Huggies or Drypers

In a few days, I will attend my first Baby's First Month celebration. The closest thing we have to a Western Baby Shower, the guests usually bring something useful for the Mum/Baby and leave with Dyed Red Eggs and Sponge Cake. I'm not sure of the relevance of the guest's gifts but, hey they're usually tasty enough. Maybe I'll find out this Sunday. Anyway a colleague for M/s L has just gone and had little Baby E, and I mentioned it to my Dad when we were out today. He said buying diapers was usually a good idea, and when I texted the New Mum, she said Huggies or Drypers. So a-hunting I will go over the next few days for Huggies or Drypers.

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Today was a strange day. I woke up with the full intention of just staying home and ordering Pizza in, and ended up all over in places I never thought of. It first started when I woke up and realised my Dad was still home. He asked me to go to Johor Bahru with him, and looking at the sky (cause it seemed nice and clear today), said OK. So off we went to JB, and had fish porridge for lunch. Then we went grocery shopping, and he ran some errands. We managed to cross the border back to Singapore by 4:00pm, and straight away headed downtown to run more errands.

First stop was Change Alley, where I finally went to change money for my upcoming Japan trip with Joaquin. Then we headed to Marina Square to collect some home entertainment system for my Grandmama that she got with some credit card promotion. It was when my Dad was topping up his ERP card for the car that he got a call from my Grandmama that derailed the rest of our plans. She was in Plaza Singapura, and in a lot of pain. She wanted my Dad to come over and help her. She also mentioned she couldn't walk.

So off we went, first to a Church Friend's house to borrow his wheelchair. Recently he had gotten into an accident. While rounding a bend in his spiffy 500cc motorbike (I think), he had lost his balance and fell off the motorbike. The motorbike then fell on top of him, and broke his leg. Anyway, he had a wheelchair handy, so my Dad drove to his place to borrow it.

Then we headed to Plaza Singapura to pick up Mama and Matthew, who had gone there to watch a movie and have lunch. They were sitting in the food court.

Then we drove to Tan Tock Sing Hospital's Accident and Emergency department, which was quite a mess. We waited about 30 minutes for her the see the triage nurse. Then Mama got directed to the X-Ray department and we couldn't follow her any longer, so I took Matthew back to Mama's in a cab, then headed home myself.

I feel quite headachy now. Need to plan for tomorrow's relief teaching class at 1pm. 

Dilbert and Haze

I sort of feel a bit like this now from work. Am feeling really tired and would LOVE to just stop teaching and be able to clear all those compositions that have been weighing on my mind. Unfortunately that's not about to happen any time soon. Instead the haze has gone and reduced my productivity by at least 30% by making me feel giddy and mentally displaced from whatever is in front of me. I took an MC today, hoping that I could rest and get well for the rest of the week, unfortunately the damn thing's gone and peaked at 290+ which means my resting today could well nigh be in vain.

I'm currently reading Vanity Fair now by William Makepeace Thackeray. I can't remember when I started it, Saturday or Sunday evening perhaps, and am now quite besotted. Only thing I must say about it that's bad is that it is slow paced (considering I just finished a PD James novel - Death in Holy Orders) and it is INCREDIBLY heavy and thick, making reading it in a comfortable position pretty unattainable.

I currently taste smoke and ash at the back of my throat. Seriously. 

Dustbin

Yesterday I went out with my Dad to pick up Ryan and go to Toyogo to buy plastic drawers. There, I found a nice small dustbin for $1.80. We bought the dustbin. For the past week or so, I've been dustbin-less in the office because the Cleaning Aunty took the bin away, because some asshats have been throwing food leftovers into the bin. It's like nevermind that we're university educated professionals, we're still not mature enough to have our own damn bin because people aren't civic-minded enough. Anyway stupid shit tossed into the bin aside, I realised the Cleaning Aunty couldn't take the bin away if it was a proper plastic thing, rather than a makeshift bin made of a cardboard box. So yeah I bought a bin. I'll bring it after the next makeshift bin gets tossed away, since I managed to make one just last Friday, complete with a sign telling people to NOT TOSS FOOD WASTE into it. 

Quite tired because I stayed late to work in the office, and I still have more to prepare for lessons tomorrow. Urgh. 

I have a supermassive craving for Thosai now ):

156

Took the 156 back home today as usual, except this time I got one of those old early 2000s type rickety-shuddery buses rather than the new sleek stable ones. The interior was pretty dark as some of the ceiling lightbulbs has blown, and the windows were frosted beyond belief with thick droplets on condensation. In short you couldn't really read on the bus (as I am wont to do every time with BBC on my phone) or look thoughtfully out the window. Plus I started to develop a headache from being shaken about. I tried closing my eyes initially, but somehow felt even worse. Instead as the bus trundled  down its route, I started looking around.

As a prominent stop, a male Indian boy and a Chinese girl got on the bus and sat right in front of me. I mention the race because I have a soft spot for mixed race couples, and I was somehow eager to see something different on the bus. Maybe she'd lean on his shoulder or something. Anyway she soon got off, telling him to 'let her know how things go'. I was about to turn back to attempting to read the news of my phone when I noticed he was holding his phone up so high, that I could read his texts. My eyes were also drawn to the fact that he was typing 'Fuckkkkkkkkkk' into my phone.

Shamefully, I ended up eyes-dropping on him. There was simply nothing else to do on the bus to keep me stimulated or entertained, and I longed to be off and reach home. The best thing seemed to be keeping mentally occupied, so I wouldn't notice how damn slow the bus was moving. I surmised that he was probably texting a sister, as their exchange centered mainly around him being horrendously late for something, and the word that cropped up in almost every reply back to her was 'Fuckkkkkkkkkk' with multiple 'k's. Poor lad. I assume it's his Dad he's worried about, considering his age.

He got off a few stops before me, so I assume whatever he was fearing on the bus has either come true around now, or has already passed. This sort of reminds me a little about Das Leben Der Anderen, but is obviously more selfish and anti-social. Oops.

I had a long and tiring day at work. 

Populaire

Just got back from watching Populaire with Shu and Tiff. The movie was at 7pm, and around 11am I got notice from The Office that they wanted me to teach a class at 5pm. Oh boy did I pray to wriggle out of it! In the end I managed to get a 3pm class, and snuck out early from work, feeling utterly rotten. I figured I had lesson prep left, and I could do that at home anyway. Just like I plan to do in about 30 minutes time. I ran into Tiff at the train station at around 6:45pm, and we rushed to buy Burger King to eat in the cinema. Shu went to collect tickets, and we made it into the theatres a few minutes late... only to be inundated by more trailers HAHAHA. I guess they figured 7pm was a tight timing for the working crowd.

Populaire was lovely. Much nicer than The Great Gatsby. Certainly more intelligent and charming. I loved Deborah Francois in the movie. Everything, from her clothes to her cute ponytail, was amazing. Ahh, to be French, beautiful and quirky. The male lead however, Romain Duris, reminded me of Sarkozy for some odd reason. That kind of killed any sex appeal he was supposed to have, for me. Also realised this was the first movie I watched with Shu and Tiff since coming back to Singapore. Woo.

It's currently Week 36 since I started working. Sometimes I feel like I know what I'm doing, other times I feel like I'm utterly hopeless and a shit at my job. I wonder if this on-and-off self-doubt/double-thinking is normal, or healthy?

Spiders and Kennedys

Recently a spider has taken up residence in my bathroom. It seems to be fairly nocturnal, because I only see it at night. Then again that could say more about my waking hours than the spider's actual habits, but I never see it in the afternoon. When I first saw it, it gave me an unpleasant surprise because it was awfully large - about 5 cm in diameter - bloody huge for a house spider. BRRRRR. That time I managed to scare it off by tossing some extra water I had in a cup in its direction. After that I kept seeing it around. About after a week I got used to seeing it hanging about on the ground. It would stay completely still if I was around, which suited me fine. I have no desire to squish things as long as they do not come towards me.

One day however while on the loo, I started counting its legs and somehow counted 6. This led to some minor soul/brain searching as I tried to figure out how I had confused it for a spider, followed by dammit-I'm-sure-it-was-a-spider. The next time I went to the bathroom and saw the spider, I counted its legs again and this time got 7. So it was a 1-leg-less spider. I wondered how it lots its leg.

When I finished showering today, I spotted it hanging off the wall near the shower curtains. Never actually saw it anywhere but on the floor before, so that kind of gave me a little shock. Still it's strange how people get used to things. I guess it has partly to do with the fact that I think spiders are far more acceptable than other sorts of insects, and how all this one does is stay still or scamper away from me. I doubt I'd ever have this sort of odd relationship with URGH a cockroach.

