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Tuesday, November 6th, 2001
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9:56 am - Reactivated
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So in the interest of being a kaypoh ('busybody' in Singapore parlance), I have reactivated this account so that I an make comments on my friends' LJ pages. I respect them not wanting just any random internet user to comment on their journals, so I'm going to oblige them by using this account.
If you're looking for my web journal, it ain't here. If LJ had comments-only accounts, I'd sign up for one instead of occupying hard disk space here, but oh well...
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| Thursday, August 16th, 2001
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1:05 pm - Day Two of Deafness
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So I used the eardrops again last night, to no avail. I'm pretty sure my hearing is /worse/ today because of it. There were a couple of comments in class that I missed today and simply smiled and nodded and hoped for the best -- despite my moving a chair forward to sit closer to the class (about half of them were absent, anyway). I am doomed. At this rate, I won't be able to hear anything when I get to my Economics class tomorrow night.
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Fortunately, in talking to a student for five minutes now, I've been able to hear her almost perfectly. Or maybe I'm just getting real good at lip reading, since I heard her, but I didn't hear the school bell. Now I'm late for class, dammit.
More later. Possibly a /lot/ more, since there's not much point having a conversation with other people since I can't hear them.
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| Wednesday, August 15th, 2001
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6:17 pm - Ear Shot
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So, both my ears are blocked and everything sound is dismally distant. It's a weird sensation. It's not the first time my ears have been blocked (I have an ear wax accumulation problem) but usually they 'pop' themselves back into permitting some semblance of aural clarity within the first few waking hours of my day.
Not these latest buggers. The hot shower in the morning wasn't enough to bestir them. Cotton buds removed loads of wax but, alas, without any concomitant improvement in hearing. Yesterday I could hear with my right ear, but the situation panicked me enough that I hightailed it to the pharmacy after work (of course, I had to stop there anyway to get my husband's painkiller prescription filled, so call it serendipity) and purchased a bottle of dewaxing stuff. My husband applied some in my left ear last night and voila! As of this morning, I have been unable to hear well through /both/ ears.
I wouldn't be surprised if I missed half a dozen people saying hi to me today as a result. I've been leery of talking over the phone too; my cellphone is already at its maximum volume, but I can't do that with the land unit.
I'm not supposed to use the ear drops for more than three days, so I'll have another go at it tonight and tomorrow before I resign myself to a ear bath at the doctor's.
Actually, ear baths are pretty cool. I had at least two done at the university health service while I was at college ('cause it was free and faster than dealing with these ear drop things) and it was just a positively delightful procedure. The device the doctor (or physician's assistant, in my case) uses is pretty horrifying -- all metallic and the tip looks too large to fit into one's ear canal -- but the swoosh of hot water and the 'pop' when the blob of wax clears... There's just no compensation for that with homestyle attempts.
I discovered a wickedly cool site today: www.indiebride.com -- now why wasn't it around when I got married two years ago?
However, in attempting to e-mail the website to my friend, I realize that post-hard disk crash, I no longer have neat "Email it!" tools in my IE toolbar. Hunting for that is going to be killer, given that running even a Google search for "email it" turns up everything /but/ what I want.
On the other hand, having clogged ears has made me realize that I'd really much rather be left alone all day to tap away at a computer. If only I could publicly admit that I had this slight aural problem these few days -- trying to hear my students' remarks in class was quite a challenge this morning -- then I'd revel in it. What does noise matter when it's neatly muted by ear wax?
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| Wednesday, August 8th, 2001
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5:44 pm - Fare Thee Well
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-- While I'm gone, that is. I'll be unreachable via the internet for the next few days, so I thought I'd file a report before I leave.
The most important thing that I left out of last weekend's entry is the fact that right after I left home -- and irrevocably so, for I was in danger of being late to the bank and that would completely screw up plans of diamond delights for the night -- I realized that the nail polish on my right thumbnail had been nicked. Horribly nicked, in a manner that no careless eye could miss, and I had no way of fixing it short of purchasing another bottle of identical nail polish while I was in town (and while I was desperate, I'm also broke).
