i know it's abit late, but our RE with our VWO on 17th and 19th was a great success! i'll tell you about it...
The 17th
on the first day , we were supposed to do a lesson for the children to teach them about maps and map reading. the children seemed to enjoy it alot, and they were rather cooperative, with the exception of a few, who got bored very early during the lesson. the rest of the lesson/session was then disrupted by him, as some of our group members had to catch him if he ran out of the room. -_-. anyhoo, after icebreakers, introduction to the lesson and introduction for ourselves, we started up the computer and did the teaching with a power point presentation. i did the second half of the lesson, and frankly teaching is easier than it looks, although i think that was partly because the children already knew most of what we were supposed to be teaching them. moving on, last part of the lesson was supposed to be spent playing puzles and teaching them how to play and such, and in my opinion, i liked that part too. ended with a debriefing by ms. Yang, our correspondent at the centre, and also the person we were supposed the lias with. went home to prepare for the next session with the children.
The 19th
today was the day where we were going to bring the children out for a "Amazing Race" around the hougang area. the children had to figure out the clues that we gave them and then use the map of hougang we would give them to make their way there. i got the group with the more naughty children, and at the start i was already feeling sorry for mself (why me?!?). however, to my surprise, the children did very well, figuring out the clues quickly adn making their way there with relative ease (although we had to help them slightly sometimes. the last station was back at the centre, and it was this puzlle competition thing. my group quickly lost interest, and ran off. diao. anyhoo, gave out prizes later, and my group got last place in terms of number of points, but i think they really put in effort. and that's what counts.
Lastly i would like to thank the helpers for coming down to help us, without you all i don't think that we could get this level of success; namely Alvin, Alex, Brandon, Chevy, Francis, Si Kai, Wai Choong and Zi Jian. we're planning another activity in December (pending). any volunteers again? =)
went out for ice skating with my cous, cous's friend, jian wei, wu and zhi yuan after second day's work. been quite a while since i last went skating. hmm. anyway, zhiyan couldn't skate, partly due to it being his first time and also because he didn't dare to fall down. lol. wai choong is up to his usual i-push-you-you-push-me ways, but at least he's not as crazy as on our first skating trip together. started at 4 plus, ended close at 8 pm. took mrt back home, and fled from wei wei who wanted to drag me all the way to Paya Lebar. goodness... i think she's mad at me now. oops.
Pictures of the RE activity can be found at
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dedricktan1202/sets/72157605768513732 (courtesy of Jian Wei)
School will be starting soon, and i haven't done most of my work... oh poof.
Till next post...
ahh. 7 days of bliss indeed. and finally, an update!
if you don't know what i'm talking about, i just came back from my band exchange/performance in japan. sadly, i didn't bring a camera. here's a rough cap of what i did there:
Day err... 0?
went to school at around 6 plus with my heavy luggage and my laptop bag. yes. i found out that i was one of the few people who brought their laptops. as a result of that, they were swarming me to want to play it/access internet. managed to shake them off somehow. phew. waited for the rest to arrive, loaded the baggage and instruments on the truck at 7 plus, and then waited for the bus to arrive. talked to friends about maple for quite some time, until the buses finally arrived. strange thing was, 1 bus was really big, while the other one was more like those types of mini school bus vans. anyway, learned how to play bridge on the bus from brandon/josiah and amazingly, won my first bridge match ever. whee! anyway, reached the airport at aroung 9 plus, checked in instruments and luggage and went to eat dinner at food court, bought drinks from fairprice and went up to play taiti with umm... let's see... josiah, yifan, zhuo hao, brandon and june hong (my junior). 6 man taiti FTW. anyway, played until it was roughly 10.45pm, time to go inside the passenger section. there, i found out about the true beauty of the terminal 3. spotted another school band also going overseas, but didn't recognise the school. diao. anyhoo, time then was already around 11 + going on 12, sat down near the boarding gate and played more cards, and then some jigsaw sudoku with brandon (we gave up) and finally boarded the plane. sat next to si kai (my room mate) and talked for a while, ate, watched "Horton hears a Who!" and slept. Nothing much for this day actually.
