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
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