秋天的反思 Reflections of the autumn

这两个星期忙忙碌碌，功课， 专题作业与报告来势汹汹，真有点应接不暇。但是也因为忙，往往时间迅速的过去。目前天气还算不错，白天艳阳高照，但气温不太高，相当舒服。然而，不知道这阳光会持续多久，说真的，也许是因为Michigan 这地方偏北，使我无法估计四季的变化时期，虽说现在是秋天，但每天太阳出来时, 让我感觉比较象夏天。究竟冬天什么时候来临，而到时是怎样的景象，我只能拭目以待。然而，话说回来，我随时都欢迎阳光！

在我屋外徘徊的鹿

Deer grazing just outside my apartment!

They were too proud to turn around for a mug shot...

These two weeks have been pretty hectic, with all the various assignment deadlines looming. But time flies when you are busy, so that’s good I suppose. The weather’s still quite pleasant as a whole, with the sun still out in the daytime and cool temperatures in general. Not sure how long this sunshine will hold though, in fact, I think because Michigan is quite far north, the estimate of the time of the four seasons confuses me. Although it is called “Fall” now, somehow the sunshine just makes me think of summer. So when is it going to be winter, and how will it be like, I wonder. Having said that, I’d rather have sunshine than cold weather anytime!

Scampering squirrel

The Islamic Centre at Ann Arbor (click picture for closer look)

Red Maple Leaf

At times, you plunge into moments of doubt thinking, why do you want to travel so far for an education? Of course, the usual reasons come to mind: new experience, refreshing change, carpe diem!, etc. But when you get down to the bottom of it all, what exactly is the impetus of packing your bags and jetting off to an unknown land for a year? I have not stopped asking myself that question. But well, as I ponder through it each day, life just continues, and before I know it, I’ve actually completed quite a number of things, and seen quite a number of new places.

Perhaps the value is not immediately seen. I remember how a friend told me that I will only truly appreciate the time spent abroad when I return home. Of course, home will still be where my heart is, but hopefully I will look back at my time abroad and think, it was a year well-spent.

Will keep on movin’…

Mooncake and other food

I was out shopping for groceries earlier this week, and saw this whole variety of mooncakes on sale at the Chinese supermarket. Quite delighted, and since the mooncake festival is coming soon (it's this Tuesday), I decided to buy a box for myself. Frankly, back in SG I'm not a huge fan of mooncakes (I don't mind the ice-cream mooncakes from Swensens' though...) , but I thought I should try to create some kind of "festive feel" while I'm here, especially when I'm so far away from home.

The mooncakes came with a customised paper bag, which I gladly took from the saleslady who asked if I wanted "special packaging". If I had not taken the paper bag, I would have been given an NTUC-type plastic bag, so "unglam"!

This box of mooncakes that I bought cost me US$17. It is imported from Hong Kong, and the packaging is pretty exquisite, with the individual metallic boxes and colourful illustrations. The type I got is the double-yolk white lotus seed paste variety. Yummy! Haha, actually I have not even tasted the mooncakes yet, but they seriously look quite good, and too beautiful to eat! I will probably eat it with my fellow countrymen on Tuesday.

What's mooncake without tea? I also bought 2 boxes of tea, one box of Ang Moh tea and one box of Chinese tea. The tea will certainly be a great complement to the sweet snack that is the mooncakes.

More food. Here are some pictures of the mee soto I cooked and the fish curry my friend cooked some time back. For amateur cooks like us, the food sure was palatable!

Mee Soto, cooked by me. I substituted the yellow noodles with thin spaghetti, but the taste was still good! The only things absent were parsley and of course the chilli, but I guess this was good enough.

Fish curry and tofu, cooked by Poon. For someone who claims she does not cook at home in Singapore, she sure can cook well!

The weather had reverted to being warm again, but signs of the fall season are certainly visible. The leaves of a couple of the trees near my apartment have already started to turn red, some trees have actually started shedding leaves. Think they will be botak pretty soon. Will go out over the next week and snap some pictures to post here.

Watch this space...

