I took videos of the march past, cheerleading, and cheer squad. Videos can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/zyenweb.

Congratulations to all winners, and to all participants too! Even if you didn’t win medals, you are still winners because of the hard work and effort you put in.

Here’s a list if you’d like to jump straight to the video:

• March Past
  • Red House (champion)
  • Blue House (2nd place)
  • Green House
  • Yellow House
• Cheerleading
  • Blue House (champion)
  • Yellow House (2nd place)
  • Red House
  • Green House
• Cheer Squad
  • Blue House (champion)
  • Red House
  • Green House
  • Yellow House

So this is for you who found my blog: STUDY PHYSICS!!!

In other news, I also know that many of you will try to add me on Facebook. Feel free to do so, but please introduce yourself (which class are you from?)… because I haven’t put your names and faces together yet.

If you’ve added me before but it’s pending confirmation, please send me a message identifying yourself.

The reason I’m being quite strict about my FB friends is because I only add people that I really know. This is more for safety purposes; I don’t add complete strangers becaues they will have access to my details, plus access to my list of friends, many of whom are my students. So yes, I’m being protective about my students.

Physics Rocks!!

Happy New Year!

Happy happy new year! May this year bring us love, luck, wealth, health and lots of dark chocolates.

Blog will be updated soon! Have a great year!

We stayed in Marina Court Resort Condominium, which is an apartment-style hotel.

Marina Court Resort Condominium

The Apartment

We stayed in a three-bedroomed apartment with two bathrooms, a living room, a kitchen and a dining room. There was a master bedroom with a king-sized bed and ensuite bathroom, a bedroom with a king-sized bed (but no bathroom), and a bedroom with twin beds. There was a shower and toilet which are accessible from the hallway where the bedrooms were lined up.

I’ve just realised… of all the 1800 photos I took in Kota Kinabalu, I did not take any of the apartment we stayed in!

Of course, I did take shots from the outside, but none of the inside of the apartment, so for now I will have to resort to taking photos off other websites…

The following photos are taken from http://www.sabah-hotels.com/marina-court/rooms.htm. The photos of the rooms are exactly like the ones in the unit we stayed in.

Living Room

Dining Room

King-sized bed in the master bedroom

Twin beds in one of the other bedrooms

Shower/toilet in the bathroom at the hallway

Master bedroom bath and toilet

The kitchen came with six of everything: six plates, six bowls, six forks, six knives, six spoons, six lotsofotherthingsicantremember. But only one chopping board, one kettle, one wok, and one of other things which we didn’t need six of. We were given a checklist that warned that any missing items will have to be paid for. So I did the checking thoroughly and found that the chopping knife was missing. We didn’t actually need any of the utensils provided because we weren’t going to be doing any cooking during our short stay, but I didn’t want us to be charged for something that we didn’t lose so I called up housekeeping and bugged them until they finally gave us the knife… about 1-2 hours after my first call.

Each bedroom had its own dressing table which was useful for us ladies. The lighting was terrible though, so sometimes I had to go to the hallway or the bathroom to ensure my makeup was fine.

The beds and pillows were very comfortable, and I slept well throughout the nights.

“Security Measures”

The apartment was actually quite comfortable, and I think it’s quite ideal for a family. But what we didn’t like was the “security measures”. Although there were only five of us, but the unit was actually meant for six and could hold up to eight people… and yet between us, we were given only ONE key. And this one key came with one security card, which was needed to open the magnetic door to the lift lobby of our apartment block. So if we didn’t have the card, we could not enter the lift lobby.

The problem was, not all of us were going to be together all the time. Bronya had her dance classes to conduct on Friday and Saturday, and while the rest of us were probably going to be together most of the time, there would be occasions where we would split up. For example, I-Vee may want to go to the shops to buy something, and I may want to go to the swimming pool, and some may want to stay in the room. Splitting up like that meant that the card/key would be left with the person(s) inside the room, and she would have to come down all the way to the lift lobby area to open the door for whoever who was coming back later. The receptionists told us that this was for security; and when we complained about the inconvenience, they told us that there would be guards nearby who could help us open the door. Which kind of defeats the security measure, because that means that they could open the doors for anyone, since they would have no way of determining who were really occupants of the apartments, now could they??

Also, the card would be needed to open the side gate in the fence of the apartment compound to get to the shops behind the apartments. Without the card we could not open the gate, so we would not be able to exit/enter via that entrance, which means to get to the shops, we would have to walk through the main entrance and walk all the way around the perimeter of the fence just to get to the shops. Alternatively, we could walk around and look for a security guard to open the gate when needed, I suppose…

Facilities

OK, as for the facilities: we didn’t get to explore much since our stay was very short. However I did get a chance to have a dip in one of their two pools (one adult pool and one kiddie pool) which were side by side in the middle of the apartment blocks. Problem was, our apartment block is not one of them. We were placed in an apartment block which was in a completely separate square. To access the pool, I had to walk from our block across the carpark, through the reception lobby, and into the pool area. In my bikini, mind you. Well, of course I brought a towel along to dry myself after swimming, because towels were not provided at the pool area and there was a warning to “not drip water through the lobby”.

The pool surrounded by apartment blocks

Having said that however, the pool was quite a nice size, and well-taken care of. The water was clean when I swam in it, and I had a good workout. They also had deckchairs for people who wanted to suntan themselves.

