Home-Cooked Food

It is wonderful coming home to delicious and healthy home-cooked food cooked up by my mother! :)

Taiwanese-style noodle soup for today's lunch

Home-cooked buffet for tonight's dinner :)

Heart in Taiwan

My mom has been glued to the tv watching the elections of mayors in Taiwan which took place today. Although she has left Taiwan over 44 years ago when she married my father, she is still very much in tune with what's happening in Taiwan, especially the politics. She managed to predict most of the wins in the different counties and cities! Oh by the way, she is green. Taiwanese will know what I mean lol.

My 1st Sole-Authored Article!

My first sole-authored journal article has been published in an international education journal, Education 3-13! I am over the moon! :) The article, which is based on part of my PhD about students' self-assessment ability, has been published online on 24 November! The acceptance of my manuscript is also the best birthday present thus far as it was accepted for publication on 27 October. :) 

For those of you who are interested in assessment, here is the link to the abstract of my article: I can assess myself: Singaporean primary students' and teachers' perceptions of students' self-assessment ability

It is still pretty surreal to see my name on a journal article! Lol :P

Happy Birthday, Dinh! :) :)

Happy Birthday to my lovely sis-in-law, Dinh! 

Stay young and funny forever!!

Hope you have a great day and lots of pampering from the boys!! 

Lots of love from all of us in Singapore :)

(Source: www.birthdayb.com)

Submitted!

I finally decided on the order of the schools after several days of mulling over. I finally submitted Marieann's S1 options via the S1 Internet System just a few minutes ago! :)
However, this afternoon I had a phone call from her school chasing me about Marieann's S1 options submission. 

Admin: You haven't submitted the S1 Option form.
Me: Not yet.
Admin: Do you know the deadline is tomorrow..
Me: Yes 3pm tomorrow. 
Admin: So you know. When are you submitting?
Me: Tonight! I will submit tonight!

I felt like a student who was being chased by the teacher for her homework! :( I know it is good intention on the school's part to make sure parents don't forget to submit the S1 options with the phone call(s) but it was pretty stressful.
Hmm, if I still didn't submit tonight, will the school call me tomorrow? YES I think so. :P

Happy Birthday (in advance), Azlina! :)

Our colleague/ friend, Azlina's birthday is 27 November tomorrow. However as another colleague/ friend won't be in tomorrow, we decided to surprise her today. Although we wanted to surprise Azlina with a surprise birthday celebration, we didn't quite pull it off lol. Azlina could sense we were up to something. It was good sport of Azlina to act surprised for the photo haha. :P 
Happy Birthday (in advance), Azlina! :)
May all your dreams and wishes come true! :)
Hope you have a great day tomorrow!! :) 

Being a good sport and acted surprised for the camera lol

Made her wish! :)

Learning Journey to Australian International School

My workplace organised a learning journey to Australian International School. 
It was very educational as we were given a tour around the pre-school where we saw how the pre-school was set-up and how the pre-school students learn. After the pre-school tour, we had a presentation on the structure in AIS as well as the kind of curriculum conducted in AIS from pre-school to Year 12. For me personally, it will be interesting to learn more about their assessment as well as their pastoral care in AIS. :)

Which Order?

Mulling over what should be the order of the secondary schools chosen. Having problems with which schools to place for choices number 4 to 6. :(

Decisions

Decisions, decisions, decisions. 
I don't remember it being this difficult when choosing secondary schools for my own secondary education. Argh. 

Open House

For me, "open house" usually means a house/ apartment, which is for sale or rent, is available for inspection by prospective clients or a party at someone's home which is open to visitors. Today, "open house" means visiting a school that has opened its doors to the public for visits and observations. Today is the first time I visited a school's open house. In fact, there were a  number of secondary schools' open houses happening all over the island just for today. Their open houses are timely as it is one day after the PSLE Results day. There are plenty of factors to consider when making the selection of secondary schools. It is often best when you can see for yourself when the secondary schools offer before you make your selection of schools. 
We only made it to one secondary school's open house. :P  

PSLE Results 2014 Release Day

From 11am onwards, 42,336 P6 students (and their parents) were at their respective primary schools to collect their PSLE result slip. I was at SCGS just after 11am as I was engrossed in my work until 10:30am so I missed a bit of the principal's speech. Oops :P 
There was no crying, no disappointment, no anger with Marieann's results as they were within my expectations. Being the educator and educational researcher, I have some pretty hard choices to make, together with Marieann of course. Wish us luck. 

Happy Birthday, Liyana :)

We celebrated our colleague/ friend, Liyana's birthday! It's always so fun to celebrate birthdays at work! All the planning and secrecy lol. :P 
Happy Birthday, Liyana. 
Hope you have had lots of fun. May the coming year bring you lots of surprises (the first was the "chilli-flavoured" brownie haha :P) and may all your wishes be fulfilled! :)

Seeing Stars

I am seeing stars with Interstellar which is a sci-fiction adventure movie! Lol :) For the geek in me, it is a pretty awesome movie and all seems really believable and possible! :) Wormhole, black hole, space travel, time (fourth dimension), gravity (fifth dimension), ... Can be pretty mind-boggling with all the science/ physics talk but really entertaining as well. If you are a sci-fi fan, you shouldn't miss Interstellar! 