That was pretty close to a calamity. I like dressing up for friends' weddings. I like looking spit-spot perfect, just right for the impression I want to convey. Bad enough I'd decided to cut my nails last week, so that my nails were round and stubby-looking rather than the elongated taper look I prefer, but to have accidentally wrecked an entire nail's colored integrity? *sigh* It was well nigh a disaster.
I only felt much better on Sunday when I fixed the nick.
I've been rereading my RP hero's logs lately. Every time I /think/ I'm doing okay, I go read her stuff and then I feel like a newbie all over again. It's not self-defeating, more self-motivating since now that she no longer RPs, there are few people against whose RP I measure the quality of my own.
I also thought up a new plot this week (on my way to work yesterday, really) which is very cool. I now feel that I have direction for one of my chars, at least till the end of this year.
School has been good these two days, probably because they are the only two days of school for this week. :) Nothing wrong with a truncated work-week. I'm looking forward to going away, but I'm also glad I had a good few lessons these two days. It's sucky to go home feeling like you've wasted your students' time. And I desperately need invigoration if I'm going to teach "The Custom House" next Tuesday.
I need to go spend a $25 voucher now. If I don't, I will so kick myself every minute of my brief and imminent vacation. More later, if time (and the brain) permits.
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| Sunday, August 5th, 2001
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12:12 pm - All Worn Out
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I am so fucking tired.
(It occurs to me that I didn't read LiveJournal.com's fine print to see if they permit swearing and things on their site. On the other hand, I know people with paid LJ sites whose writing hasn't been censored or restrained any, so I'm going to assume that I can say whatever the hell I want in any language I want on this page.)
Yesterday was a long day. It started out decently enough, with me sleeping in till 8:30 am. (My definition of 'sleeping in' ought to tell you something about what daily life is like.) It sped up rapidly because I RPed for fifteen minutes more than I should've, which means I dashed through my shower, then angsted over which bottom to wear with the school shirt I was obliged to wear for the afternoon as well as which bag to carry with it, and finally got irritated with the MRT train for being slow.
As it turned out, I didn't have to rush that much. The safe deposit box -- from which I so desperately wanted to retrieve a piece of jewelry -- was going to be open for another half hour longer than I expected. Bad me for not keeping track of important things like bank opening times.
The afternoon was rather happily diddled away at my school's twentieth anniversary celebrations, which largely consisted of student groups busking along Orchard Road (which, if you're unfamiliar with sunny island Singapore, is the main shopping thoroughfare -- think Madison Avenue minus the wide sidewalks and with fewer American store-names). I roamed up and down the stretch, generally said supportive things and clapped a lot, and also hooked up with a good friend who used to teach with me and who was also roaming up and down Orchard Road with her boyfriend. It's always fun hanging out with Yvonne, even for just fifteen minutes, if only because she was wearing a tacky "Lady Power Junker Style" tank top that would look stupid on most people but which, naturally, rocked on her.
So that was my hot afternoon, followed by a blessedly soothing (if also quick) shower at the hotel where a friend was having her wedding dinner that night. My husband brought all our clothes (since he has a full day at his school as well) and we had about an hour to fix ourselves up in the hotel room that Lynette got for people helping with her dinner. Yay Lynette! My husband and I were appointed receptionists, something I never mind doing although I always feel a little awkward asking people for their names and matching them with table numbers. A wedding really ought to be looser, more social than that, but it's not like I did things any differently at our wedding.
Anyway, the dinner was splendid, Lynette and Andrew were gorgeous, as was the entire wedding party, really. I'm amazed that they managed to coordinate white and lilac for everything, right down to the pens that were used for signing the guestbook. My own feeble attempts at coordination pale in comparison. I was a little puzzled by the lilac at first, since it's traditionally the color worn by brides getting married for not-the-first-time, but it went well with the white. It made me feel like I was back in college too, since purple and white were my college colors (though a hue of purple that's much deeper than Lynette's choice).
