*the love and grace of God in my life..*

Monday, February 27, 2006

today marks the last time i'll meet my day 1 class,
the class which did the best for UTs, the class which makes me look forward to lessons on mon morning, the class which never fails to amaze me with their cranky jokes and fun-loving students
i'm very sure i'll miss them.

ivan - the quiet, innocent and guai guai boy in class, one who never opens his mouth unless asked to, but is always striving to improve his grades. the ever-conscientious student whom all facis will enjoy having in class. always bullied by chong ming too.

chong ming - the smart student in class who did well for some UTs and although never speaks much in class, contributes whenever asked to, with a very beng-look and tone of course.

weijie - the guy who doesn't talk in class but reacts whenever he's asked to do anything, from summarizing to compiling worksheet. can be very interesting at times.

alan - another of those who doesn't talk in class either. promises me in his RJ that he'll improve if i continue to stay to teach his class, but never shows much improvement.

chufeng - used to be so quiet, but found out that she's quite crappy at times. nice student to have too.

jenny - the smartest PRC student i've seen! amazing! she not only does well for daily grade; she tops the class for UTs too. woah!

nurisman - the crazy guy in class who always join forces with me to disturb jeremy but overall, a nice person to chat with on msn.

jeremy - the source of headache every mon in class and i never fail to ask him to open up his problem statement and arrows him whenever he's not paying any attention, but still, it's all out of fun.

jialing - a very hardworking and conscientious student too, the only one who achieves 100% attendance in class, got almost all As for daily grades and did superb for UTs too.

qinhai - the act-beng in class who drives me mad most of the time when he addresses me as 'vivi' and ends up being screamed at by me.

felicia - the cute little girl who appears shy and quiet but she's not!

fransin - always disturbing me with funny things on msn but overall, an interesting student to have too.

lili - quiet and demure in class but she really does have power up in her head. does well quite often.

i do have a lot more students in class
but these are really the ones who have made the 16 lessons pretty much enjoyable and pleasant.
all the best to you guys/gals! =)

//posted by ivy @ 17:37//

Saturday, February 25, 2006

i left office yesterday in a really depressing mood,
knowing that at the back of my mind, there's a problem yet to be crafted and it's terribly urgent
my colleagues who drove me down could tell, but i decided it wasn't fair to dwell on the uncrafted problem and its various nonsensical issues
therefore, i forgot all about curriculum for a moment and enjoyed the evening bowling session

it was real fun!
both teams from my department shared the two lanes side by side
first game, jasmine and i did superb
we both had 2 strikes each during the game and at the last frame, she had a triple-strike while i had a double
thus raising our scores to a whopping 159 and 139 respectively
(not that it's really high, but for gals last night, it was!)
top scorer for first game
errr, then i guess we got too concentrated on wanting to strike and of cos, we were dying of hunger...
the 2nd game wasn't worthy of mentioning.. =)
but all in all, we did well, though the students' team were really fantastic and of cos, took the first 3 prizes
not that bad, i had an adidas backpack for lucky draw too.

sau yee aka mummy, jasmine aka my cubicle mate and me headed down to great world' tcc and planted our butt there for the next 4 hours
i'm so glad i had them last night, otherwise i'm quite sure i'll go back home feeling upset and angry over the problem crafting issue
we talked about a whole lot of things and i guess we really trusted each other
because if any of those things we mentioned travelled out of that place last night, we'll be minced meat

these few days have been a tough learning journey
i was telling someone the other day that i feel vulnerable in my working place
i don't know who i can trust, and who will backstab me again
it's scary, knowing that behind almost everyone's mind is the deep desire to beat and outrun each other
i won't deny that for quite some time, many of the times why i pushed myself so hard was to prove that i'm not that bad, as compared to the high flyers in my portfolio/dept
but slowly, i've come to learn that being caught up in the rat race at some point or another is really painful and if given a choice again, i really don't want to engage myself in that

at the same time,
i've also seen for myself how insecure this place is
not that we'll be sacked anytime, but the fact that our ultimate appraisal grade is so unpredictable places a sense of insecurity in a lot of us
sometimes, we don't even know we've been stabbed, like mad
and when we finally know it, ouch. it hurts
because it has caused a big pitfall in the appraisal grade

just this entire week,
it was a sudden realisation of how trust and security is really not in anyone, but God
so many times, we've said it to others, prayed this prayer etc
but for me, it's really the first time it hit me so hard
i'm thankful that although i've encountered some hurting incidents, they were not major incidents
but small lessons along the way to teach me this big and important lesson about placing my trust and security in God

//posted by ivy @ 16:08//

Friday, February 24, 2006

this is one of those times that i keep absolutely quiet and stay in my workstation
i feel like im being pulled in all directions today

