Chanced Meeting

I was at a school visit to present the findings of the project to the school leaders. It was by chance that I found out my long-time friend and ex-MOE colleague, Rahidah is teaching at the school. 
Had a quick meet-up and chat with her after the meeting with the school leaders. 

Happy Meeting

I met up with a former student, Vanessa. 
It was really great catching up with her and knowing that she is doing well and following her dreams!

I am really happy and appreciative that my former students are taking the time to meet up with me. :) 

Representative

I was sent to represent a colleague at a meeting yesterday morning to report on the progress of our work. But the chair of the meeting decided to talk about something else not on the agenda and never got to the progress reporting. Never have I been so lost in a meeting. :P 

Teacher-Student Meeting

I met up with two of my students from Primary 4 Prudence 1998 late this evening at 8:15pm, Tiong Bahru Bakery, Raffles City. It was arranged last minute as I happened to be on Facebook late Friday night when I read that Nicole Sze-to is going to be in Singapore for the weekend. Guess as their ex-teacher, they couldn't say no to meeting up haha.:P

Hot Chocolate and Apple Crumble (extremely sweet)

Nicole and Xue Ting, my 4P 1998 students! :)

It was fun catching with both Nicole and Wee Xue Ting over what has happened since I left SCGS and what they have been doing. We didn't part until close to 10pm. I hope to get to meet up with more of my students and catch up on what they are doing now. :)

Meeting@AST

I had my first meeting at Academy of Singapore Teachers (AST) yesterday. It is a cosy place. :)  

From a poster at AST

At the meeting, I also met my former student from SCGS. Actually she recognised me. :P

First Milestone Down

We had a meeting with MOE today to present our preliminary report/ findings. It was a relief to all that the report was well received. One milestone down. :) We will take a break this weekend and then start working on achieving the next one.

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 

Meeting Marathon

It has been one meeting after another today - 10am-1pm, 1:30-3pm, and 3-7pm. 
I am really exhausted.
I am brain-dead.

Camaraderie

Today, we had a really long work meeting (close to 6.5 hours), doing some recoding. Although it was really tiring work (recoding 152 projects), we did it! The camaraderie really helped in making the daunting work bearable. I am really glad to be a part of this team. :)

Go Back?

I have been having a series of meetings with MOE. A former MOE colleague joked that I should go back to MOE, my former workplace. Lol. See how things go. :P

Overload

I had meeting after meeting today. It was cognitive overload! Lol. Lots of new information to assimilate and there is going to be some pretty steep learning curves...

Meeting Up

A Finnish professor, whom I first met in 2009 at the conference our research centre organised, is back in Singapore for 2 days for a symposium. We had met up once more in 2010. I am really happy that Prof Niemi contacted me and asked to meet up. Being a full professor and an expert in her field, I am really honoured that she wants to meet up with me, a junior academic. I must have made a good impression on her lol. :P

I brought her to Food For Thought, Botanic Gardens for afternoon tea and chit-chat. She is really happy for me that I passed my Phd defense and even got me a congratulatory gift, an adorable Moomin cup! We had a lovely time chatting about my Phd, my work, my future plans and her work in Finland. An hour past really quickly. I sent her back to her accommodation at 5pm as she has to attend a dinner at 6pm organised by the director of NIE. We will definitely be keeping in touch! :)

Compare Notes

It is never a good idea to attend a meeting on stats data when you have a mushy brain, courtesy of jet lag and exhaustion. :( Thank goodness, my RAs were also at the meeting and we could compare our notes. :)

Council Meeting

I was elected into the management council of my estate at the AGM in June. This evening, I attended my first council meeting. It is quite an experience. :)

Busy but Fruitful Day

I have a real busy day today, 3 meetings back to back, lol. When I told a good friend, he actually laughed and said, "Welcome to my world". :P

My first meeting was at 9:15am with my PI and another professor. It was a really good meeting as we were given some food for thought about our project. It got us pretty excited. My second meeting started at 10:15am. Again, it was a productive meeting. Plans were drawn out for what to do in the coming week(s). At 11:30am, I had a lunch meeting with a colleague and a professor. We went to Colbar for lunch. It is the first time I am there. It is a very nice place, very rustic. I feel like I am back in the 60s. Well, it is an actual 60s' building, decor and everything, lol. A total breath of fresh air. :) We all had a good time enjoying the rustic surrounding, the food and our interesting conversation. :)

Got back to office around 1:20pm. Started to do some packing as our fishbowls* will be moving into one big "pond" at the end of this month. And I just moved into my current fishbowl 4 months ago. Now I have to pack again. Argh.

It has been a really busy day but extremely fruitful.

* For those new to reading my blog, my office space for 10 people is fondly called the fishbowl at my research centre. There are 6 fishbowls in all. We will move into one big office space at the end of the month.

Chanced Meeting, Night Snack

In the late morning, I took Juliane to Popular Bookshop@Orchard MRT as I had to get my counselling girls Children's Day gifts. Besides buying for the counselling girls, I ended up buying for my own girls too, lol. It was close to 12pm when I finished my purchases. We went to Sakae for lunch. No choice, Juliane wanted to have her chawanmushi and tamago. (Yes, I am getting sick of Sakae too, lol). After lunch, we browsed around at Isetan Scotts and I had a surprise meeting with a professor from my workplace. We chatted for a while on..., no, not about work but about enbloc, lol. We are both anti-enbloc so you guess which direction the chat went.

***
"We are going to Nemocity. No, Nebocity. No, Vi-vo-ci-ty". That was Juliane in the car trying to pronounce Vivocity but kept getting it wrong until she said it really slowly, lol. After dinner, we decided to try to get the sugarless mooncake from Habour City Restaurant which has a sales booth at Vivocity. Alas, they have ran out of them. Too bad, next year then.

While hubby went to his Samsung shop, I browsed around and saw this lovely cafe which reminded me of those in UK (Bath, York), Italy (Rome, Venice, Florence), Switzerland (Lucerne), Belgium (Brussels), Netherlands (Amsterdam, Rotterdam), France (Paris). I was also attracted by the display of pastries and desserts along its entrance corridor. Definitely a European style cafe, lol. When hubby returned, we went into Corduroy Cafe.

Although we had dinner, the food looked really yummy so we ordered Trzesniewski typical european bite size sandwiches ($10 for 6 pcs) and a Kortofel Salat ($4.50): potato, bacon bits, cider dressing and diced apple to share. They were really as good as they looked. The girls ordered their colourful donuts. I ordered a Rose bud Tea. They were really generous with the rose buds. Definitely going back to this cafe again. =)