Four months in Singapore

Yesterday marked four months since we arrived in Singapore. Mel and I were talking this morning that it seems like ages ago that we got here. But it at the same time it feels like the time has whizzed by.

I think the biggest change has been in Matilda. She is nearly 18 months old now and is definitely not a baby anymore. She seems to be learning new words everyday and is starting to make short sentences regularly. The other day she said "I don't like it" when she was offered some food and she regularly says "I need this" when she wants something.

Walking has become important too. When we head down to a local cafe for brunch Matilda insists on walking as much as possible. It's roughly a kilometre to the cafe and she walks about halfway without too many problems. She took a tumble this morning though and scraped her knees and fingers. While we were eating she kept holding up her hand with a pained look on her face. Poor poppet:(

We seem to have more public holidays here which is nice. They try cater for all the main ethnic groups so we had a day off last month for the end of the Hajj for the Muslims. This Tuesday is a holiday for Deepvali which is a Hindu festival. We get Christmas and New Year as well. Actually we get two New Year holidays because there's 2 days off in February for Chinese New Year.  There are some others as well but I can't remember the details.

Mel and I went into town last night for dinner and to see the Deepvali lights in Little India. The bus was absolutely full! To the point where we were not stopping. I reckon we missed a third of the stops. We had dinner at a really nice Indian restaurant and then wandered around a bit. There were loads of people around and the lights looked pretty cool. The bus trip home wasn't as busy:)

School is ok. We have an inspection for our EduTrust certification. The school needs this to be allowed to take international students. Without this we would have to shut up shop. As you can imagine this is causing quite a bit of stress. Although they aren't actually interested in our teaching practice they want to interview some of the teaching staff, as well as the admin guys. Everyone was worried on Friday as that was when we would find out if we would be the "lucky ones". Thankfully I missed out but Mel is gutted because they asked to interview some of the part time staff. She's only been there a month! They also want to see another of the part timers. She only started on Monday and has had a fairly stressful start to her job!

I can't think of anything to say right now so I'll be off.

Later
TONE

Been a while!

It's been a couple of weeks since my last post. Nothing terribly exciting has happened. We have settled into something of routine which is good. Tilda has been really good in general. She did have an ear infection which took a little while to get over and is getting loads of teeth at them moment. Who knew teeth were so unpredictable?

Mel has connected with some of the other non-working wives & partners which is great for them all. Mel set up a Facebook page and they are setting up playdates and outings with each other. Being to get to know other people has relieved some of the stress for us both. It's hard to head off to work knowing that Mel is kind of bored at home. I think it's been cathartic for Mel to be able to share her frustrations with people who are going through the same kind of stuff.

School is chugging along ok. I think I might said in earlier post that there were a lot of new staff starting this year (27!). There has been a fair bit of turmoil at the school over the last 12-18 months and there are a lot of things that aren't quite right yet. There are systems & processes that aren't properly in place. In some cases previous teachers didn't leave things when they left (e.g. schemes of work, resources) or if they were left, they were fairly half-arsed.

Probably the biggest issue is our Grade 12's (Year 13 in NZ). These guys weren't treated terribly well by some of the previous staff and so they were quite wary at the beginning of the year. More than a couple had quite the attitude going on. Unfortunately they, in some cases, are behind in their work. And by behind, I mean a term behind not just a week or two. Some will struggle to pass their IB diploma this year, which isn't fair on them. It was very instructive for me when we did a reflection activity after the first day of school. More than one student commented along the lines of "the new teachers seem to care about us", "the new teachers seem to know what they're doing" or "I'm glad they got new teachers and kept the good ones from last year". When I showed my Homeroom partner, we both felt quite sad for these kids.

There some positives though! The school roll is significantly lower than it should be. So our classes are small. The biggest class I have is my Grade 6 Humanities class with 18. I have 12 students in Grade 9 Global Perspectives and 9 in my Grade 11 Environmental Systems & Societies. My 3 senior Geography classes all have 4 or 5 students. On the whole, the students are all pretty nice kids. There a couple of special ones but they're pretty easy to deal with. We certainly don't have the behavioural issues that I saw from some kids at Fraser.

