I went for the NCC Specialists' Course today. Many teacher officers view taking students to such activities as just a formality and a chore. Although they are there, they do not follow the students. As a result, they learn nothing. They just spend their time at the canteen, or read a book, or do work.

Worse, some teachers don't even come!

For me, I ensure that I always learn something when I take students out to HQ activities. The activities themselves, the content. The organization of the activity. Talking to the other officers and learning something from them.

But I'm glad that there are some teachers who actually function as officers when they are at HQ activities. They lead and teach the cadets, function as safety officers, etc. And they are enthusiastic.

The amount of workload I have now is incredible. I have 3 classes of Physics and 3 classes of English. And 4 of them are O Level graduating classes. Do you have any idea how many test classes that is?! We have 3 tests a semester per subject! That's 18 tests per semester! That's more than one test a week! Excluding normal marking!

And I just found out that I'm marking 4 classes of Physics and 3 classes of English for the Mid-Years! This is just mind-boggling!

The O Level results came out today. My 064E1 has a bumper crop of 6 distinctions and above: 17 of them. The school has 23 in total, so much that they did not give any honour to those with 5 distinctions this year. There were 2 with 8 distinctions. One had an L1R5 of 6, and a few had 8.

The Physics MSG is 3.0, with 5 A1s and 1 failure out of a class of 40.

23 (actually 24) of them were value-added, 8 were value-minus, 8 were value-neutral. Much better than last year.

I gave my 2 S.H.E. tickets to 2 4E3 girls. Some 4E1 girls also wanted and even 1 3E1 girl, but I did not think they were suitable. I wanted to give the tickets to 2 girls that I teach who will really appreciate the concert, who will not waste the tickets. Some boys had asked for them but I think I should stay true to the original intention of the lucky draw and give it to girls only. And I should not give it to free-loaders who only want the free tickets. The boys just want to see the girls at the concert!

At first, they all wanted to draw lots. Then the 4E3 girls said they wanted to prove that they were true fans by presenting to me S.H.E. facts. In the end, I decided to whittle down the group to true S.H.E. fans first, and then draw lots if no clear winner could be seen. Drawing lots only would encourage free-loaders to put in their chance -- most of the 4E1 girls were indeed free-loaders, I discovered.

In the end, I had 2 4E3 and 1 4E1 S.H.E. girls who really knew their stuff. All 3 were not well-to-do, and had not attended such concerts before as they could not afford it. But the 4E3 girl stood out. She even ran an S.H.E. forum as the admin. So I decided to give the tickets to her. They thought I had taken part in a candy lucky draw. When they saw the contest flyer for ******* products, they said that if they had known, they would have taken part too.

I collected my S.H.E. tickets at Jurong West today. It was really far away! Anyway, when I went there to collect the tickets, the girl before me was from 02S14 in VJC. She wasn't my student, but I did lectures, so that's why she could recognize me. Well, I have so many students...

Anyway, I drew the tickets randomly and I got 2 $98 tickets! (Instead of $68 ones...) And I got 1 set of goody bags too. I had thought that the goody bags were other separate prizes. The bags are quite expensive actually. There were 6 packs of ******* products, worth $27 I guess. That's like 2 to 3 months worth... And some skincare samples and cute ******* notebook and pen sets.

Anyway, when I got to my car, the ex-VJ girl asked for a ride to Jurong Point, so I gladly obliged. It seems that she is an NTU student and only 2 of her classmates got into Medicine. She likes S.H.E. quite a lot. That's why she was very happy when she heard she had won. She asked me if I liked S.H.E., and I replied that I did not particularly. And so would I be going with someone? Er... Probably not. A bit too old for this, I replied. I'll probably give it away to someone.

I found out today that I had won the ******* S.H.E. lucky draw. I won 2 S.H.E. tickets. Hmm... I'm a little too old for this sort of thing. I'll probably give them away to 2 of my Sec 4 girls.

They had been contacting me for a few days, but I was too busy to take any calls. Today they sms-ed, so that's how I knew. I'm collecting them tomorrow.

The NCC camp just finished today. We had a Meet-the-Parents session too, with a buffet lunch to boot. The lunch was a bit expensive as there were too few dishes. Oh well, can't expect much from $5 per pax.

The camp attendance was not very high. And Part B and C's Total Defence tests have not been done yet. And the camp absentees' drill and IFC tests? At this rate, we may not get Bronze next year!

I think we must improve our training. We must position and train ourselves as a SpecOps outfit.