Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Monday, May 27, 2013

time check: week ten.

ok time you have to slow down.
sometimes i wish you'd just speed up.
the kids now are just a bittersweet experience, a love-hate relationship. i dread picking myself up and trudging all the way to bishan/ yet their interactions with me really make me laugh sometimes. especially now when the end is nigh, you start to be less serious when you reprimand them and appreciate them for who they are. even when the boy screams the f word in class in sheer anger. it's quite funny heh heh.
a tad bit reminiscent here bc i'm hunting for photos for a surprise birthday. she is always the one planning our birthdays/ playing a large part in the planning stage, so it's our turn to give back. birthdays are nice things here.

  1. listen to 8tracks- i've gotten addicted recently.
  2. no words can express how badly i need to travel right now. looking fwd to the taiwan trip jodi and jj are rly doing a swell job planning!!
  3. hopefully i can fit a sydney somewhere in the schedule
  4. and some good old yoga + exercise regime...........
sr: "i have a stuffed polar bear at home, he's very cute and his name is simon but spelled as x-a-i-m-o-n. i sleep with him every night"
it's unfair that the students get so much better and endearing when the internship is just ending. he really went a long way since the first day when he had to be prompted to listen in class for almost the entire time. it's just a full-on 180deg transformation now- listening intently to the questions, answering appropriately and being more aware of his surroundings. it's wonderful to think of how they will mature over the years.


Thursday, May 23, 2013

sports day / hougang lunch / check up

i'm walking on sunshine, woah x 3
today began with faint grumbles from the skies above. thunder. tiny ones growling menacingly, as if warning denizens of their malevolent presence. luckily all of this subsided and it turned out to be a good-weathered day. god had answered my pleas.
i was late. didn't know where hougang stadium was; turns out it's surrounded by obscure hdb blocks. was supposed to meet fion but we were at different degrees of late-ness.
the usual singapore weather. upper pri's shelter was facing the sun as if we were coerced to watch the morning sun. thankfully the kids were alright; the teachers complained more *guilty as charged*
sandalwood won double champs!!! both the 50m and 100m races we clinched the gold medal. i think i was more excited than the students over this. so much respect for the kids' determination. the sandalwood spectators also deserve a notable mention. the teachers' suggestion to cheer and support the racers did not fall on deaf ears. what came as a surprise was cq's effort in producing a mini-banner for kc, for his run!!! he had written 'go kc!' on foolscap paper and drew a lightning symbol.
i really hope they would always preserve that ingenuity in their pure young hearts, even as they mature.
love the upper primary races and love interacting with the kiddos. like yw and his constant ramblings, which seemed endearing today for some reason idk, sr and his unique sense of humour, sm and his frequent ah boys to men quotes.
-- chima --

with ivy, qiux and sam's familiarity in the hougang area, we made our way to the 1990-esque heartlands. there is a western food stall (five-star something) that serves up a la carte dishes strictly below $ten! but the best part of lunch is always the relating of stories of the kids. that's the secret extra ingredient that makes lunches all the more special. how qiux's iw shamelessly barged into his classmate's prize-giving ceremony and attempting to wear the medal himself, or fion's a looking all sullen and angsty at the world when she took her first prize medal. juxtaposed with the vp's wide grin.

we played at hougang mall's rooftop play area..... i almost barfed bc i was spinning around and then some more. best. sports. day. ever.

then audrey and i headed to paragon in our underdressed state.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
:this was how much we did not fit in that glamorous setting. blood tests are the bane of my life rly. my vein alw gets hidden. my biological self is sending messages to say my body is not adapted for injections of any sort. the needle i will feel embedded under my skin. once it is withdrawn, the rising-up motion of it will send tingles everywhere- it's like a mini-sword stabbing at human flesh and once the act is done, the sword leaves the body but not without leaving a mark on it.

am i reading too much murakami? it's scary. sometimes i feel that my life really is a novel, and a murakami one at that. in it, his characters are always trapped in their thoughts. in a sense, omitting the thoughts of the characters in his book would just make it seem that they are psychotic.
toru okada the protagonist uses a rope ladder to climb down the well near his house. yep, a literal well. sitting there in the darkness transports him into another world, to find his wife who was mysteriously lost. without their thoughts, the characters lose their essence. much like me, if i lose my thoughts, i lose who i am. it's as if only i know myself, since only i know my thoughts. what if my peanut shell outer appearance is merely a disguise to the inner workings of my mind...?
sometimes, i'd dream of something and think part of it is reality. vice versa. i'd dream of doing smth and believe i did it, when i find out i'd just been lying on the bed all this while.
mum and dad are on the other side of the soundproof glass and there is no way of me connecting to them. no one can see my deepest thoughts. the worries, the troubles, the paranoia.