Some other positives? Because there are so many new staff, there's a good sense of camaraderie developing, which is cool. We have drinks on a Friday which is good. Very expensive though and I have to be careful not to get too carried away! This year is pretty much viewed as a transitional year so we have quite a bit of room to experiment with different things. I find that I'm able to use ICT a fair bit more and myself and the Grade 6 English teacher are planning to do some collaborative work next term which is kind of exciting. There's also lots of PD going on. I've done some IB training already and there are 6 of us flying to Malaysia in the October holidays to do some more. Tomorrow there are a group of us off to a Google Apps summit at the Singapore American Singapore.

For me one for the coolest things is the fact that I can watch 3-5 games of AFL footy every weekend. For free:) It's finals time now and my Magpies are playing the Hawks tonight. I'm pretty nervous because Hawthorn have looked good all year. Wait and see I guess:)

Anyhoo, that' it for a bit.

Ciao for now & GO PIES!!!

Two weeks in.

We have a long weekend this weekend. I think it's to celebrate the end of Ramadan. Gotta love multi-cutural inclusiveness:) The extra day off came at a good time for me. The teaching staff have been at school since the 1st of August. The kids started on the 13th. I had some training over the weekend before that, which was great but tiring - 8:30 - 4:30 for 3 days. So yesterday was the second day off for me in 2 weeks.

The training was for the International Baccalaureate Diploma course for a subject called Environmental Systems & Society. It's a really interesting subject and kind of fits the degree I did. I learned a lot! But I'm sure there was some stuff that went in one ear and out the other:) It was great to meet some other teachers from the international school circuit and talk about how stuff works in the various schools.

Monday was the first day for the kids at school. I'm the Grade 12 Homeroom teacher and I was excited to meet the kids. It was interesting. Quite a few of the 23 in Grade 12 were what I would call "too cool for school". There were 2 groups that had a bit of attitude - some Korean boys and another group of girls.

Each homeroom teacher has a support teacher. Holly and I did a couple of "get to know you" activities and watched quite carefully. We were content to let them go so we could see how interacted with each other, as well as how they responded to both of us. Suffice to say, we weren't that impressed with what we saw. In my mind I was seeing a reasonably tough year with these guys.

We had another homeroom session ion the afternoon. I had been to watch the Grade 12's in a couple of their other sessions and had spoken to some of the other teachers, as well as senior management. Although it was generally positive, there were a few negatives so I decided I was going to give them a bit of a rark up. No shouting or ranting, just a nice calm but firm talking to. Mostly I spoke about being respectful to each other, their teachers and themselves and turning up on time. You know, "the usual school stuff". And they sat still and listened quietly. Some nodded their heads, while others dropped theirs and looked embarrassed. They left very quietly at the end.

Later I spoke to the IB co-ordinator and some of the other Grade 12 teachers. Over the course of the day they had learned that they were quite a way behind where they should be and they all had a massive workload in front of them if they were to catch up and get their diplomas. Basically, they were shitting themselves!

The next day I did a reflection activity with them to see what they had to say about their first day. There were a lot of positive comments, which was great but it made Holly and I feel quite bad for these guys. They said stuff like "the teachers spoke to us like we were people", "the new teachers seemed like they cared about us" and "I'm glad we have new teachers and they've kept the good ones from last year". These kids had obviously not had much support from most of their teachers last year. I asked a couple of kids about it and the comments were along the lines of "the teacher came in, wrote some page numbers on the board, said "there's your work" and then sat at their desks playing on their computers.

Anyway, things have moved along and we're getting a picture of what the students covered (or not!) last year. In the Senior school they do the IB Diploma in Grade 11 & 12 and the IGSCE in Grade 9 & 10. As they're both 2 year courses finding out what was done last year is obviously really important. Our roll is quite small which is not ideal for the school in the long term, but it's good for us as our classes are really small which means we won't so caught up with loads of marking:)

Our apartment is taking shape and now feels much more like a home. We got a second hand lounge suite and a book shelf thingy, which look great but poor Mel had a mission getting them home. The guy she organised to help turned up and said "7th floor? No you said 2nd floor" which is bollocks because she has the text to prove it. The woman we bought it off wasn't sympathetic either. Long story short, Mel got another (more helpful!) guy to help and she had to help carry part it of down 7 floors because it wouldn't fit in the lift. Poor bugger was knackered by the time I got home and has several sizeable bruises on her arms and legs. I felt stink about not being able to help carry the stuff. But I was able to help put it together and move it around.

