Ne vend-on pas une paire de moineaux pour un sou? Et pourtant, pas un seul d'entre eux ne tombe à terre sans le consentement de votre Père. ... N'ayez donc aucune crainte; car vous, vous avez plus de valeur que toute une volée de moineaux. (Matt 10:29,31)
After three weeks or so of holiday, at the start of which i was surprisingly, but nevertheless seriously thinking that i should not have made it so long (a thought that all but disappeared after a few days), i got back yesterday afternoon. It didn't take any longer than for me to approach the plane door and take the first step onto the aerobridge at Changi for me to realise "oh crap, that's it for beautiful, cool weather in which i can walk comfortably outdoors without the risk of profuse sweating", for the sweltering, moisture-saturated Singapore air easily crept through the centimetre-wide spacing between the plane body and the aerobridge canopy thingy that is supposed to wrap around the plane body (i'm sure there's a proper name for it). While i'm glad to be able to wear berms and uncovered footwear again, the idea of being back still ain't great, though admittedly i'd have expected more of a sinking feeling than what i have right now.
Knowing the sometime absentminded knucklehead that is me all too well, i had right from the start decided that i wouldn't be bringing my laptop along on this trip. If i did, chances are that it might be in the hands of some opportunistic train station vagrant (i once forgot about my laptop in the nus library, and left it at the info computers to go print something for a good five minutes, but thankfully then it was stilll there when i hurriedly rushed back to get it) or have sustained a serious body dent when i'd have accidentally let it slip from my hands onto the hard concrete floor.
This however meant that chronicling all that's happened during these past three weeks (not to mention doing more mundane things like checking email) became that much more of a difficult process, especially when coupled with the fact that, as i had mentioned earlier, my now almost three-and-a-half year old powershot started taking powerfully artful shots that were dramatically lightened and accented by weird horizontal lines, that became painfully apparent especially when i took pictures outdoors during the daytime (though i suppose i should be glad it was winter, so daylight hours were reduced, something that i otherwise found quite trying). In retrospect though, i kinda regret not bringing it along, given the remarkable number of places where i discovered you could get free wifi when i was there (actually this remarkable number is just two, but well that's still two more than i'd have expected..) In the end, when i had some down time waiting for planes in the airport and in the plane itself, i resorted to the old-fashioned method of just penning down some of my recollections on pieces of scrap paper, just in case i'd have forgotten about them later..
So now here i am armed with certain recollections and other assorted musings about the trip. I'm still not sure how to organise them, but i suppose they'll organise themselves (somewhat) as i go along. And anyways, this is primarily meant for me, that i might not forget (i am a student of history after all), so hopefully at least i'll be able to understand what i've put down here, and if anyone else does then all the better eh. Think putting everything together in one shot will be a tad too ambitious though, so we'll do this bit by bit, so just stay tuned...
There's been a heck of a lot that i'd want to put here about my trip, which is to end rather soon, particularly for memory's sake since my dear three-and-a-half-year-old camera decided to choose near the start of the trip to pull a fast one on me and refuse to take proper pictures when there is a significant amount (read: any) of sunlight involved. I'm not in the mood to do so though, i think cos there's just so many different things that have been going on that i'm not sure how to organise them. So maybe i'll leave that for when i get back. There goes any lingering aspiration of becoming a professional travel writer...
Itś been one week into the trip so far (and btw, if anything looks strange when i type it thatś because of foreign keyboard syndrome - thatś what you get when the language you normally use happens to be the one sans claws, umlauts, dashes and what have you...) and while i can´t say it has all gone smoothly, it still has nevertheless been a lot of fun (thereś been lots of other things too of course but for now well let fun be the operative word).
But i´m not here to talk about that. This is more to pen down some random thought that came to me as i was explaining to some of my cs hosts about Singapore, and in particular about the marina barrage and its function. And then it suddenly occurred to me - the construction of the barrage means that one of the sources of the comfort that Kit Chan gets while miles away from the islandis gone.
Ah too bad. Time for a new heartwarming national day song then...
While today i'm officially yet another year older (and on a more practical front, now unable to get youth prices on European rail passes), perhaps i can take solace in the fact that when i went to school yesterday for some staff program where after breakfast we'd be headed from school to the beach, the security guard stopped me and said that students are not allowed to wear sandals :p
The cca course ended a couple of days ago, and i must say, i'm surprised with how much i miss it (actually i only miss it a bit, but that bit is way more than i thought i would). Particularly, the four days and three nights at the camp were in fact quite enjoyable, and i did rather take to a lot of the activities that we had to do while we were there (well, at least most of them, i still care little, if at all, for sleeping in self-pitched tents - i.e. not those of the throw-on-the-ground-and-they-immediately-take-shape variety that you see by the dozens on any given weekend at ecp). After having a rather successful, if pain-causing go at various high rope elements (dragging your whole body across ten or so metres of rope suspended high up in the air does not spell much fun for the, ahem, how shall i put it, lower torso area) among other things, i must say that now i finally am beginning to understand why some students might actually want to join a uniformed group in the first place. Got to meet many others of a similar predicament (or shall i be the uber-optimist and instead label it a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity?) as me which was quite cool as well..
