We will be hosting 3 half hour Teaser Classes of Pole Dancing and Pole P.T. for FREE so you can come and see what all the fuss is about!

We will be running Pole Dancing Classes at 9.30am and 11am – Pole.P.T will be held at at 10.15am

Demonstrations will be run between classes by instructors and students!

Ask any questions to our students and our instructors, we will all be more than happy to help!

If you are new, why not take advantage of our 20% discount on the day!

Enrol for a course and only pay $180 for an 8 week Beginner Course!

Hope to see you all there! xxx

DAFFODIL PLANTING DAY ~ Sydenham Botanic Park

Sunday 14 April, 10am-1pm

• Plant a daffodil in the park’s very first flower garden (gold coin donation)
• Spot prizes donated by local businesses
• Find out more about the plans for the park
• Hungry? We’ll have the BBQ ready!

We wish to thank the following local businesses for supporting this event:

• Brookfield 4 Square
• Brookfield New World
• Brookfield Pharmacy
• Chatz Hair Design
• Colours of Life Photography
• Growers Direct
• Hancock Signs
• Lovell Real Estate
• Vege Planet
• Video Ezy Brookfield

Organised by Sydenham Botanic Park Advisory Group

For more information contact: Lisa Adams 021 946 374

Our experienced team will be available all day to discuss your specific
requirements and show you examples of our work.

You can ‘click  here’ to download the flyer for distribution to your friends, or to display at your ‘Flower Club’

I celebrated yesterday by going out to a Sports evening with all the teachers in my school and workers in the Tesaban (Council) Offices. We left at 4pm and arrived by 5pm at Phattalung, where all the nearby district offices had spent the day and weeks before competing in Volleyball, Football and most importantly tug of war. Tug of war was the most important for Tesaban Khaochaison because we won! Every team paraded around the sports field and track, which took over an hour because some teams had live bands and dancing (some of the dancers were ladyboys, some students.) Then the Mayor of each town was invited to pose for photos with all the teams and introduced. With the opening ceremony finished, it was the final football match, to see who would be the winner. During half time there was a tug of war again, and the women from Khaochaison came first! (Well done girls!) The guys from Khaochaison came second.  Everyone was really excited we won so we all went running on the field to congratulate the team.

This week at school is my second to last! Though I’m not actually teaching, as its exam week for all the students. Yesterday I watched films in the office and re-tested a few students during lunch break that failed their English exam. I’ve been told to retest them, and if they fail, I will have to retest them again. And again. And again. Until they miraculously understand and pass! That’s right, in Thailand you can’t fail a student, and they are allowed as many attempts as possible to pass. Needless to say everyone “passed” yesterday. I was pretty much told to let them pass even if they’re not very good, to save me having to keep testing them. So I lowered my expectations and they earned good grades. Even the ones that can’t tell me their names without a lot of prompting and asking in Thai! It’s ridiculous but that’s how it works here.

It is the students’ last week in school too, so I’ve been receiving lots of hugs, and now can’t walk anywhere without at least 5 children trying to hold on my 2 hands. They manage it somehow. Next week I am still in school but just “marking” exams. My exams are speaking so I decide there and then the grades but hey, I’m getting paid so have to be in school, even if it is just to sit in the office and watch movies.

Two weeks ago I escaped the small town with Lee and went to Hat Yai to party! We went straight after school on Friday evening, had a western meal out, then got ready. We found ourselves in a really nice bar called The Pubb, where Thai people were singing live English songs. The women were amazing, singing covers of Adele. We drank alot and towards the end were dancing and singing too, but no one else in the place was that animated so the singers were singing mainly at us. When Gangnam came on, the male singer pulled me up on stage to dance. Slightly embarrassing as Lee chose that moment to go to the Bathroom so I was on my own, and drunk, so I knocked the pole over with the music on. Whoops. Thanks to teaching I’m not a stranger to being on stage in front of lots of people and dancing! When there was a chance I ran back to my seat though. Since we had drunk alot we decided to have a break from ordering more drinks, but the waitress kept coming over with new ones, and we realised someone was buying them for us. It was two malaysian guys who spoke English and no Thai, who thought we looked crazy and they joined us at the next club, Bix where we danced and drank some more! The night was really good and ended up in McDonalds at 4am in the morning trying to soak up the alcohol.

