Saturday, January 27, 2007
:: It's the Effort
Sometimes it's just the effort.
And I think the truth cannot be further than that. Many a times I am sure everyone has faced with something they do not really want to do, for whatever reasons. I shan't go into the validity of the reasons - it might be actually understandable, it might be totally off or perhaps there isn't even any reason at all to being with. But ultimately whether we go ahead and agree to do it, I think it is actually the conscious making of the individual. We might do something for the sake of it, cause we felt compelled and therefore had to oblige to agree. Or maybe we would actually do it voluntarily, say for some cause or perhaps even some people. Otherwise we could just stick to our own original intentions and just plainly not do it. The outcome of these three decisions might vary, and in some cases they can have very drastically different consequences.
I am confident to say that we have undertaken the abovementioned three decisions before. Some of us would feel more obliged than others and would naturally do more things against their truest wishes, while others would have a strong sense of principle and they might not waver that easily from what their starting intentions were. But of course some things have to be done cause something or someone actually would end up better if they are accomplished.
In short, it's all in the effort.
Effort that we put in to try to fight for the cause and to make it work, effort that we put in to try and make other individuals feel happier. While it sounds stupid that we sometimes would have to go against our wishes, it doesn't necessary mean that it's a bad thing at all. It could perhaps lead to an improvement of certain conditions, or it could just be as simple as brightening somebody's day up. Suppose if everyone stuck to their guns, I wonder what would this world turn out to be.
I believe that if we want something for ourself, we would go out and try our best in it. Same goes for today's topic - if we desire to improve a certain condition or to brighten somebody's day, we would still find ways to actually achieve that. Though if you're lucky, you can get it done easily with much interest on your part. But life rarely works that way, and usually we would be faced with conflicting decisions. That's when the importance of that object or person would come into light.
All the smileys made, all the assurances that everything would be okay. Behind all these are just expressions of sheer surrender. It appears to come to a point when one just feels so helpless. Sometimes I'd always tell myself not to expect anything at all, because I know that I would much happier if I received even that little something compared to a total zilch. But apparently it doesn't work out that well with myself. Lol, maybe I should just indulge myself in work and stay in the office during the weekends to do something more productive instead of thinking about crappy stuffs. :)
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Thursday, January 18, 2007
:: SMS Dedication
Ahh made my first ever text dedication on 98.7FM today. Hope my intentions were received in the right way hehe. :) First time on national radio woots. Well so many of my previous attempts were futile and I'd almost given up hitting on the idea of SMS dedications but apparently I was wrong today. I knew Emily is a nice girl - plus I'd really liked her voice though she seemes to have that weird accent that is rather like a hybrid of American and Brit. EMILY ROCKS WOOHOO~!
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Tuesday, January 9, 2007
:: And Small Michelle Cried..
Well after knowing about how chaotic and ill-disciplined the kids in my last RC session went, Michelle the coordinator decide to give them a talk before the lesson started proper. A talk it was not. What is it about, I'm not too sure myself cause I actually turned up late. But I guess it must have been pretty harsh on the kids, cause Small Michelle can't stop crying the moment I stepped in. And the atmosphere was indeed tense. It appears that they hated me for complaining behind their back. But hey I thought all Big Michelle was gonna do is to sit at the back of the class today and monitor the progress - definitely not giving them a good lecture on the way they bullied me. Everyone thought I was some kinda backstabber..
If only they knew my intentions. I told them very frankly that I myself prefer a more relaxed environment when it comes to learning, that's why I never scolded them or focused on alot of discipline. I allow the girls to talk in class as long as I'm not explaining. I never did scolded them once, not even when they ran about and throwing things at me. But last week really went kinda overboard though. Yes I did felt kinda silly for letting them step over my head by being too nice to them - but they're still young kids afterall, and they don't need another school teacher at the RC centre. I hoped to let them know that I can be their friend, and they can approach me whenever they need any form of academic help outside RC timing. It's quite disappointing when you respect them as young adults and you don't get what you deserved bad. Nearly broke down halfway when I was telling them all these, but once I started to notice a slight change in my voice I'd go back to Science Chapter 1: Matter. Well but it turned out well near the end of lesson, they started talking to me once again and Big Mich even told me post-lesson that they didn't want me to leave lol.
