Yuan's super duper belated birthday celebration

Yuan's birthday is on 11th March.... but as it was during the march holiday and we knew that she would be celebrating with her Mr Right with an oversea trip, we ended up just wishing her happy birthday (only).... though not the usual practice in our RSS company.... but knowing Major Aw can be quite 重色轻友 at times, we sort of assumed that she wouldn't care less if we did or did not plan any celebration for her.... until she 酸ed and questioned us about it during the last meet up over a friday night dinner....

emergency meeting was held between S1 Ms Candy and Captain Teo Chun Yang on sat morning and the plan was immediately rolled out to be executed in one week's time...

First, we had to liase with Mr Tony to date Major Aw to have dinner on sat night only to find out that Mr Tony would be in Italy - step 1 failed...

Second, S1 Ang was to purchase butterfly temporary tattoo for all only to find out that temporary tattoos are no longer in fashion and shops dun sell them anymore - step 2 also failed...

Third, the venue of the celebration was to be at Jumbo (a super memorable place for Major Aw and her 'tattoo') but it was fully booked by the time Captain Teo wanted to make a reservation - step 3 also also failed...

Fourth, S1 Ang proposed to get macaroon 'cakes'which mx had bought for her for her 27th birthday instead of the usual birthday cake only to find out that the shop at clarke quay had closed down liao - step 4 also also also failed .... ='( ...

Despite all the obstacles, we preserved on and had fun the whole night... =) ... it's really the company that counts....

My attire for the day...

We had our dinner at

a restaurant + bar at clarke quey which served yummy and expensive main course

and not so yummy but still expensive dessert

the 4 美妹s...=D

the live band was really good though it only started at 1030pm... which was not that bad actually cos it meant that we could really chit chat during the dinner without having to shout into each others' ears... =)

and what were the 'in' topic of our chit chats leh??? it's on 再见单人床 & 犀利人妻 and of cos the table of super high and 'sexy' foreigners who were sitting 3 tables away from us.... =D

as we were not allowed to consume any outside food within the restaurant itself, we drove over to marina area to have the birthday cupcakes

too sweet for all our liking... =S

cheers to 17 years of friendship and beyond!!!

High tea @ haagen daz & lunch @ trattoria

(1) met lene again last saturday to celebrate her fantastic bonus.... =)....

lunch at my favourite 店小二 .... then went to watch "The Lucky One"

nice show.....i likey..... a show on what i termed "fated to love" 

followed by Haagen Daz High Tea...woohoo....been eye-ing it since i saw the poster at junction 8 a few weeks ago.... =D

picture from the menu 

total 4 drinks....these were the 1st two....hot latte for me and iced one for lene

the real thing..... 

close up on the mini balls of ice-cream.... i likey the white and pink one....super yummy....  the chocolate one too thick for me.... it was rather difficult to eat it bit by bit...so i would just pop the whole ball of ice-cream into my mouth.... 

ice-cream macaroons.... very delicious and very 难吃 at the same time.... 难吃 as in difficult to eat.... 

see...they melt so fast.... so ended up, lene and i kept stuffing the ice-cream and macaroons into our mouth (non-stop).... this high tea is a must chop chop eat but can take own sweet time to enjoy the drinks kind....

(2) met zhuan and ah niu niu on sun for lunch at trattoria italian restaurant

i had a sandwich with fries

nothing fantastic..... 

and pizza for them

they said that they were super good.... but i no mood to eat pizza so no eat.... 

but i think their pasta is even better.... tried it the other time with Mr Ang....both of us love it much much lo... 

proceeded to oriole cafe and bar to continue our chit chats....

nice lightings hor??? but the air conditional machiam not working lo.... warm warm de but luckily their sofa quite comfy....so still could stay for a while to catch up on each other's life...

the forever 帅气的 ah niu niu 

zhuan who is forever so nice la..... knowing that i will be going to taiwan this june, she gave me two easycards 

for the train and bus and the gondola (cable car) in taiwan... 

and gave me lots and lots of 独家 info on where and what to eat... Mr Ang is gonna be so happy.... =) 

other nice favours from her include being my make-up artist for my wedding and giving me a chance to be a magazine model... wahahahaha.... 

i really love all my friends.... heee....

A is for Art 2012 - Getting the kids

since both Ain and I are teaching in the afternoon session and ain teaches four primary 4 art classes, it makes sense to get the Art Challenge participants from the P4s. 

Initially planned to get the P4 art teachers to nominate the pupils based on the pupils' interest and talent in art. But a lunch at McDonald changed our plan. 

saw the contest requirement where they invite children to write in on why they are a Champion of Play and it sparked off an idea that we could do something like this too.... 

i shared my idea with Ain the next day and we came up with two questions for those who might be interested in the workshop

Q1: Tell us in 50 – 80 words why do you like art?

