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You can make me young again.
Today I realised that it has been 10 years, and I still haven’t realised one of my teenage dreams.
I want to marry Takeshi Kaneshiro.
And yes, I’m regressing terribly to the point where I’m lusting after imaginary, unattainable males instead of looking at the concrete ones around me, but you’ll excuse me if fantasy’s much more appealing than the real world right now.
It’s not because I just watched Red Cliff, alright. It’s actually because today I decided to listen to my favourite Japanese emo love song, and Googled for the lyrics. And it turns out that my favourite song is the theme song to a very popular TV series starring my favourite Japanese actor! Okay, so I should have known this earlier. Link to the YouTube video is here. Quality is bad but the audio’s fine.
I’m a sucker for long-haired guys with soulful eyes, outcasts who are just that little bit too weird for society. Am I talking about Takeshi or his character? Both, if you’re familiar with the Hong Kong showbiz world. Medium-long hair is sexy, and soulful eyes that betray loneliness and a desire to be understood just make me wanna cuddle their owner to my insubstantial bosom.
Suddenly today I’m 16 again, grinning foolishly at the computer screen as it brings me images of Takeshi in the rain, at the piano… okay so the whole show is really a giant romance fanfiction of the sort I detest in Korean dramas, but as I said, I’m a sucker for Takeshi.
Just for today, I am the same age as my students.
Off-day offloads
Here I am, on my day off. Don’t get me wrong - I’m not overworked by slave-driver employers. Quite the contrary, I go in to work when I’m not expected, just because I like the company of others. But this is my first proper day off in two weeks.
Last week I used my two off-days to be with my family and attend commencement, so I didn’t really have any time to just chill out and do “me” stuff. “Me” stuff means the mundane, such as backing up my hard drive and ironing my clothes, and more abstract pleasures such as eating lunch at whatever time I like, and reading online comics non-stop, because I have 10 years of backlog to get through. I’ve been reading this comic, “Little Dee”, and its creator used to do a daily strip entitled “Bruno”. It was a surprise for me to read “Bruno”, because it’s very much for mature audiences, and “Little Dee” is quite child-friendly.
So far today I’ve picked up my mail, sent out my mail, done my laundry (yay!), and had a delicious lunch of porridge from the downstairs stall. The proprietor didn’t skimp on the ikan bilis, but maybe it’s because he’s a young man and I’m a pretty girl. Yes, I admit to the sexistness of that statement.
While we’re on the subject of food stall proprietors: The chicken rice seller downstairs from my office calls me “mei-mei”. Heh. When your job consists of being with people who consider you a relic, having someone treat you as a younger person isn’t all that bad.
There’s a temporary stage erected on the empty field, visible from my balcony. I can hear the dong-dong-chiang of drums and cymbals as they rehearse for tonight’s performance. Perhaps I’ll head out later and watch. I haven’t seen Chinese opera since I was a very young child.
I think raising kids is always so damn hard because they usually turn out the opposite of what you wanted them to be, and if they don’t, you’ve failed somehow to raise an independent human being. Either way you’re damned. Tell me again why we don’t have parenting licenses?
And now to be controversial: I’m calling out the hypocrisy I see in some sectors, that they oppose abortion and stem-cell research, and not assisted fertility. If children are indeed given by God, and if you have none in spite of your efforts, then isn’t that a pretty clear sign that God doesn’t want you to have any? Why are you messing with the divine plan to keep you child-free? Answer me that, and then maybe I’ll give you leeway to advance your pro-life rhetoric. If you ask little cynical me, though, I’d just say that anything that advances their numbers is a good thing, and anything that reduces it is bad. Never mind the fact that a pro-life policy also affects people who don’t necessarily share their religious views. How unselfish they are, to want to save us all from the hellfire of Damnation!
Part II:
One of my students woke me from my nap with a nudge on MSN. Serves me right for not turning down the volume. Seeing how it was already 7pm, I readied to go out grocery shopping at the bargain supermarket before it closed. I managed to lug back nearly 50 dollars’ worth of groceries, as the rain drizzled down gently. So gently that I could just barely feel it alighting on my skin as I waited for the red man to turn green. The Chinese opera had already started, but I think it was in Hokkien because I had no idea what they were saying. Still sounded like fun, though.
On the uphill walk to my apartment, I glanced back at the makeshift stage and saw the moon, just rising above the buildings. She was hidden behind the diffuse rainclouds, aglow but not bright. As though she, like the opera performers, was waiting in the wings for her moment to shine.
I did my ironing, which is always strangely calming. Bringing flat, smooth order out of wrinkled chaos. There’s an analogy in there somewhere.
Now it’s time for some bedtime Sudoku, and that’s not anything dirty or kinky a la “bedroom Twister”, okay? Although Sudoku makes for a poor nightcap, it revs up my brain instead of calming it down for sleep.
Ok, who messed with my karma wheel?
Strange things have been happening recently. Really strange things.
Yesterday, I lost an entire streak of 5 or 6 games of Big 2 (tai dee) to one of my students. I couldn’t win at all, and I lost pretty badly even with a good hand. I don’t get it! Yes, I know I’m quite dumb at this game, but I’m not all THAT bad!
And today, I started up the music player on my phone, only for it to tell me “files corrupted”. What! I have 24 hours of music on this thing, and now I have to add them all over again? Plus it makes no sense for the files to suddenly be corrupted, I haven’t done anything to them. Faced with the prospect of an hour-long commute without music to drown out the lousy Channel 8 drama on TV Mobile, I pressed “refresh library”. Thankfully it worked, otherwise I might be a little less sane (than usual) today.
