice and Water" (essentially what I used to call "Police and Thief" in my time!) which was very fun! It's pretty much like catching so if you're the catcher and you touch the others, they turn to "ice" and must stay there till they are saved by the others who touch them and turn them to "water". Had good fun for about an hour before I succumbed to cramps lol. It was agonising though and a result of vigorous running with barely any warmup. Gotta learn that I'm not young anymore! Anyway, I chose to be the catcher so that I can moderate my running as I was afraid that my ankle would give problems but good thing was that it held up ok though there was slight pain at the end. Hope to recover fully soon!
On Sunday we went to Queen Victoria Market again to finish our last-minute buying of souvenirs and for me, spamming money on macadamia nuts though I had run out of cash so I had to borrow money from my colleague. Then we went back to finish packing and we were off!
During the flight I caught 3 episodes of "Big Bang Theory" (like finally!) which were hilarious and I learnt a lot about survival by watching 2 episodes of "Man Vs Wild" (it's really good and I marvel at the guy's ability to do all the stuff and eat practically everything from raw crickets and lizards to the most disgusting thing I've seen - deer droppings, which apparently have a lot of nutrients). I also watched a documentary about hoarders (I thought my family was bad but those hoarders were crazier) and 2 episodes of "The Hotel Inspector", which gave me some insights on running a hotel. Fascinating stuff really and I should probably go back to watching more TV to learn more about life!
Reached Singapore at 9+pm and by the time we got out, returned the kids to their parents and reached home, it was already 11.30pm! But I'm just glad to be back in my home sweet home and my messy (but clean and non-dusty) room! =)
My reflections on this trip - the food in the college wasn't always the greatest and the food in Melbourne (and I think generally in Australia) is pretty expensive and it's hard to get good and cheap meals like those at our hawker centres. The transport was so-so but ours is much cheaper and I feel more efficient. I'm not a fan of the weather there cos I didn't like it being so cold (there are quite a few who loved it though). The strengths are probably the people who are generally friendlier (e.g. the drivers also will tend to let you cross at the small roads where there are no traffic lights) and also the great outdoor scenery that they have (though you have to travel quite a bit)... Overall I think it was a pretty enjoyable trip where I learnt lots of stuff and had quite a few unique experiences... =) Oh ya, one last thing I forgot to mention - the lifestyle there I feel is really v slack, as many others would prob feel also compared to life in Singapore and we were joking about it when we were in Melbourne Zoo also cos most of the animals were like sleeping from about 3+pm onwards and the mosquitoes and flies there move sooooo slowly... =p
Then for today I woke up at about 7+ to go for our class CIP at Club Rainbow, which was near Chinatown Point. Surprisingly I was very much awake and didn't feel tired throughout the day and it was quite an enjoyable and meaningful activity as we interacted with the kids and they wrote and drew their Xmas cards and decorated the gingerbread man that we had bought. It was my first time decorating gingerbread man and dealing with cake icing and the process was quite fun!
Also learnt something new from one of the kids there cos he picked up some stuff on yo-yos so I learnt today that there are two main types of yo-yos - responsive and non-responsive. The responsive ones will return to you after releasing when you tug at it (it's like the "normal" ones that you prob have seen before) but the non-resposnsive ones won't and hence you need to use certain techniques to pull them back which allows more room to do those yo-yo tricks that you see sometimes cos there is a greater control. I think it's quite cool and if I have time I'd like to learn that too! =)
After that I carried on from Australia with my shopping spree as I went to Plaza Sing and bought 4 shirts from this new place called "Flexor Empire" which had quite funky clothes and I bought some cos trying to be more interesting / fashionable in my dressing haha.
K, shall just gonna chill today then I'm gonna get cracking on work tmr! What a busy "holiday"! =s
Friday, December 17, 2010
Young Leaders Summer School (Day 14)
Day 14 (17th Dec) - Last day of lectures and we started with Marty Ross' Mathematics lecture on Henri Poincare's Conjecture which was much more 'cheem' and although I was kinda lost at certain parts it was still quite fascinating and some parts were quite entertaining and understandable. We learnt about how to "cheat" at "noughts and crosses" by imagining the playing area as a cylinder and hence generating other ways to win instead of a traditional 2-D board and he used that game as an introduction to various concepts in topology and from there we then learnt about the Mobius Strip and things like torus and the Klein bottle, amongst many other stuff...
One thing I really liked about his lectures so far is that he really has a lot of interesting videos and cartoons and while we do have chemistry videos, somehow it was just different looking at cartoon videos cos it gave a sense that the concepts were easy to understand and common place... Wonder if there are any cartoon series related to chemistry...
After that we went for the Science Trivia Quiz and we joined 3 of our students cos somehow they were split up from everyone else which had like 8 students and we were joint winners haha. Well, actually while we did manage to help with some of the things, many of it was just anybody's guess also but my greatest screw-up was getting "Who discovered penicillin?" wrong. I initially thought it was Louis Pasteur (fyi, he founded the science of microbiology and proved that most infectious diseases are caused by micro-organisms. This became known as the "germ theory" of disease. He was the inventor of the process of pasteurisation and also developed vaccines for several diseases including rabies), then when I saw the question again just before the answers were revealed I suddenly thought of the name Alexander Fleming and that was the correct one!
Anyway, it was quite funny cos after round 1 we had 9 points out of 18 and the kids were joking just before they submitted their scores it'll be funny if they were leading cos they called themselves "The Retards" and true enough, we really were leading with a measly 9 points! That was a real lol moment for us =p Then again the questions were really tough even for MCQ cos most were on inventors and their inventions, like who invented the air-conditioner and identifying from the portraits the inventors themselves... Round 2 was complete crap and we got 8 out of 20? Round 3 was better and it helped that I knew a bit about the Nobel Prize so yup the kids got themselves some chocolate for their efforts haha.
Had leadership presentations in the afternoon and some of the groups had topics that were too common with common solutions and nothing concrete. My favourite was actually one which had a refreshing topic of how Australia would react if the two Koreas go to war and the kids were dressed up professionally cos they did it in a form of skit and presentation and acted as the Prime Minister, Foreign Minster, Defence Ministers and other ministers. Our 4 kids also did well and overall the entire group showed the best teamwork with everyone knowing their parts well (no reference to script at all!), everyone participating without it sounding disjointed or certain parts feeling too short that it becomes disorienting, and doses of humour. There was another very good presentation on Eugenics though the topic kinda bored me but at least they were creative in changing song lyrics and had some funny skit and interesting and plausible solutions.
After that we had time to prepare for the valedictory dinner and I experienced one of the proudest moments in my life - ironing my clothes for the first time in my life without anyone teaching me! =P LOL, ok, maybe that's nothing much and perhaps it's surprising that during my 30 years of life I've never touched the iron before but still I managed to figure out what to do with the iron haha. I borrowed from one of the other teachers and was told that I could fill it with water because it's a steam iron and that already kinda stumped me but I didn't show my ignorance and just took it while I tried to tinker with it. I poured the water and as I lifted the iron up there was water leaking out and I was like, *! Hahaha, anyway I just carried on with the process and initially I tried to iron my shirt without the iron touching the shirt lol cos I was thinking that maybe the steam generated would do something (and also cos I have these scenes from shows where people's clothes get burnt due to ironing) but I noticed that it didn't help much so in the end I just started to carefully press the shirt with the iron and presto, I was done! Haha, for all my intelligence there are too many basic stuff that I don't know but I'm glad I figured it out just in time for the dinner!
Dinner was ok, just a simple entree (which was light and refreshing), main course (which wasn't very filling) and dessert (which was too sweet) and I liked one of the valedictorian's speech (there were 2 strangely) cos it seemed more personal and from the heart rather than feeling like a laboriously prepared speech but both spoke well and one of them was Ngee Ann Sec's Council President and she was such a diminutive figure but she was confident and it was a very good effort considering her age. I was utterly bored though cos I was sitting with people I weren't close to and I had a bad throat so I didn't want to initiate conversations so I was glad when it was all over...
Was reading some news on Yahoo and some of the more interesting bits:
(1) We have a 11-year old whiz kid that's written an application for iPhone that has almost a million downloads
(2) Apparently there are quite a few people walking around naked in public in Singapore these days, e.g. at a McDonald's outlet and on a SBS bus. In the first six months of the year, there have already been 105 such incidents!
(3) For the second consecutive year, the most irritating word in the English language is "whatever" and I usually hate people telling me that word also because as the article says, "It can be quite dismissive depending on how they are used." The way some people say it sometimes makes you just feel like giving them a solid punch if you were allowed to... Btw, "like" and "you know what I mean" are also very much disliked... =p
Ok, that's it for tonight! Starting to pack my bag - < 45 hours to our flight home!
One thing I really liked about his lectures so far is that he really has a lot of interesting videos and cartoons and while we do have chemistry videos, somehow it was just different looking at cartoon videos cos it gave a sense that the concepts were easy to understand and common place... Wonder if there are any cartoon series related to chemistry...
After that we went for the Science Trivia Quiz and we joined 3 of our students cos somehow they were split up from everyone else which had like 8 students and we were joint winners haha. Well, actually while we did manage to help with some of the things, many of it was just anybody's guess also but my greatest screw-up was getting "Who discovered penicillin?" wrong. I initially thought it was Louis Pasteur (fyi, he founded the science of microbiology and proved that most infectious diseases are caused by micro-organisms. This became known as the "germ theory" of disease. He was the inventor of the process of pasteurisation and also developed vaccines for several diseases including rabies), then when I saw the question again just before the answers were revealed I suddenly thought of the name Alexander Fleming and that was the correct one!