Into the groove

It's amazing how time just slips me by, have already attended two weeks of lessons, and I seem to have done like tons of readings (with tons more to come....). Doing a social science course is not so straightforward as compared to proving mathematics theorems. At least when you prove a maths theorem, you know whether you are heading the right direction or not, and when you hit a contradiction, you can try to backtrack. Giving opinions on mathematics education issues is a different matter altogether. Not that it is more difficult, but you find that there is no absolute answer anymore. Even if you were to sieve out numerous theories and case studies to back you up, it still remains as just one perspective, not the final solution (may not ever see it probably).

But it's been a incredibly exciting mental challenge so far, even though it's just two weeks. To be able to put forward your case, to air your views, and know that there are people who will listen and engage you in some kind of discussion and argument. Of course, doing the assignments isn't that fun (who likes homework?), but the learning that takes place in the process is what I value most. I just hope I will sustain this spirit all the way!

Anyway, I have subscribed to the cable TV soccer channel, Fox Soccer Channel. A great tactic, I would say (pun intended). Had to travel out of town a few days back to go to the cable company to request a special add-on, but I'm glad I made the trip. Never thought that I would actually have such bad withdrawal symptoms, but now I am fine again. Managed to catch some Euro 2008 qualifiers as well as highlights from the EPL so far. My Saturdays will now be less boring, as I will be able to catch live matches of the EPL, hooray!

Some pictures of flowers here. Flowers and flowers beds are just about everywhere you go in Ann Arbor, and they all look so lovely.




This part is for my mum:

古人云：时光飞逝，光阴似箭。 转眼间，我在美国已经步入了第四个周末， 感觉有点神奇，还记得不久前刚到达这里，现在却已经上了两个星期的课。随着学校开学，我和朋友也都逐渐地有了一种生活旋律，每天忙忙碌碌，但也有闲暇时刻， 还算不错，相当充实。

前面附上几张花的照片， 究竟是什么花，我也不晓得，只知道非常漂亮。

Third weekend

Time really flies, I'm already in my third weekend in the States. Not a very eventful weekend this time round, went to this Kerry Town Farmers Market on Saturday with my other Singaporean friends. Quite a disappointment, nothing much there really. Very much prefer Victoria Market in Melbourne, and Hay Market in Sydney. But, I did manage to buy some chick peas, which I intend to make kacang puteh with.

On Sunday, I basically was cooped up at home trying to complete my readings. Well, at least I've got the television to keep me company when I'm sick from the reading, or I call my Singaporean friends. Seems everyone is busy trying to keep up with the readings. This is after all, a postgraduate course, not a walk in the park.

The weather is really starting to turn cooler and more windy each day, and in fact just 2 days ago there was even a tornado warning. But I don't think Ann Arbor will actually experience a tornado, although the wind on Friday was so strong when I was walking in campus, I ran into a building to hide for a while in case I got blown away. (There is actually a weather channel in my cable television service, and technically I can actually monitor the weather here 24-7.)

Uploading another photo here....

Start of School

It's the first day of school today. Things are moving pretty leisurely so far though. It was a public holiday here in the US yesterday (Labor Day), and it follows a summer weekend so everyone's kind of going about their business in slow-mo.

Had two lessons (3 hours per lesson) today, which were both interesting in their own ways. the morning lesson was on Mathematics Curriculum, while the afternoon one was on Educational Research. Lots of discussion going on in both sessions; it seems this is the modus operandi for classes (at least the postgraduate ones), everyone was "fighting" for an opportunity to speak and give their views, and the professor was fairly gracious, lapping it all up. This active interaction would rarely happen back home. A cultural difference, without a doubt.

Anyway, despite being shy by nature (haha), I managed to summon my gregarious self, and boldly participated in the discussion. It helped that I had done my readings, and could offer "alternative" viewpoints too, since I come from a different system from the US. Actually I think many of my American classmates were intrigued that I could speak fluent English. Haha. I would have thought that after 42 years of independence and establishing ourselves on the world stage, people round the globe would have some inkling of the cultural background we come from. Well, I was wrong. But in any case, it's really enriching to engage in lots of verbal sparring with people of diverse backgrounds and know that outside of our 648 square kilometres (has it expanded in area??) lies a whole treasure trove of views and muses.