All in all, a pleasant day, just that I'm really tired right now, and I have to write a lecture by tonight as well as finish up a bit of reading for tomorrow's night's class. It's very strange being simultaneously teacher and student: I think I appreciate being able to relax in class as a student more -- glad that the burden of conveying knowledge and fostering learning is on someone else, while simultaneously identifying pedagogical elements of the instructor's style -- but then I'm doubly bummed out when I switch back to teacher mode because I really don't want to be that responsible myself!
Just four more weeks of teaching -- three and a half, really, if you count this truncated school week with the National Day holiday -- and then I'll be home free for a while. Or That's what I keep telling myself. If the job transfer gets screwed up, I'm going to cry. Really.
I think I will sleep the afternoon away (once this load of laundry is done) and stay up as late as I have to tonight. It's too hot to do any work in the afternoons anyhow, even on a gray day like this.
My husband was remarking the other day that the monsoons seems to be out of whack this year. The December-January one lasted longer than usual; the middle of the year one seems to have arrived a little too early. Global warming or no, I'm just glad /when/ it rains.
Other high points of the week:
My brother now has a LiveJournal too. Now I can find out just how much nappig in class he does when my parents are paying through the wazoo to send him to college.
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I really hate it when people ring the doorbell insistently, even though the apartments that I live in are not big so clearly it doesn't take anyone long to answer the door /if/ they want to, and if they don't, then, bloody hell, go away and ringing the doorbell ten times in a minute will not improve my disposition towards you, you fucking wanker.
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Ah. Better.
Okay, I'm going to post this before IE crashes or something else weird happens and I regret writing so much crap without saving it in some form.
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| Sunday, July 29th, 2001
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4:48 pm - Money money money
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There's nothing like a good solid talk with your aunt who knows about money to convince you that you will never have enough of it.
It's not my aunt's fault. She means well. If not for her, I would probably have less money (on paper, that is, not in liquid assets) than I do at the moment. She's also my insurance agent, see, and a cool one. She doesn't bug my husband and I with stuff, merely checks back every couple of years to make sure we're not squandering every last dollar we earn. (Someone's gotta do it.)
But we were talking about retirement plans and investment plans and God-knows-what-other plans. She said something about inflation being an average of 3% a year in Singapore and how basically if you want to have $3,000 per month to spend when you're retired, you have to put away $5,000 - $6,000 per month now. She also mentioned something about a person needing to have $1.2 million in the bank upon retirement, so that the interest from that deposit will be sufficient to grant him/her a decent amount to live off each month.
I'm not too clear on how she arrived at those figures, but she's not one to bullshit me. Thinking about it just got me uber-depressed. Thanks to our extravagant purchase of a car earlier this year, my monthly salary is pretty much all tapped out. I'm worried if we'll be able to save money in time to go to grad school when we want to go. And now I've heard all these horrible things about how little money I'll have to live on /after/ I retire, unless I do something about it now.
There is something seriously wrong with the way the modern economy is structured. How can it be that after working your ass off your entire adult life, you wind up with less than what you had when you began?
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10:22 am - The AD&D Thang
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I just don't get it. I mean, I do my own share of roleplaying but the worlds I move in have little in common with the AD&D world (that's Advanced Dungeons & Dragons for you novices out there). For one thing, there aren't 'classes' of characters. For another, I never need to use dice when I play. And lastly, I don't need a motive, a goal in order to get my roleplaying in gear. I'm quite happy to make things up as they go along -- in Indiana Jones parlance -- than to need to know the eventual destination of the current storyline.
Thusly, my husband and I differ.
Perhaps it's my one and only experience with AD&D that's driven me from it. By all accounts, it wasn't a very good one. My best friend's cousin (or nephew, or some other convoluted familial relation) Justin was the DM (Dungeon Master, i.e. the one running the game) and I remember it being very, well, uninteresting. For one thing, no one bothered to explain the concept of the AD&D world to us newbies, so we were pretty much just nodding and rolling the die when we were told to. Doesn't make for the most productive of experiences.
Also, I think of AD&D as a very guy thing. My husband's playing group is all-male. I've yet to meet a woman who plays it as avidly as they do. On the other hand, all my online RP games seem to be dominated by women, as evinced by the disproportionate number of female characters on them, as well as the frequent revelation that such-and-such a male character is in fact puppeted by a female player.
