Thursday.

Went to school in the morning, conducted class, thought a lot about my job again, did some marking of test papers and assignments, talked to my students, did some admin work, and left for home. Yet another day at HW.

I think it’s times like this that I appreciate having friends and family around me so that I can moan about the crazy things that are happening in my work. Given that I like to moan so much, it’s very hard for me to be enduring all those stress generated from work, and then go back home and not have anyone who would listen to me moan.

Was suddenly thinking about if I would be attending Commencement in July. For the sake of meeting my friends in Singapore I’m tempted to go, but once I think about how cruelly NUS treated me in the final semester I just feel disgusted to even be associated with the place. If I were to attend Commencement, it’s really to see the friends back in Singapore, not really because of the ceremony itself. I’ll see how things were to turn out for the next couple of weeks, especially when the Commencement ceremony schedules are out. Perhaps I couldn’t even get those few days of leave during that period and I would have no choice but to stay in Hong Kong.

I think I’m missing some people back in Singapore, especially when I looked through the pictures of last year’s orientation. Argh.

Karaoke.

Come to think about it, it has been almost 3 months since I last went for a karaoke session. I have the urge to go and sing now – I’m not someone who will be satisfied by just singing in the bathroom! Of course going for karaoke sessions in Hong Kong aren’t as cheap as it would be in places like Shanghai, but if the environment is good, the company is good and the service is good, I definitely don’t mind paying for a good karaoke session!

I’ve been thinking about my work for the past couple of days (and thus all those posts about me wondering about being a teacher). I somehow feel that I’m not all that good teaching people certain things. I mean, I know how to show others how to get certain things done, but when it comes to teaching I just have no idea. Perhaps I’m demanding too much, but when the kids in class do not seem interested in whatever I’m doing despite my best efforts to make them as intriguing as possible, it can get a bit demoralising. But at the same time, when the kids laugh at the lame jokes that I’m telling or answering my all-too-easy questions, suddenly the kind of satisfaction would start to run all over again, and I feel energized to go on.

I know it’s still a pretty long way to go before my contract expires on 31 July, but I really don’t know when the day comes, what kind of feelings would I be having – would it be a “Thank God it’s all over” or “Oh my God it’s all over”? I certainly hope it would be the latter case, but I’m not sure. Let’s see how things would turn out to be.

Warm.

My legs were still sore and in pain. The Salonpas plasters in the morning didn’t really work cos they didn’t stick well, so I got myself a tube of those deep heat gel and rubbed on knees. I think I’d apply one more time tomorrow morning before I leave for school.

The weather is acting up strange – it’s getting warmer! Apparently yesterday afternoon it went up to as high as 26 degrees, which was pretty weird for a day in spring. And it definitely seemed as if today was worse – I have to turn the aircon at home on after I reached home from work because it was so warm and stuffy out there. If there’s one thing that Hong Kong pales in comparison with Singapore, it’s probably the air quality. You can literally feel that the air in Hong Kong isn’t that great, whereas in Singapore it’s much fresher. But then again, I’m not missing Singapore.

Today was the first day that I took over the HD kids for their Internet Programming class. Let’s just say that having a consecutive 4-hour class is not a very fun thing to do. It was tiring for me just as it was for the kids. I think most of the kids didn’t have a clue of what I was talking about throughout the whole class. Mind you, at certain points I didn’t know what I was talking about as well because it was so exhausting. Thank God for the parts that I didn’t know what I was talking about, the things I said were not entirely important – I still know when to compose myself. Haha.

More classes tomorrow – but at least I’ve completed my whole set of Macromedia Flash notes for the FD kids, so that’s one heavy task down. All the overtimes were worth it because now I can fully concentrate on the preparation of the HD classes.

Hiking.

This weekend has been a pretty exciting one for me. Let’s start from Friday – I went to the Hong Kong Music Fair (HKMF) after work and before I got on the bus to the HK Exhibition & Convention Centre in Wan Chai, I saw this restaurant at the bus stop near Cheung Sha Wan:

Considering the name of the restaurant literally translates to “Who’s the boss”, I think there are 2 possibilities arising: either you can shout at the waiters when they are slow in their work “Who’s the boss” to scare them, or the boss of the restaurant can shout “Who’s the boss” at you when you criticize the food.

The HKMF itself wasn’t a very interesting event – probably because it was the last 2 hours of the whole exhibition when I reached there. I walked through the path where they exhibited a lot of old stuffs from the music and entertainment scene in the past.

This is how big a radio is like back in the 1950’s. Considering how big my iPod Shuffle is now, I think technology has definitely advanced.

This box showcased the “first” items in the Hong Kong music scene. They even had that PSP music album from Joey Yung – of which I own a copy back in Singapore (it was like I bought it in Hong Kong and brought in back Singapore)

The exhibition wasn’t exactly fun, so I left after about only half an hour – but not before I managed to see one of the students from my FD class. Small world.