Anyway, it was quite funny cos after round 1 we had 9 points out of 18 and the kids were joking just before they submitted their scores it'll be funny if they were leading cos they called themselves "The Retards" and true enough, we really were leading with a measly 9 points! That was a real lol moment for us =p Then again the questions were really tough even for MCQ cos most were on inventors and their inventions, like who invented the air-conditioner and identifying from the portraits the inventors themselves... Round 2 was complete crap and we got 8 out of 20? Round 3 was better and it helped that I knew a bit about the Nobel Prize so yup the kids got themselves some chocolate for their efforts haha.
Had leadership presentations in the afternoon and some of the groups had topics that were too common with common solutions and nothing concrete. My favourite was actually one which had a refreshing topic of how Australia would react if the two Koreas go to war and the kids were dressed up professionally cos they did it in a form of skit and presentation and acted as the Prime Minister, Foreign Minster, Defence Ministers and other ministers. Our 4 kids also did well and overall the entire group showed the best teamwork with everyone knowing their parts well (no reference to script at all!), everyone participating without it sounding disjointed or certain parts feeling too short that it becomes disorienting, and doses of humour. There was another very good presentation on Eugenics though the topic kinda bored me but at least they were creative in changing song lyrics and had some funny skit and interesting and plausible solutions.
After that we had time to prepare for the valedictory dinner and I experienced one of the proudest moments in my life - ironing my clothes for the first time in my life without anyone teaching me! =P LOL, ok, maybe that's nothing much and perhaps it's surprising that during my 30 years of life I've never touched the iron before but still I managed to figure out what to do with the iron haha. I borrowed from one of the other teachers and was told that I could fill it with water because it's a steam iron and that already kinda stumped me but I didn't show my ignorance and just took it while I tried to tinker with it. I poured the water and as I lifted the iron up there was water leaking out and I was like, *! Hahaha, anyway I just carried on with the process and initially I tried to iron my shirt without the iron touching the shirt lol cos I was thinking that maybe the steam generated would do something (and also cos I have these scenes from shows where people's clothes get burnt due to ironing) but I noticed that it didn't help much so in the end I just started to carefully press the shirt with the iron and presto, I was done! Haha, for all my intelligence there are too many basic stuff that I don't know but I'm glad I figured it out just in time for the dinner!
Dinner was ok, just a simple entree (which was light and refreshing), main course (which wasn't very filling) and dessert (which was too sweet) and I liked one of the valedictorian's speech (there were 2 strangely) cos it seemed more personal and from the heart rather than feeling like a laboriously prepared speech but both spoke well and one of them was Ngee Ann Sec's Council President and she was such a diminutive figure but she was confident and it was a very good effort considering her age. I was utterly bored though cos I was sitting with people I weren't close to and I had a bad throat so I didn't want to initiate conversations so I was glad when it was all over...
Was reading some news on Yahoo and some of the more interesting bits:
(1) We have a 11-year old whiz kid that's written an application for iPhone that has almost a million downloads
(2) Apparently there are quite a few people walking around naked in public in Singapore these days, e.g. at a McDonald's outlet and on a SBS bus. In the first six months of the year, there have already been 105 such incidents!
(3) For the second consecutive year, the most irritating word in the English language is "whatever" and I usually hate people telling me that word also because as the article says, "It can be quite dismissive depending on how they are used." The way some people say it sometimes makes you just feel like giving them a solid punch if you were allowed to... Btw, "like" and "you know what I mean" are also very much disliked... =p
Ok, that's it for tonight! Starting to pack my bag - < 45 hours to our flight home!
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Young Leaders Summer School (Days 12-13)
Before I begin recapping the events from the latest days, I shall just reveal the answers to the questions I had in my previous post!
Shortest mating time - 3 seconds; apparently this happens for some of the animals in the wild such as lions and zebras because of concerns such as predators so they can't afford to take too long to mate since they are vulnerable to attacks during this time...
Longest mating time - 24 hours; this would be for, surprise surprise, the butterflies!
Shortest gestation period (for mammals) - about 2 weeks; this occurs for some of the marsupials (although I didn't really recall the zookeeper saying this but I checked on the Internet)
Longest gestation period (for mammals) - about 22 months; apparently this is the average period for some species of elephants...
Some other random and interesting (at least to me haha) tidbits (I tried to verify some of the more dubious ones on the Internet):
(1) some animals are of the "solitary" type while others are more of the "social" type and hence they are also kept in captivity in the same way so that they are in an environment similar to the one in the wild
(2) some animals have barbed sexual organs (OUCH!!!!!) such as some of the cats and also I believe the snakes (which have what are called hemipenes, one of which they use to attach to the female to hold her in position and the other for copulation)...
(3) for lions, it is actually possible for the lioness to bear cubs of different parentage as the eggs can be fertilised by the different males
(4) the lions sometimes kill the cubs so that the lioness can go to oestrus again and be ready for mating
(5) some of the gorillas had social problems and did not know how to care for their offspring and also how to mate. The solution? Nursing moms were brought in to show how they cared for their children and the males were shown videos on how mating was done lol...
(6) frogs lay up to 2000 eggs and some species of frogs (e.g. Surinam toad) have the eggs implanted on their back and the baby frogs hatch on the mother's back and seems like there used to be a species of frog (gastric-brooding frog) that used to eat its own eggs and the baby frogs would then hatch within the stomach and then come out from its mouth...
(7) the slimy skin of frogs is due to the mucus it secretes
(8) the determination of sex in many amphibians is controlled to quite some extent by the environment (known as environmental sexual determination, ESD, and this is opposed to genotypic sexual determination, GSD, where the genes determine the sex)
(9) for the stick insect, the lady emits pheromones for 33 days and if there is no mating partner that comes along then it can switch to asexual reproduction where she clones herself. Apparently this process can only occur for 7 generations because it takes out too much of the female though it sounds quite strange to me...
(10) the scales of iguanas can change colour due to emotions and environment (so colour-changing is not something unique to just chameleons)
(11) there was an iguana shown to us where we could see light through its eyes because apparently there's nothing between the eyes!
Ok, that's a lot of new knowledge! Time for recaps!
Day 12 (15th Dec) - went out for an excursion to Science Works in the morning and it was quite enjoyable, though I was disappointed that it was kinda rushed so I didn't have enough time to try out everything such as all the puzzles and this segment called Sportsworks which looked quite fun as it tests our body talents from flexibility to explosive power to hand-eye coordination and even grip strength. We ended off watching a video in the Planetarium regarding "Our Living Climate" and then were given an explanation on astronomy which I can't really appreciate because I just find it difficult to observe the stars (it's prob even harder in Singapore due to light pollution). Went to look around the shop after that and there were quite a few interesting books and stuff but I wasn't sure what was unique to Australia so I didn't buy anything. Ought to go to our Science Centre, Singapore, one of these days to see how it's like - it's also been quite a few years since I last visited it!
In the afternoon we attended a lecture on "Beyond Highschool" and it was pretty crap cos of the lecturer, which was very disappointing considering that he's been working in Trinity College for 13 years and was the Director of the Summer School but he kept digressing and seemed more interested in cracking mean jokes rather than delivering any substantial content and his remarks were also insensitive. It got so bad that we decided to leave before he was done because we felt that we had wasted enough time with him though I was too diplomatic to tell him off in front of the students but I will definitely give my frank feedback as I always do when I attend stuff.
Napped in the afternoon cos I wasn't feeling well and in fact throughout the whole trip I was not in perfect condition which was extremely irritating. Started with a persistent ulcer then had a sore throat and seems like now I have a bit of a cold...
Night activity was "Cultural Night" and most of the students were dressed up except for ours but I guess it's cos they were performing a skit so they dressed simply. Anyway the performances generally weren't great though there were some decent ones such as the Indian dance which was more authentic and also energetic though sadly too short and I thought Ngee Ann Sec's performance was good also - simple and sweet - with a rendition of Singapore Town and simple dance moves. SRJC's school dance was uhmmm... I think nothing compared to our orientation dances and I'm not being biased here! Oh, and the NASS kids were nice to encourage our kids cos we were first up amongst the 3 Singaporean groups as they cheered, "Go Meridians!" Nice kids and I always had a good impression of them from the students that I've had and am having from there =)
Our own performance had much room for improvement admittedly cos the kids barely rehearsed since our discussion on Mon and some of them felt that they embarrassed Singapore but I thought they did a fair job and also the Powerpoint slides were quite decently done and quite cute. They were kinda let down by a lack of mikes and also the audience which were too noisy so they couldn't express everything clearly as they intended to but at least they felt bad about it instead of feeling apathetic because they were trying to get out of not performing in the first place but we felt it's not nice since everybody else was performing. Our second video would've done better with subtitles but it was quite good also and it was done by one of our students for her N.E.Mation entry...
Day 13 (16th Dec) - had a talk on mentoring students in the morning which was just so-so cos I kinda mentor students also so there weren't much new stuff. After that we went out for an early lunch cos we were quite sick of the food in the college and went to this place called "Don Tojo" on Cardigan Street as it was recommended by one of the mentors. It was not bad and the food was relatively cheap as compared to other meals in Australia and the salmon I had was quite ok but somehow there's something lacking though I couldn't put a finger to it...
In the afternoon we went for the lab session entitled "Murder in Melbourne" which was in the genetics lab which we thought would be interesting but it was just so-so to us cos there was nothing to do and some of the stuff were quite basic such as analysing cheek cells and the other stuff we saw were quite simple like how to use the micropipette and some simple purification process of protein using droppers to transfer fluids so there was nothing technically difficult or unusual. Was kinda draggy so we left earlier and I went back to have an afternoon nap cos I was feeling more sick...