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Tuesday as usual is a day spent preparing for Wednesday. I worked till a little bit past 7:45pm and then headed off home. My side of the office was empty when I left. After coming back and talking to Joaquin, then eating dinner and showering (where I saw the spider hanging on the wall), I finally sat down and started planning my lesson for tomorrow.

This time it's a short piece on Caroline Kennedy, and I started digging around for more general knowledge to feed my students with, especially on JFK's death and how dramatic Lyndon B. Johnson's swearing in ceremony was (99 minutes after JFK's death, on Air Force One!). I finally watched the Walter Cronkite clip of him announcing JFK's death, and as I listened I just left incredibly sad. I can't imagine what it must have felt like to live in America at the time and feel so scared and uncertain after a political leader's sudden death.

Feeling quite easily emotional nowadays, urgh. I hope my students don't get on my nerves tomorrow :x

Pomfets

Yesterday I had lunch with my Guo Mah and parents at a Teochew restaurant in Bendeemer. As my father pointed out, the place was filled with families bringing grandparents out for lunch, and we were no exception. My Mum ordered a pomfret fish for lunch, and when it came out it was huge and tasty. I mentioned that this particular pomfret was cooked exactly the way I remember it to be when I was growing up, steamed with ginger, tomatoes and some sour plum thing, and how we no longer ate it at home. My Mum said it was because my Dad didn't buy it anymore because it's now far more expensive than when I was growing up. Then something sort of clicked in my mind even though I knew about the upsurge in price before: I was eating soon-to-be-extinct fish. I started to feel real guilty.

The fish was still nice, but it had somehow lost some of his flavour after that conversation, and I didn't really want to eat it anymore. The though of eating something to extinction made me feel kind of disgusted, like we humans were so satisfied to stuff our faces that we'd kill of an entire species. URGH. Now this is a strange thought for me mainly 'cause I never bothered about those sharks fin boycotts before. In fact, I throughly enjoy sharks fin soup. Now after this whole strange pomfret thing, I'm wondering what my reaction would be next time I'm faced with a bowl of sharks fin soup.

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I watched The Great Gatsby with Gail tonight. My feelings towards the movie can be summed up as: WTF. The soundtrack was grotesquely jarring, the script and directing IN YOUR FACE (really, ending every one of Jay Gatsby's line with 'old sport'?/zooming in on that damn green beacon at every chance?), the party scenes like a club in 2013 and immensely distracting multiple cut scenes in the beginning of the movie. Plus I wanted to throughly slap Carey Mulligan because she portrayed how irritating Daisy Buchanan was, so well. There were times I just burst out laughing, especially when the rapping soundtrack started in the beginning. For all the hype, I felt this movie to be disappointing. Boo.

Rules of Civility

Just polished off Rules of Civility by Amor Towles. I started reading it on a Monday afternoon (was it at the hairdressers?) and am now done with it on the wee hours of Wednesday morning. Towles' prose is beautifully understated - the whole show not tell thing done to perfection. His style reminds me almost of Kazuo Ishiguro in a way. I really liked how although majority of the story is done from a first person perspective, we are never actually told what the narrator is thinking, but instead simply how she reacts and responds.

When I first started reading it I thought it was simply a story about a girl who had to stand in the sidelines while her best friend wheeled in the man she loved, but the story is so much more than that, and brings up little nuggets of things to think about. It is is more about a year in the life of a girl in her prime, and the varied things that happen. I think this will definitely be one of the highlight reads of the year.

"And at the same time, I know that right choices by definition are the means by which life crystallises loss."

Rose Petals

I made my montly sojurn into town today to cut my hair, and do some shopping. I had been putting off cutting my hair for about a month because I still felt annoyed at getting charged a Chinese New Year surcharge the last time, nevermind that I cut it in early Jan. Today I finally caved after realised my hair was getting messier and messier especially when I got flustered at work, much to the amusement of my students.

After getting my hair cut, I went to get some books. I bought Ian McEwan's Atonement cause this particular edition caught my eye:

I also got Su Tong's Raise the Red Lantern and Charlotte Street by Danny Wallace. The latter I bought mainly cause it made me think of THAT Charlotte Street right in the middle of Bloomsbury. I suspect it's the same one the book is referencing. I went to Charlotte Street often last time mainly cause of Oxfam, and always walked off with a ton of cheap books for under £10. Man I miss those days. 

Walking by Guess on the way to Kinokuniya just now, I noticed that they use mannequins that are quite different from other shops. The main difference is that the mannequins used by Guess have massive breasts. I'm talking about D/DD size cups here, which is quite disturbing when you notice it. I know Guess aims for the whole 'I'm a sex bomb' market, but does it have to do it in such an obviously tacky way? Their mannequins scream 'bad boob job'. Urgh.

At Ngee Ann City I also stumbled upon the new Laduree branch, and bought some macaroons. The first thing I did when I got home to was indulge in a Rose Petal one. It was light and fluffy, and creamy in the middle. So very tasty mmmm.

A Wednesday

To be very honest, I thought about posting many times over. Each time I dismissed the though because I felt (and still feel) tired. It was another long, exhausting Wednesday. As usual I made mistakes, because I felt rushed and stressed. And as usual despite all my misgivings, I survived it. I'm blogging however because I realised I have to write something out lest later when I lay my head on the pillow, it churn around over and over, and making me unable to sleep. Gah.

Today out of my 3 classes, I had to scold 2. First time was because apparently the kiddos ran to the male bathroom and decided to lock each other out. Sigh. That still wasn't so bad because I know! They're kids! They do silly shit like that. Hell, even people my age still do that. Just not in the middle of a lesson and in full view of other authority figures. So that was scolding number 1, which was draining.   Still class ended on a high note as I showed them some videos like the Red Panda getting scared, and some PSY & MC Hammer videos that were related to a passage we gave out.

The next was my second class, of tweens. The problem with that class is that every time I scold them, it lasts for perhaps that lesson alone and then they clean forget everything. In essence they drive me nuts with their lack of respect or willingness to shut up and learn. It is very discouraging on my end, week after week, to come in and bear the brunt of their attitude problems. The best bit is that I know they don't mean it maliciously, it's just that they are naturally very playful kids who hate doing work - all stuffed together in one hellish classroom setting.

Unfortunately it's hard not to be upset by them as well, because it is very dispiriting to have to deal with the same problem all the time with no headway. This scolding really drained me, because in a sense I also felt it personally. Last night till past 1:30am I was still doing syllabus planning, and I had planned something extra on the Rama Plaza collapse for their level. I was excited at the prospect of teaching them about the global supply chain, how everything from their $10 H&M t-shirts to worker's rights was linked. I wanted them to think critically about the situation, to open their eyes. To an extent it did work, because when I conducted this portion of the lesson it was after the big scolding. I saw that they were interested. However it was too late for me, and I was dragging myself through it. They had killed my motivation to want to work hard for them.

Luckily my last class was much better. They're a jovial, bright bunch. Initially I had to scold them quite a bit because they loved running to the bathroom, stampeding like animals and disturbing the nearby classes. I managed to wean them off that bad habit after about a month, and today's lesson went swimmingly. I even managed to get a usually mischievous student to cooperate by bribing him with a red triceratops sticker (that he could be bribed by a sticker surprised me and his classmates) that he had somehow fallen in love with. To be fair it was a cute sticker. I even showed them silly videos like the Slow Loris being tickled and they LOVED it.

Ahh teaching. I supposed all in all, you need to take the good with the bad. On the other hand however, why does the bad have to be so bloody bad? 

Nerds

It oddly just hit me how nerdy my office is, while looking through the lesson plan for tomorrow. The Synthesis and Transformation questions were all inspired by characters from Archie comics, while a Grammar Question has a 'Mr. Lannister' in it. It makes me smile a silly smile. 

Test Anxiety

Most recently my students had to read a passage titled Test Anxiety and answer some questions. Some of the funnier suggestions included giving students motivational pencils to encourage them to do better. Regardless, as I was teaching it, I was going "HEH HEH HEH" in my mind as I was thinking about how I didn't have exams/tests anymore. Then I remembered, I did. And the smile slid from my face, and fell to the floor with audible PLOP.

Yesterday was my Basic Theory Test for driving. Although the passing rate is quite high, I was as usual disproportionately panicked about it. It didn't help that my Dad kept making snide remarks, saying that if I didn't pass the Test it meant I didn't have a brain/was dumber than XXX (insert stereotypical dumb person here). He was, and as is always, very very encouraging. So anyway I went to Bukit Batok Driving Centre feeling stressed out and did the test. When the invigilator (in a traffic police uniform funnily enough) said the passing grade was 90% and up (that is, 45 out of 50 correct), I almost wanted to slide from my seat and hide under the table.