开学的第一天，感觉还不错。 虽说有好几年没当学生了，但也都还留在校园环境，所以也没感觉什么特大的差别。可能不一样的是， 我现在是以学生身份出现在校园里。 今天上了两堂课，相当不错，这里的学习方式非常富有灵活性，采用的是讨论方式， 谁也别想在班上“无所事事，坐享其成“。还好我的脸皮还够厚，胆敢地在班上自动自发地发表自己的看法与理论，现在只希望自己能这样的持续下去。（说话是很累的运动，哈哈！）

Well, have got two more classes left for the rest of the week, not really sure what to expect, but I guess I should be alright. Have more or less done some simple preparation for the classes, will just go in and smoke out the whole place if necessary, hahaha!

Have finally gotten my TV, and with my cable service, I get something like 60 channels. Way cool! Of course, what do I watch? The news. NBC, ABC, CBS, MSNBC, Fox, and CNN. Been watching Anderson Cooper every night on CNN. Love his reports, he is really a journalist extraordinaire. Have always admired reporters who have been to the toughest war zones or disaster areas to make reports. I would have wanted to become BBC war correspondent.

Speaking of the BBC, of course, sadly a channel missing is BBC World. Haiz, thought I could get that, at least I could catch snippets of football action (or what the Americans call soccer --- football means a completely different thing here). No soccer, is frankly, a tragedy. On all the news channels here, there is absolutely NOTHING on soccer (not even Major League Soccer). All I can get now are reports and commentaries of the EPL via the internet.... Hmm, I must think of a way to solve this problem....

Interesting finds at Ann Arbor

Been discovering various things here at Ann Arbor as I walk along the little roads on route to the supermarket. Besides the numerous temperate trees (eg, maple) and coniferous trees, I've seen lots of geese everywhere.

Yesterday, was on my way to the supermarket, and I found a whole gaggle!!! There must be at least 30 of them!The whole gaggle was playing some kind of "crossing the road" game, and I went totally crazy following them around and snapped lots of photographs. Here are some of the photographs. They are supposedly wild geese from Canada, but they don't bite, and seem quite comfortable around human beings.








Decided to record a video too which shows them crossing the road. Quite amazing.



I also found an apple tree! With lots of apples on it! But the Singaporean in me immediately decided that it might be illegal to pluck them (it is), what if I get caught, and put onto the local newspaper headline ("Foreign student steals local apples") , so I did the next best thing: snap pictures. The tree basically lands itself by the roadside, and from the looks of it, the apples are probably never harvested. Then again, they don't look particularly delicious (not the Washington or Granny Smith type anyway)....



Finally, I went to the Chinese supermarket and got an UNEXPECTED find! ROTI PRATA! And proudly manufactured in Singapore too!! Woo hoo! Of course, I just had to buy a packet back, and got curry mix at the same time, so shall be expecting to eat the roti prata with my fellow Singaporean friends here really soon.




Anyway, school will starting in a few days' time, better get back to my readings, and work really hard!! Enough of the "touristy" stuff already!

A week, 7 days

Today's a really hot day. The sun is literally scorching, thank goodness for the comfortable airconditioning in the library.

How time flies, have already been here for a week. Things are slowly falling into place, should be more or less ready for the new term next week I guess.

I finally met some Singaporeans! It happened two days ago, at a bus stop. Again, what "gave us away"? The way we speak. That is what I call "Uniquely Singapore". (To the language police, no, I was not referring to Singlish, more the kind of intonation we normally have when we speak in English the Singaporean way.) Whatever. What matters is we can recognise one another, even if we are at the darkest corner of Peru, or Macchu Picchu. Anyway, found out that we are all here to pursue our graduate studies in education (so essentially all teachers), and hoping to bring back something good to share. But all of us have got different teaching experiences and backgrounds, and will be pursuing different specialisations in education, and that is beauty of it all.

The annual welcome event for the School of Education is tomorrow, think I'll meet many educators from other countries and make some more new friends.

It still feels quite surreal that I am so far away from home (more than 9000 miles --- can qualify for Kris Flyer rewards already, haha), doing something I could never have imagined even 10 years ago. Hopefully this year will be a very fruiful one, with me not only gaining the knowledge I want, but experiencing many new things and developing more fresh perspectives, whether in education or in life generally.

The best laid plans of mice and men, often go astray. But there are always snippets of delights that pop up at the most unexpected moments. Hope my plan for the next one year will not go haywire, and I will also encounter many moments of delight. (Ha, so greedy.....)