New Beginnings

I don't keep close track to such things, but i'm pretty sure that at least when looking back at recent years, today was the earliest on record i've heard CNY music playing publicly - even before the new calendar year has started. Crept me out. Thankfully the supermarket i happened to be in today still had the sense to play Christmas music, but i think the days of CNY music-free supermarkets and other commercial establishments are very numbered.

Another set of days that are certainly very numbered are the number of free days before school starts again - three to be exact. Not that i have had a very fulfilling holiday to begin with, but i'll take whatever i can get. Maybe it's the relative un-freedom of this soon-to-end holiday that has prompted me to already start researching on possible holiday trip locations for next year, even though it's increasingly looking like my June holidays will be another non-event and the next time i can take a trip out of Asia will be at the end of next year.

I shouldn't complain though. After all, as i remind myself frequently, my job is not to travel, but to teach. And the teaching experience next year promises to be very interesting, and if not more so, then at least in a very different year from what i've experienced thus far. On the plus side, next year i can be more focused, subject wise at least, compared to previously. Arguably, i also am able to teach things which are more in line with my teaching interests. However, that also means that i have a heck of a lot more preparatory work to do for this year's classes than i ever had to do in previous years. Furthermore, for the first time i'm also handling graduating classes, which implies the conducting of lessons over the June holidays (byebye summer vacation).

I'm quite ok with that though, and in fact, as cheesy as it sounds, i'm up to the challenge (or at least i say that now - check back in four months). So bring it on, 2011.

Perspectives on Christmas

Somehow i've never really been excited by Christmas here. I reckon it's because when i was a student the arrival of Christmas meant that the new school year would be starting within a week (which is probably why i've been even less excited about New Year's Day). Then when it came to army time i recall having to be back in camp by Christmas night, or at the latest the following day, so regardless of what Christmas symbolizes i never was particularly thrilled. save for the opportunity for a one-day break. Now that things have come full circle and i'm a teacher, i'm still pretty much indifferent since Christmas means that the end of the school holidays is near again.

And while much has been said of how Bethlehem is situated in the middle of the desert, so on the first Christmas it couldn't have been that cold, surely even for people here the idea of "Christmas in the tropics" somehow doesn't cut it. Blame it on the very westernised picture of Christmas that has been etched in our psyches, something that only breeds further disappointment, which is pretty much catnip to this nation of complainers. Why, the only hope we have of the much sung-about white Christmas is to head to Tanglin Mall and be sprayed by soap suds amidst a throng of over-excited young 'uns (and in steamy weather to boot).

Of course, ideally i'd be focusing more on what Christmas really means (isn't that always the case?), especially when year by year, we get bombarded by an increasingly commercialized view of the season. I can't say i'm a conscientious objector to the over-commercialized Christmas season though - i don't Christmas shop simply because i'm lazy - but nevertheless regardless of the proximity to the school term i guess it's good to take the opportunity to look at things from a larger perspective. Which is probably why i was very appalled to read a report on West Coast GRC in yesterday's ST, even if it was just for one line, which actually had nothing to do with the political situation per se (which you'd figure i'd have a lot to be appalled about). The reporters were talking about "foreign newcomers" in the GRC, and said that "residents in Pioneer, Boon Lay and West Coast endure the presence of foreign worker dormitories in the heartland".

That brief line speaks volumes about how Singaporeans in general (and admittedly sometimes myself included) disregard the contributions of the foreigners in our midst and instead just harp on how they inconvenience our daily lives. It almost is as though we see ourselves as superior beings to them. Now, i'd flesh this point out in detail, but that's been done far more eloquently elsewhere. I also can't say that i was appalled by this point in itself, since i pretty much would have expected to hear such sentiments. What i was appalled at was that this was presented as a factual statement on the reporters' own part. For all of ST's faults (and don't get me started on those - again others do so far better than i ever can), you'd at least expect them to present a balanced view (though then again, as i type this, Fox News comes to mind =p) and not take a prejudiced view towards the matter. Instead, we have the reporters themselves declaring that having foreign worker dormitories in our neighbourhood is something that we have to "endure". Surely a role that the press should play would be to dispel such one-dimensional takes on these issues, rather than to endorse them in their own writings, but, again when taking things into perspective, i can't say that i'm surprised. Sadly. Perhaps these ST reporters need to take this opportunity (no ST published tomorrow rite, which means that they really can do so) to think about what they write...