Daft panicking aside, I passed, and boy did I feel relieved. I got 47/50. Instead ironically, the one I almost failed was the eye sight test afterwards. Apparently my eyesight has deteriorated, which means I might need to get a pair of glasses just for driving. This is the part where I laugh incredulously at life and my fate, because 4 years ago I went for a $3,000 surgery to get rid of my glasses. PFFFT.

Today I went out for dinner with Steph, Ianthe and JH. The last time I had seen them was probably in Oct, if not near Dec last year :/ Quite scary how time flies... and how bloody complacent I am. I am the sort that is content to be at home most of the time, because I have some mental block against any perceived strain and/or being stuck in a crowd. On the other hand that's quite silly because when I do drag my lazy ass out of my usual Work/Home combination, I do enjoy spending time hanging out with my friends. But because I am so lazy, the thought of actively seeking people and arranging a meeting flitters about my mind for about half a second before I think "NAH I'll be tired."I am an old grumpy shut-in way before my time. 

Books and Heaven

Went for a massage today at one of those TCM-like places. It was painful, yet soothing. I couldn't help but thing, in my strange lull zone then, that a good massage was probably the closest thing one could experience to heaven on earth. I had a whole wonderful thesis all set out in my head that I was going to record down, but as with most things, I forgot about them after a while. In essence it was something along the lines that when you get a good massage, all your physical pains are taken away, and you're lulled into a comforting floating place. Heaven on earth indeed. For the few rare times today too, I tipped. The masseuse looked pleasantly surprised.

Finished reading David Lodge's Changing Places last night. It was an enjoyable a read, and infinitely a much better one that Michael Frayn's Skios. It was much more witty, observational, and relied more on our inherent neuroses to propel the storyline forward than the idea that everyone is inanely stupid. I refer of couse, to the lack of IQ or a brain displayed by any of Michael Frayn's characters. It's almost as if he tried to be PG Wodehouse, but aimed far, far lower. Pfft.

On Saturday I taught one of my classes Blake's A Poison Tree. While teaching it I felt myself grow really impassioned, because it is such a wonderfully constructed and accessible poem. However as always, my students were rather expressionless, which slightly killed it for me. I only hope that some of my enthusiasm rubbed off on them. Then after that I rushed for lunch with a colleague, R, that I often go for lunch of Saturdays with. Coming back about 1 minute late, I dashed into the class that I was assisting with, and tried to suavely wave at the little students. Ended up fooling around slightly with them, nagging them to copy things off the board, and sharpening multiple pencils. By the time my regular class rolled around at 4pm, I felt quite exhausted. Still of course, I survived till 6pm and gladly packed up my things to go home.

Tomorrow I plan to stay at work till late, since Wednesday is a public holiday. I am infinitely more productive when I am in the office. Perhaps it's the stuffy atmosphere, the desk that is the right height and being surrounded by stacks of marking all over (some mine, others my colleagues'), but whatever it is it works. Fingers crossed that it's throughly productive, cause Lord knows I need to clear a lot of things.

On Wednesday I plan to bring my Mum to a nice lunch at a French place for a Mother's Day treat. Looking forward to it, for tasty food if nothing else :) 

Memories and Illness

One of the things about teaching young teens is that when I look at them, I cannot help but recall what I was like at their age. Being giggly around boys. Not giving a toss about my studies. Racing home just so I could play computer games. All those not-very-nice memories about how I spent my awkward days. For some students I cannot help but shake my head, and call them my neanderthals, my animals, but there are also others I cannot help but respect because they just seem so calm and collected, far more than I could seemingly hope to be even though I am twice their age. It is a strange mix, that makes me reflect upon my not-too-distant terrible teenage years.

Yesterday I felt quite ill during my last class. Right before stepping in, I started to get a headache. Midway, almost 1 hour into the lesson I realised I was started to get breathing problems. As a result, I kept coughing whooping coughs and my airways struggled to clear. I wanted badly to sit down, and just rest my body. Except I was teaching, and I needed to teach lest my kids get the whole damn comprehension wrong. So I stood, propped against the cupboards and trying to gather my energies. When I had given them enough help, I finally left to puff on my inhaler and sat down, more than 30 minutes after I had first felt sick. I wondered what my students would do if I collapsed at that point in time (indeed I felt I was only at 30% function). That thought brought me back to an old memory, of when I was 15 years old.

That year I was Secondary 3, and suffering greatly in Chemistry class. We had a teacher that was very old school, and terrifying in an old school way, especially since we had only experienced more enlightened ways of teaching. What I mean simply was that she acted like a mean old bitch, and wouldn't hesitate to tear you one if you made her mad. Except lots of things made her mad. Not knowing the answers to questions, titrating experiments wrongly, even saying 'sorry' too many times made her angry. Boy were we all scared shitless by her and her ability to shred your confidence to bits. There was not a single girl she didn't pick on, and she did it almost methodically. Later we rationalised it was probably to make us realise we weren't as great as we thought we were - because underneath all those hurtful comments we knew somehow that she meant well. Anyway for those of you in the know, it was Ms. G K Goh.

One lesson late in 2005, she started to feel very ill. We knew she had been poorly for a while, and her condition only seemed to be getting worse. She was teaching us halfway when she suddenly stopped at sat down at the desk. She looked pale and said she felt like vomiting. I can't remember if that was the day she also took off her wig, but I do remember her saying she felt weak and needed to rest. Then she lay her head down on the table, and us students just looked at each other, stunned and scared. Although we cared for her in a human way, somehow we never thought of her as being human. That she too felt weak, could get sick and suffer physically. That she would feel so bad that she actually needed to stop the lesson and show her frailty in front of us. She died the following year after fighting for cancer for many years. Right after National Day celebrations in school, we went as a class to her wake. After she died there was much random tears and morose thoughts among all, plus the occasional odd morbid poetry popping from some classmates. I don't remember her death helping much with my already present depression then either.

Strange what I think about now, when I look at my students. 

Worn

I feel very worn down from the seemingly endless and always expanding piles of marking. I feel overwhelmed, and sightly hopeless. Just got to keep plodding on I suppose, but damn 'cause I haven't felt this way in months. This has been the 30th week since I've started working, and I'm 7 months into this job.

16 April 2013

Had a hectic day today, starting out by a gym session that wore me out. Before leaving the house however, I checked the news and first read about the Boston bombings. I spoke briefly about it with my trainer, and he referred to the bombers as 'idiots'. Ahaha. The TVs in the gym featured the News showing the bombings too, but by the time I was done exercising, I had forgotten all about the bombings. Then I rushed to have lunch, get my daily Teh Ping, and to mark Mock Exam papers for my P5 classes tomorrow.

I ran down to the cab stand around 4:25pm, to realise that there was a mega long queue for the taxi and frantically booked a cab. When when the cab came about 5 minutes later, we headed off for Rochester Mall. Upon arrival around 4:50pm, I practically ran up the stairs and burst into class, barking at the little kiddies to make them afraid of me. Needless to say, it did not work. Class went on as (presumably normal), and midway I got really bloated and had a bad headache.

Finally at 7:05pm, I let them run off. Then I quickly packed my things and my parents picked me up around 7:10pm. Got home, and had dinner till about 7:25pm. Finally from then till 8pm, I managed to vegetate like an idiot (with a headache), watching Hotel Impossible with my Dad. He seemed very enthusiastic about telling me that Daytona Beach in Miami was on a Barrier Island. During commercial break he channel surfed, and we ended watching a bit of Fox Sports covering the Boston Marathon bombings. They were interviewing the runner who was closest to the first bomb, and showed how the bomb blew him off his feet. Hmm.

At 8pm, I went upstairs and spoke briefly to Joaquin while trying to finish my marking and grade recording for my P5s. I realised (sort-of) in horror that I might have helped my students too much with their comprehensions, because they were scoring abnormally high, which inflated all their grades. When I was finally done, I ended up playing Tropico for two and a half hours, and then went to shower. I felt pretty exhilarated  and ready to face The Shit of Wednesday. Freshly showered, I went to read the news again (as is my habit) and got reminded of the Boston bombings. Now, I feel kind of sober again.

This sort of reminds me a bit of the 2008 Mumbai Bombings for some reason. I remember feeling quite melancholy the night of prom when I first heard about the bombings and hostage situation. Strange how such world events can influence one's mood even though you might not be directly involved or know anyone who is. I wonder, is that normal? 

Greene

Reading Graham Greene's The End of the Affair now and it's proving a captivating read. Stumbled upon a line however, that I love, and for posterity's sake must make a note of it lest I forget: "the telephone presented nothing but the silent open mouth of somebody found dead."

Book Two, Chapter Five, is just so exquisitely written.

