20th birthday

I had the sweetest birthday this year :D even though it was a simple affair with the people I'm closest to.

Early yesterday morning I had breakfast at swensen's with meimei. abit expensive but it was *slurp* ultra good. :D

I think i need to post this photo up haha can't stand it super cute!

In the afternoon, I went to Chinatown where Club Rainbow Singapore is located - to do voluntary work :D. Relief-tutored this primary 4 girl math. I think it was a really meaningful present I gave myself, to visit Club Rainbow for the first time. I have always wanted to volunteer at Club Rainbow but they only accept volunteers/befrienders above 21 years old. This relief tutoring opportunity came at the right time when the lady in charge called me on 24th to ask if I could make it. :)

Club Rainbow Singapore is a charity organisation committed to helping children suffering from a range of chronic and life-threatening illnesses. They currently support more than 470 children and their families. I guess it is clear why I feel a lot for these children. Hearing about the profiles of these children from the lady in charge felt like someone telling me about myself. Their ages range from new borns (0) to 20 and illnesses include liver disorders, congenital heart illnesses, neurological disorders, kidney failure, leukemia, muscular dystrophy, epilepsy, genetic diseases and others. I was told that these kids are often going in and out of the hospital, some have to go through multiple surgeries like myself. Then there are those who dont go to hospitals but are mentally and intellectually challenged. Having some experience at MINDS I could recognise some of these children at Club Rainbow yesterday.

So that makes me eligible to join club rainbow! I guess this makes volunteering there even more meaningful. :)

At night, nengneng came with a really sweet surprise. :D

Thank you also to the people who sent me birthday wishes, you made my day :D

Northlight

For the past one month or even longer ever since I decided to commit myself to a profession in teaching, I have been thinking about the path I should take when I enter NIE and thereafter in schools. I had a lot of difficulty trying to decide between teaching in a secondary school, or teaching in a Junior College. I cant do a perfect comparison if I were to compare how it feels like teaching my h2 bio student with those secondary students I teach at the Jurong tuition centre. So I did a mental list of the pros and cons of each path. But I still couldn't decide.

Just 2 days ago, I set my mind on a secondary school track. =) I was at MOE Induction on Monday, and they invited the principal of Northlight School (situated at the east near dunman road) to give the scholars a talk about how she came a long way starting the school from scratch. There were so many times I swallowed back my tears as I was so moved by the scenes on her videos, so inspired by her as a person and her school in general. And even before her speech ended, I decided I want to teach at Northlight.

A few minutes ago, I was checking out at the Northlight portal and having read through their curriculum framework I realise the children there only learn English and Mathematics, as well as computer studies for their institutional training. And they are put through a whole series of vocational training to prepare them for the workforce. Sigh. But it's okay, I hope I get a chance to do a short attachment there.

I was personally so inspired by the principal, Mdm Lim Yen Ching's speech. These children are those who fail PSLE again and again with aggregate below 50 out of 300. They are the bottom 0.5% of their entire cohort and have also very low EQ. The school was started to take in people who have failed PSLE, however many times. It is some sort of like a secondary education; they are put through a four-year programme, but they pick up more of vocational skills that theories for further education. Cos most of them will enter the workforce right upon graduation and only the top students will get to go to ITEs.

I don't know why but the thought of teaching problematic students just appeals to me. When I haven't even thought of teaching as a possible career path, I thought I would want to teach in a prestigious institution if I ever was going to teach. But now being in it, I'm really hoping that I don't get posted to a good school for my 3-year bond - for there is so much to learn from these teens, so much impact you can make on them. That will truly bring out the essence of 'teaching a person' instead of 'teaching a subject'.

These students are brought out to do community work also to enhance their holistic development. We were told of one occasion when one of the students was much encouraged by the beneficiary. They were at some old flats changing lightbulbs for the elderly, specifically switching to energy-saving lightbulbs. And they came across this flat with only one lightbulb in the house to light up the whole place. In this house stays an old uncle, who gave one of the students a word of encouragement after they fixed up the lightbulb for him. This was what he said: "Today you light up my house, tomorrow someone will light up your life."

Imagine the impact these words have on a student who once felt inferior about everything he was going through.