One of the two pools

According to some websites (Marina Court doesn’t have its own website), there were gym facilities but I didn’t explore them while I was there.

Housekeeping and Maintenance

I have to give them two thumbs up. Although they took some time in getting the chopping knife to us as earlier mentioned, they did their best to accommodate our requests. We must have made quite a number of calls because the five of us had different requests at different times, until finally the poor guy who was managing the housekeeping on his own on Friday asked us to group our requests at the same time and explained he was on his own. I-Vee asked them for extra pillows and although they said they were fully booked, they somehow managed to accommodate our request.

Our toilets kept getting blocked though, especially the one in the hallway; but the good thing was, they were quite fast in coming over to fix them.

Overall

Overall, I would have given them four out of five stars if it wasn’t for the “security measures”… hence I give them a total of three out of five stars.

Note: I have also submitted my review on Travel Advisor. It’s pretty much the same things I mentioned here, in a condensed version. Check it out!

OK, actually I didn’t forget. I meant to, but I just didn’t have the time.

Let’s see… where do I start? Let’s start at the very beginning…

The idea for the trip to KK first came about because one of the ladies in one of Bronya’s FIL2 classes* is originally from KK, and we found out that she owns a pub and bistro there.

[*I'm not actually part of this class, but I've gone to kepoh at that class so often that they have kind of accepted me as one of them. Sadly this class has disbanded due to the lack of numbers.]

Cheryl Quan, the lady who owns the pub, explained that every last Friday of the month, the pub organises a themed night where they will decorate their pub, and their patrons will dress up according to the theme. They have had themes like Hawaii and Michael Jackson (when MJ passed away); and it sounded so exciting that we all wanted to go. So Bronya (whose schedule is the most packed among all of us) took out her diary and found that the only time she could manage at all this year was in October. And mind you, we were discussing this in March. October was great timing – the last Friday of the month coincided with Halloween! (It’s actually Halloween Eve, but who cares about a one-day difference)

We didn’t really take the suggestion seriously until I-Vee looked up the airfares when it got closer to October, and even made the accomodation arrangements for us.

It wasn’t actually my first time to KK; I have been here before, on a school trip with Form 4 students back in 2007. The difference is, back then I had to run around babysitting a busful of 16-year-old teenaged girls (some with raging hormones, some with shopaholic tendencies, some with alcoholic tendencies, and many with a dreadful fascination for true ghost stories)… this time I had time for myself. Theoretically.

Oh, gosh, I’ve been looking through my blog archives and I’ve only JUST realised that I never did write about my KK trip with my students. No point writing about it now, really, because no one’s going to read it.

Kota Kinabalu trip 2007. I won't write about it, but you can see some of the photos I took during that trip by clicking on the photo above.

Anyway, this trip to KK was one that was quite, quite memorable. I think I’ll have to break it up into a few posts because otherwise, this post will be one gigantic post that no one will read because of its sheer monstrosity.

I went nuts with my Nikon D60, largely thanks to this photography workshop I joined a few weeks before then. I joined the workshop because I was frustrated with not being able to take pro-looking shots. Erm, I still can’t, but at least I’m getting a better understanding of the DSLR.

Anyway, with some new skills in hand, I documented this trip in photos almost every step of the way – from the departure at the airport to the arrival at KK airport to the lunches to the dinners to the arrival back at KLIA… in total, about 1800 photos, including the few I took with my waterproof Olympus. Yeah, it was only a 3-day trip.

Well, to keep you entertained until my next bite-sized post, here is the link to my online photo albums. Click on the photos to view the respective albums.

Kota Kinabalu trip 2009 : Album the first

Kota Kinabalu trip 2009 : Album the second

Don’t worry, I didn’t upload all 1800 photos here. The reason there are two albums is because I uploaded the selected shots to Facebook, and Facebook currently allows only up to 200 photos per album.

Until my next post!

Soon, soon. Haven’t had time of late…

With 4 Mozart for the last time. Click on image for bigger view

Thanks to Kristina for sending me this photo.

I am really going to miss you kids!

And here are some random shots.

Pile of exam papers I had to mark. This was only Paper 2. Mind you, I was so driven to insanity that I had to take a photo.

Shen Deng & Geoffrey. Click on photo to view more photos.

Why do I have a photo of Shen Deng & Geoffrey on my blog? Because I took the photo. Hahaha.

Actually today was my last day with my four Form 4 classes. I am personally very sad because I really like all four of my classes, but I won’t be teaching them next year. I’m going to miss them very, very much; some, more than others. A bit disappointed that not everyone was in school today, but that couldn’t be helped because a lot of students wanted a break from the exams and didn’t know that headstart which starts next week would be taught by different teachers (even the teachers ourselves only found out yesterday).

I had an opportunity to take photos with 4 Mozart today; unfortunately I only brought my Olympus instead of my Nikon DSLR, so my photos didn’t turn out so well. Dang! Something’s wrong with my Olympus, and I had just sent it to Olympus to get it checked, but for some reason it’s still not fixed. Sigh.

There’s a really nice shot of me with 4M in Kristina’s camera; will just have to wait until she sends it to me.

I thought I’d scan it here and put it up on my blog so that anyone who is interested to preserve our turtles can download this image, fill in the blanks, and fax it to WWF. After all, they’ll need all the support they can get.

Save the turtles!

P/S: I hope I’m not breaking any copyright laws. It does say photocopies allowed, so technically scanned images should also be allowed, right??