I've run out stuff to say for the moment so I'll be off and will try to post more this week sometime.

Ciao for now!

TONE

Back from Thailand

We got back from Thailand late last night. It was kind of sad to leave Khao Lak, but that was tempered by not having to fly back into winter. Yay! Again Tilda was a trooper on the plane. She's teething at the moment so she's been pretty grumpy for the last 3 or 4 days. We try to give her a bottle when we take off to help her ears adjust to the change in air pressure. Unfortunately, boarding (then sitting & waiting for the laggers) coincided with her dinner time. Mel had made the milk in preparation and Tilda could see it. And she wanted it desperately, so she had a wee meltdown. Although it seemed like ages and ages, it was only probably only 20 minutes or so of waiting. But minutes seem like hours when you have a wailing baby sitting on your knee. Eventually we got moving and we could give Tilda the bottle and she quietened down straight away. For the first time in a year, she fell asleep in my arms:)

We had a pretty good time in Thailand. I managed to pick up a tummy bug before we left (dodgy cheesecake?) which wasn't cool. Some Imodium and a bland diet helped settle it down and the last night I could finally enjoy some proper food. And happily that coincided with BBQ Buffett night at the hotel:)

The place we stayed was the Le Meridien at Khao Lak which is about 80-odd km north of Phuket. Mel and I stayed there in 2005, when we were living in Thailand. The hotel is literally on the beach, facing the Andaman Sea. It had been badly damaged in the Boxing Day Tsunami and a lot of the staff died. We were there almost a year after and if you didn't know about the the Tsunami you probably wouldn't have seen a lot evidence of it besides defoliated trees. Anyway, it was great to be back there after 7 years and see that the place hadn't changed too much, because the setting is just magnificent.

See what I mean:) The staff were all really lovely and totally enthralled by Matilda. They all wanted cuddles with her. Sometimes she was obliging and other times not so much. I think she enjoyed the attention though:)

So for 6 days all we pretty much did was swim, get massages and snooze. Despite feeling ordinary for the first 3 days or so, it was really relaxing.

That'll do for the time.

Ciao

Getting Stuff Sorted

It's a little over 2 weeks since we arrived in Singapore and it's been pretty busy. Having to find a place to live, find furniture, get our work permits sorted and open bank accounts means we haven't really done any sightseeing or super fun stuff. It's actually been a little stressful at times. But we're getting there!

Looking for an apartment has been somewhat of a trial. We looked at 20 apartments in 3 days. We put in 2 offers and after some fairly drawn out & pretty frustrating negotiations we finally signed a lease on an apartment. The landlords are an elderly couple and I suspect that the apartment is part of their retirement plan. I could see their side to a point but it was stressful right up to the last. Anyhoo, we signed the agreement and moved in on Friday morning.

The main reason we chose this place is its setting. The complex is right next to a nature reserve called Bukit Batok. It's basically second generation jungle and it's right next to us. The day we came to look at the apartment I saw monkeys in the trees and on our first morning there I saw squirrels jumping about. Very cool!

Although the hotel was fine, it was good to have Tilda in her own room as we were getting tired of having sit outside in the corridor until she went to sleep. She has continued to be a wee trooper. She's not complained very much at all and when she has it's been with good reason. The apartment has tiled floors (as is the style in warm Asian countries) and Tilda took a little while to get used to the floors. There were a few crashes and quite a few tears. By the next day she'd got it figured out a bit better. There is a koi pond next to the pool and we can see it from our living room. Tilda loves seeing the fish and starts banging on the windows in excitement:)

One of the first things we had to do was get our resident passes. I cannot believe how painless this was! We had our letters from school, passports and photos. We rocked up at 2:30pm and handed everything over. It all had to be double checked by us, then signed. Last we had to have our thumb prints taken. No ink pads here - all done on a scanner! Once we were done the lady told us our cards would be ready in four business days. So four business days later I went back and picked up our brand spanking new resident passes. No doubt I spent more time in the taxi there and back than at the office!

