Hammy's maze

My Hammy is Exercising!

Hammy has a good life

As a natural instinct, Hammy spends most of his time sleeping in his home. Books say a hamster is usually wide awake to look for food during the evening, my Hammy does not behave in this manner. He sleeps anytime and anywhere he likes.

Isa tries to play with him after our dinner. She helps him onto the running wheel and he tries to run. Maybe because he is quite fat, he does not exercise a lot.

Hammy's favourite food is not the dried sunflower seeds but fresh green leafy vegetables. He has 2 food bowls but only one is used at anytime. One is filled with the dried hamster food and the other green leaves and slices of carrot. He can eat up to 2 or even 3 medium size green vegetable leaves and 3 slices of carrot daily. I can see his eagerness on this fresh food whenever I put this bowl inside his cage. He will start dashing towards his bowl and start grabbing the food to eat. I am unsure his love for green vegetables is alright.

After his stomach is filled, he will spend quite some time cleaning his paws and grooming his body before he naps. During the day, he will start digging under his slide and make a mess on his bed linen. I take this as he is exercising.

So far, I have yet to hold him. Only Isa carries and plays with him. I am quite afraid of this creature.

Now I have an additional task, I have to ensure the fridge has green vegetables for Hammy. Hammy has a real good life!

Rosyth boy tops PSLE

ALEX Tan Kian Hye of Rosyth School is the top Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) pupil this year with a score of 282.

Fu Wan Ying from Tao Nan School had the second highest score of 279.

The top Malay pupil is Aquilah Dariah Mohd Zulkarnain, of Coral Primary School who scored 278, while the top Indian pupil is Muhammad Hameem, of Henry Park Primary School with a score of 274, and the top Eurasian pupil is Lendermann Monika Jiz-xin, of CHIJ Our Lady Queen of Peace, with a 269 score.

A total of 45,049 Primary 6 pupils sat for the PSLE this year. Of these, 43,826 pupils, or 97.3 per cent, can go on to secondary school.

Among the others, 63 per cent are eligible for the Express course, 22.1 per cent for the Normal (Academic) and 11.7 per cent for the Normal (Technical) course.

There are 1,223 pupils or 2.7 per cent who did not qualify for secondary school. These pupils can choose to apply to Assumption Pathway School (APS) or NorthLight School (NLS) based on recommendations of their primary school principals, or spend another year in Primary 6 to consolidate their learning.

(source: www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_607195.html)

Work Schedule

Finally I have finished writing my meeting report and ready to submit next week before the deadline. Going for overseas working trips is fine but writing the meeting or training report is not. This has been bothering me before I started the trip and finally I have gotten it out.

The tasks due to the regulatory section are mostly done before the deadline imposed. I got a nasty comment: those that you have submitted are not the urgent cases. So I replied that I settled them as they were easier to handle.

The minutes for the meeting was submitted up for clearance after the vetting. The comments from vetting officers were not nice too. I took it positively, afterall it was my first time being a secretary. I have also started arranging for the next meeting in Dec.

My teaching courses have been scheduled to be in Feb and Mar 2011. There will be one in Apr but unsure how this particular course will work out as there is still some fine tuning on the content.

For personnal development, I have indicated interest in 2 courses which one of them will be conducted in late Jan. The financial year is closing soon. All staff are checking if they meet the minimun number of training hours. So far, there is no problem for all staff to meet 40 hours of training per year.

December Holidays Part 3

D finally gave us the itinerary as he would be leaving for a trip to Vietnam soon.

Day 1: Singapore to Taipei.

Day 2: Taipei city tour on Sun Yatsen Memorial Hall, Taipei 101 and National Palace Museum.

Day 3: Yehliu National Park and Jiufen.

Day 4: Window on China Themepark.

Day 5: Wulai Aboriginal Village.

Day 6: Taroko Gorge.

Day 7: Taipei International Floral Expo, Shilin Night Market.

Days 8 & 9: Free & Easy

Day 10: Taipei to Singapore.

During the free days, we are unsure if we want to make a trip to Alisan and Sun Moon Lake.

Colosseum

J went to Rome for a conference.

Marina Bay Sands

Today's Course

Today's course conducted should be the last course for this year. Instead of a happy ending, I had one of the most challenging moments.

The class size was as big as 38 though the usual class size I handled was about 20+. Out of the 38 participants, close to 28 are teachers who know much more than me. I saw the name-list only a couple of days ago and I felt stressed because teachers are well-known to be critical and precise. They demand more else it is a waste of their time.

At the end of this course, the evaluation forms contained more complaints than praises. I admit that I did not know the topics very well even though I have studied very hard beforehand. I admit that I was already very tensed knowing that the teachers have very high expectations on me.

Should I continue conducting this course? Should I revamp the course materials so that I can cover more on areas which I am confident in and leave the less confident areas alone? Where can I find time to revamp this course?

Hammy likes grooming

Hammy pees and poos a lot. He is growing fatter too.

So I decided to leave the bowl of hamster mix dried food only twice a day in the cage. For the rest of the day, he has unlimited supply of water and a bowl of green leafy.

Books said hamsters are noctunal mini mammals. Mine sleeps a lot during the evening too. There was a night when I woke up at 2am+. I was curious and switched on the light to take a peep at Hammy. He was sleeping but the light has woken him up. The rest of the hours was terrible as he was wide awake and he was busy digging and scratching his cage. So a lesson learnt: not to wake a hamster up during the night.

Does he sleep a lot during the day? Today I am at home and can monitor Hammy closely. He takes short naps. He eats the vegetables left in his bowl. He spends a lot of time grooming himself. He washes his paws and other parts of his body. He digs into his bed linen. He pulls the paper on the tray of his cage. He carries the shreds of paper into his home and even his sand toilet. He helps to shred the paper. He is busy doing all sorts of hammie things.

The cat litter bought seems ok in absorbing the strong odour of his urine. To say that I smell nothing is a lie. It is just that the smell is not that strong and unbearable. Maybe we can afford to change and clean the cage once in 2 weeks.

My "new" family member, Hammy

After months of begging, I finally gave in to Isa's request - keep a hamster.

A mum kiddo was such kind to give me a hamster with all the necessary accessories to start. Isa could not wait to get it and Hammy arrived the next day when I returned from Jakarta.

It is a funny hamster. It does not like or know how to run on an exercise wheel. We put it on the wheel. It prefers to sleep under the wheel. It is a hoarder - typical characteristic of a hamster. We saw little bits of food in his nest. Kiddo mentioned some hamsters can be toilet-trained ie they will pee and poo at a certain place, but not our Hammy. So we let him does his business anywhere or everywhere he likes.

We bought Breeder Select (cat litter) for his bedding. He likes to dig around and so we have to put quite a lot of this recycled paper pellets.