As I was saying, I was stucked at home with elephant-sized tonsils and excruciating sore throat the other day, therefore I spent a great deal of time surfing the net and did quite an amount of blogsurfing too. Thanks to me, traffic to all my friends' blogs had increased! Yeah..
I added two very popular blogs to the list of blogs that I will track down everyday. One of them belongs to the famous Malaysian blogger Kenny Sia and I'm sure I don't have to do anymore advertising on his behalf as he's already so well known in this small island. He definitely changed my view of how well Malaysians can write (pls pardon my ignorance)! *sheepish grin* Anyway, my favourite post is the recent one about Blogskins sins which includes a list of the very common big 'turn-offs' in the layout designs of many blogs. Well, I do use blogskins that was modified from blogskins.com as I'm too lazy to do all the designing and html coding on my own. However, I'm very particular about the overall layout of my own blog and reason why I don't add mp3(s) to my site is explained in his post. Check it out!! On a side note however, I don't discriminate people who do play songs on their blogs (as I know most of you do), as long as it's not songs like 'Lao Shu Ai Da Mi' or 'She Bangs' and the likes.. Argh, those songs give me headaches!
Another blog that I'm quite addicted to belongs to Karen Cheng, it's very well designed and I really like her blog layout, it's so so sooooo 'clean' and uncluttered. Just too bad I'm not artistic enough, or I will crop up my pictures just like hers. =P
A disclaimer: I had never photoshopped any of my photographs as I'm too lazy to install the program at the moment. Moreover, I don't think I have the time to edit and airbrush away all my dark eye rings and pimples. Basically, what you see is 100% what you get.
Tuesday, September 06, 2005
Friday, September 02, 2005
Sore throat. Boring day. Duhz
Sick day.
Darn, I woke up with a stupid sore throat this morning. The whole thing started yesterday when I felt a bit of discomfort at my throat after a lazy lunch at home on Teachers' Day. I'm quite wary about sore throat due to my job nature so I ate lots of lozenges hoping to cure it, and it didn't get any better. I went to sleep with a burning sensation at my throat, but it was too late to do anything as it was already 4am in the morning (check out the timestamp of my previous post).
It was really bad this morning, I woke up real early (7am) even though it's a non-working day. I could feel my tonsils so swollen that it was choking up my windpipe, it was like having slugs down my throat and I really wanted to dig it up. It really felt like someone stuffed something down my throat during my sleep, as I was sounding quite normal even though it was pain like hell. I had had sore throat before, but it had never came close to this horrible feeling.
Anyway, I went to a clinic immiediately. The doctor was quite amused as both me and my mum were looking really worried about the choking feeling. After shining his mini torch down my throat, he said nonchalently: "Just a bit swollen only...what." Huh? Hmm..so there were no slugs. Nevertheless, I took a MC for the day so that I don't have to go for my poem course in the afternoon. It's really dumb, as this is the first MC I took for this year, and it's not even on a working day!
I've been rather looking forward to this day, since I finally have this chance go for my in-service course in just jeans and slippers like some of my classmates, instead of rushing there after school every Friday. But I ended up being sick and stucked at home the whole day surfing blogs, friendster, and even amazon.com, hoping to find a good book to read.
I was so bored that I clicked on the links of many many blogs to scan thru what's up in people's life, I even went to friendster and click on strangers' profile to see if I can somehow discover more primary school friends (Yup, I was that boh-liao loh!) Sigh... It's a total waste of my special School's Achievement Holiday (principal declared this day off for us to celebrate achievements earned this year).
Teachers' Day Dinner at Mandarin
Do not be mistaken, the following photos were not taken during my secondary school days but last night at the Teachers' Day dinner. The theme was.. 'Back to School Days' and many teachers went to the dinner dressed up in their school uniforms.
I managed to dig out my secondary school uniform as well, and joined in the fun. It was really very interesting seeing teachers dressing up as students and I really felt like it was back to school days, during our first 3 mths in JC. I was quite skeptical at first, as it had been such a long time since I last wore my “红字“ (what we call our Nanyang uniform) and it really felt weird intially, but it really turned out to be a good theme for a dinner like this. Kudos to my mum who had kept my secondary and JC uniforms in perfect condition, and thankfully, I can still fit into it!!
Me and another Chinese teacher also known as Peiling.