Woke up for dinner and we eventually settled on eating out since some of the kids were going out with their mentors anyway. The plan was to go to Sydney Road for some cafe that a mentor recommended but sadly it was closed early for a Xmas party so we wandered along the road for some time before landing up by chance at Tibas Lebanese restaurant which is apparently highly rated from what I just checked out but we didn't feel that way and the service was not good (we were not served water throughout the entire meal despite having asked a few times!) Food was just ok as we ordered 6 mixed grills to share amongst the 10 of us and most of it was lamb so I didn't eat too much as I only ate the chicken.
Came back to the college after dinner cos we didn't want to go and watch Narnia with the kids, which was what they were going to catch at 9.30pm as a cohort so it would end very late, and I decided to come back to rest... Ended up listening to some K-pop while watching some videos on Youtube as I tried to find out what's with all this craze about K-pop with the kids and while I found some of the songs catchy, there were many by the popular groups (such as SNSD and Super Junior) which weren't that great though the dance moves were good and I'll give them that...
Ok, finally caught up with my blogging at least for the trip. <70 hours to our flight back to Singapore! =)
Shortest mating time - 3 seconds; apparently this happens for some of the animals in the wild such as lions and zebras because of concerns such as predators so they can't afford to take too long to mate since they are vulnerable to attacks during this time...
Longest mating time - 24 hours; this would be for, surprise surprise, the butterflies!
Shortest gestation period (for mammals) - about 2 weeks; this occurs for some of the marsupials (although I didn't really recall the zookeeper saying this but I checked on the Internet)
Longest gestation period (for mammals) - about 22 months; apparently this is the average period for some species of elephants...
Some other random and interesting (at least to me haha) tidbits (I tried to verify some of the more dubious ones on the Internet):
(1) some animals are of the "solitary" type while others are more of the "social" type and hence they are also kept in captivity in the same way so that they are in an environment similar to the one in the wild
(2) some animals have barbed sexual organs (OUCH!!!!!) such as some of the cats and also I believe the snakes (which have what are called hemipenes, one of which they use to attach to the female to hold her in position and the other for copulation)...
(3) for lions, it is actually possible for the lioness to bear cubs of different parentage as the eggs can be fertilised by the different males
(4) the lions sometimes kill the cubs so that the lioness can go to oestrus again and be ready for mating
(5) some of the gorillas had social problems and did not know how to care for their offspring and also how to mate. The solution? Nursing moms were brought in to show how they cared for their children and the males were shown videos on how mating was done lol...
(6) frogs lay up to 2000 eggs and some species of frogs (e.g. Surinam toad) have the eggs implanted on their back and the baby frogs hatch on the mother's back and seems like there used to be a species of frog (gastric-brooding frog) that used to eat its own eggs and the baby frogs would then hatch within the stomach and then come out from its mouth...
(7) the slimy skin of frogs is due to the mucus it secretes
(8) the determination of sex in many amphibians is controlled to quite some extent by the environment (known as environmental sexual determination, ESD, and this is opposed to genotypic sexual determination, GSD, where the genes determine the sex)
(9) for the stick insect, the lady emits pheromones for 33 days and if there is no mating partner that comes along then it can switch to asexual reproduction where she clones herself. Apparently this process can only occur for 7 generations because it takes out too much of the female though it sounds quite strange to me...
(10) the scales of iguanas can change colour due to emotions and environment (so colour-changing is not something unique to just chameleons)
(11) there was an iguana shown to us where we could see light through its eyes because apparently there's nothing between the eyes!
Ok, that's a lot of new knowledge! Time for recaps!
Day 12 (15th Dec) - went out for an excursion to Science Works in the morning and it was quite enjoyable, though I was disappointed that it was kinda rushed so I didn't have enough time to try out everything such as all the puzzles and this segment called Sportsworks which looked quite fun as it tests our body talents from flexibility to explosive power to hand-eye coordination and even grip strength. We ended off watching a video in the Planetarium regarding "Our Living Climate" and then were given an explanation on astronomy which I can't really appreciate because I just find it difficult to observe the stars (it's prob even harder in Singapore due to light pollution). Went to look around the shop after that and there were quite a few interesting books and stuff but I wasn't sure what was unique to Australia so I didn't buy anything. Ought to go to our Science Centre, Singapore, one of these days to see how it's like - it's also been quite a few years since I last visited it!
In the afternoon we attended a lecture on "Beyond Highschool" and it was pretty crap cos of the lecturer, which was very disappointing considering that he's been working in Trinity College for 13 years and was the Director of the Summer School but he kept digressing and seemed more interested in cracking mean jokes rather than delivering any substantial content and his remarks were also insensitive. It got so bad that we decided to leave before he was done because we felt that we had wasted enough time with him though I was too diplomatic to tell him off in front of the students but I will definitely give my frank feedback as I always do when I attend stuff.
Napped in the afternoon cos I wasn't feeling well and in fact throughout the whole trip I was not in perfect condition which was extremely irritating. Started with a persistent ulcer then had a sore throat and seems like now I have a bit of a cold...
Night activity was "Cultural Night" and most of the students were dressed up except for ours but I guess it's cos they were performing a skit so they dressed simply. Anyway the performances generally weren't great though there were some decent ones such as the Indian dance which was more authentic and also energetic though sadly too short and I thought Ngee Ann Sec's performance was good also - simple and sweet - with a rendition of Singapore Town and simple dance moves. SRJC's school dance was uhmmm... I think nothing compared to our orientation dances and I'm not being biased here! Oh, and the NASS kids were nice to encourage our kids cos we were first up amongst the 3 Singaporean groups as they cheered, "Go Meridians!" Nice kids and I always had a good impression of them from the students that I've had and am having from there =)
Our own performance had much room for improvement admittedly cos the kids barely rehearsed since our discussion on Mon and some of them felt that they embarrassed Singapore but I thought they did a fair job and also the Powerpoint slides were quite decently done and quite cute. They were kinda let down by a lack of mikes and also the audience which were too noisy so they couldn't express everything clearly as they intended to but at least they felt bad about it instead of feeling apathetic because they were trying to get out of not performing in the first place but we felt it's not nice since everybody else was performing. Our second video would've done better with subtitles but it was quite good also and it was done by one of our students for her N.E.Mation entry...
Day 13 (16th Dec) - had a talk on mentoring students in the morning which was just so-so cos I kinda mentor students also so there weren't much new stuff. After that we went out for an early lunch cos we were quite sick of the food in the college and went to this place called "Don Tojo" on Cardigan Street as it was recommended by one of the mentors. It was not bad and the food was relatively cheap as compared to other meals in Australia and the salmon I had was quite ok but somehow there's something lacking though I couldn't put a finger to it...
In the afternoon we went for the lab session entitled "Murder in Melbourne" which was in the genetics lab which we thought would be interesting but it was just so-so to us cos there was nothing to do and some of the stuff were quite basic such as analysing cheek cells and the other stuff we saw were quite simple like how to use the micropipette and some simple purification process of protein using droppers to transfer fluids so there was nothing technically difficult or unusual. Was kinda draggy so we left earlier and I went back to have an afternoon nap cos I was feeling more sick...
Woke up for dinner and we eventually settled on eating out since some of the kids were going out with their mentors anyway. The plan was to go to Sydney Road for some cafe that a mentor recommended but sadly it was closed early for a Xmas party so we wandered along the road for some time before landing up by chance at Tibas Lebanese restaurant which is apparently highly rated from what I just checked out but we didn't feel that way and the service was not good (we were not served water throughout the entire meal despite having asked a few times!) Food was just ok as we ordered 6 mixed grills to share amongst the 10 of us and most of it was lamb so I didn't eat too much as I only ate the chicken.
Came back to the college after dinner cos we didn't want to go and watch Narnia with the kids, which was what they were going to catch at 9.30pm as a cohort so it would end very late, and I decided to come back to rest... Ended up listening to some K-pop while watching some videos on Youtube as I tried to find out what's with all this craze about K-pop with the kids and while I found some of the songs catchy, there were many by the popular groups (such as SNSD and Super Junior) which weren't that great though the dance moves were good and I'll give them that...
Ok, finally caught up with my blogging at least for the trip. <70 hours to our flight back to Singapore! =)
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Young Leaders Summer School (Days 9-11)
Day 9 (12th Dec) - Went to the Docklands today and the kids walked around the area and also went ice-skating at the Medibank Icehouse. Didn't go ice-skating cos of my ankle though we took a look inside just to have a sense of the place so we spent the whole time shopping at the Harbour Town Shopping Centre and there were quite a lot of stuff to see and buy, esp for the ladies I would think, and I spent my greatest amount today! Not that much actually (compared to my other shopping sprees) though it's much more than my other days but it felt good and that's most important I guess!
Oh ya and we had lunch at KFC there haha - I guess sometimes you just gotta try the common fast food overseas to see how it's like - and I had this "All-Star Box" which had 2 "Wicked Wings", 1 piece chicken, 1 chicken strip, 1 box of popcorn chicken (much tastier than Singapore's), 1 regular mashed potato (gravy was also much tastier than Singapore's), 1 bun (which was also better than the dry one in Singapore haha), and a can drink. But as with most meals in Australia, that cost me $9.95 and I think it was already the cheapest meal there!
While shopping, we saw one of our students sitting with a friend along the path outside a shop and we were commented that she looked like one of the homeless people that hung around outside shops sometimes...
