So, as previously mentioned, I’d been assigned to the school my dad’s teaching at for my pre-NIE School Experience.

I didn’t make any particular effort to hide this fact from anyone, but my dad hid the family photos on his desk the day before I arrived, triggering some suspicion from a colleague (who happens to be an ex-student of my mom’s, and I do resemble my mom quite a bit). Somewhere along the way, though, most of the staff have figured it out. It’s not very hard when we arrive in the same car every morning, and I sometimes drive my dad’s car home if my mom needs a ride somewhere (although a colleague did ask him, with a bit of concern, “Did you see that trainee teacher take your laptop and drive your car off?!”).

Now, however, some of the students seem to know too — especially this one kid who works at his family’s restaurant nearby (highly recommended, it’s that cze char / seafood restaurant at one end of the block where Casuarina Roti Prata is). He must’ve seen me there with my dad before or something.

Earlier this week, he randomly asked me: “Are you Mr Soon’s son?”

“What other surname do you expect my father to have?”

It’s my third-to-last day at the school, though, and an altogether rather pleasant experience (apart from the late-night lesson planning due to my usual procrastinating habits). At the very least, it’s been quite educational, and maybe NIE classes won’t be so boring if I have real experiences to relate them to.

No more: the “links for” posts just weren’t entertaining enough, even by my low standards. Also, it hurts my addled brain to have to think of whether I really want this link I’m bookmarking to appear on my blog… Still, though, del.icio.us: best bookmarking service ever.

The “School Experience” goes well, in general, but given that it’s my last week here, I’ve given up on really preparing lesson plans or anything and settled on just making shit up in class. Hmm. Another failed experiment, perhaps.

My favourite sitcom Scrubs finally got nominated for the Emmys — Best Comedy and Best Comedy Lead Actor for Zach Braff. Granted, the former is really only because heavyweights Friends, Sex and the City and Frasier have finally gone away, but it’s nice to see this smartly-written comedy finally get some attention it deserves. The latter nomination is probably an extension of Braff’s success in Garden State, but it’s a start. Pity John C. McGinley (the absurdly sarcastic Dr. Cox) didn’t get nominated in the supporting comedy actor category, instead losing out to hacks like Will and Grace‘s Sean Hayes. Seriously, what the hell is that?!

Other random thing: Baybeats tomorrow will actually feature Concave Scream, my favourite local band. Holy shit! I thought they’d disappeared years ago. I remember buying Erratic in JC, and I couldn’t get enough of their post-punk-tense-rock (or however you’d describe it — somewhat New Model Army, I say). After I got back from the US, Eek and I spent hours trying to locate their MP3s because I’d lost my original CD. Finally, I managed to order it again through mp3.com before it shut down, and also found their next album, Three, at Audiophile. Excellent stuff still.

Somewhat drained from the week, really. One has to take the random pleasing things as they show up…

Only tangentially related to this post, but interesting nonetheless, are various online responses to Szemeng’s letter to the ST forum about social mobility and the scholarships system in Singapore: two from From a Singapore Angle ([1], [2]), another from Zuco.

As possibly part of his statistic (that 75% of scholarship-holding Singaporean students at Stanford who don’t live in HDB flats), I feel that I should demonstrate how truly ungrateful I am for having had the chance to study overseas for free by being able to remind myself of how long more I’m bonded for. The new countdown timer on the sidebar shows exactly how many days I have left until my bond is up, and assuming a base value of $500,000 for the bond with interest (I think that’s what was stated on my contract, higher than usual because of NIE), how much I’d have to pay back if I broke it right this second.

If anyone else wants to use it, here’s the pluggable PHP code to put in your HTML. The two end dates are for those who’ve completed NS — I’m assuming 10 months of it counted towards the bond, although is only the case if the bond is completed.

<?php
$end_date_break = "20 June 2011 00:01";
$end_date_endure = "20 August 2010 00:01";
$start_date = "20 June 2005 00:01";
$bond = 500000;

$seconds = strtotime($end_date_endure) - strtotime("now");
$hours = $seconds / 3600;
$days = floor($hours / 24);
echo $days . " days and \$";
$total = strtotime($end_date_break) - strtotime($start_date);
$seconds2 = strtotime($end_date_break) - strtotime("now");
$remaining = $seconds2 / $total * $bond;
echo number_format($remaining, 2, '.', ',') . " away from freedom\n";
?>

The depressingly large debt I seem to have signed myself into aside, it’s mildly amusing to keep refreshing the page to see the bond value go down by a few cents. Edit: Stupid blogging software, "smartening" all the damn quotes. Gah!

Actually, the real reason I thought about coding that little snippet up? A good friend is moving on from being bonded to hopefully much greener pastures. Good luck, you.

