It was colder inside. Each step we took threw up the dust which had been collecting since decades ago when the place fell into disrepair and each "plick plock" footstep found its replying echo at the end of a far off hallway.

My stash has increased. Jaime rightly says I am like a little boy on Christmas day. To think my maths class, whom I have been harder on, two thirds of the stuff on the table is from them. What I appreciate most, not the chocolates, not the miscellaneous little presents, but the cards, with their little messages of thanks; warms the heart. 

I got a pleasant surprise today. This means more to me than whether it's a distinction or a credit.

My 10 week sojourn in Cedar is nearly at an end. My sup comes tomorrow, her last visit to settle the final admin matters. I spent the greater part of the morning going through essays, hoping to finish up the marking in time for tomorrow. In between scripts, I amused myself taking photos of the autobot and decepticon sentries stationed around my cubicle. It's a rainy gloomy wednesday, and even though school dismisses at 1pm today, I am rained in. Yi Ren Yi Ban from 881 has been on repeat on my ipod for the last 15 minutes. No overkill. It's just such a beautiful song, stirring up all these poignant unsaid feelings inside of me.

In NIE, using the analogy of baseball, we talked about 'pitching', pitching the level of your lesson; pitching at the correct height so that the content would not be too difficult nor too easy. Generally I feel I have done well to keep the students in my English class interested and engaged. Today was an exception in which I probably 'overpitched.'
Five for fighting's World, that's one really great song, with lyrics that make you ponder, lyrics which evoke mental images of starving children, mushroom-shaped clouds, a polar bear clinging desperately to a melting ice floe, World Leaders giving great speeches promising everything but fulfilling little, hurricanes, Katrina, New Orleans, Surveillance, Big Brother, Che Guevara, Revolutions, failed revolutions, crying mothers while bombs rain down all around, or so I thought:

Got a package full of Wishes
A Time machine, a Magic Wand
A Globe made out of Gold

No Instructions or Commandments
Laws of Gravity or
Indecisions to uphold

Printed on the box I see
A.C.M.E.'s Build-a-World-to-be
Take a chance - Grab a piece
Help me to believe it

What kind of world do you want?
Think Anything
Let's start at the start
Build a masterpiece
Be careful what you wish for
History starts now...

Should there be people or peoples
Money, Funny pedestals for Fools who never pay
Raise your Army - Choose your Steeple
Don't be shy, the satellites can look the other way

Lose the Earthquakes - Keep the Faults
Fill the oceans without the salt
Let every Man own his own Hand

What kind of world do you want
Think Anything
Let's start at the start
Build a masterpiece
Be careful what you wish for
History starts now...

Sunlight's on the Bridge
Sunlight's on the Way
Tomorrow's Calling

There's more to this than Love

What Kind of world do you want
What Kind of world do you want

What Kind of world do you want
Think Anything
Let's start at the start
Build a masterpiece

History Starts Now

Be careful what you wish for
Start Now

"What kind of World do you want?" I thought that'd be a great message. All that. lost on my class of 13 year olds. I was so disappointed. It's back to the drawing board.

I almost Died!!

Torture, from the 10km mark, my kneecaps started to creak and hurt, and very soon, I could only limp in pain, for the remaining 11km!!

6am.

I could smile before the flag off...
Yeah right....


I'm gonna need shit lots of training if i am to run the 42km in December.

She gets me Deathcab for Cutie while on holiday. She offers to pay half of my fine, because she says it's equally her fault when it's really all mine. When it's late and I have a half marathon to run the next day, she tells me not to send her home but to go home and sleep." After a convoluted, long way round, it seems I have finally..... well I don't want to jinx it, and maybe it's too early to say. This time round, I will get it right.

Still missing my bed, but I am going off for the half marathon now, a last minute thing with no training whatsoever. If i get through this alive, I'll be going for the 42 km full length Stan Chart one at the end of the year.

Rawr!!!

I caught a film at Sinema old school for the first time on thursday, with Jaime, after planning to do so for so very long. It was turning into one those things that I thought would never happen. You know, the kind you think about alot, but never get down to actually doing (either due to procrastination or lack of enthusiastic similar minded friends). In line with our theme this month, we saw A Month of Hungry Ghosts, a documentary by Alan Kern about one of the most colourful festivals in Singapore. It was well researched and pretty interesting, watchable, not the put you to sleep kind of documentary. Well some points I gleaned from the show, 1.)Historically, according to collected statistics, there has always a spike in road accidents during the seventh month in Singapore. 2.) A woman on the show claims, as long as she can remember, it has always rained on the eve of the 7th month. 3.) The Sino Japanese War in 1896, The start of WWII, the September 11 attacks, they all took place during the 7th Month. But so did the Olympics and National Day.