The next day we went to a bank to open accounts. Again this was pretty painless. I reckon it took 45 minutes to open 3 bank accounts. And they were up and running straight away, complete with debit cards with our names. I used my card 25 minutes later to buy some picture hanging stuff.

Just to continue with the whole efficiency angle, the night before we moved we went to see about getting cable tv and the internet set up. This was at 8pm. I guess it took around an hour to complete the paperwork and the guy assured me it would be good to go the next day. And so it was. The only issue was me plugging cables in the wrong places!

Our apartment is partially furnished (i.e. washing machine, dryer, old tele and few other bits & bobs). Mel spent a bit of time online and we were able to get a bunch of really good stuff pretty cheap. A sideboard, chest of drawers, coffee table (all teak) & a dining setting for about $800. We hired a guy with a van to help pick up the stuff and move into our place. It took 2-3 hours all up and it was hot! Who knew teak weighed so bloody much? I was pretty knackered after that but it was all good.

I should point out that I'm writing this in a hotel in Thailand. We flew out on Sunday for 5 nights at a place Mel & I stayed at when we lived in Thailand so we could chill out before school starts. The flight to Phuket was short. We probably spent more time in the car coming to the hotel than in the air. It's really cool to come here again after 7 years to find the hotel not changed heaps. So since Sunday afternoon, we've not done much except swim and snooze:)

I reckon that's about it for time. I'll put some photos up soonish.

Later
Tone

We're in Singapore!

So we've been in Singapore for 4 days now. It's very warm, but after the rubbish weather on the day we left, that is totally ok!

We got into Singapore late Tuesday after a pretty good flight. Tilda was really good. She only grumbled a little on the flight and even slept for around 3 hours. We were lucky that there was a spare seat next to us so we could put Tilda between us. Once she fell asleep (on my arm) we could put her in the bassinet. When we tried before she was asleep she didn't like it as it was pretty small. Again she was great as we made our way through customs etc..

The hotel we're staying at is nice. The pool is good and so is the breakfast:) The staff are really friendly and very helpful. And they love Tilda! Each morning at breakfast, the waitresses make a big fuss over her and go out of their way to walk past our table so they can say "hello". Tilda obliges with big smiles. Actually, Tilda has become quite the star. Whenever we go into a restaurant everyone fusses and says "hello". She is loving the attention!

We started looking for an apartment on Wednesday afternoon. School has arranged for two agents to helps us. Sharon and Rachel drove us around on Wednesday and Thursday afternoon. They were so helpful and understanding, especially when it came to Tilda. And she was a trooper as well. She didn't complain at all about getting in and out of the car as we looked at around 16 places. We saw some nice places. One in particular we liked and put an offer in for it but we appear to have missed out. Sharon and Rachel have been really proactive on our behalf and are in touch regularly to update us. It looks like we need to look at some more places in the next couple of days.

We went to the Ministry of Manpower (or MOM) to get our Employment Pass stuff sorted. It was pleasantly not traumatic as we had expected. I think this was due to our experiences in Japan & Thailand. In Japan you had to have everything perfect or they'd send you away. And you could only go at certain times/days. Once I went too late and even though I was in line, they closed for lunch! In Thailand, things were somewhat haphazard and it might ok or not. The woman who looked after us was really helpful and explained everything well. So by Wednesday next week we should have our passes.

This is a picture I took from the pool floor and put together using a cool app called Autostitch.

Later:)

Leaving The Tron Part 2

I felt quite sad as we drove out of Hamilton yesterday. After 6 & half years, I have become quite attached to The Tron and more particularly the people I have met & worked with.