I could draw all sorts of Mars-Venus conclusions here, but that would be too facile. Suffice to say that one man's idea of an exciting game is to another a curse of ultimate boredom.
Oh, and I don't get Battletech at all, either.
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| Saturday, July 28th, 2001
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1:51 pm - College Day
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Despite my sick self (although not as sick as two days ago), I hauled my sorry ass into school today for College Day. Mostly I went because I didn't have an official doctor's leave of absence anymore and my husband gave me a dark look when I so much as suggested skipping the event. He's /way/ more conscientious than I am.
But I think I went because part of me was thinking: wow, this is quite conceivably the very absolute last College Day I'll ever attend. Because of my imminent job transfer, of course. I'm not sure if I'll come back for next year's, just to clap for any former students who come back to claim prizes. And I usually don't get sentimental over this sorta thing, but when we were singing the college anthem and later that nef song "As One" (my colleague was impressed that I knew all the lyrics by heart, but I reminded him that I went to two schools for six years and sang the damn song throughout), I got a little choked up. Metaphorically speaking, of course. This college was the place where I first confirmed for myself that literature was my thing, where I realized that all those years I spent reading weren't a waste of time, from which I went on to pursue literature and the rest of my education with a direction and focus inconceivable to me before I joined the school. Leaving it upon graduation was easy enough, but leaving it a second time as not just an ex-student but an ex-teacher -- well, we'll have to see how that plays out. I'm not foreseeing any melodramatic moments of departure, but I don't think it'll be as perfunctory of a goodbye as it was the first time round.
College Day today was nice for other reasons. Four of my neato students received prizes, as did a couple of kids I went on a history trip with in 1999. All the speeches didn't seem as long as usual and the guest of honor, whom I was certain would bore us to death with some sermon on entrepreneurship, elected instead to tell his life story with a great deal of humor and self-denigration. He did mention the growing importance of entrepreneurship in today's economy, but I forgave him for that because the kind of initiative and bright-eyed eagerness he demonstrates (even for something as yawnworthy to me as e-commerce) is precisely what our students lack. "Premier educational institution" this college may be, but it's not producing the Jerry Yangs or Ellie Arroways of the next generation. It'll certainly never produce a Jed Bartlet. And I loved that he admitted to being a bond-breaker. It's about time someone came out publicly, before a group of idiotically impressionable young people like the kids at my school, to tell them how things stand in the real world. You don't have to be a government scholar to make it. Why don't they stand on their own two feet -- and I do mean theirs, not the parent-propped ones -- and do something for themselves for a change?
So, all in all, it was an unwasteful morning.
I also found out that word of my imminent departure has been wildly circulating. It's funny how fast everything goes when I'm not around. :) For instance, it turns out that my ex-colleague, who came back for College Day, has an office on the same floor as the one I'm going to join, so she found out from one of the staff there about my incipient transfer.
I fully expect that the news will have leaked to my students before terms ends, even though I'm not planning to breathe a word of it till I'm actually moved out of here and into the new office. The past has taught me not to count one's chickens or to sit too heavily on the eggs, either.
And now it's raining, and the weather is cool, and I've got two excellent RP sessions going, and everything is just dandy. :) Lucky, lucky me.
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| Friday, July 27th, 2001
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4:26 pm - The Damn Apostrophe
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What really bugs me about this page is seeing it listed always as "Bubblevicious' Journal". See, the problem is that the 's' at the end of that isn't to indicate plurality; it just happens to be a name that ends in 's'. Therefore, it should read: Bubblevicious's Journal. As in Jesus's or Amos's or Moses's.
But that's a computer script for you. It can't distinguish between a plural form and a regular name and thus we have a glaring grammatical error each time this webpage is loaded.
It's enough to reduce an English teachers to tears, I tell ya.
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4:16 pm - Fluey Kablooey
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So I'm home sick. Not as sick I was yesterday, but still sick enough to merit not going to work today. Besides, Friday's the day I don't teach and sit around and try and do work and mostly wind up wasting the day away. So I might as well stay at home and waste it away, without fear of being caught gaming at work or having people bug me when I don't want to be bugged (i.e. in the middle of a game).