Q2: Tell us in 50 – 80 words why you should be chosen for the Art Challenge Workshop?

44 pupils collected the 'registration form' and 23 were selected.. =) 

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two rationales behind this method of 'recruitment' were 

(1) we want participants who wants to be in the workshop out of their own will and interest and hence (hopefully) will show more commitment and enthusiasm in the programs that Ain and I had planned and as a result gleaned as much as they could to help them build up on their knowledge and interest in art

(2) as pupils are required to do plentiful of reflection, we need pupils who can write .... this may not be a problem in other schools... but over here, we do have quite a good percentage of pupils who have difficulties in writing and reading (even at P6s) .... but Ain and I are not strict with the spelling/vocab/grammar mistakes that they made .... we know that this is an art challenge and not some english workshop..... so as long as the pupils can write in simple sentences, able to express what they want to say for the two questions above in a few sentences ... we will choose them.... =D 

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tentative schedule:

Term 2

week 4   -  registration and issue of consent form

week 5   - 1 hour briefing + 1 hour on composite creatures

week 6   - 1 hour on colours + 1 hour on shapes & patterns

week 7   - Learning Journey to Asian Civilisations Museum

week 8   - Closure to the 3 themes + Brainstorming for the 'Chair Challenge' and selection of the 'Chair' team 

week 10 - Budgeting and consolidation for the 'Chair Challenge' 

A is for Art 2012 - Sharing with the Aesthetic Department

P wants to sit in aesthetic meeting meeting + SH on MC + agenda not flowery enough = panic button activated by HOD = kenna arrowed to do an hour sharing when i only requested for 10 minutes... >.

Ain and I modified 3 of the activities that we went through during the camp and all the teachers including P had fun doing art and learning about art. In the process, Ain and I had a feel of how would it be like to carry out the activities for people who have no or little art knowledge. We also shared on how these activities can be modified for the teaching of other subjects (as most of our department teachers are not art teachers) and gathered ideas and suggestions on how we could roll out this program to our pupils. 

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upon entering the "meeting room", each department member was asked to choose a sticker that was coloured in primary colours...they were curious but Ain and I decided to only reveal the intention during the game... =)  

Our tuning activity was the - "blow, wind, blow a colour" game


instead of standing in a circle, we had our participants, 14 of them, placed their chairs in a circle (aka musical chair style)... this was to prevent any dishonest act (oopx)... 


while giving the instructions, i found that the concept of secondary colours  and exchanging seats can be a little difficult for the participants to grasp so we tried the game out by levels.... 


level 1 --> only primary colours
level 2 --> only secondary colours
level 3 --> primary and secondary colours 


and this is how the game is played

If the 'pasan' person calls out a primary colour, for example 'red', then players with the red sticker will have to move to another empty seat and the last person left without a seat will be the next 'pasan' person... 

and if the person calls out a secondary colour, for example 'green', then players assigned with either one of the 2 primary colours (blue and yellow) that makes up this secondary colour will have to move to another empty seat and the last person left without a seat will be the next 'pasan' person... 

for every round, there would be a few people trying to change their positions as they are not allowed to remain in their original seat if their colour is called out. So participants have to be very alert, know their colours well and be quick

during the games, we had participants pulling (gently) ppl out of chairs, some slight shoving and pushing to get to an empty chair and our P's foot was stepped on....oopx.... din know that teachers could be so 'violent' too....wahahahaha.... so rules, especially safety rules were highlighted and I made it a point to remember to lay out the rules before the start of the game when we are playing this game with the pupils. 

We shared with the teachers that this game can be used as a tuning in activity or extended to consolidate an art lesson on primary, secondary, warm or cool colours too and it can also be used as a good assessment tool to check on pupils' understanding of the different categories of colours informally. 

They could also modify it from 'colours' to 'numbers' and used it in the teaching of factors etc. 

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the second activity we tried with the teachers was 'blind drawing'... a volunteer (Joanne, English HOD) was tasked to describe the Quan Am by looking at the picture printed in the Teacher's manual while the rest of the members had to sketch a picture of the Quan Am. 

We did not give Joanne the list of guiding questions as planned during the workshop as we were interested to find out if there would be a difference in the outcome. And true enough, even for an adult who is well verse in english, she found it difficult to describe the Quan Am in details or detailed enough for the rest to do a good sketch. 

these are some of the teachers' drawings

we had the teachers put up their drawings on the white board to demonstrate what an art wall could be and this led to a discussion to where we could have our art wall...we ended the discussion with P suggesting that it should be in the canteen or the hall where pupils could have access to ... 