Through Mdm Lim I have gained some little inspirations, which were especially enlightening during this period of time for me. Some nights recently I would just suddenly feel very scared as I think back about the many problems I have. I would start wondering why I have to go through so much in life. I feel lonely. People always tell me how strong I am. I realise, this is not always true, and can never always be true... cos however strong a person is, he has times of breaking down, he has times of failure, times of fear and withdrawal. And I definitely have much more of these terrible moments of fear than anyone else. Over the years I grow to realise that courage is not the absence of fear cos the latter can never be totally absent from your life. Courage is still going on to do what you want even though you are scared.

"When we change how we see the world, our world changes." The pitch-dark sky may seem intimidating to some, but without the darkness there will never be a whole beautiful myriad of constellations. Like the many odds in life, it is how you see it.

Outward Bound

Yay! I am finally here to blog about my outward bound experience =D.

The day was 24 June and I was at MOE headquarters with about 80+ other TSL holders. It was the meet-up session for the Teaching Scholars (Local) with our scholarship officer Mr. Kok Shin whom we later knew is actually such a funny guy haha. I reached just a few minutes before the thing started to I didn't get to sit at the same table with Peiyee. So I went to sit at this table of 8 where I first got to know of weishan (: who later became my watch mate at OBS. Mr Kok went on about the administrative matters, upcoming programmes for us and all... and a lady from OBS came to give us a briefing on our outward bound programme that will be held from 30June to 3 July at Pulau Ubin, a 4-day event. When it was time for Q&A, I stood up and asked whether I could go for OBS if the Raffles Medical doctor certified me UNFIT for it. I really wanted to go after all that she told us about what we will be going through. Land, Sea and Air elements...expeditions and all that really got me all excited.

For people like me, sometimes you really don't know how much you can stretch yourself, because you never know where your limit is. It is vague cos you've never tried going further and further to push it, and there is this psychological thing holding you back from going too far because eventually you want to at least keep your life before you can go for more attempts to challenge more limits. And then there are the people who care about you who will be nagging by your ear asking you not to do it and all. You know they aren't wrong and they did it out of love, but yet you really want to do something for yourself and feel as normal and as strong as everyone else.

Candy's answer to my question was - "yes you can go, but you are only allowed to be an observer. so you'll be involved in the bonding with your watch but you are not allowed to participate in any of the activities at OBS." I think it's only right for them to do that, safety as priority. But somehow, I felt really disappointed. I tried calling up Raffles Medical but they've already sent my report to MOE by then. Stubborn me still packed my stuff and on 30 June morning I was on bus 82 to punggol jetty together with peiyee. :D and we left for a 4-day OBS course that I will never have regrets going.

The first day was quite a breeze, but the intensity increased as the days went by. And somehow, people remembered me by "the heart problem girl who asked if she could go OBS at meet-up session". Over the next 4 days there were people who asked if I was that girl, hahaha.

So this was what we did on the first day. We had ice-breakers as usual. There were 67 of us, split into 5 watches of about 13 and all the watches have names of famous people :) like Boseng (for lim bo seng) and so on. And my watch has the name of Kurt, taking over Kurt Hahn the founder of Outward Bound.

Our four ground rules and all our beautiful autographs XD


Exploring our bunk and that cheeky girl on the top deck is weishan :D and oh all the girls in my watch (in fact almost all the girls there are one year younger than me. the guys one year older and i'm in between. cos they are all just starting uni this august. but guess what we got along so well I never felt like I was the older and supposedly more mature one lol.)

Weishan was from RJ and Elizabeth below was from VJ :)


unpacking at night for the land expedition on the second day. that's kaixin, a junior I knew in NJC guzheng before I quit and joined harmoc. what a small world!


this is yuru, our funner girl ahaha. Okay no teasing :P she's the only chinese teacher in our watch and was from Dunman high 6-yr integrated programme. first time i meet someone under this scheme. =)



this was on the first night at the cookhouse. we were busy sorting out food needed for the next two days. All the rations will be all we survive on (: but it's really alot.

there are people discussing how to sort the rations out...

...and people just slacking and giggling away lol... (and we got our retribution for this cos we missed the land expedition on the second day! ) Shaoxun and I , together with 5 other people from other watches went back to main island to have the medical checkup done again because of some problems OBS encountered receiving it. Luckily we went to have it done again haha then Dr.Lee passed me as FIT. HAHA and yay from day 2 onwards I can take part in all the activities :). Actually I did the climbing activities on the first day already, secretly, ahaha...