Free Mondays

This was the first Monday I spent alone in a while. Usually I spent at least a portion of it with my Dad, but today I had it in my mind to go shopping, and I certainly couldn't go with my Dad to do that. Still, for some reason, the idea of going alone and making decisions about what to do made me feel anxious -  and I hadn't the foggiest idea why.

My first stop was Namnam, where I finally tried their Pho. I had previously tried the Banh Mi from there when I went with Ianthe to attend the Esperenza Spalding concert, and thought it was a poor cousin to it's London-based counterparts. The Pho there was tasty, and the spring rolls were great too. I was happy at having chosen to eat there, plus their set lunch menu prices were quite reasonable.

After that I ended up going in and out of stories looking at superficial things. Then I headed to Kinokuniya to get some books. I bought 4 books in total, 2 of them graphic novels. One of the graphic novels was written by a Singaporean, called The Girl Under The Bed. The other was Yoshihiro Tatsumi's Abandon the Old in Tokyo. I had previously read The Midnight Fisherman and thought it was great (Joaquin has it now), so I decided to try another one of his books. Books wise, I bought Michael Frayn's Skies and Ruth Ozeki's A Tale for the Time Being.

Paying for the books at the cashier's in the Fiction section, I chanced upon a most surprising poster. It listed the Booker Prize Shortlist nominees for this year, but under Tan Twan Eng's book was a little stuck on sign that said 'Winner'. I was distressed at this for two reasons. One is that I couldn't believe I had missed such literary news, and the other than was I wasn't quite a fan of his. But then again I wasn't quite a fan of anyone else on the list (Narcopolis by Jeet Thayil which I read about a week ago, I didn't quite enjoy), so I'm not sure why I cared.

Ruminating on the poster later on, in Toast Box, I decided to stop my marking and google the 2013 Booker Prize Winner. Predictably (to you other book lovers out there), the Booker Prize for this year had not been released. It was far too early. I started to get rather annoyed. Then, I did something I never did before: I called the Kinokuniya hotline and complained. My heart thudded in my chest as I went on a short inane rant about how they should not have misrepresented Tan Twan Eng's book. I think I even said Tash Aw a few times instead by accident. I became That Weirdo Who Obsesses About Inconsequential Things. After the call, I felt strangely exhilarated. Then I went back to marking and wondering how I could ever drill proper grammar into my students' heads. 

Demon Eye Wednesdays

My left eye is demonic red.

Wednesdays leave me utterly stricken, despairing, and shattered.

I feel like projectile vomiting at the HR department that has made my schedule (and life!) such a living hell.

In my 9 non-stop hours of work today, I could only visit the bathroom once, because that's how miserable my Wednesdays are.

I will get kidney stones.

I loathe Wednesdays.

23

When I was about 18, one of my favourite music albums of all time was Blonde Redhead's 23. Looking back, I still can't explain why I loved that album so much. The subsequent album, Penny Sparkle, I listened to once and then forgot about - so it wasn't quite the band that I loved, but just that one album. Listening to that album, I'd inevitably think about being 23, and sort of softly chuckle to myself because I couldn't IMAGINE being 23. Years ago when I was about 14, and still madly in love with my first love (who is ironically getting married this year!), I thought 23 was a great age to get married - something that added to my chucking too years later at 18. So anyway here I find myself, 23.

The day before I turned 23, I watched Side Effects with my Dad. We had Pepper Lunch for lunch.

On 26 March itself, I went to the gym as per normal. I met Jean for lunch at Professor Brawn Cafe, where the Poached Salmon dish was excellent. After getting to the office, Jean snuck off and suddenly reappeared next to me with a slice of cake from Bakerzin, and a few colleagues came over and sang a wee birthday song. I was touched :) Then I spent the rest of the day marking, went to teach a class, and hung around the office till about 8pm cause I had papers to clear. One colleague gave me a small kinder bueno egg, which was cute, when she found out it was birthday.

Before leaving for home, I bought 5 slices of cake. Then I went back, had dinner, had cake, and watched a few episodes of Law and Order SVU.

Wednesday was shit teaching day again. What made the day great however, was that right after I finished teaching at 9:30pm, I checked my phone and saw a text from my Dad. The text simply said that one of my friends from the UK had sent a cake over for my birthday. Incredulous, I called home immediately, and spoke to my mum who confirmed my Dad's text. I went home, practically floating on a cloud. When I saw the cake, I burst out laughing. It was a fine, well made thing, but the inscription was "one pound fish, very nice, very nice". Still I felt so touched I almost teared up.

Saturday after work I met up with Shu and Tiff for dinner at Itacho. I was mad hungry so I ordered a lot , and realised they were treating my only when it came for the time to pay :/ I felt kinda bad, so we walked over to Holland Village and I treated them to dessert from The Daily Scoop.

Was a nice birthday, all in all.

Uncomfy

My birthday is just next week. I think the reason why people in general (ok, mainly my Dad) get so uncomfortable with birthdays is that is an in-your-face indication that yet another year has passed - so what have you managed to achieve? 

Last year at this time, I was in Scotland with Ianthe. We were probably on our 3 day 2 night tour of the Scottish Highlands and the Isle of Skye. After that we went Couchsurfing with 2 very nice hosts (funnily enough, not local Scots) in Stirling and Glasgow. We were footloose and fancy free. I was still unsure of what the future would bring, and my dissertation due date was about as far as I could think. 

This year I'm now a teacher. My achievement has been to graduate and work slightly over 6 months. Sometimes I enjoy my job and feel contented, other times I don't. Sometimes my students like to try and get on my nerves, and ask Why Did I Want To Be A Teacher. Some other students just plain disrespect me. Although these incidents do get to me (Lord knows I'm just disappointed now thinking about today), they remind me that Hey, 22 (or 23 as I'll be next week) Is Too Young To Settle And Just Be Contented. 

Composition Workshops

Today I taught yet another class of 10 year olds. The lesson for this week was a composition workshop focusing exclusively on a single component of composition. Towards the end of the lessons, I gave them three 'fun' scenarios to write four paragraphs about (one included a dumpster!). Some of them managed to do the work easily, especially after I emphasised how we needed to include the writing techniques we taught them. Others however, had great trouble. I ended up working with some of them them one on one to show them how to work in various techniques to pad up their tales. It then struck me why I had zero incentive to write fiction any more nowadays - it's cause I already use my creative juices trying to save their compositions about bribe-accepting judges and blind-dogs in dumpsters.

Today I also went out with Ashraf for dinner. We ate pasta at Doodle, and then walked about. We even bumped into an ex-student of his, now working part-time at one of the shops in Square 2. Hadn't seen the guy in over 6 months, so it was nice meeting up again.

Tomorrow will bring more compositions, but with my 12 year olds this time. Somehow between the ages of 11 to 12, they manage to lose their creative sparks and enthusiasm for written expression. I anticipate much cajoling and mocking remarks needed to survive tomorrow's lessons. 

Reversi

Finished reading Cloud Atlas yesterday. Although it was a enjoyable book, I spent exactly 2 weeks reading it. I think it's because I always end up reading quite little near the end of the working week, when I get oh-so-very-tired. Anyway of Cloud Atlas, not all parts struck a chord with me, although I was quite impressed by it. In particular, I liked the Sonmi and Luisa Rey parts, with Robert Frobisher and Timothy Cavendish's parts placing about 3rd and 4th place. Unpleasant however, was the middle part of the book titled Sloosha's Crossin' an' Ev'rythin' After. Didn't like that one bit. Read that part as fast as I could just so I could get to the Sonmi part afterwards :/ The Sonmi section however, almost made me cry. It made me feel incredibly sad. So that's the part I thought was the best.

Taught two classes today, both of 10 to 11 year olds. No wonder I felt so tired afterwards. Enjoyable classes though, especially the first one. I spoke to the kids about the old practice of foot binding, tried to explain the concept of dowries and why traditional families preferred having male to female children. Wonder if any of what I said actually stuck. Nevertheless, it was fun to teach.

Just finished reading the Graphic Novel version of the Sherlock Holmes tale, A Sign of Four. Graphic Novels are great for plot and atmosphere when one is very tired. Still because of their cost and relative rarity, I always end up rationing them for days when I feel like I need an extra treat. As tomorrow is Crazy Day at work, I think I need all the treats I can get now to power me through Wednesday!

Also downloaded Reversi on my phone, and can't stop playing it. I remember first discovering it when I was about 10, on a compilation of games that my parents had bought for my gameboy. I remember playing it on road trips to Ipoh. My gameboy was purple, and I had thrown an almighty tantrum to get it (I still cringe at the memory of it now). That gameboy was awesome though. The recollection of how I got it, not so much. Eep.

