Everyone keeps asking me but no, I didn’t go away these holidays.  It is a long story.  In a way I am glad that I didn’t because I spent my time with people who are important to me and did something meaningful for Christmas for a change.  Together with a bunch of friends, we did a Christmas programme for some after-school care kids.  We taught them how to make puppets and got them to be a part of a play impromtu.  I realised that teaching young kids is not really my forte.  Oh my, they can really make a lot of noise!  In any case, they are quite cute and we had a fabulous Christmas celebrations

One of my personal goals in my life is to see great works of art, listen to great music and see stunning architecture. My trip to Egypt a few years back was a dream come true. It is indeed one of the greatest civilisations and to see the pyramid was absolutely breathtaking. If you can’t go all the way to Egypt, you must not miss this exhibition!!! There is so much to learn and discover about the Egyptians. Go as soon as you can because students with a valid student pass gets in FREE!!! WAH!

This is kind of like a vision break from my admin work and I also realised that I haven’t been writing for quite a while.

One of the interesting things recently is an EL Teaching Seminar that I attended at SMU.  I think I come from the era where note-taking was in the form of self-concocted abbreviations and structures that only made sense to me.  Working with a laptop in the middle of a lecture is something I would never ever get used to.  Plus, there is a multitude of distractions in the form of MSN, Facebook and YouTube.  I must confess I am not the most cooperative student in this aspect.

However, the age of laptops as a tool in the classroom opened up possibilities in learning for me.  No longer was information static.  We had teaching videos streaming in the notebooks and hands on experience with some materials which we could manipulate or create.  In this sense, it was refreshing.

A couple of the highlights at the seminar was the introduction of the Interactive Whiteboard (IWB).  I had a lovely instructor who gave us some very practical hands on experience with the IWB and fool-proof instructions like “Just follow the steps I gave blindly.  You can’t go wrong.”  Here we are exploring the possibilities of an IWB.

Another one memorable session was spent learning all the different forms of poetry like a haiku, tank, concrete, shape and cinquain.  Given 20 minutes, we had to rack our brains and write two different kinds of poem.  It was rather challenging.  I know you all are ever so interested in L-O-V-E.  So, here’s a wonderful piece written by my coursemates on what love is in the form of a “list poem”.  Enjoy

A BIG THANK YOU to the Student Guides at the Open House!

I am very grateful that you gave your time and were passionate about Kranji!

Awesome shot by Jian Lun at Grad Nite 2009

ps: I should get more sleep too.  The eye bags are deplorable.

Click to view the rest of the Grad Nite Photos

See how sauve my “favourites” look like!

First Manicure of My Entire Life

… but are you ready for prom nite?

Here are the photos from the last day of school. Too bad I didn’t to take with everyone. Let’s hope we can some pics at grad nite ok?