音時雨 ~Regentropfen~

2009-Sep-05 (Sat), 17:50@GMT-7

❆ TA workshop

I was always nervous about the TA workshop (from Sep. 2-3, 2009) after I knew it. First, I have no experience about working as a TA; second, I even had only a faint idea on what's a TA.
Anyway, no one can avoid time going by. That day came finally.
At the time of waiting for the beginning, I was a little bored. I could have put a book in my bag, but I didn't.
The ambience was nice. There were 8 round table in the room. We randomly sat around one and thus made up 8 groups. Some senior graduate students joined and helped us in the workshop. The one in my group, was a very nice girl. I liked her from the moment she introduced herself. Sat beside her, I felt less tensive.
In the first day, we talked about almost all basic thing of being a TA, and learned several cases. However, OMG, I still need to improve my listening skill! @__@
Yet the case study was very nice. Who knows what we would met in the future TA working!
In the next day, every new future TA would be giving a mini-presentation in the case of pre-lab. We had got emails from the workshop host about our own topics. I've ever seen so many TAs when I was taking my undergraduate lab courses. Some of them were nice. Although I know what they did in the pre-lab part exactly, but I had no idea on how to do the presentation. I chose to wait until the first TA workshop day. I thought I would get some hints from it.
Actually, I think I didn't get what I expected. I've got to do it by myself without any new hints from the workshop.
I organized what I was going to talk, and searched online for some data. Then I figured out some essential sentences. Okay, I had only 5 minutes to do the presentation, I needed no more nonsense but only the essentials.
So, I needed to do a practice.
Didn't I?
We not only needed to do the presentation, but also needed to re-watch our performance afterwards! Our prepositions were all videotaped!!!
Maybe that was what I most worried about. I'm always nervous in front of a camera.
Some people used overhead slideshow. I didn't. I really dislike the overhead project. Sometimes the text was just too faint to read.
Thus I didn't go performing my presentation until the break. I wrote my points onto the blackboard instead of on the overheads before I started.
I was nervous, and who wasn't?
Maybe I got too many pauses, maybe I failed to control my speaking speed, maybe my volume was a bit low, maybe I should have done some overheads... my presentation wasn't that bad after all! The reports from our instructors told me that.
Fortunately, I'll not be TA-ing in fall term. I still have time to improve myself. There're still lots of things to be learned. I still have no experience on so many issues of being a TA: communicating with students, marking lab reports, teaching others in an effective way, etc... I don't know what it will be at my first TA-ing course yet.
No one knows.
However, a good beginning is always great and full of hope.
Go on like it.
That's what I wish right now.
2009-Sep-04 (Fri), 9:36@GMT-7

❀ amazing trip – anti-time

I landed in Vancouver on August 23, 2009, at noon 12:00.
It was a bit hot. The sunlight was soft. Clouds floating in the sky, light blue sky. My sight was covered by golden dust.
There was breeze, made it a bit cooler.
The Vancouver airport was like a maze. It was so difficult to manage to find the correct way I should go. Actually, for me that airport was werid. I'd rather like to say that I was in a hotel than an airport.
And fewer people were in the airport.
Even at the moment when I went in to my plane to Calgary, I still has no any real sense of that I was in Canada.
I sat down, and started to recall the whole time during getting my study permit.
That was rather a fun experience.
I think I've been so accustomed to queue and wait. Yet that queue was too long. All I worried about was whether I would be able go catch my next plane. It was only less than 2 hours left, but there were too many people to let myself believe I could be done in time in this queue. Anyhow, no time for me to wait like this. I explained my difficult to people in front of me. Fortunately, I got to move myself to the very front.
I went to the window. Before I said something, the officer said first.
“Hello!”
Hello. I said.
“How are you?”
My brain got in blank for a short while. What should I say? Then from the deepest part of my mind, the fading away memory of English I learned years ago revived.
“Fine, thank you.”
“Excellent.” He smiled.
Okay. Not a bad beginning.
Now, I have no idea on how long it kept. He asked me kinds of questions, but I've forgotten most of them. What I knew was everything went well.
“Good luck!” He approved my study permit finally and returned me my passport.
I left the window. There was still time for me to catch my plane.
Although it was hard to find my way to my plane, I had less worries on it: I've got my boarding pass, my plane would at least wait for me for a while. Then, the officer showed in my mind. Oh, my god, he was rather handsome!
I can still remember the moment when he said “excellent.”
What a nice feeling it was! :3
I planned to take some photos in Vancouver, but I didn't have the time to do it.
At about 14:00, The plane took off on time. I didn't miss it~
The other thing I felt lacking the sense of reality was that here in Canada, people use both English and French in official situations. Sometimes I got confused. XDD
The rest of the trip was far shorter than the first part of it. I had a nap, and arrived at Calgary about one hour later.
The plane flied through the white misty clouds. I like to see the sky that's full of clouds, and I also love going through them! Perfect weather it had! ^_^/
My trip ends in Calgary. Nothing troublesome happened. I was not over-tired, I didn't get jet-lagged, I was still sane with my not-so-good speaking English. I was standing in the world, the other side of the world.
I left my home city at 16:00, on August 23, 2009, and arrived in Calgary at 16:15, on August 23, 2009. Yet actually, the trip took me about 13-4 hours in all.
Yay~, I took only 15 minutes from one side to the other side of the world!
2009-Aug-21 (Fri), 13:15@GMT+8

❅ autumn

I haven't drawn for my own characters for a lone while, because I needed to re-arrange everything (plot, basic design, story setting, etc), and then re-write it... x__x
anyway, I drew this picture only for uniform (I like this kind of things) after this, I think I can finally re-start my whole story, while fighting in my lab! XDD
I drew both uniforms for summer and winter, thus I chose a background image of autumn that stands between the two seasons, and the whole colors got a nice match, I think~