Day 1
woke up just in time to complete my embarkation card and talk a bit more to si kai. landed at kansai airport, passed through customs without much problem, collected instruments back and met our bus drivers and tour guide, sort of. drove along the beautiful japanese coast towards our first stop, todaiji temple in nara. it has these nice deer roaming the grounds freely, and many souvenir shops along the way. according to our tour guide, todaiji temple is the largest wooden structure in the world, and the main attraction is the 15 meter high bronze buddha statue they have inside, together with many other things, like models of the original temple, religious figures and other things as well. also, one thing they had was this hole at the bottom of one wooden pillar. they said that it was the size of one of the buddha's nostrils and if you could successfully crawl through it you would become smarter/better etc. only some people tried, and one of them was si kai, who fit through with ease. i myself didn't dare to try. =P borrowed zeyang's professional looking camera and took a nice looking picture of todaiji exterior. looks very nice indeed. went for a buffet lunch that was rather nice, and was our first dose of true blue japanese food. oishii!! i knew it would be one of many ones to come.
went to osaka toin high school for exchange with the japanese band, and well, got owned. really. they have at least 2 times our manpower. they their own band hall building SEPARATED fromthe main school building. and they had at least 7 euphos. they sight read our pieces like after 10 minutes of practise only. *stares* i felt slightly better when i could actually play one of their pieces properly with them, although thanks to slightly un-understood instructions i didn't really play at the parts i was supposed to, and i played at the parts i wasn't supposed to. goodness...
went for dinner with them later after the exchange, and we ended up at some university-like place. after some seemingly random walking in a forward direction, we suddenly turned left, turned left again, climbed up some stairs and poof! we were at some random eatery. there, we met up with some of the players that we had played with earlier. HOWEVER, the euphos we had met with earlier were not there. actually, not a single one of those that we had seen earlier was there! diao. so, we just sat there as our section, eating the food provided, and gossiping with any sections that happened to walk nearby. and, it was brandon's err... birthday celebration on that day, thanks to dao bo, who apparently told the japanese players that well, it was brandon's birthday. i should have taken a picture of the commotion that they caused. haha.
bid them farewell after dinner, and bryan actually gave one of the girls his handphone number/email. why am i not surprised...
anyhoo, checked in at new hankyu hotel in the middle of osaka, next to bustling yodobashi shopping mall (will type about that later), main street and stuff. room was 451 if i'm not wrong, settled down, unpacked laptop and stuff, showered and played cards until like err... 12.30 plus with friends. then slept. found some time before that to check out asnas, the convienience store to buy some apollo strawberry chocs and instant noodles. si kai set the old kettle sitting on the table to work, and we had a filling, although meagre supper. yummy. =P
Day 2
woke up early from this strange dream. when it was almost time for me to wake up, as in the half asleep-half awake kind of state, i heard this beeping noise. i (in my dream), looked down to find this digital thermometer in my hand beeping away merrily. i pressed the button to turn it off. it kept beeping. it was not until si kai called me then i woke up and found myself pressing the air stupidly. turns out it was the built in wall alarm clock, lols. anyhoo, went down for buffet style breakfast. had some coffee (useful stuff, that) and other random japanese/international food. took bus to USJ for a fun-filled day at the theme park. oh before i go on, japan has this most amazing network of highways. turn onto the expressway entrance, drive up a ramp, and poof, you're driving like 6-8 floors off the ground. and at some places if you actually stick your head out the window, you can actually see what's going on inside some office buildings. this also means that while driving you could get some pretty nice overhead views of the city. only problem is, to protect the privacy of people working, they've decided to install large metal grilles. therefore, most of your view is limited to admiring the quality (or lack thereof) of the metal whizzing by. poof. back to USJ: only problem is, i've been on everything before. what a lovely way to spoil the fun. also, i lost my re entry pass after going out for lunch. that means i was NOT allowed to go back inside. i would like to thank those people, wei jie, jun hong and yifan who stayed outside with me to play cards. thanks to you, i didn't die of boredom during the 1 and a half hours or so i was waiting outside. so, before lunch, iwas enjoying some of the rides, the jurassic park one was particularly memorable, i had my poncho hood on just before the drop, but as we rushed down the slope the wind blew it off, and it was just before the splash that i managed to save my clothes/bag from laundry treatment.