The next day after a fry up we went shopping round town, and I purchased a big travelling back pack for my adventure to Chiang Mai. Also managed to catch up with Kylie, who I did my training with, and her boyfriend Tom, who moved over here recently to also be a TEFL teacher. Spoke to them for ages, and was great to see them. They are staying next term so hope to see more of them! Late Saturday we got a mini van back to Khaochaison.

My visa runs out next week so I also had to go extend it this week. This meant another 2 hour journey to Satun immigration office, where it clearly states in English that the whole process takes only 15 minutes, all over the walls. I was there for 2 hours. This is because not only did I have to get a new visa, but I needed a re-entry permit too, so that I can leave for the UK and come back and still work. Also because I’m leaving soon, I had to get another piece of paper stating to the Government that I will actually be gone before 90 days. After all this was finally completed they gave me back my passport with all the relevant stamps, and I asked them where is my work permit. Cue lots of talking in Thai and nobody telling me what is going on. Eventually I asked them to speak in English and tell me whats happening, I guess they had lost it. Not only did they lose it, but they had given it to a previous customer, a filipino lady by accident. The organisation in these places needs to improve. They apologised and after ringing my agency, came to an arrangement that meant I would receive my work permit back eventually. It arrived yesterday in the post.

At the start of the month my school hosted its Open Exhibition day, where students had the day off lessons and a huge marquee was set up with different subjects and activities. It was a really fun day and I think everyone enjoyed it. During the morning students went to each subject and took part in the activities. I found myself making bookmarks and throwing darts at balloons as well as painting statues (of an elephant, obviously!) In the afternoon there was a competition for best dances, and best “sing a song” (Karaoke) I videoed the best performances but wordpress won’t let me upload the file unless I pay so you’ll have to look it up on facebook!

I also made another video for my Mums 50th Birthday. It was hard being here this week knowing everything was going on at home. It was Mothers day, Mums birthday and her party. I just wanted to be there, I’m ready to go back now. Luckily just over 4 weeks and I will be there. I’m definitely counting down the days! My Year 5/2 class helped me for the birthday message and they were great, and were excited to know the video was being sent to England.

I’m currently at school writing this and I think the other teachers know I’m just going to be watching movies today, they just bought me a bag of popcorn! Ha, even though I miss home, I still love Thailand.

On Sunday, 17. 03. 2013 was an open day in the Refugee Church in The Hague. This second open day aimed to increase public support for their protest against the brutal policies of migration management.  On the program were discussions about the recent situation of the refugees and Peter Storm accompanied with a guitar performance.

The sites included in this open day are Ħaġar Qim and Mnajdra Temples in Qrendi and the Domvs Romana in Rabat, which on the day will also be celebrating the Feast of St Joseph.

The mosaic pavements in the Domvs Romana rank among the finest and oldest mosaic compositions from the western Mediterranean, alongside those of Pompeii and Sicily. Apart from free admission to this site, during the open day one will also have the opportunity to join a free tour of the museum. Tours in Maltese will commence at 10.15am, 10.30am, 2.15pm and 2.45pm.

Those visiting Ħaġar Qim and Mnajdra Temples can participate in a number of activities including guided tours, lectures by various students that focused their studies on the temples, a taste of food prepared with ingredients available in the Neolithic period, hands-on pottery activities and a treasure hunt for the young and young at heart. Click here for a full programme of events.

During the open day, visitors to any of these three sites will also have the opportunity to join and become members of Heritage Malta at a discounted rate. Membership benefits include the possibility of visiting all of Heritage Malta’s sites for free, except for the Hal Saflieni Hypogeum, for which tickets are available at a discount of 50% on the normal ticketing price. Additionally, throughout the year, Heritage Malta also organises various events specifically for members. For more information on membership, please click here.

Doors will be open from 9.00hrs till 17.00hrs with the last admission at 16.30hrs. For more information, please call Heritage Malta on 2295 4000.

