Down Time

A bad news to share with everyone. My home PC is down...reali down.

It juz so happened so suddenly...after my night shift last thursday when i was playing some games in the morning, the pc juz blacked out. i din bother to take a 2nd notice and i went straight to sleep. oni to realise that it could not be restarted after i woke up. i suspected it was an easy problem ---- power supply failure. So i brought my pc to the nearby shop to comfirm my hypothesis. To my horror. the motherboard also was found to fail. Sending back to the sim lim dealer on the same day was a double blow. Not only the power supply had failed, my motherboard and hard disk were also shocked and all 3 equipment were confirmed to have failed. My home PC will only be back in service in a minimum of 2 more weeks....zzzzzzzzzzz....

If u realized, I can't possibly be at home now. I'm using the PC in school at the moment.

Sorry if i had created an impression that i had gone missing on the net, email or msn.

It's juz that these days without PC had given me the reason to reali try to recuperate from my CHRONIC cough. taking powerful medicine which cause me to doze off unknowingly every night shortly after i commenced some bedtime reading, and leaving the lights and radio on till 4-5am when i would then instinctively wake up to turn them off.....

If u happen to see me online on msn, pls bear with me if i did not reply your msg, as most probably i was not at my desk (esp for the past few days).

The only major consolation for the past week was the results of the release of the O level results yesterday. I was kinda surprised that my tuition boy did pretty well, i would say value added performance.

I still could recall the 1st conversation i had with his father back in May 06. That his son reali needed help in his studies as he did reali poorly for his mid year exam. I agreed to help and it was only during the 1st lesson we had that i found out that his results then were reali poor ---- he was the top student, ranking from below for his class then. His diligence and determination reali impressed me, and also gave me the push to reali want to impart all that i know to him. I taught him 2 subjects, Mathematics and Chemistry. It was a pity that he was forced to drop A Maths at the end of Sec 3. In fact my predictions for his grades for both subjects came true, though no distinctions (both B3), but considering the improvement he had made from day 1, I am very satisfied :) and i reali feel very happy for him that at least he qualified for a JC, which means to say that he persevered to qualify for one place in the top 20% of the national cohort. I advised him to further his studies in a polytechnic.

In fact, over the past years which i had been providing part time personal tutoring, i realized that unlike many of my friends or colleagues, who always had the chance to teach top notch and well to do students, I am always faced with the challenge to teach the really rock bottom students. Perhaps it's really fate, or i should say, my fate. Of course i am not god. I can't create miracles (as i reali couldn't salvage the grades of certain number of students which i had ever taught), but the most important this was that my conscience towards them are clear.

Now that the boy had graduated, but my teaching career had juz restarted. I am now teaching his sister. the same subjects, but starting from day 1, not after flunging her examinations. Let's hope that I could help bring someone to a greater height again!