New Year..

2005 had been a rather eventful and colourful year to me. I'll always remember 2005 as the year that marked the end of the studying era and also the beginning of being an employed worker. Besides that, I'm especially pleased with the new friendships formed and the old friendships renewed. Here's a breakdown of my 'achievements':

Academically: I've never ever been very academically-inclined. From young, Barbara has always labelled me as a 'slow learner', especially with any subject related to alphabets and words. So to have graduated with an Honours degree is quite an achievement in itself. If there was a value-added award tracking my results from JC to University, I won't be shy to admit that I utterly deserve the award.

Career-wise: I was initially in a state of confusion and frustration into deciding my career line. I only applied for teaching because the friends around me did so, or rather, just to have a taste of what the interview was like. I was initially elated that I was allocated to teach secondary English and Music. Through projects done in my 4 years of university, I've always been dismayed with the standard of written English Language of my peers. This was especially so in the 1st 2 years of university. Having had to read through lower secondary school standard of English made me want to vomit blood. It makes me wonder whether these people have been taught grammar, sentence structure and even spelling during their English lessons. It would indeed be a satisfying job to be able to raise the English standard of the future generations. Anyway, I was more glad to be given the opportunity to teach music. I thought it would be a breeze as it is afterall a non-examinable subject (not MEP). I'll probably just have to play some pop music on the piano and get the students to sing along. I was totally shattered after the music audition. I could only blame myself for being so shallow. Classical music still reigned after all in our education system. The matter was worsened as my music audition was delayed due to a clash with my school exam. By then, the vacancies in NIE were already filled up. I was only left with the option of contract teaching, with the teaching subjects of English and Mathematics. I could only lament the poor timing. But if I look on the positive side, at least I was still given a chance to teach. After not making through the audition, they could have just threw away my application and not bothered about me. So while most of my friends went directly to NIE, I was thrown straight into a secondary school to be an untrained teacher. As all of you would probably know, the initial stages were very difficult for me. I found it hard to adapt to the neighbourhood surroundings. All along, I've hardly come into contact with the mainstream, only mixing with similar people. Elitist would be the perfect word to describe me. But as time went by, I began to understand the kids better and got used to their style. I initially concentrated too much on their weaknesses, which totally blinded me from their strengths. If the students were represented by a piece of white paper smeered with patches of black dots, I only focused on the black dots even though the white areas were much larger. As an educator, this was a grave mistake. Anyway, I'm glad to have started off with contract teaching first even though it meant that I would lose out on some monetary gains compared to my other peers. It was indeed crucial for people like me to have a taste of what teaching neighbourhood school students would be like. Hopefully with this experience, I would be able to manage the students much better during my school experience and practicum.

Health (Sports and Games): Believe it or not, I only picked up tennis this year. The Federer racket that I bought was meant to be a lucky charm for Rog's matches. I must say that playing tennis was much easier than I expected. Perhaps the one decade of watching tennis aided a lot. Who needs a coach? Constant exposure to watching skilful players like Steffi Graf, Pete Sampras, Andre Agassi, Martina Hingis and of course Roger Federer would do. Besides tennis, I've also been hitting the gym.It takes a great effort to get started in exercising. Ironically, I only started doing so when I began teaching. I was desperate to do something to feel more energetic and recharged. Running on the treadmill keeps my mind afresh and improves my stamina which I greatly need in my job.

Friendship: As stated above and probably in previous entries, the new friendships formed in my honours year is probably the highlight of my undergraduate studies. My females friends aided me a great deal in my studies while my male friends and a few girl friends provided me with much entertainment and companionship (when playing tennis, mahjong, singing ktv, watching movies, eating, talking crap etc.). Hopefully our friendship would last as the years go by.

Romance: Did enjoy some blissful moments with certain people but no further attempt was taken on both parties to move on to the next stage. Perhaps there was but the hints dropped were not straightforward enough for me to understand. On the other hand, I played the devil by rejecting people. Irony in simple English: People whom you like don't like you but people whom you don't like like you.

I don't want to make any New Year Resolutions as I hardly ever achieve them. I just hope I would be able to manage my students more effectively. More importantly, I wish everyone good health. Afterall, health is wealth. Good health does not come in a vacuum. Alrights, this has been such a time-consuming entry to read. So get your butts out of that comfortable chair now and start exercising!