Short trip to Singapore

I went to feel the breeze of Singapore during the holidays. My family and I took off last saturday and stayed the night in Johor before crossing over to Singapore. We woke up early in the morning to beat the traffic on the causeway as you know traffic conggestion over there is terrible, horrible and vegetable..............*-*

Well the merchandise there are damn cheap compared to ours but the price of a house over there is damn expensive. I didn't manage to shop but luckily i got to meet my ex-house/university mates over there. We did a little bit of catching up and it was interesting to hear all their adventure and stories while working in Singapore.

Oh .....my family and i also got lost while heading back to my aunt's apartment. We had the GPRS but the road signs sucks. We practically rounded the city for an hour an alf before finally reaching our intended destination. We even pass through little India of Singapore, what a sight....... i really thought i was in India with the masses of Indian people walking around.

Legend Water Chalet in P.D.

It was a beautiful day and after a long and tiring session of talks. Me and my apartment mates (Cozaine, Chow & Heng) decided to take an evening walk along the water chalets situated next to our 3 star resort. We heard that our next door hotel was given a 5 star rating and therefore decided to check it out ourselves.Equipped with our cameras, shorts and sandals, we started our exiciting expedition.

The view from the water chalets were magnificent. It was as if we were in a small neighbourhood that was built on the sea. One could be fooled that we were in Maldives from the pictures that we have taken. There are also some crazy ones that we took in which they will be embedded in our lovely memories forever.

The only sore eye of the whole view was the sea water. It was seriously polluted and murky. A vast contrast of the clear blue sea that had always been portrayed in the ads and tourism campaign. And with Maldives......... i see no competition there. However, this did not affect us as we continue to pose differently with each 'click' of the camera.

Induction course part 2

Alright, after all the ramblings in part 1 i guess now is to continue, not with ramblings, but reminiscence of the fun time and new friends that we met and made throughout the course.

The best thing that ever happen was that we get to meet and make many new friends. Some were juniors just like me while some were a bit senior. However I was lucky as all off my group members were very easy going, cheerful, caring and lot's more. During the 2 weeks we have bonded very well and we seem like one big happy family than different individuals from different places.

I still remember the time when we've sucessfully done practising for our closing ceromony performance and went out for supper together. All nine of us squeezed into a MPV, with our group leader in the driver seat. Our group leader was just like a father to us as he has a very tranquil aura around him. He is also very knowledgeable as he has been teaching for quite sometime. We made a ruckus all along the way expecially Khong with her funny quirks.

Almost at the end of the 2nd week we gather for the last time, express our feelings and said our goodbyes. It was a very touching moment and i will definitely remember those moments and miss them.

Induction course 2008 part 1

I've been attending an induction course for the past 2 weeks as it is a compulsory course for all new civil servant. It was practically a torture session if you ask me. No doubt there were some very informative topics about leaves, allowances and medical benefit in it but most were in my opinion insignificant. Yes you read me clearly...... INSIGNIFICANT! and there was also some history of how our education system was formed. Pftt........ no connection there........ (I HATE HISTORY)

My reasoning for this induction course was that there were too many employees in this sector and in order to segregate some work to them, courses like these were invented. Well most of the useful topics are presented by speakers who are already burden with loads of work by their post and still they are further burdened with all these minor seminars. While for all those useless topics i guess they have too much time on their hands and therefore they are call to torture us and in a way to occupy their working time.

Some of the speakers were very good as they conducted their presentation in a very interesting way by occasionally slipping in cases, jokes, funny pictures to keep us alive and awake throughout his speech. There are also those who just babble on by reading their powerpoint slides. What's the point for those speakers? what's the point? The question keeps repeating itself in my head throughout the induction course.

