Assembly

Barely a month after Ace has started school, I recieved an invitation to watch him perform at his school assembly...

However, the assembly happened during a school day and it happened during the time that Max is away... so initially I did not want to go...

But when I asked Ace what he would be performing, he says it is a secret and he won't tell me unless I go watch him in school.. and so in the end, I decided to go... since Max is not here, I guess it might be better if I did go and video it down and take some pics for him to see....

Fast forward to the day of the assembly....

As I had taken the metro to Dubai Mall two days before and noticed at the train station that there is actually a shuttle service that goes direct to the school so a day before I was due to attend the performance, I spent some time on the RTA (LTA equivilent) website to check out their journey planner...

Alas, that wasn't exactly a very good idea because I couldn't find Horizon School at all till 30 minutes later.. and the reasons were being:

1) HOrizon School was spelt "Horizen' in the RTA map...

2) Addresses dun count for much here in dubai.... as this place is way too big, most places do not have an exact address... just take my address.... it may sound strange but my address here is merely Umm Hurriah Road... And even though my building is Al Ghuriah Building, there is no sign on my building.. so we tell the taxis TO LET building next to Umm Hurriah building IV. Most people use PO Boxes and so it is not uncommon for their written addresses to be actually something like ABC Road, opposite XYZ building... since ABC road is very very long. The best part is... according to the school website, the school address is a certain number on a certain street... and according to RTA website's map, the school address is a DIFFERENT NUMBER on a DIFFERENT street.. BUT they all actually are referring to the SAME PLACE! Isn't it amazing????

Anyway, I found out that the recommended route is that I take the metro to Business Bay station and change to the shuttle bus service.. But as I now have very little faith in the info I recieved from RTA, I decided to go back to the Dubai Mall Station instead where I was certain there was a shuttle bus... PLUS, it looked like I had to walk much furthur to the the bus stop from the business bay station from the map I had...

Anyway, here I was all set out to go out on a warm sunny morning in Dubai with my sunglasses, long sleeves and my cap... CAN DIE lor if go out without these three things...

I was so pleasantly surprised to find that the bus stop for the shuttle bus was indeed 400 metres away as stated on the journy planner. However, the bonus is that it was a 400 meter walk in an airconditioned walkway.. with travellators! I was so darn happy!

As I looked out when I was walking, I got super lucky (or rather, unlucky). I glanced out to see the bus and so now, I not only knew what the bus looked like, I actually knew exactly where the bus stop is. Alas, when I reached the bus stop, I realized that as this was off peak hour and as I had just missed the bus... I had to wait another 30 minutes for the next bus... I was so worried that I would be late man...

And the bus was late! The bus arrived 35-40 minutes later and I was so sure I was going to be late. Thank god though that the bus ride was actually a mere 7 minutes and the bus stopped right outside school and so I was just in time.. which was just as well as I realized that parents couldnt go up first and had to wait till 12.30 before they can go up.. so most parents just hang around and make small talk... and I just din feel like I fit in since I was neither ang moh, nor a long time parent in this school.. the other parents seem to know each other really well and some were I think neighbours as they were offering to pick each other's children up from school....

Anyway, it was a typical school assembly and it was quite an interesting eye opener for me.. I think once a week, a different class gets to perform and the parents of that particular calss would be invited to school to watch...

That's Ace.. very excited that the performance is about to start.. On the lower left corner is one of the paintings that they used to decorate the stage and of cos I am featuring it here because it is drawn by Ace:) On the right lower corner is Mrs Sinclair... the super power headmistress I mentioned....

The theme for this week's perfomance is WE ARE SPECIAL. So they started off with some boys and girls introducing themselves and talking about what they like to eat or do.. and ending with how even though they are different, they are good friends...

And then there was a story of how Blue Boy and Green Girl, even though very different eventually became friends... and they ended with a I Can Sing A Rainbow song....

Here's the video of part of it..





Anyway, I think Ace got the SHORTEST script amongst them all.. wahahahhaa... I am not quite sure how they assign.. is it based on when they join their class or based on their ability to read or wat.. but I guess after you listen to all of them with their ang moh slang.. Ace's singaporean accent does sound a little bit out of place... But yet, there were some children who were struggling with the words and they had super long scripts... so I guess... maybe they did a lucky draw and Ace was just lucky.. wahahaha...

Here is the video of Ace doing his one liner....







I say this assembly is an eye opener because they did a few interesting things I wished SGP schools would do too.... First they gave out certificates weekly... Certificates do not only go out to children who did well academically in a certain subject.. but were also given out to children who helped others, children who cared for someone and did and extra kind deed... children who taught their teacher how to speak a certain language.. etc.... And after all the certs were given out, the whole school sing this song about You Are The Best or something like that to all these children who recieved certs and aknowledgement.... tat's really cool...

After that, the children with birthdays this month would stand up... and they are allowed to request however many number of claps from the whole school. If they wanted 20 claps, the school would give them 20 claps lor!

Then leh, BIG TED, the huge pink teddy comes out.. he goes to the class who is best class in the whole school in that week and gets to stay in the classroom for the week... just how cool is that right?:P

Anyway, after it ended, I did my sums and realized that if Ace took the school bus and I took the Metro, I would reach home later than Ace and if I were to take a cab, I might as well just take a cab home with him.. so I decided to pick him up and go home together.

Alas, there was no cab to be found.. the school guards told me this is a very difficult place to get a cab.. and so, he suggested we walk to the main road... and we walked and walked and walked and walked for 10 minutes in the blazing hot sun before we reached the main road and there were still no cabs.. and I dun fancy standing there in the hot sun to continue waiting since the MRT station was just in front of us.. I told Ace we will walk to the MRT station instead....

It took us another 20 min before we reached Business Bay metro station and luckily, there was a mini shop tat sells food and drinks... so I bought Ace a chocolate milk drink to prevent dehydration and to help him tahan cos he complained he was hungry... by the time we reached the station, he was all spent and his cheeks were all rosy and red!



That's us looking very shagged at the platform waiting for our train...

So while I think that the dubai metro probably tried to imitate the singapore MRT but did a bad job as they failed to follow up on the software as well, there were some things I think they did well, if not, better than Singapore. Here in Dubai, women and children are well taken care of.... there are certain days of the week that parks only allow women and children and so they are free to enjoy.. there are cabins on the train that are only for women and children (and so you have higher chance of getting a seat). Also, they have a gold card for people who pay a little more to sit in the gold card carriage of the train... it is more comfy, has more seats and thus you also got higher chance of getting a seat:)


Anyway, that's us posing for the camera... glad that we are finally home but sad that Daddy is not with us....

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