phew!! glad to have survived a long tiring week (make that TWO tiring weeks!) which is so typical of life in my workplace.. Granted, there were times when I felt like turning blue from the hectic pace of life in the past two weeks...but then again, a girl's gotta do what a girl's got to do.....

so here's a snapshot of why i've been occupied these past two weeks:

i) benchmarking trip (plus shopping) to langkawi!

this was ultimately the most fun thing out of all the things i'd been busy with. fun, because first of all, we only had to pay a token sum of rm50, since the rest of the fare was paid for by some very generous individuals.

our air asia flight landed at the langkawi airport at around 1pm. a fairly uneventful flight- but i had a hard time believing that the plane was about to land at the langkawi airport. my poor best friend lost her luggage, no thanks to some irresponsible individuals...so we had to wait for a while before making our way to our tour bus.

after checking in and unpacking, we made our way to go island hopping at Pantai Tengah. It was a really fun outing, even though I'm afraid of water, primarily because I can't swim. We went island hopping, to three of Langkawi's more popular islands: Pulau Dayang Bunting, Pulau Singa Besar, and Pulau Beras Basah.

The trip to Pulau Dayang Bunting was memorable for many reasons. First of all, because of the long trek up the many flights of stairs before we finally reached the lake from which the island got its name (or is it the other way around?). Some of us went swimming in the lake, some went boating, and some even took home some of the water at the lake (since legend has it that the water can help those who are trying to conceive). Initially I didn't want to swim in the water, but ended up dipping in the wading pool which they had prepared for the kids (so no risk of drowning there, lucky me!)

On the way back, though, one of the macaques on the island snatched the plastic bag in which i'd put my loafers.thankfully, i was able to bribe him with orange juice, with the assistance of some dear mat sallehs who were also touring the island.

Pulau Singa Besar is known as the place where the eagles would fly in to get food. we didn't get to stop at the island though- we were only allowed to watch the eagles as they soared and dived to catch the fish.

Pulau Beras Basah was quite beautiful, too. didn't go swimming there though, cos i didn't want to get my jeans wetter that they already were. word of advice, though, be careful while swimming in the beautiful waters of this island, especially at low tide, since you might hurt yourself with the corals and other creatures in the water.

the good thing about island hopping is that they'd snap your picture as soon as you descend the stairs to go island hopping. so after coming back to shore from the trip, you can claim your picture for rm 10. lucky that my picture was nice, so i wasn't embarrassed to buy it. :)

Dinner that night was fun, at a place called Bamboo Restaurant. the food there was divinely delicious, among the best i've ever tasted so far. we had crab, ikan bakar, prawns, chicken, tomyam, and a lot of other delicious food. the more interesting part came after that- we went shopping! - the guys included. so a lot of people carted off tons of chocolate, comforter, flatware, nonstick pan, pretty much everything that was on sale at the shop.

We went on our benchmarking trip the next day at mrsm langkawi (which was ranked the top performing school in the 2007 spm!) it was amazing to find out that their schedule wasn't as packed as ours was (and still is!) what i can say is that the school advocates student autonomy. They do have remedial classes for weak students for all subjects, every night; while the other students are provided with enrichment activities.

ii) form 4 orientation week / makan beradab 1

the form 4s registered two days after we came back from langkawi. yours truly was in charge of makan beradab, which went pretty ok mostly, except for the part where there were more guests invited than initially agreed upon. it's all good though, perhaps this'll be a lesson to everyone to always keep our eyes peeled for details..

iii) prefects' installation

ok, this hasn't happened yet, but it was one of the reasons why i was going bonkers last week. i was filling in for a colleague who was away on a meeting, and suddenly i was put in a spot when i the person requested that i be the emcee for the actual event since "i was doing such a good job". yeah, right. truth was, all the emceeing duties (three in the past week alone!) was getting to me. and, plus, it wouldn't be good if the audience wasn't going to look forward to my emceeing after this!


no pictures this time, thoug, since i haven't uploaded them yet. next post, probably... :)


whatever it is, my working life is nothing without 60-hour weeks (which is so atypical of a teacher!) but i enjoy every minute of it, since it's productive use of my time, anyway.