The shirt on Shaoxun looks familiar doesn't it :D another NJcian!

The rest of my watch getting ready for Land Ex in the morning on day 2... shaoxun and I missing in the photo.

That backpack was damn heavy it's like 10kg for each person...with all the rations, life vest, 4 litres of water for each person, some clothes, utensils and repellents. It's like NS outfield man, just short of the part where you gotta dig your own hole to shit.

Kurt again! :)

Wa Shaoxun and I missed out this part. I only knew of this when I was looking through the photos yesterday! Durians while taking a break from the trekking.

quarry

And this photo below shows the Jelutong campsite where we spent our second night. Pitched the tents near the shore and then dinner started with everyone cooking instant noodles on solid fuel. The ants were crawling in the mess tins with the EXCLUSIVELY "DELICIOUS" KURT'S FISH LUNCHEON inside. =X Luckily the instant noodles was not as bad, just one or two ants I spotted. So to save the hassle of washing mess tins, our watch just cooked two big pots of noodles+canned mushrooms and everyone attacked that two pots.

The map of pulau ubin, people from other watches studying the route for our sea expedition on day 3. Our route was a cross-island one where we had to cut through the middle of pulau ubin through the swarms and rivers and get to the open sea on the other side and kayak all the way round the left section of the island back to OBS Campsite 1, where our bunks wait for us. XD

The morning of day 3 - in a circle again =) and by this time we have already done our capsize practice, where we have to purposely capsize one by one and learn to climb back on the triyak again. We grouped up in threes and set out on the expedition on triyaks actually. Triyak = 3-person kayak. I was with my watch mates Jem (Jemima) and Shaoxun.

In a circle, we had our "circle of blessings" done, where everyone contributes up to three words of blessings for the whole team before setting out to sea. So while we went one round there were blessings like 'take care', 'drink more water', 'good weather', 'high tide' (cos if its low tide we gotta crawl thru mud at the swarms), 'don't capsize' and yada yada. Here comes the highlight. When it was the instructors' turn, my watch instructor LJ (the one you see below) wished us all the bad stuff. He wished us many many capsizes, very low tide, muddy pools, storms, patches of sunburn and so on. I was shocked initially, and quite afraid that all he said will come through. Cos even if the others can survive that I don't think I can.

Then he ended his 'blessings' with a meaningful story about a carrot, an egg and a coffee bean. This was how much I remembered:

One day a boy was telling his father how bad his life is and that he's going to give up. It seemed like as one problem solved the other one will come along. His father then took him to the kitchen and gave him 3 pots filled with water. In the first pot he placed a carrot, in the second an egg, and in the last coffee beans. He let them boil and sat there without a word. In about twenty minutes he switched off the burners. He took out everything in the pots and asked his child "what do you see?" the child replied "carrot, egg, and coffee beans". He then explained how the three overcome adversity (boiling water) differently.

The carrot went in strong, hard and unrelenting. After adversity, it became soft and weak. The egg had been fragile. After adversity, its inside hardened. The coffee beans were unique, they looked the same and on top of that, they changed the colour and fragrance of water. The father then asked his child "Which are you? Are you a carrot, an egg, or a coffee bean? When adversity knocks on your door, how do you respond?"

And as we set off, LJ wished us all the storms and adversity we could get.

I really look up to these OBS instructors especially LJ when he's my watch instructor. Cos I gathered so much about life in a short period of 4 days and even more precious was to learn that OBS is not just a 4-day journey but a reflection of this lifetime. It's about learning to tide over waves and come out stronger.

Out to the open sea.

Beautiful views on the sea =)

And off we went into the river and mangrove swarms that cut across the mid of the island.

Our triyak :D Jem myself and Shaoxun

Oh no the waters are running out. Low Tide!

This below photo is not low tide okay. This is no-tide. -___- And once you step one foot into the mud you sink all the way in till your hip and get stuck there. On and off you see crabs and mudskippers crawling and skipping around.This mud pool really gave us a very hard time. The triyaks were towed Manually INCH by INCH for don't know how far and it got us a few hours for the whole team to get over the mud pool. I was so guilty cos I wasn't up to much help. Wish I could exert some force but my heart didn't allow me too. It was during this point of time when I started to feel some slight palpitations. Seriously some of us thought we'll die here. Cos there were people who were so worn out and felt so hopeless that they cried. Each step taken was accompanied with 10minutes of trying to get your foot out from the mud cos it was just stuck there, TIGHT.