COCO Boy's main task for the day is to update a spreadsheet report regarding vouchers across the various stations. Yes it's vouchers again sadly. And I can't believe I'm so slow that I couldn't even finish doing that one spreadsheet today. Yes I spent like the whole working hours trying to complete it, but the raw reports were far too messy and not standardised at all. And guess what, one of the stations had some gross error in calculations. For that 20 dollars margin in error, I've gotta recount ALL the station's vouchers once more tomorrow. More counting of vouchers again.
Well COCO Boy did have his first taste of accessing the SAP system. But I'm like knowing next to nothing to it, cause all the supposed explanations was only done in 5 minutes before one of my colleague left. And it went waay too fast for me to even jot down. But I can tell that it's an important piece of software for businesses worldwide. Somewhat like a database system.
One good news before I go - I only received like 4 emails today! And I was too busy to even sit down and go through all of them. Plus the remaining ones from yesterday lol. I wonder how much mail storage can Outlook allow. Hehe.
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Monday, January 8, 2007
:: COCO Boy
"Hi there, can I know where Grace is?"
And before I know, I was being led to my workplace for my first day of work when even my supposed supervisor was late. Well actually most of the people at Chevron Singapore came later than expected but guess this privilege only extends to permanent staff only, much less a temp guy like me. My new job? I'd prefer to call it the COCO Boy :)
Well COCO Boy is theoretically not directly under Grace, but rather the COCO Accountant. Not a not babe sadly, but well the poor accountant seems to be the busiest office worker I've witnessed in my life so far. Endless phone calls, spreadsheets to do and basically just countless tasks. Well his assistant left quite some time ago, and that's where this COCO Boy comes in! COCO Boy helps his boss to scan documents (yes I scanned like over 200 plus bank statements today), count vouchers (and he said I was too slow, when I'm nearly going crazy counting those vouchers one by one cause they seem to be glued to each other for some unknown reasons).
COCO Boy don't have access to MSN Messenger (argh!) at his workdesk, and his LCD computer screen faces the two biggies of the department (supposedly) so he cannot slack. In fact, they can watch my every move. I am indeed very impressed with the internal intranet system, and in fact my inbox is filled with over 50 mails in just one day! I can't understand like almost all of them. Actually most of them are for my boss, so I'd just get the carboned copy anyway. Now you can tell how busy my boss is. And COCO Boy's workdesk is even worst than my room condition. Hundreds (yes, literally hundreds) of unopened letters in all sorts of colours and size - brown, white, big, small. Scary.
First day wasn't all THAT bad, but COCO Boy can feel that more stuff will come. I mean, there must be an explanation for all those letters yeah? Someone would have to deal with them. More photocopying and filing. *Groans*
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Thursday, December 21, 2006
:: More Tuition
Home tuition yesterday night as a nightmare. 15 dollars per hour for tutoring a lower secondary school kid is like so way below the prevailing market rate. Yes I know I'm new to this, but doesn't mean that I deserve to be treated like some form of cheap tutoring solution. Actually what turned me off is not the money primarily, but rather it's the mom that I'm most dissatisfied about. She dictates everything that is to be done every lesson, and there's like so much tasks squeezed into that paltry two hours! I have to explain to the kid English and Chinese newspaper articles, vocab mistakes, comprehension mistakes, listen to him read out Chinese model essays, explain to him Chinese textbook articles.. and the list goes on. What's truly infuriating is that I have to copy like so many words with their meanings into an exercise book for him. I mean, isn't this what the student and not the tutor should do?! And the student is like giving me attitude problem, appearing very bored. Come on dude, I'm feeling even worse than you are!
And he's from CHINESE HIGH INSTITUTION. For those uninitiated, it's previously known as The Chinese High School. Which is like the number 3 school in the whole of Singapore.
