philos
liberté
princeps
memoria

The fourth week has gone by, and the gangsters at the back of my class have become almost friends. They copy their notes, snort loudly and speak gangster-speak, yet I can't help but laugh with them when they tell those lame chinese-eng jokes that remind me so much of primary school.

I use the plastic neonpink pencilcase smoot gave me for v-day, and so there's a "cher" on it, big and bold. Imagine their shock/horror when they see it and go "teacher, your name is zher?" Being highly amused yet trying to maintain a stern disposition is one of the harder things in the job. But I get how teachers keep young; there isn't time, nor space, nor heart to become jaded and distant. The kids don't demand infinite knowledge, but they do need you to care.


And so I find it in bad taste when people decide that teachers should work "with their hearts, and not with the hope of better pay", as is stated in the Forum. I don't see how else they work, if not with their hearts -a generalisation no doubt, but one that does not and cannot diminish the truth.


When teachers have to play the role of parent, when they worry about the kids not yet in school, or those who are failing in every aspect of academia, and have to hear / face the verbal abuse that the parents throw at them. Well.


How else should the system go? Should we pay for ever insult the teacher receives, or for every mean thing the student throws. Should the nature of the job be altered to "Hazardous - emotional health at risk" just so we can justify a pay rise? This isn't Teach less, Earn More.

If the only way to justify a rise is through quantifying their job, then I am sure the rise is more than justified. The Teacher is answerable to everyone in their line of work: their hod, their principal, the students, the parents.

If nothing else, perhaps we could pay for their added line of responsibility.

-

Lastly, a hopefully apparent observation- the introduction to Means testing and its subsequent critiques have reflected one thing: we are a greedy lot. They either request that less be given to the already subsidised, or whine about the higher standard of living and ask for more for the upper middle-class. Is $5000/month for a family of 3 considered lower-income?


Even with every recognition of generalisation, it's a joke to even ask.

My Shuffled Music Life 2007

1. Open your library (iTunes, Media Player, iPod)
2. Put it on shuffle

3. Press play

4. For every question, type the song that's playing

5. When you go to a new question, press the next button

6. Don't lie and try to pretend you're cool!

OPENING CREDITS: Sing - The Carpenters

Sing a song.
Make it simple to last your whole life long.

Don't worry that its not good enough for anyone else to hear.
Just sing a song.

WAKING UP: Flying away - black eyed peas

We’re about to take flight y'all. Lift it up.

FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL: Wise Men - James Blunt

she said to me, go steady on me.
Gotta ask yourself the question, where are you now.

FALLING IN LOVE: Breathe - Rebecca St. James

This is the air I breathe.
Your holy presence, living in me.
This is my daily bread
Your very word, spoken to me.

FIGHT SONG: Empty Apartment - yellowcard

Crash and burn, I think sometimes you forget where the heart is.

Learn a lesson
It's not me, you're not listening now
Can't you see
Something's missing.

BREAKING UP: Bold as Love - John Mayer

but they're all, bold as love.

PROM: November Rain – Guns and roses

When I look into your eyes
Nothing lasts forever

LIFE: Resolution - Nick Lachey

(OUCH)

There's so much I left behind
Even more that waits in time
Everything's so undefined


Here's my resoluation
I'm letting go
All I need to know is along this road.

Living life without a plan
Finding solace where I stand
Learning how to love again

And all I want is something real
That I can feel.

MENTAL BREAKDOWN: Hungry (falling on my knees ) - Joy Williams

Hungry I come to You, for I know You satisfy.
I am empty but I know Your love does not run out
So I wait for You.

I'm falling on my knees
Jesus, You're all this heart is living for.


So I wait for You.

FLASHBACK: only yesterday - the carpenters

(wow)
Everyone has faced their share of loneliness
In my own time nobody knew the pain I was going through
And waiting was all I could do

Hope was all I had until you came

only yesterday when I was sad and I was lonely
you showed me the way to leave the past and all its tears behind me
tmr may be even brighter than today
since I threw the sadness away
only yesterday

WEDDING: Be the Centre - Michael Frye
Jesus be the centre
Be my source
be my life



Be my hope be my song
Jesus

BIRTH OF CHILD: only hope - switchfoot

there's a song that's inside of my soul
It's the one that I've tried to write over and over again

sing to me the song of my soul
Of the galaxy dancing and laughing

DEATH SCENE: Reflector - Planet Shakers

Since I found your love
Never needed anything to fill my heart
Even when I fall
You're always there to pick me up


I wanna be a reflector
I wanna show them your glory
I want to whole world know that Jesus lives in me.

