Fruits of your labour

What a nice surprise to see these on sale last Sunday:



I instantly knew these were the fruits of your hard labour 2 weekends ago, when you volunteered to help pack the candies in aid of the Boys' Town fundraising drive.

Without any hesitation, I bought a couple of boxes and told my husband and my daughter how they came about. I swear my face was positively glowing with pride.

I'm sure the beneficiaries in the Boys' Town need whatever little help you could give, and you gave many precious hours of your weekend. Excellent job!

Your Sunday reading

I'm pre-empting you on this because tomorrow The Sunday Times is going to run a story called "Should Teachers Blog?".

I'm really curious as to why they would want to do a story like that. What is wrong with teachers blogging? Is the question about teachers blogging (ie. some people feel teachers should not blog, for whatever reasons) or is the question really about how and what teachers should blog about?

If any of you get to read this post before you read the The Sunday Times, perhaps you can let me know what you think about this issue.

Do you, as a student, have a problem with teachers blogging? Is there anything you are concerned about? Are there lines you think teachers shouldn't cross?

I would also like to hear your opinions after you have read the story. I'll share with you my opinions in class too. Frankly, it baffles me why this is even a topic for discussion in the mainstream media. Unless of course, some teachers have been known to do unsavoury things like posting saucy pictures or raunchy videos of themselves. Now you know that the photos I have posted on my blog are all very educational and perfectly innocuous. If you disagree, do let me know and I'll take the offending pictures down.

Mdm Sng is innocent! I blog to NURTURE MY STUDENTS and to HELP THEM IMPROVE THEIR ENGLISH. I also blog in Chinese to emphasize the IMPORTANCE OF BILINGUALISM.

Note to Straits Times : Don't put undue pressure on teachers please. We are very stressed as it is with our work and with taking care of our students. Leave us alone. Tolong.

New fengshui

And now with the new seating arrangement, I hope the fengshui's better, not that I believe in such hogwash, but I do like to start the new term with something new.

The class' now drawn into a sort of battle of the sexes formation, with the weaker sex (the boys, ha ha!) on my left, and the girls on my right. It'll be interesting to see what would happen when we have a debate, an idea I've thinking of the last few days, and which I may actualize next week.

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Did I tell you I'm very happy that so many of you signed up for CIP last weekend? You did it voluntarily, without so much of a murmur, and I got a note from the organizer today, saying you did a great job and they were so grateful for your contribution.

What amazes me is how you managed to get 2 boys from F42 to join in. So who was the 'propagandist' huh?? Well done, and I hope you will continue to infect students from other classes with your zeal and positive attitude.

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Talking about starting things anew, I have recently been thinking of going for an eye surgery to correct my myopia. New improved eyesight for me! You are the first people I've told this to (other than my sister in law who had hers done and is the one from whom I'm getting all the first-hand information). Given my active lifestyle, I really think it will transform my life tremendously. I'm working out dates here and seeing when I can schedule my appointment.

So who knows, maybe in a few months' time, you will see a new me with laser-treated corneas!!

testing

testing

testing

teating my blogger

Escape to Muar

For the sake of many of you who didn't go for the Geography field trip to Muar, here are some photos for you to ogle at :

We didn't have a good start. Were stuck in a humongous jam where the coach moved like 2cm every 5 minutes. So what else was there to do but zzzz...



We visited a pineapple farm. But instead of showing you how a pineapple looks like in a farm (which is the same as what a pineapple looks like in the market), how about a different view from the top:



Do the arrangement of the leaves obey the Fibonacci number series? Can some bright sparks find out and let me know?

When city kids go to a rubber plantation, out comes the cameras!



A closer look at the palm oil fruit, which when squeezed, gives you the palm oil, which gives you Palmolive soap, and also forms the base of many types of cooking oil.



Here I'm standing under a durian tree and looking up through its lovely yellow foliage! (No durians found on the tree though, which is just as well. The smell would have driven me away!)




Someone's stealing the coconuts!



Kampung kids having a swell time in the longkang. Our students were going "eeks!" and "yucks!" but hey, at least they had a carefree childhood!



An expert showed us how a gasing is spun. The record, we were told, is a jaw-dropping 1 hr 45 min of spinning. That's the amount of time for you to finish the English Paper 1 exam!



Finally, a picture to remind us that just 3 hours away from Singapore, there is an oasis of tranquility, where time moves a little slowly, and you get to catch your breath, and admire the splendours of nature.

A dreamer or an ant?

So you've all set some goals after the AK Workshop. Have you asked yourself why your goals are the way they are? For example, why do you need to score 6 points? Or why do you need to get to a JC or university?

Prominent blogger Mr Wang, has an interesting post about the Singaporean dream and what it means to different people. He made a most interesting observation about people who are "mindless ants scurrying about their busy little lives and those who are the "dreamers and the poets, the soul-searchers and the visionaries".

Even as you work out your goals and your dreams, I hope you would pause for a while and ask yourself if, on the road to achieving your dream(s), whether you would end up a mindless ant, or are you going to be a soul-searcher, poet and visionary. For me personally, I'll opt for the latter any time. I may not be rich or successful by the standards of society, but I'll be a whole lot happier.

So how did it go?

I'm sitting in the staff room and waiting for the caterer to come with the dinner for my dear students who are now cooped up in a room, being bombarded with messages from Adam Khoo.

I am dead curious to know:
* did my students find the 3 days life-changing?
* even if the answer is 'no' to the first question, did it at least make them think about some issues in their lives (like their relationship with their parents, the beliefs they hold about themselves, their attitude towards life..etc)
* are they going to make some changes to their lives so that they will achieve their goal?

When the dust has settled, and you all get to catch up on your sleep this weekend, I wonder how different your lives will be.

Can't wait to talk to you on Monday!