Big accidental beige theme going on again today, but for the best reason – EXHIBITION TIME! My own colour palette usually favours beige anyway but I suppose there’s something about these white walls and wooden floors  in particular that brought out everyone’s neutral side. Portes Ouvertes was a sort of open day in my art school, where prospective students as well as the nosy public can basically come and take a look at ‘how we do.’ There was of course the art school stereotypical ‘Artwork made from human hair’ and ‘Artwork of combined genitals’ but across the school there was still quite good variety of work going on, though I only managed to get take photos of the pieces in the main Galerie Xavier Jouvin. I installed a few pieces of art that I’ve been working on and I’m so proud to be able to show you photos of the culmination of my ‘Volume – Installation’ module; Silent Night, and of my ‘Deep’ module, Too Deep; a 98% successful ice sculpture work. Maybe the sculpture snapped when I was taking it out of the mold (cry…), or maybe I just couldn’t take a picture of it before it melted and broke…I’ll leave the guessing up to you. Either way, it was 1000 times more successful than my last attempt at ice art so I couldn’t be happier! Check out the photos and let me know what you think :)

Too Deep

Too Deep (Detail)

Too Deep (Detail)

Installation Shot: Too Deep & Silent Night

Babel #1, Babel #2, Silence & Silent Night

Silent Night

My favourite pieces by other students in the Galerie.

I’m sure that if any of you have tried applying for anything law-related recently you will know that the competition is, quite frankly, ridiculous. Of course, I am fully aware that all kinds of students are facing the very real threat of being job-less after finishing university. We’ve all heard the stories/read the news. Depressing.

Attempting to be more optimistic than I am known to be, I underestimated the difficulty of getting a job or even an interview when I started to apply for vacation schemes and training contracts. That’s not to say I didn’t know it would be hard, I just hadn’t quite grasped just how many rejections would occur before even getting to the first hurdle. More depressing.

Now I will admit that my A-Levels do not show my ability and fall below what many law firms are asking for, which is obviously a great disappointment. BUT, I can’t go back and re-do all of my GCSE and A-Level years and despite what my grades look like on paper I know that my other skills far exceed those of lots of ‘clever’ people I know. Academia isn’t everything, people.

Anyway, let’s get back to what this post is really about. After the aforementioned, crushing rejection emails I finally received a message saying that I had been successful in my application for an open day at a rapidly growing commercial firm. Yes, I know what some of you may be thinking – “JUST an open day?” Don’t be too underwhelmed. Hundreds of people apply for these places and only 25 get the opportunity to go. One small win for me. I was also joined by fellow JMU GDL student and friend, James.

Being my first success, I didn’t really know what to expect. We were told to come to a building in Liverpool I had never heard of, in an area of the city I didn’t know existed. On the 7th floor of a brand new, shiny, high-rise building we were greeted by 20 other students all dressed in their best office gear and looking decidedly younger than me. I’m only 22 but seriously, everyone there was young and KEEN to impress. I have never been surrounded by so much false confidence in my life and let me tell you, there is nothing more intimidating than a younger person who appears to know everything.

Lunch consisted of becoming acutely aware that university degree level students definitely have one up on us polytech GDL students who get little to no careers advice and even less guidance when it comes to work experience, etc. This is where I start cursing to myself inside my head and smiling and nodding at what the 15 year old is reeling off to me (slight exaggeration of age there). One guy in particular was a total law student MACHINE; he knew everything there is to know about the firm, he had already met the graduate recruiters before, he had secured interviews with other firms and was just generally scary (even though he was shorter than me). THIS is what I’m up against? More depressing.

The rest of the day was spent attending presentations, chatting to eccentric founding partners and fresh-faced trainees, hearing about other opportunities to work for the firm and going on a tour of the office. It was all actually thoroughly enjoyable, very interesting and encouraging. This is a firm that, although on paper say they want pretty impressive A-Levels, are genuinely happy to read the whole of your application and be impressed by other aspects of your personality and perhaps even give you a chance to show those areas by attending their vacation scheme or giving you an interview for their training contract. Less depressing.

Let’s hope I get some more luck soon!

I also have to admit that it feels a bit odd sitting at home and not having to do any CBT or Question Bank. After constantly doing it for 5 months, it feels as though it has become part of my routine and now I don’t have to do it. I’m sure I’ll get used to it, but for the short term it feels wrong!

Before leaving Southampton though, I was helping out at the CTC Wings Open Day on Saturday and it was so good to see more people like myself, with a dream of training to become a pilot. I hope you all found it useful and enlightening, as well as enjoying, especially if you got into the simulators!
I did manage to get into a simulator again and got a couple of hours in as a psuedo training captain (basically making sure everything was running properly and we didn’t crash!) The potential pilots I ended up flying next to all seemed really determined and I’d say that you should keep that mentality up!
If you still have questions, both my contact details and details on how to get in touch with CTC can be found on the Contact page.

We are still waiting for confirmation of our flights to New Zealand, but I have now been assured that they are booked, so it looks like I am leaving the UK on the evening of the 20th March to head out to New Zealand. I can’t wait!

