Saturday, 10 November 2007

Morphing personality

You Are An ISFJ

The Nurturer

You have a strong need to belong, and you very loyal.
A good listener, you excel at helping others in practical ways.
In your spare time, you enjoy engaging your senses through art, cooking, and music.
You find it easy to be devoted to one person, who you do special things for.

In love, you express your emotions through actions.
Taking care of someone is how you love them. And you do it well!

At work, you do well in a structured environment. You complete tasks well and on time.
You would make a good interior designer, chef, or child psychologist.

How you see yourself: Competent, dependable, and detail oriented

When other people don't get you, they see you as: Boring, dominant, and stuck in a rut
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It is rather weird. As a few months ago, I was an ISTP. Suddenly I become feeling and not thinking. I do not think myself as feeling at all. But as for judging, I am glad that I became one, as I think it reflects me better than perceiving.
In the post above, "How you see yourself: Competent, dependable, and detail oriented" Those words in red are true. I am not exactly dependable as yet. Also, "When other people don't get you, they see you as: Boring, dominant, and stuck in a rut" I think this is totally true. Sigh.

Sunday, 21 October 2007

Day of carefree-ness

Today is my 2nd last session with my ex-student for her preparation for her retake of A Levels. How I wish she could just ace her examinations, so that she can go to become a dentist - an ambition of hers. I would then will be remembered by her as someone who had helped her in becoming what she is. How 伟大!

But I worry for another of my student, Kxxxxx. He disrupted from NS, but he is not putting in more effort than the 2 girls. I suspect that he would not do any better than what he achieved last year. This is going to be quite sad.

As for my current job in my school, right now I have 2 things in hand: preparing for the OCIP Batam trip, as well as invigilate in some other JC. My classes are having class chalets in Nov while I am having invigilations. Maybe I will pop by one of these days. I hope that the deployment of our classes would not change last minute, so that I can prepare myself mentally. Actually, in my opinion, I do not mind lecturing ionic equilibrium, however I am worried my trip to Batam would deprive me of the time to prepare for the first topic of the lecture. So now I keep my fingers crossed that I would not get this impoprtant topic.

Oooohhh, time to get ready for my session with the 3 kids.

Saturday, 20 October 2007

Olden Days!!!

I saw this at a friend's blog, so I want to try how ancient am I.

