rechord the melodies

of volatile vacations and funny friendships

eb — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 17:00:28 +0000

so, i’ve been to cambodia and back, and it was quite an unforgettable experience. angkor ought to be on everybody’s bucket list.

it was interesting to travel with enghong. i didn’t kill him, as amos thought i would – enghong was lucky, im missing my period once again and thus he missed my pms window. (not complaining..) strange interlude in the friendship – hardly kept in contact since j1, and we went on a full-fledged holiday after a 5min conversation in june, after which we didn’t see each other again until we met at the airport.

that it is an interlude was apparent the minute we got back. he got bombarded on whatsapp, and then both of us were on the phone with our own friends, fixing nye plans, while collecting luggage. the evening we got back he had a friend visiting from japan whom he was rushing to meet, i had a friend over from australia to entertain. it feels kinda surreal now – it almost feels like a break-up. i think it fair to say we became the closest of friends during the trip, opinion-sparring (not actually a good idea when your ‘opponent’ is a law student), food-sharing, annoying each other and all that. and now, we’ve gone our separate ways and honestly, it makes me more than a little sad. i miss his company but i know if the trip was any longer the ‘annoyance’ level will go into unhealthy levels. rather bittersweet memories of a friendship than no friendship at all eh :p (shudders at the memory of exploring morocco).

shoutout to yyk: it was enghong who spotted your skyrim reference and insisted i ‘like’ it :)

yet another relapse

eb — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 21:24:18 +0000

i personally think im pretty good at putting up a cheerful front most of the time, but i’ve been losing it this weekend, possibly because this is the fourth/fifth sleepless night in a row.

event at le danz earlier on. didn’t feel like dancing much because i felt the onset of cramps, so i messaged jas telling her im outside her church. it was near the end of the service, but she came out and invited me in. i haven’t been to church in a long time, and i didn’t really know what to expect, since it was my first visit to new creation. anyway, there was the sermon, and praise and worship to round up.

at the end of it i went back into le danz because the performances had already started. i received an sms fr jas saying that when she knew i was outside, she prayed for the service to be extended, and it was. not that im aware, but it ended a full 20mins later than usual, and jas said, ‘see, daddy god loves you so’. when the performances ended, i went back out to chat w her, and all around people were commenting on the extended praise and worship session and how pleasantly surprised they were about it.

im still a cynical skeptical follower of God, but miracles do happen, and prayers do get answered.

testing the new router out

eb — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 18:44:05 +0000

had a great saturday.. vietnamese food with amos, and when he left, i went to the queen and mangosteen for a drink. the weather was mild and bearable, so i sat in the alfresco area looking out to sentosa, and had a beer (which unfortunately didn’t stay cold very long. damn climate..). read agatha christie as i did that…haven’t felt so relaxed for quite a while. then there was zouk social in the evening, and went for more drinks at club st after.. lala brought ice-cream to zouk, and when nobody asked me to dance i just sat in the corner spooning ice-cream into my tubby self and felt inordinately happy about it. not so much today when i observe my multiple chins in the mirror but hah.

i’ve been reading a number of murder mysteries recently, and find that modern mysteries just pale in comparison to the masters like sir arthur c doyle and dame agatha christie. modern murder mysteries are tend to be involved in some kind of massive world-history-changing shit but doyle and christie are just simple and still thrilling. christie or doyle? i think my preferences lie with christie. what about you?

i screamed the house up at 3am

eb — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 20:01:08 +0000

because there’s a huge-ass lizard in my bedroom. bloody hell!! where did it come from??? i was hardly home over the weekend so my windows weren’t open! FML.

i had my first birthday dance on saturday night! ok i screwed up much with boon and everyone watching but haha im glad my first birthday dance is zouk and not salsa.

thereafter we headed to stuart’s place instead of clubbing because we prob wouldn’t be able to get into the clubs we wanted. and we continued dancing!

himbo ttm moment when we stepped into the living room. siwei grabbed a hank of his hair with one hand and pointed frantically with his other – ‘you have the holy trinity!!! wtf!!! the trinity!!! arghhh!!!’ lala and i were dumbfounded…and then siwei turned to us and went like ‘omg you girls don’t know how to appreciate. ahhh omg!’ so stuart stepped in and helped explain ‘here’s my game room, with the xbox360, ps3 and wii.’ lala and i just shrugged…much to siwei’s consternation. (so that beer advertisement wasn’t exaggerating after all…now that i’ve seen it first-hand, haha.)

