Pioneer

I've been posted to Pioneer Junior College (PJC).

They're building Pioneer MRT station outside my block, but unfortunately, it's not near to PJC, which is in the Choa Chu Kang area, near MINDEF.

This is my last week at Juying Secondary...

Looks like I won't be able to play tennis again this week... on Thursday they want to go to SOFRA for dinner, as a get-together before we go our separate ways after Practicum.

Sunday morning tennis is also put on hold because Ni is overseas... All this when I'm itching to play because I just bought new Wilson Pro Overgrips (Yellow), and Prince wristbands.

My current addiction: Mitsuba Peanut Crackers (ISO PEA!)

Back to School

The tennis courts at NIE have all been resurfaced, according to schedule. NUS has still to get its act together regarding the tennis courts.

The school term has begun again, and there's less tennis for me this time around. I'm on the NTU floorball team, and our first IVP game is this Wednesday night against SMU.

At least, with floorball, the rain can't stop us!

Also playing for NTU Hurricane in the Singapore Floorball League (Division One). There's a match practically every weekend.

I guess this also means that the holidays have ended, and I have to confront the fact that I have done almost no programming over the holidays. All I did was write a Bash script to rename files in a folder (e.g. DSCN0045.JPG becomes DSCN1045.JPG if I want an "offset" of 1000).

Now to write a lesson plan to teach the multiplication rule for probability (for independent events).

By the way, I bought a floorball stick. The picture there is pretty small, but that was the only one I could find online. Feeling a little too lazy to take a picture of my stick. I had it shortened by about 4cm because the 101cm shaft was too unwieldy.

For these five weeks before the teaching practicum, I have classes at 8:30am for four days a week, except Thursday, which starts at 10:30am. But classes all end by 12:30pm every day!

More Upheavals

Now that the holidays are here, the 3 other NIE tennis courts are undergoing renovation. Just happened that I had just blogged about how Tennis Court 1 had been renovated when I first started NIE.

Had quite a good tennis session today, played through a drizzle that thankfully passed, though it got a little too heavy for comfort at one point. Lots of people clamouring to use that one court today, good thing we had a booking.

I'm able to get some consistency on my first serve, but I feel that I'm not getting optimal power on it. Meanwhile, my backhand is not too bad, though pretty weak when I'm caught. At least I get the ball in consistently, and can go for the cross-court winner when given the chance. On the forehand side, I can access the cross-court angles pretty comfortably, but need lots more work on the inside-out forehand.

Hope it doesn't rain this evening! I think the last time we had Thursday tennis was probably a month ago!

Let me leave you with this photograph taken in Thailand.

Sports

The new stadium and sports centre next to our place is open! Went to take a look around the other day.A highlight of the place is the aquatic centre, which has a huge water slide. Great for the family.
Up on the roof there are two tennis courts. Good to know, though expensive to play.
Meanwhile, around the neighborhood... The MRT extension is taking shape...
And maybe one of these days I'll go try out the skate park near the PIE entrance...

Rain On My Parade

The rain has been horrible these days. It's made me miss at least 2 tennis sessions this past week, and in addition I also rescheduled my dental appointment because it was raining so hard.

It's made me feel pretty sluggish these few days. Probably combined with the fact that my classes are more or less done, and I don't really need to go to NIE anymore. Last class tomorrow.

But I got my fix of tennis this morning at NUS, and if nothing goes wrong with the weather, tennis tomorrow morning at NIE is on.

The NUS tennis courts are currently under renovation. They were supposed to be finished with the first 8 courts by mid November, and then work on the other 5 until the end of December. But they screwed up, citing some technical problems, and were actually thinking of renovating all courts until the end of the year! They finally decided not to renovate the last 5 courts for now. And the good news is that they are actually done with one of the courts, and they made it available for booking! So there are 6 courts to play with, one of which is spanking new!

Federer's record has been amazing...

Oh, and if it doesn't rain on Tuesday morning, will probably be doing dragonboat racing! We're having a camp for some kids as part of community service. And Bryan's wedding is on Tuesday night too.

Precious Things

Went to run at SPE this morning, tried to go see the hockey pitch (where we sometimes trained) but it seemed to have become an "authorized personnel only" area. From outside it looks like it's been upgraded from a sand turf to a water-based one.

Mentioned that to my CO, and somehow he knows (and told me) that there's an astro-turf at Delta for hockey, I probably should have followed up on how he knew that. That's where we trained most often. Apart from physical training...

Quite a good run, really, for the first time I managed to run faster than CO! His age notwithstanding, it was also because he woke up and left his house without even drinking some water, plus they had run about 4 to 5 km before running with me. And I was quite well rested also.

I could do about 2 minutes a round for 2 rounds at a go, and repeat that after resting for about 3 minutes. That's still quite off from the 12:20 for 6 rounds that i need to pass IPPT... but anyway I also need 6 chin-ups to pass, and probably can muster at most 4 now.

Going to play basketball on Monday evening, I suggested street soccer since the basketball half-court is also a street soccer arena, so I'll just bring my soccer ball to office and see how. Good that my soccer ball is still ok, just pumped it and it seems ok. My pump is not so ok, though.

Going to play tennis with gz and 2 of his friends (I know them also, they also scholar from OCS) tomorrow morning, which means will have to miss gym+swim with Aaron and Jasper. Say Yang's not going either, due to tuition commitments.

Invested in an $18 alarm clock. That will hopefully prevent $12 taxi fares in the morning. It should pay off in a week or two. The shop i bought it from was having a closing down sale. And next door, people were queuing to buy 4D and Toto. Always got queue...

Also bought an aluminum tennis racket from NTUC, for $10. So now got 2 rackets, if anyone wants to play please let me know, I bought the racket so you don't need to have one to play.

So I actually met gz today and I had just happened to buy the tennis racket, so he mentioned he was playing tomorrow and I invited myself. He returned me my CDs.

Spoke to CO about officer scholars being posted to unit. Says he'll look into it. I had mentioned that seems like all the officers got posted to unit then immediately get attached elsewhere (like 2 of my friends, who are in MINDEF now).

So the casino will create jobs. But what kind of jobs? Dealers, people changing money into chips, women wearing sexy outfits and walking around serving drinks...

Went to dentist to clean my teeth, actually slipped into sleep a few times as she was grinding away. Probably swallowed a little chalky water.

That suite of MS Excel macros I wrote is in the running for the best WITs in MINDEF under the "admin" category. Competing with one other team for the honor.

I guess I should sleep now since I've got to get up really early to NUS to play tennis...

gz asked why I don't write to the forum anymore and all that... I guess... I guess I shall blame it on the Straits Times not having their articles online for free at all. But actually it's because I think my writing sucks.