On the way back we took the free City Circle Tram that brought us around the city (in a circle as the name suggests) and it was a nice slow ride that occasionally had commentary. =)
Night activity was "Movie Night" but I wasn't interested so ended up blogging... =p
Day 10 (13th Dec) - Went for another school visit in the morning, this time to a public school (Coburg Senior High School) although apparently it was a much better one than most other public schools because they actually receive sponsorship from Apple (everyone seems to have an Macbook!). It was quite interesting and we quite liked the open concept that permeated the place - there were no classrooms to speak of but rather certain open spaces that were designated as teaching areas and even some of the workshop areas were pretty open. Oh and the principal was the one who presented to us as well as brought us around to show us the school facilities, which was cool I guess and that's prob cos this is their holiday period. I also quite liked the way they taught and got students to present but it's challenging for us right now due to the class size (they have a teacher:student ratio of 1:10) and also technical skills I guess though I hope things can change in the course of the future... =) [Interesting that I read on Yahoo News today that this is starting to happen in Singapore, with Maris Stella High School making it compulsory for all their students to get a Macbook]
After we came back to the college, we walked to Melbourne Zoo and had a fun time there! It's been more than 12 years since I last went to our Singapore Zoological Gardens so it's good to visit one. The most interesting part was the lesson that was taught by the zookeeper, which was on reproduction haha.
We learnt about the different ways in which animals tried to attract their mates - visual (e.g. peacock strutting about displaying its feathers, platypus doing their dance), aural (mating calls - common to many animals), and smell (release of pheromones for example through urine and faeces to "mark their territory" and btw, the males are not allowed to enter the territory except during the mating period); the longest and shortest mating time and gestation period (answers to be provided in my next post!); and the most fascinating thing to me were the various mechanisms in which animals employ to ensure that they have their offspring, such as induced ovulation which occurs for animals such as cats and basically the eggs are not released until the act of copulation causes them to be released (hence the term "induced"), delayed implantation / embryonic diapause which occurs for many animals such as bears and marsupials (e.g. kangaroos) and basically the embryo remains dormant (for details, please google and read =p) hence delaying the gestation period and this is done to time the birth of their offspring for favorable metabolic and/or environmental conditions so that their offspring will survive (e.g. an animal with a 3 month gestation period would need to mate in the winter so that its offspring can be born in spring, which is most favourable but this may not be possible as they may not meet their mating partner in winter so the mechanism allows them to mate earlier then delay the implantation so that the gestation period can start in winter - brilliant!) There were still plenty more interesting stuff that I learnt but will save it for the next post - information overload!
There were no night activities planned so we decided to meet up with the kids to go through with them their performance for the upcoming "Cultural Night" where they were supposed to do something to showcase our Singaporean culture. They had earlier discussed about doing a skit to showcase parts of life in Singapore but they hadn't settled many things so we sat them down together to thrash out the script and got them to rehearse and it was hilarious watching them act and talk although it was kinda messy. Basically it involved scenes of taking the MRT and showcasing our "Love Your Ride" campaign to show our obsession with campaigns (not forgetting to play for our foreign friends that irritating jingle) and eating at a hawker centre to showcase the variety of food from the various races (e.g. Chinese noodles stall, Malay Teh-Tarik, and Indian Roti Prata)... Had fun generating ideas and coming up with funny actions for the skit haha =p
Day 11 (14th Dec) - Went to IMAX theatre to watch 2 films - "Forces of Nature" and "Hubble 3-D" and it was quite alright though not exactly mind-blowing and perhaps a bit over-rated? "Forces of Nature" was basically about researchers trying to find out more about the destructive forces of nature such as volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and tornados and the underlying theme was for us to learn more about them so that we can deal with them, for example by doing analysis and being able to predict when a volcano will erupt and where an earthquake would hit. I was most fascinated by the part where they analysed the history of records of earthquakes from some ancient building and then, by noticing the pattern and using technology, accurately predict where the next earthquake would be because the stress in the earth that was released from earlier earthquakes traveled in a certain direction and would build up again later on. I enjoyed studying geography in secondary school and certainly could appreciate the commitment in studying these forces of nature for the benefit of mankind =)
"Hubble 3-D" was cool as it gave us insights into the minds and lives of the astronauts who were on a mission to fix parts of the Hubble Telescope that was launched into space back in the 90's. We saw the kind of training that they had to undergo to simulate the conditions they would encounter in space and the things they had to overcome to complete their space mission. The funny and, after a while, irritating thing was the kids who kept stretching out their hands to try and touch the people who were "close" to them because of the 3-D effect haha.
In the afternoon, we went on a fairly long journey to the National Institute of Circus Arts where the kids had about 1.5 hours of circus training and it was very fun! They were split into 2 groups and we joined the ones that were in the air-conditioned area haha. We started off with juggling, which I have tried my hand at when I was still in the army but I was never really good at it haha, and it was nicer to try it with proper bean bags rather than paper balls. Then the kids went to do jumps on the mini-trampoline which I opted to skip because I was worried about my ankle again but I would've loved to do it. The part I loved most though was the trapeze and we got to climb and do stuff on it that wasn't as difficult as it looked but it was still ultra-cool (such as hanging upside-down on a trapeze - got a video of me doing it!). Finally we went onto the ropes which kinda reminded me of the one we climb in the army for SOC (standard obstacle course) but somehow I seem to have forgotten the technique of climbing by standing on my legs (I kept trying to rely on my arm power). Nevertheless, we had fun and it was cool hanging upside down and posing for a picture =p
After that we walked around Chapel Street, which I heard and read was supposed to be a very cool place to shop because of the many shops with trendy fashion but somehow we weren't excited by it, prob cos we didn't go to the correct end of it (it's a really long stretch and we had already walked quite a fair bit) so the stuff that we saw weren't really that awesome and those that looked decent seemed a bit over-priced so that was kinda disappointing.
We went to this place called Mekong Vietnam for dinner, which was along Swanston Street and near Bourke Street and the pho (rice noodle) was just awesome cos the soup was fantastic! It looked ordinary but when we tasted it, it was just heavenly! Apparently many famous people have ate there before, including Bill Clinton, Jackie Chan, Samo Hung, I think Michael Chang (wasn't sure but looked like him!) and some other Hong Kong celebrities whose name I do not know (but I've seen on TV). I'd definitely recommend eating the pho there and the pricing is similar to most meals in Australia, which is $8.5 for a small bowl and $9.5 for a regular bowl but we weren't impressed by the cold rice rolls though, or maybe cos we weren't used to eating that kinda stuff... Nevertheless, it is affordable and the service is very efficient there - it was packed to the max and yet our food came within like 5 minutes from the time we ordered - we could certainly learn from them!
There were no night activities cos our kids who were in the Science Worlds went out for dinner separately with us so it was just chilling time and blogging... It's been such a long time in Australia and I can't wait to get back to Singapore and back to my room where I can at least get to watch TV and play com and do other stuff whenever I like... Less than 4 days left! =)
Oh ya and we had lunch at KFC there haha - I guess sometimes you just gotta try the common fast food overseas to see how it's like - and I had this "All-Star Box" which had 2 "Wicked Wings", 1 piece chicken, 1 chicken strip, 1 box of popcorn chicken (much tastier than Singapore's), 1 regular mashed potato (gravy was also much tastier than Singapore's), 1 bun (which was also better than the dry one in Singapore haha), and a can drink. But as with most meals in Australia, that cost me $9.95 and I think it was already the cheapest meal there!
While shopping, we saw one of our students sitting with a friend along the path outside a shop and we were commented that she looked like one of the homeless people that hung around outside shops sometimes...
On the way back we took the free City Circle Tram that brought us around the city (in a circle as the name suggests) and it was a nice slow ride that occasionally had commentary. =)
Night activity was "Movie Night" but I wasn't interested so ended up blogging... =p
Day 10 (13th Dec) - Went for another school visit in the morning, this time to a public school (Coburg Senior High School) although apparently it was a much better one than most other public schools because they actually receive sponsorship from Apple (everyone seems to have an Macbook!). It was quite interesting and we quite liked the open concept that permeated the place - there were no classrooms to speak of but rather certain open spaces that were designated as teaching areas and even some of the workshop areas were pretty open. Oh and the principal was the one who presented to us as well as brought us around to show us the school facilities, which was cool I guess and that's prob cos this is their holiday period. I also quite liked the way they taught and got students to present but it's challenging for us right now due to the class size (they have a teacher:student ratio of 1:10) and also technical skills I guess though I hope things can change in the course of the future... =) [Interesting that I read on Yahoo News today that this is starting to happen in Singapore, with Maris Stella High School making it compulsory for all their students to get a Macbook]
After we came back to the college, we walked to Melbourne Zoo and had a fun time there! It's been more than 12 years since I last went to our Singapore Zoological Gardens so it's good to visit one. The most interesting part was the lesson that was taught by the zookeeper, which was on reproduction haha.
We learnt about the different ways in which animals tried to attract their mates - visual (e.g. peacock strutting about displaying its feathers, platypus doing their dance), aural (mating calls - common to many animals), and smell (release of pheromones for example through urine and faeces to "mark their territory" and btw, the males are not allowed to enter the territory except during the mating period); the longest and shortest mating time and gestation period (answers to be provided in my next post!); and the most fascinating thing to me were the various mechanisms in which animals employ to ensure that they have their offspring, such as induced ovulation which occurs for animals such as cats and basically the eggs are not released until the act of copulation causes them to be released (hence the term "induced"), delayed implantation / embryonic diapause which occurs for many animals such as bears and marsupials (e.g. kangaroos) and basically the embryo remains dormant (for details, please google and read =p) hence delaying the gestation period and this is done to time the birth of their offspring for favorable metabolic and/or environmental conditions so that their offspring will survive (e.g. an animal with a 3 month gestation period would need to mate in the winter so that its offspring can be born in spring, which is most favourable but this may not be possible as they may not meet their mating partner in winter so the mechanism allows them to mate earlier then delay the implantation so that the gestation period can start in winter - brilliant!) There were still plenty more interesting stuff that I learnt but will save it for the next post - information overload!
