Week 1 passed peacefully and meaningfully =)
Presently, I am accustoming well to my new classes, and I must say that I can genuinely see that the students are trying to get accustomed to this new presence (that would be me) in their class.

Anyway, I will not divulge too much about the classes but the students have been great and I look forward to a wonderful time with them.

Yesterday was the Singapore Youth festival held at the existing National Stadium at Kallang, perhaps for the last time. It will be torn down very soon and the entire area will be redeveloped into a Sports Hub.

The cold concrete stonework of the stadium belies the countless beautiful memories that flowered there.

We arrived at Tg Rhu carpark at around 3.15pm. The journey was pretty uneventful. Upon disembarking the bus, it was really, so to say, "people mountain people sea"!
Students in all colors of their uniform were practically everywhere. I think TV mobile also lose. Haaa... just crapping.

Yeah, after that, it was a relatively long trek to the stadium from the carpark. The trip was made worse by the dusty environment and the hot glaring sun. It was pretty chaotic and we just practically went with the flow. After squeezing through everywhere, we finally got to the stadium! Shade at last! Well it was more waiting there but at least it was windy and shady. =)

After what seems like an eternity, we finally got to our seats and proceeded to sweat it out. Lol... it was HOT lar! The parade has not started and the emcee was trying to psyche up the crowd by urging the audiences to sing some songs. The atmosphere was pretty charged up I guess. (What else do you expect from tens of thousands of easily excitable students?!)

Our students were divided into 2 seating areas due to space constrains but the locations were rather close to each other. Upon settling down the students, we proceeded to pass them bottles of water. Don't ask me where we got them. Details are not forthcoming. Lol..

In any case, the parade formed up and the uniform groups marched in.


I was pretty surprise that there was a gun salute for the Prime Minister since I did not expect the uniform groups to be firing blanks. Mr Jimmy was busy trying to take good shots of our students for the school web and in the process I secretly took a picture of him in action! But I shan't post it here. Respect for privacy yar ;)

After the march past, the invited bands from Malaysia and Indonesia performed for the audiences but it was too soft since their contingent was rather small. They were more of playing for the PM and the VIPs. Oh well, on a brighter note, that leaves the rest of us free to amuse ourselves by commenting on what we SEE rather than HEAR. An exercise on creativity I must say.

Then came the highlights of the event. The 3 competing bands! They are in order of appearance Tanjong Katong, Deyi and Bowen Secondary. The coveted awards of Best Band Major and Best Display Band were up on the line and I must say that all 3 bands put up fantastic performances though as with all competition, there can only be one winner. As it is, The band major award went to Deyi while the display band award went to Tanjong Katong. My personal choice was Bowen but then again, I'm not the judge. Haa...

I actually have some videos of the parade but its of too low res to put up and finding a hosting site is troublesome. Yeah, so thats it. After the awards, we sang the National Anthem and left the stadium after some time. I really miss the feeling of singing the National Anthem at the stadium...

On the way back, I gave my 2A2 some biscuits and water to drink! Haa... those hungry students derserved it. Lucky I came prepared. It had been a very long day for all of us but I must say that personally, it was a meaningful and fruitful day... I had a good chat with Mr Jimmy on the trip back to school. The rest is history...