But the RC tutoring experience this evening was so much nicer. 2 more joined the Primary 4 class, one malay boy Zul and a chinese girl Shannon. Luckily the chinese girl was rather enthusiastic and she soon made friends with the first chinese girl Michelle. Michelle appeared very and quiet 2 days ago, but became extremely chatty once Shannon sits besides her. Argh they're getting outta hand - I ought to be the baddie and separate them next lesson lol! But at least there's some form of rapport going on between me and the kids, though I still appeared to be at a loss when I learnt about the difference in their academic ability. Let's just hope I'm more able to pace the lesson next time round. This is starting to get a little fun hehe.
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Tuesday, December 19, 2006
:: RC Teaching
The first lesson for my RC teaching career commenced today, and it didn't particularly had a wondeful start. It really demoralises you, when the first expression the parents gave you upon knowing that you'll be the kid's tutor is that oh-too-familiar one. What the hell? You mean this kid is going to teach my children?! But there's nothing I can do about it too, firstly because I myself lack any kind of raw experience and secondly if I were them most likely I'd give that same expression too anyway.
Only one girl turned up for the class - the other came after the lesson ended (apparently her grandma got the timing wrong). So ceteris paribus I can expect 2 students to turn up for the next lesson, which is like in two days' time. Didn't expect teaching English grammar to a Primary 4 kid was that hard, and sometimes I really doubted myself if I can really teach or not. Cause some language stuffs can't be taught - it has to come naturally. Languages is so dynamic and flexible as compared to scientific and mathematical subjects, yet it's this interesting element which makes conveying your idea all the harder. As my student isn't exactly a strong student, I'd try to slow things down for her. In fact, I actually had to keep going back to the printed example given and sometimes even use analogy to help her better understand. She says she understands, but there's still some errors here and there. Hope the homework I gave her can show some improvement. I think I'm being very reasonable here, giving her like only 5 questions to complete. I don't believing in overgiving homework to tutees. Afterall I was a tutee once before, and it's quite screwed when you find yourself having to do work when people your age are enjoying their holidays.
But then, it's really satisfying during moments when she actually can get the questions correct herself. Maybe that's why some people say teaching is such a gratifying job.
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:: First Part-Time Job
Hurray! Got my first-ever part-time job already. Apparently I'm supposed to tutor a class of Primary 4 kids at some RC centre 2 times per week. One and a half hour for each session. Yes I know the time might sound abit crappy and the pay peanuts, but I'd still decide to give it a shot since I have nothing on so far as well. But it appears to be a long-term commitment which will probably stretch into my uni days, so I hope I would be able to cope. I'm bad at managing my time, but we shall see how it goes. For now, everything looks fine. And I didn't even manage to go through any sort of interview at all - it appears that the coordinator is too lazy to keep an eye out for more experienced tutors, so she'd just rostered me into the whole thing. Hope I won't disappoint her, cause she's really a very nice lady it seems (and she's my age too lol!). Just don't screw up my probation period and get used to the idea of teaching, and things should flow smoothly. If all goes well that is..
And I'm officially a home tutor now. My first assigment is that of a Secondary Two student, and I have to coach him on four subjects - English, Chinese, History and Literature. Yes FOUR subjects. That's quite a chunk ain't it. I wonder how am I going to specialise at all. And all my knowledge of History and Literature comes from my lower secondary studies. Somehow I have a bad premonition about this whole thingy, and the fees ain't exactly fantastic but I'd just take it anyway since students are such rare gems to come by these days. Oh well.
Oh yeah I got splashed by a puddle of water while waiting for a cab to take to the RC today. It was a grey Mercs which vroom-ed past us and got me wet. Think ZL wasn't spared too. I hate that driver - so what if it's a Mercs huh, I hope all the water will get inside your engine parts and make them rust. Hehehe!
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Monday, December 18, 2006
:: Can't Wait!
Back in like 5 hours time, and I can't wait heh.
Can't wait can't wait can't wait lol! =)
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