we played kinect! and danced all night long..it was hilarious, esp when the boys did rihanna. siwei’s reaction to the kinect was: ‘omg stuart how could you be so sacrilegious?! how dare you put your kinect on top of the ps3! sony personnel ought to come in and punch you!’

yea…it’s nice to have boys around..being in an all-female environment in nie really drives all of us nuts. wish the moLe didn’t change my cs2 to english, there’s gender balance in history/ss! lit/el combo gets too damn bitchy sometimes, like being back in a girls’ school all over again. eurgh.

it was probably for this reason that i used to love section outings – back then, it used to be my only group of friends with gender balance. the rest of my cliques are quite purely female…too damn much estrogen? speaking of girlfriends – my sec sch girl’friends’ either forgot about my birthday or couldn’t be bothered to wish me – i suppose it’s a good thing.

job uncertainty

eb — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 15:56:29 +0000

my nie friend from india is going to ACtually Just Chilling for a job interview tmr, and im feeling just a bit ponderous. i’ve been invited back by psum, but im not quite sure whether i wanna go back there. i haven’t contacted the school yet because i can’t decide whether i wanna take the neighbourhood secondary school route or not. i would love to teach gp, that’s for sure. but my stints at the so-called neighbourhood schools have turned out surprisingly enjoyable, and i wonder whether teaching there would be more meaningful, in its own way.

sigh. leave it up to fate and not apply anywhere?

emotional eating

eb — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 23:23:13 +0000

am having all sorts of cravings, but it doesn’t make a difference to how i feel when I get my hands on whatever I want. ok wordpress for iPod sucks cos I can’t see what I’m typing.

yongkiat’s photos make me even hungrier (this is a compliment, mind) and yes I think he should perhaps change his cs to home econs.

starting and stopping

eb — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 05:39:52 +0000

I’m experiencing a kind of dry spell from reading. I’ve started reading several novels, including Perfume, The Crimson Petal and the White, Les Miserables (unabridged), Delta of Venus, If On A Winter’s Night a Traveler, A Connecticut Yankee in Arthur’s Court and Night Train to Lisbon. I’ve completed none of them. In fact, I hardly ever reach the mid-point. It’s not even that I find the books difficult, the way that I found Nietzsche or Marx difficult. I actually enjoyed whatever I’ve read of all of the books listed above, perhaps with the exception of If On A Winter’s Night, because the story-lines annoyed me. I just can’t read, and this upsets me more than being unable to do my nie assignments well. The only so-called non-frivolous books i’ve read this year are the sec school lit texts, in case I was to do relief teaching and had to know them. The texts didn’t interest me in the least, but I completed them, whereas I cannot read books that I want to. where’s the justice in that?

This time last year I read a ton of books, a good mix of serious and lighthearted novels. a year ago, and an ocean of difference from this drought.

Perhaps I’ve got adult add. or perhaps im beginning to lapse into depression again. let’s see, symptoms include:

Persistent sadness or emptiness – tick
Loss of interest in all or almost all activities – tick. i can’t read, and i don’t even look forward to my weekend zouk sessions anymore. i don’t even look forward to december holidays, i can’t even plan a holiday anywhere.
Decrease or increase in appetite; unintentional weight loss or gain – tick. definite increase in appetite and weight gain.
Difficulty in sleeping or sleeping excessively – tick. last weekend i went clubbing, and still managed to get to church, sober. (then again, that has more to do with alcohol pricing in sg)
Restlessness or feeling agitated – tick
Fatigue and lacking in energy – tick. i’ve been rejecting dances. rejecting! in the past i feel lucky to be asked, and can’t wait to go on the dance floor, now i’m actually turning them down because i simply don’t have the energy to dance.
Difficulty concentrating or having trouble thinking and making decisions – tick
Frequent thoughts of death or suicide – not as bad as in the past, yet
Feelings of worthlessness or excessive guilt – somewhat

life just about sucks right now.

my life in weekends

eb — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 13:59:30 +0000

today: murphy’s law. it rained when i suggested alfresco dining, and when it’d stopped raining i’d fallen out with my dinner partner.

last week: meranti, from 8.30 to 6.30 on sat and sun. was sick all-day saturday morning, vomiting bile into the bushes because toilets in nie are so damn far away.

the week before: was still slightly ill but made it to zouk 3 class, and zouk 3 social. danced twice, or thrice, with gavin. he smelled really good.

the week before the week before: fever of 40degrees. could not get out of bed.