My farewell from Fraser was short & sweet, which was how I wanted it. A few people spoke and said some really nice things about me. I felt slightly embarrassed but really stoked as it's always nice to be acknowledged in front of your peers. I will miss Fraser. A lot! I worked with some outstanding educators who care deeply about the students they teach. And that makes the National's anti-teacher campaign all the more frustrating as they don't have any clue about how hard (most) teachers work and the feeling they have for the job. I always felt frustrated at the noises people made about Fraser when they found out I worked there. The conversation usually went something like this:

Them: so where do you teach, Tony?
Me: Fraser High.
Them: Ohh. Right. Umm...how is that?
Me: really good. I work with some great teachers and fantastic students.
Them: Really?

I know Fraser has a reputation and it is deserved to an extent. But every school has problem students. Many of us tend to get caught up by the trouble makers, which is kind of understandable as those students do take up a lot of our time. But it's really easy to forget about the good kids. And I worked with some amazing students at Fraser. I have no doubt that they will go on to do great things in the community and I feel really privileged to have had the opportunity to work with them.

My last post was pretty much just a list. The last week has been pretty full on and we were all knackered last night. Today has been pretty lazy:)

Our "Empty the liquor cabinet/farewell party was a great night. We had about 30 or 40 people from Mel's work and Fraser. It was awesome to have so many people come and say goodbye and share some laughs. And drink our alcohol:) It was worth it if only because we arranged to sell our car on the night, which took a huge weight off our shoulders!

On Saturday I was feeling a little shabby and it took a little while to get fired up. Mel & I went to the shipping company to discuss prices and pick up times. We had until Monday to get everything we needed/wanted into the boxes and get them sealed up. No pressure! The rest of the day was spent trying to do that, as well empty the house for the property manager's visit on Monday and get everything organised for our garage sale on Sunday morning. And we had to do that by around 5:30-6, so we could meet some friends at Speight's Ale House before the rugby.

We managed to stop work and have a quick feed before we headed off. We were able to get a park reasonably close the pub and found our friends inside. They had the Wallabies vs. Wales game on tele. Lots of cheers when Wales scored and took the lead. When the Wallabies scored again soon after I cheered & yelled a bit. Everybody was looking at me. Mel looked horrified. Then the bloke next to me said "what's that all about?". I said "Umm...I'm Australian". He looked at me and rolled his eyes and made noise that sounded like "pffft". I smirked and said "winners are grinners".

We headed off to the stadium and found our seats. I love going to Waikato Stadium because you get a really view from any point in the stadium. It was cool to see a couple trys scored right in front of us and Mel was quite excited by seeing SBW in the flesh. I was disappointed to see Ireland getting spanked, as I was hoping for a close game. Most of the action was up the other end in the second half, so the it got a little boring. Not too worry though, I spent most of the time looking at the score from the Collingwood vs. West Coast game in Melbourne which turned into a very tight contest. The Pies regained the lead with about 10 minutes to go. The score wouldn't update so I had no idea what was going on. I was pretty stoked when the Pies held on to win by 3 points! Also during the game I started getting texts from a mate asking about our fridge. By the end of the first half we had agreed on a price and arranged a pick up time for Sunday. This meant that we had got rid of all our big stuff. Yay!

We were up early on Sunday to get ready for the garage sale. The weather was pretty rubbish and unfortunately we didn't heaps of people coming to look, or more importantly, buy. We got to talking with one couple that came and ended up talking about our house and what we were planning to do with it. They came around again in the afternoon to have a look and were interested in buying but needed to do some calculations. Although it would been hilarious to have had a garage sale and end up selling our house, in the end they never got back to us. After the garage sale we packed up what was left into Mel's mum's car to take to the Op Shop. Then it was on to getting the house empty, which we managed to get done by about 2:00 Monday afternoon. At 2:30 we were sitting at Mel's mum's place absolutely knackered but feeling reasonably happy, if somewhat claustrophobic due to all the stuff surrounding us. Now we just needed to get the boxes for Singapore taped up and reading to be picked up by the shipping guys. The guy arrived at 5pm and by 5:30 all the boxes were gone.

