A great paddling day!

I had the chance to bring my students out for a very short kayaking program last Friday, and am glad I really made full use of it. The challenge was to fully utilise a 3 hour session with 42 kids, which will also have to include the shifting and fitting of all equipments from storage to the water, and back again after a washup of course.

It took 45 minutes to get eveyone into the water, with each sec 1 kids paired up with a senior. I wanted the session to be one whereby the newbies get some informal training from their seniors and an introduction to the water before their star course. And it turned out real good! I send them out in their boats without teaching a single thing, and from the first dip of the paddle each senior was busying themselves teaching basic paddling skills to the juniors. They raft up, and I just reinforced the learning points briefly.

Next, sometime I never tried before - I got the group in a raft about 30-40m facing the shore, teach the sec 1s how to disembark from their boats to get into the water, and then tell them they are to jump in from there one by one and swim to the shore, with their senior trailing in the kayak behind them. It was an exciting challenge that I think excited the seniors more than the swimmers, but all of them did the swim perfectly, with constant encouragement from the paddlers.

With a little bit of coaching about reverse paddling and seating position/boat control, it was time for the capsize drill. The seniors felt sort of deprived that they couldn't go swimming under the hot sun, and was clamouring to go in. When I told them that I'm going to grant them their wish, all went shouting "Yay! Capsize drill!!" Again, their enthusiasm rubbed onto the juniors all the capsize drill for the 21 kayaks was over in 5 minutes.

Water drained from the boats on shore, they hopped back in and proceeded back to the pontoon and the centre. With everything done, they reached the bus at 1815 - not bad at all!

Have a good feeling about the coming star course!

Pride and learning

I am getting quite excited about the upcoming kayak course for my school kids, where I will be conducting a 2 star refresher course for my kids. It's really the highlight of the year for me, to be in my elements, teaching my kids fun and cool things, and really passing on the love for paddling to them. It's probably the only 2 star course in the world that will incorporate sprinting and canoe polo introductions in them too, and I've even finished my extensive lesson plan for it.

I felt that it will be good for teachers in my school to go for this advanced 2 star course so that they can learn much more, and so invited all teachers in my school to it. 2 teachers from the NCC unit wanted to join in, a middle-aged family man and a young female teacher just a batch before me. The guy was the CO for the unit in my school, a very friendly person who is quietly passionate about giving his best to his CCA. For example, I was surprised to meet him at the last outdoor education conference, which he somehow got wind of and signed up himself, when I had thought I was the only teacher interested in such things.

Yesterday, I met that guy in school, and he said that the lady teacher did not want to go for the course anymore because my ODAC kids will be there as well, but that he will still be joining us. Now that was really a disappointment man. A young teacher who gives us on a learning opportunity, just because she don't want to be seen as a student by her own students! If she is ashamed to be seen as a student, what kind of message is she sending to the kids?

The kids didn't know that she was supposed to be there, but that's not the point. I just feel disappointed that people would rather preserve their pride than be seen as being amateurish, especially when she's a teacher who has to constantly encourage her students to work hard by telling them that everyone has to start somewhere.

Promoting school sports

Went for a North Zone Sports Development Committee retreat today, and it was pretty interesting. Apparently the committee is made up of a group of volunteer PE teachers/HODs etc who represent North zone schools, and they come together to think of initiatives to nurture and encourage the growth of school sports.

What is commendable is that these people look beyond the focus on organising the yearly competitive leagues, and instead shifted their focus on bringing sports to non-school team players and the general school population. They came up with an idea of getting schools to play home and away matches in a few sports to generate healthy school rivalry, build school identity and also giving the sports' second-stringers a chance to play against others. Another idea is to have a North zone sports carnival, with schools able to send a team each for a few different sports, and with all these games being played at this games hub of Innova JC-Innova Primary-Sports school.

The idea is grand, the intentional noble, and the task a massive one, and for all these I have to salute these guys for daring to dream big. I can see the passion in these guys, and it is amazing to see these uncles being so committed to the casuse of PE after so many years in service. What an inspiration!

By the way, there was this speaker who reminded us that there are people working hard to make it possible for local school sporting events (The Schools Nationals) to be aired on Channel 5, during primetime slot no less. If they realise that the viewership is not sufficient, such shows, and the opportunity to promote school sports, will never take happen again. Therefore, if you want to help promote all our young athletes, do your part in a small one - watch it on TV!

IT fair 2009

...was a big squeeze. I figured the jam on Orchard road on the way there can be attributed to the fair, and when I was near, the signboard giving you parking lot info says that Marina Square in full and there are only 10+ lots in the whole of Suntec! After queueing up to turn into Suntec, I realised that they closed the carpark entrance at the convention hall area, and I decided to miss it altogether, parking at Shaw Tower instead.