But that's come to rather an abrupt end and it's since been back to school. Actually, there's just one more day of the official school term left, and then i'm more or less done until the latter half of december (do i hear a woohoo?). My first day back at school today though has given me news that next year may be more tiring (or in optimist speak, constructively challenging) than i had originally thought that it might be. But well, the serial avoider in me shall conveniently overlook that for now, at least until i come back. And in the meantime, there's still an alarming amount of planning and prep that i should be doing before i fly on Tues morn, so excuse me while i (try to) get my act together...
Have spent the past week at the cca course, the exact name of which i'd better not divulge here, just in case. Suffice to say that it's not exactly my dream cca(come to think of it, in some ways at least before entering teaching it was my nightmare cca), and that the course continues for another week-and-a-half, the 'highlight', if i may call it that, being a four day three night camp at a place aptly named 'camp r*s*l**ce', a quality that will certainly be much drawn upon by many, if not all of the campers, during the duration of the camp.
The past week was not bad, actually, though the most compelling encouragement that i could pick up from the course conductors to the many involuntary teacher i/cs among the course participants did not get any better than "well, since you kena arrow, might as well make the most of it, right?", which is not exactly the most uplifting of reasonings. Perhaps an apt paraphrase of that reasoning would be that we all should just "bite the bullet". Or in the case of us, fire the bullet, which is what we did on Friday. I was actually rather pleased with myself since i found out that i'm actually not an entirely hopeless shot after all (as i thought was the case after army), though perhaps it would have something to di with the fact that the firing distance was about one tenths as long as what it was back then.
One major minus though is that the food generally is less than less than palatable (no typo there). I'd gladly consume army fresh rations on any given day or even combat rations for that matter over another meal at that place. However, as bad as the food is, the thing about me is that unless the stuff placed on the plate in front of me is especially inedible, i usually will eat it, just so as not to waste food, and as such i've had many a mild irritation on my tongue over the past few days because potentially offensive food (usually some kind of fish by-product) was swiftly plopped onto my plate before i could utter any "auntie, zhe(4) ge(4) bu(4) yao(4)".
I guess however, that i can at least still look forward to some of the activities on the course (which are actually quite interesting). Here's to better weather than the past drab and damp week..
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 ofSachertorte) is probably something i won't end up doing anyways..
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 fromaspiration 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 :)
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..
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 agothis 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
While, as most people who read this would know, i don't really care much for most things Chinese, one exception is with regards to some of the old Channel 8 SBC shows. When i was in primary school especially, i'd watch them all the time. At one point in time, there was something called 'one plus one' (yi jia yi), with two shows back to back, but then later it changed to one seven o'clock and one nine o'clock show. And i've concluded that if i were not interested in these shows, i probably would have flunked my Chinese all the way through primary school to PSLE (and goodness knows how things may have turned out if that was to be the case, but as usual, that's another story)
Yeah so anyways, one of these shows was Crime and Passion - i'll always remember it for teaching me that oleander is a poisonous plant. That's cos Zoe Tay's character killed her hubby midway through the show by using oleander branches to skewer meat and serve him satay. Just as well, cos she pre-empted him trying to kill her by mixing insecticide into her salad dressing. Totally random, i know...
There was another show (among many others that i found) which i had almost forgotten about, but when the theme song started playing i realised i still more or less remembered it (music + lyrics - the latter not being much of a stretch since much of it is aiyoaiyoaiyaya). Thought it was quite cool that i could still remember so much of a song from 1991 though...
I must have rambled on here before about how staying right smack in town isn't all that it's made out to be. Inevitably, when someone finds out where i stay, it's usually followed by comments along the line of "wah, so lucky!" or "so you must be very rich!". Of course, i then would have to make it clear that either comment made is not true, at least not the way i see it.
It's usually easier to convince people that the latter is not true, after a quick explanation of the circumstances that have led the family to stay where we do stay. The former, however, is somewhat harder to brush aside. Unlike many others, i don't really see the value in living within such close proximity to the town center. So what if i can make my way to Ion by foot within twenty minutes? The hoards of people that i would encounter both along the way to and from there and in the place itself are way more than i am really comfortable with, and in any case, the chances of me making a purchase there are probably next to nothing (Certainly not from Louis Vuitton, or "elvee" as many a S'porean auntie would call it due to the fear of pronouncing it wrongly - and in their defence, well they usually do, kinda along the same lines as Hermès ends up rhyming with "perms").
And at least until the current agreement runs out (and i'd dare you to call me unpatriotic when i tell you that i'm hoping, not so secretly anymore, that it is not renewed - for me F1 as a whole is an unnecessary mass emission of carbon dioxide), every September the latest reason for me to lament staying where i do roars its way back into town. I of course i am referring to the darn S'pore Grand Prix. Staying where i stay and working where i work, it's become practically impossible for me to avoid being grossly inconvenienced by the road closures that i have involuntarily been made to accept in the name of the boost to the local economy and what not.
It's not too bad in the morning, since i leave for work at such an unearthly hour that there never is a jam along the diverted bus route, though it does add a good five more minutes to my bus travelling time, and disables the rather handy "time till the next bus arrives" digital info screen at my bus stop (i dunno what's its proper name, so it is hereby christened as such). When i've been taking the bus home this past week though, that's another story, as most of the possible buses that i can take use Nicoll Highway, which means there has been more than my fair share of being stuck in traffic (and btw, you have to appreciate the SBS Transit staff who have been stationed at key points along the temporary bus routes - i recognise one of the frequent bus inspector aunties among them; and the police too - both of these groups who probably would otherwise never come within an F1 car's exhaust's whiff of the race). On top of that, the high-pitched buzz from the cars is very audible from my place. I may stay on a hill, but i nevertheless get all the noise without a smidgeon of a view of the darn noisemakers themselves. The worst of both worlds, if you may...
