I realised about a day or two ago that at the age of 22, I've only lived about a quarter of my expected life span, and found this fact incredibly depressing. That means I still have majority of my life left to go, and that I haven't even passed the halfway mark of completing this whole rat race that is living. It means I still have many years of pretending-to-know-what-I'm-doing left. Damnit.
-----
Today was my off day, and I went to cut my hair. Even though Chinese New Year's is about a month away, the salon I went to charged me $5 extra for a CNY surcharge. At least at the salon, they had yesterday's New Paper there, and I managed to read a particular article one of my colleagues mentioned about a Primary 5 word list. The article in particular mentioned how ridiculous the list was, and as I read it I was half chuckling and half feeling depressed about how absurd the whole thing was.
I knew about 21 words of the whole list, and I think I have a pretty good vocabulary level. The ones I weren't sure of were diurnal, navvy and supervening. As to why I even needed to know some of the words on the list, I don't know but I do. Which brings me to the whole point about how bloody stupid this whole affair is - what's the point of young children needlessly chugging down bombastic words that they'll barely be able to use? I can scarcely think of a context where osseous or indict will be needed in a composition. After all, all primary school compositions tend to be about shit catching fire anyway. A random disaster happens? It's a FIRE! Weird sound in a library? It's a FIRE! Stranger trying to open your front door? He's a FIREMAN and there's a FIRE! The only possible scenario I can think about, where words from that list would be applicable, is a child writing about firefighters digging through a fire-ruined structure and finding the osseous remains of bodies gathered around a blocked emergency exit. This results in an investigation and eventual indictment of a powerful figure of gross negligence, whose thoughtless actions caused the fire and unwarranted deaths.
I'd pay to see a Primary school kid write that. Hell, I'd even pay to see a Secondary student write that. I get can't over how incredibly daft the whole thing is, bah.
Incidentally, they're taking me off teaching Primary school kids and making me teach more Secondary students. One wonders why indeed.
-----
After I went to cut my hair, I did the whole trendy hang-out-at-Starbucks shtick. The last time I hung out any coffeeshop like that was months ago when I was preparing for my final exams in London, and I remember getting excessively irritated with a loudly bragging man next to me. It was a Sunday, and the Kingsway Starbucks was oddly crowded. This time of course I was at the Liat Towers branch, and it was no less crowded for a Monday afternoon.
I initially wanted to sit outside, but it looked awfully dark under the awnings, so stuck inside I was. It cold, but at least I could see things without ruining my eyes. I managed to get a table against the wall, next to a guy who was coding stuff on his Mac, and contemplating setting up a twitter account. Yes I am a busybody, and yes I was bored. I used the Starbucks gift card my mentor gave me for Christmas and plonked myself there for about one and a half hours, getting the full bang of the bucks-I-didn't-pay-for. I read through the lesson plans for the upcoming week, and made little annotations here and there. Towards the end when I was done and bored (and because it was raining), I started reading Pygmy, a book I had just bought from the awesomely old school Ana Book Store. The book is strange.
-----
Last night I finished reading One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. I had started reading the book earlier in the day, and was satisfied for a brief few moments with myself when I managed to complete reading it in a day.
-----
I had tasty white carrot cake for lunch, but I suspect the excessive use of oil is currently giving me indigestion. Urgh.
No comments:
Post a Comment