1. You grew up watching He-man, Transformers, Silver hawk and Mickey Mouse. Not to forget, Ninja turtles and Smurfs too. YES!!
2. You grew up brushing your teeth with a mug in Primary school during recess time. You will squat by a drain with all your classmates beside you, and brush your teeth with a coloured mug. The teachers said you must brush each side 10 times too. YES!!
3. You know what's 缤纷八三 is all about. YES!!
4. You know what SBC stands for. YES!!
5. You were there when the first chinese serial, the Awakening was shown on TV. YES!!
6. Internet? What the heck is that? YES!!
7. You find your friends with pagers cool in Secondary school (handphones don't exist). YES!!
8. SBS buses used to be non-airconditioned. The bus seats are made of wood and the cushion is red! The big red bell gives a loud BEEEP! when pressed.There are colourful tickets for TIBS buses. The conductor will check for tickets by using a machine which punches a hole on the ticket. YES!!
9. Your favourite actor and actress is Huang Wenyong and Xiangyun. Next is Lee Nanxing and Zoe Tay and the Aiyoyo woman. YES!!
10. You've probably read Young Generation magazine. You know who's Vinny the little vampire and Acai the constable. YES!!
11. You were there when they first introduced MRT here. You went for the first ride with your parents and you would kneel on the seat to see the scenery. YES!!
12. Movie tickets used to cost only $3.50. YES!!
13. Gals are fascinated by Strawberry Short Cake and Barbie Dolls. YES!!
14. You learn to laugh like The Count in Sesame Street. NO...
15. You longed to buy tibits called Kaka(20 cents per pack) and Ding Dang(50 cents per box), that had a toy in it and it changes every week not forgetting the 15 cents animal crackers and the ring pop, where the lollipop is the diamond on the ring. YES!!
16. You watched TV2 (also known as Channel 10) cartoons because Channel 5 never had enough cartoons for you. YES!!
17. All that you know about Cantonese is from the Hong Kong serials you watched on TV2. NO...
18. Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, The Three Investigators, Famous Five and Secret Seven are probably the thickest story books you ever thought you have read. Even SweetValley High and Malory Towers. YES!!
19. Civics and Moral Education was “Hao3 Gong1 Min2”. YES!!
20. KFC used to be a high class restaurant that serve food in plates and let you use metal forks and knives. NO...
21. The most vulgar thing you said was asshole and idiot and THE MOST EXTREME WAS 'super white'...you just couldn't bring yourself to say the hokkien relative. YES!!
22. Catching was the IN thing and twist the magic word. YES!!
23. Your English workbooks was made of some damn poor quality paper that was smooth and yellow. YES!!
24. CDIS was your best friend. YES!!
25. The only computer lessons in school involved funny pixellised characters in 16 colours walking about trying to teach you maths. YES!!
26. Waterbottles were slinged around your neck and a must everywhere you go. YES!!
27. Boys loved to play soccer with small tennis balls in the basketball court or play something that uses tennis ball to hit other players known as “HUM TAM BOLA” during recess /after school. YES!!
28. Hopskotch, five stones, chateh and zero point were all the rage with the girls and boys too... YES!!
29. Science was fun with the balsam and the angsana being the most important plants of our lives. YES!!
30. Who can forget Ahmad, Bala, Sumei and John, eternalized in our minds from the textbooks. Even Mr Wally. YES!!
31. You did stupid exercises like seal crawl and frog jumps. YES!!
32. Every children's day and national day you either get pins or pens with 'Happy Children's Day 1993' or dumb files with 'Happy National Day 1994'. YES!!
33. In Primary six you had to play buddy for the younger kids like big sister and brother. NO...
34. Chinese teachers were always old, boring and damn fierce looking. YES!!
35. Your form teacher taught you maths, science and english. YES!!
36. The worksheets were made of brown rough paper of poor quality. YES!!
37. You went to school in slippers and a raincoat when it rained, and you find a dry spot in the school to sit down, dry your feet, and wear your dry and warm socks and shoes. YES!!
38. Famous Chinese singers were only Jacky Cheung, Andy Lau, Aaron Kwok and Leon Lai. YES!!
39. School dismissal time was normally around 1 pm. YES!!
40. There would be spelling tests and mental sums to do almost everyday. YES!!
41. Your friends considered you lucky and rich if your parents gave you $3 or more for pocket money everyday. YES!!
42. During class gatherings, parents always tag along in case someone gets lost at Orchard Road. NO...
43. You freak out when the teacher tells you to line up according to height! and hold hands with the corresponding boy or girl. YES!!
44. Handkerchiefs were a must for both genders. YES!!
45. Collecting notebooks and all kinds of stationery was a popular thing. YES!!
46. Autograph books were loaded with “Best Wishes”, “Forget Me Not”, and small poems like “Bird fly high, hard to catch. Friend like you, hard to forget”. YES!!
47. Class monitors and prefects loved to say “You talk somemore, I write your name ah!” NO...
48. There were at least 40 people in one class. YES!!
49. Large, colourful schoolbags were carried. YES!!
50. You brought every single book to school, even though there was one thing called the timetable. YES!!


Wow! An astonishing 45/50. I must have been a dinosaur. LOL.

Saturday, 2 June 2007

MBTI Test

Dominant Introverted Thinking [ISTP]

Rodin's Thinker is introverted. Here these thinkers ponder the apparent chaos of the world in order to extract from it the universal truths and principles that can be counted on. These principles, once extracted, will provide the logical structure on which to build strategies.

They have a finely nuanced ability to analyse situations, find root causes and foresee consequences. They distrust action taken too quickly without the necessary investigation. They are usually levelheaded, objective, impersonal yet intensely involved in problem solving. They are fiercely independent, seeking input and comments from a chosen few. When reporting to others, they need to establish credibility first: their own and that of the person they are reporting to. If the gap in knowledge and expertise is too great and their own proficiency dismissed, belittled or ignored, they will lose interest and motivation.

They are less interested in running the world as they are in understanding it. They are curious and capable of explaining complex political, economic or technological problems, taking great pleasure in explaining all the factors and intricacies. They are rigorous with their thoughts and analysis, choosing the exact words that convey precisely what is meant. They may spend a lot of time defining words, concepts and systems in order to define a problematic solution.

They are armchair detectives, scientists and philosophers, spending most of their time in quiet reflection to ponder truth, and solve mysteries. They may tend to neglect social requirements and responsibilities, finding many relationships to be too superficial to be of much interest.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Looks like it fits my profile. I do not know whether they considered teachers as scientists. LOL.

