At one of the hallways at the Old Governtment House, University of Auckland

Today was supposed to be my day off, seeing as how I only have classes on Tuesdays and Fridays. On Wednesdays, I have a weekly housekeeping session as well as a 2-hour Professional Development (ProDev) course with Sheryll, but they don’t actually apply as ‘classes’. We, IPBArians, have been invited to a morning tea with representatives from the Malaysian Ministry of Education (Pn. Kartini and… Ok, I forgot the other official’s name. Bad me =O).Basically, we introduced ourselves to them, and listened to speeches by John et al.

It was during this meeting that we were informed of the new B.ed TESOL cycle (the third and supposedly last cycle). The next cycle is going to be a big one (more than 500 will be sent overseas for cohort 1 and 2 of the new cycle every year), and 90% of them are going to be primary school students. Compared to us, 130 students, that’s going to be a lot to manage. I wish our coordinators luck on dealing with a relatively larger number of students.

After the intros and speeches, it was time for the awaited morning tea. I admit that I’m one of those money-oriented ones attending the meeting for free morning tea + lunch. Not working this year, so money… Yeah.

There were fruits, scones, French macaroons, orange juice, tea and coffee. Seriously, the macaroons were awesome when taken with creamy butter filling (I didn’t take the raspberry/strawberry ganache). I ate two and brought one home. Now that I think about it, I should have taken some more (LOL).

Library: The book by Widdowson that I want is currently on loan until the first week of April. Grr. I’m tempted to just recall the book, but since I can still make do without it, I won’t be too hasty. I borrowed a few books on Linguistics, language in general and the teaching of English and literature in the classroom. They look so interesting that I couldn’t resist.

Fun times: Atie visited mine and Mira’s apartment this evening. We had fun playing NDS and listening to oldies, which of course include our infamous Malaysian jiwang karat and rock kapak songs. Hahahaha. No, really, please don’t ask. Finally, someone who likes those awesome songs from the 90′s!

Skype woes: On another matter altogether, I’ve been having bad experience with Skype lately. Skypeout and video calls have been extremely poor in quality. Bloody volcanoes. Bloody storm. Bloody backward-technology broadband. Why is Skype the only one affected? Hurrrr.

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