Summer

I feel that dog days are coming, but from  what I see among friends, we are more than ready to take everything head-on.

Salaries, job aspirations and a plethora of entertaining distractions money can buy, all are good medicine for this thing called "adulthood".

Sometimes I yearn for the nonsensical and tumultuous time during university. It was the summer of life, the time when emotions, growth, achievements, falls and friendships undergo a riotous growth. It was like summer because explosively beautiful flowers as well as the ugliest weeds grew, and every deed was done without much thought to consequences because the only consequence was unbridled growth.

Times have changed. The flora has grown on its own and after graduation all of us have become gardeners, snipping and rearranging what we have in our lives. We protect and nurture the shrubs we want into great trees, while killing the weeds of unwanted experiences, relationships, even knowledge. All this is done for the sole purpose of settling down.

Now I am on track to settling down, but the yearning of unbridled growth from those days of yore does sound its siren call every now and then, but fainter and fainter.

 I wish to climb a mountain again.

Somebody Else's Problem

If Tess of Tess of the d'Urbervilles had a sense of optimism (or if Thomas Hardy had it), she won't be getting the short end of the stick. Maybe she developed a case of learned helplessness, that is, attributing herself as the cause of things that go wrong with the world, regardless if she is indeed the real cause.

Now possibly I suffer from interesting bouts of learned helplessness (as do you and you and you). The base claim that learned helplessness can be reversed with focus on past positive experiences bases itself on a thick wallet; plebeians may not have the money (yet).

I recommend a good dose of island holidays.


After traipsing through the nice little island of Bintan with some interesting people, perspectives can change. I wake up when I want to, drive around in a buggy when I feel like it, swim, eat or even cook, with a mind that what I am doing is for my own good, and everything else is somebody else's problem. Pity the chambermaid that has to clear up the rubbish, the assorted bedroom mess and potentially fix the parts falling off the buggy.

I came back from the Bintan trip with an understanding of SEP, somebody else's problem. Now mind you sometimes when things go wrong, the blame is attributable to myself, but generally I realise that sometimes/often times, the root of all problems go beyond mere personal effort, that is, maybe what is wrong with people and events may not be my fault.

And thus begins this thought pattern. I will try hard to mould some futures, including mine, in the days ahead. And if things don't go really to plan, presto, I did my work and the rest is, SEP.

NOT DEAD!

This blog is all but dead. Not until I say so anyway.

I SURVIVED PRACTICUM, and even as this exclamation is long overdue, these days I look back and marvel (self-adoringly) at the hectic ten weeks. Lesson plans upon lesson plans, I still am sane (or mildly insane).

So thanks to all who made it possible.

Self-time has decreased somewhat, amidst the rush to get things done, getting to and fro work, and the max I can manage in the way of self-time is random moments of reading and viewing in the night. M has been most cooperative and supportive in the way she juggles everything with me in a cooperative circus act. I say circus act because like in a circus we have moments of random inane fun, so intense that the only way to deal with it is to beat ourselves. M got promoted (again) and as it goes on pretty soon I am sure I will be the teacher-consort to a regional marketing director or something.

We didn't get our place after all, but it was a good exercise in even trying and sorting it out, so again, one more small milestone in our life.

People come and people go, and at least for now I am glad to be stuck (again) with the same batch of crazy literature teachers to be in NIE. We are surviving quite nicely I feel, and with crazy random outings only Lit people can cook up.

So now it's 3 more months to the end of the NIE year. And there won't be any looking back.

The Birth of An Idea

Just today I went with M to watch Inception.

It is a movie with a rather powerful plot, and gives you plenty to think about. Do you feel that sometimes you want to explore and surf your own self-consciousness? Or go down to the reality of your sub-consciousness, where past experiences and hopes meets powerful primal emotions, thus creating an alternate "inner world" that can be your worst nightmare? Go catch that movie! And DiCaprio has been typecast as the problematic middle aged character ever since Revolutionary Road and the pirated angmoh Infernal Affairs. Which is a good development from the bubble-gummy Jack of THE sinking ship.