It was fantastic to see Singhy, Shika and their kids on Sunday afternoon. Their wee girl Shyla it a real cutie and Tilda loved playing with their boy Ishan. It was so funny to watch them running around in circles. I haven't heard Tilda squeal & giggle so much before. Or fall on her butt:)

On Monday I took Tilda to Little Feet for her last day. After I left her there, I went back to Fraser and caught up with a few people who hadn't made it on Friday. I also managed to fit in a last cuppa with the lads at interval which was cool. I think they were happy with that. While I didn't get to tease Gordy about the footy on Saturday, I really enjoyed being able to talk about sport in general with the lads one last time. Before I picked Tilda up from childcare I went to Browsers to try and sell some books which was hard as I hate giving up books. Especially as I watched they woman sort through them and in my mind I was going "bought that here, and that one, and that one" etc. etc.. The cheque at end kind of made up for it. A little. While I was off doing this, Mel was talking to the property manager who came to take pictures of our newly empty house and discuss a rental price.

Tuesday was Tilda's last day at Space. Mel and her mum went off to that and I went to get a massage to ease the aching muscles. It helped a bit, but I was still sore. Especially in the "squat muscle" area. We also got rid of our car. It was sad to do but the money will be helpful when we start setting up our apartment in Singapore. The rest of the day/evening was spent packing our packs and trying to leave Jill's house in some sort of decent state.

Although we planned to leave Hamilton on Tuesday, we all knew that it wasn't really going to happen. We spent the morning trying finish off the packing and sorting the stuff we're leaving behind into some kind of order so Jill's house wasn't a bomb site anymore. I took one last box of stuff to the Salvation Army and went to visit my former boss who'd recently had her first baby. It was awesome to see Nance and meet her little girl Makaia who's another real cutie! When I got back we packed up the cars with as much stuff as we could fit. Both cars were filled to the gunnels!

And then we headed off to Auckland with a quick stop in Mercer to drop off some stuff we'd sold on TradeMe. Unfortunately we'd left Hamilton a little later than we planned and we ran into the back of the afternoon traffic on the North Western Motorway. It took about 30 minutes to get from the on ramp at Point Chevalier to Lincoln Road. As we stopped and started I was looking at the traffic around us. I was amazed at how many vehicles only had one person it them. No wonder there's so much traffic on the roads!

So from here. We repack our bags so that we can make the most of our baggage allowance. We'll try to sell a few more things on TradeMe. Hopefully we can take Jill out for dinner to say "thanks" for helping us so much before we all leave. I guess that's it for a bit.

Ciao:)

Leaving the Tron!

So, now we're in Auckland. Well, actually were at Mel's mum & dad's place near Kumeu. It's been busy week this one!

Wednesday - Geo field trip to Rotorua; packing/cleaning.
Thursday - Farewells at Fraser; packing/cleaning.
Friday - Empty the liquor cabinet/farewell party; no packing cleaning.
Saturday - Hungover; visit moving company, organise stuff for garage sale, moving stuff out of our house, meet friends from Auckland at pub before rugby, get stared at by punters when I cheer for the Wallabies when they score a try, go to rugby & see the All Blacks spank Ireland 60-0 (I spent most of the second half keeping an eye on the Collingwood vs. West Coast score)
Sunday - Garage sale at 8am, finish moving stuff out of our house, cleaning the house, sell fridge (thanks Matty & Liv!), finish packing boxes for Singapore, Singhy & Shika visit - meet Shyla (cutie!)& watch Tilda & Ishan run around in circles for 20 minutes, giggling their heads off:)
Monday - Tilda's last day at Little Feet, goodbyes to Fraser people who couldn't make it on Friday night, last cuppa with the lads, drop books off at Browsers, old car seats to Plunket, boxes to Singapore taped up & picked up, property manager visits.
Tuesday - Tilda's last day at Space, sell car (thanks Angela & Peter), finish packing bags.
Wednesday - Last minute packing, one more box of stuff to the op shop, visit Nance & see wee Makaia (another cutie!), load cars & head up to Auckland, get ready to sell last few things on TradeMe.

I think we're going to take it easy tomorrow as we're all pretty knackered. I'll have some more to say in the next day or two.

Later:)