Went back to school yesterday morning to do some work. Stayed for about 2 hours before meeting Sis for lunch at Nam Shan. Then went to Kwun Tong to get a new router for my place. The old one was acting strange and I decided to ditch it and got a new LinkSys one. At $390, that was testament to the fact that playing with IT gadgets is definitely an expensive hobby.

Then today was exciting – I went for my first ever hiking trip in Hong Kong! The IVE Teachers’ Association organized a hiking trip from Tsuen Wan to Sham Tseng. I have never been on a hiking trip before, so this was definitely an eye opening experience for me. As it turned out, it was a hike of 2 halves. The first half involved mostly uphill paths, and that part was the one that had me almost wanting to die. It was a lesson for me who have not been exercising regularly! Then the second half was much better, as the path was easier to walk on, and it was mostly downhill. But mind you, downhill paths don’t make it easier to walk, because the downhill can really be pretty steep and challenging! In the end, it took me about 3 hours to complete the hike, and I’m glad that I made it – even though my legs are hurting like mad now!

This signboard points to the trail that we hiked on – note that it was one hour to the start of the trail from that particular point. It’s like we have to hike for an hour before we actually start hiking.

I was calling SOS all the way when I was going uphill, but views like this do make the whole tiring trip worth all the while.

See this track where everyone was walking? It looks mild enough, but for me it was a killer! The worst thing was, after this apparent uphill, there was another one behind this!

Then halfway through there was a small family-style restaurant that sells cold drinks (Glory be to the God) and offered a very nice pond for viewing pleasure. At this point, the hike was about at its 60% point.

Apparently the path that we walked on was a black spot for landslides. I’m sure it wouldn’t be fun to be stuck in that spot when a landslide is happening.

Civilization!!!

After the hike, we went to this roast goose restaurant for a sumptuous roast goose lunch – for all the difficulties and hardships, it was a well-deserved reward!

Then as I took the bus from Sham Tseng out back to Tsuen Wan, the bus had a very good view of the Tsing Ma bridge.

After the nice view of Tsing Ma Bridge, an equally good view of the Ting Kau Bridge was coming up.

I’m totally knackered after the whole day of walk, and it was weird to spend a weekend not resting at home when I was so tired after the whole week of work in school. It’s quite amazing to see half the class not bothering to hand it the homework given to them. But I can’t complain – perhaps I can’t be bothered to complain considering that I don’t think I would really want to be in the job after my current contract expires. I really don’t think teaching is the job for me.

Sleepy.

I’m terribly sleepy today. I think even the kids in class noticed how tired I was. It wasn’t like I didn’t sleep or anything like that. It’s just a sudden bout of weariness, I guess. I guess I’ll go home and have a really good rest after work today.

Met up with Dheresse who was in town and joined her friends for dinner at this poshy-looking Thai restaurant in Central. The dishes are not too bad, and for about $140 a person I think it was acceptable. Maybe when Mum pops in the next time I could bring her there.

That’s me, Dheresse and one of her friends who happened to be known as KC too. What a small world.
(The picture has been colour-corrected because the original picture was way too red due to the setting of the restaurant)

Dheresse commented that I look older and more mature in shirt and pants. Let’s just say I somewhat still need to maintain the image of a teacher, as much as very deep inside I still don’t see myself as one.

One more sleepy afternoon to endure. Some strong coffee might help, though it’s hard to come by especially now that I’m sitting in office.

Mac OS X, Windows Vista & Windows XP.

For the past two days over the weekend, I was in quite a frantic mood modifying my MacBook. I finally succumbed to the lure of running both Windows and Mac OS X, and decided that I would want to have the best of both worlds. So I went over to Sham Shui Po and gotten myself a 80GB SATA hard disk and slotted it into my MacBook, replacing the original 60GB one that I have. Because that 80GB hard disk was a new one, I had to install Mac OS X on it. So for that I spent a couple of hours on it. That was part one.

Then I wanted to try if Boot Camp really works, so I used the Windows XP Home installation disc that my sister has to try installing Windows on my MacBook. And true to Apple’s words, I had a perfectly running Windows XP Home except for a little bit of trouble while installing the ethernet and wireless drivers. But in the end everything was working fine and so that was my second OS in 2 days.

After that I realised that my sister could get a copy of Windows Vista from her school, so I got it from her and put Windows Vista over Windows XP Home. It installed perfectly fine and was running pretty smoothly, bar a few glitches that was somewhat unsolvable. One of them was the problem with the audio driver. Apparently the audio driver could be installed (I saw the Sigma Tel stuff being installed) but the computer wasn’t able to have any audio output. That was definitely a downside, but besides that it was quite a nice OS to work with.

During the installation of Vista on my MacBook.

The welcome screen on Windows Vista after it boots up.

kubicwave.com viewed on IE7 in Windows Vista.

The start menu in Windows Vista. Pretty slick.

