The One about the new school and new work space

It has been a busy week for me and I have surprisingly find little time to blog. Was in my new school, presently at the skirt of some industrial areas unpacking my stuff. My new table awaits.





It is definitely much bigger that what I had so far in IJ and of course it has a nice window view which you would not be able to see it from this angle which i am taking the shot. But so far I am still having a hard time making the trip to school and bring my stuff over. It is a lot of junk that I have accumulated over the years.

Will try to blog more but I am getting lethargic by the day.. Must be the old age :P

The one about the prom night pictures

I have just woken up in the middle of the afternoon. The late nights talks and the emotions of the Grad night somehow got the better of me. I am having this sense of emptiness. Anyway will blog about all this when I am finally "awake"

For my sec 4 and sec 5 students, please spread the message to send me the photos ( in .jpeg or .gif format) to my email mrng@teacher.com. Will be extremely grateful.

Got a wedding dinner to attend. See ya soon.

The Ego One

The one about the time to leave

Potential long post, on my random thoughts.

Finally I can put behind the turmoils that has been going through my mind for the past few months. Now I can finally let loose my feeling and announced to the IJ community.

Yes the rumours are true, I am leaving IJ. I have infact on various occasions hinted my imminent departure. But perhaps my usually tongue in cheek manner and delivery always made things obscure. And yes finally after 5 years of services to IJ, I finally pick up the courage to move on to something new, to climb my own Everest. It is one of the most painful and most difficult decision thatI have to make throughout my whole adult life till now.

They said familiarity breed contempt, I say familiarity creates bonds, it builds emotions, it creates emotional ties that is hard to break. I never thought that I will be making the move, as I was so emotionally attached to the school, "simple in virtue, steadfast in duty" and to think that I actually resented the fact that I was posted to IJ when I first joined to school in 2000. But the school, the people, the colleagues, the culture, and You every unique IJ girl won me over, bit by bit.

My decision to leave was made in June 2005 and everything is finally confirmed in september 2005. That was when I decided to try to stay distant, it is not that I don't care but I was hoping that it will be easier then for me to finally really pack up and go. I am actually glad that the one month plus of O levels will be a good cooling off period for me. And the cooling off period have allowed me to decide when I should finally say goodbye to all. Maybe I should just recollect the things that were happening to me. It has been a difficult few months for me. It was difficult for me to make the decision to keep everything a secret and pretend that everything is ok.

Forgive me for not telling you all especially the sec 4 and my form class and for spoiling such a wonderful thing during the PAE briefing, for I didn't know what type of impact it will have on all of you. For the rest of the other class and my CCA girls and those who have worked with me, sorry for choosing to "fade away" like this... Sorry that I am so egoistic and think that the departure of the form teacher will affect the performance of my sec 4s. forgive me for my delusion if that was so untrue.

Please do not say I am heartless, please do not say I don't care, for I have devoted 5 years of undivided attention and service to IJ. And I think, in this, I have shown myself to be a loyal servant to the school. I have no regrets, well actually just one, is that I won't be there to give the piece of the O level results slip to my sec 4/4 girls. That in my opinion would have been a perfect closure to an amazing 2 years as their form teacher.

I hope that I can keep my emotions during the Grad night. After all it is also my graduation night - an end to all my bonds with IJ. If I got uncontrollable, please don;t blame me, I am not going to be all macho, I am an IJ boy by the way. :P Maybe the whole class can do something crazy and dance to the beat of "Hey Baby". That will be cool... :P

On 2 Jan 2006, I will devote my attention to a new group of students, to build bonds with a new group of colleagues, to serve a new school. And once again, I would like to thank IJ for the wonderful memories. The chapter is now closed, for the sec 4s, go on and find your own sky and rest assured that even though I am no longer an IJ teacher, I will always be part of IJ from the bottom of my heart.

The one about the end of the O level exams

As i am writing this very moment, there will be students counting down the hours to the end of the O Levels. By 3 pm tomorrow, all of the IJ sec 4 will be free!

in fact it seems like yesterday when we started 2005, when the teachers like myself were worried that whether the students will be up to the task. There is always the comparision with the "last year batch" , and how this present lot will better them. Remedials, tons of worksheets, lectures, tests, retests, re-re-tests, scoldings, desperation, despair, frustration... all this were part and parcel of a sec 4 teacher, synonymous to the sec 4 cohort. I think they will be glad to put all these behind them now...

However, this also mean the end of a chapter in IJ for them. The empty classrooms, the corridors devoid of the usual bustle and hustle. And realising that there is only the sec 4s to share that feeling of leaving behind the 4 or 10 years of convent school life to chart new directions ahead.

I am ambivalent about this last few hours of the end of the O levels. My responsibilities officially ended on 24 November 2005, after the grad night. This is when I am no longer 4/4 2005 form teacher, and a sec 4 additional maths teacher or even a sec 4 social studies / history teacher. It is when I await a new chapter to begin. The future is uncertain...

The one about kena-ing tomorrowed

Some people ( blogders I hope) apparently find my post on my car amusing and they send it to the editors of tomorrow, and now it is recommended! Anyway a little about tomorrow, it is actually a bulletin for singapore bloggers and it showcases interesting, up-to-date happening about things in Singapore.

Thanks to the "Anonymous Coward" who submitted my blog entry.

And now I can proudly say.................................