Coming back to Inception, sometimes ideas can be more dangerous than a virus, and the Id refuses to be tamed, no matter how hard you try. Inner conflicts... my kind of stuff.

Work is challenging, but still do-able.

And I hope we get what we want, M, in August.

Onwards Practicum-ers!

Time, Space, Past.

The act of writing often is made out to be a form of informing, arguably the communicating of information from Person A to Person B through text. Maybe the act of writing can also be a deliberation of past choices: thought exercises on "have-beens" and the coming to terms of one's own existence thus far.

During periods in my existence, I have often wondered if there were a chance to relive or at least un-make and re-make certain key decisions made in my past. Everyone at certain points wish to undo regrets, and as a manner of process, try to pinpoint that specific decision that "caused it all". This is as it were, in my opinion, a fallacy often committed by certain historians. Given unlimited decisions committed as a result of innumerable causes, I believe chaos theory trumps determinism. There is no sure way that that single "screw-up" corrected will lead to a better life now, or in time maybe even that "screw-up" may be a blessing in disguise. But why then does one bother to think of correcting past have-beens if there is no concrete use-value to all that reminiscing?

Oh, I used the word "use-value". Marxist hard logic and the thing we always try to accumulate in this realistic society. See my inevitable steeping into the money rat race? But I digress.

Mikhail Bakhtin's theories thus come to my mind. I am a sojourner of my past, taking mental day trips to periods of have-beens and once-been. I write and view my own histories in my mind, and in writing or at least parsing all that past into understandable portions, maybe I am creating a Bakhtinian chronotope of my life story. It bears cold comfort when I am in a black mood, but at least thinking about the past distracts me from the bothersome present at a very basic level.

At another level perhaps I am engaging in heteroglossia, and maybe in my construction of dialogues between characters in my life and myself, I find something essential about the way I see things. And I find exploring, categorizing and recognizing the infinalizability of my being a fruitful exercise on two levels (again): one as distraction from present troubles, and two as a more concrete stepping board to making decisions in the present with consideration for the past and the future.

Don't know who will read this, but there's the fun in it all. This is my dialogic imagination at work. And the takeway?

I make slow decisions, but stick to them, as my Being depends on it.

There Be Sense in Fate's Madness?

Ah the happy days come. Holidays now and a time to go traipsing, meet people and let the mind drift in preparation for practicum.

Practicum. Rolls off the tongue smoothly, but how many not in the business know exactly what is this "internship" (my mum calls it that) about, or the assorted trepidation, anxiety, rush and hard work associated with it?

The postings for both prac and final school are out, and sadly again Fate dealt me something completely random. Let's just say HQ did not accede to the request put in by a certain school after an interview.

Don't even know how to feel about a workplace 5 minutes walk away. Just do it, and try to perform well, twin wise-sayings I have no choice but to adhere to.

And Susan Ang got it spot on perhaps. Maybe I do have the face for a certain type of school...

That aside, have you have the experience of letting past monsters slip one past all the defenses that you have erected? Faceless numbers already alien and names I can curse freely sometimes do come back to haunt you, in the form of baseless discoveries and "sightings" by someone who matters. And it's agonizing in the way misunderstandings develop and yet you are always in the wrong, and you know you are indeed in the wrong for not deleting certain stuff. But yet to delete and forget is to remember, to leave things alone is to completely nullify their significance in my life. Do you understand?

Onwards educators, censor to save your life, take on personas to baffle those who surely come a-nosing, during and after practicum!

RT

I like RT. Some guys I know spit on it as a waste of time. It does affect my schedule (as I know to my detriment), and screws up time for loved ones (drastically). But there are some good points I feel.