Yesterday I was really sick -- so sick my head hurt, in rhythm with my body. Or was it the other way around? I couldn't get myself to the doctor fast enough, couldn't get in and out of there fast enough to go home and take the drugs, couldn't crawl into bed fast enough when the drugs kicked in. And when my fever broke several hours later, I still had the presence of mind to mosey over to the couch and turn on the fan, full-blast at me, instead of switching on the airconditioning in the bedroom (where we don't have a fan) because the latter would have used up more electricity and hence cost more.
But today has been spent mostly in front of the computer and with the airconditioning on in this room. So much for yesterday's fit of saving energy/saving the world.
It's nice having a couple of days to loll around at home, though. I was insanely jealous on Monday because Gerard has one /week/ off work (suspected mumps), so I guess I might've brought this on myself, but when I was creaking in pain yesterday, I was pretty sure it wasn't psychosomatic.
Of course, my colleague who had to fill in at the last minute for me at some presentations at 4:30 pm probably isn't too thrilled. I should buy him chocolates or something.
I keep thinking I have all these Deep Thoughts I want to jot down here, but I never think of them when I'm actually online and successfully logged into LiveJournal. Damn this aging brain of mine!
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| Wednesday, July 25th, 2001
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7:08 pm - Tremors
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So it accidentally came out during a staff meeting on Monday that I will, in all likelihood, be transferred to another job in January. All hell didn't quite break loose, but the rumblings have begun.
See, I have a pretty cushy job. Teaching wise, it couldn't get any better than this. Now that people know I'm leaving, apparently the remaining teachers are jockeying for the position. My co-teacher is, naturally, dismayed at all this, not to mention disappointed with himself for bringing up the subject that led to me mentioning my transfer. I wasn't going to till later this year, but given how the meeting conversation went, if I fudged my answer, things would've played out far worse.
I just need to smooth out the bits where people think I'm leaving 'cause I don't get along with my co-teacher. I do -- fabulously! In fact, our strong working relationship is the reason I was reluctant to give more than a second thought when the opportunity for the job transfer came up.
But such is life. You take it when you see it.
Part of me is looking forward eagerly to the transfer, the same part that cringes at the notion of starting another teaching cycle over in January. That part is also realizing how much I need to get /out/ of the place I currently work in, to move beyond the colleagues with whom I've grown cosy and to get out there, more deeply thrust myself into the real world.
But the little-girl part of me will miss all that is familiar. It's hard to say goodbye permanently (and now I know the departure is permanent) to an institution that witnessed the key formative years of my education and which also provided me with my first real job.
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| Monday, July 23rd, 2001
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6:31 pm - Black Monday
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To satisfy your curiosity, /yes/ I wore black to work today. It would've been all-black, but my black tops don't quite match my black work pants, so I settled for a shirt with tiny black-and-white checks. That's pretty black. My new black shoes worked well too, matching-wise, though not so good on the comfort scale. I swear they were a lot /looser/ when I tried them. When I walked around today, I felt like my fourth and baby toes were all scrunched up on top of my middle toes. Uber-yuck. I hope these shoes stretch after a couple of wearings or I might have to ditch them, for all that I used to crow about how durable and comfortable Payless shoes are.
On the bright side, my Masters' classes don't start this week after all, so here I am at home, typing a LiveJournal so that any fears you might've had about my outfit today are appeased.
Another reason today would've been a black Monday, even without my satorial concerns, is the way the day began. It began, post-shower, with a phone call from the woman who I usually ride in to work with. She tells me her husband isn't able to take us this morning, not unusual in itself since it's really sweet of him to drive us when he's retired and doesn't /have/ to fight morning traffic for forty minutes each way. Anyways, we agree that we'll meet at our usual time/place and take a cab, which is what we did last week when this happened.