post-Krabi

While it has usually been the case that during the longer school holidays i'll take a fairly long, or at least, as long as possible holiday out of the continent of Asia, the special circumstances of this December holiday (plus of course my last minute planning, which was even more last-minute this time than it has ever been before due to a combination of procrastination and too much darn work to do) have it such that travel plans this time round were decidedly different. Well for starters, i've had to restrict myself to Asia for a change, and in fact, to be more specific, Southeast Asia (though that's in large part because i'm not at all interested in going to any other parts of Asia, at least not at the moment, and in the case of China, not ever). Additionally, the length of the trip's been cut drastically from last year's three weeks to less than a week this time round. So this meant that for the first time in three years there were no quaint Christmas markets in close-to-freezing weather with the obligatory mulled wine to enjoy. Instead, it was decidedly tropical weather for a change, something much closer to home (which as far as i'm concerned is often not something good).

It didn't turn out too badly though. Not that i'm not one to be philosophical about such things, but like i had said earlier, in a way circumstances were such that it was just as well that i didn't manage to get away from say, November, since i had so much work to do (hmm and in fact, still do have to do, though that's another story). Furthermore, i guess after four straight backpacking and couchsurfing trips in Europe a break in the routine couldn't do much harm. In any case, i ended up going to Koh Lanta in Krabi province, which at this time of year at the start of the northern winter season seems to have a tourist demographic profile almost entirely composed of sun-starved Europeans. Being pretty much a lone Asian in a sea of tourists of European ethnicity (yes there were barely even any Japanese, and (thank goodness) almost no other Singaporeans in sight either) meant that i was pretty much ignored by almost all the people in the tourist trade whom i encountered, which can work both ways. On the minus side, in such situations you can't help but feel like a second-class tourist compared to the farangs, but on the plus side, that means that the scores of massage, hotel, and restaurant touts barely even sent a glance my way.

Oh, and of course, another big plus about this trip is that it was a heck of a lot cheaper than what i'd pay usually, even though this time i had to resort to staying in hotels due to the scarcity of budget/couchsurfing options. So now i'm telling myself that the money saved this time round could possibly go a long way next time. Hopefully the next time will be during the June holidays. I dunno if i could tahan any longer without a larger-scale trip...

catching some breath

I find it kinda ironic that now that it's the holidays, and school has been out (at least for the students) since the last time i was here, that i seem to have less time on my hands to post anything here. Bringing forward the last day of school (again, i stress, for the students) seems to have become the ultimate empowering device to hand all sorts of somehow school-related work to us, stuff which, during lesson time, we could still swat away (occasionally, at least).

In this sense (and i know i might sound like a darn workaholic when i say this - which maybe is what i've become), i'm glad that circumstances are as such this time that i'm not able to go for a decent (means more than a week long) overseas trip, so that i can have more time at hand now to try and get all the work done before i do go somewhere, which will be for a far shorter time than what i'd ideally like. But a holiday's a holiday, i guess, right? And in any case, i somehow have become relatively focused these past few days or so, such that i think i've been able to get through quite a fair bit of work, or at least a fair bit more than i'd expect from myself when not at home trying to do work.. Good times?

a mouldy moulder

It's now pretty much the end of school for this year ( at least for the students), as even though this upcoming week is only week seven of the last ten week term of the school year, due to the O Level exams everything else in secondary schools is more or less shut down. This has only been the case for the past, what, five years or so, due to those exams having been moved forward to accommodate an earlier release of results. I still remember the (good?) old days when my birthday, while always falling right at the start of the school holidays, would during the O and A level years instead fall smack within the exam period, and i definitely had to plow through a paper or two once or twice.

What this means is a very rushed second semester for the teachers and students, particularly, if like me for lower sec history, your school follows a modular system, where basically you have only one semester (i.e. half the school year) to complete your entire year's syllabus. Couple that with the impeccable timing of the SAF in scheduling my three week reservist during this period (while for good measure, managing to also eat up my Teachers' Day and one week September school break as well), and the uncanny knack of the higher ups for without fail, managing to come up with more and more things that teachers are supposed to do. Add for good measure conditions at the workplace which are, shall we say, evidence of a fallen world and you've got one incredibly crazy semester that i'm frankly still reeling from

It therefore isn't much of a surprise that this semester has also been the one when i've started to entertain thoughts about a life outside of the system, even though, yes, i still have a good two-and-a-half years to go before i can actually enjoy even the possibility of such a life. I feel that there's only so much more of comforting myself by being reminded of the fallen-ness of this world and me as being placed by God in the midst of it for a purpose (and that already had started to wear thin by the time i was at NUS) that i can handle before totally losing a sense of what that really means.