So cute right?!! My tuition kid's brother, Benjamin, who speaks like one of those kids on sesame street. While his sister does maths problems, I am teaching him how to kick the soccer ball properly.

Watching Table Tennis now. The Olympics Finals. Singapore(David) vs China (Goliath). It's rare that our whole family is doing something together, glued to the TV screen willing on our heroines in Beijing. I was on the way to St Wilfreds for the 7pm match, when on a whim I decided, it could be a once in a lifetime thing(Singapore in an Olympics Final), I'd better get home to catch it live. Oh crap we lost the first game, but well-played anyway, FengTian Wei.

On saturday morning, in the middle of my dvd session (The Punisher), Dr Hu (or is it A/P?) from the English Department of NIE called to inform me he would be coming down to observe my lesson either on Tuesday or Wednesday (to see if I am a distinction for teaching practice, I want to say it's already an achievement to get this far, but I know it won't count for anything if I don't get it. I mean I haven't been doing anything specifically to try to get it, all I have been doing is to try to teach the way I wish my teachers back then could have taught me). His call put paid to the relaxing weekend(as Jaime calls it, couch potato weekend) I had been planning to have . I don't want to freeze on the big stage, go missing like Ronaldo does at big matches, which meant I needed to start thinking, think about what I am going to do in the lesson; think of an innovative/interesting way to deliver the content, think about the rationale behind the lesson, try to recall the stuff we were taught in NIE, grr, I hate thinking about work on weekends! I knew I had to get out of the house, so I picked up my camera......


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

3:02 Pm - Playing around with my camera gear.
18-55Dx with VR(Vibration Reduction Motor) turned off.


18-55 Dx with VR(Vibration Reduction) switched on. Shutter Speed 1/5 F6.3
Notice the difference?

Hohoho, lmao at this.

Before the perfect ending, before Transatlanticism(specially for Lucy, so she claims), round about 930pm last night, the spotlights fell upon Ben Gibbard, as the other members of the band took a well deserved little break. He said, "I am going to sing a love song for you." And then he took up his guitar(well someone brought it out for him), and sang probably the saddest most beautiful love song I have ever heard live. I Will Follow You Into The Dark. $111 dollars but probably the cheapest I have ever paid, for two wonderful hours which seemed to just fly by. Just like how I feel at Mayday concerts - You lose yourself to the music and you lose awareness of time, and before you know it, they are on the encore and you are starting to feel melancholic about the performance, you wish they would stay a little while more, lull us just a little while longer......

My dad delivered breakfast to me this at work at Cedar Girls this morning. Yummy Hotcakes meal. I dunno why, perhaps it was because just last week I had caught Jack Neo's Money No Enough, with its lesson on filial piety, this act of love from my dad was particularly heartfelt. 

The Straits Times changed their layout. I decide I would also go for a new look, a change of fonts. Time flies, it's August again and our nation's 43rd Birthday!! Wonder what will be in the PM's national day message tonight( apart from the usual self-congratulatories).

It was truly a shock, an explosion of pain when my shoulder popped out of its socket on Tuesday morning, as i reached behind me to flick the light switch on, that sickening "keraccck" sound and then I was on my knees groaning in pain. Usually it only happens during soccer games when I forget my shoulder brace but this time it was the innocuous act of turning on the lights and the pain, there isn't really any conventional measure, you know like a thermometer for pain, but if there was, it was a great degree more painful than the usual. And even with a few attempts I was unable to put it back into place(usually I am able to) to get to school on time, so I had to grit my teeth and phone in to tell them I was not going to be there on time, and then I shouted(literally shouted) to my dad that I needed to get to the A&E, because the pain was killing me!

Just as we were about to leave the house, me pathetically hunched over and clutching my wrist, worried about how they were going to force my shoulder back into place at the hospital, I decided to give it one more try, to concentrate, try to put aside the pain and think about what I normally do. I sat down on the ikea armchair in my dad's room and in one firm motion, popped the shoulder back into its socket and the relief from the pain, it felt so good, it must be what drugs feel like and I sat there, savoring the moment, lapping up the relief as the the cold sweat dripped down my brows.


(" ,) I am going to see DCFC live next tues!!

Singfest was such a blast! Jason Mraz, Mr A-Z and his band, they were in top form. He is unbelievably good, I would say he sounds better live than on CD, and that is probably one of the best compliments any artiste can get. Too short! The 50 min set was way too short.

A mirror of the state of the environment. Humans have despoiled and plundered the earth and our next generation will be the ones to pay. I can only do my part and try to reduce my carbon footprint. Turn off the lights, the computers when they are not used, avoid using plastic bags, print on both sides of the paper. Use the fan instead of the aircon. It won't be enough unless everyone chips in. Won't you join me?