We have moved!

finally! my new blog's set up. check it out at teacherhafiizh.blogspot.com

Revamp alert

It's days before my wedding. Instead of worrying or preparing, I decide to avoid all that and think about perhaps launching a new blog.

After all, I can't very well remain bujanglapok after I get hitched.

Today my tuition kid asked me if I auditioned for Anugerah (Malay TV's singing competition) today. For no apparent reason.

Art As It Is Special

With my impending wedding date nearing, I have to get through the semestral case conferences. Part of my job is to update what the kids have done in my class and the photos below are, in a sense, part of my portfolio.

A big part of my work the last term was to teach the kids to use scissors and glue. What better way then to have the kids practice on mosaics?







So after they mastered the art of cutting and pasting, it was time to move from the abstract to more conventional designs.



Some of the works-in-progress....















And the more complete ones.

Notjog

Today I planned to go out jogging. For the first time after so long, I finally had time to run just before maghrib. I came back after tuition, put my bag down, turned on the computer and take a quick break.

Next thing I know when I look out the window the sun had set.

It has begun

Tomorrow I will sign papers at the ROMM.

Watchmen

I was walking along the corridor when my phone rang and an unfamiliar number flashed across the screen. Against my better judgement I thought I would answer it anyway. It turned out to be some woman named Suzanne who wanted to know if she was talking to a Mr Hafez.

Then it started to get weird. Did I take a picture of myself jumping? With my hands up in the air?

That telemarketer-like call turned out to be Suzanne Walker from 91.3fm. She was calling me to tell me that I had won tickets to watch Watchmen this coming Monday. Apparently without my knowledge Sidah and Khairul had endeavoured to send in an entry for a contest to the station. They did this just hours before while I was stuck in the meeting.

The contest was to send in photos of people in the most superheroic poses they could find. I don't think mine was the best - but it was good enough to win the pair of tickets. More importantly it was for a movie I really wanted to watch.



Let's hope it's half as good as the comic.

Term 1 Week 5 Report

After the thankfully short CNY work week, I find myself at the mid-point of the first term. It's a good time as any to reflect on the progress we've made.

Amazingly the first delivery of our stationery supplies only arrived today! All this while we have been making do with whatever paints, paper, brushes, stamps or recycled materials that we could get our hands on.

Not to mention that we were supposed to only start on the fourth week but we already had students coming into our Prevoc room on the 2nd week. It's all been a mad rush since then.

Even so Yazid managed to prepare bookmarks for the Parent's Orientation two weeks after we started.



He also got the kids to decorate these paper boxes.



My kids were learning to stamp on markings made on paper. With a little bit of marker and the photostating machine, pretty soon I had strips of flowers ready to be made into bookmarks.







After that it was just a matter of laminating and threading ribbon through them and there you have it.





The students under me were also dabbling with paper mache. Unfortunately the first few attempts did not turn out like they should.



In case you are wondering, that was supposed to be a huge heart. So I thought I would go back to the basics and make simple round shapes from balloons.





Apparently big shapes are harder to pull off so I finally managed to get them to make my valentine hearts.





I still haven't decided what I would do with them. Maybe fill them up with something and seal them to make paperweights probably.



Have a happy valentines!

What Time Is It – HSM2

Rules:
1. Put your music on shuffle.
2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
3. YOU MUST WRITE THAT SONG NAME DOWN NO MATTER HOW SILLY IT SOUNDS!


IF SOMEONE SAYS "IS THIS OKAY" YOU SAY?
I Want It All – HSM3 Soundtrack

WHAT WOULD BEST DESCRIBE YOUR PERSONALITY?
Watch The World Burn – Hans Zimmer

HOW DO YOU FEEL TODAY?
Get Back – Demi Lovato (I didn't even know I had this song)

WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO?
Right Now (Na na na na) - Akon (Yeah baby, I wanna make love!)