I like the very pedestrian attitude RT men take to performing exercises. Just go through the motion, complete the 20 sessions and get the hell out. Fast in, fast out. Sweat a little for the record and free up the calorie count for the nice family dinner afterwards.

I also like the reality of it. The fact that we are all part of the super large cohort of "unfit" soldiers. There is nothing much to laugh at; we are all the same and in the same boat. Amidst groans of fatigue and keyed up counting of repetitions, there is this bemused camaraderie among us: the strain of the exercise or the unbelievable amount of reps set out for us to do is often shown by a resigned smile and a shrug from the guy next to me.

Plain, simple, go in and go out. If only life was simple for me. At least for RT I know that, do or die, 3 sets of exercises and two hours later I am out of it. Do that for 20 sessions and I am done for the year. And I do get bit fitter.

With the pile of shit coming up from school and the lack of some very basic fundamental support and understanding from others, I sometimes just wish that my life, especially now, is just like RT. Just do it, shrug and then carry on.

Bus Ride Through Familiar Streets

The bleep of closing doors was followed by the inexorable movement forward. It’s just like uncontrollable Fate. The trudging feel of wheels slowly changes to a smooth motion, as the bus picks up speed. The world is oddly muted, coloured and punctuated by songs playing on my headphones. How Do I Live, A Thousand Miles?

Actually this story was submitted for a lit assignment. An exercise called Fiction 55 whereby one writes a short story in exactly 55 words. I went on a bus ride to a place I never wanted to go to again, for a late night project meeting. And I wasn't in the best of spirits, no, not all. Much fun that, Fiction 55, shall populate blog with that.

Of Weddings, and Stuff We do at NIE

Weddings galore this year.

There's Faisal and Wahida, Libin and Daniel, and Grace and... whatshisname?. Grown up already eh, yonder people from primary school and jc... So some pictures taken at engagements and dinners...

25th is M's cousin's engagement. Now people are starting to get all hitched in early twenties. Therefore I should buck up too eh?

In the other news, things in NIE are getting too hot to bear. And people are starting to stress up and lose it. Thankfully, the lit people are more than fun. Too fun. And some of the things we do include...

"thematic dressing": sunglasses for all in one week, and red for the week after. Upcoming is headgear day...

And of cos zany lesson plans (Web Quests) that includes activities like making Romeo and Juliet into comics (Click on picture for clearer pic):

Web Quest lesson resource can be found HERE, courtesy of yours truly's group.

That's all for updates.

Will Contemplation Brook No Peace?

In the mad rush of essays,
the flurry of presentations,
the madness whirlwinds and tornado
whips of speeded-up, production-line
type of education...

in the midst of the storm's eye,
here I lie,
stealing a moment's respite.
Stop. Relax. Contemplate.
"Safe in a Crazy World",playing in the background.

Will such contemplation,ever brook any peace?
In the storm of storms, called NIE?

The NUS Matric Card Ad

This is certainly very very true. Introducing the...

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Folding:
How To Fold A T-Shirt In 2 Seconds - Explained

I've tried. It works. And that was from an EL lecture.

Where the buses stop

Buses go where roads run.
Each stop is spaced differently,
has its own name.

One long past is called Jubilant
One more recently called Anticipation
One called Happiness...
Sorrow--Anger--Dissatisfaction
--Reconciliation.

Do you think the next one's called Contentment?

25

Yes. 25 already!

Damnable. Where did all the years go man.

Thanks to everyone's well-wishes. I got a scary phonecall from Korea, from angel (incidentally you look like one of the wondergirls) and shiva, in which they sternly said "Mr Huang, do you know who am I?" in some official voice (and I thought that's it. Big Bro's got me finally). So I got quite a collection of "Happy Birthday" messages and I am happy and satisfied with my social existence.

Immensely jittery and hair-raising that, being 25 finally. Not much more scream-y kind of excitement and random-ness but rather a focused attempt to stable finances, get the family sorted out and settle oneself down.