So next time, don't offer your raves about where i stay. I'd prefer your condolences :p
So the 20 days of reservist came and went, with nothing much that i can talk about (cos well there was nothing much that went on) and i have to say that i thought it went quite well actually. At the least, Seletar Camp is quite a nice place. I'd take some pix to prove it but well of course that would not be allowed, so you've to take my word for it. For starters, managed to spot quite an impressive variety of local bird species there including moreLong-tailed Parakeetsthan i've ever seen anywhere else, even in Changi Village. I sure don't remember them from five years ago, though perhaps it was just that i was too blur then to notice.
(Actually, it's been eons (if at all) since i've remarked on anything to even remotely do with the SAF in a positive light so well maybe the proverbial toto/4D buyers should make a beeline for their nearest S'pore pools outlet.)
Unfortunately all this came to an end on Tuesday, and as expected, the first days back at school haven't exactly been in the same mould as the days back in Seletar. In fact, there has turned out to be even more things to do than i thought there were, and whatever excess sleep and rest i did manage to get in the past close to three weeks has been cancelled out within the past two days. And in the same way, whatever sense of refreshment and recharge there may have been is long gone.
But hey, it's not all bad. And there's the year-end holiday to look forward to. Once i finally decide where it'll be at, that is...
I had been decidedly coy and ambiguous in talking about reservist mattersfor two reasons. One was that i had little idea what i would be doing in the first place, given the general scarcity of information that i could get a hold of plus the fact that this was my first one anyways. The other was that it could potentially fall into the overused yet nevertheless still somewhat compellingly secretive if-i-told-you-what-i-did-i-would-have-to-kill-you category.
Well, after the first few days, i realized that there was no need to worry about the latter reason at least, simply cos i've not been doing anything, which means that there's nothing to accidentally divulge to anyone in the first place. Yes, all that initial last-minute bother and panic about what to bring and what i was missing after more than five years of blissful, military-free years of existence came to naught within a couple of minutes of booking back into camp, when it turned out that the highlight of the day was, well, nothing. And while of course there's some action injected into this close-to-three-week-long program from time to time (like ippt, which surprisingly enough i passed with minimal difficulties, and $100 to boot), it looks like i may be getting that break i was hoping for after all. A bit too much in fact - imagine that- now here am i yearning for more to do.
Good thing though is that i can totally get used to this kind of existence, and at least any initial trepidation on not knowing what the decade(s) ahead of reservist liability may have in store is now gone. Also good is that there's been a good number of people from long ago, many of whom i've not met in the aforementioned blissful span of more than five years, whom i've had opportunity to touch base (and kill time) with again. Of course, not all the cycles will feature such a schedule, so well i'd better enjoy them while they last eh..
It's been a rather busy few weeks and even more so because as i'll be away from work for just under three weeks from tomorrow (no, not for a vacation, not a typical one anyways), over the past week or so especially i've been dealing with a lot of work that has to be done before i go away, lest i come back to an avalanche of issues to deal with (though actually, either way, that will probably still be the case).
And in the midst of all this i must say that, for what it was worth, whatever initial euphoria there was at being liberated from the chains of nie has long since vanished. It has since been replaced by plenty of last-minute scrambling to settle what i should do for each upcoming lesson, more than one's rightful fair share of non-essential work to deal with, and, perhaps worst of all, class upon class of dissatisfied customers who are getting more and more comfortable with being openly unappreciative of the lessons i conduct.
Here, i have to say that the latter is far from being entirely unjustified. I must admit that a lot of my lessons nowadays, if they were to be used for assessment purposes, could not be saved by the wayang-est of wayangs. Yup. The dreaded chalk-and-talk, or to be entirely accurate, marker-and-talk. That's due, i'd like to think, to not being able to find enough time to prepare for a sustained period of quality lessons. Perhaps though, it may also have to do with mental fatigue - the rather novel ideas that used to come to me rather naturally are now buried somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind, if they're even there anymore. And also that honestly, the students nowadays (oh i feel so old just typing that) are much harder to appease that those of not even more than just ten years ago. Many a time have my virtual hands throttled the virtual neck of many a student. But well, at least idealistically speaking, i did think i was better than that.
But anyways, whatever the cause, the fact remains, and come to think of it, as badly timed as this involuntary break from work is, on the other hand it's also perfectly timed, that is, of course, if there'll be sufficient time for me to escape, if not mentally, then at least physically, from work, and possibly achieve that most elusive of goals, recharge myself for the remaining school year (where much more awaits). Who would've thought eh..
While i welcome any opportunity for a non-working day as much as anyone else, sometimes i don't welcome as much the reason behind it (though it being a non-working day i tend to keep my complaints to myself). Together with CNY, National Day ranks as the holiday that i'm least enthusiastic about. I'm probably the last person you'll see wearing red anything on these days, though on other occasions i've no issue with doing so.