/cont'd.

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

forever young

still trapped in the world of mr. wind-up bird in tokyo *scuse me*
i find that despite may kasahara's morbid attraction towards death and all its forms, i can relate to her so much: how she thinks - or over thinks. how she is aware of being too normal, not knowing what she'll be doing in three years time even though those around her seem to have it planned. just maybe how her mind works in ways that even she doesn't comprehend, much less others. how sitting at her yard doing the simplest things can give her great satisfaction. idrk what gives me great satisfaction though.

today my student threw up w/o any teacher knowing, (i was only alerted when his friends told me about it) & he actually managed to climb four flights of stairs.... with barf stains and mucus dripping from his nose. and he only softly mentioned to me that he 'needed tissue', as if it was a daily occurrence. sometimes u just get the feeling that u have to fend for them, because they cannot do so for themselves. they abide strictly by what happens daily: studying from 8am to 1pm, then home, that when sickness comes round, they're at a lost of what to do, so they place following rules over taking care of themselves. turns out he was running a high fever and needed to go home. in the meantime, i looked at him and he was copying down contents from the whiteboard like usual but seemed much weaker. can't even recall from the depths of my memory my determination to follow any teachers' instruction when i'm down w any illness, much less a high fever. these kids amaze me sometimes.

p.s: bringing the glamour of this post down a notch by saying that my ass hurts soooooo bad after riding my bike ok. fion says i should put some cushions on my seat but is there such a thing as bike cushions??
p.s.s: i like riding my bike around bedok town and soaking in the heartland atmosphere and literally weaving around like thin threads around the open area, being super cautious on not intruding into any one's walking space

Sunday, May 19, 2013

Free Monday

Hope the girls aren't busy...
Welp today's weather is pretty pretty~~ good homemade beef stew reminds me of p3 cat class, the catechists let us have a taste of beef stew and some bread to signify.... an event....

playlist.

punching in a dream - naked and famous
apartment - young the giant
step - vampire weekend

luckiest

if i had it my way, i'd probably be spending my time editing pictures. filters, texts, stickers- the works. just downloaded some mad good photo apps which i will be using to make the #upperpri some stuff before we part ways. our daily adventures with the students are what coalesces us. like eight candles standing erect beside each other, its wax blending into one another, irregardless of anything and everything else.
*channeling my haruki murakami*: currently entranced by the world of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. that book is nothing short of amazing. his descriptions were so vivid- there was that time when i read about general yamamoto being gruesomely skinned alive and i truly did feel like my breakfast was rising up my throat. horridly descriptive yet surprised that mere words strung in a sentence can actually invoke such radical actions from the reader. plus i'm the type who is usually not the barf-y kind. (proof that y'all should check his masterpieces out, he's rly one amazing dude)

drk whether to consider myself lucky. maybe i am just that i wasn't able to see it still am not able to see it. right now i feel blessed as always, but i still can not shake off those times when i feel the world is against me. maybe going for chat will be able to solve things. i'm actually getting my hopes up that all will be ok once tmrw comes around. the parents have yet again paid for those extremely insane high prices of driving lessons, groceries- that are always always adding up to hundreds per visit, and of which i consume almost half or all of it, and my bicycle with an apple bell and all those other accessories that come with it... yet my nets runs out of cash like precious water. and once again, money has proven to make the world go round.

my weekends are pretty meaningless/ i will keep hoping that there can be more time after pl ends/ there's yet another part of me that wishes it does not end, bc there will be more free time.
does this make sense?

nts: exercise mao.

Thursday, May 16, 2013

Is it any wonder

seems to get worse w every passing day. i feel like i want this- i want to get fat bc i'm tired of being in a family with dominant skinny genes
i can't fit into jeans, neither can i feel the firmness in my stomach anymore. i guess i took it all for granted all this while
three years to build up and demolished in half a year. maybe post-internship.

need to get away from this household. the entire day is not suffice. i must be absent for this whole period lest the binge feeling starts acting up again. idk, i don't think when i consume. i barely breathe/ barely in my conscious state. more of waiting for my tummy to get disgustingly nauseous bfr i start to regret what i am doing.
didn't rly mention this to anyone bc writing it makes me less embarrassed about this i guess.

