Learning to Teach... In the Jungle...

So what better way to get inspiration for a blog on [mis]education, than to sit in the very heart of education and learning, the computer lab at NIE?

Well, actually I can think of tons of better places, but since my laptop is not hooked up to the Internet yet, this will have to do. :p

Yes, it is the first week of school already, and from [trying to] teaching in one, I've now gone to [trying to] learn to teach in other schools. :S

Not that lessons have actually started though. This week is still considered Orientation week, so it's still mainly briefings, briefings and briefings on other future briefings. As opposed to work, work, and mind-numbing, suicide-inducing work, so I'm not complaining.

But first time visitors to NTU/NIE be warned though: The physical geography of the place takes some getting used to.

Already, I commited a big boo-boo by taking the wrong bus from Boon Lay interchange. Which landed me waaaaaay on the other side of campus from where my hall was, and earned me one lonely, long walk at night, only seeing the occassional passing jogger, [hall people are capable of jogging at weird hours of the night. I can barely bring myself up 6 flights of stairs to my room] and the sound of rifles punctuating the night.

Whenever I take a bus in, I'm always looking into the bushes to see whether I can see one very lost NS man sticking his camoulflaged head out of the jungle.

Not only that, but unlike NUSSUX, NIE and NTU tend to be built, er, long. THe buildings of NIE itself are built in one straight row. Getting from one end of the campus to the other is basically a long distance straight lined walk. And so is getting from NIE to NTU, and the computer shop. In order to find the computer shop, GTS and I walked along both spines of NTU [North and South] before we got to where the laptops were being sold.

Most appropriately, in the middle of the computer engineering faculty, it seemed. What, the rest of the campus didn't need computer stuff?

So now, at least, we know how to get from Hall to Various Parts of Campus without getting too lost. Simply walk. In one very straight line.