While in school, i wasn't as turned off by National Day as i am now. I even voluntarily went for one NDP when once someone offered me a ticket. However, no way would you catch me being like one of those who would try and predict which army camp would be the one handing out the free NDP tix that coming year and stalk the camp gates like a hungry pride of lions a sick, old bufffalo - thank goodness for the relative sanity of the recently-implemented balloting system (and extra points for thwarting the ambitions of the serial NDP attendees). Whilst still in choir i even managed to grin and bear my way through leading the singing of national songs in school and at other functions.
Then came NS, which i guess was when i started to shift from a mood of ambivalence to sheer and utter annoyance. Overkill, to put it lightly.
Uni times were slightly better, since for the first time i was no longer obliged to participate in any National Day celebrations. I remember the National Day of 2006 the best. Why? Cos for the first time i was out of the country, having left for the States a few days earlier for holiday and exchange. No better place to spend a National Day than in Portland, OR.
Last year i was so fed up with being made, involuntarily, to do a lot of crap thanks to the nie people that i decided to skip the culmination of this crap which was meant to be the nie national day celebrations. Didn't take too well to being back in the mode of being obliged once again to participate in such activities.
And this year, it has struck me that it's something that i'll have to get used to, at least for the next three years or so.. However i'm still trying to stay true to my (warped and, to some, meaningless) principles. I made a conscious effort not to wear red to school this morning (though it was quite a mindless choice as the only red top i have is pretty unsuitable for school wear). But, just to make sure i would not step on too many toes, particularly since i'm still new, i came in white instead. It's a national colour after all. That, together with my inspired choice ofRote Grützefor dessert the other day when i had dinner atWerner's, will probably be as so-called patriotic an act as i'm willing to pull off this year.
Did i already say this National Day stuff is something i'll have to get used to? During the school celebrations there were so many moments when i just had to close my eyes. No, not because i was moved to tears by the song singing, the message, or the multimedia presentation. Rather, it was so that i could roll my eyes in safety, without fear of being detected by anyone around. I had to go against my aforementioned principles a bit though, for during the singing of Reach out for the Skies, some overenthusiastic students of mine pulled me up on stage to join several other less-than-willing fellow teachers to do the elaborate waking up, heart-pumping, and fly-swatting exercise that is the accompanying cheesy dance to the song. Dance schmance. Hmm, i guess at least i masked my cynicism well methinks..
As i'm sure i've said before somewhere here (just look for the archived August posts), it's not that i don't like this place. Far from it. I just don't see the point in all these outward displays of patriotism, especially if they come just at this time of year or when we host some sporting event of otherwise token importance to the international community, but of ridiculously over-magnified importance here. This is along the same lines as the whole Sunday/Christmas and Easter Christian thing - the important thing is not how you are on the so-called important days, but on whatever day it is. It may be just me with this view, and i surely don't force it on anyone else. As long as my family doesn't drag me along to the parade i'm perfectly happy with letting my father enter my name for the NDP ballot (which thankfully for me we've not yet kena-ed as of yet). And i hardly think i'm the worst of the lot. Better to not display the flag at all than to hang it the wrong way round or with laundry draped on either side of it.
I, obedient S'porean that i am, usually am quite a stickler when it comes to following the rules. The theory behind it being God's call for us to submit to the governing authorities that have been put in place. To that end, whenever I fly i grudgingly adhere to the flight attendants' request that you leave your footwear on during takeoff and landing, as uncomfortable as that may be. As a student, i almost never skipped classes or other school-sanctioned events (which incidentally left me rather miffed by the end of the moe induction programme earlier in the year, but that's another story). And now whenever i have to cross the road, jaywalking is almost always out of the question, unless it's legal (i.e. cross on the correct side of the signs demarcating 50m from the nearest pedestrian crossing) or if i succumb to peer pressure.
So imagine my shock when it finally dawned on me after more than a decade of riding the mrt that when that lady with the contrived accent cautioned in an ascending register that "eating or drinking is not allowed in stations and trains", she meant every bit of it. I'm hardly like one of those toots who open a tarpow container of wanton mee and slurp it up happily on the train. Rather, i am guilty of the apparently equally illegal offence of drinking water on the train. When i read that they were now going to enforce an immediate fine for offenders i thought i was safe as, after all, it's only water. It seems though that even water drinkers are not immune, which strikes me as a bit much. I mean, even in the library, while eating and drinking were no-nos, at least they still did allow water-drinking. I thought it was a given exception to the no eating and drinking rule wherever you went in S'pore.
While i definitely understand the preventive rationale behind the rule, in that they don't want to inconvenience other passengers and risk messy spills, i wonder why (some) trains in other places have no rule against eating or drinking, yet remain comparably clean as our own mrt trains. While granted that a lot of these foreign metro trains are not air-conditioned, and so may not facillitate the spread of foul food odours as much as on an mrt train, there are other longer-distance trains of say the intercity variety which are air-conditioned and have no qualms about letting passengers eat whatever they want. Heck, some trains even have dining/snack cars. Which begs the question, is it just that S'poreans just can't be trusted with such liberties? I'd tend towards answering in the affirmative...
"I'm taking a tour of France, without ever leaving my kitchen" boasts Laura Calder, in the promo to her French cooking program,French Food at Home, which they air constantly on AFC (and incidentally, where camera amgles, seductive poses and grandiloquent, mellifluous usage of vocabulary are concerned, she's basically Canada's answer to Nigella).
Whenever i see that, i'm inclined to think to myself "well Laura good for you but i'd rather leave my kitchen and hop on a flight to the real France and eat the food there.