I admit that some of this morning's suckiness was my fault: I forgot to change my cellphone's battery, so after locking up the apartment and taking the elevator downstairs, I had to backtrack, get the charged battery, except that it turned out /not/ to be charged and I really thought I'd need the cellphone today, so I grabbed the charger as well, stuffed it into my over-full bag (thanks to the laptop I lug to and from work some weekends), and dashed down the stairs. Then I call the cab company and walk over to the meeting place while I'm on hold for a cab number -- only to see the usual car waiting! So I hang up my phone, dash to the car, and there's no explanation from the colleague in question why her husband magically is driving us, not even concern expressed over whether I called for a cab.
I'm pretty sure my cellphone number just got blacklisted by all local cab companies because chicken that I am, I turned /off/ the phone after getting into my colleague's car. So some poor cab driver who might've thought he was picking us up -- well, I guess he had a black Monday morning too.
I was pretty irritated all the way to school, though my colleague and her husband were talking, so I didn't have to simulate interest or feign a happy face. I just -- I wish she had asked or had called me once she knew her husband was driving. It's not as if this is the first time I've called for a cab (and the reason I do it is because she doesn't offer to, though I forgive that readily enough since on most days, her husband drives us in).
It doesn't help that I'm distantly related to her, so I have all that Asian cultural baggage if I'm going to express any sort of disapproval of her behavior, and also that I've been working with (under?) her on a school project recently, during which I feel like I'm doing the bulk of the work yet being overruled on occasion.
Gripe, gripe, gripe. If I were truly mature about this, I would talk to her about the matter. But I'll take the easy way out: since I conceivably won't have to work with her or drive in to school with her after January, when my job transfer takes effect (fingers crossed that the Powers That Be don't screw that up), I'll just let it slide. It'll be someone else's problem by them and besides, she's old enough that I don't need to be fixing her personal problems.
Okay, all done now. I'm not sure if it's because my husband's turned the airconditioning on or if I'm done venting, but I feel a lot more relaxed now (and so do my poor, abused toes).
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| Sunday, July 22nd, 2001
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10:14 pm - Tick Tick Tock
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So the last one and a half hours of the weekend are ticking away and I feel obliged to pen (in a matter of speaking) an entry before the onslaught of the workweek hits me.
I hate to sound like a flake, but I'm trying to decide what to wear tomorrow. I need to wear something decently comfy for work -- since it's a long-ish school day -- and maybe I'll wear the same thing to my first Masters' class at night. Or I'll change in school, which means I have to pack an extra outfit (though a far more comfortable one) and possibly extra shoes too. And I might want the latter pair of shoes -- assuming I change them from what I wear at work in the day -- to be comfy in case my husband can't pick me from the class and I have to rely on public transport to haul my sorry and tired ass home. Oh, and whatever bag I bring has to match it all.
Being a girl is so difficult sometimes. I mean, I could go to work all in black tomorrow -- there's an idea, since I've never done that ever and it /is/ Monday -- but that's so not me. I never really got into the all-black thing, unless you count the one little black dress I have. And now, thanks to this damn LiveJournal, I'm actually contemplating the all-black thing -- mostly because the only pair of shoes I have which have a heel decent enough for work yet not indecent enough to fracture my ankle is, indeed, black.
I'm a stickler for matching shoes, by the way, at least as far as black and brown shoes will take me. My exquisite friend Yvonne will wear black shoes with everything, but something in me cringes when I see someone in a browns or earth colors and then slapped on their feet are jet-black pumps. I just can't do it, I tell you.
Oh, unless the person is male. Guys don't have to think about matching their shoes. I don't think men's shoes even exist in lighter shades (unless you're thinking of some Panama linen hue).
So my husband just ducked in to spy on my screen and he doesn't know about this LiveJournal (see the very first entry on this site for the reason why -- it's nothing personal or juicy, puh-/leeze/) so I'm going to post this and, uh, hide. Yeah, hide. :)
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| Saturday, July 21st, 2001
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10:13 am - Sisterly Love
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The funny thing about non-sexual female friendships -- in my experience -- is that it's incredibly difficult to tell someone that they're good-looking or attractive. It's easy enough if your friend is trying on a dress or just appeared all dandied up for a wedding or some other special occasion, but on an ordinary day, when you're abruptly struck by how simply attractive your friend is, it's pretty hard to tell her without them reacting oddly.