Approaching my usual bus stop, I checked my watch and got a gigantic shock. The face read 11.15am, which seemed odd given that I left the house at 10.10am and it doesn’t take an hour to get to that stop. Plus the more pressing issue of being late for work, of course. I rushed to work, with Deep Purple’s “Highway Star” in the background. I made it to the office and started up the laptop.
Imagine my confusion when the computer clock showed 10.57am. “Eh?” I thought. I looked at the actual analog clock on the wall. It read 11.05am. I looked at my watch. It read 11.40am. I took it off my wrist and readjusted it.
I know it’s perfectly possible that someone pranked me by adjusting my watch, but I’m sure it was perfectly normal yesterday. I don’t take off my watch at work, so none of the kids did it, and the only time it comes off is when I’m back at home. So, assuming that no one had the opportunity to adjust my watch - how did that discrepancy come about?
I am thoroughly befuddled. It feels like I’m the butt of a cosmic joke on some level.
A month in pictures
Graffiti that I left behind on the wall outside C205, as a permanent reminder of my stay. Permanent until they renovate, anyway. It reads “Lynn Chan lived here, 26.12.04 - 10.5.08″. My goodness, it’s like an epitaph on a headstone.
I was at Novena Square on the 6th of July supporting Hair for Hope, an event by the Children’s Cancer Foundation where volunteers raise pledges for shaving their heads. My friend Kelvin was a shavee, and this was right before his convocation ceremony, so hats off to him! (pun intended)
As you can see, Tan Kheng Hua was the emcee, and I was a bit starstruck so I took a picture. Although in Singapore, seeing your local TV celebrities is quite a commonplace affair, ya?
Dinner at Tetsu in Tanglin Mall, because my parents came down for my convocation and Gabriel sent me the restaurant review right before. It wasn’t bad. This is my a la carte selection of tempura and kushi-age (I think that’s the term for the breaded stuff).
My mum’s set meal. Comes with the usual rice, soup, etc.
This is dessert. Some chewy green-tea-powdered jelly thing with konnyaku strips underneath.
I actually wanted to take that nice piece of patterned paper under the bowl, but that’s beyond cheap. Also it was a bit damp.
I’ve been pretty much stuck in the same areas of Singapore for the past month or so - home, work, occasionally Orchard. Perhaps one day I’ll go hiking in the nature park nearby, just for a change of pace. When you work in the city and look at concrete buildings all day long while the air-con hums at you, scenery consisting of trees and birdsong sounds like a real treat.
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.
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
Things fall apart, again.
Why do my things break all at the same time?
My laptop hinge broke, so I had to wake up early and lug it to the service centre in the rain. Total cost of repair and labour: $123.
Darcy has a tumour on her right hind leg. I’m going to just leave it this time, I don’t think surgery is very beneficial anyway.
Last night my clothes rack broke, in the middle of the night, and collapsed against my room door with a loud THUD. It woke me up immediately and then I had to set about fixing it so that it wouldn’t fall again. This is why I am extra sleepy at work today.
Why do misfortunes always travel in groups?
First day at work
My feet are blistered and I’m tired. This must be what life after work is like.
To be honest though, this isn’t work’s fault, and it isn’t even my first day at work. Theoretically speaking, I was supposed to have started today, but I started last Friday instead. No, today is not the day to rant about work.
It is the journey to and from work that tires me out. I have to take 2 buses to get from home to work, and those transfers involve a bit of walking because the bus routes don’t jive nicely, and I have to cross a very busy road. I got to work just fine, in fact I got there early enough to pop into McD and buy the new McGriddles breakfast. I wanted to see what’s so indescribable about the taste. Well, let me just tell you now: McGriddles are griddle cakes, which are essentially fat, thick little pancakes. 2 of these sandwich a sausage/egg and make up the breakfast meal.
Now, pancakes are a little sweet, and sometimes there’s syrup on them to sweeten them further. So it is in this case. Can you imagine sweet pancakes with a savoury sausage slice? Yup, I thought so. That’s probably why the marketing people decided to stick with “indescribable”, because “sweet and salty” sounds like a recipe for failure.
By the time I got to work, my new shoes were biting me. Or rather, the left shoe was biting my Achilles tendon with a vengeance. My right foot remained blissfully unharmed. Add to that the fact that the shoes were narrow, and my feet are broad. Yes, yes, this is the price I pay for vanity. But it wasn’t for lack of trying to find a comfortable shoe, I assure you. It just seems to be my destiny to be sandal-shod for the rest of my life, and you can’t blame a girl for trying to change her destiny.
The journey back was markedly worse. First I had to cross to the opposite side of the street. Makes sense, because this morning I alighted on the “correct” side, so I am on the “wrong” side when I have to travel in the other direction. But even such a short walk is murder on blistered feet. Then, I got off a stop too early. And when I got to the proper stop, I decided to use the MRT underpass instead of crossing the road on the surface, and came up at the wrong exit, so I had to cross again. Whew!
Bukit Timah Road is so boring, especially if you have to travel from one end to the other. I am literally going its entire length, from the eastern junction with Rochor Canal Road to the western termination at Upper Bukit Timah Road. It’s straight all the way, so you don’t even have the excitement of swaying from side to side as the bus turns.
And after this urban adventure, I get to walk back home. Uphill.
I am going to work in sandals tomorrow.
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