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

If not now, idk when.
Hope chat hurries and replies me soon so I can these demons over and out

Thursday, May 9, 2013

Cramped

Class did well for exams // 80s and 90s range for most subjects, feeling happy for them ☺ the instances where they woop for joy at their marks and tell us how proud their parents are of them reiterates the normality of their lives; that their emotions are relatable to us when we were twelve year old kids.
Yoga helps; that, and self help books. I think I'm going to try to cruise along the path of self-acceptance and hopefully not veer off it.
//
Upper trackies were ulti-judging me on my bulletproof tennis bag- sigh pie long gone were the days when I used to lug it to TJ like a hermit. When we were on our way to the crib, Mr Tan asked if I had a copy of the wksht and they ALL looked at me and started laughing coz getting things out of that black hole is *almost* impossible

Is my being a social recluse acceptable to the world idk

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

If you cannot be happy for yourself then others cannot be happy for you.
This is an often overlooked statement. I think the gist of it is that you control feelings of what you think of yourself. And what you think that others think of you is a reflection of what you think of yourself. The mind is so powerful and how true that if you're happy, the universe will conspire to bring you continual happiness. If you're sad and insecure, then everyone will just seem to go against you.
Been reading self-help books like Food: The Good Girls' Drug and the Craving Cure. All the fruits if a good library search.
If what one needs is to be accepted in life and love, then self acceptance has to be the first step in accomplishing that.
Just food for thought.

On a happy note - 2 lessons of yoga today after work. Feeling quite proud of this newfangled idea of my doing yoga. I always thought it'll be nothing much since half of the time it's breathing and dozing off on the sweaty mat. However it helps in curing (or curbing) the intense bingeing desires!!! Hopefully it works on me cuz my brain usually outwits my actions if that makes sense.

Monday, May 6, 2013

Recovery

Thankful of ah keong financial services *too Singaporean* team. Glad Huiling could see the potential in taking up this initiative and pulling us along with it. More adventures to come :-)

It's exam wk but the kids don't seem to express the kind of stress we did as p6s. No frantic note taking, comparing grades and answers. Recess is still play time for them. They have learnt the stop pose and breathing exercises in case they don't know how to regulate themselves.

Teacha: If you're feeling unwell and need to vomit, please just run to the toilet ok"
SM: "Do we have to run quietly?"

T: "If u wna vomit pls do it outside of the classroom if not the aunty has to clean and u don't want the smell to longer in the classroom when you're doing exams right?"
YW: "Is it we also cannot vomit outside the classroom at the corridors cos if not the smell will waft into the classroom. But we can vomit outside of other people's classrooms"

Sunday, May 5, 2013

4:06

i feel pathetically stifled by all the inner thoughts about food - unimaginable. i wish it would stop
maybe getting off school awhile might be a good idea
just that everything is happening in a mad rush bfr the internship ends and tbh idrk what to do after that.
but just. food. it's shameful

Warm / cold juxtaposed

In the midst of the heavy rain, I felt the warmth of the father's love.
Yesterday's happenings are worth noting.
In primary school, Chinese periods will be filled with countless passages about filial piety, love for family, sacrifices, respect: those typical Asian values. One story I remember was of a mother who always gave the meatiest parts of the fish to her children and ate the less-than-delectable fish head portion instead. This happened for years and years. So much so that the children were brought up thinking that she loved fish head instead, but it turns out her love for her children is so great, that even sacrificing her favourite food is what she would do to make her children happy.
Parents show their love for their children to the fullest capacity. And it hurts to know that the child may not see that because people love at different capacities; not everyone's 'full capacity' is the same.
It was the usual evening/ nighttime run. At first it was a few trickles here and there and I thought nothing much of it, until not long after when, without warning, winds broke out and haphazardly strew withered leaves on to the ground. The torrential rains came almost immediately, like the clouds couldn't manage the huge bucket of water and spilt it all over the earth. I found refuge underneath a shelter, a measurable distance away from home. I thought about calling home to ask someone to escort me, but I withdrew from that decision almost immediately.
I could wait for the rain to stop, it has got to stop
Don't rly feel like talking to my family ha ha ha it's almost always like that
The greatest moment has got to be when my brain sent telepathic messages to my dad, whom I saw walking towards me with that familiar huge ass umbrella. That was when I felt truly blessed.
"Did you call mummy?" "No/ I was planning to wait here til the rain stopped"
Un/fortunately, it did eventually stop, before we reached home.
But idk, that scene reminded me particularly about sacrifices of a parent. How do they have so much love within them, yet they almost always never ask for anything in return? Why am I incapable of that? Srsly speaking, I'd get salmon sushi for myself and cucumber ones for my kids instead hahahaha (half kidding). Point is, sacrificing is hard and not sacrificing is a secretly beneficial thing yet a terribly selfish thing to do.

