The school is Value-Added this year - Bronze, with a star. And another star for the Arts performances - SYF Central Judging. We are the best in Bedok - we appeared on the Express charts this year.

I don't know how the current batch is going to fill such big shoes.

One of my 064E1 students in MJC managed to go to the Perimeter Institute's Modern Physics summer school in Canada. One of my 054E1 students was also successful last year. 50 places were reserved for Canadians and 50 for the rest of the world. 3 were from Singapore, I think.

This reminds me of one of my students who just came back from Imperial College on an A*STAR scholarship doing Physics.

This holiday is not shaping up as one... This is Week 2 and I still have marking and admin. I have a course on Monday and Tuesday. I need to be ready for Term 3 by next Tuesday, or I will have no holiday at all. This calls for a lot of work over this weekend. I have another course from 18 to 20 June.

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.