the week before that: had a not-so-slight flu so i stayed home.

the week before that: i can;t remember im too vrunk

a teaching moment

eb — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 08:58:43 +0000

one of the more memorable moments i had with my sec4 students happened during my final week there. school was over, and i was giving english remedial to a couple of students. a couple of boys were ‘playing soccer’ at the back of the classroom.

at the end of the remedial we were chatting about possible topics that may come out for the O’s oral exam, and somehow the topic of politics came up. of course, politics ain’t gonna come up for oral, but i suppose it’s one of those topics that you can’t back out of once you start on it. so, of course, the students began to slam the incumbent govt and its policies, nothing actually original nor thoughtful. so the debate started with student A coming up with a point, and student B adding a new point to prove the earlier point (which they thought was example-giving and elaborating when it’s actually not – i.e. according to LORMS all level 2 response max). thereafter they’d look to me with this knowing look on their faces which tells me that they expect to hear the ‘correct’ answer from me which is to give them the official stance since im a teacher/civil servant.

mostly i gave my own personal response to the issues they raised, some of which do correspond to the ‘official stance’, and they continued to bring up new points to counter. Ge2011 came up, and the students commented on voting secrecy and quoted the classic and overused example of the civil servant who lost her job because she attended the opposition rallies.
i then said, ‘i attended the WP and NSP rallies, and nothing’s happened to me.’
-at around this point, the boys playing soccer stopped and came over-
students: who did you vote for?
me: i spoilt my vote.
students: why?
me: it was between pap and nsp. i can’t say i agree with any of the policies nsp was offering.
students: then how?
me: im still hired by the ministry, im still a teacher, which is why im here talking to you right? what new conclusion can you come to, based on my example?
students: er. huh?
me: SS! History! use your source-based questions skills now! we teach them for a reason!
students: oh. er.
me: earlier on you said you’d vote for the opposition anytime. do you even know what the opposition has to offer?
students: hum…haw….not really. -one a little defensively- and you do?
me: i tried to. i read the party manifestos of the parties whose rallies i was unable to attend.
etc.. im not sure how convinced they were, and there came a point when my response was, ‘you are entitled to your own opinions, if they are your own. but i would like to hear informed decisions, i would like you to think for yourself. that’s why we teach you all these reading and thinking skills during your humanities classes. can you do that? . . . i don’t want to teach you what to think. we all want to teach you how to think.
students: murmurs, a couple of ‘buts’ and ‘where gots’
me: i know it seems as if we teach you what to think, but we’ve got the syllabus to cover, and you all wanna score right? -nods and shrugs- the easiest way you can score is if we give you the answer and you just regurgitate, which means we teach you what to think. you ask for short-cuts, we give you the short-cuts, right? to teach you how to think requires so much more time. we have less than 100 days to O’s, and your class just started on the cold war this week. how? do you want to cover content or cover skills?
students: we don’t get to choose what. and anyway you’re leaving.
me: but im asking you now. i’ll be teaching in the future, im asking myself the same question. help me out.

and we had a rather fruitful (for me, at least) discussion about teaching styles and methods etc before moving on to real, proper conversation topics in the tys. but for the rest of the conversation, the students remained there and talked to me, when they could be doing all sorts of other things, like eating, or homework, or playing soccer at the back of the class. for my part i hope i showed them successfully how to make better value judgments and informed decisions, and not dismiss alternative opinions too quickly. it was only later on that i realised the significance of this episode – or rather, my mentor pointed it out to me as i told her about it. she asked for the names of the boys who were present, and she was like, well, you know these boys, and you know that they are not motivated to study at all, but you managed to get them to listen to you, when they didn’t have to. i felt quite pleased with myself after this, and for good reason too. after i managed to get the attention of the backstreet boys, they were so much easier to manage in a formal class the next day, when they’re normally quite disruptive.

a little stepping stone. a national day post, to say that, no, im not in the business of imposing propaganda. (in fact, i still don’t know why the students approached me for help with their SS and history homework..) there’re worthier things to impart in the context of a classroom and out, and to people who irresponsibly reduce what we try to teach in the classroom to mere propaganda, well, they probably need some classes on thinking skills as well.

my boss

eb — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 13:34:35 +0000

so the above’s my boss, and i had a senior cher as a mentor, both of whom are from my alma mater, which mostly stressed me out because i had that extra standard to measure up to…not just as a normal trainee cher, but someone with kim gek values as well.