The big squeeze started when I walked into Suntec from the bridge - the short passageway past Watsons took like 20 minutes to clear! But I have to say that things were much better when you're inside the hall. It helps if you're skinny like me too!

Got an Acer Extensa 4630 laptop with 3GB RAM at $859 instead of $999 outside, so think it's worth the trip down after all. Bought an LG 160GB DVD recorder for $388 for my new place too, have been waiting so long to get my hands on one! Gonna record hours of Discovery channel and Sports events when I move into my new place and get my SCV channels!

Holiday? What holiday?

Term one is over!

The students are probably happy to enjoy their one week term break, but only after they finished a few online assignments given to them, and maybe a CCA camp. For me, I have a camp tom till Sunday noon, a retreat for PE teachers on Monday, and another camp from Tuesday to Friday. Having to stay out means that my holiday week is actually busier than my normal school week! It's total madness.

And that only means that it will be one full week away from doing preparatory work for my wedding. I'm pissing in my pants now because Jacob told me last week that with my wedding at end May, I should be sending out invitations by the end of March - I haven't even confirmed the guest list! I'm so gonna die loh.

I have to say that my house renovation is going on quite nicely, even though it wasn't on schedule. Karen and I spend countless days arguing about the colour scheme, and that really slowed down the work because the paint job has to be done before many other things can be installed. But we're reaching the finishing line soon, and quite in love with what we saw already!

To make up for the rough week, I'm gonna do retail therapy at IT fair this Sunday. Will be getting a laptop, among other things. Maybe I'll take my laptop outdoors to play with...

Captain Planet's Dog - Tubby!

BBC features Tubby of Wales who goes hunting for plastic bottles whenever he goes for his walks, then crushes them with its jaws before handing them over to its owner, making it the ultimate environmentally-friendly pet! The picture is just too cute to resist, and it will be real cool if everyone train their dogs like this. I have to say that the town must be full of rubbish everywhere for Tubby to collect at least 6 bottles on its twice-daily walks!

Garang-guni men should start training pets to find and crush metal cans for them too! Too bad they can't help to collect cardboard boxes - dogs will probably be more interested in chewing them up.

Obama Pop Art!

Go to Obamicon.Me and you can get a Obama-style pop art portrait of yourself! Here's Karen's...

And mine! Quite cool, go make your own!

There used to be a time...

...that this picture could adequately illustrates my life. Being in the outdoors most of the time. Enjoying myself under the sun. Proud to be a member of NUS ODAC. Happy and carefree.

That lifestyle, like that beloved t-shirt, is nowhere to be found now apparently...

Waterproofing electronics

For those out there who wants to bring electronics out to sea, I have to say that unless the unit is waterproof in itself, there are few storage containers that you can trust for submersion.

Aquapacs
Reputed to be the best stuff around, but I personally drowned 2 phones and a set of walkie talkies encased inside them before.

Boxit
About the only thing I trust for submersion of phones, but you got to sacrifice usability when using your phone and live with its bulkiness. No flip phones or smart phones or phones with jog dials allowed, and call volume is much reduced.

Sealline
I saw this one with a roll-top, definitely a no-no. Roll top style bags cannot be submerged! (But they did say it only afford watertight protection.

Pelican Micro Cases
I bought it thinking it was waterproof, but every time I used it water will find its way in without fail; you only need to slosh it around an inch of water at the bottom of your kayak and it'll be wet inside. I went to the product website and scanned the entire site - nowhere on the site does it use the word 'waterproof'. Caveat Emptor!

D&G
I bought this green medium sized bag recently for $10 only at Beach Road, and stored my Solio charger in it. It has a 'ziploc' closure which then rolls down and is velcro-ed fast in that position. Inside, there are two thin plastic flaps which seals up together when pressed against each other, and can presumably keep any water from touching the stored items, quite a cool concept. Don't think I tried submerging it for long, should try someday.

And on waterproof electronics...
Pentax WP-series camera
Proved itself to be really good in operating underwater, never had problems with it. Picture quality leaves much to be desired though, even to my untrained eye, but maybe the newer models nowadays have better lens/processor.

Garmin GPS
My Garmin 76cx is supposed to be waterproof, being designed for boating use, but I had never dared to use it without protection - it's too expensive a toy! I am quite comfortable in using an Aquapac over it though.

And maybe I'll try waterproof mp3 players soon...

Dreaming on...

A friend Alex in PESS now just informed me of his successful application for an exchange semester in Canada! Congrats to him for going through the many rounds of trouble the application gave him, it has all been worth it certainly!

Thanks to him, I was suddenly inspired again to learn about the outdoors and more from visiting great places like these. I had once dreamt of going Canada to explore its vast nature parks and learn playboating on the Ottawa river from Liquid Skills. If only I can still find time to go NOLS someday, or to take my L3 coaching course or perhaps even a sea surfing course. The possibilities are endless (elsewhere).