My suggestion would be to provide each new civil servant with an employees handbook so that they can refer to if they encounter any problems. The handbook of course will state the common rules and regulation and if there is a special case, we would refer to the person in charge of that section. There can be hundred and one scenarios just on rights to claim certain allowances which can't go into the book altogether. If courses held was for this purpose then it would not be a best solution as we might not be able to think 0f these 101 scenarios unless we encounted it let alone during that 4 hours of talk. Besides, printing a handbook by the bulk is much more cheaper than having to pay for the accommodation, food and traveling for a duration of 2 weeks to all who attended this course.

In the teaching profession, i would have hoped that the government would allocated funds to send teacher to attend courses that helps in the field of teaching such as courses organised by MELTA. They have various kinds of courses which explores the possibility of using a particular materials to come up with creative and effective ways of teaching or maybe a much more lively and interesting method to pass on the knowledge to students. Now wouldn't that be more interesting and relevant?

How does the minds of those people works still puzzles me but for all i know is that to survive you have to make the best out of the things around you and to make the best out of this induction course would be to get ample of rest before going back to the tedious task of teaching.

Alleluyah!!!!!! ^-^

I am sick.

I've been sick for almost a week. The bug caught me during the weekends and I was down with fever. After I've recovered from the fever I caught a cold. It kept me sneezing all the way through, but the satisfaction after sneezing it out was way beyond all ratings.^-^

Hope I get well soon!

Back to school

Well, after a week of hols I'm back working. New semester, new things to teach. It's a hard life being a teacher. Yeah.....yeah you get all the perks for having lots of hols but the problem is you're always readjusting your mood as you are always in between working mood and holiday mood. T'was hard for me to drag my a** all the way back to Malacca to work after a week's comfort at home.

Shifting House

For the last few days I have been busy shifting to a new home, a very tiring and tedious task. My whole back is aching now due to the heavy lifting and climbing up and down the stairs. In the process of shifting I was somewhat frus. of my mom. She wants everything to be quick effective and efficient which contradicts to the way I do things. I like to do things leisurely and if I start at something I will usually go through it till the end but if I'm tired and would like to rest then no one can move me.

We are shifting to a new house not far from my old one, about 10-15 min drive. My concept is that I will empty out the things in the drawers or cupboards that needs to be shifted to the new house by lorry and the others we can take our time and move it little by little. This will definitely make the whole shifting process a relaxing one instead of having to rush everything. But my mom,....................... the dictatorship likes it everything her way, and that is, if possible, to shift the whole house there immediately with one trip. She would be estactic if every single item could be teleported into our new house at once.

My mom always complain that no one listens to her, but what she refuses to aknowledge is that she is the one that cannot accept anything which is a different method or version of hers. She is the female version of Adolf Hitler that needs everthing to be excecuted her way. Yes of course I do admit that she has a lot of experience and do know the best and effective way to almost everything but that does not mean we have to follow it. She insists we follow her way by giving the reason: if her way is the best which is effective and saves time then why can't we follow her's. She also added that if we could suggest a more efficient way then she would accept it. Yes I do get her point and it is very true when it comes to work but this is home, something personal like packing our wardrobe or the arrangement of bags. Couldn't she just let us do it our way, so what if our method is not as efiicient as hers, it is our time that we are wasting and most important of all we like doing it that way.

To sum it all up, I have been like a robot for the past few days just listening to her instructions and dare not even arrange anything without her opinion afraid that she will 'sound' me again and I will have to rearrange it according to her likings.(now isn't that also called double work) That's not the end of it, she then continues to babbler on that we never listen to her instructions and that she has to look over everything herself, blah blah blah blah. I sometimes wonder that my indecisive behaviour is actually from the way I was brought up, but gladly I am learning to stand up and defend myself by voicing out my opinion.

Finally this is off my chest. I feel much better.
p.s. Mom I really do love you but sometimes I just can't stand you. If you could just relax and lay back for a while maybe your health will get better. I know mom worries about everything but you can't worry all. We are old enough to take care of oursleves so just let us be. You can't be taking care of us for the rest of our lives so I guess you can start by slowly letting go.