8.30am - came in to office, prepare to go to class. my module-chair came up and say she's going to meet the director upstairs to get approval for the problem i crafted
9.30am - i ended 1st meeting, came back to office. Was going down for breakfast when my module-chair came and say that the problem has been rejected.
10.00 am - finished breakfast, went to see her regarding what went wrong.. and i was so pissed. becos she had taken out the learning objectives before i crafted the problem, then when she went up this morning, she took with her the initial learning objectives which obviously meant that my problem didn't coincide with the learning objectives
10.30 am - went for class for 2nd meeting
11.30 am - ended 2nd meeting, rushed for CET meeting with directors again
12.30 pm - OCC staff sharing
1.00 pm - went for class for 3rd meeting
2.00 pm - ended class for the day, went down for lunch
3.00 pm - came back and tried to re-craft the stupid problem which is for monday's class
3.30 pm - IG students came to prepare for photoshoot
4.00 pm - department budget planning
5.00 pm - tried to think of new problem once again
5.10 pm - reminder by people to settle CET admin, HR accreditation documents by next Tues, I&E networking night asap... blah blah
5.25 pm - i'm here blogging.. because im going to explode.

just look at the schedule i've today
i don't even have 5 mins to rest!
and there are some people around who claimed that they're so busy beings when all they do is edit video the whole day, whine and complain
yeah right, they're busy! who'll believe?

and now, it's 3 mins to go before they are going to come and ferry me to bowling alley for the event tonight
HOW am i going to finish my problem statement??????????????

//posted by ivy @ 17:18//

Thursday, February 09, 2006

valentine's day adverts are all over the place
emails coming in, students offering v-day service like flowers/gifts/chocs delivery
frens asking how am i celebrating
one guy colleague jokingly said he'll buy flowers for us
some others said that those who have no dates for the night shall get together and have dinner that night
oh well, as far as i can remb, v-day was nothing special for me to look forward to
every year, it was just another day, another schooling/working day.

when was the last time i had a date?
as in.. being asked to go out? i can't remb.

i missed the times where you reached out and hold my hands;
i missed the times we spent at blue-star place;
i missed the times when we first got together.
everything seems different now.

but i know
weekends are no different from weekdays now
the only difference is that i do not need to report to work

exception of cos is this week
JAE beginning this sat
i can't imagine the mess on sat, at the new campus

one week closer to the move to woodlands
one week closer to the graduation of my students
one week closer to saying goodbye to my fun-loving, wonderful, yet those wanna-strangle-them-at-times students

//posted by ivy @ 22:07//

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

it's only tues and i almost fell asleep at my workstation this evening
i had class yesterday and after that, spent the entire afternoon doing my grading
this morning had ut invigilation, followed by cet admin stuffs, and afternoon was another round of grading
to add on, i've ut grading too!
driving me mad.

i'm running another project for my IG as well
was rather last min but my ex-co is really dedicated and so, it makes things easier
met up with the yr 1s, dedicated the job to them and hopefully, they get back to me as soon as they're done

danwen and wei siong dropped by for lunch this afternoon
they said they were sick of tanglin mall and so, made a 10-mins trip to my horrible canteen and of cos, i had to entertain them
what a pity that we're shifting soon..

i've no lessons tmr but it's a whole day of pbl development training
which essentially means im not able to do my work like grading again.. argh.
tmr's meeting is packed back-to-back
the only consolation is i've aerobics at 5pm, and kickboxing at 7pm
not going running with my colleagues tmr, i've enough for the day.
last week, we ran about 4km in hmmm, 40 mins. haha, cos we spent the last 10 mins walking..it was quite an achievement
considering that only 2 gals ran with 4 very-fit guys, but they never left us alone
always encouraging us to go on, and ran together with us
team-spirit eh..=)

alrighty.. i need to sleep
badly.
*yawn

//posted by ivy @ 22:15//

Sunday, February 05, 2006

have you ever wanted to be alone, but at the same time, you wish someone is around to hold you, to be by your side?
i honestly dunno what i want.
as much as i wanna spend time with people, the other side of me wanna be alone.
in the end, i chose to be alone today.

an overwhelming surge of emotions came when i was on the bus journey back home
and there i was trying not to tear, not to think about anything, not to focus on the negative aspects.
then i felt emotionally-constipated.
how i wanted to cry it all out, but i couldn't
how i wanted to say out whatever is on my mind, but i couldn't
how i wanted to whine and complain, but i couldn't
reason?
i'm afraid of the consequences of my actions, the extent to which people will be hurt.

it's really affecting me.

//posted by ivy @ 16:26//

Thursday, February 02, 2006

2nd feb 2006.
it's been 3 years, which essentially means my baby has tolerated my nonsense for a whopping 3 years. =)
we're both buzzy busy beings, so a simple dinner was what we had.
i love you baby!

things are pretty much picking up in office
with just 4 more weeks to the end of semester and the first batch of graduating students, we're busy checking through their resumes, helping them with job search and offering career coaching etc.
not to mention, i've my career coaching certification to atttempt for.

O' levels results releasing soon and i'm part of the interviewing panel for the new diploma
the fact that the outcome of whether 10% of those students are able to enter the course depends on me, scares me quite a bit
what a heavy responsibility to be the interviewer

besides that, i've been busy coordinating external courses
marking my never-ending daily grades and upcoming UT
arranging for my IG retreat/chalet/bbq/photoshoot

and it's time to sleep
becos i've an extremely long day ahead.
in fact, a long weekend ahead.
ta-ta~

//posted by ivy @ 23:13//