But well, since there's something called work, Ms Calder's option is the best i can do at the moment i suppose. And along these lines something i've been spending more and more time on nowadays is surfing random food sites and watching random food programs. For example, even when i'm not hungry,HungryGoWhere is a frequent stop for me, just to ponder upon places i've eaten at and others i want to eat at.
Oh to have a nice $100 per pax steak dinner at Mortons including a hearty onion soup with cheese topping and some Godiva hot chocolate cake. Paying $100 (or more) for a meal is just not right to me though (perhaps if i thought of it in terms of foreign currency it might be less of an issue to me), and especially when i've been trying (with little success) to cut down on cow-related products just so to do my part to discourage the farming of too many of those methane belchers (and farters). Then there are all those hotel buffets with an amazing range of delicious stuff. I manage to keep myself away from those mainly by considering how a significant proportion of the hefty price tag for one of these meals would go into paying for the sashimi and crab legs and oysters and what have you, things that i don't eat (and it's not just cos i watchedMr Bean in Room 426).
But still, there is a whole host of food that i do eat, and would like to eat a lot of. I suppose the good thing though is that i am prevented from extreme gluttony by the fact that inspite of how many rave about the food scene here, i personally am not too enthusiastic about most local food, and, again like Ms Calder, get really interested only in the food from places further away (The trouble being that with the way i prefer to travel nowadays, it makes it hard to actually eat a lot of that sort of food from sit-down establishments when i am away and instead i subsist mainly on a diet of grilled paninis and ready-to-go salads, which coupled with the amount i walk is probably why i always lose weight whenever i go on holiday). Until then, it's back to more virtual pigging out i suppose..
Almost four weeks into school term and the pattern in posts here is becoming very apparent - seems like most, if not all of my life as of late has to do with school in one way or other, since there's been precious little else that i've talked about.
Ironically, this comes at a time when, at least compared to practicum time, i spend at least an average of an hour less in school than i used to, something i guess is a result of not having to draw up detailed lesson plans for every lesson so far. Actually, the truth being that up till now i've not done so for any one lesson this term :p, though the tediousness that is the teacher's record book is something that i'm still coming to terms with.
In fact, the time has now come for me to be the one to urge the new practicum people to go home, rather than be the one chased home once the a/c is switched off come 6:30pm. I used to have the twelve-hour rule, whereby i make sure i leave school less at least than twelve hours after i've signed in for the day. Now, i find it hard to top eleven, though it's not so much about not having enough work to do (far from it!) but more from a reluctance to do it, and an even greater reluctance to bring it home..
My reticence towards most Chinese stuff has thus far has had to necessarily take a step back for now, in view of having no choice but to help Mandarin-speaking students translate words into English and vice versa. And after today's parent-teachers' meeting, i realized that things will only get mroe interesting since there'll be have to be a lot of communicating going on with Mandarin-speaking parents/guardians in the future - my attempts today were laughable at best... Even in invigilation duties, i was not spared - some of today's instructions for the MT listening comprehension over the radio came purely in Mandarin, which meant a lot of careful listening on my part just so i didn't screw anything up (and believe me, especially for something like listening comprehension, the invigilator can feel just as , if not more nervous, than the exam candidates, since any wrong antenna positioning or flat battery here of a wrong button pushed there can cause the prospects of a class full of students to dim significantly all thanks to you...)
It's been close to two-and-a-half weeks since the new school term started, and not a moment too soon, i think i'm finally starting to get used to the pace of things. However, considering that due to all the measures put in place against H1N1, things have hardly been going along at the rate in which they are rightly supposed to, perhaps once all this is over and done with, there'll be more to adjust to.
Thus far i've been having pretty mixed reactions to this whole H1N1 business. On the one hand, there are a lot of directives given by the people up there that my cynical layman self cannot help but roll my eyes at. Perhaps the cherry on this overfluffed cake is the seven-step handwashing theory and practical test that was conducted for all students. While admittedly until this moment i don't recall ever having used soap from any public washroom soap dispensers (even the fancy ones in hotels), and now i use them fairly infrequently due to all the handwashing hype - which is a step up in any case), to spend minutes on end scrubbing my hands and wrists in every possible configuration known to man just doesn't do it for me. It's not as if i'm about to perform surgery rite...
However, on the plus side, i couldn't have thought of a better time for CCAs to stand down, and oh what a pity that they start again next week. Ah well, three weeks off is already three weeks longer than i thought i'd have ya... But this still means that from next week onwards, once CCAs come into the picture, and i step up the pace of my lessons, things are going to get a whole lot more interesting for me. It certainly has been a lesson in itself for me in terms of being adequately prepared beforehand for lessons, especially since i think my teaching load is pretty much close to doubled since practicum. And i'm trying to get away from the counting-down-to-the-end-of-the-week mood that i've perpetually found myself in since the beginning of term (and for the record, half my load for the week is over :p), just cos i think my underlying attitude towards it is wrong.
It being the fourteenth though, i can't help thinking of holidays again. And since i belatedly realized that part of mylong-forgotten travel wish-listwas partially (and unknowingly) fulfilled through my past two trips since writing it, i wonder where i should head to next. Now here's hoping that H1N1 doesn't pull a SARS and lead to an extension of the school term into the holidays. At least on my part, i'm willing to wash my hands till kingdom come if that's what it'll take...