That is, I'm secondguessing the fact that they'll react oddly. I haven't actually dared to say so.
Part of this is, doubtless, due to the fact that I was born, bred (but for five years) and continue to live in an Asian country -- more specifically, an Asian country where the average Joe (and I particularly mean Joe, rather than Jane) is very touchy about the subject of homosexuality, even if they're not overtly against it.
The other part of it is the usual (Asian?) bashfulness when a compliment is offered. I honestly don't think this is just a meaningless instinct in this culture; for many of us who have grown up watching our elders behave thus (while suspecting that their motives just /might/ be duplicitous), we've been indelibly left with a code of humility that precludes a warm "thank you" upon being complimented. I'd rather hide behind a pillar than have to deal with a compliment up-front.
So even though during a staff meeting the other day, I noticed my friend/colleague across the table and was abruptly struck by the simplicity of her attractiveness, I don't think I'll ever say it to her, not in any more definite terms than when I compliment her on a nifty outfit.
But I was struck. And I did wonder where my sense of aestheticism had been the past few years that I've known this friend -- not that I thought she was /ugly/, but I always considered her merely ordinary.
But she's not. She's beautiful. And I can't believe I ever thought any less of her.
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| Friday, July 20th, 2001
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2:42 pm - Racial Harmony Day
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Because Singapore doesn't have enough Big Days punctuated with Capital Letters, the Education Ministry decided to introduce a couple more in the late '90s. The two that I can recall (I think there were only two new ones) are Total Defence Day and Racial Harmony Day.
Racial Harmony Day is today. We don't get a day off school to meditate on racial harmony or anything. I wouldn't mind if we did since everyone on this planet can probably use a few days to sit and think about racial issues. But no, this is how Racial Harmony Day is "celebrated" in Singapore schools: everyone is encouraged to get into their racially harmonious -- while also ethnic-specific -- togs for one day.
I cannot tell you how many of my colleagues have asked by the way why I'm not wearing a sari or some other cultural dress today. My students have had the sense not to -- which shows you that the kids have it right sometimes. Why do I have to wear ethnic garb just because the Education Ministry invented another silly occasion to parade our multiculturalism? What does wearing ethnic dress have to do with peace and harmony, in the first place? Why can't anyone wear whatever the hell they want to -- specifically ethnic dress on non-Racial Harmony Days and nondescript western wear on Racial Harmony Day? If we're going to be so racially harmonious, the only thing that unites us is, really, everyone's agreement that T-shirts and jeans are comfortable and de rigeur.
Racial Harmony Day is tokenism at its worst. Wear your ethnic dress! Show your ethnic pride! Oh, but don't say or do anything that might actually prompt an honest discussion of racial dynamics in this country and around the world. Ssssshhhhhhhhh. Just flip your goddamn sari cloth over your shoulder and Bollywood your way to class, thank you.
If I had remembered that today was Racial Harmony Day, I'd've worn all-black in recognition of the sad state of race relations in the world today.
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1:21 pm - Foiled again!
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So LiveJournal (Ha! Just typed "LiveaJournal".) didn't eat up yesterday's post after all. C'est la vie. It's not that heinous.
I'm actually glad that the post didn't disappear into la-la-limbo, because I was getting irritated with LJ's error messages and about to gripe here about them. :) But now I understand what's going on behind the scenes and everything's peachy keen.
Except for all this work on my desk I ought to be doing instead of LJing, but whatever.
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10:23 am - LiveJournal's saving burp
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I typed a horribly acerbic entry yesterday, griping about a student -- not by name or anything, mind you, but still sufficiently biting to make a casual passerby wonder what a fiery, compassionless beast like me is doing in the teaching profession.
However, LiveJournal ate it up (Ha! I just typed 'LifeJournal' by mistake. Think about that.) because there was some server error, possibly due to LJ being upgraded at that time -- and so the entry is lost forever in internet limbo. I feel the better for it. It was nice to rant, but I really don't want this LJ turning into a rantmobile. I have enough other non-virtual outlets for that.