There were no night activities planned so we decided to meet up with the kids to go through with them their performance for the upcoming "Cultural Night" where they were supposed to do something to showcase our Singaporean culture. They had earlier discussed about doing a skit to showcase parts of life in Singapore but they hadn't settled many things so we sat them down together to thrash out the script and got them to rehearse and it was hilarious watching them act and talk although it was kinda messy. Basically it involved scenes of taking the MRT and showcasing our "Love Your Ride" campaign to show our obsession with campaigns (not forgetting to play for our foreign friends that irritating jingle) and eating at a hawker centre to showcase the variety of food from the various races (e.g. Chinese noodles stall, Malay Teh-Tarik, and Indian Roti Prata)... Had fun generating ideas and coming up with funny actions for the skit haha =p
Day 11 (14th Dec) - Went to IMAX theatre to watch 2 films - "Forces of Nature" and "Hubble 3-D" and it was quite alright though not exactly mind-blowing and perhaps a bit over-rated? "Forces of Nature" was basically about researchers trying to find out more about the destructive forces of nature such as volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and tornados and the underlying theme was for us to learn more about them so that we can deal with them, for example by doing analysis and being able to predict when a volcano will erupt and where an earthquake would hit. I was most fascinated by the part where they analysed the history of records of earthquakes from some ancient building and then, by noticing the pattern and using technology, accurately predict where the next earthquake would be because the stress in the earth that was released from earlier earthquakes traveled in a certain direction and would build up again later on. I enjoyed studying geography in secondary school and certainly could appreciate the commitment in studying these forces of nature for the benefit of mankind =)
"Hubble 3-D" was cool as it gave us insights into the minds and lives of the astronauts who were on a mission to fix parts of the Hubble Telescope that was launched into space back in the 90's. We saw the kind of training that they had to undergo to simulate the conditions they would encounter in space and the things they had to overcome to complete their space mission. The funny and, after a while, irritating thing was the kids who kept stretching out their hands to try and touch the people who were "close" to them because of the 3-D effect haha.
In the afternoon, we went on a fairly long journey to the National Institute of Circus Arts where the kids had about 1.5 hours of circus training and it was very fun! They were split into 2 groups and we joined the ones that were in the air-conditioned area haha. We started off with juggling, which I have tried my hand at when I was still in the army but I was never really good at it haha, and it was nicer to try it with proper bean bags rather than paper balls. Then the kids went to do jumps on the mini-trampoline which I opted to skip because I was worried about my ankle again but I would've loved to do it. The part I loved most though was the trapeze and we got to climb and do stuff on it that wasn't as difficult as it looked but it was still ultra-cool (such as hanging upside-down on a trapeze - got a video of me doing it!). Finally we went onto the ropes which kinda reminded me of the one we climb in the army for SOC (standard obstacle course) but somehow I seem to have forgotten the technique of climbing by standing on my legs (I kept trying to rely on my arm power). Nevertheless, we had fun and it was cool hanging upside down and posing for a picture =p
After that we walked around Chapel Street, which I heard and read was supposed to be a very cool place to shop because of the many shops with trendy fashion but somehow we weren't excited by it, prob cos we didn't go to the correct end of it (it's a really long stretch and we had already walked quite a fair bit) so the stuff that we saw weren't really that awesome and those that looked decent seemed a bit over-priced so that was kinda disappointing.
We went to this place called Mekong Vietnam for dinner, which was along Swanston Street and near Bourke Street and the pho (rice noodle) was just awesome cos the soup was fantastic! It looked ordinary but when we tasted it, it was just heavenly! Apparently many famous people have ate there before, including Bill Clinton, Jackie Chan, Samo Hung, I think Michael Chang (wasn't sure but looked like him!) and some other Hong Kong celebrities whose name I do not know (but I've seen on TV). I'd definitely recommend eating the pho there and the pricing is similar to most meals in Australia, which is $8.5 for a small bowl and $9.5 for a regular bowl but we weren't impressed by the cold rice rolls though, or maybe cos we weren't used to eating that kinda stuff... Nevertheless, it is affordable and the service is very efficient there - it was packed to the max and yet our food came within like 5 minutes from the time we ordered - we could certainly learn from them!
There were no night activities cos our kids who were in the Science Worlds went out for dinner separately with us so it was just chilling time and blogging... It's been such a long time in Australia and I can't wait to get back to Singapore and back to my room where I can at least get to watch TV and play com and do other stuff whenever I like... Less than 4 days left! =)
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Young Leaders Summer School (Days 6-8)
Day 6 (8th Dec) - started with a talk and activities on the Myer Briggs Testing Inventory (MBTI as it's popular known), which we were unsure about how interesting it would be cos we had done the questions before but surprisingly it turned out to be quite worth our time because the speaker was able to clarify certain issues (e.g. how certain descriptors may be quite fuzzy for us to distinguish because we exhibit quite a fair bit for both sides of the trait), come up with some constructive activities for us to think through and try to link it to the context of our working environment and help us to better understand ourselves and others so as to reduce conflict and also learn how to work around problems by appealing to people who are of our opposite type. This session also gave me some food for thought regarding our Council Training Camp because we had earlier paid quite a large sum of money for some training sessions for our councilors but I thought that the MBTI could also be used to help the councilors learn about their differences in their preferences and working styles between them and since they do the test for their Chrystal lessons anyway it would be good to build on that and also save the money for us to do other stuff...
It was a pity that we had to miss some interesting workshops though, such as the geology lecture and workshop (which apparently taught students how to recognise fossils and non-fossils through touch, shape, colours) as well as the physiology workshop where they learnt to measure blood pressure amongst other stuff and seems like the students quite enjoyed themselves based on the reflections that they wrote.
In the afternoon we went for the lecture on drug design and chemotherapy and while it was chemistry-based, it was not what I had hoped for and I kinda knew some of the stuff already regarding how drugs were discovered or engineered so it wasn't appealing to me.
Night activity was Bollywood Dancing and it was quite short, less than an hour and the teacher wasn't as good as the hip-hop one - she was too fast and not clear in her teaching and also she was teaching the entire group of students which was probably too difficult to do so but I still kinda liked certain parts. Didn't plan to dance initially but some of the kids were so 'nua' and not moving so we had to go in and join so as to encourage them to dance along also haha...
Day 7 (9th Dec) - main activity was rock-climbing and we followed the kids down to the centre to watch them climb. I chose not to climb cos it was kinda 'leh-cheh' and I was wearing my jeans (which I did cos the weather was v cold) so it would've restricted my movements. But I could see that the kids really enjoyed it, especially those that climbed all the way to the top of their section of the wall (there were many different zones of varying difficulty) and there was more bantering amongst them 'suaning' each other about how they climbed higher than their friend. Took some good shots of them to showcase their achievements and generally it was a great time! One of them is the vice-captain of our rock-climbing CCA so perhaps I'll ask around to see if there will be any beginners' course to be held in school. It certainly looks fun and challenging (physically and intellectually also to figure out where to move) to me!
Lunch was ultra-fail and we ate at a Chinese restaurant at the same building where the kids did their rock-climbing because of convenience since we needed to go back to observe them and I ordered Yang Zhou Fried Rice (my standard dish), Xiao Long Bao, and a drink. The fried rice was not terrible, but certainly not worth the price ($9.8) and the xiao long bao was the most disgusting I ever had - it was almost totally dry! Should really have heeded the advice from an ex-student to avoid Asian food in Australia unless it's from famous places!
Afternoon's lecture was on "Gender and Cultural Narratives" and it was quite interesting - the lecturer started with a brief introduction of what he was going to do and then launched himself into a 12-minute play where he danced, pranced around, and acted in tune to the music that he had arranged. Basically he's a PhD student who's doing his thesis on a topic related to gender and he was trying to elicit responses to see what people from different cultures felt when they saw his performance because there were segments where he performed what we stereotyped as "masculine" movements and other times when he did "feminine" movements so the question was to challenge and find out why people considered certain movements to be masculine or feminine when there were no clear reasons to be. I thought the whole idea was quite intriguing and so did some of the other teachers but obviously it was lost on many of our students who were falling asleep and did not respond to the intellectual challenge as much as we did...
Night activity was "Trinity's Got Talent" (kinda spin-off from America's/Britain's Got Talent) but unfortunately there didn't seem to be too much on show. I fairly enjoyed 2 of the solo dance performances and parts of 2 of the group dance performances but apart from that, there was little to shout about and the singing was generally none too pleasing. Initially I was asked to sing but thankfully I got myself out of it... It should be the students' night anyway and I just wanted to chill and not have to stress myself out to perform (it's ALWAYS v stressful to prepare for a performance even after all this time cos I need to spend time to warm-up my voice)...
Day 8 (10th Dec) - we were originally scheduled to go to Mornington Peninsula but unfortunately due to the rain that was forecast a few days ago we were brought to Phillip Island instead, which was ok, except that I went there before. It was a 2-hour ride there and one of the mentors played "Love Actually" on the DVD, which is a nice movie in my opinion because I enjoyed the various love stories described and could relate to some of them, but there was one problem - it was the uncensored version that they played, so it was kinda uncomfortable... Never realised there were so much nudity and sexual references that were cut out cos the one that I watched was already pretty complete and the parts with nudity seemed pretty unnecessary...