skip forward to dinner. we were at some long (emphasis on long) shopping street, the type lined with shops on both sides and cars aren't allowed to pass through. first, me and the "eutube" section went to the yamaha shop all the way at the end of the street, looked through the OMG-ish expensive euphoniums and tubas, mouthpieces and such. finally decided to buy this music book and CD together as a section, which will come in handy when trying to teach those @#$@#% sec 1s. turned around after a while just to see the rest of the band (almost), following us into the shop. helped alastair, wei jie and some others decipher the signs on the dividers on the shelves of scores. turns out eupho is "yuho", tuba is "tyubaa", clarinet is "kurarinetto", trumpet is "turampetto" and so on...
left the other sections behind to go to some cafeteria like store for dinner. i sat down and ate my curry and udon set, chatted with my section for like 15 minutes when suddenly, the whole band (almost) followed us in for dinner as well! lucas immediately attributed this phenomenon to his magnetic personality. -_-
met back at 7.15 plus at the kani nabe ("crab pot" in japanese. don't think sick.) started to rain at that time, so jun hong smartly took out his jurassic park ride poncho. i told him that it makes him look as though he's wearing a plastic bag. oh well... the saxes were late, cause they ended up at another kani nabe. (trust me. the japanese love their kani nabe.)
went back to new hankyu hotel, and ended up with our room crashed by those wanting to play cards. again. when you're stuck in japan with no tv or computer to use (yet), the next best thing is well, CARDS. this we all knew. because of this, i ended up sleeping late again. and we found out brandon is phenomenally bad at taiti, probably because he thinks too much. slept without much disturbance from then on, but not without showering first.
Day 3
woke up early again, thanks to the trusty alarm clock in the wall. that day was another slack day, we were checking out of new hankyu to go to fukui. but first, we had achane to go to kinkakuji, a gold-plated temple sitting serenely at the side of a lake. joined the crowd of people waiting to take their picture with this 24k wonder, and sadly, cause i din have a camera, i wasn't one of them. ended up taking pictures for others instead. poof. anyway, walked along the path winding through the gardens, saw a few mini shrines with stone figures around, one i saw had this bowl in the middle, where people would try to throw coins into the bowl from the side. i tried, and wasted 10 yen. lol. walking along the path, it's easy to forget that you're in the middle of a bustling city like kyoto, since that place is so peaceful, with natural scenery and greenery and such. then lunch. helped my section decipher the all japanese menu at some restaurant-eatery place, and bought some souvenirs, like a necklace for my cous and a windchime for my flat. =) bryan bought a life-sized but thankfully wooden katana. lols? next we went to kiyomizudera, or
清水寺. another temple of sorts, the main attraction at kiyomizodera is the three streams of water that run down from some place at the temple. people drink from these streams to gain blessings form the gods. i didn't drink from them because 1. i'm a freethinker of sorts and 2. i don't want dysentery/cholera. wanted to buy souvenirs, but was put off by the price. me and my typical singaporean cheapskatedness, haha.
next was a 4 hour or so long bus trip on the chuki bus to fukui town in fukui prefecture. played hearts on the com for the first half an hour or so, then listened to music (techno FTW) until my battery ran out. slept until we reached the rest stop, a random place in the middle of nowhere. from then on, managed to keep awake until i saw the words "fukui" start appearing on road signs. strangely, there's a city named obama there too. lol.
reached the hotel and checked into room 351, on level 3, the only non-smoking level in the entire hotel. which is a good thing, as the other storeys reek of stub stench. anyhoo, the room was much bigger than the previous hotel's one, and the decor was slightly nicer as well. went out for dinner at some traditional-ish restaurant where the floor was tatami and the tables were short. finished quickly and played blackjack with sikai, who was next to me. had some malt tea which tasted like green tea plus coffee, and returned to the hotel after walking along some dark alleyways with less than desirable establishments like ahem ahems.
this reminds me of something. on the tvs in the hotel there is this pay card system where you buy this tv card to access certain pay channels. p3 has some shows like Heroes and such. and P1 and P2 happen to be the po** channels. yes. they have such things in japan. there was a 30 second preview of each channel before you had to pay. and because of this many people were crashing other people's rooms just to play the 30 seconds of ahem, and then accuse the other person of being sick minded. and worst of all , they were the sec 4 seniors. oh puh-lease.
much to my surprise, nobody bought the pay TV card!
