Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Looooooooooong weekend!

Really looked forward to the National Day weekend break...2 4-day weeks at a go...great time to rest...catch up with friends...catch up with marking (?!?)....and catch up with everything else.

Figured that I better have a short update before I get whizzed off to the land of Prelim3 and common tests marking.

Flowers galore

Recently, my mum's been buying flowers home every week....love the sight of flowers in the house..just makes everything a little more cheerful and bright.


Humongous lilies that my mum bought from the market...

As usual..love macro shots of these pretty little things...

National Day Celebrations @CH

Given the voilatile situation of the H1N1 scare, for a long while all the Uniformed Group (UG) ICs were under the impression that we weren't gonna celebrate national day with a parade this year. But then, as with the voilatile nature of what can be done and can't be done due to this flu outbreak, the most recent we heard was that we're going ahead with the parade! Haha..so everyone came together to put together a simple parade, with only the Guard of Honour contingent doing a march-in instead of all the different UGs doing a grand march-in. Well, a smart move in my opinion, because I think to put together a decent full parade with a 'live' band playing, it'd definitely take more than 2-3 practices.

My Land contingent receiving feedback & pointers during one of the pracs..

Discussion of all those little little things to be ironed out from what was being observed of the contingent...

Love this shot of the march past... =)

...and this one too :)

NDP@CH: The actual NDP

This year's Guard of Honour, the NPCC Contingent.

*Beams with pride*

Flag party marching in with the Singapore flag as well as the CH flag. The actual march past.
So, in line with not having the school congregate for too long due to H1N1, this year's celebrations after the NDP, was inter-class games.

My S2s were involved in the Frisbee games.

2-1 in action!


2-1 cheering from the sidelines!

Could hear my class cheering for their classmates who were playing..... Finally! Cheers that are self-initiated......really warms my heart =)



Apparently my class was touted as one of the hot favourites to reach the finals, but for whatever reason, they didn't. Oh well...I guess we can never predict what happens..as long as everyone had fun =)

Over at the S3s side, it was the favourite game of the century, SOCCER.

Could see the boys were totally enjoying themselves...even the teachers formed a team to pit their skills against the boys! Was really fun watching my colleagues play... :)

So after celebrations in school, I headed over to Sentosa for some beach volleyball & frisbee. So fun!! Even though now, I've got this swollen bump on my right arm....just can't get the swell to go down...think the ball landed one too many times on just one arm.. *ouch* Hope it goes away soon...

Ended off the day with a nice cosy dinner beside Palawan beach at Sentosa. Ate at this place called Coastes. Nice :)
The nice ambience of Coastes...

S & S' Wedding
I think I can become a professional wedding singer already. This year, I've already sung at 2 weddings...and one more is coming up in Sept! :S It's actually not the singing that's tiring..it's the COORDINATING of the group that's tiring since my friends are now mostly married, some with kids..and all working...
The wedding singers during one of our weekend pracs....
See what I had to resort to to entice the singers to come for prac?? :P
And so we practice for about 1.5 mths, and the wedding was last Saturday.
The gal singers with the bride...

The lovely emcees...my long time friends, E and G.

The anxious groom.....he actually sang the song for the bride's march-in!!! The first of its kind.... :)


Another long time friend C, who's anxiously waiting for the pastor to say the word "exchange rings" so that he can run up to stage and pass the wedding couple the rings in his hands. Hahah...he was so anxious... :P

Think as time goes along, this sentence that my friend once mentioned becomes more and more true...."These days, we either meet up at weddings...or funerals..." How true....and sad as well...coz it means that friends do not have the time to meet up just for a simple meal, but have to wait till big organised events like weddings, or unfortunate events like funerals to meet up with one another. But am glad that over the weekend, it was a wedding and not the latter =)
National Day at East Coast Park
To top it off, my Sunday evening was spent at East Coast with Z and walking Z's dog! Boi (the doggie's name) is just soooooooooooooooo cute! Everyone who walks past can't help but comment on how small, or how adorable he is.
But seriously, I thought half of Singapore was in East Coast..I have never seen soooooo many people at East Coast all at the same time as on Sunday. Nevertheless, there was nice cool breeze...and we managed to catch the big Singapore Flag that came from the National Day Parade fly pass us....
Really love being by the sea...hearing the waves..seeing the sun set.....
So that concludes me National Day weekend :)
4 more weeks to Sept break!

Saturday, August 01, 2009

H1N1 H1N1 H1N1 !?

H1N1 seems to be the buzz word for the whole of Term 3...ever since the school term started...everything that we do had to be revolved around the "measures for compliance" passed down from the ministry, some of which I don't quite understand even..
"This can, that cannot.....that can, this cannot...."
Sigh.
CHMA 2009 has been officially cancelled....what can I say...
First it was mass uncertainty.....then it was possible postponement....and finally, sudden cancellation. I had big dreams for this year's CHMA...but oh well...
Though I can try to understand the decision to cancel it..but I guess that doesn't do much to lift the disappointment...for the crew..for the finalists..for the guest bands..the emcees..
But I suppose, I'm slowly coming to terms with it.... hope the journey for everyone involved has been a fun and enriching one.

Besides that, Term 3 has been a MAD term with 2000 000 things to mark. Every week I mark an average of about 140 marks worth of Sec 4 tests....I think I'm about to go crazy from it soon. Somemore, this 2 weeks..I think the average number of marks shot up to 230 marks coz the common tests for the Sec1s-3s are approaching, and I gave them tests too! Sometimes I wonder why I do such things to torture myself..

On a lighter note, have signed up for Kickboxing sessions to try to slow down my rate of turning into an all-work-but-no-play-dull-Jane. Has been pretty fun so far...

And with the slow relaxing of the "measures for compliance" from Ministry, hopefully the end of year Ophir trip that P and I are hoping to plan for my CCA would be able to follow through. Always feel there's so much to gain from going through an expedition together...for the boys, and for the teachers too. So pleeassseee laaaaaah....don't tell me H1N1 last minute we can't go ah....