Our first PTM at Caden's Primary School

We have to recognise the fact that Primary education should be taken seriously, even at P1, as this is the stage where the school builds a good foundation for the children to progress on their secondary stage.

Caden's first PTM at Mee Toh school happened on the 24th May and we took half day to attend a scheduled 10 minutes session with his form teacher.

The wait was fairly long, although our timeslot to meet the teacher was due, the earlier session with another group of parents happened to be highly engaging. I was thinking to myself.. what's there to be discussed which would have taken half an hour at P1 PTM? (we were earlier at the school 15 mins before our timeslot and had to wait for another 10 mins after our timeslot - so the earlier group took at least 25mins with the form teacher).

Mdm Suzie came across as a warm teacher. She commented that Caden is a shy boy at class, doesn't speak loudly during lesson but able to communicate well with the teachers when need to. He had also played his role as the team lead well in term 2, coming across as very responsible and shown good leadership in his team.

She went on telling us that Caden can be careless in his work (which we are aware too) and would like to see more improvement on that area. When we asked where does he stand in terms of academic, she said "He's average"

AVERAGE?? At the point in time, my heart dropped. Average? Despite us putting in that level of effort with him and he turns out to be average in class? I thought he was doing not too bad, based on the test results that he brought back in term 2.. so at that point, I was thinking, wah, this school's students' standards are really high!

Then Mdm Suzie went on to show us his school portfolio, where they have filed in his compositions (creative writing modules) and show and tell scripts. She then shared with us his test results (which we were aware too) and then said that, " for Math, he's in Band 1", "for English, he's also in Band 1, but at the borderline".. we then found out that actually the definition of Band 1 is the top tier group in his class, so was finally relieved that least, what we have done so far, are on the right track.

His personal portfolio..

As we left the school, ,my ah lou also commented that he was shocked when Mdm Suzie told us that Caden falls under the 'average' category when his test results, we thought, are not too bad.. so her words really caught both of us by surprise. This school really advocate that we need to continuously improve the children's academic standards for their benefit.

Our 2nd hand Yamaha Piano

The piano is finally here in our house and it was after 2 months of search. We had a hard time hunting down a reasonably priced 2nd hand piano and found this M108 at Emmanuel and Sons. I had asked to reserve this piece when Mr Kwan told me that he had just recieved the stock 2 weeks back. Emmanuel and Sons do not have a lot of 2nd hand pieces in their shop so we had to put our request with Mr Kwan and call him each week to check if there's any suitable stocks. This cost us $2.5k but thought it was quite reasonably priced since these days, you hardly can find a Japanese made Yamaha model and the sounds do sound quite nice to our ears.

We have deliberated on this purchase for the last 2 years, was worried that money will go to waste if Caden's interest in music diminished after he starts primary school. To-date, he asked to continue with his Yamaha Junior Music Course eventhough there are times when he was really not persistently practising.

This afternoon, Caden was excited with the arrival of the piano and kept playing on it.. I wonder how long will his interest last. I became more interested in picking up playing, and attempted a few simple pieces with Caden's 2nd year book.

Mummy's Day treat at Sushi Tei

Ah lou brought us to Sushi Tei on Mummy's day for lunch and here are some of the funny faces my boys had made

Mummy's Day

This morning, on our way to Berries class, Ethan surprised me by asking, "Mummy, today is Mummy's Day right?" I told him yes, and he asked," so later after school can go buy your present and my present!". His present??

Trainers Award

I received my first award in the Bank after almost 11 months of service yesterday. It was an event which I looked forward to (not extremely anxiously) in getting a direct recognition from the Group CEO (which is quite a privilege to me). This is a trainers award (for being a specialist trainer), which was given to staff whom had conducted >7 hrs of training sessions in a year and got a relatively good rating from the participants.

For a period of time, I was quite motivated with a MOE poster that I saw in Raffles Place MRT station. That slogan goes "our teachers make a difference. what do you make?" It hit me because there I was, after a tired day of work, on my way back home knowing that it's going to be an hour train ride, thinking that I have worked so hard, just to have a secured future. Being a teacher, educator, certainly makes much more impact to the generation that is going to take over us. I thought I would probably really try out doing this when I decided to quit this current role.

So, for a period of time, when people asked me, "so, when are you going to rejoin SCB?" I responded that it's not going to happen, if I decided to leave my current organisation, I would have completely decided to exit from the banking industry - and move on to be an educator. (to qualify, perhaps this is my current sentiments, which can be changed again given few years down)

At the ceremony, after the speech from our Group Head of HR, she reminded us that it was not easy being a trainer in our specialised area. To be a successful trainer, one has to have a good grasp of knowledge and be able to pass on the same set of understanding to our fellow colleagues. She recognised the fact that each of us had to put in additional hours to prepare our courses which is required over and above our existing BAU tasks. Her speech was simple, but yet, sent through a clear point that we have helped the organisation in one way or another, to train fellow colleagues and in turn, added value to the organisation.

At that point, it dawned onto me that I can continue with this organisation for now, given that there are so many opportunities to conduct trainings, briefings, and even management presentations, it's a good training ground for me to continue to polish up and gather more conviction that I do like teaching and be able take this as a full time professional role.


As part of the reward for being a specialist trainer, the Bank threw in 2 movie tickets for us to watch 'Avengers' which is a great treat.. And after the show, I changed my superheroic character 'like' from Iron Man to Captain America!