Dolls

Over the weekend, my mum had a new wardrobe installed in my room. The new wardrobe is fitted and custom made, and cost just a bit under S$2000. While I wish I could say it was solely done for my benefit, by mother had an ulterior motive, which was to store her extra clothes in my room. However now that I had come back from the UK with extra bulky winter clothes, we were running out of places to store all these extra clothes. Hence, she decided to get a new built-in wardrobe put into my room. Now I feel tiny in my room because the damn wardrobe is at least two times my height, and my stuff has all been shoved into a corner of the room to make space for the wardrobe. This simply means one thing: spring cleaning. 

Today I went to Daiso with my Dad to pick up those plastic boxes to slot things in. After we came home I spent the little bit of time before dinner re-arranging my papers and all. Then, I stumbled upon these dolls - a veritable blast from the past.

In 2001, I first went to Yunnan, China with my Grandparents. I remember being appalled at how dirty the toilets were, and how bad smelling everything was. I also remember demanding Coke at every meal, and eating only fried eggs with tomatoes and rice, because I found the food there so vile. In addition to be doted on gastronomically by my Grandparents, my Grandma also spoiled me by buying me all the dolls I wanted. In Yunnan they were selling these dolls (for about S$4 I think) dressed up in various ethnic clothes of all the minority groups in China. I used to play with the dolls everyday afterwards, until I was about 12-ish I think, in the back of my Grandparent's room. One of them even had a sword!

Of all the dolls, I remember this one was my favourite. She always starred as the downtrodden heroine. Even now almost 12 years later, she's still my favourite. I think it's the relative simplicity of the outfit, and non-clashing colours.

I put all the dolls back into their boxes, and put them into a plastic bag with the rest of my old stuffed toys. They're all - save my old favourite which I decided to keep for sentimental reasons - destined for better homes at the Salvation Army. 

Dead Pet Stories

Hot Chocolate in Gyeongju

Did quite a bit of marking today. One the questions set was about A Significant Memory, and How It Played A Part in Your Life, and for some reason in one particular class whose papers I marked, they all decided to write about their dead pets. One wrote about how he was given a small kitten when he was 12 as a reward for doing well in his exams. One day however, he left the window open and the cat fell out and died. Another wrote about having a tortoise for 3 years, but one day for weeks on end forgot to feed the poor thing and it died of starvation. There were a hamster stories as well, about hamsters unlatching their cages and running off into the night. 

Most amusingly however, was a tale written by a girl about her pet fish. It started off with her talking about how the first round of goldfish died when her brother decided to feed it tissue paper. Then, her parents bought her a more expensive saltwater set-up, but mysteriously the fish kept disappearing one by one until one day there were simply no fish left. Finally, they tried one last time with guppies. The father however, bought guppies that were too small and got sucked in by a powerful filter. She concluded her story simply by declaring that her family was too incompetent to keep fish alive. LOL.

Masking Tape

And just when I thought my job had almost driven me to the edge of reason, two great classes in a row have gone and restored my faith again. The first is always expectedly a quiet and reasonable class. The second however, tends to be rowdy. This week, they were much more better behaved and responded well to the 'I'll make you stay back with me if you don't complete your work' threat. Namely, they did their work. What made the class GREAT however, was their mature and rather intelligent responses to My Blueberry Nights, when I screened the first portion of the film. The joy I got from getting a proper lesson though with them cannot be relayed in mere words. But then again, they were never as bad a case as one of my other classes. 

Today however, I came prepped in case they misbehaved on an epic scale (they did make me lose my voice last week). I bought me a roll of masking tape, 60mm in width. Not to tape up their mouths as one might imagine, but rather to use as a gavel to pound tables with if I needed to get attention and didn't want to shout (one can't imagine how constant shouting is until it becomes a job prerequisite). I got the idea from an old teacher I had in Primary school, who was really stern and terrified us girls. To get the students in order, she'd pound the teachers desk with a roll of masking tape. It produces a rather loud sound, as I tried on my desk today before class. That she had turned a seemingly innocent item into an item of order was not lost on us either. I think that added more to us being scared of her. Funny the things that stick in our memory, and funny how the tables have quite turned today.

Sigh

Days at work like Wednesday and today really, really make me want to quit my job. Even the thought of my salary is not worth it. I dread tomorrow too, because it could very well be another day like today. 

TOILET

While waiting for Jia and Chong Wee to turn up for dinner, I wandered around Art Friend. Amongst the many aisles of art materials, I found this marvellous sheet of stickers. Needless to say, I bought it (despite, ouch, it's price). I shall give it to my lovely mentor as a gift. I'm sure she'll get a massive kick out of it, oho.

Saturday Morning

Last night, I dreamt that I was teaching, and one of the Front Desk girls came to look for me. In her hand, she held my stationary box, and I felt incredibly happy. Then I went on the dream some other things. When I woke up, I realised that I had dreamt getting the stationary box back - dirty puffy seal sticker on the front and all. I now feel slightly melancholy for two reasons: 1) I still do not have my stationary box, 2) I obsessed about it so much that it infiltrated my dreams, ergo I need a life.

Anyway, 2 more classes to reckon with today. Fingers crossed my throat and voice hold up. 

First Day Back At Work

...and I'm already beginning to lose my voice. I think, as I said to my students over and over when they were misbehaving today, that I need another vacation.

In other news, my stationary box is AWOL. I simply cannot find it, and feel kind of naked without it. No red pens, no blanco, no stapler, no nothing. GASP.

So Call Me Maybe! (Gyeongju Day 2)

I am currently sitting in the living room of Tavo House with Joaquin, and Gun Hee, the B&B host is playing Carly Rae Jepsen on the computer. That song, as I just explained to them, makes me think of a particular student I taught once, a J-He who burst into my class like an explosion of trolls. He kept looking at me and singing that song, but apparently that's his trade mark. Looking into the eyes of people, and singing that song to try and creep them out. Lol. Funny memory.

Today Joaquin and I cycled around Gyeongju, and saw Cheomseongdae Observatory, along with Anapji Pond, Gyerim Forest, plus the Wolseong Fortress (nothing remains of it anymore, except a veritable hump) and the seokbinggo. After that we took a well deserved break at a nearby restaurant, where we had ssambap. Then, we went to a coffee shop called Rain and Coffee for more than an hour. There, I had a hot chocolate and finished Sebastian Barry's The Secret Scripture. The book was not bad, but not quite something I'd recommend. Barry's style of writing was not quite to my liking, but I stayed on for the plot. It reminded me somewhat of Anne Enright's The Gathering (what is it with depressing Irish writers?), but was far more enjoyable. Plus I liked the (slightly predictable) twist, which gave it a much less sombre tone.

After that, Joaquin and I cycled to the Gyeongju National Museum to look at the sights. Then, on our way back he bought Gyeongju bread, which reminded me of Japanese dorayaki. When we finally arrived back at Tavo House, I was overjoyed. I kept expecting to meet some horrid accident while on the bike, if not explode from sheer I-can't-do-this-because-I-haven't-exercised-in-yonks. So I was relieved when we finally arrived back. The house was initially empty, but Gun Hee came back soon after, followed by his adorable Grandmother. The grandmother even plodded over and gave each of us a yakult, which was really sweet of her! I drank it, even though that stuff gives me a tummy ache from lactose intolerance. Fingers crossed nothing bad happens!

Dinner now, woo hoo.

Seoul Day 2

Today, I went to the National Museum of Korea to find it closed. What struck me however, as I was walking towards it, was that it was rather ugly in appearance. That is, it looked grey and modern, but in a '90s Convention Centre way. As I couldn't even go in to see the exhibits, no comment on that bit.

After that I went to Myeongdong to look for a pair of boots. I was amused to see that there were multiple shops of the same brands, sometimes just a mere 20 metres away from each other. It seemed rather pointless. I ended walking in circles, and had small moments of thinking 'Oh my God, where am I?'. Still, I somehow managed to find my way to the City Hall side, and wandered into the Lottle Department Store, where I was blown away by the steep prices. Then I found Lotte Young Plaza across the road, which had far better prices. There, I finally found a nice pair of boots for a reasonable 99,000 won. I wore the boots out of the shop, wandered around a little more longer, and then found my way back to Myeongdong station to head back to the hotel.

The language barrier is frankly, rather intimidating. I've never felt so intimidated before somehow, when I was traveling in Spain or Austria/Germany. Adding to the problem is that everyone here seems to think I'm Korean, so when they speak to me all I can do is stare at them dumbly. I thought about it, and I even know more Japanese than Korean :/ Plus I recognise little to nothing about the food here.

Oh well, tomorrow Joaquin and I are headed to Gyeongju. I'm looking forward to it!