Despite the obviously very pretty looking Vista being in my MacBook, I still went to Mong Kok to lay my hands on a copy of Windows XP Professional because (1) I can’t stand no audio output coming out from my MacBook and (2) most of the things I need to in school are done in Windows XP, so I have to follow the crowd. Once again, I removed the Windows partition in my MacBook (for about the 6th or 7th time over the weekend) and installed Windows XP Professional in it. The XP Professional installation had to be the smoothest of all the installations because there was no glitch, and neither was there any problem after the installation. Everything installed nicely (including the Mac hardware drivers of which I have to install in Windows) and I was very happy about it. I even had time to install the .NET framework (well I know I have to do it anyhow, but it was great doing it)!

kubicwave.com viewed on IE6 in Windows XP Professional.

Playing 情歌 by 側田 on Windows Media Player in my MacBook. Sweet.

In any case on Saturday, my sis and I went to Central to check out the new H&M store, which is featuring the line designed by Madonna. We never got the chance to go into the store because we both didn’t find the idea of having to queue to get into the store particularly impressive. But what was impressive was the size of the billboard above the store:

Virtually the entire Central is covered with the H&M Madonna series advertisements – and this is just one of the many billboards around the area.

And then the fog is coming in for the past couple of days, and I managed to take a shot of how bad it was:

And mind you, this picture was taken on a good day! When it was bad, it was so bad that we couldn’t see anything outside!

More work tomorrow – like I was mentioning on kubicwave.hk, I think I’m beginning to find the job being a little too boring. But heck, I think I’m still having fun.

Still Pain.

The painful left eye still hasn’t go away.

And then today while conducting class, my throat started to hurt as well. I think it was probably because I was speaking a bit too loudly for my throat’s comfort. So I decided that I would not risk any further and picked up the microphone to use. In previous lessons I have always not used the microphone because my pride wouldn’t allow me to do so (I’m always very proud of the fact that I can project my voice very well). However after about 6 weeks of lessons I think my voice is no match to the two classes, and so I admitted defeat and started using the microphone. The strange thing was when I used the microphone, I think I sounded quite weird. Oh well,

Early class again tomorrow. Not fun.

Pain.

My left eye has been hurting for the past 2 days and it definitely does not feel good. I don’t know the reason to it, but I hope it would go away soon.

Today during class my phone rang, and being too engrossed in conducting class (or being plain forgetful) I didn’t turn it to silent mode. So when it rung for the second time, my class started singing to the ringtone (which was 離家出走 by 衛蘭). I think it was kinda funny. To be honest, I do enjoy teaching that group of students, it’s just that sometimes I really do get a bit frustrated when they keep asking things that I’ve spent so much time explaining because they don’t bother to pay attention when I was actually talking about it. Oh well, perhaps that’s the retribution of me being a naughty student when I was studying.

These couple of days have been kinda busy as I have quite a lot of work to do. It looks as if I would only get to leave school at about 7 so that I can get whatever I need to do done. But I’m still enjoying it.

Just that I would probably enjoy more if my left eye isn’t hurting so much.

iPod.

Today I made myself a proud owner of an iPod Shuffle! I know with my pay I could have easily afforded the 80GB iPod (aka the real thing), but since I don’t have that much of a music collection to talk about, I think a 1GB iPod Shuffle that is slightly bigger than a $5 coin is good enough for me. Besides since it was only $650, it is well within my budget. Actually I have been thinking of getting the iPod Shuffle when it was first launched, so fulfilling one of the things that I’ve been wanting to get is always going to give me a great feeling.

My new toy!

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One of my colleagues, Mandy, had her last day a couple of days ago, and before she left, she gave everyone a treat to some nice cake. It’s a pity that I never got to know Mandy well enough before she left, but I’m sure wherever she heads to, she’s going to have a great time.

The treat Mandy gave – it certainly tasted great!

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Weekend’s beckoning again – though that should mean that my relative light workload so far is coming to an end soon because I probably have to go into overdrive in the coming week or so to prepare for more classes coming up. Nonetheless I think I’m having fun – perhaps I might end up loving teaching?

Stern.

I don’t think I did well in the afternoon today. Oh well, I guess maybe that should put me in a better frame of mind to continue with my job right now.

I gave my class a stern telling off today because they absolutely messed their test up. I wouldn’t have been so disappointed with them had they be careless about their answers, but I was really seething about their attitude towards the test itself. I have already tried making the test as easy as possible, but I was really unhappy about them giving me horrible answers that defied all possible logic. As such, the class today was kinda solemn (which to be honest I also didn’t feel too comfortable about). I think my stern look scared the kids a bit, because they were really quiet and didn’t try to be funny like they always do. That said, I think they understood why I was disappointed with them, so I hope that would be the last time I should pull such a stern face on them. On a lighter note, seeing that the kids were paying attention to me (at least for) today did make me feel much better.

Hope everything is going to be better in the future weeks!