So the one(ish — I didn’t have any classes last Tuesday and Thursday) week in NIE is over, and I’ve been bored out of my mind so much that I’ve racked up 3MB of GPRS usage surfing the web, checking email and using instant messaging (AIM/ICQ/MSN) services on the cellphone while in class. The instructors seem nice enough and really do teach rather well, but they don’t seem to have very much interesting subject matter to work with.

Next stop: four-week “Teaching Experience” in school. The Teacher Training Unit apparently decided it’d be amusing to post me to the school my dad teaches at. Very funny, guys. Can’t complain, though… free ride to work in the morning, and it’s only a few bus stops away, anyway, so I can rush home quickly. Since we look nothing alike, my dad and I have decided not to tell anyone about the connection (though it’d seem mighty suspicious for anyone noticing me driving my dad’s car off every now and then).

Nothing worth complaining about. Ask me again in a month (fuckin’ flag day for NIE orientation?! Fuck!).

Update on life:

• ORD tomorrow (!!!), brought forward from the 24th. The countdown timer’s gone, having served its function, but…
• Work starts Monday, and the even more depressingly long work-off-the-bond countdown begins. The length of this one’s too intimidating to make a countdown timer for it.
• Took a secondary-level Math test for future NIE Math teachers — passed, thankfully, but I’m sure barely so. How the hell did I know all this stuff 9 years ago?
• By passing the test, I don’t have to go for the Math “content upgrading module” next week — wah, like Army like that. Pass already get two days off. Can’t complain, really, who else starts work with two paid days of break?
• Week after that, month-long attachment in schools. This could mean trouble.
• Way too much poker on weekends. Quote: “We’ve been playing poker like everyday!!!” — i.e., every time we meet up on weekends — “No lah, we didn’t play Sunday through Thursday…” Oh, my brain hurts.
• Uhhh… not much else, really. This is why I don’t mention the personal life much, it bores even me.

I’m sure there’ll be more nonsense coming up.

Just one more thing I need to mention…

ORD loh!!!!!

How to tell when poker night’s gone on for way too long: while driving home, I saw quite a number of people doing their morning jogs. Not nearly as bad as in my final quarter at school, when the fast food morning staff recognised my group at the drive-through because we’d always be programming till dawn then getting hungry, but… close enough.

Two more weeks of this nonsensical life-schedule before I go to “school” (or work, loosely defined), though. Making the most out of it, I suppose.

Darth Vader Made Me Cry
A wonderful little tale about how evil the Imperial Dark Lord truly is.

I quite enjoyed ROTS. Peter David has a review that neatly summarises what I liked about Episode III (and, true to form, quotes Python on that one amusingly Holy Grail-esque bit). He also writes about how Episode IV matches up from the end of Episode III here, which makes me sorely want to rush out and buy the DVD box set. Argh.

No, not going home yet — stopping over in Korea for five days before finally making it back to Singapore on Monday. I do leave from SFO in about eight hours, though, and I’m tired of packing so I’ll blog a little.

What’s gone on since the last post:

Went with Tansuwan to Castle Rock State Park in the South Bay for a 4.7 mile hike. Reading the description on the page before we left, we were told the hike was “moderate” and that “a trekking pole (or two) is definitely recommended.” Trekking poles? Two trekking poles?! Also, “If you stop and sit on this rock, or any other, be careful not to fall off the side of the hill!” Woo! Fun!

The 1000-mile elevation change was definitely tiring, but the weather was great. Here’s a small selection of pictures:

View of the hills from the path

Blue hills, great day

Must I really climb up there

Not much else, really — more weekend ridiculousness in various bars and clubs around the city, some sightseeing and general wandering around the city. On the way to the MOMA with some friends, we passed by some storm troopers outside the Sony Metreon.

Can I see your ticket, please

Ah, and there was Vegas, of course. I may have been back from there for more than 30 hours by now, but I’m still not certain I’ve fully recovered from the weekend. This trip was with the drawgroup (most of it, anyway), so things didn’t bode well for my liver from the very start. My last two trips were relatively sane, considering the company: once with JC friends, the types who are substantially less likely to develop serious alcoholism problems than those I went with this time, and another time with family.

This time, there was an unreasonable amount of gambling, and an equally unreasonable amount of drinking. I ended up down a little at the blackjack tables, but what I lost more than paid for the free drinks. I think I averaged about ten drinks a night, not that I could really count by the end of each night. And by “end of the night” I actually mean “8am in the morning”, which was when we tried to stumble back to the suite at the New Frontier hotel without getting hit by cars or puking all over the morning joggers. Who the hell goes to Vegas to jog in the morning on the strip?

So that’s all I have for this (part of the) trip. I realised that I actually started blogging on stupidchicken.com a few days before I left here after graduation to go back to NS. Feels nothing like that now, of course (ORD loh!!!, almost), but I’m sure I’ll miss all these crazy drunkard friends all over again after I go.