Rollerblading, for the first time.

I had a very long day last Saturday, and it was one of my most fruitful day of ages. I'm about to give a detailed account of what I did in that whole day, do be warned that it's going to be quite long.

It started off with the most boring part of the day, going to school to mark books that I couldn't finish off last Friday! I woke up specially at 7am just to do that, as I didn't want work to pile up the week when I'm about to leave. The scariest thought is staying back for another week at practicum to get my work done. No way, man!

At 10am, I met up with the rest of my gang and guess what? We went rollerblading! This is really something new for me as it's the first time of my life getting my feet into a pair of blades. Actually, we ran out of things to do on weekends and I'm quite keen to pick up something new. Speaking of being active in my last blog, I had tried out various kinds of sports over the past few weekends after the dive trip. I did hiking (tree-top trail), swimming, cycling, spent 3 weekends kayaking and walked across the causeway once (if you can consider that too).

Blading was easier to pick up than I had imagined, but I'm having a very brusied bum after falling down many times on my butt, and only once on my knee guards. There wasn't much problem with blading, except that I couldn't stop myself once I started, therefore it resulted in many crashlandings, with me falling down in many awkward postitions and looking the most unglam. But overall, it's a interesting sports and I'm contemplating to get my own blades sometime soon so that I can become a pro at it. Ha!

While I was taking a rest, I caught OBS instructor in a very dramatic fall, with PE teacher to her rescue!

Dramatic 

Getting onto her feet

Getting onto her feet.. 

The blading session only lasted for an hour plus as my bum was hurtful and I had difficult walking and sitting down properly. After roller-blading, we went for a karaoke session at K-box (Toa Payoh). I found more songs that I can download onto my MP3 player!! Although my player has a whooping capacity of 2,500 songs, right now there's only less than 400 songs inside, due to the fact that I can remember most songs by the tune but not the names.

Anyone, names of nice songs that you know?

At the Parade

As this is the last NPCC day parade held at the current TRACOM (aka Police Academy), the bunch of us (namely, the super oldies) decided to gatecrash and view the parade for old times sake. With some luck and good connections, we managed to grab the front row of seats even though all of us were not in uniform, neither are we the VIPs or parents of the VIPs. Hahah.. and we have fun time there, ermm.. most of it from making stupid remarks while viewing an event that hadn't change much over the past 10 years.


We the 'extras' taking photographs. 

As I said, it was an eventful day. After the parade, we went for Jap food (Ichiban something) at Novena square, the food there was great! To end off the day, we went to catch a midnight show "Coach Carter". That was one of the best movies I had watched in the recent few months, quite motivational for educators. Some commentaries had it that the plot is rather cliche, the ever popular story of underdog sport team developing its potentials and winning amazingly at the end. Well, I feel that it's definitely something different from 'Iron Ladies', 'Dodgeball' and the likes. It's a movie worth watching, by my standards!


Coach carter 

If only there's more coach carters around, every school need some of these people who are un-discouragable, top it up with a un-dying passion to deal with difficult kids that are breeding all over this world now.

Shape 

A meeting in "Shape"

Currently, I’m switching between blogging and doing my lastest report for this semester, and probably for the whole of my career as a trainee. Yeah, lastest.. that’s the word for ‘very very very final one’ in case you haven’t noticed. This afternoon, I’ve also done up my lastest lesson plan for the whole of my practicum life. How I love this word, lastest! Well, that is if I’ve passed my practicum successfully. Hmm..


Anyway, if you haven’t realized, I’m typing my report in Chinese as my reports and lesson plans are all supposed to be in Chinese, so pardon me if I sound incoherent. But I’m still blogging on as I realized that you guys must be sick of clicking on my page and seeing the same old story about my trip to JB weeks ago. So here I am, to update my blog again, finally!

Last Wednesday, I rushed all the way down to East Coast to attend a short ‘interview’ with the editor of Shape magazine. Well, if you haven’t heard of this magazine, so did I, thus it was embarrassing when the editor Elisabeth asked me to give her feedback about how the magazine was doing. But anyway, right after the interview, I picked up a copy and it wasn't not too bad to speak the truth, just a bit too expensive and targeted readers are working young women who are into sports and health issues, or maybe for those who are health conscious.

Well, back to the interview now. I wouldn’t call it an interview but rather, just a chatting session with the editor who wanted to find out more about young working women who are into seasports (before they decide to do a feature about it). Thus you guys do not have to rush to the newsstand to get hold of a copy of the magazine yet, as we may not be featured after all. I actually rushed all the way from Yishun (my workplace) to East Coast to attend the meet-up with the editor after being ‘arrowed’ by our club manager. Yeah, I’m actually into clubbing.. seasports club to be exact. Hahaa.. There were five of us being assigned the task of answering questions, three of us doing kayaking and two other windsurfers. Turned out that the editor and the writer of the magazine were more than mesmerized by the ladies who are doing windsurfing, as that’s a sport more suitable for their target audience. I have to admit: kayaking is more for adolescents and doesn’t require as much techniques from the layman's point of view. But the session didn’t go to waste as I had a go on the windsurfing simulator and I’m quite inclined to pick up the sport too. The editor asked each of us about how long we had been into the sport and it made me realized that I had actually been into it for 6, 7 years. Wow, that’s a really long time spent on the sea. And to think of it, quite a lot of UV rays absorbed too.