Next week at Strathclyde Business School, we are hosting an Open Day, inviting you to come and visit us at our Glasgow base, and find out more about the programmes we offer at postgraduate level which includes our MBA via full, part-time or by Flexible Learning.

Every aspect of the business school’s postgraduate portfolio will be represented: so whether you are a graduate looking to undertake a one year’s masters degree, a working manager thinking about studying on a part-time basis, or an HR Director considering executive education for your organisation, there will be something of interest to you.

Representatives from each of the business school’s departments will be on hand to chat to you about their particular programmes. In addition, a series of mini lectures will run throughout the day allowing you to find out more about the standing of the school, or hear more about a specific subject area.

To attend, we ask that you take a moment to register online here and also highlight your own particular area of interest, from the list.

We look forward to welcoming you to Strathclyde Business School on Wednesday 13th March. However, if you are unable to make this date, we regularly attend recruitment events around the world (see Events), or feel free to contact us directly at sbs.admissions@strath.ac.uk to make a personal appointment to discuss the MBA in more detail.

We invite all parents to bring along their children or adults to meet Brenda Davis our facilitator, from 9 to 11am daily for a free clay session. The aim of our clay making week is to produce mini ceramic planters for our herbs and “vetplante”.

The MEC of Social Development will be visiting our adult centre on  28 March and we would like to show her the planters we have made during this week.

Brenda will meet visitors at 254 Main Road, Walmer (please note: 254 Main Road). For any further information please contact her on 083-533-9963.

Monday

If you’ve spoken to me about the Master’s course, then you will probably have heard by now that I have always intended to go abroad, not something I have addressed before in this blog. Every day I try and do a little bit more research into where I’m going and into the application process, so Monday involved going to a talk at the Careers Centre, held by an organisation that specialises in assisting UK applicants who want to study in the USA. It did not tell me a lot that I did not know, as I have already been through their website with a fine-tooth comb, but it did clarify a few things that I was not sure about.

Monday was strangely quiet, since there was only me and Sara in the office, when normally there would be seven of us, spread across two rooms. Luckily, it was Sara with whom I had planned a meeting, because I am interested to know more about the work she does as a Web Content Co-ordinator. She spends two days a week focused on web-based activities, as well as her regular role as the Faculty Team Librarian for Earth & Environment, Geography, and Transport Studies. She took me through the decision to abandon the old library website in 2010, through the process of building a new website from scratch in 2011, then the launch of the new library website in January 2012, finishing at February this year, when the library won a national prize for our new visual identity, the Design Effectiveness Award. I used both the old and new websites as an undergrad, so I can assure you that the new one is an immeasurable improvement (example statistic: the new website has about 1500 pages, the old one had around 10,000).

Tuesday

I attended Sara’s Web Content Team meeting, happy that I was attending a meeting which I wasn’t minuting for a change. They spoke of the upcoming plans for the website (probably not allowed to write about anything I heard), plus I agreed to attend a training session on Jadu, the software used by the library to maintain the website.

For the final hour of the day, I was minuting the Sci-Eng Library Reps meeting again. I found this task quite difficult and time-consuming the first time, but this meeting was very straightforward to minute and write up. This change is probably because I’ve done an LSAB meeting, so everything else seems like a breeze in comparison. Also, the more you do something, the easier it becomes, and I’ve done a lot of minuting now.

Wednesday

Wednesday is Purchase Alerts day, so I got those fired off within ten minutes and made a start on the minutes from yesterday. I didn’t get to finish them though, since Penny and Katie arrived for their tour of the Edward Boyle. Sean and I have already visited their libraries (Leeds Met and Bradford respectively), so he showed them around the Brotherton, then I took them around the EBL and also around Health Sciences (a very short tour, since I only really know where the training room is down there and that’s it!). Sean came down after this and we all had a short chat together in the Airport Lounge (a café, the name of which they assumed was a joke), but then I had to jet off for evening duty. I spent this on reception with Eddie, a new Brotherton employee who I’d been asked to oversee.

Thursday

It’s the week of the All-Staff meeting, which is actually only for half the staff, since the rest attend the repeat meeting on Friday morning. I heard about a comment from a mystery shopper, who had been employed to test out the quality of customer service provided by the library, it was as follows: ‘The Edward Boyle Library is old and dated, but that doesn’t impact on the quality of the service’. I thought this was a fair point, nicely summarised.

