The ICT course

Because I wanted so much to learn something fresh and different from my routine, I enrolled for a free course at AMC Business School last week. Excitedly I responded 'yes' to the sms when it was sent to have the enrolment confirmed. Wednesday 6-9.45pm and Thursday 6-9.45pm. "Just nice", I thought. On the first course day, I verbalized a long list of instructions to the kids, making sure that they'd behave while I was gone. Then off I went to the course at 5pm, on the dot.

The lady at the counter was very helpful, but seemed puzzled when I gave her my name. "Yes, I did register for MS Excel", I insisted. She politely asked me to recheck my inbox, just to make sure. "Oh no, it is MS Access!" I heard myself exclaimed. The lady smiled and cheerfully suggested that I gave it a go. Thinking that I have come all the way to the place, fighting a heavy jam when it was actually only about 5km from my office, I decided to heed her advice.

At 5.45pm, I was comfortably seated at lab 4, waiting for the instructor to come. 6.50pm and I was still on my own. Finally, realizing that I was being unusually early, I went downstairs for a drink. When I came back at 6.05pm, the instructor was waiting for the software to download on each PC, and there were about 4 students waiting.

At 7pm, the software was still downloading. By then there were 12 students waiting. We were given meal coupons and half an hour to have our dinner. Thankfully when we came back the PCs were ready to go! 2 hours on the first day was spent on waiting...but at least the remaining session was spent wisely on the nuts and bolts of MS Access.

It might have been too basic. Something I could have done with a little bit of exploring on my own laptop, but on the second day I realized it wasn't wasted at all. It was good to have an expert explained things effortlessly, to discover functions that on my own, I'd have found confusing. Mission accomplished...I did something simple yet refreshing, and at the end of the day, I was rewarded with a certificate to show off!

One of the 50 things I want to do before I kick the bucket

When life gets too busy, one tends to forget to do the things one loves such as blogging. Maybe I should thank the little things that trigger the longing to write such as discovering that my dreaded ovarian cyst is back six month after the last operation. It might be unlikely that I'd die soon because of that, but it is enough to motivate me to try to do as many of the things I've been dreaming of doing for so long.

Attending ICT courses is top on the list. I'm not ashamed to admit that I have yet to learn a lot of sophisticated ICT things, even as basic as excel. And so come next Tuesday I'll attend the very first on my course list- excel level 1. It's a free course (government sponsored) conducted by AMC School Business. I'm quite looking forward to this.