FUNERAL SONG: There She Stands - Michael W. Smith
But I know I'm not alone
By the light, she stands

END CREDITS: brightest - copeland

If you find yourself here on my side of town
I pray you'll come to my door
And talk to me like you don't know what we ever fought about
Cos I don't remember anymore

I just know that she warms my heart
And knows what all my imperfections are
And she said that I was

the brightest little firefly in her jar.

-

nihon mura, mangoes, us































jap feast














girls' lunch out









Mango lingo

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

(Recommended by yilun / rng)

Ishiguro's contribution to the real technical debate (this is vague because I don't like spoilers) is minimal, a mere gloss that promptly discredits the 'science' from “science fiction”.

Yet, nothing is more heartbreaking than his understated treatment of what the novel is really about - the steady erosion of hope.

It's about repressing what we all know: in this life people fail one another, grow old and fall to pieces. It's about knowing that while you must keep calm, keeping calm won't change a thing.

Never Let Me Go makes me want to do anything to convince myself that I’m more alive, more conscious, more powerful than any of those characters. And, in the end, the frighteningly clever novel isn't about the science of anything at all.

M Harrison says:

"It's about why we don't explode, why we don't just wake up one day and go screaming down the street, kicking everything to pieces out of the infuriating, completely personal sense of our lives never having been what they could have been."

Very true, that.

Change


Something clicked. Not 10 minutes ago, something changed for me, and with it, the banal frivolity of faces and forms, gone.

I think there is a Someone we aspire to become. Different someones, no doubt, yet fundamentally, intrinsically, Different. I believe in this Different, because with Different, we can change the world. This generation of the discontent is also a generation of the hopeful; with no memory of personal wars, we have no baggage to unyoke, no mirror to cloak, no shadows to vanquish.

The reason I am obstinately engrossed in the US primaries (besides being fully confident of the Democrats eventual victory) and the Obama-Clinton saga is simple. I believe in the promise of change for change's sake, not neatly embossed in snazzy political slogans "Real Change"(Edwards) or "Smart Change" (Clinton).

Just pure unadulterated Change.

And though it is not enough to hope for this change, getting things done begins with that exact hope that some think Obama can deliver. The crowds may be sidetracked by the ecstasy of his poetry, or the power in her prose, but the essentially personal vote for president will not be about rhetoric.
The power to the new voters, the below-40s, bespeaks great winds of change. And so, to reduce the import, no, the potency of this coming election to a Racial choice seems almost juvenile. We do not rejoice in a possible win for Obama simply by dint of his being black or having attended an Indonesian kindergarten. It goes far beyond Obama's canny embodiment of black-white reconciliation.

Even if only by sweeping statements, it is clear that the ultimate destination of economic movement has always been (arguably) to the US. The fiery dragons China and India, Saudi Arabia if one looks to the future, seem to me merely auxiliary powers to replace our Germanys.

Yet, with our new year, we face a superpower- the Superpower- downtrodden with mounting recession, a corpulent deficit and obese public spending, rampant juvenile delinquency and an unfledged public school system. If anyone is to agree at all, it will be that their great and beautiful country must, nolens volens, reconfigure their tortured relationship with their leaders, and start healing with the rest of the world.


The Economist, in a quoteworthy commentary, attributes this year 2008 as a year for courage.
Our gen Ys are a selfish, complacent lot, and until the day we stir up the nascent political passion, this fine city cannot see Change.

And this has moved far beyond saving the cheerleader. We're saving ourselves.

Updates


-Heath Ledger is dead. ):
I was absolutely shocked. Must catch him in Batman The Dark Knight then.


-I'm quickly losing my voice, what with all the screaming and threats I keep having to invent, just so the teachers / hods next door won't come knocking.

Half of the class really wants to learn; the other half wants to prevent them from learning. -.- I don't have enough authority in me to tell them to keep quiet, once and for all. Hence the dilemma.
Do I teach, do I scold, do I give up, do I go..


One of my brighter Star Pupils (haha) raised her hand and I was prepared for a groundbreaking, earth-shattering question that would stun me and the rest of the class. But she only told me I looked to her like Violet, from A Series of Unfortunate Events, "exactly like!".
:o
Alright, evidently my geog trivia can't stand up against the sleep-inducing technicalities of agriculture.

I can live with that.


-



Seems like the boys aren't all that washed out in ns. Even frat boy marcus is chillin' haha ;)
And they get live rounds! I will never get to shoot live rounds. ): Not that I have anyone in particular I want to shoot, but experience is always a good thing. (So says Hillary anyhow.)




