Yesterday was a packed day with little breaks in between, after taking into consideration the travelling time.
As mentioned before, went back to work at 9am supposedly for some training, but it turns out that it was just doing data-entry and checking through it, no training or whatsoever. I was done with what I had to do by 11.30am, so I was just sitting there doing nothing (and yawning). So John got me to shift over to his desk, because I was sitting right in front of the HR department and if they were to see me not doing anything there, they would probably just complain about how there are too many temp staff haha. Yup so I moved over to his desk, doing my own stuff once again. Idk, I just feel that it's weird to be doing your own things during work. I kept wanting to be given something to do, to be kept busy. Maybe it's because I just started work. But still, I feel it's weird to be sitting there doing my own things when I'm actually being paid to be working. I didn't even feel comfortable using my phone, except for occasionally checking it.
Left my workplace at (exactly) 12pm lol. Settled my lunch with 2 pieces of bread (a doughnut and a coffee bread) and a cup of soya bean bought at Aljunied MRT station. Ate it at the bus-stop while pretending as if I was waiting for my bus LOL. Sorry la, there was no where else I could sit to have my meal.
Afterwards headed for CDAC for a workshop at 1.30pm. Was the third person to reach there so sat around a table with the other two people in awkward silence hahaha. The workshop started with an icebreaker game (as usual), which involved musical chairs, so we had to go around different tables and introduce ourselves to different people in each round. After all the rounds, each table would have to draw a person they could remember from the introduction he/she gave. My group drew a guy who is currently in NS as a medic officer or something. And surprisingly some other group drew me, probably because it was easier to draw a cello lol. So that's how I ended up with that mahjong paper. The trainer carried on by sharing his past experiences, and went through briefly on how we should "learn to work with the kids", instead of learning how to manage or handle them. It was quite a useful workshop I would say, because he did share with us a little on children's mentality and all. He said that a teacher (let's just put it that way) should remain stern for at least the first month of teaching, because that will tell the kids that you mean business. Afterwards, once you slowly start opening up by telling your personal experiences, the children would open up too. And he discouraged letting them call us jiejie or korkor because then they would think that they can play around with you, just like how they treat their siblings. So that's how you maintain the balance between being their mentor and being their friend. I think it's something I really need to take note of, because I always thought that if you treat them nicely, then they will also do so. Plus, I've never wanted to appear as a teacher to them, but rather just a friend that they respected more. But thinking about it, the main purpose is to teach them, not just to befriend them. So I guess there is the need to establish this idea that I mean serious business. Even though I don't like it, but perhaps it will help, considering how my approach has seemed to fail, at least with respect to my dog hahaha. She treats me like a friend (I hope, and not as a toy), but she doesn't seem to really get the point that I am her owner. She just steps all over me, literally, and I have to push her away to get her to back off. But she doesn't do that to my dad.
You know how people say it's easy to be the bad guy and hard to be the good guy? If you start off being stern (bad guy), then subsequently you become a little bit nicer, that amount of "nice-ness" (idk what you call it) somehow seems to multiply by folds. So similarly, if you start off as a good guy, but just make a small mistake somewhere, you immediately get faced with criticism and get degraded to the bad guy, despite all the good that you have done before. That's the sad story of a good guy. So maybe I should consider appearing like a terrible person instead of a nice one.
Yup anyway, back to topic. I met quite a few people of the same age at the workshop, some coming from RI and some school that has the IB syllabus. Surprisingly, there were also quite a number of JC2 students there. I asked one guy what made him decide to commit to this programme this year, despite the A-levels, and he said that it was just to see how much he could stretch himself and also as a preparation for the future work life. Not exactly sure how true his words are, since he gave me a poor vibe (yea I'm judging, also because he sniggered when the trainer said something), but if his words are genuine, then kudos to him! I did have that kind of thinking before, but I was too cowardly to actually try it out. There was another JC2 guy also, who didn't seem all that interested during the workshop. It's kinda sad if they're joining just for the records.
After the workshop, headed to Bugis to meet the peeps for Yik's b'day celebration (which consisted of a fail b'day song haha!). Even though I felt tired from the day's activities, I felt surprisingly more awake once I met them. Hahaha it's like I just forgot how tired I felt (oh but it came back for a while after dinner lol). It was nice catching up with some of them, and of course DDR with nic LOL. Finally played the game again after years. Okay I did play once I think two years back with nic/xm but that doesn't really count HAHA. I used to play it on the PlayStation with the mat I borrowed from my uncle. Even though I was kinda forced by nic (haha) to play at first, but yup thanks for forcing me to play because it made me remember my gaming days. Haha did that make me sound like a gamer? Nah I used to play quite a lot of games la, especially game consoles. But I stopped after the games became a little boring and limited, particularly Nintendo Wii games. I still prefer PS :) Then came handphone games, which were generally not as fun because of the small screen and the touch-screen. Idk, it's just a different feel. Game consoles still better. I like the adventure kind of games hahaha.
Yup, so that was a long summary of my busiest day of the year so far. It was tiring but fulfilling. Feel so much better than wasting my day at home. Okay gonna go tune my cello right now (after so long), finally bought a tuner that day!