However, I will say this about the Singaporean attitude to schools:
Schools are not babysitters, people. Schools are where people go to /learn/. If a person is not interested in the learning offered, s/he should find someplace else to find his/her time and the school should not be obliged to babysit the recalcitrant fool. If society has to find a place to deposit such individuals, create a playtime area for them and let them knock themselves out with baseball bats or whatever. But DON'T WASTE TRAINED TEACHERS' TIME WITH THEM.
Oy, I'm ranting again. Forgive me, reader, for I have sinned.
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| Thursday, July 19th, 2001
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1:05 pm - Expel, Expunge, Expeditiously
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Until Singapore schools have the power to expel recalcitrant students -- and not by any centralised Education Ministry standards, but by standards suited to the academic and social expectations of each school -- no teacher will be entirely happy in their profession.
I, for one, would have expelled half a dozen losers from the premier institution at which I teach. I don't understand why people insist on enrolling in school when they have no intention of attending or studying. For God's sake, a high school education isn't compulsory. Get on with your bloody lives and quit fucking around with mine.
Thank you.
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| Tuesday, July 17th, 2001
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9:57 pm - The Fairer Sex
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So I couldn't help noticing, as I was walking home from the train station these last two evenings, that women walk way faster than men, even in the damned high-heeled shoes. It doesn't matter how old the women are (although they have been in the typical age range for wearing such shoes, i.e. women working in some office-y job) or what kinds of high-heeled shoes they're wearing. We all start off at roughly the same spot outside the train station, and by the time we pace our way to the finishing line at the first HDB block, the women have pulled far ahead and the men are still toddling on their way -- and these are men wearing wingtips or other pretty much flat-heeled variety of shoes.
We are the stronger sex.
I have a theory as to why this is true, natch, and it's one that's informed more by socialized roles for women in the workplace than by my own wistful hope that we are the sex with greater endurance and fortitude.
Women tend to be confined to secretarial and clerical jobs. Nevertheless, they frequently have to dress well for these jobs, never mind that their job descriptions include pacing up and down at rapid and repetitive tasks: off to the Xerox machine and back and off again to get things filed in some other nook of the office, then back again only to find she's forgotten something for which she has to trot entirely across the office to talk to someone else in another department. And so on.
And that's assuming she's working in an office that's confined to /one/ level. What about people who shuffle up and down the stairs all the time? (e.g. Teachers -- see my previous reference to incipient varicose veins.)
Men, on the other hand, get to occupy more executive and managerial positions. This requires them to wear nice shoes also, but we all know that nice men's shoes do not come anywhere near the discomfort levels of nice women's shoes. Furthermore, men's jobs tend to plant them firmly behind a desk all day -- their secretaries do all the legwork (see above paragraph) and they get to wiggle their toes barefoot if they want to.
Which explains why despite having the more formidable footwear, women still walk more quickly on average than man.
Part of me revels at this observation; another part of me is just sad.
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| Monday, July 16th, 2001
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10:40 pm - PSS
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PSS is the name of a society a couple of dorm friends and I were intending to found during my junior year in college (/intending/ to found -- geddit, geddit?). I know the P stands for Procrastination and the second S stands for Society, but I haven't a clue what the first one refers to. Ah well.
I invoke the spirit of PSS because that is precisely what consumed me after I submitted my last journal update. I was /intending/ to go prepare a lesson, as a dutiful teacher should, but I got sidetracked into a discussion about publicising SS's Search on other Pern games; between that and an ongoing conversation besides me -- between two colleagues mulling over an odd e-mail -- I did little besides unearth a list of essay questions from a previous examination paper and decide unceremoniously (actually, it was with a good zeal of zest and an unseemingly loud "Yes!" to punctuate it) to inflict the task of formulating an essay outline on my students. After all, three errant souls were /supposed/ to have a current affairs presentation ready for that lesson; their procrastination merely infused mine with far more evilness than is usually warranted. You should've heard the class's groans when I announced the task and why I was dropping it on them.
So like I'm typing this on my desktop, which has a tendency to crash, so I'm going to submit it now -- since I've sufficiently confessed my penitent, procrastinating soul -- before it's zapped to byte-sized oblivion.
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