I'm quite amazed at how quickly this past week, the first back at school, has gone by. It's not been much of an issue getting adjusted back to the school environment, but perhaps the same cannot be said about the school hours. Especially when coupled with the remnants of jet lag and late nights, this has meant that i'm sometimes wide awake when i really shouldn't be, and conversely very sleepy in school, of all places. I'm still trying to figure out how purposely sleeping an extra two hours the previous night contributes to me being extra sleepy the following day. I've all but lost count of the number of times i found myself at the sink splashing water on my face. As such, i'm very glad to see the weekend come, and a long one at that. I have to say, never have i been so happy to see a youth day holiday, not even in the twelve years as a student. Not that school has been bad - on the contrary, i think it's been quite a good first week (aside from a giant cca bomb dropping on me, that is), but i really do need the break.
Not that the last break that i had was a long time ago. Why, it was only last Friday morning that i got back. But it really was a good break, and i don't see this first week back at school having gone as fairly smoothly as it did without the holiday beforehand. If there's one thing i regret (ok, actually there are many things i regret - that's just the nature of me and my sometime overanalytical mind), it's that the holiday wasn't long enough and so unlike what i ideally look for in a good holiday, which is a nice, relaxed pace, due to a shortage of available time out of here i spent much of my time on various modes of transport shuttling from one city to another, and much of the rest on my feet shuffling from one place of interest to another, with little time left to just sit back and chill. Ironically, perhaps the most time i had to do something like that was when i was shuttling from one city to another, but as at the time it was on a sixteen-hour ferry, the opportunities for chilling (literally too) were too plentiful for me to not take them up.
If i could sum things up, perhaps the one thing i really enjoyed about where i went was that, degree of modernity aside, it was refreshingly different from here. And as you would probably know by now, the Singaporean-ness of Singapore is at times what makes me so inclined to get out of here so often (and i'm already thinking about where to go at the end of the year, though with the aforementioned giant cca bomb dropping on me, that might be of a far less grand scale than i hope for - and that's before taking into consideration the northern hemisphere flu season rearing its ugly head). While at the same time many of my illusions/fairytales of the place were gently shattered by the end of the trip, methinks that just helped to make the place more real and less artificial/functional/clinical (i.e. less Singaporeanesque).
At least one out of two people who find out i travel/travelled alone give me that kind of "what are you thinking?!" kinda look, and i can definitely understand why. My rationale for doing so basically boils down to the people. I just find it too difficult/troublesome to find people who want to go to the same places as me with a similar worldview (i realise now how important that is especially when travelling), on a similar budget, and for a similar period of time. I mean, each day there there would be a time when i would think to myself that if there was someone with me and he/she were any different from me i'd probably be abandoned anyways.
That being said if i could find good travel buddies i would probably enjoy that at least as much, but from the way things have been going maybe there would be a need first for much prayer and fasting...
Loneliness when travelling is definitely an issue - i don't doubt that one bit. My solution to that during much of this recent trip wasCouchSurfing, and i think it probably turned out far better than i had expected it to. At least for me at this point in my life, on holiday i think you can't beat not only meeting up with locals but even staying with them, and this trip made me all the more skeptical of packaged tours too (particularly the Singapore-based ones which never fail in bringing busloads of S'porean tourists to a whole host of exotic cities around the globe, and then taking them for dinner in a Chinese restaurant - oh the shame). And the fact that on the trip, with the help of my hosts, i got to do so many things that a packaged tourist would come nowhere close to doing, just punctuates my point. Apart from that there also was the chance and arranged meeting with friends, which i really enjoyed as well.
Comes as no surprise therefore that the only time i felt rather down during the trip was on my last evening there before flying off the following morning, when there were no more people to meet, and instead i found myself wandering solo for hours on end in an amusement park. As cool as that place is, after eight whole days of quality human contact, the anticlimax perhaps could not have been more anticlimactical.
But well, the highs far outweighed the lows. And speaking of highs (no innuendo, if you got any, was intended), here's one for the road: definitely something you won't see gracing any S'porean tourist attraction anytime soon.
Well, at least when i was there, i didn't dothis(caution - R21-ish shot, and if you see nothing that looks like the above, try some of the following pictures)
Ever since getting back it's been one crazy day after another. While initially i was very pleased with myself that i had the foresight to choose a holiday destination that did not fall under the "affected country" label (since i had also considered places in Australia, the States, and the UK), think i soon came to regret that decision mere hours after the plane touched down at Changi as less than three hours after that i found myself in school for a staff meeting (when i could instead have been tucked in bed under LOA). It's no one's fault but mine that i was distracted by the inflight entertainment from what i had originally set out to do for the latter half of the flight (which was, of course, to sleep), and as such i only snatched less than two hours of precious shuteye before landing. By lunchtime at the staff meeting, i was already craving for the bed, but well, didn't make it there until past midnight. And so began a cycle of totally warped sleeping hours over the weekend, which has now 'stabilized', if you could call it that, to a midnight to five am sleep cycle.