*scream*

Every birthday is some sort of an emotional phase for me man. And this time round I got the perfect solution in the form of a small private celebration at the house of a great man (absent), in the company of the lover. Not bad a day. Thankew M.

And January is the start of school (NIE) again. YES. And with that I become a (paid) student yet again. Next Monday I shall go down to pack my stuff from my contract teaching school (I secretly relish the "pack everything into a printing box and stagger out like I am retrenched moment". And I shall find out how many of my kids passed N Levels English. Scary.

New faces, new challenges. Been feeling very tired and sleepy of late. I can't seem to keep late nights the way I did back in NUS. Must be the age catching up.

Merry Xmas to all.

What is In a Name?

Apparently plenty. While traipsing around in Great World City the other day I glanced around the shopping crowd and noticed a frail old lady on a wheel chair.

The brand of the wheelchair?
"KARMA"

Like huh?

Oh so now they want me

I am going to NIE in my journey of leading, caring, and inspiring. I will not miss the vegetation surrounding my school (it's so ulu) as NTU has the same abundance of green growth. I will not miss teachers cos NIE has a wide variety of all types; in addition, the contract folks will also be going in with me.

It's the students I will miss. The demons who made my life hell for a bit until I grew to appreciate (and handle) them. That's to 4N2, 3N1, 3N2, 2EA, 2EB and the funky Language Arts Club people of SSS '09. And kudos to a special group of teachers, especially the EL HOD and EL senior teachers, for their guidance and inspiration.

I believe that contract teaching serves a purpose: to open my eyes into the real hard and gritty world of teaching in a neighbourhood school (however I would still have preferred to go NIE straight). The experience should set me in better stead for practicum and the rest of it.

Change of scenery (not much, still quite green) in January 2010. NIE here I come.

sojourn

The sojourner exudes a magnetic aura of courage and self-dependency. In today's world where inter-connectedness and network-edness is the norm, the drive to seek oneself in unfamiliar surroundings can be both exhilarating yet poetically sad. I feel like a sojourner sometimes, when things rush headlong into everything and amidst the clashing priorities of life, I wish for quiet peace. How many times have you thought of yourself? Defined yourself in ways that are not monetary, not status-based, not based on who people who know you perceive you to be?

Poets and critics often chart the emotional landscape of the sojourner with the physical landscape he traverses. When I take a step back I realise the same thing applies to me. In the hub-bub of school life and the buzz of a staff room, I am quite the misfit. Not that anyone can really perceive the off-kilter English teacher couched in his cubicle leafing through papers as the misfit. I speak when spoken to, smile when the occasion calls for it, and partake in the standard office practice of gossiping and bitching. Yet when the opportunity comes, I run, I withdraw. Currently I am hiding in an empty room behind the hall, in an obscure corner of school. What does my physical landscape say about myself then? I am trying to figure out too. Maybe really what I am doing is to place myself in a physical space occupied by only my person, a pool of peace and quiet surrounded by the bustle of a school; maybe that is my inner sojourn, to find myself amidst the social and relationship demands.

Great things are moving in my life. I can't pinpoint nor can I vaguely control any part of them. Little things that I find minor and senseless can come round to become big issues, similar to the butterfly effect, and affect me deeply.

That's my sojourn through life. The clashes, butterfly flaps of inconsequential stuff, the storms of huge proportions, and the exhilaration of ephemeral deeds. My sojourn through emotions, in marked contrast, consist of a quiet room I can write and think in, a room of one's own, for myself and for finding out who I am.

Crossing Thresholds

How much beating can one take? Sometimes allowing the best of a person to shine through to oneself, and accepting love and help from the significant other might well be the best articulation of love.

In other words, love can sometimes be receiving, instead of just giving. The act of shutting oneself up in a web of despair and self-imposed psychological injury can well be equated to partner betrayal. Why so? By making oneself inaccessible to feelings and goodwill from one's partner, one actively tries to be alone; in an act of transference of agency, one has the illusion that the other actively does not care or, in lay parlance, "you just don't understand." Maybe understanding in a relationship means less of understanding the other partner , but rather understanding one's own fears, mental habits and even incapacity to receive (throw down one's independence).

