Reflect
Monday, January 28, 2008
The thing about working with kids is that it can be tiring and long, at times frustrating, but fun at the same time. Interacting with them makes me smile at their nonsense and makes me feel young (although that's not really an advantage but nevermind).
But then the lack of epiphanies of any sort in my life makes me feel rather stagnant, even though according to the date, the year passes so quickly and I know I'm older by the day. As much as I find joy in what I do now, I really dislike feeling like I haven't progressed at all these past few months.
I miss school.
I know it's ironic because the environment now is generally the same, but I kind of wished I was one of them - still studying something and getting excited at some newfound discovery that I never heard of before and yet struggling with the rest over a difficult theory like Pierre Nora's piece on Memory.
It's funny how when I was at school, like many of my classmates and my kids now, I used to wish that I would quickly graduate and start working life, but then now that I'm on the other side of the fence, things seem clearer to me than before: I really don't want to stop studying.
On hindsight, I also realised that maybe if I had started studying what I enjoyed studying from the start, maybe this realisation would have hit me much earlier. Perhaps fate has played a cruel joke on me and now I'm back where I missed out on the part of my education the most. Now I even look on at my kids in amazement, at how they refuse to be enthusiastic about Austen or the various poems that are in store for them, and I can't imagine myself being like them.
Didn't Literature start out as an indulgence for the upper classes back then in England? Isn't it a greater challenge when a play or poem cannot be easily understood such that students of Literature should strive to make the most meaning out of it? Where have all these values gone to today?
I can't explain where all this bemoaning originated from. Perhaps it's one of the withdrawal symptoms from Murakami's short stories, or the increasing lack of high level activity in the brain that is causing this. But mostly, it's probably the fear that if I stop thinking critically I will be brutally reduced to just anyone, a nobody.
Obviously my identity holds on to a lot more than I think, and it's time I think I should reflect.
9:51 pm
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Meet Natsumi
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Meet the girl whose going to revolutionise this tub of fats - Natsumi (Nat-chan for short).
Hopefully Nat-chan will become my best friend in the weeks to come and beyond, since I've somewhat spent a small fortune on her - to date, the most expensive footwear I've ever gotten.
Well at least contrary to popular belief, Asics does produce pretty sports shoes. And omg would you believe how comfortable it feels to run with her? I don't like running very much actually, but this is the first time I'm starting to think that maybe, just maybe, I have been wearing the wrong shoes all this while.
Hurrah to me for finally being able to figure this one out.
Anyway, Nat-chan is now my new inspiration to exercise more often (more often meaning actually exercising at all). Well, obviously having made some kind of investment, you don't expect me to leave her in the shoe cabinet to rot do you?
No, she's going to school with me, because that's where the track is. See... I'm absolutely determined not to collapse the next time someone asks me for a jog.
The last time someone asked me to jog a mere four rounds around the track and play pickleball with her, I almost died. Hmm no, actually I thought I was doing fairly okay not collapsing and ended up with a minor stitch on the side.
Well, or so I thought.
That was just before my ex-shoes protested violently and proceeded to cough out a part of his sole.
Omg, that was rather embarrassing. Imagine someone else picking up that little rubber bit and playing with it.
This was last Thursday by the way. Enough motivation to get myself a new pair of shoes that might work better I thought. And considering how I haven't gotten one since JC days, I thought I ought to have saved (if I actually did, that is) enough money to get a pair of Asics (well, even if I didn't, I thought I deserved her, which suited me fine, really.)
And so in short, this is the story of how Nat-chan was born.
Oh and did I mention that I think she is gorgeous?
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Gone Bunburying
Monday, January 07, 2008
If you asked me where I've been the last three weeks, I would have to say I've gone
Bunburying.
For the clueness ones, please either summon Wilde from the dead and ask him, or simply wiki the term, although the former seems a bit on the difficult side.
Anyway, what was I saying before I got rudely interrupted? Ah yes,
Bunburying.
I assume you know its meaning by now, otherwise this is another warning: wiki it now
now.
Right. Of course, thanks to my procrastinating skills (no doubt another excellent trait engineered and perfected by rote learning at NUS),
Bunburying is the best term to describe my repulsion from updating this blog.
Woe to my loyal readers, I hope you find this post fodder for thought.
Now let's see...
Bunburying has been highly exciting yet tiring, even though the reason for the latter beats me since I hardly had to use my brains very much, probably the physical energy spending have been taking a toll on my body.
Bunburying included fireworks on New Year's eve (yes including jostling with the crowd at midnight and part thereof), one cheenapop concert (my first! haha! Not to worry, my fans, I'm still me and have
not transformed into a full-fledged
ah lian), one local musical called
Beauty World (oh the pain! I swear it's the worst musical I've ever been to in my entire life! And I've watched like so many already!),
several escapades to dodgy (not all of them were of course!) Japanese restaurants (all in the name of searching for the most authentic Japanese cuisine of course! Please consult me should you need any advice in this field and I will be most happy to oblige), a few trips to chinatown (which is more than I've ever been in my entire life!), the giving of many many presents mostly for christmas (if you didn't already know, my secret ambition was to be Santa Claus. Nah, I'm only joking, I don't really enjoy being fat with a red face and white hair, moustache and beard. I just like giving out presents heh), and finally, this must be the best part:
zero work done during the entire of the school holidays (well owing to the fact that they don't pay me at all during this duration, I didn't see any incentive to do any work.)
Of course, I couldn't have done them all without
you.
I must say I haven't enjoyed myself so thoroughly and so truely for a long long time, and it will be memorable, even though I've been so busy enjoying that I couldn't manage to record them anywhere, even on film. Ah, you know me, I can't multi-task if I were to immerse myself fully in a single experience at any one time. Trying to do both will probably tantamount to like two-timing or something, and you know I can't do that.
So what happens after I'm back from
Bunburying?
Well, obviously, there's work, work and more work. (Don't I just feel like a Primary school kid all over again? Yeah well, I still don't feel like I've graduated. Sometimes I go into these time lapses sort of thing and get temporary identity crises. You kids know what I mean right?)
Then there's the one-year-long mugging for Japanese.
Alright alright, I haven't gone into full speed yet.
Well, at least I'm trying to. I've bought the books at the last Kinokuniya sale!
Does... that count?
Work has been piling up these few days. I'm currently a part-time librarian cataloguing books which were thrown out but were saved by my colleagues (yeah, I know, our relationship with books is complicated), part-time student who needs to churn out essay plans, part-time typist to convert several essays in hard copies to soft copies, and part-time organiser to categorise past year papers into tables for easy reference (er, obviously not for me!)
Hmm where's the
real work? Well it's coming, in a matter of one week's time.
Ah, I miss
Bunburying...
9:34 pm
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