Speaking of the inflight entertainment, i randomly ended up listening to the song Ben and thinking about how that probably was one of my favorite MJ songs. (In fact, i think all the songs by him that i like are generally of the slower, more minimalist variety (at least relatively speaking) like Human Nature, Man in the Mirror, Childhood, Heal the World etc) How strangely ironic that after him being somewhat in my thoughts for the first time in years, that i should arrive back to hear that he was admitted to hospital, and then dead. And while now i am semi-boycotting CNN and even BBC World because of the far-too-excessive coverage of his death at the expense of far more pertinent world events (and by that i don't mean Farrah Fawcett), as troubled as he ended up he was a very talented guy. Even though i did feel somewhat cheated in the aftermath of his death to realize that he in fact did not write some of those favorite songs when i had always thought he had (Was under the impression that Ben was written by him for his pet mouse, when in fact it was written by two other guys and was originally intended for Donny Osmond). Ah well.
About to head home to a staff meeting mere moments after touching down, and also have elearning stuff to prepare thanks to H1N1 (and guess what, i have the textbook with me now). Also, on the plane, i will seriously be freaked out if anyone starts sneezing or coughing incessantly, not cos i don't want to get the flu, but more cos of the hassle involved (and not turning up for your first week of work isn't exactly the best way to start things off, is it?). Please don't let this be a so-called 'affected country'...
On the plus side, this has been a very good, albeit as usual way too short holiday. Met new people, surprisingly bumped into old ones, did new things, experienced different weather and so on and so forth. It also occurs to me that i never said where i am here. Well, i consciously did that, for no particular reason other than that i'd feel somewhat paiseh to announce it here. So, before i leave, using the local keyboard that i have, here are some parting clues: æøå..
Yesterday i had a rather interesting experience - the precursor to what happened was that there was a Chinese (as in, PRC) girl seated in the seat in front of me in the train, who was not sure when her stop would come. Armed with the timetable, i got her attention and let her look at the timetable. She asked me where i was from and i said S'pore, and she was like oh no wonder we look similar. That's somewhat besides the point, but anyways what i am getting at is that i made a conscious effort to not speak Mandarin, just because i didn't want to.
The experience itself was that after reaching a certain ulu train station i had to take a tram from, there was this elderly Asian man who saw me and immediately went up to me and asked me something in some undecipherable Chinese tongue - i guess cos again, we looked similar. Anyways initially i had half a mind to feign ignorance, but eventually uttered some words in Mandarin which caused his eyes to light up and so the rest of the conversation continued in the said language (of course with much difficulty on my part).
Turns out he was stranded cos he had missed a connecting transport back home and didn't speak any of the local languages. So i ended up helping him by providing English-to-Mandarin translation through the tram and subsequently a train, before leaving him to take a connecting train. En route i learnt a bit more about his fascinating history (or at least whatever i could gather - i was usually just nodding while understanding only 80% at most of what he was saying), and before i said goodbye to him we exchanged contacts, and if he ever ends up in S'pore maybe we can meet up again...
Well, i hope he found his way back home. And on my part, well, maybe speaking Mandarin isn't all that bad...
Just a random post cos when i was about to buy one hour's worth of internet access this guy called me over and offered me his remaining 55 min for no charge. :)
Arrived without a hitch, and so far have not been bothered by the absence of the stuff i forgot to bring - apart from one guy winking strangely at me when i was in one corner looking at the free city map i got at the tourist office. Creepy.
Now i have to get back all my stuff and trek across the city to the ferry terminal on the other side of town - and i wonder why it's hard to find people who want to travel with me :p
Am now at the airport waiting for boarding to begin.
I was confident that this time i had left nothing at home.
Turns out by the time i got to the airport i realized i had left 1) phone charger, 2) medication, and 3) all (five - thanks to nlb's new policy) the guide books behind.
I just rescued this kitten from the second-floor awning in my building. Not in the way i'd have hoped to though. The intention was to use a ladder to climb onto the awning (about three metres high), pick the kitten up, and bring it down to safety. Instead, once i got onto the awning, it decided that leaping off the ledge, something that it had hesitated to do in the four or so hours since i first found it there, was still preferable to ending up in my clutches. So off it went. Hope it was light enough to not cause itself any harm by doing so...
Things have suddenly become a whole lot slacker ever since practicum came to an end.It certainly feels so weird to have (close to) nothing to do after weeks after weeks of almost never seeing daylight out of school (ok so that's a big exaggeration).
Of course, this state of affairs is all too fleeting, and a part of me is thinking i should just sit back and enjoy it while it lasts. And it's not as if i actually have nothing to do. There still is nie to deal with, though i can still tolerate it because 1) i don't have to wake up at 5am anymore; 2) i don't have to at work for almost twelve hours every weekday anymore; 3) i don't have to wear work shirts and long pants anymore - all of these summed up in the fact that i can slack off, somewhat.
Not totally though, as there is still some token work to do. Also, not surprisingly moe/nie never fails to find new ways to unecessarily add to the number of things that eat into this precious free time. I don't care if they save us $300. I'd much rather save $6 and a good portion of my sanity and not have to trundle down there for some test. A test of my patience, that's what it is.
Other things that i want to do while i have the opportunity include buying a bike, since i realize that it's now been more than a year since my last one was stolen. Furthermore, i've been eating too much (like practically a whole cow last fri) and exercising too little lately and actually have time to do something about it for a change.
And as usual, still thinking about a (flying) holiday. Unfortunately, the H1N1 virus generally seems to have the same preferences in places to visit as i have and while i'm not too worried about catching it per se (though the chances are slim and the fatality rate is like 0.16 apparently), untimely (and methinks unnecessary) quarantines i can do without. Hmm..