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE'S PURPOSE?
Harvey Two-face – Hans Zimmer (Hahaha you got to love Zimmer's song titles)

WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?
Vespertillo – Hans Zimmer (I don't even know wat this means - but it's heroic)

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN?
Bust It Baby – Plies ft Ne-Yo (LOL)

WHAT IS 2+2?
I Don’t Care – Fall Out Boy (That's right)

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND?
I Will Survive - Cake

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
High School Musical – HSM3 (Ahahahahaha)

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?
Hot n Cold – Katy Perry (Interesting)

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?
Always a Catch – Hans Zimmer (I guess I don't wanna grow up!)

WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?
Love You More – The Streets (Ceh)

WHAT WILL YOU DANCE TO AT YOUR WEDDING?
Just Dance – Lady Gaga (Double ceh)

WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
Aggressive Expansion – Hans Zimmer (Very interesting)

WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST?
Teenage Love Affair – Alicia Keys (Ok Sidah's gonna kill me)

WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET?
Like a Dog Chasing Cars – Hans Zimmer (Huh?)

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS?
Dangerous – Akon ft Kardinal

WHAT'S THE WORST THING THAT COULD HAPPEN?
Thunder – Boys Like Girls

WHAT MAKES YOU CRY?
Give It To Me - Madonna

WHAT MAKES YOU LAUGH?
Blood on My Hands – Hans Zimmer (Wahahahaha *evil laugh*)

WHAT IS THE ONE THING YOU REGRET?
Next Plane Home – Daniel Powter (Oooooh)

HOW WILL YOU DIE?
Decode – Paramore (Finally paramore!)

WILL YOU EVER GET MARRIED?
Make It Mine – Jason Mraz

WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?
Whatever You Like – T.I. (Cheers to independence and trust)

DOES ANYONE LIKE YOU?
A Little Push – Hans Zimmer (Apaseh?)

WHAT SCARES YOU THE MOST?
When There Was Me and You – HSM1 (Heh)

IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME, WHAT WOULD YOU CHANGE?
Introduce a Little Anarchy – Hans Zimmer (Cool)

WHAT WOULD YOU SAY, WHEN YOU MEET YOUR BOSS?
I Hate This Part – Pussycat Dolls (Hahahaha I can imagine)

WHAT WILL YOU POST THIS AS?
What Time Is It – HSM2

Prevoc @ Yishun Park

So it's a new year and a new term. I am also starting a new adventure setting up a Prevoc Department in Yishun.

The aim is to have the kids produce craft products such as cards or bookmarks. We are also looking into services that they can provide such as simple delivery to classes. Basically they would be applying the skills they learnt in class in the prevoc room and showcase their contributions.

So this is my new room. That's my AM co-teacher Yazid.



We decided to go with a round-table concept - like King Arthur.



I will be in the afternoon session so I am looking forward to waking up late. The earliest I have to be in school is 10:30. Who knows, I may even squeeze in a morning run before school?

Right.

Iphone Problems and FIxes

I can't tell you how much I treasure my iPhone. Once you get the hang of it, it's very tough to put it down. However, it's definitely not perfect. Here are some tips I've learnt from experience. Hopefully it'll help because the net is THE place for troubleshooting tips.

Turn off 3G and GPRS

Turning off 3G should be your very first step unless you have a huge (also known as expensive) data plan. When I first got the phone and I asked the sales person how to switch off 3G, he told me it wasn't possible. I dunno if he was just misinformed or was following company protocol. Let's hope it was not the latter.

Go to SETTINGS >> GENERAL >> NETWORK >> ENABLE 3G. Just switch it off. For the more visual people out there, refer to this.

Don't activate your GPRS. Usually you'd have to reply to a sms and save settings the returned sms. Since the iPhone does not support MMS, who needs GPRS.

You definitely want to avoid horror stories like this and this.

Free iTunes account

Unless you want to jailbreak the phone, you would want an iTunes account. This would let you download free apps from the app store. You would need a credit card (debit card not accepted) if you want to buy paid apps.

Basically download iTunes. Click on iTunes store and make sure your country at the bottom of the page is set to Singapore or the US. Then click on a free app and proceed to download it. You'll get a prompt to sign in or sign up for new account. Sign up for it and make sure u click payment option as NONE.

See here if you are lost.