While i'm still in this system though, i think i do need to start to try and get my act together more. Which means for starters screwing up less often, in order to give others as little ammo as possible to (deliberately or otherwise) aim in my direction. I guess i can hopefully use the (somewhat) clean slate of a new school year to try and start over, so to speak. At the same time, there's the need to remind myself constantly that ultimately, teaching would not exist if not for the students, and therefore they are people whom (as terrible as they often can be) i should consider the impact on them for whatever i'm doing as a teacher. (After all, otherwise, i wouldn't be moulding the future of our nation, eh?) And also, for as much as i despise the notion of doing things primarily for the sake of promotions and performance bonuses, to not be so blatant in bringing that across, as i've realised that it can come across as preachy, instead of reflecting well on my values as a Christian in the workplace.

I do wish that i had a good time on vacation to regroup and make sense of things before the new school year. Unfortunately, the aforementioned craziness of the past semester means that i never got around to planning anything, and now air ticket prices are all crazy expensive. Then, scheduling wise i'm not able to be away for any longer than a continuous week, which really kills it for most places that i'm typically interested in going to. Will definitely try to fit something in though. For my sanity.

The Calm Before the Storm

It feels kind of surreal now - me typing this leisurely on a Saturday afternoon - as after being seemingly endlessly busy, all of a sudden i can't really find much to do (ok, actually there are lots of things to do, just that maybe they're not so urgent. Important, yes, but not urgent - i shall start to do them later on - yes, seriously).

The reason for this somewhat eerie calm is of course that exams begin in a few days' time, and so there are no more real lessons to teach (thankfully i was able to finish teaching all that is to be tested soon enough), just revision. And while, as usual there's all the last minute consultations with students, many of whom have showed not even a microscopic degree of interest in my lessons until now (though i prefer this to not being interested throughout, which is the case for many others), by and large it's been a much easier time during these past few days compared to when i first got back to school not more than a week before that. Easy enough for me this morning to actually have the opportunity to go for a run that had nothing to do with either school or the SAF. A rare opportunity indeed, one which i doubt will still avail itself next week when i will have the scripts of 240 students to mark over the weekend (marking while running - now that's a nice bit of multi-tasking that i'd like to see someone do).

Now, one thing that i was able to do today since i'm this free was to read the newspaper without having to rush because i might miss the bus/not get enough sleep. In today's ST Life there's a feature on children "having a bigger say in how they want their rooms to look," with their parents "gladly picking up the tab". I was never given this opportunity by my folks, though just as well, given my indecisiveness (not to mention indifference).

What i thought was appalling was what one mother of a five-year-old girl who chose a pink (surprise surprise) room with drawers "painted with a shimmery sheen of stars" (oh help) said (and by the way the bill came up to $15000). And i quote: "We pamper her a lot and tend to be indulgent. It is important that she feels good about the room, that it is designed to what she likes so she can have a happy childhood." Do we really need more potential spoilt brats who are used to getting whatever they want just so that they can be 'happy'? I suppose that having to deal with some of these on a daily basis has made me even more abhorrent of such (imho) poor parenting practices. You're basically setting your daughter up to become one of the many who believe that she is entitled to have her way practically no matter what, and in the process cause many of those around her (or at least people like me - those who as an occupational hazard work with these young brats) a great deal of misery. You want her to be happy? Well then give her a can of pink paint, a brush, and a some shimmery star stickers from Popular and get her to do it herself (Oh yeah, she is all of five years old eh - then why not do it together with her? A good parent-child bonding moment)

irregularity

Yet another quick recap post, if at the least, to maintain a minimum of one post per month on average.

But anyhoos, what a past month it has been, though unfortunately i don't think that i can say much, if anything about it here. Suffice to say that it was three weeks or so of (somewhat surprisingly enjoyable) overseas reservist, i went there pale and i came back, well, black(-ish), Oh the grossness that is peeling skin.

