the shuanglin monastery
Monday, 30/1/2006, 09:47 p.m. #1026

Second day of the lunar new year. Did a bit of visiting, then went to Shuanglin Monastery to pay our respects to Grandpa and Grandma. The place is so beautiful that I always cannot resist taking pictures every time I'm there. And the vegetarian food there is great too!

a forward-looking new year
Monday, 30/1/2006, 08:35 a.m. #1025

Not a very cheerful CNY as many of my relatives are having problems in their family - unemployment frustrations, divorce, wife leaving home, daughter married off to USA (the unhappy-marriage strand really runs in our family)... 名副其实的"家家有本难念的经". While there weren't much visiting, bai nian yesterday had been quite tiring. And there's the thought of those piles of papers to mark and a reflection essay to write (yes, teachers now have to write biweekly reflections)... The four-day holiday is a good break from work nonetheless, and it's nice to see my younger cousins having suddenly ballooned to become beautiful sensuous ladies and handsome young men.

Among all the forwarded sms greetings, one of them (from SH) stood out for being the most meaningful, although it didn't exactly read like a greeting message:

小狗问妈妈
幸福在哪里
妈妈说
幸福在你的尾巴上
小狗于是去追自己的尾巴
可怎么也追不到
它告诉妈妈说
自己总抓不住幸福
妈妈说
只要你往前走
幸福就会跟着你了

the sextet
Saturday, 28/1/2006, 01:39 a.m. #1024

Amazing that my eyes could tahan wearing contacts for 20 hours without feeling tired. Had a nice day out with Edmund, Benjamin, Justin, Eileen and Zhangli, with Edmund being our most reliable and nicest driver (cos he sent everyone of us home at the end, hee). Sang at Paradiz K-Box for the whole afternoon after the CNY celebration in school, then had an ala carte buffet dinner at China Square, where we chatted till nearly midnight.

That's our complimentary yusheng. When we were lao-ing it, our wishes were: no arrows in the new year, change of principal, less work to do, hope certain evildoers get transferred out... very unambitious hor? And we were the noisiest in the restaurant, like a bunch of rowdy kids in officewear. Haha.

Initially wanted to continue chatting at the Cheesecake Cafe (Siglap) when the restaurant had to close for the day, but the cafe was closed as well, so we playfully went to Mdm Tey's (a senior teacher) house to bai nian as it was nearby - we felt bad about our impulse the moment we pressed her doorbell cos she has clearly turned in for the night when she peeked out of her window in her pyjamas - luckily she didn't chase us out with a broom. :) Instead she showed us around her house and we viewed the picture gallery of her husband (he paints, and holds personal exhibitions regularly), and we had a long chat about the school and the people-to-watch-out-for.

P.S. The 4E1 and 4E2 students came back to visit us during the CNY celebration. So glad to see them fresh and coping well with their new life in JC/work. :)

mr ceo on bus
Wednesday, 25/1/2006, 05:53 p.m. #1023

Just came back from a long day of teaching 9 periods and 4 hours of meeting, and I had to come across this extremely inconsiderate man on bus 51 on my way back home. I'm sure you've seen other bloggers taking snapshots of inconsiderate commuters on public transport, and there'll be people who'll leave comments like "you could have asked the seat-hogger to shift, such people will usually be embarassed and move - it's impolite to take snapshots of them as they may not realise their mistake"... So I decided to try this out just now, to see if such inconsiderate people really have some conscience and sense of shame...

There was this uncle who looked like a businessman. He was wearing some expensive office-wear (probably a CEO or something) and he was sitting on a GREEN seat which was supposed to be for the NEEDY. It's a crowded bus but he sat alone and placed his LARGE suitcase beside him, and he opened his legs so wide that he was hogging 3/4 of the seat. Not only that, he was leaning on the front seat so as to read the newspapers that another passenger (who was two seats in front) was reading. The women sitting in front of this uncle could not lean back on their seats and had to arch forward uncomfortably as this uncle had his arms resting on their seats. As you can see from the picture below, his arms (in fact his whole body) stretched out so much that he was almost occupying the whole two-seater (and he continued to sit like that even when I was sitting beside him already).


Of course, as nice humble Singaporeans, nobody on the bus said anything even when the bus was so crowded and the women in front were clearly inconvenienced. They probably didn't dare since the man looked quite old, but hey, doesn't older age imply that he should be mature and wise enough to be considerate? As I was already in a foul mood due to the long day of work, I thick-skinnedly sat down beside him (he stared at me for one full second) and "confronted" him:

Me: Sir, could you please shift a little? I'm almost falling off my seat.