Interstellar official trailer 3 (uploaded by Inerstellar Movie)

School Workshop

It has been a long time since I last conducted a school workshop. I co-conducted the workshop for teachers with two other colleagues today from 1-5pm. It was fun. Looking forward to the second part of our workshop on Thursday. :) 

Overloaded

My first day back at work after my Penang holiday and I have been attending meetings non-stop from morning 9:30am till 6pm. It was my highest record ever of 5 meetings a day! By the end of the 4th meeting, I was already pretty zonked out. :( 
I think I need another break lol. :P 

Blank Space by Taylor Swift

Heard that Taylor Swift's new song, Blank Space was released on 10 November 2014 while we were holidaying in Penang. It has only been a week and it has hit 41.5 million views!!! OMG in a good way lol. :P Well, it is a very catchy song. :) 

Blank Space by Taylor Swift (uploaded by TaylorSwiftVEVO)

Travel Journal

Although I was pretty tired from the trip (making sure kids were safe and had enough to eat in a foreign land haha), I worked on the travel journal which the kids were supposed to have done in Penang. I always have a travel journal for each overseas trip so that we have a scrapbook memory of what we have seen and done, other than the photos such as brochures, ticket stubs, etc. :) 

Blogging Soon

We are back in Singapore after our 6 day trip to Penang (8-13 November 2014)! :) It has been really fun. It will take me some time to choose and upload the photos on my blog as I took close to 1000 photos for this Penang trip! :P Please bear with me and I will try to upload my photos as soon as I can. Thanks! :) 

Day 6 Penang 2014: Going Home/ HOME!

We are going home today to Singapore. We are sad that our holiday is coming to an end. However, we should have a full stomach so that we have the energy to wallow in our sorrow about the end of our holiday lol. Juliane tried the Asian selection but it is Dim Sum today. I had Classic egg with toast again but there is an extra teacup of pineapple jam which was absolutely delicious. I was actually eating it on its own! :P Mariean had her French toast again.

After our breakfast, we just chilled and relaxed in our room. I checked our luggage again to make sure everything has been packed. We just lazed in bed, either reading or playing on the iPad or watched tv until check-out time 12pm. By the way, I promised to give you a closer look at the unique security for Noordin Mews rooms. :)

A unique security system at Noordin Mews. Really lock and key! :)

Once unlocked, we will leave the lock on the other side. Indicate to staff too that we are inside.

The security system from the inside. We were tickled when we first got to our room.

We will miss our Noordin Mews Upstairs Room, I

Check out was a breeze. As we were only leaving for the airport at 2:30pm, Noordin Mews kindly helped us to store our luggage while we skipped over to Prangin Mall for lunch. We tried this restaurant, Little Oasis. The food was not too bad. :)

The link bridge between 1st Avenue and Prangin Mall

After lunch, we walked back to 1st Avenue mall from Prangin Mall to get back to Noordin Mews. Marieann also did some last minute shopping at both 1st Avenue mall (wallet) and Noodin Mews (a fragrance named Georgetown which is actually quite nice). She used up the half of my emergency money and I had to activate my credit card too. Wah, she is really spending a lot! :S Guess shopping at the airport is out. Although we were technically no longer guests of Noordin Mews, we were still treated like one as the staff offered us iced water and ice cream. That is what I call service! :)
We took photos with the wonderful staff of Noordin Mews. Their wonderful service, attention to details, attentiveness to customers and wealth of knowledge have definitely won our hearts. We will most certainly stay at Noordin Mews again when we visit Penang again. The girls have already told me that they wanted to come back to Penang next year and they WANT to stay at Noordin Mews again.

We arrived at the Penang International Airport (PIA) early at 3pm. Our flight Jetstar 3K 676 departs at 5:20pm lol. By 3:30pm, we were checked in. By 4pm, we cleared immigration customs. When we were clearing customs, I also pick up RM$25 just before we put our carry-on through the immigration scanners. Lucky or what?! Lol. :P

With the last of my emergency money, close to RM$40, we bought some sandwiches and also local food products, e.g. coconut biscuits and waited at our departure gate A6 for boarding.

While waiting at our gate A6, we saw our plane pulling up and also dark storm clouds. :( A storm is coming...

It started raining heavily as we were boarding the plane. It seemed departure would be as scheduled despite the heavy rain. By 5:30pm, we were in the air. :) As I opted for Plus bundles on our return flight too, we bought light refreshment with our $15 F&B vounchers.

Bye, Penang

We are in the air!

Penang Bridge in the distance

A closer view of the Penang Bridge

Another view of the Penang Bridge

We were above the storm clouds

Sun setting

Our refreshment

The flight was smooth and we arrived on time to Singapore. However, due to the heavy storm in Singapore in the late afternoon, our plane could not land as scheduled at 6:45pm. Instead we had to circle in the sky to wait for instructions from the control tower for our turn to land. We saw a few planes in the sky circling around too. They were in the queue to land as well.

Another plane circling the sky

Landed!

Beautiful sunset

Home!

We finally landed around 7:05pm. At our baggage claim Belt 20, there was another delay due to technical issues with ground handling agent's equipment. We eventually collected our luggage at 7:45pm. During our wait for our luggage, we had company in the form of my colleague and friend, Azlina! She was at the airport to meet up with another friend who arrived back in Singapore slightly earlier than we did lol. It was quite funny that we were texting each other even though we were just 300 metres apart. My girls said we were so near and yet so far. Thanks Azlina for staying with us and even offering to drop us off at the train station to catch a cab as the girls' father was nowhere in sight.
We made our way over to Terminal 2 to get some dinner while waiting for the girls' father who was going to be really late. I saw Penang Culture and asked the girls wanted to have Penang food. They said unanimously "NO"! HAHA. I guess they have had enough of Penang food. :P We finally had dinner at a restaurant they had been trying to go to in Penang - Sakae Sushi!

Happy girls at Sakae

We reached home just after 9:30pm. We were tired but we were also excited as my parents were also back from their Taiwan & Xiamen trip after two months and that meant we would have presents! :) The girls were busy telling their grandparents about about our Penang trip. :) We definitely had a great time in Penang!! :)