"I guess I'll ask you in the morning
Right before I pack my things and walk right out the door
I guess I'll ask you in the morning
And pretend we're still in love tonight
Because we won't be any more..."

That Lee Ryan. Whoaa...he's got me feeling it.

The June holidays have ended and it's back to school all primary and secondary school students. For me, that means more crappy assignments to mark, more noisy little buggers and definitely more childish antics that either entertain me or piss me off. Campus Superstar Kid is starting to really, really annoy me with his newly-acquired self-importance, which appears to have followed his newly-acquired fame - I use 'fame' in the broadest sense of the word. Today, I found out that some of my sec 2 kids are really anti-him! I think he'd better watch his smarty pants attitude before some sec 2 Ah Beng whoops his sorry little under-developed ass.

I guess what really irks me is how he and his friends cluster together everytime I go into class, and just talk, sing and make alot of noise instead of doing the worksheets I give out. That cute koala bear thing is getting oldddd. :( Yesterday he took out his phone in class and I told him to keep it. He actually replied in a super indignant matter-of-fact tone (as if I was the one being an unreasonable nuisance), "I sending sms to the Mediacorp people la!" What the hell. Apparently, this kind of behaviour occurs during other teachers' classes as well, so I think it won't be long before someone caves and threatens to screw him his chances of appearing on TV.

Another kid that has succeeded in making me want to wring his neck is this idiot who kept shouting, "MISS ONG, WO AI NI!!! (Miss Ong, I love you!)" whenever I walked past last term. This term, his vocabulary has expanded to, "MISS ONG, JIA GEI WO! WO YAO NI DE AI! (Literally: Miss Ong, marry me! I want your love!)" Every. Single. Freaking. Time. I was like, wtffffffff. Eventually I was so mad, I scolded him in a complex series of Chinese phrases, which he of course did not understand. Muahahahahahaha!

Candice, Anis, Joylynn and Khairul (all the relief teachers present last term) have left, so it's just me and this new girl named Anne. It's been fun chatting with her during breaks 'cos she's just so frank and unpretentious and we can bitch and bitch about students like nobody's business. :) New batch of NIE teachers have arrived, so our workload isn't so heavy. Speaking of new teachers, a lighter workload isn't just the only good thing that has happened. HEHEHEHEHE...

I wanna shee eurrr sshy, shhweet shhweet schhmile and kyuutey kyuutey kyuuute dhimplesss!

If you still don't get the above sentence despite having read it numerous times - assuming that you haven't died of frustration from the unnecessary letter 'h's - it's in Twit Language (Google 'Twitionary'), introduced to me by Anne. Fret not, I've not morphed into an airhead (although I know some people are begging to differ) I'm just mocking the silly goons who actually type like, write like this, talk like this. One word: EWW.

But he does indeed have such a nice smile. ;-)

Labels: Relief teaching

aaaand views from the restaurant.....

oops...mummy caught in an unglam moment....

The adults went for SPA treatments at night, leaving us in the care of my 30sth cousin Andy and his girlfriend Genevieve. I finally tried the famous Krispy Kreme doughnuts! Hehehe...

Walter and Andy wearing their KK paper hats!

Day 4 was departure day...nothing much happened, no pictures either. I've spent 5 hours on my ass blogging and uploading pictures...gonna go off now and bathe. Taa.

Labels: Vacation

obtained from http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=grill I had originally wanted to type a post about my Bali vacation, but something killed my mood and now I'm compelled to blog about it. I got the link of this website from Xiaxue's blog, and found myself rolling my eyes 70% of the time spent reading what this guy wrote.

I was looking over a menu in a restaurant the other day when I saw a section for vegetarians; I thought to myself "boy, I sure am glad that I'm not a meat-hating fascist"

You know someone's obviously looking for trouble when he starts an article like that. Visually, this translates into the image of a scrawny teenage punk doing the "360 degree" (according to my cousin Xin Yi, that's the proper name of the swagger thingy that makes Ah Bengs walk like they have flea-infested balls.) while shouting to random innocent people, 'Eh! you stare what stare! Want to fight is it? Can! I can fight! I can fight 'cos I am strong! Come lah!' Obviously, all he gets are people ignoring him, shaking their heads in disgust/amusement/sympathy. Personally, I would choose the latter but more about that on another day. Lesson 1: if you want to sound convincing in a speech or article, don't shoot yourself in the leg before you even begin. Let's look at another lovely quote:

What pisses me off so much about this phrase is the sheer narrow-mindedness of these stuck up vegetarian assholes. You think you're saving the world by eating a tofu-burger and sticking to a diet of grains and berries?

Woah hohoho. Looks like somebody's getting wound up! My immediate immature reaction to this was "well, at least we actually get shit passing through our 'stuck up vegetarian assholes', you constantly constipated, carcinogen-ridden, artery-clogged dirtbag!" However, let us read on before I make further comments.

Well here's something that not many vegetarians know (or care to acknowledge): every year millions of animals are killed by wheat and soy bean combines during harvesting season (source). Oh yeah, go on and on for hours about how all of us meat eaters are going to hell for having a steak, but conveniently ignore the fact that each year millions of mice, rabbits, snakes, skunks, possums, squirrels, gophers and rats are ruthlessly murdered as a direct result of YOUR dieting habits. What's that? I'm sorry, I don't hear any more elitist banter from you pompous cocks. Could it be because your shit has been RUINED?
That's right: the gloves have come off. The vegetarian response to this embarrassing fact is "well, at least we're not killing intentionally." So let me get this straight; not only are animals ruthlessly being murdered as a direct result of your diet, but you're not even using the meat of the animals YOU kill? At least we're eating the animals we kill (and although we also contribute to the slaughter of animals during grain harvesting, keep in mind that we're not the ones with a moral qualm about it), not just leaving them to rot in a field somewhere. That makes you just as morally repugnant than any meat-eater any day. Not only that, but you're killing free-roaming animals, not animals that were raised for feed. Their bodies get mangled in the combine's machinery, bones crushed, and you have the audacity to point fingers at the meat industry for humanely punching a spike through a cow's neck? If you think that tofu burgers come at no cost to animals or the environment, guess again.