Mr CEO: No.

Me: No?

Mr CEO: No.

That is the EXACT transcript. I could have kicked up a big fuss like telling him to go to hell take a cab if he needed so much space, but I simply smiled and said okay (you know, we have to be respectful to elders) and took the above pictures (yes, very petty of me). Actually he didn't seem to mind - he was looking at the camera in one of the photos.

So, please remember this uncle's face and throw eggs at him if you happen to meet him and have some eggs in your bag. Thank you.

my e string broke
Tuesday, 24/1/2006, 09:21 p.m. #1022

My E string broke. A bad omen maybe? And that happened when I was wiping the strings after my last lesson with Michelle before the CNY, which means I won't be seeing her until half a month later... Can't wait that long for the string to be restored cos I'll surely need to practise. Clumsily put on a new string myself - don't even know whether I did it correctly - violin pegs are so hard to turn!

Had my work review yesterday. Told Sakinah and Ms T that I might be interested to go on the Specialist track (I indicated my preference for the Master Teacher track last year). When they asked me why I'm having a change of heart, I told them frankly that I'm feeling my passion for teaching dwindling bit by bit, and that a "less emotionally-tiring" job at the HQ may be more suitable for me in the long run. They told me that it'd be a waste for me to leave the teaching profession so soon, and that I can actually ask for a trial period at the HQ; if I don't like my HQ experience, I can then ask to be transferred back again... Hmm. Shall think it over.

brokeback mountain
Monday, 23/1/2006, 08:05 p.m. #1021

Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain (2005) is such a sad, sad movie. Still can't get the emotions off my mind right now. Quietly affecting and painfully bitter, the touching story of the forbidden love between two cowboys (Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist, played by Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal) is an imploding storm that makes you ache as you watch. Ennis, being confused and unable to reconcile with his uncontrollable and unconventional urge, chose to live the "normal" life, yet he couldn't help but continued to meet up with Jack on Brokeback Mountain once in a while over the next twenty years, even when both of them got married and had their own kids...

The story is very similar to 蓝宇 in many ways, but Brokeback Mountain is much more haunting with its beautiful cinematography, a stronger script and real characters that connect (even the supporting cast delivered very memorable parts). Besides the brilliantly nuanced performances by Heath and Jake, Michelle Williams' role as Ennis' wife Alma (who knew but tolerated) has been extraordinarily poignant - my favorite shot was when Alma sat at the table, motionless, waiting for her husband Ennis, with a milk bottle in front of her, only to see him come back and hurriedly pack up to go on a "fishing trip" with Jack... No wonder the movie has already won over twenty awards everywhere, it's undeniably one of the top films (if not, The Best Film) of 2005.

memoirs of a geisha
Sunday, 22/1/2006, 04:08 p.m. #1020

Of the first five movies I watched in 2006, two were brainless while three were slightly "more intelligent":

American Pie 4: Band Camp (2005) is an absolutely unmemorable and unfunny sequel, with unnecessary nude scenes and stale slapsticks that do no justice to the original American Pie.

The formula of The Hot Chick (2002) is nothing new. After all, the idea of a woman trapped in a man's body is really corny and overused. But the light-hearted movie is a hilarious and delightful treat if you wish to just loosen up and get a good laugh.

The Juniper Tree (1990), Bjork's first film, is a twisted tale of witchcraft and mysticism. The acting is bland and there're plenty of silent scenes where nothing is happening. But its disturbing ending makes up for its lacklustre and slow storytelling.

Rewatched Be With Me (2005) with director's commentary as I bought the DVD. Still touched by Theresa Chan even when I was watching it for the second time.

The story of Memoirs of a Geisha (2005) is told in a very modestly Asian manner, with the characters' restrained emotions well under cover and not overly "Hollywoodenised", although I think the hard and dignified life of a geisha has been unjustly trivialised to a tale of jealousy, catfights and gameplans. (It's like, anyone can be a top geisha as long as you play the game right... which I think is not true.) I thought Gong Li's veteran performance superceded that of Zhang Ziyi as she imbued so much fire in her character even when it's been scripted so one-dimensionally. And the score! Ah! The score!!! John Williams has done it again, with Itzhak Perlman's stirring violin theme and Yo-Yo Ma's cello, the OST has gone straight to the top of my must-buy list. Is the book worth reading, anyone?

the week in pictures
Saturday, 21/1/2006, 06:55 p.m. #1019

A few pictures taken in the past week:

That's Bertie on the extreme right, our guide for the aerial photo exhibition by Yann Barthus-Bertrand on Monday. And the famous picture is an actual mangrove location in France. Do visit Yann's website here to view all his breathtaking masterpieces, especially for those poignant shots of the aftermath of natural disasters like tsunamis and earthquakes... And all of the wallpaper-esque pictures are legally free-to-download.

