Year End Post...

the last couple of days have been a whirlwind of great fun.

i met up with some very good friends whom i've not seen for a very long time. and they have all grown in different ways but have stayed beautiful nonetheless. it was wonderful catching up with them, chatting about life, the past and the future.

and i am very excited about the future, their futures and mine. 2006 has been great. 2007 would be challenging but full of its own rewards too.

well... here's to a great 2007!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

p.s. for 4D, buy 3012. worth a shot...

400

i realise that i have moved past the 400th post. it took quite a while, and even longer because of the many hiatus that i've taken this year. and i don't think it'll grow much faster. suffice to say that the recent blogging spurt would be an anomaly in the coming year.

not that i write very well anyways. and i realise how lousy my writing is after reading the letter that i just got from the Warden (he's the Warden of Manor Hall, the place i stayed in for 3 years when i was in Bristol). he has an amazing way of using words to give texture to feelings, form to thoughts and substance to ideas. his words are nuanced, subtle, painting pictures in fine brush strokes and carefully chosen shades, while my writing is more like big blotches of roughly mixed colours.

my ability to write has definitely deteriorated. it's moved away from the literary to the factual. i have been trying to read more fiction books to bring back the standard, alas, the sort of books that i read aren't really tomes of great literary classics.

ah well...

Professional Hazard

apparently my friend and i do the same thing at work.

he's an anaesthetist, i'm a teacher, we both put people to sleep.

speaking about professions... there's a strong case for teaching being a noble, even royal profession. you see... teachers tend to inbreed... i.e. we marry teachers. very much like the royal and noble families of UK.

WT's Wedding

just got home from WT's wedding dinner.

i know it's an oft repeated platitude that time flies. but when one sees one's friend get married, given that one has known this friend for years, since the time when one and one's friend were struggling with the challenges that comes with coming of age, and at the precise moment, when he sees this friend walk in with the bride, and realise that both he and this friend are no longer the hapless, chrysallis struggling to break into the adult world, one then realises that time has indeed flown by. and with time flying by, so has a lot of other memories, tinted by various shades, peppered with multifarious flavours.

and so it was. as i saw WT enter the ballroom with his bride, decked in his ceremonial uniform, nostalgia assaulted me like a sledge hammer. it peaked when his army mates made him re-enact his proposal to his wife.

see... i've known WT to be an MCP, who's totally against mushiness. but he was wiling to lay down his pride, kneel down in front of his wife, in front of so many people. he went as far as declare his love for her.

i'm not entirely sure why it happened, but all that nearly made me cry. perhaps with nostalgia, perhaps with joy. the joy that comes with knowing that a good friend of mine has found his happiness.

i'm such a sop.

sigh.

My Immortal

i love the song. there is something about the ethrealness of the voice that makes it hauntingly captivating. like the voice of a sirens, beckoning to Odysseus. it adds makes the song, whose lyrics are sad enough on their own, even more tragic.

I'm so tired of being here
Suppressed by all my childish fears
And if you have to leave I wish that you would just leave
'Cause your presence still lingers here
And it won't leave me alone

These wounds won't seem to heal
This pain is just too real
There's just too much that time cannot erase

When you cried I'd wipe away all of your tears
When you'd scream I'd fight away all of your fears
And I held your hand through all of these years
But you still have
All of me

You used to captivate me
By your resonating life
Now I'm bound by the life you've left behind
Your face it haunts
My once pleasant dreams
Your voice it chased away
All the sanity in me

I've tried so hard to tell myself that you're gone
But though you're still with me
I've been alone all along

Retail therapy

so i've done my bid to stimulate the economy. i've spent tonnes in the last few days. bought things which i normally wouldn't have bought. but i thought that it's a good time as any other to have an overhaul of my wardrobe. now i have clothes which are markedly different from what people are used to seeing me wear.

well.... we shall see...

:)

Poetry...

in an inspired moment while talking to Y, i came up with this:

okie dokie,
you're a pokie
lost my key
oh such stupidity.

i'm such a literary genius, i tell you.

ha...

in other news, another Y i know, a friend from uni, who's currently doing her PhD in Stanford, would be back in Singapore soon. so that means we would get to meet up and catch up... :)

My Latest Favourite Sport

is beach volleyball... women's beach volleyball. this happened after i watched the Asian Games Women Beach Volleyball between China and Japan (where China won... beware the Yellow Horde!)

and my latest idol is one of the Chinese players called Chen Xue. she is super, in my opinion, super hot.

grr...

And somewhere in Europe...

it's winter. only that someone apparently forgot to tell the bears. cos they ain't hibernating when they are supposed to have done so some three months ago.

and J blames it on the fact that the rich fat people of the world have moved their pension funds into China, flooding it with ample capital to set up millions of factories, each spewing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

EC thinks that he is contributing to the problem because of his dairy farm there in China (cows fart and their fart contain methane. as does their dung. methane is a greenhouse gas...)

J is highly displeased that this might disrupt her family's holiday plans in Slovenia.

damn... i want to go to exotic places like that for holiday too... grr...

Zoukout

was out Zoukout last night.

and boy... was it a grand night out! music was good, weather was fine, ladies were hot, company was great. couldn't have asked for anything more.

except until this morning. was literally falling asleep as we walked towards the bus stop, fell asleep standing on the bus. when i got home, had breakfast, showered and crashed. woke up feeling sore all over. not that i was surprised. cheonging from 10 to 6, almost non-stop, high as i was (on music, friendship and some alcohol...) is bound to give one sore muscles and aching body.

:)

Remembering Yunnan

finally... a post about my Yunnan trip...

this trip has thus far been quite enjoyable. i am learning a fair number of things about myself, about my students, about education, about my colleagues and about life in general.

i love standing in mountainous regions looking at rolling peaks. it makes me realise how insignificant my problems are and at the same time, it makes my life immensely large when i feel the connection with the land.

i also love seeing the sun gently rise from behind the mountains, having the rays of light shoot out from behind the peak. it was a gorgeous experience, made even more beautiful by the cold climate and the warmth of the local students.

i saw that sight in this secondary school right smack in the middle of the mountains called Si Zhong (Fourth Secondary School). yar... the schools there only have numbers... the students there are amazingly resilient. some of theme walk 2 days to go home (they only do so once a month) and they walk through the mountains. and while i have my millions of layers and my gloves, they have 2 layers and no gloves. yet their thirst for knowledge is... one of them asked me something about Singapore, then a whole group of them crowded around me to listen. i've never had a group of students look at me so attentively before. and we were standing outdoors in the cold. they did the same to my students who told them about things in Singapore.

and when we parted, some of them cried. it's amazing, considering that we've only met for less than 6 hours in all. some of my students cried too. i teared. a little bit. the thought of connecting with people and not being able to see them ever got to me.

then there was the final debrief on the final day. i was amazing how open SL was. and with his frankness, he moved the students to tears, opening their hearts, making them more ready, more able to learn the lessons that they had to learn for themselves, lessons about love, friendship, themselves, family, country.

it was a good trip in all...

I'm...

back. from Yunnan. but too tired now to actually post anything about it. will do so after i've recovered.

:)