Anyway back to the journey, we went to visit the Phillip Island Chocolate Factory which was only so-so because we didn't get to see the exhibition (we could've but it would cost us $12 each and we weren't given much time so I didn't think I could fully explore the place). After that we were brought to "The Nobbies" where we got to see the sea-gulls and take a stroll along the boardwalk. It was very cold and windy but it was quite nice to see the waves coming in and enjoying the beauty of nature, even though the view was quite limited. The sea gulls were quite pitiful though cos it was so cold and they were just resting in the open and when they tried to fly the winds were so strong that sometimes they just stood still or flew backwards...
After that we went to the little town there and had our lunch cos we didn't like our packed lunch - in fact most of us were quite sick of the food in the college and some of kids had already been eating instant noodles regularly. Most of us ended up eating Fish and Chips which wasn't great either cos it was kinda dry and they didn't have sauce but at least it was still quite ok lah... Walked around some of the shops there but there weren't anything worth buying - the souvenirs were too ex and there were no nice clothes haha...
We came back after that and part of the thing that I didn't really like about the day tour is that we spent more time traveling around rather than at the destination itself. Out of the 7 hr and 40 min that we spent during the entire trip, about 4 hr was spent on the traveling...
We went out with all the kids for ice-cream and there were a lot of joking around, and we spent a fair bit of time teasing one of the boys who is somehow very popular with girls (though we couldn't figure out why), so much so that one of them got quite close to him in front of everyone and the funny part was that she wasn't even his group member but a friend of his group member! =p
Anyway night activity was Games Night so there were various games - sports at their field, board games (which was a failure because the games were not interesting and nobody played them in the end) and video games (they had Dance Dance Revolution, Halo 3 and Fifa 2009 I think) but in the end I just watched some of our kids play DDR for a while and then I left already cos it didn't appeal to me to play video games with strangers in a big crowd...
The nights here in Melbourne are generally quite boring I must say cos we're in the college and the computer room can be pretty crowded in the evening with the kids. Last night I found myself with really nothing to do cos all the computers were used so I went back to my room and thought of going to sleep but it was like 9+pm and I was like, "Who the heck sleeps at 9pm on a Saturday???" So in the end I just stayed awake for a while then went back to the computer room at 10+ when the kids have been chased to their rooms... Then I started blogging haha... Not much of a life still haha but well better than nothing I guess...
More updates soon again - there's so much time to do so! =p
It was a pity that we had to miss some interesting workshops though, such as the geology lecture and workshop (which apparently taught students how to recognise fossils and non-fossils through touch, shape, colours) as well as the physiology workshop where they learnt to measure blood pressure amongst other stuff and seems like the students quite enjoyed themselves based on the reflections that they wrote.
In the afternoon we went for the lecture on drug design and chemotherapy and while it was chemistry-based, it was not what I had hoped for and I kinda knew some of the stuff already regarding how drugs were discovered or engineered so it wasn't appealing to me.
Night activity was Bollywood Dancing and it was quite short, less than an hour and the teacher wasn't as good as the hip-hop one - she was too fast and not clear in her teaching and also she was teaching the entire group of students which was probably too difficult to do so but I still kinda liked certain parts. Didn't plan to dance initially but some of the kids were so 'nua' and not moving so we had to go in and join so as to encourage them to dance along also haha...
Day 7 (9th Dec) - main activity was rock-climbing and we followed the kids down to the centre to watch them climb. I chose not to climb cos it was kinda 'leh-cheh' and I was wearing my jeans (which I did cos the weather was v cold) so it would've restricted my movements. But I could see that the kids really enjoyed it, especially those that climbed all the way to the top of their section of the wall (there were many different zones of varying difficulty) and there was more bantering amongst them 'suaning' each other about how they climbed higher than their friend. Took some good shots of them to showcase their achievements and generally it was a great time! One of them is the vice-captain of our rock-climbing CCA so perhaps I'll ask around to see if there will be any beginners' course to be held in school. It certainly looks fun and challenging (physically and intellectually also to figure out where to move) to me!
Lunch was ultra-fail and we ate at a Chinese restaurant at the same building where the kids did their rock-climbing because of convenience since we needed to go back to observe them and I ordered Yang Zhou Fried Rice (my standard dish), Xiao Long Bao, and a drink. The fried rice was not terrible, but certainly not worth the price ($9.8) and the xiao long bao was the most disgusting I ever had - it was almost totally dry! Should really have heeded the advice from an ex-student to avoid Asian food in Australia unless it's from famous places!
Afternoon's lecture was on "Gender and Cultural Narratives" and it was quite interesting - the lecturer started with a brief introduction of what he was going to do and then launched himself into a 12-minute play where he danced, pranced around, and acted in tune to the music that he had arranged. Basically he's a PhD student who's doing his thesis on a topic related to gender and he was trying to elicit responses to see what people from different cultures felt when they saw his performance because there were segments where he performed what we stereotyped as "masculine" movements and other times when he did "feminine" movements so the question was to challenge and find out why people considered certain movements to be masculine or feminine when there were no clear reasons to be. I thought the whole idea was quite intriguing and so did some of the other teachers but obviously it was lost on many of our students who were falling asleep and did not respond to the intellectual challenge as much as we did...
Night activity was "Trinity's Got Talent" (kinda spin-off from America's/Britain's Got Talent) but unfortunately there didn't seem to be too much on show. I fairly enjoyed 2 of the solo dance performances and parts of 2 of the group dance performances but apart from that, there was little to shout about and the singing was generally none too pleasing. Initially I was asked to sing but thankfully I got myself out of it... It should be the students' night anyway and I just wanted to chill and not have to stress myself out to perform (it's ALWAYS v stressful to prepare for a performance even after all this time cos I need to spend time to warm-up my voice)...
Day 8 (10th Dec) - we were originally scheduled to go to Mornington Peninsula but unfortunately due to the rain that was forecast a few days ago we were brought to Phillip Island instead, which was ok, except that I went there before. It was a 2-hour ride there and one of the mentors played "Love Actually" on the DVD, which is a nice movie in my opinion because I enjoyed the various love stories described and could relate to some of them, but there was one problem - it was the uncensored version that they played, so it was kinda uncomfortable... Never realised there were so much nudity and sexual references that were cut out cos the one that I watched was already pretty complete and the parts with nudity seemed pretty unnecessary...
Anyway back to the journey, we went to visit the Phillip Island Chocolate Factory which was only so-so because we didn't get to see the exhibition (we could've but it would cost us $12 each and we weren't given much time so I didn't think I could fully explore the place). After that we were brought to "The Nobbies" where we got to see the sea-gulls and take a stroll along the boardwalk. It was very cold and windy but it was quite nice to see the waves coming in and enjoying the beauty of nature, even though the view was quite limited. The sea gulls were quite pitiful though cos it was so cold and they were just resting in the open and when they tried to fly the winds were so strong that sometimes they just stood still or flew backwards...
After that we went to the little town there and had our lunch cos we didn't like our packed lunch - in fact most of us were quite sick of the food in the college and some of kids had already been eating instant noodles regularly. Most of us ended up eating Fish and Chips which wasn't great either cos it was kinda dry and they didn't have sauce but at least it was still quite ok lah... Walked around some of the shops there but there weren't anything worth buying - the souvenirs were too ex and there were no nice clothes haha...
We came back after that and part of the thing that I didn't really like about the day tour is that we spent more time traveling around rather than at the destination itself. Out of the 7 hr and 40 min that we spent during the entire trip, about 4 hr was spent on the traveling...
We went out with all the kids for ice-cream and there were a lot of joking around, and we spent a fair bit of time teasing one of the boys who is somehow very popular with girls (though we couldn't figure out why), so much so that one of them got quite close to him in front of everyone and the funny part was that she wasn't even his group member but a friend of his group member! =p
Anyway night activity was Games Night so there were various games - sports at their field, board games (which was a failure because the games were not interesting and nobody played them in the end) and video games (they had Dance Dance Revolution, Halo 3 and Fifa 2009 I think) but in the end I just watched some of our kids play DDR for a while and then I left already cos it didn't appeal to me to play video games with strangers in a big crowd...
The nights here in Melbourne are generally quite boring I must say cos we're in the college and the computer room can be pretty crowded in the evening with the kids. Last night I found myself with really nothing to do cos all the computers were used so I went back to my room and thought of going to sleep but it was like 9+pm and I was like, "Who the heck sleeps at 9pm on a Saturday???" So in the end I just stayed awake for a while then went back to the computer room at 10+ when the kids have been chased to their rooms... Then I started blogging haha... Not much of a life still haha but well better than nothing I guess...
More updates soon again - there's so much time to do so! =p
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Young Leaders Summer School (Days 3-5)
Day 3 (6th Dec) - started off with the mundane stuff like the welcome speech, housekeeping matters and then icebreakers for the kids. We skipped the tour of the college (since we kinda knew most of it anyway) and the uni and decided it was better to head down to the city so we went to Bourke St. again since we didn't get to go into the departmental stores the last time. But we found out that the prices there are really ex compared to Singapore and though I tried to work my way through the little streets around the area I couldn't find any bargains sad to say. Even "The Reject Shop" didn't have much things that appealed to me (unlike the one in Penang where I bought clothes)...