This is not Orchard but Hougang, just beside my block. Think it's really beautiful.

Yes, you're not seeing things. Zhengjun is appearing in my blog because she helped JH and me buy a new liuqin book from Shanghai and got the author to autograph on it. (She even got the author to write my name on the book - quite amazed that she actually knew the Chinese characters of my name.) We gave her a treat of pasta at Sunflower Vegetarian on Friday to thank her for that... It was my most "intimate" experience with her and it wasn't that bad. Talked for quite a bit as she told us her experiences with the CO maestros in Shanghai. Quite a nice, unpretentious girl actually.

pesky nails and correlations
Wednesday, 18/1/2006, 06:53 p.m. #1018

I sometimes wonder whether the fast growth of nails and beard has some correlations with anything else, especially when one day I trim my nails until there's only the pink part and then the next day I stare with disbelief at the new white band around the pink. And sometimes when I have already shaved in the morning, a colleague may ask me in the afternoon why I haven't been shaving... It just gets very irksome to have to do these "maintenance" stuff so frequently (oh, I can never understand how girls can do the toner-cleanser-moisturiser thing, in whatever order it is supposed to be) - having to clip my nails every two or three days and shave every morning is a CHORE - I'd rather spend the time solving a 99th-order differential equation (i.e. something REALLY undesirable). But I still have to do these cos "teachers have to be neat" and I need short nails to play the violin... :/

Oh yes, back to the question about correlations. Could fast growth of nails and beard possibly indicate that

(A) I'll have a higher chance of getting cancer? :(
(B) I'm going to stay thin for the rest of my life? :(
(C) I'm cleverer and I'll live a longer life than others? :)
(D) I have an extraordinary stamina for sex? :)

All right. An absolutely boliao entry... Time to cut my nails. -_-

grapes of jealousy
Tuesday, 17/1/2006, 08:57 p.m. #1017

Overheard two thirty-ish women talking beside me just now when I was waiting for my bus:

Plump woman: Eh, that Carina Lau very ugly hor? Dunno why she can become so famous.

Scrawny woman: Ya lah! So ugly still wear until so revealing. You see that advertisement before right? Wear until breasts almost come out...

Plump woman: Huh-lor! Some more hor, I hear Shanghainese women very vicious one... This Carina Lau is a Shanghainese and she got cheat a lot of men leh...

Scrawny woman: Aiyah, all the men blind one...

Huh? Carina Lau? Ugly? Were they talking about Carina Lau or Carina's Chicken?... The sourest grapes ever.

whole family down
Tuesday, 17/1/2006, 07:11 a.m. #1016

It's probably bad luck to talk about working in a clinic. Am on MC today, and I'm the last person in my family to be hit by the malicious flu bug since the weekend - how often do you have the whole family sick at the same time?

Now my throat hurts terribly and my head feels like bursting every time I sneeze. The flu already got quite bad yesterday but I couldn't take MC as I had to bring the EC members on a guided tour along Orchard for the Earth From Above photo exhibition by Yann Arthus-Bertrand (very inspirational pictures by the way, but the kids were visibly bored). I guess the short trip under the sun worsened my condition. Then again, I probably deserved it. For the past few days when I could feel the flu bug catching up on me, I still didn't get much rest as I was busy chatting with my new form class students on MSN. Simply couldn't resist listening to their stories and getting to know them better... Kids are such wonderful creatures... :)

dispensability is cool
Sunday, 15/1/2006, 07:12 p.m. #1015

If I should ever need a part-time job, I'll be a dispenser in a clinic. My sis has been dispensing medicine for a year and she's now able to tell me what medicine I ought to take when I need some self-medication, or when my doctor is giving me a cheaper version of a better medicine. She even knows the price of each medicine and can quickly calculate how much profit the doctor is earning from me (usually in terms of hundreds of percent). It's also quite amazing that she knows all the weird medicine names from A to Z - her colleague and her even came up with an Excel sheet cataloguing nearly a thousand common medicine names. And imagine when a friend is sick, it'll be really cool to be able to say something like, "Oh, just take Zoral or Anarex, but if you're taking Anarex, you may feel drowsy, and make sure you don't take it with Panadol"... you know, the kind of gibberish that doesn't quite make sense but sounds really clever and useful. Hmm. Then again, I hope I won't ever need to find a part-time job. :)

