The land of 'Down Under'..

Good news! I've passed the medical screening with no obstacles, except for the fact that I was so sleepy when filling up the form.. I wrote my birthday as 03/03/06. The therapist connecting the ECG nodes to my body was so astonished when she tried to key in my info and the data couldn't be processed. Blur me! (=.=)"""

Anyway, more about the trip.. I'm really quite excited as I'll be going with 3 other closest friends, Shumin, San and Danping! We havent been able to organise any overseas trips on our own this year as all of us are already working and schedule is really hard to meet.

And best of all, it's fully sponsored for teachers! Other than my own shopping money and a few meals over there, it's all paid for by the NPCC welfare training fund.

About the programme, this was sent out through the circulars when we were invited to apply:

NPCC hereby extends an invitation to 20 officers for an overseas
leadership adventure course to Margaret River area, Western Australia on 3
to 10 Dec 2006.

2 This overseas leadership adventure course aims to provide our NPCC
leaders an enhanced insight in the facilitation of team building, character
development, leadership development and an exposure to nature survival. It
will be ideal for our leaders who wish to be exposed to an advanced
learning opportunity that is uniquely customised for NPCC.

3 The programme consists of Abseiling (at least two locations), Caving
(at least two non-tourist caves), Kayaking (e.g. Blackwood River) and
Forest/Beach trekking among others. Accomodation will be in the form of
barrack type sleeping in a campsite with an outdoor overnight camp
scheduled within. As a part of outdoor survival experience,leaders will be
engaged to assist in cooking and cleaning as part of training for the
course. Participants will also be divided into groups and will be engaged
in tasks throughout the course to facilitate training and exposure to
leadership and management. Trained australian facilitators and trainers
will oversee the activities and learning during the course. We also aim to
incorporate a learning journey to a Police Youth Community Club (details to
be confirmed) within this course.


Sounds cool.. haven't been in the outdoors for a long time!

Medical screening

I was informed earlier that we were supposed to do a medical screening before our trip.

We are actually going to check in at the airport for the trip coming Sunday night, but the details of the medical screening only came to us last Friday, so apparently its quite a rush. I quickly called up the clinic as I have to report to school until this Friday, working office hours (Yeah, I know it's school hols..don't ask me why I still gotta work). To my horror, the clinic is fully booked till end Dec on weekends and it's only opened during office hours on weekdays.

I decided to play by ear and see if I can get off early any of these days to do my checkup, if not I shall delay it till Saturday, which is just one day before our trip! San went for it yesterday and her ECG report was abnormal, so ended up she had to clear the screening by going to another specialist. This made me even more nervous, as ten years ago when I was applying to go OBS Lumut, I failed my ECG test as well and the condition forced me to give up the trip. Was quite devastated at that time as I was only in Sec 3 and going overseas was a rare opportunity. Of course, after the heart operation done a few months after that, I'm supposed to be in good working condition again.

This morning, I called up the clinic and its unfriendly office hours didn't leave me with much choice, but to apply for permission to leave the school earlier tomorrow to go for the medical checkup. When I filled up the form to take time off for tmr, I noted that I'll have to go to my RO and P for approval. BUT, to my horror again, my HOD informed me that the new procedure is to go through my VP before they can sign on the forms! The VP is known to reject application for leave, and I was really quite anxious as I'm quite sure she will say 'no' since there's quite a few colleagues on MC, leave, courses and etc lately.. Luckily, after I explained the whole situation to her, she said 'Okay, can go'. Really heng (lucky)!

Now just need to cross my fingers for the medical screening tomorrow..

Online shopping

A colleague is into online shopping lately and I also jumped onto the bandwagon to get some pretty accessories from taiwan. Afterall, a girl can never resist the temptation to keep buying those funky cutie accessories, though we don't have hundred pair of ears for all those earrings.

Online shopping had never appeal to me, and I am always quite skeptical about it as I'll never buy clothes off the rack without trying (unless I'm having shopping spree in Bangkok). Anyway, the taiwanese seller who is aunctioning her accessories in yahoo has really sweet things and I ordered this clover necklace. More because I'm quite attracted by the nice colourful gems rather than the common belief of getting clover to give me good luck. The best part was, the necklace was delivered looking as nice as it was on the website. =)

P/S: Hehe, forgot to add, my collegue has this site where she is helping friends make orders from Taiwan.. take a look if you like exclusive accessories from 'Gong' (Korean show) etc.

Tis the season to be jolly...falalalalalala...

Woke up this morning with people sms-ing me and colleagues discussing it in the office today. We are getting 2.2mths of year-end bonus this year!! Yeah... this is the best news so far as I'll be dead broke by the time I come back from the land of Down Under.

Although this is nothing much compared to the private sector, it should be able to tide me over for the holiday seasons! Yippie!!

Counting down to.. HOLIDAYS!

It's quite cliche but times flies! The school year is coming to the end and I'm left with a week with the kids. Strictly speaking, only left with three more days with them as I'm on course on Wed, and on Friday we are holding the Graduation Ceremony for the P6s. Actually, this year I have a very nice bunch of kids, they had made my job a lot easier for the whole of 2006, think I'll miss them. Who knows? I might be meeting some real devils next year. *shudder*

Officially, we can only go for holidays in December, as usual, we have to go back for meetings and other stuff till end November. Three more weeks and I'm off to Australia for my adventure trip! =)