Air Ticket Woes

Today, I spent my entire day rushing about doing work, and working my ass off. I had almost no time to myself at all, once I got to work. This, coupled with how hard I've been working for the past few days trying to finish marking scripts before leaving for South Korea, has left me feeling extremely tense and strained. Ooof. I am so looking forward to my trip tomorrow!

On another note, I just printed my E-Ticket, and was extremely aggravated to find that the daft thing printed 2 (TWO!!!) whole sheets of nothing but terms and conditions as well. What a horrid waste of printer ink (which is one of the dearest-priced liquids known to mankind) and paper ): I felt like I had just gone and wasted about fifty cents worth of material.

Yesterday evening I went out with Shu and Tiif, to celebrate Tiff's birthday. We went to McDonald's (Tiff's idea) and we all ate the Chicken Prosperity burger. I must say, I thought it'd be tastier :/ Then, we had dessert at a nice place. Ironically, our desserts cost more than the actual main meal at McDonald's itself, ahaha. I bought Tiff a flower from a random street vendor, as it was also Valentine's Day.

Pre-South Korea Trip

I just started packing, and realised that I have utterly forgotten what clothes I used to wear during Winter. How quickly I seem to have forgotten things. I also realised how much I relied on my lovely old Clarks boots to make me look not-like-a-slob during those Wintery years. Fingers crossed that I'll managed to avoid looking like an unfashionable blob, while keeping adequately warm at the same time!

CNY Day 3

I originally set out to mark tonight, but on the last script I marked, I realised my wet hair was dripping water all over my student's paper. Erp. At least I didn't accidentally tear the weak, wet spots. So, I decided to write instead.

This is a photo of my Guo Mah's head, taken at the 3rd House.

Yesterday was El Grande Visiting Family Day. My family and I visited a total of 7 houses. First house was my Guo Mah's, followed by my mum's 5th eldest sibling, her sister's house. Then we went to visit my mum's 6th eldest sibling's house, although she had passed away two years ago. It was kinda sad being in that house because I remembered that the last time I was there was when I had attended the funeral. My Guo Mah saw the many photos of her departed daughter and started speaking to herself in a sad voice. I understood nothing because she was speaking on Hokkien, but mutely patted her on the back. My Uncle looked sad too, although he had a new girlfriend now. After that house, we went off to visit my mother's 2nd eldest brother (number 3 of 8 siblings) where we had lunch and finished watching Ah Boys to Men.

After that came the boring houses, because they belonged to my mum's eldest siblings. We visited her eldest sister (number 2 of 8), near Aljunied, and when we got there it started to pour like crazy. I also noted that the new lifts were up and running, which was excellent because my Guo Mah has a lot of trouble walking up stairs. Then, it was off to visit my Mum's eldest brother who lives in Tampines. We had a semi-sort of dinner there. Last house was my mum's 4th eldest brother (number 4 of 8) in Pasir Ris. My memory of that house is bringing one of my cousin's playstations there to play some X-Men fighting game when we were younger.

I have no idea how else to describe that day except tiring and confusing. As we went from house to house, more and more family members would join in. At the first house we acquired my Guo Mah and my mum's youngest brother (number 8 of 8), and after the second house we acquired another 3 more families. And so on so forth :/ It took me ages before I figured who I was directly related to, and who I wasn't, especially with regards to my mum's 3 eldest siblings. OK mystery finally solved after 22 Chinese New Years.

----

Today, I woke up late. I throughly enjoyed my chance to sleep in, after almost 4 days straight of needing to get up early. I went off to met Jia, and only at the bus stop realised that my phone wasn't working. At Standard Charted Bank, when I was depositing some money, I managed to borrow a phone from a couple using the AXS machine to call Jia. PHEW. Thank goodness they lent me a phone. Jia and I then met up, and we had lunch at El Patio. Sadly, the burritos were nowhere nearly as awesome as London ): I felt slightly put off. I crave nothing more than a good burrito from Daddy Donkey now.

After lunch, we walked about Holland Village for a bit, before going to get a quick 30 minute massage at Quick Massage. It was great, and worth every bit of the $20 we paid, especially since my back hurt yesterday from contorting in strange positions in the back of the car, squished with my Guo Mah, Uncle (the youngest one) and Ryan. Then, we went to Starbucks where I started marking. Jia looked at some of the scripts, and went off after a while. I left Starbucks around 5:45pm, after finishing marking for my Friday 5pm class.

It's back to work tomorrow, and I'm not quite looking forward to it, namely because I have no idea what other things I can incorporate into my lessons. Hmm.

CNY Day 1

Today was the first day of Chinese New Year, and I was dog tired. I had a headache for most of the day. Last night I felt very restless, and had trouble sleeping. Looking at the time it is now, I think I'll have another night of inadequate sleep. Regardless, it was a nice day. We went to the grandparent's in the morning to have brunch, along with my Uncle. Then afterwards my Grandma wanted to go out, so she and my Grandpa, plus my family (Uncle's family went off to visit the other Grandma) went to the Science centre to watch an IMAX movie. It was To The Arctic. The movie was pleasant enough, but honestly all I wanted to do was go home and sleep. Ryan was well behaved during the movie, so that was awesome.

Evening I was awoken by my Uncle and his family coming to visit. He and my cousin marched into my room, switched on the lights, and stole my Archie comics before leaving. WTF. We later went off to get dinner at Owen together, along with Grandma and Grandpa. And thus marked my CNY Day 1. Tomorrow will be visiting my Mum's side of the family, and will occupy pretty much the entire day. Oof feel tired thinking about it.

Anyway CNY is a jolly time, sadly, because of Hong Baos. I don't care much for the traditional dishes, except for Yu Sheng. Plus I'm so close to my family, I see them often anyway, so CNY really isn't that particularly different for me. Except maybe wearing more red things. So anyway HONG BAOS. I must say now as a working (semi) adult, the thrill of receiving red packets is much, much more. Perhaps because you realise the value of money more than before, and getting money for doing absolutely nothing except existing is great.

Thus, I decided to finally go get some books I was eyeing off Book Depository. Ohoho. I just bought David Lodge's Campus Trilogy, Graham Greene's End of the Affair and Somerset Maugham's Collected Short Stories Vol. 1. Hooray, books!

On another note, prompted by M/s L's recent assignment on a short story by Roald Dahl, I have taken to reading his books from my collection. I finished Switch Bitch earlier in the week, and am now making my way through Tales of the Unexpected. 

Panthera Panthera

I had a dismally unproductive marking day at work today. I suppose that's because I was marking compositions, and each one took me almost 40 minutes to get through. In the end, of my Wednesday class' lot, there were two scripts left. Tomorrow and Saturday however, 4 more class' lots will come in. I expect I'll be spending some bit of Chinese New Year marking stuff :/ Perhaps I should try marking with a timer next time, to limit the amount of time I spend tearing through each script. After all, there's only so much the students can absorb from intrusive marking.

Anyway tonight, after work, I met up with Shu and Tiffany for dinner. The rainy weather made us change our plans, and we ended up eating at Ootoya. I was disappointed to find that the menu had changed since the last time I was there some 3 years ago. Hahaha I'm terrible with change. The food was OK. Naturally, the company was much better.

After Ootoya, we wandered downstairs and saw the Matcha House, and decided to have Matcha ice cream for dessert. However when we tried to order, the girl at the counter told us there was no matcha ice cream left, and we immediately fell into a bout of giggles. The whole thing was so absurd, how could a matcha store specialising in desserts be out of matcha ice cream? We left, slightly disappointed, but amused.

In the end we had ice cream from Seventh Heaven. Having the ice cream in store cost more, so we ordered it to go, and wandered just a few metres away to sit in a hidden walkway and eat our ice cream.   Lovely, lovely evening.

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On an utterly random note, I just realised that Alex Salmond, who I always thought of as Alex Salmon, is incredibly fat. Google also has auto-complete suggestions of 'Alex Salmond fat bastard', with his face superimposed on the Austin Powers' character's body. Sadly it seems, it's not much of a stretch of imagination to think they're the one and the same, oho.

Sodium Chloride

Peskily, ever since I started going to the gym last Friday, my personal trainer's words have stuck in my head. To be precise, his words on eating healthy in general. When he asked me what I was going to have for lunch on Friday, I replied that I was thinking about Novena Fish Soup. I thought he'd be all 'VERY GOOD MELODIE!' and etc when he heard that, but instead to my dismay he said 'eh, you can't drink the soup!'

Ever since I was brought to that place by LUG, and the repeated times after with Jean and etc, we have always, always polished off the soup. The best part of the soup was that when you'd finished eating all the ingredients inside, you could drink the soup while munching on the slightly soft fried shallots. OK, I'm getting hungry again just thinking about it. So anyway yeah, I love the fish soup from that stall.