After that long a time spent there, unlike most of the others i did not really look forward to coming back. My reservations were quickly justified upon the first day of stepping back into school. The semi-amusing comments from students and teachers alike about my quantum leap in skin tone aside, it was a grim day when i finally had to face the consequences of an extended (but oh so blissful) time away from school, consequences that i only now, around a week-and-a-half later, am beginning to recover from. I don't know if there's been any talk about making the yearly ICT less of a hassle for NS Men, particularly those who work in the public/civil service (since one could logically argue that more could be done in such cases to make it such that this mandated time away from work does not have to adversely affect how things turn out before and after the ICT itself), but if there is, well then *note to self to activate my self censorship switch* MORE NEEDS TO BE DONE!

ta!

Off for overseas reservist (to i-can't-tell-you-where to do i-can't-tell-you-what). Hopefully i'll be frequenting this place more when i get back.

Au revoir.

Moscow 2010, if only...

So it turns out that it has to take a four day long weekend before i'm able to get myself to put something here (i abandon too many things before they have run their rightful course and i don't want to add this to that heap of things). Sadly, half of the said weekend is already gone, and before i know it it'll be (ack!) time for school again, with probably less than half of the work that i had originally intended to complete being done. Case in point - because i had to go for a nat'l day dinner at expo tonight (don't ask), i had intended to first hang out at some cafe at expo and get some work done before the dinner, and then hang around again at the Hanis near my place to get more work done before heading home. Needless to say, i didn't hang around either time in the end

Anyways, as i know i've mentioned at least twice before, together with that other obliged-to-wear-red holiday, nat'l day is just about my least favourite of the days off that we get. How ironic that both of these holidays are the only ones when we at school are guaranteed at least two days off each. Certainly, the extra day off for both is a slight redeeming factor, but otherwise i can't really care much for either.

I suppose though, that given the line of work i am in, the employer i work for, and of course, the country i live in, remaining this negative and cynical can't be very healthy [that was actually a very valid and thought-provoking point that the MP made during his speech at the nat'l day dinner (yes, i was actually listening - must have been during one of the courses of the chinese menu that featured seafood, so i didn't have the option of being distracted through eating, and since everyone else was eating i couldn't talk to anyone else either..)]. Something to work on i guess - let's wait for YOG to be a thing of the past though. There's only so much angst that i can repress =p

Anyways, in totally random other news, i just realised that i have memories of Nat'l Day 1990. At the Padang. Silver Anniversary. Was it really twenty years ago?

life support

There have been many times over the past month when i've wanted to put something here, though, as is normally the case nowadays, i've had to postpone doing so due to there being so many things to do. And of course, now when i actually have some time to write a post, my mind is blank. Pity. It's been an extremely eventful four weeks, both in and out of school. Wish it were more out than in.

Ah crap, brain not working. Watch this space.

Gone Too Soon (Haven't we been here before?)

The last time i was here, i was relishing the prospect of the (then) upcoming school holidays. Well, the holidays certainly came and went, and all of a sudden, it's the last Friday before school reopens. Hmm, how did that happen?

I was seriously looking forward to the June break as a very timely and much-needed opportunity to refresh and regroup before the second semester, but in the end, as with many of my best laid plans, it went awry. Ok, maybe not that it went awry, but just that as it turns out, four weeks off from school is still not long enough, especially when you've to finish off the rest of the year once those four weeks are done.

Not that i didn't get anything done during the break though. On the contrary, somehow within these past four weeks i squeezed in a three day course, two overseas trips, a real scare, and even one night in Ubin. I even grew tolerant enough of soccer/football to manage to watch almost a complete game (at a free live screening, of course - you'll still never catch me at a match live, not unless you pay me the cost of the ticket first at least) and actually be rooting for a particular team (though only because i was firmly in that playing country's territory).

One thing that i was reminded of, though, was that as long as i could ever hope these breaks to be, my job/calling at the moment is not to slack off watching telly and traveling the world, but rather, to teach. Sounds real cheesy, but well, you can't eschew cheesiness entirely if you want to tahan working in the S'pore civil service, can you (so many writhe-inducing taglines come to mind)?

So with that in mind, it's time to (try and) gear myself up for Monday. Awshucks.

Finally figured out how to use the darn timer on my camera...

Red and Blue (but mostly red)

There were a lot of things going on last week, especially towards its latter half, as the exam papers of all my classes were ongoing, which also meant that my foot-high pile of marking also came in by last Friday. Meanwhile, the UK general election was going on, and especially with so many late results coming in, on Friday morning i was alternating between invigilating, checking on how my students were doing with their/my paper, and dashing back into the staff room whenever i could to catch the live streaming of the Beeb's election coverage.

