Happy Birthday Khairul

I used to have everyone's birthdays diligently noted in my computer. Chicks love it when a guy takes the effort to remember. Unfortunately the crash of 2005 meant I lost everything.

That loss was felt yet again this year when we couldn't remember Khai's birthdate. We were divided between the pro-thirteenths and cannotbethirteenths. In the end we celebrated his birthday with durian cake and his neon-green G-shock gift a day early yesterday on the 12th.

That meant that we had to come up with some way to commemorate today. The birthday boy even came prepared with a change of clothes. I guess he was expecting some sort of hydrotherapy. The truth was we had no idea what to do.

Cue newspaper and masking tape.



Halfway through our mission, we were caught in the act. Khai came at us with his supersoaker. He was still on the clock so he couldn't leave the school compound so we just took cover behind the car. We managed to finish that side before we made our great escape.

Happy birthday to our brudder Khai.

March Holidays

I cannot imagine working in a job where there are no school holidays. I am so used to slogging for 10 weeks and then taking a break from all that is school.

The unofficial farewell committee organized a BBQ to say goodbye to ...um... I kinda lost track of who was saying goodbye. The point is we had food and it was delicious.

It took a while to get started though. We didn't have those pits you usually find at the east coast.



Some people also didn't really understand what BBQ food was.



For satay however, everyone naturally went into the squatting position and knew what to do. And they say we don't have culture.



Eventually people realized there were chairs.







Most were there for the food and company...













... others had karaoke on their mind.







There was also some poolside entertainment.



It was too dark and too censored to show you what happened. In the end two wet guys ended up eating up what was left of the food. Enough said.



Happy Holidays!

Bujanglapok Learns To Cook

So much for updating my blog regularly. My first entry for the new year is in February!

2008 has been much much busier workwise than 2007. I actually volunteered to take charge of publishing a newsletter for my school. I should have known how much more it was than publishing oh say, a blog. Anyway 3 more pages and we'll be ready to go to print!

Here's a preview of the front page.


Class-wise I am also doing Adaptive Living Skills (ADL) for the semester. ADL is fancy special education teacher talk for cooking class. We've done milkshakes, cheeseburgers, hot dogs and chocolate-covered bananas.

The last were a total failure. Don't get me wrong - they tasted great but the presentation left a lot to be desired.

I had the chocolate and honeystars.



I had a bright idea to freeze the bananas. My mistake was putting them in the freezer instead of the normal compartment.



See for yourself.



I still went ahead with it. They tasted great but definitely not appetizing enough.



My other projects went much better. Look how cool and organized my two workstations are for cheeseburgers or hot dogs. I forget which.



Wish I could show you the end products but good things never last long enough for pictures....

RCBS @ St James

I think every few months we say goodbye to some of our colleagues. It's sad but the turnover in special ed and Rainbow Centre in particular is a bit on the high side. I blame the low pay. People expect us to be equally or better paid than mainstream teachers but the reality cannot be further from the truth.

There are reasons to stay though. The kids for one thing. For me, a big reason why I still am in this line is because it's so hard to find colleagues like the ones in Balestier.

And they sure like to party. Even a farewell can be turned into an occasion. Who wouldn't like to makan?







I think this is the first time our principal joined us to say goodbye. She resisted so far because it might seem that she's actually encouraging us to leave. Hehehe.







Of course after she left, it was time to party!





This is my favourite picture for the night.

Raya RCBS 2007

Rainbow Centre Balestier jalan raya!

This year we didn't take the bus, but squeezed into 3 cars. We also held it right after this year's AGM. So the bunch of us were in full raya dress at the early Saturday meeting.

Our first stop was Arzme's. His was the first house by the virtue that he needed to go home to take his samping.



Next, we made our way to our Boss' place. Peggy, Fairuz and I chose to walk rather than squeeze. The house was about 3 carparks away yet we three still managed to get lost.





From Jurong we crossed the island to get to Pasir Ris. This was Senior Teacher Syifaa's house.



Wan moved for the first picture. So I took revenge for the second.



Finally.



Next senior teacher's house is Siti! We played Find-the-18-cats at her place.







None of the cats wanted their picture taken.



We went to Eipic Coordinator Izah's house. By then though we were so tired we forgot to take a group photo. My excuse was I wanted to rush to the next house to catch Man U vs Arsenal.

I'm so glad Talib had cable.





Finally, the last stop was our own Head of Programme, Shah!



Every house had food, and all of it was yummy. I think we went to less than 10 houses altogether. All that food however made it seem like 50.