I feel really touched at OBS. One of the incidents that really moved me was this mud pool experience. Shaoxun and Jem just kept assuring me that it will be fine and they just don't allow me to get down into the mud after I tried twice got stuck inside and couldn't exert enough force to get myself out. And throughout the whole sea expedition they were there for me like guardian angels. We would make sure that each of us have a time to put our paddles to rest and munch abit, drink up or just take a break.

One of the instructors called Andy. He had mud fight with me, threw mud at my face and it actually went into my mouth gosh tasted like real shit. I think the thing in his hand is some worm that he found lol.

Finally! Out into the river again where there is water. I think that's Jem washing her shoe. I remember her doing that. LOL ;D And look at all of us - gosh everything we wear can get ready to be thrown away already. and my WHITE cap. ahh. it became brown cap on a closer look.

See this girl on the right in the photo below. =) She's called Fang Fang from TJ and I got to know her when I went for my interview 1 month ago.

Into the open sea again...uh-oh look at the weather... yes LJ is like some fortune teller. Everything he said came true. We were later met with a storm when we returned to the open sea. The strong waves break the shores and hit hard at us. We were all rocking so much that any greater momentum would get us capsized. The winds came and it started to rain. There was thunder and everything. And I think the worse thing to encounter when you're met with a storm at sea are the waves.

All over the place the instructors were shouting out to us "BREAK RAFT BREAK RAFT!!!" and everyone was frantically kayaking back to the entrance that leads to the river we came from, where the water is calm. But there was a group of us who got drifted away from the entrance of the river by the strong waves. And this 23 of us were so petrified till we found a small stranded shore at a corner where we could wait for the storm to abate. We thought we were going to die.

So here we are. These are not trash bags that grew legs haha they are our heavy ponchos.

And tada! Hmm, a touching scene unfolded here. There's this girl by the name of Diana shaking vigorously in the cold, lips turned blue and looked severely traumatized, plus her heart wasn't very well. So a group her team people (all from different watches) came and surrounded her. They were there covering her under the same poncho, one trying to warm her up, the other feeding her water, and another (peiyee) feeding her muesli bar. Everything just to stop her shivers - that was almost like the sinking of Titanic. We were all dirty with unique streaks of mud over our faces and there we squatted together, them doing all they can to protect me. It was so touching that I actually teared... and some of them also did after seeing my tears. I just don't know how to best describe what happened on the isolated shore.

These are the people who truly care for each other... these are the teachers who will show genuine love for their children.

The 23 of us + some instructors (: when the storm was about to go away.

As the storm abated we set out to the open sea again and with the others who managed to enter the river, we kayaked our way back to campsite 1. So what happened was on day 2 land expedition was trekking from camp site 1 to camp site 2 where we spent our night there on rations and in tents. then on day 3 we kayak back to camp site 1.

I personally have never imagined myself doing all these. And by the time the storm came I was having some sort of a panic attack. I was too afraid and totally traumatised to continue. My lips turned blue and I was shivering all over in the freezing winds. I thought I should stop and don't stress my heart out. Psychologically I thought I couldn't take that trauma, and physically I feel that my heart cannot survive the other half of the journey back to campsite 1.

It is at this point in time where I was on the verge of giving up, where I was alreadying asking LJ to send the yellow boat to fetch me. I bit my teeth and when asked whether I still need the yellow boat cos it's already here, I looked at the yellow boat and said something that felt like it didn't come from me - I told LJ to let me continue with the journey. I want to overcome my trauma. LJ then left me with my tri-yak mates and we paddled the next few hours back to campsite 1. When he left I felt like OH SHIT was I mad or something... I thought I must have been crazy to say something I don't feel like I really mean. Throughout this next few hours it felt like hell, but ironic thing is- it felt so good when campsite 1 was already within sight.

I kept feeling scared. I just couldn't stop panicking. But I didn't allow myself to stop paddling. Shaoxun asked me to look at the beautiful scenery far far ahead where the sky meets the sea with one color in unison. And from LJ:

"If you think you can't go any further, just turn back and look at how far you've come. This is how much more you can go."