While i'm less familiar with UK politics than i am with the situation in the States (and as such am still getting accustomed to the Tories' colour being blue and Labour's red, when their ideological counterparts across the pond adopt the exact opposite colors), it still was very interesting to see how things developed, especially with a credible third party also among the fray. That's even if thanks to excessive media hype, it seemed to culminate in a spectacular anti-climax when they actually experienced a net loss of seats. (It was extraordinary though, to see how all the news networks were harping on the disappointment for the Lib Dems after all the spotlight on Nick Clegg. Did they fail to see the irony of the fact that it was them who fed this angle incessantly in the first place?)

One thing that i was, and to a lesser extent, still am confused about, is the degree of importance they accord to exit polls and projections of winners. Of course that's partly because over here there are no exit polls (or for that matter, any means of political opinion polling in the first place), and practically everyone can project who the overall winner will be even before the election is called.

Conveniently enough, however, through marking my students' papers i did at least get some semblance of how this can work. Since i generally started marking from the easiest section onwards, by the time i reached the final section, and looking at the recorded marks from the previous sections, i could more or less project who would pass (my expectations are low), based on mental calculations on how many more marks they would require, weighed against the so-called swing from their previous test marks that would be needed. Somewhat confusing stuff, but it makes more sense when you actually are doing the marking.

But for the moment, at least, both (the elections and the exams, at least for me) are over, and the break (or whatever i'm able to take from it) is coming up. Not a moment too soon.

monocultural

On the bus to school this morning, there was this Caucasian girl of about eight or nine headed to school with her Filipino domestic helper, both of whom were sitting two seats in front of me. The helper had evidently been tasked by the girl's parents (probably the mother) to assist the girl with school stuff. Fair enough.

It turned out to be particularly bizarre and intriguing for me though, as the subject in question was Mandarin Chinese, and what the helper was doing was showing the girl a series of flashcards with Chinese characters on it which she had to try and identify. While the girl did not exactly seem to be the most enthusiastic learner of the language, she was definitely more enthusiastic than i ever was, and could identify most of the characters. The helper would then let the girl know if she was correct or wrong by referring to the hanyu pinyin written on the reverse side of the card.

So to recap, we had two totally non-Chinese people being the teacher and student in a rather effective Chinese lesson. From my own scarred perspective that's practically inhuman, but then again that's why today i have to fish out my NRIC each time i may be required to write my Chinese name somewhere (and the last time that happened was when i was registering for A levels methinks..

If it were up to me, there would not be this passionate ongoing debate about the weightage of PSLE second language (i refuse to term it as 'mother tongue' because a mother tongue it was not for me). I would rather permanently abolish the study of it, at the least for students from ethnic backgrounds that are not totally similar to the language being taught (i.e. me). After all, if you want to use the economic argument, surely not every single person who studies Chinese will eventually find, or for that matter, be interested in a job involving the so-called rising dragon that is China. Some will inevitably find jobs either here or elsewhere that would not require the utterance of a single word of Chinese (oh the bliss). (And then of course there are others like me who due to the nature of the job have had no choice but to speak Chinese anyways). And if you use the roots/cultural heritage argument, don't forget that there's the chance of overkill - as again is represented by me. Furthermore, this has come at the expense of the other half of my roots/cultural heritage, which is probably why today i'm pretty cultureless, with lots of Western stuff having filled the cultural vacuum..

In any case, if the second language exemption rule was in place all those years ago for me, my PSLE score would probably have jumped by at least 30 points or more. Though then again, that might have meant i'd have ended up in a school like VS, or horror of horrors, ACS(I). That's enough reason there for me to believe that God works through temporal adversity to bring about more long-term joy.

say that again?

Am getting down to (hopefully) finalising holiday plans within the next couple of days, though worries that right after i book the flight i'll find out that there's some school-related activity which i've to be at home for are perpetually at the back of my mind. And i think that "sorry, i've already booked my ticket, so that's just too bad (actually that's already the self-censored version - the first thing that came to my mind was more along the lines of s**** you - blame it on my students, though they say far worse)!" is hardly the way to go about handling such a situation if it were to arise.

Another recently-developed worry that i now have is that the lingering ash cloud over much of Europe will somehow not magically (get lost in your rock and roll and) drift away by the time the June holidays arrive, especially since in the fleeting moments that i've caught the news i've heard worst-case scenarios of 6 months till the ash clears being floated around.