Now I just need loads of cash and the heart to plonk it all down for them...think that'll be very difficult now that I'm all grown up and have already *ahem* shifted my priorities to other things in life...

(PS - just booked a holiday tour package for 10D Europe today, but would have loved to go for a cruise in Alaska to visit Denali and more...)

Batam Trip

We have always been interested in doing short getaways whenever we can, so for the V-day weekend, we tried Batam for the first time. Before going, I was wondering how Batam made itself a leisure island, without much natural attractions or...any attractions that I can think of actually! After the trip, I was even more confused...

Holiday Inn saved our trip - it's pretty nice, and we got a suite room with 2 bedrooms, so actually it can house four person very comfortably - damn!

The resort is nice, the pool is rather pretty, and we had fun playing table tennis too (that has become a standard activity for our recent holiday trips hm).

Nothing much else was good though. We went to Nagoya town center, which had a megamall selling things we weren't interested in. It was very noisy there with this terribly loud performance inside the mall, and we had to endure it throughout dinner at Pizza Hut; there really isn't anything nicer to eat. Before that, we had to endure a torturous 2 hour massage which was rather painful at times, and not very soothing or relaxing overall, offered little privacy, and irritated us with instrumental tracks of chinese pop played loudly. I couldn't wait to go back to the hotel.

And so we hereby resolved that...

• We will stop masseurs from inflicting torture on us in the future when things get painful
• We will not go travel overseas for the weekend - taking the ferry twice in two days is rather bleah.

I want better trips!
.

Reno update 12th Feb

Things are going really fast, and I'm getting excited too. The rate of progress is really quite amazing to a noob like me, and I wonder if that's normal, or if my contractor is really good.

With the old cabinet beneath the stairs and the sliding balcony windows gone, the house looks big and spacious. Light, glorious light!

The view of the living room again, this time from the balcony. Wiring work has started already, hence the wires all around.

The open kitchen, with the cupboards still to come. There will be an island worktop in the middle of it all, and the sink will be on it, hence the three pipes sticking out on the ground.

At this corner where the toilet used to be, there is now a washing area with a half-height wall, and a raised platform for the washing machine. Can't imagine this narrow space used to be the width of the toilet.

A look down the rail-less stairs from the top.

The plastering work was really good, and after taking out and replacing the windows, they are going to lay the parquet floor on the second floor already.

Today, we just choose the laminate colours of the cupboards, got some ideas on paint colours coordination, and selected some sanitary wares for the toilets. Contractor hurrying us on various things now and we have to do our market research diligently these days, busy!

Work in Progress

The contractor started hacking work on Monday, and was supposed to finish it on Wednesday; we went to take a look on Wednesday evening and they were already tiling the toilets! Went to take a peek again on Saturday, and they are plastering the walls right now.

The house looks rather strange with the rail-less staircase; we could see all across to the balcony through it. Everything is everywhere, and tiles are all there in their packaging ready to be used.

This is the kitchen, with the corner wall hacked so that it is more 'open'. Eventually there will be a glass wall around the corner, and a swinging glass door too, all to let the light in. The kitchen does looks much better without the toilet.

The master bedroom toilet has been tiled already, and it looks pretty good, according to what we want.

Can't resist the view from the bedroom everytime I'm there...

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This has been the most expensive weekend for us - we just returned from Harvey Norman today and blew $1860 there for the fridge, washing machine, microwave, a handheld vacuum, hifi, rice cooker etc. I have to say that the sale is genuine and good lah. Another $1800 was spent on the bed yesterday. And the airconditioning's gonna cost us $3.3k soon. Coupled with the previous $1.5k spent on the sofa and console and $2k for the stuff from Barang Barang, that's over 10k leow!

Oh, I forgot the lights...oops.

Waiting to get wet...

Everytime I return home I see the foldable boat bags propped up there against the wall, just waiting to be used and assembled. It always remind me of how great the last trip was, and how long I'll probably have to wait before I can use it again.

Maybe when my new place's up I can assemble the frame and hang it up or something, that'll make a nice display piece! It'll be a fantastic dust-trap though, and maybe we'll eventually start hanging up clothes on the frame even...

Man I miss paddling. It's terrible to do it like once every half year!

Should you depend on the external for happiness?

I had 2 great PE lessons today!

I took the pain to split them my class into their groups and brief them about all the routines that they will be doing for all lessons last week, so as to make sure this week's lessons will go smoothly. In the morning, I took time to sort them out again, make sure they go for their warmup lap orderly, and start all activities briefings only after everyone is settled. They had fun trying out different things and I didn't had to waste their time organising them and slowing down the flow and momentum of the lesson. All that made my day.

