Whereabouts in Wien?

Due to the pushing forward of the O level exams so that results can come out in time for JC to start soon enough, yesterday, even though it's still safely in October, marked the last day of school. The time when we actually had to wait for week ten of the fourth school term to end before officially marking the end of school and going off on our holidays are long passed.

Actually, they still have not passed, though that's now the case only for the teachers, and not for the students, some of which are already back in their home countries/are leaving for a holiday as i type this. There still are three weeks left until the de facto last day of school, and it is at least until then before the teachers are free as well. There aren't really anymore lessons, of course, but there are various things that we still have to do, although on the plus side, the hours for the next three weeks are only from 8:30 to 12:30.

But then again, that is not the case for me, as come Monday i'll be starting on some two-and-a-half week full-day cca-related course in Choa Chu Kang. Not as ulu as say nie, but probably much more tiring. And with far longer hours (including travelling) to boot. Unfortunately, since i stay where i stay (and so few others stay where i stay - it's more of a curse than a blessing to stay here, i tell you), it is all but impossible to find someone to tompang along with, so i'll have to stick with public transport (and join the 59 percent of other S'poreans who do the same - and btw if they want to promote the usage of public transport for a start the higher-ups could consider actually using it themselves on a regular/daily basis, rather than merely during those token staged photo opp trips that are excessively covered by the local media).

From my place however, to get to CCK there are two possible routes, either the more straightforward (but less straight) route of taking the red line all the way up through Woodlands, or the quicker but more cumbersome route of switching at city hall/outram park and then again at jurong east. There also are buses i can take, but given the overenthusiastic security measures taken in light of the APEC summit meetings, which means that many roads along my area will be affected by closures and what not (chalk one more up for the curse column) and so there may be more jams than usual.

Well, on the plus side, one thing i can do while on those tediously long train and bus rides is start finalizing plans for the holidays. Have finally booked tickets after lots of delay due to busyness with school stuff (and as a result missing out on a ticket that was $200 cheaper), though the only place i'm definitely going to is where my flight there lands. The choice of this place to fly into is more a matter of convenience, since it's more or less close to most of the places that i really want to go to, and since i was there briefly about nine-and-a-haf years ago. And the main thing that comes to mind that i can do there (get a slice of Sachertorte) is probably something i won't end up doing anyways..

joyful sorrow

The past two weeks or so have been a dizzying whirlwind of events for the family. Basically my grandfather (father's side) suffered a broken hip from a fall at home, which got him warded at CGH for a routine operation. Well, one thing led to another and his heart stopped just a few days before the scheduled operation. While he was revived, certain complications developed/saw a resurgence and six days later (this past Monday), he passed away from aspiration pneumonia.

What we thank God for though, is that just after he took a turn for the worse, he made a conscious decision to finally accept Christ and get baptised, ninety-one years into his life, and just six days before passing away. While i was never close to him, the point that he was first admitted i realised that it could possibly be, to put it rather crudely, 'now or never' for him, so to speak, and so while my prayers for his salvation up till that point had been admittedly particularly sporadic at best, they became, well, far less sporadic.. And praise God, the prayers of us as a Christian family were answered by God in a wonderful, timely way, with us being blessed by many assurances that his decision to accept Christ was not one made in a period of deliriousness (a state which he frequently was in) but a conscious decision in a state of lucidity.

So when all's said and done, while definitely a death is a time to mourn, how wonderful that for us as Christians, it is also a time of rejoicing, for the person who dies is now in a better place, somewhere that I'm sure looking forward to going to. And although for many of us, it's not something that may seem to be coming anytime soon, i suppose that the example of my grandfather, who was stubbornly reluctant to accept Christ until just about the very end, shows that not now does not necessarily mean never eh :)

babble

Haven't been doing much random and boliao rambling for a while, but since i actually spent a good part of today doing work (simply cos there's too much), i feel entitled to do this as the week draws to an end.

Especially with me sinking into what more or less constitutes a morning routine before work, and thus taking the same bus at the same time every weekday, i've been wondering if it's just me or is it that non-English speakers tend to be the noisy ones on buses. Or is it that there are just not many verbose English speakers who take buses (given socio-economic trends here, they would probably be more likely to be driving)? I've observed this countless times before, but now with me seeing the same people every day it has become that much more obvious to me. Particularly where aunties are concerned, the people who always end up disturbing my morning stoning-in-the-bus peace and quiet with their conversations that are scores of decibels too loud for 6-ish am in the morning invariably end up speaking in some Asian language, be it Mandarin, some other Chinese dialect, Malay, Tagalog, or whatever else. If they would keep their voice down, it wouldn't bother me so much. But they always seem to be blabbering at the top of their voices, at a volume level that i wish many of my English students would have when they have to do reading aloud. I'm not faulting them as much as i am myself for getting so easily annoyed, but i wonder nevertheless...

And i'm not proud to admit it, but i definitely cannot tahan the chinese (mandarin/other dialect) speakers the most, partly because they often are the loudest of the lot, but also cos of the language they speak being, old channel 8 shows aside, the bane of my childhood, with memories that still haunt me today.

But that being said, i realise that i really have a very low threshold for noise, be it chinese-related or otherwise. That's probably why i was super irritable over the F1 weekend, as the constant whirr of those darn f1 cars was simply excruciating, even though i got no nearer to the race site than my house. That was even though i resurrected my army earplugs for that very occasion. (Actually that's more to do with the timbre than the volume, i suppose, but it's noise pollution nevertheless.)

I couldn't even bear to be in the same house, let alone room, of a tv broadcasting the race, which is why i exempted myself from family dinner on sunday cos my father had explicitly stated his intention of catching the race on tv at my aunt's house. I can't for the life of me imagine why, since to me it's just a bunch of flat ugly cars that save for the on-air commentary are practically indifferentiable from one another zooming around a circuit for 61 rounds too many.. Anyways, think that next year i'll probably exile myself in some far-flung corner of the island come the race weekend so i can escape all the F1 (imho) nonsense.

And speaking of 'sports' i can do without, again i can't see the point behind this epl broadcast rights stuff that's been going on and that has sparked so many newspaper columns and writeups and what not. I of course, could not care any less for soccer, so how people can have a good five more set-top boxes that i do just for one sport is plain ridiculous in my book. As much as i enjoy watching tennis, i probably will never sign up to catch it on cable, unless they introduce some kinda pay-per-view system, as i see no point in paying so much just to catch way too much soccer plus token amounts of tennis save for when one of the four grand slams approaches.. Maybe now that starhub has lost the epl rights they will repackage things and allow for some form of soccer-free sports package, but come on, like that would ever happen.

Note to self: Book holiday tickets very soon. Oh, and decide where exactly you want to and can go while you're at it..

september ends

Unlike the past couple of nights, last night i had a relatively generous seven-ish hours of sleep.

Unfortunately, unlike the past couple of days, i ended up arriving in school late, because that extra two hours of sleep came after my usual wake-up time.

I must have somehow slept through my alarm, and in any case, how ironic that just a couple of weeks ago this was the title of a previous post here eh.

Actually, under normal circumstances, my parents, who usually wake up after i leave, would wonder why i would still be sleeping. But it so happens to be Children's Day, and they thought that i was sleeping in cos there was no school today. What perfect timing, eh?

Anyways, thankfully i managed to get in to school with as minimal fuss as possible, and the rest of the day went ok i guess.

Here's to more hours of sleep without putting myself in any jeopardy next time. Sheesh =p