If one is adept at making psychological walls, does one blame the partner for not being able to smash through the walls, and thus get injured, or can one just be periodically happy with the abrupt "understanding" as the partner jumps up and down and his face appears for a split second above the wall only to disappear in a second? What happens when the wall is built too high, or that the jumper gets tired, or even if the jumper decides to smash through and gets crippled in the attempt?

They say sex is an act of physical intimacy unsurpassed by any other forms of touching. Perhaps then psychologically, the ability to ask for and to receive help without a sense of egoistic pride is the ultimate emotional version of intimacy, perhaps far less achievable than simple lovemaking.

I look to you now and seek to understand. I am the jumper and I will try to negotiate the wall.

Lucky Numbers 3, 9 and 34

Last night was the Teachers' Day (Belated) celebration for my school. Which was in the 3rd month of my teaching career. Which also fell on the (so high school!) 9th month anniversary of a interesting and meaning relationship.

The dinner was held at Concorde Hotel, and as far as my school is concerned, it was a very domestic, hearty and quite warm affair (read: cheap, good, fun). The theme was "Starry starry night". I was "Justin Timberlake" for the night, as all participants are assigned temporary star names. I had Britney at my table, as well as the Beckhams. The fun that night was split into two parts. Firstly was of course the nice and fun people I've known, especially my fellow contract teachers, who never fail to gossip, complain, "lun" and "dong" all the humdrum in the life of a common teacher.

So here are the pictures (and teachers can be funky too):

The Nifty Nine. Between us we cover subjects such as English, Chinese, Maths, CPA, EBS, POA, PE, gangsterism, KTV, gossiping etc... From left to right, top first then bottom: Vernon, Wei Sin, Tony Leung, Terence, Zeying, Nellie, Adeline, Melissa and Shu Ling

Sexy duo: Chinese teacher and PE hunk


Ye Olde EL and Lit Dept: between us we handle like 1/4 of the school's EL classes.

Suppose to look pro and Englishy, like the teacher on the left.

All of us, minus one got something from the lucky draw: a rice cooker, NTUC vouchers and all that domestic stuff. And now for the second fun part:

Your's truly got the best prize of all.

Prize Number 34. Big water jug.

What Future?

I've always wondered what is the use-value of education.

Does use-value denote the monetary benefits brought on by certification in certain areas that leads on to better paying jobs? Or is the scholarly (and therefore smacks of the ivory tower) argument that education leads to the betterment of the person and builds character?

The truth i suppose (if every there is one), lies between these two polarities. Couple of interesting people I've met in my stint here. While some guys are real eye-openers, there are still some real life disappointments and potential disasters.

How can family money lead to the development of a brat (I have this pure brat in my class that the whole school hates)? Simply giving too much leads to a kid having to rely on the dad's influence and money for his life. Said kid models himself after his rags-to-riches dad, but falls terribly short. I've turned wise old man with my attempts to reach out to these people. I say things like, "The main question now is that whether you can be the man that your father became. In his time his words were filled with 'I WILL' like 'I will be rich someday'. When it comes to you, you say 'I don't have to', as in 'I don't have to earn my own keep'. One is admirable, the other despised".

Future is yet uncertain, but with my boss' assurance that she highly recommended me in a report to MOE, perhaps I can make it to NIE after all. But according to Andrew (who I met that same day as my report debrief with HOD), spaces are very limited because some contracts from the year before have not gone in yet. When can my income be stable enough that enough good things can be 'bought' into my life (I believe I have some character so never mind about development in that aspect hurhur)?

Exam time now. I've a feeling that I've sent some good people in to die. But as M said, I've done my best. I hope they do theirs.

Good luck to us all man.