melody writing
Saturday, 14/1/2006, 04:33 p.m. #1014

Theory lesson in the morning. Did melody writing. So troublesome! Have to consider chord progressions and cadences while writing! Think I have defied all these "rules" when I was composing last time cos I don't remember thinking so much when I was writing 钟楼叙忆... Anyway the theory exam is coming soon in March, and I'm starting to get nervous already. Then during guitar lesson, Lily asked me whether I want to take the guitar exam this year, which happens to be in March as well... Hmm. Guess I shouldn't be too ambitious to take two exams at the same time, ya?

Had lunch with my ex-student. Didn't expect I'll have such a long-lasting teacher-student relationship, or that I'll be actually remembered.

blur
Friday, 13/1/2006, 07:00 a.m. #1013

The past few days felt like a dream and passed by without much of my consciousness. Was so tired that I slept at 7 pm last evening... Hope this "blur-ness" will clear up soon.

dae jang guem
Tuesday, 10/1/2006, 01:16 p.m. #1012

Finally finished watching all 70 episodes of Dae Jang Guem (大长今)! While there's plenty of filler scenes and unnecessary subplots, the main storyline flows relatively well and is engaging enough to sustain the viewer's interest. The first 35 episodes about 徐长今's story in the 御膳厨房 is much nicer compared to the last 35 which dealt with her journey as a 内医女, mainly because some of the sophisticated characters created in the first half become very simplistic and 面目可憎 in the second half, and many even become rather inconsistent in their behavior. (Are the two halves written by two different scriptwriters?) A few characters which the serial has spent quite a bit of time establishing earlier also 没有清楚地交待: What happened to 崔今英 and 朴阿烈 in the end after they're sent out of the palace? Especially for a well-developed and complex character like 今英, who has grown up together with 长今 and gone through so much 良心的挣扎, surely she should have deserved some proper closure in the serial? What happened to 长今's father 徐天寿? I thought he would reappear at the later part of the serial to complete the prophesies in the prelude but he never appeared again. Also, why create a girl 信非 who's so similar to 李连生 and as brilliant as 长今 but never involve her in any major plot? Nonetheless, vivid characterisation is what made the serial so interesting: 徐天寿、朴明伊、韩爱钟、崔成琴、闵桂烈、姜德久夫妇、郑云白、张德、申益必、郑尚宫、崔判述、崔今英、李连生、尹令路、阿昌、朴阿烈... It's also good that the romance between 徐长今 and 闵政浩 was never quite the focus of the story, or else this serial would have become just another soap opera...

这大概是我看过最长的剧集，虽然有点虎头蛇尾，又虽然长今的际遇有点荒诞地幸运（有时她也真是过于正义凛然得令人反感），但它的确是一部制作严谨、相当富有寓意的剧集，我也从中学习了不少烹饪与药膳的小贴士，有空倒是值得一看！:)

to give or not to give
Monday, 9/1/2006, 07:41 a.m. #1011

While oversensitizations in charity shows nowadays don't stir me anymore, last night's Renci Show touched me so much so that I dialled their number and made a tiny donation. The call-in statistics were quite discouraging compared to previous years, assumedly because of the NKF saga which "spoilt the market". The artistes begged the public to remember that their root intention was to help the people in need, and the people who suffer would be the unfortunate and poor families if we chose to ignore charity shows.

The NKF saga has definitely made me more skeptical and careful about making donations. Just two days ago, a boy approached me for some donation for a family centre. I asked him to show me proof that he's helping the centre and not pocketing the money for himself. He showed me a photocopy of a certificate with his name on it, which stated that he's a certified volunteer. But I was not convinced as I thought anyone could easily make a photocopy. Then he asked me how then would I believe him, and I quite meanly told him that that's a problem for him to think about and not for me to solve. If he was trying to cheat my money then I wouldn't regret what I've done, but if he was really a volunteer, I must have spoilt his day for being such a difficult miser.

a new year for the e.c.
Saturday, 7/1/2006, 05:01 p.m. #1010

CCA Recruitment Day for the secondary ones. Got my EC members together yesterday for a last-minute rush to prepare our little booth for today. Made a banner, a few posters and tons of handouts and bookmarks to give away. This time I have the help of Shahar, who's an art teacher and is going to be my co-teacher-in-charge of the EC, and she helped greatly in drawing the banner and getting the display board from the art room. Hopefully we can also learn some things about recycle art from her this year...