It's interesting to see, by the way, how much news coverage is devoted to this story in both the local and int'l media (my joint favourites - a seemingly unsolicited "i wish i was there" message to the ST from Vivian Balakrishnan, last heard stranded in Paris, and today's front page story of Penny Low teleconferencing to join her fellow GRC MPs at a community event - does that really warrant a front page story? Pretty lame, was what i thought (both her teleconferencing and the story). You would have thought that there might be a greater focus on the Qinghai earthquake, which now surely ranks as the Farrah Fawcett of recent news stories.

One part of the whole volcanic ash flight cancellation saga that has been severely undercovered is ironically at the centre of it all - the name of the volcano (and for the record, it's Eyjafjallajökull). Up till now, on the tv news it's been known simply as "the Icelandic Volcano". But i guess who can blame it when it's pronounced something like this.

circular logic

I've always been one for obscure, insignificant, and ultimately super boliao things (though at this hour, no examples come to mind). The latest example of this took place today, when, admittedly semi-buoyed by the pointless novelty of trying out the latest leg of the circle line on the day it was opened to the public, i (after some difficulty, might i add - chalk it up to poor signage at Dhoby Ghaut station) hopped on a circle line train.

Don't get me wrong though, this was, by no means a random, on a whim kinda thing done because i had nothing better to do. I was, of course, headed to school to get some work done (what's new, eh?) That aside though, i'm seriously glad that this part of the line has opened, as it makes traveling to and from school from home that much easier (ah yes, all the better to spend more time in school, the nagging cynic in me would say). As the past week went on, i seriously could hardly wait for the opening, especially since, seemingly in order to perpetuate my perennial frustration with having to rely on buses 14 and 16, i was hit with many just-left-the-stop-as-i-came-within-ten-metres-of-it buses and horrid rainy weather, up till Friday evening, the last possible time whereby i would not be able to try the train back.

My relative satisfaction with the ride today aside, i do wish that they wouldn't pimp the line up to be more than it actually is. My favourite is this report by cna (who else?) stating that by using the line commuters can save both time and money, but giving the ridiculous example of the (train) journey from Paya Lebar to Bartley which "takes about 38 minutes and costs $1.61", while with the opening of the latest circle line stage it will be cut to 6 minutes and save commuters 66 cents, "which is over 40 per cent cheaper than the previous fare".

That's all well and good, but who in their right mind would take the train down from Paya Lebar to City Hall and change to the red line to Dhoby Ghaut and change again to the NEL at Serangoon and then change a final time to the Circle Line to Bartley anyway, when they could easily hop on a bus (i dare say a direct one) and make the trip insurely less than 38 minutes and also at a cheaper price? The answer? Seemingly only Hetty Musfirah Abdul Khamid , the writer of the article, who along the same lines would, if needing to head to the ground floor from the first, would probably choose to take an elevator all the way up to the topmost floor before taking it down again to the ground floor. Kinda like a Twilight Zone Tower of Terror for the geriatrics.

So don't make the new section of the circle line to be something it's not. Makes travel more convenient? Yes. More environmentally-friendly than diesel-powered buses and taxis? Yes. The cheapest mode of transport? Far from it.

incroyable...

Let's finally talk a bit about the India trip, before it becomes an all too distant memory. First trip in a long time that i've taken out of the country which i wouldn't consider a holiday. Probably all the way since army training all those years ago. I wouldn't even consider it a working holiday. Just plain work is more like it, just with a change in environment from cosy corner of the staffroom to less cosy legroom-deficient seat in a seasonally-airconditioned coach (we were traveling and caught in jams so much it's as though i never left - except for a brief spell in the middle, but more on that later...)

Granted it was nice to finally see India beyond the Mumbai (then known as Bombay) airport. Places like the old pink buildings in Jaipur and of course the Taj Mahal are definitely must-sees. Postcards and Incredible India adverts hardly do them justice - especially with the latter, to see it in person is a totally different experience altogether.

The people there whom we encountered were a very hospitable bunch. Unfortunately, in the middle of the trip i was the recipient of more hospitality than i had originally intended for, after getting hit pretty bad with what i think was food poisoning. Don't know how that came about, if i ate more or less the same food as the rest. Maybe it was just that i enjoyed the food so much that i had much more than the rest (Indian McDonald's aside, which i refused to touch). But whatever the cause, i must say i've never had so much bonding time with a toilet seat as i did with the one in room 26 of the fourth floor of the N***** M*** School Hostel. Two whole days straight. The silver lining being that i could get away from the students for those two whole days. And in any case the staff there were most helpful, and even volunteered to bring me to the doctor to get some medication. Even if the doctor ended up being one in a place which, for someone adequately familiar with Malay/ Tagalog like me, was somewhat worryingly named "Saket Hospital" they still were great nevertheless.

