Monthly Archive
Browsing entries posted on June 2008
Playing favourites with my kids
Some days, my job is so insanely fun it seems illegal that I’m being paid for it. Until, of course, the credit card bill comes back and I find out how teenagers can eat you into the poorhouse.
Anyway, the centre was undergoing some minor renovations today. Nothing that would have really disrupted the lesson, but the smell and the dust and the noise were getting to me, so my student and I ran away to a cafe and sat there for 2 hours, revising the chemical reactions of metals. We were joined by a second student, and the two of them proceeded to order drinks on my tab.
These 2 kids are good friends, so I had an interesting dynamic to deal with. All in all, it was more like taking my juniors out for a meal than conducting a lesson. By the time I got back to the centre, I had been gone for about 5 hours. My boss must have been wondering if I’d dragged them to another country or something. See what an awesome place I work in? I go AWOL for 5 hours and it’s okay!
It might seem like I play favourites with “my kids”, and I’ll admit that there are students to whom I feel closer. But I don’t really have my likes and dislikes. I’m only closer to certain kids because I’ve had one-on-one time with them, and had the opportunity to know them as real people, instead of just evaluating the academic part of them. I’m sure all the kids have interesting things to teach me, if I just allow them to let it out. Plus, they’ll tell me things about each other, such as who likes whom and who’s a good artist. Gossip is an integral part of rapport-building.
For some people, a job is just a job - something they do that allows them to make a living. For some people, it’s something more - it gives structure to their day and allows them to feel useful, even if they don’t need the money. But for a fortunate bunch, their job is their life’s work. It gives meaning and purpose to their life. Special needs teachers, religious brothers and sisters, doctors, activists - their work allows them to achieve their dreams.
My dream is to change people’s lives. And I’m slowly seeing that come true. This is why I work more than 40 hours a week - not because I have to, but because I want to. Today was supposed to be my day off, and I end up working until 9.30pm. Why?
Because this isn’t just a job. This is my work. This is my contribution to the world. Not better grades, but better people.
This will be my legacy.
My First Paycheque
I made a paycheque! Okay, so it’s not technically my first, since I’ve received cheques from my previous job, 4 years ago. But this is my first REAL paycheque from a REAL job. Ahem. So of course I took a picture of it to commemorate the occasion.
I’ve modified the picture to eliminate personal information - in other words, it’s an intentionally bad picture.
To celebrate my newfound wealth, I decided to share it with a lucky proprietor of some shop selling earphones. My Nokia N78 is a brilliant music phone that comes with very unfortunate stock earphones. I have no idea why they’re so bad. Even the headset on my old Nokia 6230 fit and sounded better than these earphones. So I went on a search for Sennheiser in-ear phones, because I primarily listen to my music while travelling, and it has to block out the bus noise (as well as the annoying TV Mobile dialogue).
I ended up paying $159 for a pair of Denon earphones instead of the Sennheisers, because a) the dude in the shop told me they were better and b) Denon’s a pretty low-profile brand so fewer people will have the same earphones. And I like being special. Later I found out I got pretty much ripped off, as the same earphones retail in the USA for 50 USD. But I was going to fork out more than a hundred for my earphones anyway, so I’ve not much to complain about.
They fit great and the sound is bliss, compared to the stock earphones. The sound isolation works very well, I’m stuck in my own little world once the music starts. And they also double up as impromptu earplugs when the aircon at work starts getting too noisy.
Unboxing pictures after the jump, to save bandwidth.
Dear Students
Dear students,
This is the story of how I came to work at this place, teaching you. It’s a long and winding story, but persevere and you’ll see the point.
Guess what I wanted to be, when I was 12. A doctor. How very pedestrian, that’s what all kids say growing up. But I stuck to it for a while. Until 16, actually. Then biotech became the next big thing and I wanted to be a genetic engineer.
(Un)Fortunately for me, biology in JC at A-Level sucked all the aspiring geneticist out of me. That was when I realised something about myself. Being a doctor had been about helping people (gag, cliché), and it was also fueled by a fascination with the human body. Now that the human body wasn’t holding my interest, I turned to the human mind. When human bodies go wrong, they see a doctor. Where do human minds go when they need help?
The answer was psychology. What I had realised, was my inherent desire to help people. The method didn’t matter, as long as I could solve their problems or alleviate their pain. The study of the human mind - essentially psychology - was my other road towards fulfilling this desire.
And that is how I, a triple-science student, switched to Arts and Social Sciences in university.
Close to graduation, when the job-hunting begins, you always start to consider what other options you might have. If I weren’t teaching you right now, I’d probably be unemployed, an insurance agent, or maybe even working with Knight Frank, the property management company. So how did I come to work here?
Truth is, I didn’t really consider teaching. It’s a common saying among Arts students that if you can’t find a job, you can always teach. But I don’t have a passion for teaching, not the way MOE wants us to teach. I can’t stand children, and facing 30 or 40 of them just seems like a nightmare. But I came for a job interview here anyway.
They convinced me that this company is really different, not just from the MOE style, but even from other tuition centres. How many tuition centres will send you for a motivational course that’s in line with their in-house philosophy? And of course tuition is a more relaxed way of teaching than working in a school. Tuition centres are naturally more easygoing than classrooms. You can wear whatever you want, and we’ll let you eat in class. But what we do here is something more than even tuition.