We then went back to observe the kids as they went through some team skilling stuff (think team-bonding games, again a bit like the standard type of games in orientation such as building the tallest tower with paper, although this time I did get to see a very creative design that was tall and looked decent; I also liked the part where the kids were asked to choreograph certain segments of a dance and the various flashpoints which were quizzes that helped to break the monotony of certain tasks), listened to the introduction of the leadership project and I took part in the hip-hop lesson that they had which was quite fun! I liked it cos of how the instructor taught the moves and got the kids to open up and the learning points that she had, which was NOT about the dancing but just giving 100% in whatever you do and having faith in yourself and not being afraid to be judged by others. She started by teaching a routine that everyone did, then a routine for the girls and boys so that we could battle it out, then divided into even smaller groups of 4-5 where each came up with their own dance routines and finally ended with the confidence circle where everyone went up individually to the centre to do whatever they were comfortable with. I thought that was really good and tried to force people to come out of their shells (although some did minimal stuff)... Certainly gave me some food for thought about next year's Council Training Camp... =)
Night activity was trivia night which the teachers felt could be improved by having questions that were more general and allow greater interaction and sharing of culture amongst the participants rather than very obscure questions based on American/Australian culture so that at least the kids can interact more rather than cracking their brains individually...
Day 4 (7th Dec) - started off with an introduction to this "Melbourne Model" thing which was supposed to describe how wonderful the system is like but in the end we just thought it was no different from our Singapore system so it was kinda boring but thankfully it was just a short session. We then joined the kids for a lecture on "How We Fund Our Ideas" which was on copyright issues, trademarks, trade secrets and patents. While certain parts were interesting to know, I thought there were too many draggy parts which stopped me from enjoying it more but it was ok for me (though many of the kids seemed to be falling asleep).
We also attended a Maths lecture on "Mathematics, Nature and Nonsense" which was quite funny and I appreciated the idea to bring the kids back to fundamentals such as how Pythagoras Theorem came about, how pi was defined and some other Laws and formulae that were put forth by early mathematicians. I think the important idea which is true for Science also is that we need to appreciate how the early theories come about rather than just memorising the formulae and it is also important to understand what went through the minds of the great people because sometimes the stuff they think of can seem so nonsensical at that point of time and yet it all makes sense much later on. I also liked the part about the numerology and how there are various ways in seeing patterns. But as a kid pointed out, she couldn't see the application of the knowledge from the lecture which is true and I just felt that it was a basic introduction to Mathematics and the philosophical side of things rather than the hardcore mathematics stuff so it was very different from the JC system naturally...
Last part of the day we had public speaking and I thought it was quite boring cos it seemed pretty basic stuff and also for our kids since they went through almost everything in their OP preparation for PW so we left early, though apparently there was something a little bit more interesting after we left...
Dinner was good as our host brought us out to Lygon Street for dinner at an Italian restaurant and the food was awesome! I had a mixed seafood grill and thoroughly enjoyed it, as did the rest. Then we went to a nearby cafe (Brunetti's) for ice-cream and it was again fantastic cos it was really creamy and smooth and tasty! Best meal we had in Melbourne so far! =)
Day 5 (8th Dec) - Went to Xavier College for a tour there and I believe it's a private school and for boys only. I thought the labs were quite good and I liked the way the doors and walls were designed with murals of famous scientists to liven up the place and create a better atmosphere for doing lab work and I thought it was something that could be done also relatively easily and cheaply. There were some fascinating stuff that we saw in the labs such as some cleaning equipment that would make cleaning so much easier and we thought about getting that for our own labs haha. The school had a pretty posh look also and their auditorium was impressive, as was their general school compound. We also got a look at their attic, which served as a heritage centre of sorts and helped to capture all the memories of the alumni as they had many photographs, replicas of the dorm beds, bathrooms, and even the original graffiti on the ceiling. It was certainly pretty impressive though much space had to be given up to do that...
After we came back to Trinity College we set off towards the city again as we wanted to find the DFO shops at South Wharf so we took the tram to the end and stopped outside Flinders Station. I then bought food from "Lord of the Fries" which was just ok - the fries weren't that awesome anyway though I liked the Belgian mayo sauce. Took another tram to Spencer street where we dropped off then walked through the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre before finally reaching our destination. It was certainly worth the traveling because it's a shopping haven, esp for the ladies I'm sure because the basement had a huge area of shops with discounts and I finally got to buy some decent stuff though I held back on the more expensive items because I wasn't sure about my fashion sense haha. But we'll definitely go back next week with the kids and I want to buy more stuff! =)
Night activity was karaoke night and there were plenty of bad singing haha though some of the performances were quite entertaining cos of the dances that the groups tried to come up with and watching our kids perform was quite entertaining... =p
More updates soon!
We then went back to observe the kids as they went through some team skilling stuff (think team-bonding games, again a bit like the standard type of games in orientation such as building the tallest tower with paper, although this time I did get to see a very creative design that was tall and looked decent; I also liked the part where the kids were asked to choreograph certain segments of a dance and the various flashpoints which were quizzes that helped to break the monotony of certain tasks), listened to the introduction of the leadership project and I took part in the hip-hop lesson that they had which was quite fun! I liked it cos of how the instructor taught the moves and got the kids to open up and the learning points that she had, which was NOT about the dancing but just giving 100% in whatever you do and having faith in yourself and not being afraid to be judged by others. She started by teaching a routine that everyone did, then a routine for the girls and boys so that we could battle it out, then divided into even smaller groups of 4-5 where each came up with their own dance routines and finally ended with the confidence circle where everyone went up individually to the centre to do whatever they were comfortable with. I thought that was really good and tried to force people to come out of their shells (although some did minimal stuff)... Certainly gave me some food for thought about next year's Council Training Camp... =)
Night activity was trivia night which the teachers felt could be improved by having questions that were more general and allow greater interaction and sharing of culture amongst the participants rather than very obscure questions based on American/Australian culture so that at least the kids can interact more rather than cracking their brains individually...
Day 4 (7th Dec) - started off with an introduction to this "Melbourne Model" thing which was supposed to describe how wonderful the system is like but in the end we just thought it was no different from our Singapore system so it was kinda boring but thankfully it was just a short session. We then joined the kids for a lecture on "How We Fund Our Ideas" which was on copyright issues, trademarks, trade secrets and patents. While certain parts were interesting to know, I thought there were too many draggy parts which stopped me from enjoying it more but it was ok for me (though many of the kids seemed to be falling asleep).
We also attended a Maths lecture on "Mathematics, Nature and Nonsense" which was quite funny and I appreciated the idea to bring the kids back to fundamentals such as how Pythagoras Theorem came about, how pi was defined and some other Laws and formulae that were put forth by early mathematicians. I think the important idea which is true for Science also is that we need to appreciate how the early theories come about rather than just memorising the formulae and it is also important to understand what went through the minds of the great people because sometimes the stuff they think of can seem so nonsensical at that point of time and yet it all makes sense much later on. I also liked the part about the numerology and how there are various ways in seeing patterns. But as a kid pointed out, she couldn't see the application of the knowledge from the lecture which is true and I just felt that it was a basic introduction to Mathematics and the philosophical side of things rather than the hardcore mathematics stuff so it was very different from the JC system naturally...
Last part of the day we had public speaking and I thought it was quite boring cos it seemed pretty basic stuff and also for our kids since they went through almost everything in their OP preparation for PW so we left early, though apparently there was something a little bit more interesting after we left...
Dinner was good as our host brought us out to Lygon Street for dinner at an Italian restaurant and the food was awesome! I had a mixed seafood grill and thoroughly enjoyed it, as did the rest. Then we went to a nearby cafe (Brunetti's) for ice-cream and it was again fantastic cos it was really creamy and smooth and tasty! Best meal we had in Melbourne so far! =)
Day 5 (8th Dec) - Went to Xavier College for a tour there and I believe it's a private school and for boys only. I thought the labs were quite good and I liked the way the doors and walls were designed with murals of famous scientists to liven up the place and create a better atmosphere for doing lab work and I thought it was something that could be done also relatively easily and cheaply. There were some fascinating stuff that we saw in the labs such as some cleaning equipment that would make cleaning so much easier and we thought about getting that for our own labs haha. The school had a pretty posh look also and their auditorium was impressive, as was their general school compound. We also got a look at their attic, which served as a heritage centre of sorts and helped to capture all the memories of the alumni as they had many photographs, replicas of the dorm beds, bathrooms, and even the original graffiti on the ceiling. It was certainly pretty impressive though much space had to be given up to do that...
After we came back to Trinity College we set off towards the city again as we wanted to find the DFO shops at South Wharf so we took the tram to the end and stopped outside Flinders Station. I then bought food from "Lord of the Fries" which was just ok - the fries weren't that awesome anyway though I liked the Belgian mayo sauce. Took another tram to Spencer street where we dropped off then walked through the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre before finally reaching our destination. It was certainly worth the traveling because it's a shopping haven, esp for the ladies I'm sure because the basement had a huge area of shops with discounts and I finally got to buy some decent stuff though I held back on the more expensive items because I wasn't sure about my fashion sense haha. But we'll definitely go back next week with the kids and I want to buy more stuff! =)
Night activity was karaoke night and there were plenty of bad singing haha though some of the performances were quite entertaining cos of the dances that the groups tried to come up with and watching our kids perform was quite entertaining... =p
More updates soon!
Friday, December 10, 2010
Young Leaders Summer School (Days 0-2)
Procrastination consumes me again and now I find myself blogging two months after my last post in Melbourne as I'm one of the teacher chaperones on our Young Leaders' Summer School which is hosted by Trinity College, University of Melbourne. Perhaps one of the best parts is that I'm finally getting some decent sleep since most of the nights I sleep by 11pm (which is 8pm in Singapore) as there's nothing much to do at that time of the night so hopefully that helps to make up for the lack of it during the course of the year!
Let me recap the main things that happened so far...