When I first tried it, it gave me this error message “You did not complete the entire form. Please enter your credit card number. The credit card expiration date you entered ha already passed. Please enter a valid expiration date.” I gave up and cursed iTunes. A few days later I tried again and suddenly it worked. I did nothing different, so I guess if it doesn't work you just have to be patient. I wished I could be more helpful but there you go.

iTunes and syncing

A major, major bugbear to me because I faced so much difficulty loading songs into my iPhone. In fact 3 days after use, I was trying to update my firmware to v. 2.2 and thanks to syncing problems, my iPhone turned into iBrick. I had to go back to Singtel to get it reset.

Apparently the root cause of all of this lies in the fact that it is definitely USB-port-related. From what I've read it seems that it has to do with the iPhone drawing power from your USB ports.

In my case, the solution was plugging the cable to the ports at the back of my computer as opposed to the front. The back ports were better powered than the front.

Other solutions included unplugging any USB mouse and plugging it again (for laptops mostly), plugging in USB drives on another port and transferring a file to the computer from the drive while iTunes and the iPhone was trying to sync and basically unplugging all USB connected devices.

Apps autoclose themselves

This problem happens when you sync to 2 or more computers with iTunes.

After my phone became an iBrick and I reset it, I tried downloading songs on iTunes on Sidah's computer instead. Worked perfectly. (This was before I discovered I could just plug the USB at the back instead of the front.) Then I opened an app and it closed within 2-3 seconds. WTH.

The solution? If you are syncing with 2 or more computers you need to authorize-deauthorize all the computers u are syncing on. When in iTunes, click STORE>>DEAUTHORIZE. Then click STORE>>AUTHORIZE and sign in with your iTunes account. Once it is authorized, sync again with your iPhone. When you unplug it, it should be functioning fine.

Hope this helps!

Investing Tip 1

The logical way to fight generational risk is to borrow money to make large, regular investments in stocks while young, then use a proportion of later savings to pay back the loan rather than to pile into the stock market in middle age. That sounds risky, but it is, in fact, exactly what people do in the housing market. Knowing that they will need a place to live all their lives, they tend to buy a small house and gradually trade up to a bigger one, paying off their mortgages only late in life.

Taken from here.

I'll have to remember this.

bujanglapok@kooshi

Sigh Sidah is addicted to lingerie! She seriously buys one every fortnight, no kidding. One of her favourite shops is the kooshi online store. So once a brick-and-mortar shop opened up in parkway parade, there we were among the first shoppers to be at the grand opening.





I looked pensive because I was thinking of things I could have bought with the money instead.





And yes, these are the official photos of the opening taken from their facebook site.

In Conversation

I recently have started dabbling in shares and stocks of our local STI. A friend of mine was surprised to hear this especially with all the negative sentiment right now of the economic turmoil. I explained to her that sometimes when the market is bad, it's a huge opportunity to buy shares and wait until the economy recovers and reap the gains.

She got very interested and started asking me how shares work. As expected she asked if it was halal because it sounded very much like usury. That led to my explanation of how money isn't really money, money is actually debt. If you really thought about it, we are all living in an age of usury and there is nothing we can do about it, sadly.

I doubt very much she understood most of what I was saying but I think she got an inkling of what I was trying to convey. She went quiet for a while, probably thinking of something to say.

"So....what else is new in your life?"

"Don't you have my blog address? Everything's there, with pictures even!"

"Yeah I know, I saw." she laughed. "I miss talking to you, though. You sound so much smarter in person."

"C*&%*@."

The Proposal

Ah ok sorry guys for the late update.

So as we set off from our little picnic island, we took a little toilet break at a little marina they called One Degree Fifteen .









So then we were moored off just behind Sentosa's Songs of the Sea. Sidah didn't know it yet but it was here that I was going down on bended knee.







I'd say my timing was just perfect.





After the light show Sidah was still in a state of shock. She kept staring at the ring.

























Here was what Sidah was staring at.



While I was watching the show.

























So finally we said goodbye to our captain and crew.



And took the bridge to get to Vivocity.











On hindsight, the walk was a bad idea. We should just have taken a cab. We just had to end the night with cake.



After that it was a nice private ride on the London Cab back to her place.