I am really thankful to all these people. and Jem who kept assuring me that we'll be fine. that the storm will not come anymore. and we will reach campsite soon. think about beds and dinner waiting for us. and left right left right we paddled on, with each second overcoming a little bit of my trauma. I don't know how the sea expedition has been for others. But for me, don't you agree it's a life-changing experience. I learned so much about myself that trip out to sea. I realise that deep down somewhere at the bottom of my heart I really wanted to finish the journey, however tough the going gets. Actually I never wanted the yellow boat to come and take me away. I wanted to be facing the waves and winds with my team of TSLs. I wanted the team to stay together with a strength of 67, not just during meals and bedtime but through all the activities there.

Obstacles are there only to show you how much you want something.

washing triyaks one by one back at campsite 1.

look at the sardine we spotted in someone's cap =O what an incidental catch XD

washing ourselves to prevent clotting up the bathing cubicles later on

Back in our circle. this was the moment where our bodies are most worn-out....but our spirits highest. cos everyone felt so accomplished completing the 10-hour sea expedition, having overcome the mud, sun, and storm. LJ says he has never seen in so many years at OBS any cohort that is more suay than us haha. I hope he remembers this cohort of OBS's so far suay-est people, the 09 batch of TSLs from MOE lol. but it really feels so great to have gone through so much together.

Yay back to our bunk!

Day 4 (last day) morning - another round of reflections (: Weishan!

Din! (Nurudin) and he's from ACJC

me

yuru

kaixin

Jem, and Jem was from Innova (:

Poh shen, another NJcian but he's older than Shaoxun. Cos like myself he only applied for scholarship after end of year 1 (:

Shaoxun

Jasmine and she's from TJ

Elizabeth

And then time for our last activity! The leap of faith. where we climb to somewhere high and from this small wooden platform we jump and try to reach for the pole hanging quite far from us. If we don't catch it we'll just drop down and hang halfway in the air. It's damn scary it's like committing suicide. And this is another thing I never thought I could do. I climbed my way up and was stuck there for so long cos I just couldn't bring myself to jump down. It was so :S :S :S. For some others also and Jem who also has acrophobia was scared to tears. But everyone eventually did it and just completed the leap of faith =). When I came down I was telling them how hard it was to take that first step out. And LJ came with another really enlightening quote

"The first step is always the hardest step to take."

And soon it's time to.... go home!

with a cert and something even more precious - laminated A3 piece of paper with post-its from everyone else in the watch.

and a string. everyone had a part of it. It once connected us all together in a familiar circle setting. It was once all part of one single ball of nylon string. LJ told us before we left ubin, that everyone will be going separate directions, back to our busy lives and commitments. And at any time where we feel tired of life, facing troubles and rough waters, take out this piece of string and remember all the adversity you managed to overcome, with this group of people you'll meet in your future career, whom you will work with together again.

So yes, i will keep in mind everything LJ taught us. The last two things from him were these. One was - that if you are able to survive without your handphone through 4 days, next time you can easier convince your students to do the same at similar settings. if you have overcome so much, it puts you at a better position to convince them and motivate them to overcome as much. And the other was what he said on day 4 that really struck me hard, summing up all we have done in the past 4 days and all we have gathered, relating it to what we'll be doing in the near future.

"It is whether you want to teach a subject, or teach a person."

I'll be keeping this string with me for me to look back upon on how far I have went to face my trauma and fears, to overcome it, how special the 4 days had been to have formed closely knitted ties with the other 12 of you,

KURT. :D

The last quote that LJ left for me:

"Your disability is your opportunity." - KURT Hahn

Diana

I have officially started to use this name :D i think it's super convenient, and it carries so much meaning to it - keeping me in reminder of the past. And it's official and on my birth certificate! Okay, so from now please call me by the name of Diana... but for those who've known me long and 've been calling me 'wuzhen', 'zhen', 'ahbu' or 'gohchern' just continue to do so. =)

The first group of people i introduced myself as Diana to is my watch (group) at OBS. Oh ya talking about OBS, i just came back from a 4 day MOE Teaching Scholars (Local) OBS camp. It was really a life changing experience. I have so much to say about it, but I shall keep everything undisclosed till I get all the photos on friday when I meet them up for dinner. :) can't wait to blog about it!!!

98.7FM, this wednesday 9pm to 930pm.