"Eh, didn’t you see that piece of paper on the floor? Pick it up."
Trust me. In the school that I am at right now, this tone is necessary.
I will persevere. Positive thoughts, positive thoughts.
It’s only been the second day.
What began as an innocent primary school classmate gathering turned into a clubbing session at Rum Jungle.
I need sleep now.
It was a good night, even though it was with people whom I haven’t met for like 10 years and some others that I didn’t know.
And I really need to sleep.
呀边个边个 - my version of the all new CNY song.
Forget about your tong-chiang-chong songs. This song is the real CNY song.
For those who can read Cantonese (not a lot of you I know hee) -you can pretty much tell why.
For those who can’t - basically, it’s about having to remember which relative that is before you and how you are supposed to address them -headache ain’t it?
长气的妈妈每天闹我 成日将七姑四姨舅母记错
还记得称呼舅公十次 有八次 叫错
几多亲戚 点去认喎？
咪忘记 呀边个 咪旧阵娶左边个
要叫声呢个 o个个 唔记得左咯
咪忘记 呀边个 咪就系家姐边个
要记得呢个 o个个 你大个咪错
随我的身高每天渐变 妈妈的叮嘱始终未厌
人际的餐单每天在变 而我要 应变
披荆斩棘 彷似大战
咪忘记 呀边个 咪旧阵踩亲边个
佢最?呢个 o个个 唔唱得边个
咪忘记 嗌边个 咪就系公司边个
要记得呢个 应该 我就冇乜错
咪忘记 呀边个 日日在偏帮边个
要小心呢个 o个个 唔记得左咯
咪忘记 冇边个 着实系益左边个
我呀妈讲过 讲过 我大个咪错
(我不怕被不骂 你给我廿年吧)
人一生中总有日化
我忘记 呀边个 旧阵系公司边个
佢最憎呢个 o个个 唔笑得边个
我忘记 呀边个 实在系家阵边鬼个
要记得呢个 o个个 我就冇乜错
我忘记 呀边个
要小心呢个 o个个 唔记得左啦
我忘记 呀边个
我呀妈讲过 讲过 我大个咪错
Preview of the song here .
Anyway, I am back in Ipoh (yippeee~!) - though nursing a horrible flu after being stuck on a bus for 11 hours.
However, it is all worth it - seeing family and friends again. Worth every second of it.
Have a good CNY people - try not to be offended by people and do insult others without them knowing!
A non-Valentine’s Day-dinner — a restaurant rave, actually
We make it a point not to ‘celebrate’ Valentine’s Day - cos seriously, why ‘celebrate’ a day with no personal significance to you?
And I cringe at the thought of flowers on that day - the cliched-ness of it all!
So we were looking around Robertson Quay (one of our fave places!) for a place to have dinner last night - and ended up (after being IGNORED at another Japanese restaurant) at this small little pizzeria that we had been meaning to visit.
And we’ll probably never have Italian food anywhere else again.
What we had …
Omega 3 pizza (smoked salmon and lots of olive oil)
Seafood linguine in white wine sauce
Mixed salad with pan fried curry chicken (sour cream on the chicken and italian dressing on the veg)
Panna cotta
and a glass of wine on the house.
The food was good as in the flavours were very full but yet light and not overpowering. I hate ‘localised’ Italian food where tomatoes and cheese powder somehow equate to the ‘real thing’. Gah.
The salad alone had like 5-6 different flavours to it as you ate it. Me still thinking about it. Me misses the olive oil in everything.
Another big plus was the friendly captain and the boss/chef.
The sighs of contentment that we had - and we are going back next Saturday with my parents! Yipppeee!
As future teachers, we are told to…
respect our students
respect the ideas that they have
encourage creativity
set good examples
and never be condescending
and yet,
within NIE itself
you have people who bark at you "No your name does not have a hyphen!"
"no, art is not literary"
"your objectives in your lesson plans are not literary values"
people who go "hello? hello?" when one merely expresses their opinions in class - like you are stupid
interrupts your presentations
then tells you to speed up
has poor time management in class - and says that YOU need to speed up
How NOT to be a teacher? learn from the Educational Studies tutors in NIE. Don’t worry about the Curriculum Studies people. They are lovely.
Revisited childhood by cooking pork ribs+minced pork balls+beancurd sheet (fu-juk) soup. And french beans with yummy shallots and garlic. And onion omelette. To feed three.
Organised my study/work desk. Now, it looks like a study/work desk.
Next up, prep for presentation tomorrow. Grarh. Me does not like NIE presentations.
Life was good back then. The 4am hush-hush sessions. Cracking heads over proposals. Tears shed. Fong Seng in the middle of the night. Reading as an official occupation. Ladies’ Nites. Drunken boys. The Green Man.
And everyone else.
But nah - ask me again and I’ll tell you that I don’t miss hall. 4 years was quite enough and I was happy while it lasted. Life may have been good then - but I know it’d get better. Cos God is watching my back (and blessed me with a Christian supervisor who seems really nice!)!
And I guess that’s all we’d need for now
"I got an A2 for English!"
So the ‘O’ Levels results were released today - and I received this SMS in the afternoon.
I smiled, not so much for the A2 (though yes, I am thrilled over it - we both worked hard! Okay, my student worked harder!), but more because she remembered.
And I guess at the end of the day, a short SMS like this is all that it takes.
Cos’ small town dreams do come through
This is probably quite late but hey I am across the Causeway where "local" music is usually loosely translated to local-singer-who-trips-off-to-Taiwan-to-make-it-big-therefore-we-are-proud-of-him/her!
But anyway, call it what you want, Ipoh Mali and KL Lheng Chai (the Cantonese is so distinctively KL/Ipoh 
) do get into your head after a while. Listen to Point Blanc here!
Plus, it’s not every day that you get to see Bingotown in a song played on Hitz FM. (Bingotown: Popular arcade in Ipoh Garden South where it was cool to be seen. We are talking about 1994/95 here haha)
And Bingotown brings me memories of Castor Cafe - its dark dark interior, bad set lunches and booth seats.
And I feel about 14 years old all over again.
10 years later, I ask: am I really living my small town dream?