Day 4
had buffet style breakfast at hotel restaurant, and they have this most wonderful half boiled egg immersed in this soya sauce solution. lovely. went off for rehearsal at the fukui harmony hall, something like the singapore version of the victoria harmony hall, except better in every way. waited for an hour or so in the dressing/practise room, before going on stage for a dry run. in case you didn't know, we're the guest player for the fukui high school band concert. had bento lunch which came in these nice looking boxes. and inside, the box is further divided into main course, appetiser, second dish and dessert (mochi!) . another sign of japanese perfectionism; something you don;t see very often in singapore. anyway, the rehearsal was screwed up , cause the percs screwed up by not playing properly, and dropping most of their sitcks and mallets down this hole at the back of the stage. and the only way to retrieve them was to well, move the entire stage, which was something we didn't have the time or strength to do so.
let's skip ahead to... our visit to tojinbo or
東尋坊. just google the name and you'll know exactly what it is. took some pictures off the top of the cliff, and peered down oike, one of the biggest drops (25m) to the bottom, which is the sea. fear of heights and falling to a certain death aside, the place was pretty breeezy and nice, with the sun shining,the clouds billowing across the sky, and the horizon seemingly stretching out to infinity. oh, and there are these eagles which refuse to fly low enough to get a picture of themselves taken. sigh... went to a crystal shop to look around, wanted to buy some but didn't. don't really know why. must be because of the price. bought a kendama at some shop there, and i'm currently playing with it. quite fun actually.
went for dinner at some italian/japanese restaurant, and nearly gave the cashier a headache as we all payed in COINS (and in amounts of up to 1000 yen as well). diao. went to the 100 yen shop later and bought some glass bottles for a personal reason, and some jumbo sized playing cards (but i lost them later. boohoo...) si kai and i joked that these cards would finally be suitable for big-forearm/hand brandon to shuffle. ahem. sec 4s went for the public bath as a batch, and my hotel room was again colonised by the people wanting to come in to use the com/ watch P1/ play cards/ stone for no reason whatsoever. left to play cards at andy/ jun hong's room until 12 plus, and returned to find my room empty! turns out si kai chased them all out at 11pm . thanks sky! you can roughly guess what happened next when now i'm going on to
Day 5
the big performance!! changed into band uniform in the morning, standard morning procedure blah blah blah, and we headed off to the harmony hall. oh, did i mention we had an earthquake in the morning there? only thing was, it was on the other side of japan, so by the time it reached us in fukui, it was less than noticable. the remarkable thing was, just 1 minute after not feeling it, it appeared on television. how efficient. anyway, our performance was due 1t 4 plus, but let's just say the rehearsal before that was less than satisfactory. oh why must bad luck follow us all the way from singapore!??! but the show must go on. and it did. first piece, bandwagon, was screwed up again. you could even say i crashed the bandwagon.. second and third pieces were dance celebration and merry widow, both of which, were in my opinion smashing successes (again). after our turn was over, we sat back and enjoyed the music played by the fukui high school band. there were some recognisable tunes, like 20th Century Fox theme fanfare, Takarajima, Rhapsody in Blue and so on. also, the star guest player was some professional trumpeter called Eric Miyashiro, who played super high notes and trills and jumps as easily as someone would do so on a piano. during his performance, the notes he reached almost made my glasses break. i also noticed Russell's face turn a lovely shade of green as well. i guess it's not because he's sick.
dinner was again at own expense, and our section went to eat at Mcdonalds (globalisation. hmm.), after finding out that all of the other food stores were closed. saw some bimbos at Mcs, nothing more to say. ordered some megamac burger, and it was well, large. what else can you expect from something called MEGAmac? met back at the century clock with everyone else, and walked back to the hotel for another night of cards and talking with friends.