*sob* will continue to write more interesting articles...

Cheers

The Ego One

Work

Work can be impersonal
Well it is never personal in any way but sometimes it can be a bit pain in the a** when it come to bureacratic BS.
Imagine you are like less than 5 freaking meters from someone (Let's call her X for this scenario) and she called you over and said "hey I need something from you and I left you an email" Take about top-secret stuff and when you look for an available computer, login, open the internet explorer, type in the url and then your password, and when you open the mail (finally after like 12min), you received a less than 20word message for a couple of documents and paper.

Talk about these stupid ways of bureacratic communication.

Next time they will thank you via email instead of face to face.

Anything to say?

The one when my car was decorated

I know this is really long overdue. But I only managed to get the pictures like just now. Wanted to share with all.

On the last day of school which was like 2 weeks ago, I was given a rude/pleasant surprise from my girls in the RMUNC 2005. In case you are wondering what RMUN is, it is an annual competition known as the Raffles Model United Nations Conference organised by RJC. This competition is more of an adhoc thing in IJ as there is never a formal team; ie we only formed a team or two about a couple months before the competition. Anyway the girls are going to take part in the conference in New York next March. It would be a wonderful exposure for them.

Anyway talking about the surprise, the girls spend so much time and effort that I feel the need to "immortalise" it in my blog...


Look what my girls did to my bao-bei car... :S


Look what they place on my car - a big red card, a small wood block which had the words "IJ 05 RMUN" and two giant bouquet of flowers.


A close up of the "IJ 05 RMUN"


A close up of the bouquets


Rear view

Anyway we drove the car out for a spin with all the "accessories" and there was like a 5 m radius around my car.

To my RMUN girls, thanks for the wonderful gesture. All the best for your New York trip!

To the sec 4s

All the best for the O Levels!

Don't worry too much about the SS paper tomorrow. Just remember what you have been told so far.

Don't panic.
Manage your time properly
Write your essays well K?

I will be there to give you guys moral support.

Mr Ng

I watched Zorro last night at Bishan Junction 8. The palce is so crowded that it seems like the whole Singapore population from the Northern part of Singapore had all gathered there. In fact the quiet and cozy place was the cinemas. It seems like it is not a popular show. Or it has been on the screens too long. The cinema theatre was only half full.

It was a great show if it was not interrupted by incessant sms-es from desperate who would like yo know how to answer a "reliability" question or why I had awarded her with the marks but wrote down "weak weighing of factors". As i mentioned in my previous entry I have no problems helping, but.... I need to celebrate Deepavali.. Sigh :p

Updated
I shall not entertain any more essays from today. 20 emails per day asking for help is too much to bear.

The thing about Packing and Unpacking

Recently, with the results out and the students, san the sec 4 leaving to enjoy their ill deserved holidays, the teachers in the various staffrooms are busy packing for the new school. In fact this is a painful process as after going through that two and a half years ago, we are going through the same process of doing that again. Of course it felt better as now we are in anticipation of a newer, more modern staffroom ( yes and that means a staffroom with a proper kitchenette attached and not the long kampung bench that the teachers are so used to for the past few years.)

Surprising, most of us are reacting to the return ambivalently; While some look forward to the modern facilities as compared to the run down state of the holding school, many especially in my staffroom will really miss the wonderful times that we had together. A lot of teachers love the morning air and the vast greenery in the Thomson campus. The long leisure walks which could kill in the scorching heat of the afternoon sun and of course the thought of sharing the habitats of birds, squirrels, mosquitoes and of course (gasp) snakes! In fact there are some who are apprehensive about coming back to one big staffroom after some many years working independently of each other in three different staffrooms, where 3 starkly different working cultures had emerged. There will bound to be conflicts and of course, there will be the occasional bickerings. It won't be easy but we will try, and we can make it work.

However I must conclude, the past few years had been memorable, especially in a staffroom where it was really like a big family. It was during this few years that I got to know a couple of my colleagues better, and of course made real good friends. It is in this small but yet cozy environment that I got to know a fellow colleague so much better. I will definitely miss the monday morning jibes on the latest progess of our favourite EPL teams, the late afternoon sharings sessions with my colleagues and the saturday stressfree mornings where you just "indulge" your time in the staffroom marking books/assignments, writing and preparing lessons, with the stereos blasting.

It is also through this painful process that we discovered something - teachers are sentimental beings. A couple of colleagues, myself inclusive still have our Practicum files ( when we first started teaching) with us hidden in some dusty corners which we will not have realised if we didn't start packing. Although the syllabus had changed, content had changed, we still hold on to that file, for it reminds us of the hard work we had gone through then. Of course there were also boxes which remained unopen since we first moved in and that it will returned to Toa Payoh Campus in their pristine form. Going trough the massive stuff of mess also uncovered things like - my sec 2 maths notebook when I started teaching maths 4 years ago, a stack of sec 3/4 adventure camp consent form, an envelope containing tens of dollars in coins!, sec 4/3 2003 prelim results etc.. "Archaeological searches" had also uncovered cards, thanks you notes, little souvenirs and of course years of photographs and magazine clippings of past events and people. They only served to remind us how things have changed, how we had aged and of course how we had mellowed down over the years...

As I bring back the bits and pieces of stuff- books, files and souvenirs, that is when i realised that all this is all that I am left with...in 3 years of life in the Thomson Campus.