Anyway, the recruitment day went smoothly, with the cooperation of my 14 loyal members and Shahar. Showed off our new weather station console at our booth, and several students indicated an interest in joining our club. The EC members enthusiastically pulled the "recruits" to our booth and got them to take part in our "lucky draw" while we promoted the EC - the prizes of the lucky draw were actually just the bookmarks that we made, but well, I guess the value of the prizes doesn't matter, and everyone loves a lucky draw, ya? :)

Our gorgeous display board.

Prizes of the lucky draw - each hand-drawn and unique.

good luck to the enlistees
Thursday, 5/1/2006, 06:13 p.m. #1009

My juniors will be enlisting for NS in the following days. Reading their blog entries about their anxiety and preparation and feeling of "growing up" made me recall the time when I was doing BMT 10 years ago... The checking of equipment (shoes, helmet, etc) in the training shed on the first day, loading onto tonners that brought us to unknown destinations, the stargazing on the Tekong-bound ferry, the crave for chocolate bars at the canteen, the nights of standby-rifle, the weekend night patrol of lamp-less Tekong when everyone on the island booked out, the close encounters with wild boars, the eerie Jacob's ladder, scaring the girl friends with our ghost stories, the smell of chao recruits... Inefficiencies aside, there are truly many fond memories of NS, and the tough training (doing things you'd never thought you could do) really made me feel stronger and that nothing in life can ever be too difficult. So, guys, stay positive, and good luck! :)

we are so dispensable
Wednesday, 4/1/2006, 10:24 p.m. #1008

Okay, I shouldn't be complaining when it's only the second day of work (plus, my classes are still behaving really well), but I'm really, really tried! 9 periods in a row, followed by a departmental meeting. And the persistent rain. They simply didn't add up to give me the idea of perkiness!

Anyway, the principal came to sit in our departmental meeting today. At one point, she intercepted our discussion and made a summary of the status of our department: 6 Physics teachers, 3 Chemistry, 2 Biology. Then she went on to make this statement about the school having too many Physics teachers and that this deprived her from asking MOE for more Chemistry and Biology teachers as MOE always replied that they couldn't deploy more Science teachers to us as there is a limit to the total number of teachers given to each department. AND she said that since Physics teachers are clearly in EXCESS, she would gladly oblige if any of us would like to ask for transfers so that she could get new teachers for Chemistry and Biology. Oh yes, and she was smiling a yes-I-meant-it smile when she said all this.

I was just shocked (so were my fellow Physics colleagues) when I heard this. Being one of the Physics teachers, it didn't feel good to be labelled as EXCESS and to feel so dispensable, and that my presence was actually impeding her "greater plans". I think I still remember trying to get transferred out when I first entered this school but they were unwilling to let me go. Now I am one of those unwanted people. And I just couldn't believe that a leader would actually DECLARE such things to her subordinates, who were working hard and happily for her initially. She couldn't get us out legitimately so we're supposed to get her hint and make ourselves disappear?

I shall apply for transfer this year, although I hate the fact that my decision will most probably please her.

tuesday blues
Tuesday, 3/1/2006, 09:30 p.m. #1007

First day of school. Glad that my classes were all quite all right and I didn't see potential troublemakers yet (at least for now). All of us teachers have been so used to the holidays that it'd been exceptionally tiring today to stand the whole day and deliver lessons... Whenever we passed by each other, we'd have that "I'm so tired - Me too." knowing look. Hmm... I miss waking up late! :/

preschool anxiety
Monday, 2/1/2006, 07:21 p.m. #1006

Spent the last day of 2005 making class notes in the morning and meeting EJ at night. Had dinner at Din Tai Fung and Coffee Bean, bought a pair of Hush Puppies, went to EJ's house to get a soundtrack, and spent the first minutes of 2006 back home watching TV on my bed. Yep, no celebration, no stayover, no countdown - decided that I'm too senile to squeeze in crowds. (Picture a youngster pointing at me, asking his friend, "Eh? What's this old man doing here?" Hohoho.) And really, what's there to celebrate when I'm getting OLDER? *counting the wrinkles* :)

School is starting tomorrow. Am looking forward to meeting new students, but I'm also getting the school-reopening anxiety. Yeah, not only students experience this. :p