Friday, 1 June 2007

Batam Trip

My first ever OCIP trip to Batam is finally over! It is an enriching experience for me as I get to see how a poor school operates. Our students are very caring and they enjoyed teaching these kids. A huge number of them really bonded well with the kids over there and this is something that I hope they bring back to Singapore and reflect. Let me comment on some of the students.

Eu Jay: A student from my form class. A very motivated, caring individual who will try his best to perform his duties well. A very N2 student as well, he wakes up at 5.30am almost everyday to watch the sunrise while the rest of the people are still zzz. Forget to mention that he is cmi in bridge.

Guanhui: Another student from my form class. A bright student who wishes to participate in every single activity. I have to advise him to cut down on the extra curricular activities so that his results wouldn't plummet, although he still tops chemistry for his class. [I am a KIASU teacher indeed!] Not to forget his thunderous snores.

Mingwei: The organizer for this trip. He has multiple personalties: softspoken, leader, passionate, emotional, vain, funny, good mass dancer, responsible. Tell me about it. What strikes me the most about him is that when people laugh at him, he easily brushes it off immediately. I think this is something that I have to learn from him. Another thing he is a weak bridge player. HAHA! He is one of the 2 guys that cried on the last day amongst all the other girls that cried. I know it is extremely hard to turn off that tap if he is very touched.

Class of 06S73: A huge number of interact exco are from this class, namely brandon, darren, yirene, yen jeong. All have their different colourful characters. Tough for me to name them all so I only name a few. Brandon - I will never forget the story he told me about the "wet" thingy in his other trip. Darren - He fell on 2 students while playing basketball. He tried not to injure these students but using his hands, ended up he was the only injured party, bravo! Yirene - One of the best student-teacher. Fierce and firm. Students loved her so much that they labelled her as GORILLA although she feared animals. Talk about irony. Yen Jeong - A "petite" girl who heads the activity comm. I will remember her boyfriend sent and picked her up from the jetty. All told me that they think I was funny when I relieved one class for Ms Wong. Sigh...

Clara: President of interact club 2006-7. A fabulous dancer. Writes and articulates well. So far, nothing bad I see from her. She is someone you can depend on.

Minghao, Pauline and LiSha: Minghao danced as well as me [Not a compliment!] Pauline is well loved by her P3 kids. They all cried for more than 20 mins on the last day. LiSha is a senior for EuJay and Guanhui. "Petite" too, very fearful of animals. She can scream and cry on the slightest scare.

Joshua: An avid swimmer. Quite a quiet boy. But sometimes when he speaks, it can kill someone. {One needle sees blood} He was volunteered to do the video, and he willingly took up this role. Kudos to Sophie for having such a wonderful student in her class.

BinBin - Responsible secretary like LiSha. Always taking down minutes.
Felisha - Well liked by some of the girls. Often seen playing hopscotch with the students.
Eileen - Sporty. Mix well with the rest.
Diane - Has an admirer with the name Yogi. Fun to tease with.
Kailing - Very talkative like me. But like to suan me. So I teased her a lot.
Jasmine - Our only malay speaking student. Lessons depended on her a lot.
Valerie - A syncronised swimmer. She did a split on one night. OMG!

All in all, I enjoyed the trip tremendously. My colleagues over there said that I need to be managed like the students. How terrible is that!!!

Resting time now!

Saturday, 28 April 2007

Sigh!

After marking the class tests, I was so shocked. 1 class did fantastically. 1 did ok. 1 did miserably.

My form class did "horrifically". Only 9 passes. That means that they do not know what they are doing for this topic at all.

Reasons for doing badly:
1. Tutor sux!
2. Did not do tutorial.
3. Did not study for the class test.
4. Having serious misconception.
5. Too many tests?

I think it is a combination of all. This is the worst I have seen from this class. For all 3 classes, the things covered are similar, yet there is a huge disparity between the results. Partly is due to the fact that they do not even attempt the tutorials. Now I have to think of solutions to help them. Remedials during school holidays?

Tuesday, 24 April 2007

1 lecture down!

Wah, after the long awaited lecture on thermodynamics... finally it is completed. I left 2 more lectures for H2. I felt so relieved. Initially, I thought I would be bombarded by zillions of questions, but sadly, only a small handful of students read the notes, hence it is easy for me. I just had to go over the answers of the problems set for them. The vast majority of students are weak in mathematics, hence they have difficulties performing simple integration problems. I think we should not assume that they understand integration unless they have covered them for H2 maths. Sigh!

Hopefully, they would not consider me as a total disaster!!!

Preparing the next lecture...