Day 0 (3rd Dec) - spent the morning and afternoon doing my last-minute preparations for the trip - went for a haircut, buy facial wash and sunscreen, exchange money, then started to pack. Thankfully our flight was delayed, apparently due to adverse weather conditions, so that gave me a bit more time to tidy things up and also some more time in Singapore - I much prefer spending time back home in my room than my room here! Anyway, we were given $20 each to spend at Delifrance or BK due to the flight delay, which was a pleasant surprise so most of us started to spam as much as we could to maximise the amount even though we had our dinner and really went to calculate to see what's the best way to use up the $20 fully haha. Flight itself was good (thankfully, given all the recent incidents about Qantas flights) and I had a window seat so I had a good view of various parts of Australia (a lot of geographical features that I couldn't recognise) since we reached there early in the morning. =)
Day 1 (4th Dec) - reached Melbourne airport at about 9+ am local time then I took some time to clear the customs cos I decided to play safe and made a declaration about my shoes in case they had soil (the Aussies are VERY particular about foreign stuff being brought into the country). Found the student leader in charge and we were brought to the college, which looked pretty impressive because the structure of the buildings resembled that of ancient educational institutes such as Cambridge and Oxford (although we found out later that it wasn't just the outside of the buildings that were ancient =p).
Went to check into our rooms and the other teacher and I were surprised to find that our accommodation was far from what was described by another teacher who had been there before haha so our high expectations were kinda flattened. It's not that the rooms are bad, but we expected more I guess. I didn't really fancy a room that was carpeted cos it was kinda dusty and I had an ancient-looking cupboard which I wasn't keen to put my clothes in. At least my bed and toilet looked decent (though there were the occasional mosquito, fly, and moth that flew in - something that I can't stand!) so it's bearable for me haha. But give me my room and toilet in Singapore anytime! =D
After settling down, we went out with some of the mentors (think OGLs) who brought us around the area and we walked to some of the other nearby streets (Lygon street in particular, which has become quite familiar to us esp since we go to the supermarket there to buy our groceries) and also walked to Carlton Gardens and past the IMAX theatre, Melbourne Museum, and the Royal Exhibition Building.
Came back to the college and rested, then had dinner before we went out to town. Landed up at Bourke Street where we queued up to watch this Xmas display at this shopping centre called Myer. Apparently it's quite a tradition for them to put up these displays and it's basically telling a story (in this case it was about the Nutcracker) and they made very intricate figurines so we took a lot of pictures (though some of the kids weren't interested in it I guess cos they never heard of the tale before - neither had I but I just followed politely and tried to appreciate it since the mentors brought us there and also to find out more about the story).
After that we walked down towards the Yarra River and we saw a few buskers performing around the area before we settled down around a place near the Crowne Casino to watch and feel the flames bursting out from some of the pillars in that area. Apparently it happens every night on an hourly basis so it's quite cool - not mind-blowing but it's nice to take a look if you happen to be there at that time. =)
Went back after that and I guess one of the main things I learnt today was also how to buy tickets for their tram and this was the first time I took the tram even though I had been to Melbourne seven years ago for a few days.
Day 2 (5th Dec) - went to Queen Victoria Market which I have been before during my last trip to Melbourne but I kinda forgotten how it looked like until I started to enter the place. It's really like a HUGE pasar malam - you get the variety of shops selling all kinds of stuff and after a while the same kind of shops start to appear but I'd still say it's a must go for the souvenirs and also probably macadamia nuts, which are apparently v popular since I've had some requests and so have the other teachers. Before we left the place one of the students tried his hand at this game that was set up in the market. It involved climbing onto a slanted ladder and whoever could reach the top and touch the $50 note there would win it. Well obviously the person made it look v easy during his demo but somehow it's v hard to do it and nobody could figure out. Our student just said that it's v difficult to balance so guess we should ask some Physics teachers to sort that out!
Went back after the shopping trip then rested before they had their "Mini-Olympics" where they had some orientation type of games to build team-work but some of the games were quite standard to me and I'd like to think that some of our OGLs actually came up with much more interesting games for our orientation next year so I'm looking forward to that!
After that we had this Mexican Party where I kinda liked the concept of how people were paired together. You pick a name out from a hat then go around finding your partner whose name complement yours e.g. if I pick Batman I'll try to prob find Robin; for me I was Clyde and tried to find Bonnie. Once you found your partner you had to solve a quiz where the answers lied mainly with the mentors so you'll need to go around asking them for help.
After that quiz we had a Mexican themed dinner which was quite nice (prob the best meal that we've had here so far) and it was quite funny listening to some of the kids talk. Then they had dance sessions including the Limbo Rock and Macarena and some other free-style dance before it ended and we went to the supermarket again. This time there was an Aussie girl who joined us and from the supermarket till the college we kept gossiping and joking about one of our boys who seemed to be charmed by her cos my fellow chaperone pointed out that he always walked in front but now he kept walking at the back so that he could talk to her. =P
That's end of Day 2 - updates on other days soon!
Let me recap the main things that happened so far...
Day 0 (3rd Dec) - spent the morning and afternoon doing my last-minute preparations for the trip - went for a haircut, buy facial wash and sunscreen, exchange money, then started to pack. Thankfully our flight was delayed, apparently due to adverse weather conditions, so that gave me a bit more time to tidy things up and also some more time in Singapore - I much prefer spending time back home in my room than my room here! Anyway, we were given $20 each to spend at Delifrance or BK due to the flight delay, which was a pleasant surprise so most of us started to spam as much as we could to maximise the amount even though we had our dinner and really went to calculate to see what's the best way to use up the $20 fully haha. Flight itself was good (thankfully, given all the recent incidents about Qantas flights) and I had a window seat so I had a good view of various parts of Australia (a lot of geographical features that I couldn't recognise) since we reached there early in the morning. =)
Day 1 (4th Dec) - reached Melbourne airport at about 9+ am local time then I took some time to clear the customs cos I decided to play safe and made a declaration about my shoes in case they had soil (the Aussies are VERY particular about foreign stuff being brought into the country). Found the student leader in charge and we were brought to the college, which looked pretty impressive because the structure of the buildings resembled that of ancient educational institutes such as Cambridge and Oxford (although we found out later that it wasn't just the outside of the buildings that were ancient =p).
Went to check into our rooms and the other teacher and I were surprised to find that our accommodation was far from what was described by another teacher who had been there before haha so our high expectations were kinda flattened. It's not that the rooms are bad, but we expected more I guess. I didn't really fancy a room that was carpeted cos it was kinda dusty and I had an ancient-looking cupboard which I wasn't keen to put my clothes in. At least my bed and toilet looked decent (though there were the occasional mosquito, fly, and moth that flew in - something that I can't stand!) so it's bearable for me haha. But give me my room and toilet in Singapore anytime! =D
After settling down, we went out with some of the mentors (think OGLs) who brought us around the area and we walked to some of the other nearby streets (Lygon street in particular, which has become quite familiar to us esp since we go to the supermarket there to buy our groceries) and also walked to Carlton Gardens and past the IMAX theatre, Melbourne Museum, and the Royal Exhibition Building.
Came back to the college and rested, then had dinner before we went out to town. Landed up at Bourke Street where we queued up to watch this Xmas display at this shopping centre called Myer. Apparently it's quite a tradition for them to put up these displays and it's basically telling a story (in this case it was about the Nutcracker) and they made very intricate figurines so we took a lot of pictures (though some of the kids weren't interested in it I guess cos they never heard of the tale before - neither had I but I just followed politely and tried to appreciate it since the mentors brought us there and also to find out more about the story).
After that we walked down towards the Yarra River and we saw a few buskers performing around the area before we settled down around a place near the Crowne Casino to watch and feel the flames bursting out from some of the pillars in that area. Apparently it happens every night on an hourly basis so it's quite cool - not mind-blowing but it's nice to take a look if you happen to be there at that time. =)
Went back after that and I guess one of the main things I learnt today was also how to buy tickets for their tram and this was the first time I took the tram even though I had been to Melbourne seven years ago for a few days.
Day 2 (5th Dec) - went to Queen Victoria Market which I have been before during my last trip to Melbourne but I kinda forgotten how it looked like until I started to enter the place. It's really like a HUGE pasar malam - you get the variety of shops selling all kinds of stuff and after a while the same kind of shops start to appear but I'd still say it's a must go for the souvenirs and also probably macadamia nuts, which are apparently v popular since I've had some requests and so have the other teachers. Before we left the place one of the students tried his hand at this game that was set up in the market. It involved climbing onto a slanted ladder and whoever could reach the top and touch the $50 note there would win it. Well obviously the person made it look v easy during his demo but somehow it's v hard to do it and nobody could figure out. Our student just said that it's v difficult to balance so guess we should ask some Physics teachers to sort that out!
Went back after the shopping trip then rested before they had their "Mini-Olympics" where they had some orientation type of games to build team-work but some of the games were quite standard to me and I'd like to think that some of our OGLs actually came up with much more interesting games for our orientation next year so I'm looking forward to that!
After that we had this Mexican Party where I kinda liked the concept of how people were paired together. You pick a name out from a hat then go around finding your partner whose name complement yours e.g. if I pick Batman I'll try to prob find Robin; for me I was Clyde and tried to find Bonnie. Once you found your partner you had to solve a quiz where the answers lied mainly with the mentors so you'll need to go around asking them for help.
After that quiz we had a Mexican themed dinner which was quite nice (prob the best meal that we've had here so far) and it was quite funny listening to some of the kids talk. Then they had dance sessions including the Limbo Rock and Macarena and some other free-style dance before it ended and we went to the supermarket again. This time there was an Aussie girl who joined us and from the supermarket till the college we kept gossiping and joking about one of our boys who seemed to be charmed by her cos my fellow chaperone pointed out that he always walked in front but now he kept walking at the back so that he could talk to her. =P
That's end of Day 2 - updates on other days soon!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)