Helllooo smooot you're back! (:

Tanneh - Down with evil colleagues! Seriously..

Lun - you're right! Ishiguro writes good stuff!

[edit]

I changed my mind. I wish I was better than that. And maybe

This is where it ends. Here in this blank space.

This is where you get off.

Oh boy was I wrong about today. Prepared, I was not.











I'm just thankful I held on. Not in front of the students now.. That'll be unprofessional.











But I got a few perk-me-ups along the way. Like iced blackcurrant tea at Chijmes - Insomnia. Ok, 'a few' is pushing it. Me sis came to visit, but I had to leave early for the IJ Trail. ):

falling leaves

chijmes

I can be stronger after today. I know I can.




-



And I'm angry. Yeah. What's new, but I am. I thought I was so over l_sers and the whole school-kid drama that JC could have done without. And I know the good parts of school completely eclipsed the bad and the pathetic. But some things just creep up. And sometimes I wonder if its just me and hyper-sensitivity, or do people never really grow up / out of






Ephesians 4:26
"In your anger do not sin."






I don't think I can cut your bitterness with a knife.
I'll need a chainsaw.

pretty white orchids

observe xinying's happy face

:D

pam preparing delicious meal. (:









yumm.













:O it was so pretty. Pam is a troo bloo Baker.

mirror shot!

Alrighty! (:

Hope smoot's having a blast in HK, and friends at work! It's off to sleep now and off to scary class tomorrow.. I AM prepared.

It's been one week on the job.





Already I think I'm beginning to see things in a whole new light.

Okay, maybe not entirely. But the parts of it that I have carefully avoided seeing. Those I've closed off because I didn't need the baggage.

I realised I have the responsibility not to say too much, because things get read and misconstrued. But maybe it's only now, years since, that with some degree of "working adult" hindsight, I recognise that instinctive collusion in the conspiracy of our Fiction.


Our Fiction of School-Angst. When we complained about our lousy school system, a horrific R- Programme, incompetent admin, substandard co-curricular acitivities.. Long school hours, longer CCA hours, lack of sleep, overload of term papers and whatnots. H3s.. Is-es. The works.



Then I think of the people I teach. The kids who instinctively think they are "stupid", so they say. And I hear the staffroom chatter that is so strangely hurtful because it was not 3 months ago that I was a student too. And so I'm left wondering - did my teachers ever say stuff like that about us. Did they belittle our abilities, mock our questions, tire of our stupidity..

did they mark our essays, only to decimate them and us with careless remarks that really can scar, and pretend they were doing their job.


One thing that will never cease to amaze me is how shallow people really are. I don't mean fake or hypocritical. That's something totally different, one I am not qualified to judge.

I mean when people measure others by the numbers or grades on a paper. When your paper IQ becomes the measure of the person you are, and the person you will eventually become.


my teachers probably were very patient with my work. They gave us the benefit of doubt - that we will learn and eventually blossom with our star-studded exam slips. Thanks to our psle or whatever it was that earned us that benefit.



We made a mockery of ourselves, I make a mockery of myself, if and when I ever for one moment thought myself disadvantaged, when I really was in every way, blessed. Is that a stronger word for Fortunate?


They believed in us because we somehow earned that belief, because we were where we were. Top School calibre. And somehow that could justify our barrage of anger towards those who expected too much, so much of us.

"Give me a break. I'm only a kid."




And now I think. In a very different world, I would have enough of 'em breaks. I would plead for someone, anyone's belief in my ability. And I would hold my own hope in their ability to look beyond, past the 3-digits that would have defined my destiny.


The Education system is merciless. meritocratic too, surely.



But people.
People can be cruel.

I'm so free this morning. Brother's watching Captain Sparrow At World's End. Good news greeted me early, with headlines on Obama's semi-victory at Iowa, and Edwards a (surprising) second (hillary hillary where are you..)

Onward New Hampshire! (:



This, because I was told I should find one I like real soon. "Approaching adulthood eh".

Just dropping by..!






The dear family remembered to get a cake for me this year! A yummeh grand copthorne chocolate truffle one.

berries. (:

I gotta go bathe and sleep now (yes, at 9pm) because tomorrow is a long day, and I'm taking this sec4 class which positively chews me up and spits me out. So I need to be able to handle that abuse ;)















But I just wanted to say THANK YOU to everyone who came for my first surprise party / 10-year-old party, first ever in my whole life. I remember whining to shawn about the absence of a kiddy party smoot mentioned before. And now I have had my very own, and throughout I kept thinking how lucky I was to have such great friends, and how happy and blessed I was feeling the whole time.