In the close-to-a-month since i last rambled here a lot has happened - excellent lesson observations, unacceptable lesson observations, lots of resetting and retyping, the death of Bingo, gaining a wee bit of street cred through being in the second-place team in the school sports day staff/parents race, getting burnt at the aforementioned sports day, taking a quick overseas trip with friends over the recent long weekend, coming back to school and having to fill that trip in an H1N1-related travel declaration.
Gah - so many things eh. Sian to type out so much. I think the reason why i've been absent from here for so long is that i finally got as close as i'll be getting during this soon-to-end (woohoo) practicum to a full teacher's workload. Which included having to forget about stoning over the weekend but instead planning lessons and marking piles upon piles of students' work [of which i've about four or so more sets which i've absolutely zero chance of returning to the class before their exam (in two days' time)]. If i'm to be honest i was quite impressed with myself (or rather, God working in me) that that much managed to be done.
But even if so much actually was done, it sure is not the brightest of signs for the years to come. While i've successfully kept to the 12-hour rule (sign out less than 12 hours after signing in), it's happened just barely a couple of times, and really the only thing keeping me from breaking that rule in the future is that they normally turn off the a/c by 6:30. The concept of a work-life balance is an illusory one, or at least on weekdays it certainly is. The scale may inched ever so slightly back over the past weekend, but it's poised to revert back sooner or later.
Of course, there is all of three days left of practicum, after which it's back to nie (which strangely enough i'm looking forward to just that little bit, if only cos even with the thrice as long travelling time and transport costs, it still will take up less of my day). And I don't care what viruses stand in my way, i'm going to find some place to take another (as long as possible) trip out of here before things get back into full swing once again. So maybe there is still some more hope in the life part of the equation...
As the past week was an insanely hectic one for me, I barely had time to stay updated with what's been happening in the news. When i finally had time to catch up on the week's happenings, the tragic Geylang Serai food poisoning cases got my attention. Honestly, i got so bothered by what's been going on that if i were not bound by the cs code, i probably would have written in to the forum (not that there would be much chance of it being published though). So i guess being pissed off here is the next best thing.
Read any of the mainstream local media (out of necessity more than anything else) and the blame always seems to gravitate towards the stall owner, Mr Sheikh Allaudin and his staff. Since ultimately it was his stall that served the tainted food, definitely at least some of the blame for what has happened lies with him. To give him some credit, he has accepted the blame and apologized for what has happened and is prepared to face the consequences.
Unfortunately the same cannot be said about the NEA and the Environment and Water Resources Ministry as a whole. I really don't know how they can sleep at night after all the shifting of blame and responsibility that they've been engaged in in the wake of this incident.
For starters, NEA gave the incredulous response that they are not directly responsible for the hygiene in temporary markets and food centres, but only at permanent ones. Instead, the management committee is supposed to be in charge, and the NEA just conducts spot checks. I wish someone could enlighten me on the logic behind such a move. Logic, that is, beyond the NEA trying to shirk from its rightful responsibility. Even if the choice to build a temporary market is not up to the NEA and may be a voluntary undertaking by the local traders' association, surely there is the need for the relevant government agency in whatever case to take an overall policing and enforcement role. And this should all the more be so in temporary markets such as the one in Geylang Serai, where the workmanship, facilities and what not may possibly not hold up as well as those at the permanent site and therefore require more hand-holding on the part of the government agency. After all, they are the logical experts when it comes to food hygiene, not any management committee. If not, why bother to have such a body in the first place? At the very least, the NEA should apologize for instituting this policy in the first place and change it in the wake of its painfully obvious shortcomings as demonstrated in this case.
According to the ST, all the cooked food stalls in the temporary market have received a mixture of B and C hygiene grades. In other words, there's not a single A amongst them. I must admit that I'm not the most frequent visitor of food centres islandwide but nevertheless i'd like to think that at every food centre there are at least a handful, if not even just one, stall that manages to be hygiene-conscious enough for an A rating to be warranted. That not even a single stall was able to attain an A grade ought to have triggered alarm bells at the NEA, at least during one of their so-called spot checks. This ought to have signalled to them that it may not simply be an issue with the hawkers, but also with the venue itself. Didn't they spot even one of the now famous sixty-one rats during these checks? One wonders if they had not let their guard down since they were not directly responsible for the hygiene there, and hence would not kena if something happened to them, as in fact turned out to be the case.
And speaking of the rats, the ST also mentions that Mr Ahmad S. Said, the president of the Geylang Serai Traders' Association had raised the matter of rat and roach infestations with the NEA as early as March last year - more than a year ago. I wonder what the NEA had done, if anything at all, upon being alerted to this matter. Were any large-scale rat-catching exercises like the one that coughed up sixty-one, 'tip-of-the-iceberg' rodents following this food poisonong outbreak carried out in response to Mr Ahmad's notification? It's somewhat tragically amusing to see how all these wayang efforts at improving the hygiene standards can pop up everywhere, alongside the blowing of much hot air from the relevant ministers with choice quotes like "it's outrageous that this has happened". This instead of the constant vigilant policing that should have been the case long before this incident happened and that is but expected of a place with a carefully-cultivated reputation for cleanliness such as S'pore.
Yes, Mr Yaacob, it's outrageous that this has happened. Don't forget though, that it's also outrageous that you and your ministry let it happen. How disappointing it is that this is the level of accountability that we get with million-dollar ministerial salaries.