We also shared with the teachers the theme (textures) behind the 'blind drawing' activity and also the other 3 themes and how the four themes will lead to the final art challenge of  making a chair

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the final activity was the drawing of a chair that represented the teachers themselves which too were displayed on the 'temporary' art wall in the room...we were rather impressed with some of the sharing and pictures.... =D

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we prepared the following questions for the teachers and our principal to complete after the sharing

Q1. What did you learn from the activity? Please elaborate.
Q2. How can we further improve the way the activity was conducted? 

some of the suggestions that we are considering:
- get the pupils to colour their stickers for blow, wind, blow a colour
- instead of the sticker, use a visual card to display the colour for the blow, wind, blow a colour game
- allow pupils to colour their sketches for the sketching a chair activity 

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was really glad to have the opportunity (though we din really ask for it) to try out some of the activities with the teachers... it allowed ain and I to have a feel on how the pupils' reaction to the challenges could be... it also allowed us to gather feedbacks and areas of improvement to fine -tuned some of the activities to suit our pupils and our style of facilitation and of cos make the activities more engaging for the pupils ... =) 

met up with NTU pals, PTL & BFF

Met up with XY + Vivian, Charles & Lene

(1) Met up with vivian and xinying on 18 march

....presenting xinying's princes...

                  toddler marcus                                              baby lucus 

   
it's amazing how much marcus had matured and became so independent just because he's an older brother now.... he used to be very clingy towards xinying and would get grouchy when he was sleepy but now he could feed himself, sit patiently at mummy's side while mummy was busy feeding baby lucus....even when he got really sleepy as candy auntie, vivian jie jie and xinying mummy were busy gossiping and updating each other's life, he would just close his eyes and rest on the seat all by himself..... 

such a good boy now....luv luv...=) 


we went to cuppage area to have lunch... 

highly recommended by xinying and vivian

my bowl of ramen 

shared an egg with vivian.... ....highly recommended as even for someone (me) who hates egg yolk, i slurp it all.... it was that delicious...but a little expensive...cost $1.50 per egg....

(2) met up with charles on 8 apr
finally he's free to meet me to to give me my birthday (for 2011) treat ...=S

went to 

@ NEX

 i really like this restaurant lots lots....the food, the deco, the uniform, all i like... =D .... very festive...very oldies... very different... 

He and his stupid face....he has never once smile into my camera before just because he thinks he's not photogenic.... diao!!!...

u give this kind of spastic face...of cos not photogenic la!!!! =P

see....must SMILE....then not pretty kind also become 可以看一点 kind.... hahahaha.... =D

dragged him to plaza sing to buy me my wedding (jan 2011) gift after lunch.... and he got me 

 a scrapbook ($25.90) with 70+ pretty pretty pages inside

with this, i dun have to stress over how to decorate it nicely....just paste the wedding photos in can liao....  

 but as the budget is $50....不砍以后就没机会砍了....wahahaha....  
so also got him to buy me a pack of 8 glittery borders ($7.90) 

and a bag of chip boards

totalling $40+ ....=D

then we went to another scrapbooking shop where i got myself 

a pack of sticker letters ($15.90)

and scrabble pieces (10 for $4.50) that formed our names 

but as they are sold in multiples of 10 and PTL was the sponsor, we got pieces to form his name too.... =) 

and it was at the cashier that i was told that since i had 3 'green' items...i could enjoy a 40% discount.....it was a one day kind of promotion thingy.... woohoo..... it was indeed my lucky day lo..... i dun even know there was a promotion and which items were 'green'.....真的是误打误撞 one...... wahahaha.... 


(3) Met lene on 14 apr 

initially planned to go ktv to watch MTV....yes, ktv with only the 2 of us is not for singing cos i dun sing and to have lene sing the whole 2-4 hours by herself can just make her go mute la.... 

so we always ended up watching all the nice mtv...nice mtv are those with interesting storyline. or sleek dance moves, or those with super yantaos... )

but lene was in a shopping mood so we changed to shopping at far east plaza instead... she really power.... within an hour, she bought 3 pairs of shoes and 7 dresses..... whereas for me, i only bought 2 pairs of shoes 

blue flats are at $20 and the black heels are at $15...=) 

also bought a sundress at $29.90

was very happy with the sundress until Mr Ang said that it was too short and i had to pair it up with tights!!!!...... where got ppl wear sundress with tights one la.... shall ignore his silly request....

lene bought me to Ice Cream Gallery @ Valley Point to have yumilious ice-cream and cakes after all the shopping... =) 

we rotted there for 2 hours +.... kept ourselves occupied with gossips and magazines which were provided by the shop... 


and also tabao tao huey home.... 

very yummy.....luv it....it's the pudding kind of tao huey which is in the craze now.... bought original, caramel and white chocolate....as expected, Mr Ang went for the original one.... he's really an old man trapped in a young man's body lo...super tradition....super not adventurous one....hahahaha.....