Friday, May 3, 2013

Cookie recipe


  • one banana
  • cup of rolled oats
  • handful of raisins
bake for 15-20 mins at 350 F

Thursday, May 2, 2013

moments.

a's a cutie: he loves taking photographs of himself (the new age male camwhorer this one) and i finally had a spontaneously picca w him!!! real ecstatic.

yq: NO SLING BAGS FOR YOUUUU *blows whistle*
that actually happened. he did bring a whistle along. it was epic.
me: *retorts* no whistles for youuuuuuuuuu
yq: arghhhhhhh & exclamation marks x many

a little more than one month. and this is the month of may?! five months and still lugging my dead heavy body over to bishan every day. thank goodness i meet qiux every morning so we can talk shiz and laugh. and the other kids that kind of make a difference.

sr: *points to fish* why are there two dots where the nose is supposed to be?
everyone: ...
sr: there is actually a species of shark called the goblin shark which has a nose
teecha: SR!!! if i see a fish with a nose, you know what i'll call it right?
yq: *flails arms* i know i know!!! nosefish.

and i thought sr was just rambling false information to prove his point. but-
just googled goblin shark and wtfbbq this is a horror movie condensed into one animal.
and he actually spoke of the truth.

disclaimer: click below 4 nightmarez

who am i and why am i confused.

scene: 9.38 pm, darkish, humid.
take us down but we keep trying/ forty thousand feet keep flying.
-a vibration from the phone/ a call-
M: it's so late already, are you coming back soon?
...
M: (concern) we thought something happened to you. daddy went out to look for you.
B: (spurted) huh??? i'm coming home soon. walking along opera estate there.
M: okay.

you finally cared. you finally called. you didn't know i'm bingeing. (why the hell am i bingeing). you take it as if singapore is the most dangerous city in the world. you take it as if singapore is not safe enough for me to run on a stretch of well-lit park connector.you don't know my problems. you take it as if i can never look after myself. you never let me try.
you never did ask about anything. i fuvkd it all up by not caring bfr this/ this looks unimaginably impossible to amend. never did ask how my day went. i never did manage to muster up the courage. i see a younger sibling  just two yrs my junior living the teenage life i had alws envisioned. a life where you didn't give two hoots about arriving at the doorstep near midnight. because the sibling is a he, not a she. b/c being a guy means being safe in the night.
you promised that i could talk to you whenever i had issues. and hell do i. it's a sick unsatiable dependency i have on others. almost 3/4 of my daily caloric intake in less than an hour. this binge cannot be stopped. i wouldn't dare to tell you this. this is such a perfect family. nothing ever goes wrong here.
just five pairs of deft fingers dancing on the iphone screen during meal times together. five physical bodies in close proximity, yet never have i been so distant from each of them. solemn faces, unwilling to open. does this happen to every household, idk.
me getting irritable that every sentence i say has to be repeated for my father. anti-climatic irritability just puts me off saying things anymore. nothing ever works.
welcome to my mind.

lord. i have lost you. this society is too porcelain-perfect for me and my mind to handle. the stresses to be a perfect little family- one that is so dependent on one another, just has the opposite effect on me. i can never be more grateful for the 'peace' in this household. a gratuitous peace. yet something is missing altogether. there is but a hollow shell here in op estate.
around me people have legit reasons to feel terrible about their lives, while i have none. it is only the battle against myself.

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Might have gotten a tad excessive w Whitagram

(One of z best apps ever) ((?))
Had a productive day w my procrastinator shitz buddies samoo and qiux--- plaza singapura w an important agenda. Presents for currently important people!!! Had a great time and we sw0re we were the worst in deciding things. for eg, lugging three bags worth of two dollar treats when we were supposed to get envelopes and cookie bags.
On a brighter sunnier note, my DIY spirit seems to be holding up pretty well!!!! Other than my Typo Alphabet Stamps, I added an inkpad and oil crayons to the list of things to use. Really gotten the bulk of my inspiration from txy *thank you so so so much can we start a chops business soon* the chops market in Singapore is largely an untouched one ya? oops digressing.
-Life is materialistic and idk whether it is a blissful spot to be in or I should be a worry wart and start worrying-

So then we headed off to Koi where I pushed my limits and ordered 50% (!!!!), talked about our kids for a little bit while waiting there as usual!!! Then went off into the far distance which was Cathay. Us being proud of QX the anti-walker who managed to make the trek ha ha ha x million.
We pranced around the spacious area, did some logistics for the hopefully successful BBQ (noob moment here but this BBQ is the first and most-thoroughly planned out one yet, the feeling of hopefulness sorta gets to me), figured out stuff to get for our favo teechaz /inverted commas cough wink burp wiggle/ and bopped up the escalator where we spent infinity at TotallyHotStuff!!! Pondered so hard over getting the notebooks there but in the end it was Tan Qiu Xuan who rewarded herself w an 80$ bag that rich kid.
I hypothesised that w extra moolah in our bank accounts, we have a propensity to spend more. Today is e v i d e n c e.
wonderful May Day anws. Except that I have in my possession, a hole-punched ez link card and raw skin from walking too much,
And probably library books that I'll have to pay the fine for. Sheet

Apologies for this self-absorbed & superficial post.