And I wonder if it's a good thing to be excited by the success of my lessons, because it also means I'll be negatively affected if I don't have a successful lesson (and I have pretty high standards for myself). The alternative is to be the cool/cold teacher who is detached and unaffected by his performance at work, which probably translate to a lack of enthusiasm in teaching. Sometimes I wish to be the latter, but I'm plainly too excitable and emotionally involved really, which makes it really draining when things don't go the way I want.

I love to be the involved teacher, but it drains so much from me. That's why I think good teachers that lasts like that for long are really really rare.

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Postscript - 5th Feb

Things didn't go as smoothly today, it took a long time for me to get them organised, even though I improved on my 'script' and clarified my instructions. Things still work but just not efficiently. So that's how it is, ups and downs, and one just have to take it all I guess. Just wondering sometimes when I'll take it until...

Keep a dog, lower your stress

It's always nice to come back and be welcomed by a dog, even though you don't really like to be licked all over on the legs. At least you know there's something who actually looks forward to you going home as much as yourself.

Here's Hockey in a fetal position during a rainstorm. He's such a furball isn't he?

And here's my cousin with her St.Bernard...it's really huge and quite ready to scare the wits our of anyone whom it doesn't know well, but apparently it's a darling for the family (so they say).

I'll actually think I'll like to keep a dog too, but it'll have to be smaller than Hockey of course. Something mid-sized will be nice, one that's intelligence and wouldn't bark at anything that moves. In the day, maybe it can play with Hockey till we come back to fetch it after work haha.

Hope you've had a better New Year

It's disgusting how unpleasant my CNY is. I spend a large part of my Saturday and yesterday doing school work, and am both pissed and frustrated that I got to do these nonsense on the only festival that I celebrate.

Today was terrible, I didn't go into the classes feeling prepared, and though I think things were done satisfactorily, it was terrible going to classes. Anyway, I got to quite complaining now, much more work to do!

Frankly speaking this is a terrible job la. Wonder when I'll call it quits in school and move elsewhere...

Settling down?

There is an eerie calm in school, and I wonder when the storm will break out.

Somehow, I find myself able to feel pretty lax at work for the past week. No doubt there are things to be done, but I don't find myself chained to work at night, nor rushing to churn out things during the day. But that has not made my mind feel much more relaxed though. I'm just waiting for the work to hit me. Or could it be that I'm finally getting comfortable with my work life?

These days I'm actively corresponding to my renovator, helping to make small decisions about the wedding, and even squeezing out much time to try ways to rediscover an entire folder of pictures in my kaput hard disk. I'm just thinking when I'll be paying for the slackness, sigh.

It has been so long since I even thought about going back to climbing, skating, polo, sea paddling, and even playboating. Such a scatterbrain now, my attention is all over the place. My priorities are definitely changing. I'm growing up, I think.

But no time for pessimistic thoughts, it's gonna be CNY soon! A much looked-forward to holiday. I'm gonna mahjong day and night, if I could, and stuff myself with sinful snacks.

Shopping again...

It seems like every weekend will include some kind of window shopping it seems. But I have to say that Sunday is a good time to shop, without ERP and with cheaper parking (it was $2.50 per entry at Clarke Quay!). We visited a wedding fair to look into organising the ROM ceremony, went to Liang Court's Audio House to look at appliances, and was nearly tempted into buying our bed too.

Actually, it's quite draining to keep looking at these things without buying. I felt that it's going nowhere comparing products all over, and we probably waste enough time and money in the process to warrant buying it all in one go at one megastore. So when I found a good deal for the cooking hob and hood, I had to pounce on it. I wanted to get a cheap DVD recorder too, but Karen think's there'll definitely be a better deal 3 months down the road, or she'll pay the difference. Ok, we shall see about that. At least that's one thing down.

And we paid $1800 extra for wedding photos yesterday when we couldn't decide which ones to leave out of our photo album. To think that I was initially scornful of the whole idea of doing posed wedding photography. Surprisingly I don't really feel the pinch, though I know it's a big sum. But all the bills are really adding up...

The work has started!

Have visited the new place the past week sporadically, and am surprised the hacking work goes quite smoothly. One day the whole flat was full of wood piles from the torn-down cabinets, the next day it was all cleared, and a pile of sand appeared instead.

Kitchen all ready for further work here - the wall on the right of the picture encloses the toilet, which will be demolished to expand the place. Wall hacking has not started however, as all other hacking work will have to wait for HDB's approval first before being carried out. Can't wait!

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And of course, my work in school have started. I can't say I have been terribly productive at the office, but yet at the same time I am constantly worrying about my next few literature lessons. It's terrible - I think of that in the middle of badminton action on the court!

Can't wait for CNY to come and I can play mahjong again! I'm gonna do back to back sessions then haha. Hope I draw back this hand again!