In retrospect, i've learned a few things. 1) Going on a school trip as a student is a piece of cake. Going on a school trip as a teacher, on the other hand, well, ahem... 2) Always bring toilet paper wherever you go when you are overseas. 3) Money spent on inundating potential tourists with Incredible India publicity could instead be spent on things like streamlining the secure but still unnecessarily convoluted immigration and security clearance at the Delhi airport. Woohoo.

Now to try and put together a real holiday this June...

so i still get out

Last Saturday i ended up going for yet another fun-o-rama. If not for the fact that for various reasons many (and boy do i mean many) $10-a-piece coupons tend to end up heading my way in the weeks leading up to the event, i probably wouldn't go for one anymore. And why should i, when at each successive one i go for i feel older and older, and more and more out of place, as teenage exuberance seems to saturate the air (as if i don't get enough of that at work), and i bump into less and less people from my time there.

And this year's one was no exception. On the plus side though, having been for so many of these by now, i've become pretty seasoned in terms of knowing what to do, and when i should do it. Like how i've learnt to hang around till near closing time in order to pick up stuff after their final mark-down. It may still be grossly overpriced, but at least you get some sense of satisfaction at having paid less than the early birds, who in this rare case, far from manage to catch the worm.

I've also learnt that if you're actually intending on purchasing the (again grossly overpriced) food, your best bet is to avoid potential D-class hygiene rated food prepared by the students (and i was in their shoes before, so i know how gross it can be), and instead head on over to the friendly folk at the Parents' Support Group stalls, as you have a greater sense of assurance that the food is safe to eat. (And having just come back from two days of, shall we say, intimate bonding with the toilet seat during the previous week's trip to India - more on that some other time perhaps - i was extra cautious).

And while we're on the topic of grossly overpriced food, i've just come back from my maiden trip to Chatterbox with the family, where of course i ended up finally trying the much ballyhooed $22++ Chicken Rice. As delightfully un-oily yet still very delicious as the soup was, and as intensely sesame-ish as the basting sauce for the chicken was, and of course as generous as the portion was, i can't imagine ever voluntarily paying that much for something like chicken rice. Not in Singapore at least. I do vaguely remember being tempted by i think it was US$11 chicken rice when i was at Penang in Chapel Hill, but even then i knew it wasn't worth it..

Glad to see a post that does not include my lamentations/complaints about work, for a change - they still exist, of course, but well, vive la différence.

in a bit

I really want to get round to posting more here, especially when i've a lot to bleah about, but alas, circumstances always get in the way.

So watch this space and hopefully in due time, there'll be more stuff here than mere filler.

rant & recuperation

Just about one year has passed since i first started at my current school. And as i see the latest batch of practicum people scurry around with blur looks on their faces i can't help but think back to when i was in their shoes, and realise how i've become somewhat less scurrying and blur than i was before.

However, becoming less blur has meant that i've become more immersed in teaching life, and at the same time more aware of the occasionally harsh realities of it all. Like how now realistically speaking i cannot spend an average of less than eleven hours at school each day because of the amount of work, lesson-related or otherwise that i have to deal with. Or how when i look at my class while i want to see a bunch of young individuals with so much worth and potential and who of course are very much loved by God, i instead cannot find it all but impossible to think of how just over seven weeks with them has left me physically, mentally, emotionally, and perhaps worst of all, spiritually spent. Or when i (admittedly in a rather voyeuristic manner, but only because i cannot find the opportunity to actually meet up with others) observe how people i know seem to have no problems with achieving the so-called work-life balance, when my own balance seems to be permanently tipped on the work end of the scale.

It makes things that much more frustrating, even with the sense of satisfaction that the job does still bring. Maybe it's because i'm too tired to feel sufficiently satisfied.

So i guess it's good that, to this end, i'm on course for the next few days, as though i cannot say that this will be an improvement from things in school, the break from the school environment for a couple of days (though that being said i probably still have to go back to school in the early morning to settle some things first on at least one of the upcoming days) is definitely welcome. The return to school the next week is another story altogether though =/

seeing red (again) (and again)

The many weeks since i've last posted here are a good indication of how busy i've been at school this year. It's been one crazy and long-drawn-out week after another, with all too brief weekend interludes which hardly allow me sufficient breathing space before Monday arrives again.

