22 February 2012

Greetings from my sick bed



Just thought I’d poke my head in here again to see how y’all are doing.

I MISS HOME! So if you are reading this and are located anywhere that relates to my home, my home-town, or my home-country, then I MISS YOU! (And that includes my pets, who can read too, evident by their recent explorations into Social Networking)

Where have I been all this time, you ask?

Well, if you really want to know, I’ve been depriving you of my Singaporean experience on purpose, to not only irritate you, but to also reward you in the end with a more enriching account of my life here. See how the two go hand-in-hand? (This is how I deal with my students on a daily basis).

You’ll thank me later because now that so much time has passed, you’ll have the benefit of learning about my experiences in neat little organized packages of just the nitty-gritty, by which I mean, EVERY SINGLE STINKING DETAIL OF MY LIFE, but all in retrospect. I can now sort all of my experiences into categories like “Food in Singapore” and sub-categories like “Part A: Fruit in Singapore” down to “What I do in my free time in Singapore” (Here's to hoping that soon there will be enough meat in that section to warrant its own category.)

Ok, it’s true, it’s not as fun as getting to experience things with me in real time, but unfortunately the only thing that has had the ability to occur soon after something interesting happens to me is SLEEPAGE, and the occasional (and often regrettable) outburst on Facebook. You see, pretty much all of the interesting things that have happened to me revolve around high-stress events that are generally not too good for one’s blood pressure. This also explains why I'm fat.

Are you getting nervous?

Good!

Now that I’ve gotten you all riled up and excited I think I’m going to sign off again,  to make sure my irritation quota has been filled for today. Bye!



Miss Murata's dabblings into PREZI

I decided to try my hand at PREZI "zooming"/motion-sickness inducing presentations! I have to say that I really love Powerpoint's flexibility and intuitiveness, but I figured this tool would be useful in helping students see history in more realistic "proportions", seeing as the country of Singapore is aptly nicknamed "tiny red dot." (And to all you real academicians out there, please do not whack me for representing the world in the way I did, I had no choice! The Prezi Toolbar seemed to have leanings towards the West :P)



Caption: An over-simplified, perhaps, rendition of the world circa the 1860s to 1930s. Chapter 5 is sadly a very short chapter in the students' textbook, with the sole purpose of showing students how major world events came to influence Singapore's inevitable involvement in WWII. It's a pity I can't spend more time on each of these other events -- The Great Depression? WWI? Industrial Revolution? So much juice there, ahhh! Oh well. When you're on Singapore time, you have no time.




(Above: Worksheets meant to accompany the presentation/discussion. I know it's pretty self-indulgent (or just plain teacher-y?) of me to post my lessons here but I'M PRETTY DARN PROUD of this one considering I made it all in one go whilst sick in bed with a stomach virus! So hooray!)

28 January 2012

I'M STILL HERE and I'm still alive, too!

I'm slowly but surely uploading all the items from my SD card onto the internet for your viewing pleasure! 
Check out the link below for some Singaporean imagery.

IMG_1769