Me with other colleagues from convent
I would say I enjoyed the dinner with my colleagues tremendously, it was a huge gathering as there were staff from all the six schools and there were games as well as cheer competitions played between the schools. There was one particular school which was really onz as a lot of the young teachers dressed up as ah lians in their school uniform, completed with colourful hair, super short skirts and tatoos on their faces and arms. I almost mistook them for the real Ah Lians walking along the Orchard Road downstairs. Comparatively, the teachers from my school were much more decent. =)
My colleagues and I were sitting around talking about the good old days when we would do modifications to our school uniforms to look more 'outstanding'. Stunts used during those days include folding our skirts so that it looks shorter after the morning assembly, pulling up our socks so that it almost reaches our knees (it was the ah lian fashion during those times) and trying not to be caught with forbidden items like the pager. And my school was exceptionally strict then, the no. of rules that we had to adhere to was so many that our student handbook became as thick as the dictionary. No kidding!
We also noticed that most people turned up in their secondary school uniforms rather than their JC ones. I think for most of us, it was really during that phase of life when school life played an sigificant role in our identity. I still missed the good old days from time to time, when we had an unique school uniform, outstanding school name that we could identify with.
I managed to dig out my secondary school uniform as well, and joined in the fun. It was really very interesting seeing teachers dressing up as students and I really felt like it was back to school days, during our first 3 mths in JC. I was quite skeptical at first, as it had been such a long time since I last wore my “红字“ (what we call our Nanyang uniform) and it really felt weird intially, but it really turned out to be a good theme for a dinner like this. Kudos to my mum who had kept my secondary and JC uniforms in perfect condition, and thankfully, I can still fit into it!!
Me and another Chinese teacher also known as Peiling.
Me with other colleagues from convent
I would say I enjoyed the dinner with my colleagues tremendously, it was a huge gathering as there were staff from all the six schools and there were games as well as cheer competitions played between the schools. There was one particular school which was really onz as a lot of the young teachers dressed up as ah lians in their school uniform, completed with colourful hair, super short skirts and tatoos on their faces and arms. I almost mistook them for the real Ah Lians walking along the Orchard Road downstairs. Comparatively, the teachers from my school were much more decent. =)
My colleagues and I were sitting around talking about the good old days when we would do modifications to our school uniforms to look more 'outstanding'. Stunts used during those days include folding our skirts so that it looks shorter after the morning assembly, pulling up our socks so that it almost reaches our knees (it was the ah lian fashion during those times) and trying not to be caught with forbidden items like the pager. And my school was exceptionally strict then, the no. of rules that we had to adhere to was so many that our student handbook became as thick as the dictionary. No kidding!
We also noticed that most people turned up in their secondary school uniforms rather than their JC ones. I think for most of us, it was really during that phase of life when school life played an sigificant role in our identity. I still missed the good old days from time to time, when we had an unique school uniform, outstanding school name that we could identify with.
Thursday, September 01, 2005
Thank you..
Presents I received yesterday..
Yesterday was a very happening day. Though it's supposedly special and pleasant for all teachers, it was quite tiring too. I was running in and out of the office meeting students who wanted to pass things to me, giving out last minute instructions and homework for the holidays while trying to get the kids to settle down and listen to me. I think the kids are really much more excited than us teachers, and there were lots of leftover cakes in the pantry from the P6 parties. =)
At my EM3 class, I was ambushed by the 'foam' confetti spray cans.. three boys were armed with a spray can each, and I had to escape to the staff toilet. It looks like cake being thrown on me initially, but luckily it was quite easy to clean off once it's dried. Other than this surprise, I was also very surprised by the students. I complained a lot about them, as they were the ones who made me feel the most frustrated in school and received the most scoldings from me.. but each of them really spent time and effort to get something for me. And they were eagerly gathering around me, trying to get me to open their presents first. I guess it's not the number of presents but the kind of appreciation you can feel coming from them.
I hadn't been in school for long, only a term so far and that's no more than 10 weeks. I'm not expecting to get boxes and boxes of presents (you'll never know what to do with them!) like my other colleagues but its still nice to get students who run up shyly to you to wish you 'Happy Teachers' Day'. I think it's really the thoughts that count, isn't it?
Oh yah, to top off the parties and celebration, I had my first fire drill in school yesterday. Nobody that I knew was aware that there's going to be a fire drill, and I couldn't even recognise the alarm when I heard it. I didn't know where to bring the kids too, and it was a lucky thing we met the form teacher at the ground floor and she took over from there. I heard that some classes were cutting cake when the alarm went blaring.