040907 - Department Retreat Day 2

I had to head back to school today after yesterday's debacle at Ubin for part 2 of the retreat. We were supposed to gather at 9am and as usual we left from our office as a group. KM was very nice to sacrifice his leg to stop the lift door from closing so that FDR could grab his ID.


Our director served us breakfast (NZ burger!) which was totally cooked in the conference room. That meant we were worried about power tripping as we were overloading the mains with a microwave oven, a toaster and a grill. We were also worried about triggering the water sprinklers/smoke detectors from the smoke generated by the grill.

The burger was so huge that FDR had so much difficulty eating it though his mouth's huge!



Poor JQL as well!


Then we had this Coconut Awards ceremony which is to celebrate the semester's end. I got a young coconut award for my maiden attempt at crafting problems (i.e. syllabus creating). I also won this party bag with the M&Ms and this pinball game from yesterday's Ubin crawl. The cookie's baked by my director as well, though I haven't got the stomach to eat it up as I was too full! He also baked this chocolate-coconut brownie which was very sweet(!).


I was unsure why my colleague NML kept on forgetting my burger, but I was one of the very last few to get mine and I got it only after those sitting around me like FDR and JQL have finished theirs. Hrmph!



Now my turn at tackling the giant:



Then we also had banana crepe!



We ended the day by doing a Touchstone exercise which is different from mission statements and visions as in touchstones are more immediate, directing our daily decisions and working. I pointed out that the word 'student' is conspicuously absent (that was really thanks to AD's frequent discussions about what it means to be student-oriented) and it was interesting when my new Reporting Officer (RO) also exclaimed that their team had also talked about it without providing anything of noteworthy material to supplement my point. Hmm!