So thanks


to peck pudi bren xy dee sru david ong


it was FUN seeing everyone again and playing all our kiddy games tgt. (:






to martin for remembering my dublin mudslide love and the yummyyummy cake. And for sunday's fish&co lunch (: (:








To smoot and tanneh: Haha I am lost for words.. Just muchmuchmuch LOVE. And let's meet for our jap buffet soon. (:



























I asked God for friends. He gave me lifesavers.





(:

Post all the photos some time!

The surprise birthday party for me organised by smoot / tanneh was a total and very happy surprise (: I am truly blessed, to have such fine friends.. More on that when I'm feeling upbeat. As of now, I'm quite tired out, cos today was a momentous day...
















I taught my first geog class, ever.






One of the geog teachers took MC for a week, so I had to take over all her classes just like that. I was putting up a brave front, but that 3-day NIE programme don't prepare you to face a noisy class of sec2s who cheer at the sight of you, only cos they're so happy you're the Relief Teacher a.k.a. We Can Slack. They even treated me like an exotic animal from mandai.



"Teacher, how old are you??"
"Teacher you are very fair. Compare with me! (sticks hand out)"
"Teacher you are very cute" [Because I was walking in circles, because I am noob.. What am I supposed to say to that. Thank you very much, so are you!]



Naturally my true calling shone through, and I proceeded to tell them all I knew about Settlements, enough to save my soul. Had to scream it out, cos most of them at the back row didn't think it was a very interesting lesson. Characteristics of Settlements.



But tomorrow will be exciting cos tonight I'm going to start mugging my geog again so I Will Be Prepared to give trivia and geog Did-you-knows.. And I will bring my red pens to fill my table (: (: I have a teacher's table! I am so grown up.




Oh and apparently, my sis is having a great time suanning RJ, in ACJC. I think it's part of their Mission / Vision / Motto or whatever. Haha naturally we'll let them have their fun, but everyone knows who the real winners are.

:D










R-A-F-F-L-E-S.

My mind is numb from talk after talk... But I can safely say I learnt a lot about the science of teachership. It is the science of nuances. The art of mass - amnity. Something that needs perfecting, else you fail. I have heightened respect for the teachers who have produced the perfect lesson, every lesson. They have mastered what seems now to be the impossible.


I have also realised that I cannot sleep later than 11pm. I become anti-social, grumpy and flippant the next morning, as grace and sharon probably have discovered. Sometimes I forget I even have a smile.


(:



Ah, there it is.


-








I've often wondered why they were so afraid of my aspiration. The gasps of alarm, the slightly nervous laughter , the patpat don'tworryyou'llgrowoutofit, the gape and gawk. I almost felt a little sorry after I told, because they didn't know what to make of this seeming lack of ambition. The missing drive to "be all that you can be", and "you are wasting your potential".


it never really bothered me, really. I just didn't know why. And now, I think that maybe its cos the safest route to success is one that can be monetized, calculated, measured in dollars and sense, the plain good sense that money gets you places and faces, and even if you end up dried up - at least your rich and dried up.


but these things are so frangible.

what if i don't end up with a lamborghini, but somehow (can it be?) more happy than you, happier than you'll ever be. And neither of us will ever know, but



what if?






-





All these pseudo-gnomic pronouncements must be attributed to my nie indoctrination trainings the past few days.



and I wasn't supposed to say that.

13A Boys: Mug shot with smiles (:

Girls! ^5 everyone, job well done!

Hanging out at Pasta Cafe (:

C Power

ong xy smoot annie peck cher david sab rayner

me n smoot (: (: She's a lifesaver, rescuing situation from EviL Seoul Garden Manager. :x

CHRISTMAS stuffs

My 2007 Discovery:

Dublin Mudslide from ben&jerry's are the best. Ever.

Irish Cream Liquer ftw.

Dog says HI!

he is the most adorable thing, my bro LOVES him.

letter writing!

last christmas, i...

bro's birthday logcake. hiltonhotel's truffle fudge is good stuff.

the nicest xmas tree.

SMOOT'S Christmas Party (:

hooray for smoot! One Driver, coming right up! (:

prune kueh lapis n orchids.

lun is so mature-chic I look primary school..

fooling around for half an hour at fullerton (:

anger

yum.

-

Here's to the New Year.

To keep loving.

To believing in love.

To trusting.

To keeping the faith.