this reminds me. that night i played cards with ignatious, zhuo hao and brandon until 4.30am. yes. it's not a typo. played bridge, taiti, hearts, cheat and the lot until the sky turned bright. which was around 4.30am. days are longer in japan now as it's summer now. anyhoo, i managed to make it through the entire day without falling asleep thanks to this wondrous substance known to me as coffee (with cream and two sugars). slept again only to wake up to
Day 6
woke up on time, amazingly thanks to si kai and that overzealous alarm clock next to me. went to fukui high school to have an interaction with them, and i, being the only person who had learnt japanese, had become the official translator for both the japanese euho section and the english-speaking eutube section. so, on bad times, my life would consist of speaking alternatively in japanese and english, repeat ad infinitum thanks to my talkative section and the japanese people's manners which prohibits them from refusing a question. whoo... ended up trying to make them play cards to no avail, as they didn't know how to play even the simplest card game of all, blackjack! moving on, i just had to make do with simple conversation about themselves and the band. and although they didn't really speak much english, they tried really hard. one even brought out his japanese-english dictionaries. good thing they understand chinese characters though, so i guess that was one common point. oh well... found out that one of the japanese players ws really good at dancing, so we tried to invite him on stage to perform, but he didn't. boo.. anyhoo, 1.5 hours just flew past as we had fun talking to them and playing some random games adn had some random talk with them as well. when it was finally time for us to leave, we realised that we didn;t have some kind of gift for them! after some discussion, we decided to give them our school ties, with our schol name writen on the front with some silver ink pen. how creative! not. as usual, our good-natured japanese friends accepted the gifts with thanks (no matter how cheapskate they were) and one even went to wear it at once! we took a picture of that, but i have yet to find it...
after waving goodbye, we spent most of the after noon travelling back to osaka, had lunch at rest stop along the way (nice katsu kari) and bought some treats for my family, after remembering the lovely green tea mochi i had. reached hotel at 2.50 ish, and met downstairs to go to yodobashi, this huge shopping complex opposite our hotel, mostly specialising in electronics. entered the shop and we were met with this array of colours and noise, of people advertising their wares, tvs and radios doing their best to show themselves off and price boards hung over every display case. bought myself a pair of sony earphones (cos i needed them for blasting music on the bus from my laptop), looked around all the levels for games (couldn't find much) and went back feeling quite happy. played cards until it was almost time for dinner at josie/brandon's room (and inadvertently left my new earphones there when it was time to go for dinner)
dinner was at some shabu shabu restaurant, which is some sort of japanese steamboat. had free flow beef, and i and 4 others (joseph, cheng shuen, zhuo hao, yinan) finished off 7 plates of beef! poor eric must be thinking of his relatives... anyhoo, did more of a certain activitiy involving shuffling and dealing and sporadic swearing (mostly by ahem ahem). laptop got used again for Hearts and Liero X (nvm what that is) had to go to bed early as tomorrow it was time to go back home. and thinking about it gives me some sort of happy/sad feeling, as i could actually live like this for a while longer anyway, it's time to face the inevitable and move on to
Day 7
final day! had breakfast, as usual, loaded bus with instruments (my poorly wrapped eupho lol) and luggage, boarded bus for the last time, and reached osaka airport with some time to spare. checked in luggage, enjoyed lounge area for passengers, and when the time finally came, boarded the plane back home. watched some movies, including I am Legend, CJ7 and some other random one i forgot. spent some time talking to si kai next to me, and poked him for fun (random?), had lunch on board, and spent the last half an hour of the flight enjoying the view outside (although i wasn't the window seater) and counted down to the landing with help of the screens infront of me. we had some sort of reception at the airport, with mr. paul lim (ex-teacher at RI) and some other people that i do not know. anyhoo, the bus ride back was ok, passed RIGHT BY MY HOUSE (wanted to be let off there, but knew that wasn't possible), met back at band room for debriefing and got fetched by parents back home. whee!!
in all i think this trip was rather fun and enriching, and i would gladly go for another one, if there's one next year (hope there is, but most likely won't have due to SYF), but anyway, i would like to thank the teachers who planned this out, and thank my friends who came along on this trip for making it more interesting for me with your jokes and games and laughter and such. last but not least, my parents for providing the money for me to even go overseas! =P
will update on school life in the next few posts, but that will take a while to produce due to my utter lack of energy to write another post, especially after this super long one.
Till next post...