Flash back to Friday morning, and distressed, I asked him why I couldn't have fish soup. After all it was FISH and SOUP, I mean, it sounded like one of the healthiest, yet tasty things to be had. Sodium, he answered solemnly, there's a lot of salt in soups. And then he went on the list the others things I shouldn't eat: white rice, potatoes, beef, pork...

And then when I fell to the ground and screamed NOOOOOOO. Yeah I wish. What happened instead was that I just frowned at him, and the more he spoke the deeper my frown became. U(N@*$UMX*( DAMNIT.

So in the end on Friday I had curry chicken from Toast Box, cause a colleague, P, wanted to go there instead. I'm quite certain the curry chicken was more unhealthy than any possible sodium filled soup, but OH WELL. Throughout the weekend, whenever I ate less rice than usual, I was incredibly proud of myself. Which brings me to today: gym session number two.

This session was quite different from the last, mainly cause it seemed to be more focused on upper body strength rather than lower body. I guess that'll come on Friday again. However again as the session was about to end, he brought up the horrible S word, and reminded me of all those horrid things Salt does to your body and blah blah blah ):

So, I had fish soup for lunch today, and I managed to leave 1/4 of the soup behind. It seemed an awful, awful waste of good food. So this post is dedicated, in mourning, to that wasted 1/4 bowl of extremely tasty, but salty, fish soup.

The Quiet American

Today, I finished reading Graham Greene's The Quiet American. I must say it's quite a nice read, and I liked Greene's writing style. It was very understated and not over-flowingly flowery. It was simple and straight to the point. Plus the characters were interesting, in that they were all shades of grey. I liked the setting too, of a pre-American invasion Vietnam. All in all, it was a good read. Before that I read Jamrach's Menagerie, which I didn't quite enjoy. It was too Life of Pi - but with more suffering and cannibalism. I'm not a fan of reading about people suffering :/

On Friday morning, I went to the gym for my first training sessions. As I wobbled about down the stairs of the gym upon leaving, I felt like my thighs were made of jelly, unsteady on my feet. After about an hour though, the feeling went away and I felt fine the rest of the day. Saturday however I woke up and my thighs were aching, as expecting. Today however, I woke up, and somehow the aching got worse. I didn't even think that was possible :/ 

It's been about 4 and half months since I've started working for M/s L, and on Tuesday, Week 20 begins for me. Oho.

Gym

Last Friday, during an exceptionally rowdy class, a student asked me (in one of those daft, provoking manners), how many months pregnant I was -____-" I went back, and fumed to my family the next day during a Dinner-Birthday celebration about unmanageable students. Then my Uncle piped up, "hey, your face is getting quite round now!"

So anyway yesterday I signed up for a gym membership. I also signed up for a personal trainer, since I know I am so utterly unmotivated and unmovable, only monetary pain will spur me to go. As a result, I now have an appointment for Friday 11:15am, and at the same time am in denial of how much money I just plonked down.

I keep thinking of payday tomorrow, damnit. I really need to start saving better :x

Puberty

Somedays, I just can't wait for puberty to hit the students - like a rude slap with a fish - just so they'll get all awkward and shut the hell up in class GRWARGHHHHHHH.

Bring Back, Take Away, Fetch To and Fro

It seems all my epic stories always start innocently. I've never been the sort to go out on wild drunken parties where people dare each other to do daft things and when something happens people go 'Oh come on I saw that coming!' Instead my weird epic stories (just like fainting on the tube) always happen because I'm incredibly clumsy. So anyway preamble aside, I have yet another silly story to tell, and it all started two days ago.

Jon arrived in Singapore on Saturday night for a 3 day layover, and one of the things he really wanted to do was go to the zoo. I hadn't been to the zoo in close to 10 years, and since they had those new Giant Pandas and adorable Red Pandas (which I've discovered a new love for) I agreed to go with him. The zoo was located in the middle of nowhere, and in order to save money I suggested going there by bus, rather than taking a taxi. 

After a tasty breakfast of Nasi Lemak at Adam Road Hawker Centre, Jon and I hopped onto 171 for a mini tour around Singapore, before getting off around Mandai Lake. Just as we were crossing the road to get to the next bus stop, I espied from afar a familiar red-looking public bus trundling down the road from afar. 

"Oh My God Jon!" I yelled, "That's our bus!" and so with that, both of us started running, while waving frantically at the bus. I ran faster than Jon. All looked well, except I was wearing my shitty pair of black flats, that I had already fallen down in once. As we ran, I kept thinking "Don't fall!" to myself. So, 5 metres away from the bus, just as it stopped to wait for us for a few seconds, I fell. The fall wasn't that bad, except everyone at the bus had seen and I felt embarrassed. On the bus, a tourist lady was talking to her little one and talking about me tripping, and I smiled at both of them to show I was OK.

Only after we were safely on the bus, did I stop to finally take a look at my knee. My left kneecap looked slightly grazed, to which I was relieved. Compared to other accidents I had, this was relatively minor. And then I froze, because I realised the only reason why it was minor was because my fall was onto a patch of grass. I then wondered if my old grass allergy was still alive and kicking within my system. When we got to the zoo, I washed off my knee cap with the tap in the Kangaroo exhibit, and then promptly forgot about it in the excitement of seeing live animals.

Flash forward to the next day, that is, yesterday. It was Jon's last day here, and he wanted to eat Dim Sum before jetting off to bad-Dim-Sum land, Australia. I woke up and discovered a small patch of hives on my left leg. After showering, I showed it to Jon, talking about how it seemed I was still allergic to grass (hadn't had an attack since I was about 15). Then I went off to work for a while, making arrangements to meet him for lunch.

Come one o'clock, I met Jon at ION Orchard to eat lunch at Imperial Treasure, which my Grandma swears by. When the food came, we were both very happy. I even ordered a big plate of veg because we'd been eating unhealthy stuff over the past few days. The ha gao was tasty, prawn chee cheong fun excellent, and we were both enjoying ourself - not really talking because the food was that good. Around the 3/4 mark of the meal, I started to feel a bit funny. My eyes suddenly got insanely itchy and I kept sneezing, to the point that my nose was running and I couldn't breathe. I started complaining to Jon. I made a joke that perhaps terrorists had released poison gas into the air conditioning system and I felt the effects first. 

After paying, I went to the bathroom to blow my nose. It was then I looked at myself in a mirror, and I realised my left eye bag looked like it had been a victim of insect bites. I freaked. I walked out and asked Jon how he hadn't noticed that, and he was like "Oh yeah."At that point, I still couldn't breathe, and decided I had no choice but to call in sick. I brought Jon to Nippon-Ya to buy a small present for my Grandparents, and in the shop there were many mirrors. I kept looking at myself, watch my eye swell to epic proportions. I couldn't breathe through my nose anymore.

We took a cab to the doctor's. In the waiting room, I started to become highly amused at the whole situation. The nurse recognised me, because I had been there so often. I liked how she was totally nonplussed at my eye, but the rest of the patients in the waiting room kept looking at me sneakily. Jon said he even saw one making a face in reaction to the sight of me. For some reason, that just made me more amused because I could now troll people by just being there.

The doctor took one look at me and jabbed me with anti-histamines. Then he made me linger around for a while to monitor my situation as I started to get more and more drowsy. Jon started playing Monsters Ate My Condo on his phone. I played with a interactive BMI poster, it said I was in an OK range. Jon said BMI was bad because it didn't take muscle mass into account. He said by its standards, he was overweight. I noticed that one of the pictures in the other waiting room was a cross-stitch of the Great Wall of China.

After I was given the all-clear by the Doctor, I went to the counter to pay. I overhead the Doctor talking to his Dad on the phone about email accounts, and LOL-ed. His Dad was the family doctor before his son took over, but we hadn't heard from him in years. At the counter, I started doodling on the paper while waiting for the nurses to tote up the bill. I drew one for Jon, and drew the above uploaded picture for myself. My grandma came to pick us up.

I went home, scared my maid, and then went to sleep. My parents came home from work, but by then the swelling had decreased considerably. Still, my mum was freaked out. During dinner we discovered that everything had prawns in it, except for the plain rice and the pork. Even the soup had been boiled with prawns. Later wandering around, I spotted a TV show featuring Prawn Noodles, which I love. OH WELL. I hope this allergic attack was only triggered because of the abundance of histamines in my body as a result of falling in the grass.

So thus ends my epic story. I called in sick today because I woke up and I was still really groggy after a night of sleep. I slept after eating a bit, woke up around 3:30pm, and now I'm feeling drowsy again. I'm looking forward to going back to work tomorrow and being productive.   