All this being the case, i ought to be grinning from ear to ear right now, since tomorrow and Tuesday are both school-free days thanks to the CNY hols. (And btw that's not so much because i've time to relax, but more that i've time to get a bit ahead of schedule with all the work that has to be done.) Instead i think i've not felt this bummed for a long time, at least not in 2010.

It's not because i've that much work to do (or that i'm behind schedule in trying to get it done) - i think that by now i've come to accept this as but the standard lot of a teacher. It definitely has to do more with the fact that this is cny, which more or less amounts to my least favourite holiday of the year. To make things even more intriguing, this year it's a double whammy - cny + valentine's day (not that i'm a bitter single, just that i think it's a plain waste of money). If they somehow ever managed to squeeze national day into the mix (thankfully something that is never going to happen) i'd be the first person to get a ticket to, say, India, where i reckon no one celebrates national day, only a minority celebrates cny, and if you celebrate v'day you run the risk of being torched by an angry fundamentalist hindu mob...

But at least until that happens i suppose i can look forward to the fact that it's just about two more weeks till this round of madness is over, when i can step into a supermarket/department store/ underground carpark without fear of another infernal racket that calls itself cny music. Of course, that will also be when school becomes even more busy. Awshucks..

hunger or horror?

Since as of late i've been spending pretty much half of every calendar weekday in school, it has become necessary to have meals (or at least some sort of food) there. There have been times though, when i've missed eating a single thing in school whatsoever, meaning that i've at least on a handful of occasions taken my first taste of food at around seven/eightish, due to only being free to eat when all the canteen stalls would have already closed. And while the seemingly legendary food center lies just opposite, the phrase "so near yet so far" could not be more fitting than it is in this case.

While this had pretty much been the situation since i first entered the school, it has only occurred to me recently that i could actually keep a stash of food in the office so that i would at least have something to fall back upon. Unfortunately, this epiphany of mine has coincided with the start of the cny season. In other words, it's time for the annual bone-chilling assault on my eardrums that is the cny songs played ad nauseaum in supermarkets.

I wonder if i've some kind of clinical phobia of these horrid dongdongqiangqiang numbers. I say this because driven by hunger, i've tried to brave the onslaught of overenthusiastic dizi music and incomprehensible (by me) Chinese couplets rattled off in unison by the seemingly endless number of annoying singers, only to find myself covering my ears as well as i can with my hands while scanning through the aisles of snacks for suitable food. I probably would remind people of the hear no evil monkey. That makes sense though - the hear no evil part, not the monkey part - since as far as i'm concerned such music is as evil as it gets.

Maybe i should get in touch with cold storage delivery...

(On a completely unrelated note i couldn't help but chuckle when i read the first bit of this report in the ST a few days back. I don't know if it was meant to hint at the quality (or in many cases, lack thereof) of teaching at nie in general, but at least when i was reading the opening line, which said that "Their best lessons were not in the lecture theatres at the NIE", i couldn't help but think to myself that i couldn't agree more :p )

the elusive eight

There couldn't have been a bigger shift in lifestyle for me than between two weeks ago and now, with the beginning of school once again. There's a lot going on with me in school right now, and suffice to say that the words stamina and endurance immediately come to mind when i think of what i'll need to have a good semester ahead. Hence the sudden break midway through my attempt at doing a decent log of my recent trip. That will hopefully resume in due course (latest by the March holidays =p).

From last year, and of course presently as well, i've been lamenting as to how i can hardly seem to get a decent amount of sleep nowadays. The magic number is the elusive eight, which was often exceeded during the last few weeks of the break, after i had gotten back from the trip. Now on school nights i usually settle for six, and often end up with fiveish instead, waking up grumpy and then secretly scowling at the auntie whom i sometimes see at the bus stop smiling and greeting her fellow passengers at six thirty in the morning, wondering how anyone can be of such a cheerful disposition at that hour.

And just now in the shower it suddenly occurred to me to do the math and figure out why i'm ending up with so little sleep (relatively speaking, of course, since my work email inbox oounts the hours of one to three am as some of the most active in terms of incoming mail from colleagues). It all started to make sense, since with twelve hour days coupled with another hour a day for getting to and from school, it leaves me with just three hours to play with for anything else, if i am even to catch a whiff of eight hours of sleep per night. Not possible. Partly because i waste precious time on busy days like this doing things like typing this. Oops.