Your ordinary tuition centre doesn’t really care about giving you life skills, career guidance, or being your friend. They just want you to get great results to put in their advertisements. That’s not how I roll. If I worked in a place like that, I’d just feel it was a job. But what I do here, in a very roundabout way, is what I set out to do when I applied for a place in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. I’m not just a teacher, I’m also a counsellor. I help you with your grades, but I also want to set you on the right path for life. I want to help you to be a better person - to be the person you want to be.
Because that’s what this job is letting me do - it lets me be the person I want to be, by helping others.
That’s why I work here, and that’s why I’m talking to you today.
Would you like to check out my package?
I ordered 2 different packages from the USA while I was back home in KL, expecting them to take at least 2 weeks to arrive. I may have underestimated the efficiency of whatever logistics providers Threadless and the US Mail use, because they arrived within a week. Hooray!
The first one to arrive was my leather handbag, which I purchased from an Etsy seller. Etsy is like eBay for quirky, handmade, individualised stuff. After the big leather-goods brands failed to offer me anything attractive in the way of a full-leather, stylish handbag, I turned to the Internet. Lo and behold! A bag. It wasn’t any cheaper than those in the shopping malls, but it’s pretty much one-of-a-kind, handmade, and unique. I don’t like having a bag that’s just like what someone else has, and being able to say that my bag is unbranded because I bought it off the net, instead of being another run-of-the-mill Coach or Gucci or LV - it satisfies my inner (outer?) geek.
The packaging is pretty simple, which I don’t have an issue with. It’s a leather bag, it’s supposed to be durable. If it can’t survive shipping, it won’t survive life with me. The green tracing paper is a cute touch.
My deliciously brown leather bag. Sorry vegans, but nothing beats the smooth feel and sniffable-ness of real leather. I love the smell of leather in the morning. And afternoon. And evening, and any damn time I feel like smelling leather!
Cute and quirky! I like the big polka dots. Circles, being a regular, um, monogon, calm me. I can put the bag over my head, shine a light inside, and have a disco-ball hallucination.
Oh! An awesomeness-proving package, for me? How kind!
I love you Threadless. They’ve upgraded from the plain greyish-white courier bags of the past. Goes along with opening your own physical store and having your own brand of t-shirts, I suppose.
My order. The white and gold shirts are my sister’s, while the silver and blue ones are mine. Threadless is slowly phasing out the American Apparel shirts, so my silver one (”Camouflage”, if you must know) might very well be the last one I buy that’s printed on American Apparel.
I should really do a census of my Threadless shirts. I know I have more than a week’s worth, but do I have 2 weeks’ worth? 14 Threadless shirts would mean my students can play a decent game of “which shirt will she wear today”.
Scenes from a Wedding
I went back to KL recently to attend my cousin’s wedding. It’s a big deal, because he’s the only male on that side of the family, and he’s the first to get married. Oh, and the actual event ran over 2 weekends: one for the tea ceremony and one for the wedding dinner itself.
Personally I think the “games” that the bridal party puts the groom’s party through are rather childish, but to each their own. I’ve seen enough of those in the course of my 4 years in hall, so I thought adults about to get married (or rather, their friends) would be more mature. On the other hand, don’t listen to me. Such “games” are a part of our overseas Chinese cultural experience, and I’m an iconoclast who would rather elope than give in to such conformist ideals.
So instead of doing the proper thing and being all polite while staffing the wedding reception desk, I decided to camwhore. Yeah, so I got to sit there and stuff fat red envelopes into a Louis Vuitton bag. But since neither the bag nor the money was mine, I only got a ‘free’ dinner out of the whole endeavour. Chinese people are the best people in the world to tell you that there’s no such thing as a free meal.
1 hour spent on applying makeup. End result: still looks like no makeup. To sigh for my wasted time, or to rejoice because I have such a deft hand at the “natural” look?
My aunt and sister.
My uncle’s piggy tie! It’s how cute la.
I have a wrist corsage! Pretty pretty! *officially takes leave of sanity*
I have a few more shots, but I don’t want to give free publicity to a certain hotel. Hehehe.
RIP Darcy
My mouse Darcy died yesterday.
She developed a tumour on her right hind leg, and when it started to look really bad, I took her to the vet to be put down. The decision was made soberly, but when it came time to hand her over, I broke down in tears. I didn’t want her to suffer any more, but I also wanted to hang on to her just a bit longer, because I didn’t want to part with her. That was the most difficult part.
I couldn’t bear to stay and watch the vet put her down. Instead I went outside to sob my heart out.
It was horrible bringing back an empty carrier box, to a room with an empty cage that would never again have an occupant. As I cleaned and dried her cage and accessories for the last time, I just kept crying, remembering how she would run on her wheel or perch on her cube, and how she loved sleeping in her toy car.
Tim is the only one left now, and after he’s gone, I’m giving up mouse-keeping. The breeding lines available in Singapore are far too tumour-prone, and Malaysia isn’t much better. I suppose one day, I could fly to the US and search out a reputable breeder to help me start my own colony, but that won’t be for a very long time.
I’ll miss the clacking sound of Darcy’s wheel as it hit the side of her tank. I’ll miss watching her run and marvelling at how good her stamina was. I miss her gentle and shy nature. I miss her now that she’s joined Kip on the big wheel in the sky.
Goodbye Darcy. You were a good mouse.
In Loving Memory
Darcy
May 2007 - 9th June 2008
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