In the past year, I had kept myself away from such activities due to workload in school. But the past few months during practicum had gave me more free time during weekends, so I was more active. I’ve met some people recently who were ‘mistaken’:

They: Hi, you’re the new teacher. What do you teach?
Me: Mother tongue.
They: Oh, Malay??
Me: Erm, actually I meant Chinese.
They (bewildered): Oh, sorry. I see.
Me: …

Seafood Dinner across the Causeway

Oh gosh, my blogs are really overdue as I'm so busy completing up the last of my observations lately. Finally, getting into the 'final phase' of practicum and things are finally slowing down.. =)

Me and friends actually ventured out for a seafood spread at JB last last weekend, on a Sat evening. It was the first time we did that, and the travelling paid off as seafood is really, really cheap there!! We had stingray, sotong, crab, prawns and some vegetables ala carte and it only cost us S$10 per person, completed with dessert and drinks.


We decided to be adventurous and walked across the causeway instead of taking the Causeway Link, 170 or 950 on our way to the Malaysia custom. The sun was setting so the view was fantastically nice(Serene was totally in awe with it), but people behind us were rushing us along so there wasn't time to admire the scenery. I managed to take a few photos while my legs were busy walking.  

The Sign

Signboard advertisement of Malaysia custom with nice evening clouds behind.  

Any drinks for you??

The 'uncle' from the drinks stall came to take orders, and after walking across the causeway and jostling with the crowd to get through the customs, I decided that we are REAL thirsty, thus I ordered large drinks for everybody. And the drinks were really LARGE size indeed, the sugercane drinks come in a surprisingly humongous glass and it was even bigger than a big gulp! Someone placed a handphone beside it while I was taking a pic of the giant sugercane drink, so that there's a basis for comparison when I post it up in my blog. The rest looked at me with amazement, "Ermm..are you that thirsty??" I actually ordered not one, but three of that sugarcane drinks completed with some coconuts for our dinner!! And that was really a lot to drink.  

Amused

It's 4am in the morning, after being irritated by the fact that MSN could only finally be logged on about 2am just now, I'm back again!!

I'm really amused by something that I had digged up from a forum and the very 'kay-poh' instinct in me really can't help but blog about this. Guess those of you with high SA may have seen this clip before, in which a NUS freshman actually declared his love for a fellow school mate during a lecture. And what was even more amazing was the the lecturer actually helped him to 'surprise' the girl, not only showing to the whole lecture group a powerpoint slide that he had made, but also allowed him to present flowers to the girl in front of EVERYONE.

Oh my god!! Unbelievable.. that was truly my reaction. And I think some of us who are hopelessly romantic will feel that that was a vvvverrrrry sweet effort. Hahaha.. I must say that I really admire the guts of the guy, and I bet he never imagined that almost the whole NUS cohort and lots of other people would have heard about this as the whole lecture was recorded down in webcast.

Unfortunately, not everyone enjoys attention and the poor girl is really traumatised by this act. Obviously, just having guts is no use, especially if it's brainless gutsy behaviour. (Guys, please do not make the same mistake, only perform this act if you are 99% sure that the girl likes you!!) As an onlooker, I guess I would really enjoy such a show, especially if it happens during a boring maths lecture. But if I were the girl, I would rather die than to go for another lecture in my life (even though there's not a single chance that such a thing can happen to me). If you haven't guessed it, the courageous guy in question was rejected.

So, moral of the story:
If you can't make someone love you, at least do not make him/her hate you.

Excerpt from the blog of the poor girl:

Overnight fame results in many people calling and msging you out of the blue. I think I've grown sick of this whole shit already. I'm too pissed and lazy to reply to the messages also.

I think I'm on the verge of going berserk. But no point. Trying to think creatively about capitalizing on my current fame. Merchandise? Signature? Perhaps donate to my Paypal and you would receive within 7 working days. Fel says I can probably become the next big thing online. The suggested new Internet name for me would be 下雨, as opposed to the famous XiaXue. But I was thinking along the line of 下血.

Post note: Realised that it wasn't only NSK who couldn't find the link in my blog, so therefore it must be a flaw in the design of my new skin. Will do something about it! Meanwhile, the link:Click Here!!, hope no one can missed it this time.

MSN not working.. =(

Arghh.. MSN is down on a Friday night, so sianz!! This is the only night of the week when I can stay up late without worrying about waking up for work, but there's nobody that I can chat with. I'm so used to MSN now that ICQ is no longer in use, I'm feeling so lost without logging on.

Anyway, it's another week down, FOUR more weeks to go. Hurray!