Pygmy

Last night I finished reading Pygmy by Chuck Palahniuk. It has to be one of the oddest, most strangest stories I have ever read. Although some online comments (I like to read online comments after I finish an interesting/odd book) talked about it being comparable to the style of Trainspotting or Clockwork Orange, I daresay the vernacular used in those were far more effective and coherent. Pygmy read like a Mao Zedong speech run through both Google translate and a Yoda-speak translator. The vernacular was also a little trite, and I fail to see how it added enough to the book to justify it's existence.

Still, criticisms inside, it was the nihilistic and enjoyable plot I expected it to be - with lots of interesting surreal happenings. I ended up finishing the book in less than 48 hours. Definitely memorable if nothing else.

Also, I think the cover illustration is brilliant, parodying those ye olde Chinese communist propaganda posters. In fact, I think it's directly aping this fellow:

On another note, I am meeting CNE for lunch tomorrow before he jets back to the United States. Hooray.

Why Are You Running?

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.

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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. 

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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. 

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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.

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I had tasty white carrot cake for lunch, but I suspect the excessive use of oil is currently giving me indigestion. Urgh.

La llama es blanca

Last night I finished reading The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, and spent the next 30 minutes online reading analyses to see if I missed anything, cause it seemed a bit odd to me and I wondered if I had missed something. Turned out I hadn't, and Muriel Sparks is known for being an extremely subtle writer. She takes the whole 'show not tell' adage to the next extreme, heh.

Had to drag myself out of bed today. Really felt like I didn't want to face people/the world and instead wanted to live in my bed for the day. Of course I couldn't really do that, and just ended up at work pretty late.

Today for some reason, they were giving out free scoops of ice cream at work. They had a whole proper industrial size freezer full of them too, with HR going about distributing them. I had a banana flavoured scoop and it was tasty, but left me feeling kinda gross after because it was too sweet. Then later when I was rushing off and went to collect my dinner, HR asked me again if I wanted more ice cream. I peered into the freezer and realised it was still almost 80% of ice cream, but left without taking one as I was rushing to another branch and had no time. I wonder what did they with the extra ice cream in the end.

As mentioned, today I had to rush between branches to teach. However when I arrived at the branch-I-hate-because-it-is-far, and saw that there were no students waiting for me, I got an odd feeling. True enough, after 25 minutes of waiting, I had been good old-fashioney stood up by 3 students. So I rushed all the way there, on a $24.80 (well to be fair it's not me paying for the cab) cab ride, for nothing. I ended up working on a handout about Alexander Pushkin and Eugene Onegin, and talking rubbish to colleagues instead.

Tomorrow, we're having a small send-off lunch for WY, the girl who sits in the cubicle on my left. Boo.

Books

I just finished reading Please, Look After Mom by Kyung-Sook Shin. The book is split into about 4 sections, and I must say the last section was queerly written with far too many shifting perspectives for my liking. Still not too bad a read - no regrets from me - it made me think about my maternal grandmother.

Before that, when Joaquin was around, I was reading The Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving. Not too bad (oh that phrase again!), but still couldn't beat Owen Meany in my opinion. Plus the fact that I read the bought over such a long period of time with great pauses sort of killed it for me, because I often forgot what I last read.

I was trying to recall what I read before the John Irving book, but I can't remember anymore. In all probability it has probably been drowned out of my memory owing to the craziness that was work in December. I recall a day where I had to sneak out of class to eat a Subway sandwich by the lift lobby -___-"

I dislike being unable to recall things.

Dino Stickers

Everytime I went out with Joaquin over the past week and a half (and I'm sure he'll attest to that) I was always on the lookout for stickers. I bought stickers from Tesco in Malaysia, a random show in Holiday Inn in Johor Bahru and the above lovely stickers from Popular in Bras Bersah. Plus one night I spent hours looking at aliexpress.com and trying to order stickers. Needless to say, I think on top of my already existing few hobbies (reading, keeping journals, postcards) I have found a new one, collecting stickers, just like when I was a 6 year old girl - except this time there are no sticker books and I collect them only to give it away.

Joaquin left last night, and I'm left feeling sort of empty now. Figuring out what to do with all the sudden spare and free alone time is somehow more mind-boggling that it ought to really be. On the upside it was nice being at work and organising papers that were lying all around. Felt that I could be in control of something at least. Plus I ended up teaching another class with students that I thought I'd sadly saw the last of the previous week - for some reason their permanent teacher (I'd previously taught them for 5 weeks) didn't turn up again today. We had a good time, as usual, though I had to rush them like hell this week. As a result though, I'm losing my voice again. Looks like my sinusitis from last week hasn't really disappeared.

Las Hormigas Culonas

Today is the first day of 2013, and aside from the revelry of the past few days/week, it felt just like any other day. 

For the past week Joaquin, along with the members of my extended family, have been here in Singapore - and it simply felt lovely. For the first time in many years, we celebrated Christmas as a whole family, just like how it was when I was growing up. Of course the nature of the gifts changed (from toys to a handbag), and the tree-decorating excitement was gone, but it still felt nice all the same. 

On the 29th December I headed back to work for a day and progressively kept losing my voice. By my second class at 4pm, I had pretty must lost my voice in an onslaught of mucus and phlegm so the kids and I ended up watching 20 mins worth of Mr Bean. They loved it, hurrr. Then I headed over to my Grandma's house on the convenient Circle Line to celebrate my Aunt's birthday with a nice steamboat dinner.

On 30th December, Joaquin and I met up with Tiff, HM, Shu and ZW to have lunch at a super packed Crystal Jade in Ngee Ann City. It was great seeing HM, especially since I hadn't seen her in months. The dim sum was great, but the price not so much. We had much fun joking with the waitress, especially since Tiff was around as usual. We were waving in silly ways to get the attention of the waitresses in the packed restaurant, and when the waitress came over she asked us why we were waving so frantically. Someone replied that it was because we were very hungry in a cheeky voice, prompting the waitress to lean over and cheekily proffer her arm to eat. Tiffany, not missing a beat, asked the waitress if her arm was clean and if it had been marinated. LOL. Later the waitress came around and joked with Joaquin, especially when his dessert of durian pudding came. 

We ended up wandering around Kinokuniya after lunch for a short while, before Joaquin and I headed back. I wanted to clean up and get ready for the family photo-taking session. At 4:50pm, we left the house and headed to the photo studio, where it turned out everyone else already was. Joaquin was tasked with trying to get Ryan to look at the camera properly, haha. After that, we all headed to Riverview Hotel to eat a Japanese buffet at Irodori, where we all pigged out on good sashimi. I'm sick of sashimi now. Joaquin and I ended up watching two documentaries that night about Korea. Nerdy.

On the 31st December, I brought Joaquin to see Haw Par Villa. He was highly amused and entertained.  It's truly one of those spots where the old Singapore can be seen, before it became all modern and shiny. There were scattered spots of tourists around, all looking about interestedly. Pity it wasn't better kept, as some plaques were rusted by the weather and impossible to read. The ten levels of hell was, as always, charming. After that we headed over to Holland Village where it was raining like mad. We went to the Hawker Centre and had a simple lunch, then I decided to get my nails done while Joaquin got a back massage. Then we headed back to rest before heading out for a nice dinner at Greenwood Fish Market. I had a fillet of orange roughy which was tasty (and upon googling a bloody ugly fish) and a molten chocolate cake with ice cream. Then we walked to The Old Brown Shoe along Bukit Timah Road for a quick drink before heading back to watch Unforgiven with Clint Eastwood.

Joaquin and I were still in the middle of watching Unforgiven when it was about 5 minutes to 00:00 of 1st Jan. We ended up going onto youtube and doing the countdown with the Taiwanese show that was streaming live. Lol. Then we went back to watching Unforgiven. Simple, but best New Year's Eve I've ever had.

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Today Joaquin and I went to the Kampong Glam/Bugis area of town. We went to the Malay Heritage centre and he popped into the Sultan Mosque to have a peek. The Malay Heritage Centre was quite nice, I was impressed. It was also newly opened (didn't know that) and today was free entry. We had lunch at Minang and then went off, walking through Bugis shopping centre, Bugis Street, Waterloo Street before taking a break at a small cafe. Then we went to Bras Bersah complex before heading to Raffles City shopping centre, then Chijmes and finally Funan. At Funan, Joaquin bought a stylus for me, hooray. We also stopped for a quick snack at Qiji. Then around 5:30pm, we headed back.

Joaquin ended up taking a short nap after we got home, and around 7pm we left with my parents to get Peranakan food at Beauty World Shopping Centre. We originally wanted to go to Ivins but it was too full. Still the food we had at Dulu Kala was good. We even had chili crab. 

It was throughly a good long day spent with Joaquin. 

Unfortunately, sigh, he leaves tomorrow night for Korea again :/