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! =)