so that’s ended, and i must say the other people on attachment with me made life extremely fun. some stories to share…

while preparing for a lit lesson:
me: oh cav, can you explain to me the difference between simile and metaphor again? i’ve mixed them up! dieee.
cav: easy. you are like a cow – simile. you are a cow – metaphor.
someone else: ouch HAHAHAHAHAH
me: gee, cav, thanks…

was sharing my singlit resources with my boss during a department meeting. she picks up a book…
boss: oh, wow, this is really old.
-silence while she flips through its contents-
me: -points- it’s from scgs library! condemned copy. maybe it’s from your time!
-lmw, another lit teacher, glances sharply at me-
me: -realization dawning on me- oh shit oh shit that’s wasn’t what i meant! im so sorry! omg! sorry!
-boss looks me straight in the eye-
boss: in fact, i taught this. -gives me a mischievous grin-
cav: -in low tones throughout- i can’t believe you said that omg. and you survived. my god.

another conversation with my boss, this time in the presence of 3 other HODs and an EL teacher, and several of my ‘brothers’. this happened on a friday evening at 6.30pm.
boss: so, all ready to take my classes on monday? (i was gonna teach sec4 lit, cav to teach sec4 EL)
me: um, i haven’t read to kill a mockingbird the play before, only the book. im not sure whether i can teach it.
boss: they are doing ‘the crucible’.
-i began to wither in horror under her unflinching gaze, my ‘brothers’ began to give each other ‘the look’. the omg-she-die-look-
boss continues: it’s the sec2s who are doing mockingbird. didn’t you sit in during my lesson yesterday? clearly your mind was somewhere in the clouds.
me: um..uh…um…oops.
boss: -broadens into a wide smile-
-the HODs and teachers laughing at my awkward predicament-
boss: i was just kidding you. -laughs- don’t worry, i have set some written work for them, you may just supervise them if you wish. . .are you ok? -i supposed i still looked shell-shocked, then i started laughing too-
at the end of it all, after we left the HOD room, cav: i can’t believe you survived again. you are like…woah.

i ended up going through poetry with the sec4s. some of my favourites – sir andrew motion, christina rossetti, and a bit of carol ann duffy. i think that class went ok. i prefer teaching lit so much more than el! god i was bored at my own lesson while doing oral and compre with the sec4s.

on the boys attracting attention – the day before our last day, we were having lunch at the canteen when three sec2 girls ran up to elt. three!
girls: mr tan! mr tan! can we meet you after school tomorrow?
elt: no, im not free. -meanwhile, um-chios all around the table, we could hardly contain it-
girls: huh, why?
elt: i have a meeting with the HODs and the Principals tomorrow. we all do. -motions to us-
one of the girls: oh hello miss ch__! (i was teacher-in-charge of her cca.)
girls: so, we can’t see you after school tomorrow? really can’t?
elt: no. not free. go study la, bye!
-as the girls left, laughter erupts-
…: wah mr tan, superstar la. fanclub leh!
…: eh don’t let us see you in the new paper next time. headlines: teacher has illicit relationships with studentS.
edt: elt, do you know that even when the girl greeted ange, her eyes were on you?
elt: eh you all stop it ah. tsk.
ke: eh not fair k. students actually ask to see you. mine is always ‘you! see me after school!’ sometimes must go and chase somemore, you, people come and look for you. -rolls eyes, smh-
-laughter all around, echoes of ‘shit man, ya we are the ones making them see us, unlike you!-

on the last day, edw receives a note from a sec3 girl:
‘dear mr tan,
blah blah blah, you are much nicer than the other mr tan! at least you don’t dao us.’
edw to elt: eh you’ve been breaking too many hearts already.
me: ya man be careful, teenage girls have fragile hearts. I, know!
elt: eh stop it ok. what am i supposed to do?
-we all snigger-

on how we became siblings:
on the last day of work, we were running around in a mad rush. i was handing a gift and card to my lovely mentor when edw interrupts.
edw: ange! 10mins! we have to go to the library to return these and then meet the Ps and HODs!
me: ahhh! -throws a stack of worksheets at edw- help me hold! -dashes away- (later on, i find out abt what happens..)
miss j was near us during this whole exchange, and she frowned when i threw everything at edw.
mentor: -to miss j- oh don’t worry about them, the six of them have been cooped up together in the R3 room, that is, the dungeon, for four whole weeks! they’re as close as brothers and sister now. hahaha!

yeah, annoying but entertaining brothers…

tell you more about my 4e classes next time!