Following this meeting, I met with Janet, an FTL from the Arts & Social Sciences team, to talk about my involvement in the Library’s preparations for Open Days. She told me that my role would be that of the ‘hunter gatherer’; I am to research advertising and marketing techniques employed by libraries, as well as the different methods that libraries can use to provide tours and information to visitors, particularly in relation to Open Days. If you’re reading this and you’re a Graduate Trainee or someone on our Twitter, then I will probably be speaking to you about this in the coming weeks!

Friday

I met up with Sally, my mentor, for an informal chat about how things are going, my project, my plans etc. I always find out useful stuff from talking to her, for example this time she told me about some things that she’d come across in her role as Library’s rep for International Students (I didn’t even know we had one of those), which will be useful for the report I’m writing for Janet.

Finally, I came back to the EBL and started writing this blog post, which took me up to 5pm but I didn’t have chance to post. I intend to blog on Friday afternoons from now on, since I’m up to date (although I’ve not started as I mean to go on, since I’m actually putting this online on a Monday).

Thanks for reading!

Our faculty is unrivalled in its breadth and depth of disciplines, programmes and departments, and The Bartlett staff and students are engaged at the very forefront of their fields, whether in teaching, professional practice or research. Through interdisciplinary collaborations, together, they constitute a true powerhouse of thinking, creating and doing.

Located in the heart of one of the world’s greatest cities, The Bartlett maintains a close and active relationship with numerous centres of built environment education, research and business in London. We work in partnership with London’s exceptional concentration of built environment firms and agencies, acting in local contexts across the globe.”

Find out more and register to attend by visiting The Bartlett’s webpage.

This is a heads-up to anyone in Chennai regarding the IMSc Open Day, on March 10, 2013. It’s a Sunday! This will be a day-long affair, morning to evening, open to the public. If you’re a school/college student, you may either nag your parents to take you to the event, or show up on your own. If you’re neither, feel free show up anyway. It will be fun. Indulge your curiosity, and feel free to tinker around with the many science demos that will be set up on the day. If this is enough to convince you (or kids you know) to show up, spread the word and go to the homepage and register! If not, read on.

Everyone’s thinking!

Once upon a time, I indulged in a long rant on education (science education in particular), where I argued why those in academia must reach out to the public, especially children. The Open Day is one such effort we are making at Matscience and it would be hypocrisy on my part if I do not spread the word around. The idea is to have a day-long interaction with the public where anyone can walk in and attend any of the events and also interact with members of the Institute.

The events typically kick off with short public talks on some aspect of math, physics, and computer science by researchers in the respective fields. These talks are meant to be accessible to school students. An example of what such talks might be like is this lecture by Jam (RamanuJam) on playing games (meant for high school kids!):

Jam’s inimitable talk!

After the talks, you can walk around the Institute and inspect the math and science demos that will be set up at various places on the campus. There may also be a treasure hunt! There will be an event called ‘Ask the scientist’ where you can ask some scientists/mathematicians all the random questions that catch your fancy. You can also catch unsuspecting graduate students (yes, the ones with that distant look in their eyes) who, I am sure, will be happy to feel relevant for once. They might tell you how exciting science is and will be glad to indulge your curiosity as long as you don’t ask them, “How’s research?”, or worse still, “When do you graduate?” Those are questions they may not have good answers to, so be nice, and avoid those questions. For they may provoke them into rants you may not want to hear on such a happy day! Then again, if such a thing happens, don’t be scared. They are normal people (more or less) and will be nice to you if you offer them free food (perhaps you can get some along from home?) or just ask them what their favourite method of procrastination is. They are seasoned experts in both of those departments.

‘Elephant’s toothpaste’, they called it.

I’ll be organizing the Science Quiz at the end of the day, by the way. So feel free to drop by if you like science trivia and puzzles of the logical kind. There will be prizes! The quiz is open to school and college students. There will be five teams, each with two school students and one college student. Of course, there will be a written preliminary quiz to choose teams for the main quiz. The audience will get to answer questions that all the teams pass, and will be rewarded for the same. There may also be questions exclusively for those in the audience. To give you a flavour of what the event looks like, here are some pictures from 2011:

Quiz in progress

Quizzical looks!

If all this doesn’t convince you to show up, there will be free food! Register here! See you on the 10th. Cheerio

P.S. Here’s how you get to IMSc. And this is where you find it on Google Maps.

Easter Open Day – 31st March 2013