If there's one thing I hate, it's a narrow-minded, anal, self-righteous person who doesn't tolerate the existence of any other set of beliefs other than his own. Yes, extremist religious fanatics who give me shit like "I want to save you" or "there is no God other than mine", I'm talking to you as well. I'm not defending vegetarianism or my own beliefs, nor am I gonna adopt some holier-than-thou stand to criticise meat-eaters and assert the moral superiority of vegetarians in comparison to those who love meat. A vegetarian who, for instance, takes delight in grossing out his meat-loving friends and relatives with gory details about the factory farming industry while dining at social/family gatherings (read: freaking inappropriate.) or one who hurls abuse others just because they eat meat will annoy me as much as a meat lover who criticises the HELL out of vegetarians just because he happens to have a few counter-arguements on his side. It's really interesting to see how Mr Maddox (that's his name) seems to be turning his article into an argumentative monologue, complete with insults and allegations. Can you spell 'unnecessary'? On the other hand, I let my empathy kick in and give him the benefit of the doubt. I mean, maybe he had a particularly traumatising run-in with a bunch of celery-worshipping droids, maybe he's sick of all the anti-meat/anti-fur/anti-leather campaigns and marches that are oh so common in the States. Maybe one of those people insulted his mother. Or maybe his uncle's wife's cousin's sister-in-law's brother got knifed for eating -gasps- not one but TWO hotdogs in Las Vegas, and last but not least, maybe the last girl he dated was a massive two-timing biatch - who also happened to be vegetarian, duh. Really, the possibilities are endless.

The vegetarian response to this embarrassing fact is "well, at least we're not killing intentionally." Since when is the knowledge that every year millions of animals are killed by wheat and soy bean combines during harvesting season 'embarrassing'? For your information, Mister Maddox, most vegetarians are usually animal rights activists and vegetarianism is just ONE of the ways such people try to reduce and/or prevent animal sufferring or cruelty. Kindly do not marginalise all of us as stuck up individuals who take the moral high ground and berate meat eaters while proudly boasting about how "guiltless" we are. Boo to those obsessesed vegetarians who are - I cannot stress this enough- a MINORITY, of course. And get this, genius: many vegetarians know that animals get killed by accident during crop harvesting and there are projects by PETA and other animal rights organisations to reduce this. Lesson 2: always look at both sides of an argument. More monologue gems...I think my eyeballs are dizzy from all that rolling.

That suddenly makes you innocent? I guess we should let drunk drivers off the hook too since they don't kill intentionally either, right? There's no way out of this one. The only option left for you dipshits is to buy some land, plant and pick your own crops. Impractical? Yeah, well, so is your stupid diet.

It gets worse...
Even if combines aren't used to harvest your food, you think that buying fruits and vegetables (organic or otherwise) is any better? How do you think they get rid of bugs that eat crops in large fields? You think they just put up signs and ask parasites to politely go somewhere else? Actually, I wouldn't put that suggestion past you hippies.

Now he's just being plain rude. Newsflash, smart boy! Modern societies are made up of all sorts of races and religions of people who have various beliefs which they hold close to their hearts. Vegetarians have their own beliefs too...apart from the extremists (m-i-n-o-r-i-t-y) nobody's saying that everyone should go vegetarian because it's The Right Thing. A characteristic of a civilised modern society is a fabric woven out of a myraid of cultures and outlooks, i.e. you don't go round labelling people as "vegetarians" or "meat-eaters". You don't see an African-American guy and yell out "Yo Nigga!" don't you? Hippies. Ouch, that, like, really hurts. Peace, maaan.

His attempts to justify his meat-loving habits by refuting many things vegetarians mention while advocating their practices contradict the intentions he seems to be establishing in the first place. Mr Maddox doesn't like vegetarians 'cos they're self-righteous, self-justifying, tight-assed and mean shits, boo hoo hoo. So why is he acting like the sort of person he despises? I'm absolutely increduled by the statement 'humanely punching a spike through a cow's neck', and I sure as hell won't want to be exposed to the rest of this guy's moral universe. Or hear him stage another monolugue titled, for example, "Torture: Skinning alive vs. Electric shocks to the balls; which is more humane?"

Who the hell defines what a so-called 'lesser evil' is anyway? I don't understand why people like Maddox insist on finding ways to assert their practices/religions/customs etc. are better than others, when really, it's up to the individual to decide what he wants to believe in. Nobody's denying that little critters get smushed up by harvesters and tractors, nobody's denying that the tiny buggie-wuggies that eat our crops die terrible spasmic deaths upon exposure to pesticides. Hell, there're even studies which apparently show that plants have feelings and may perhaps be able to feel pain. Go and google 'plants have feelings' and see what you get. All these are as real as the sufferring animals go through while being raised in factory farms and during trips to the slaughter houses, how they struggle and thrash about while squealing/mooing/squawking etc. in pain while workers at slaughter houses humanely *snort* decapitate them/break their necks/poke them with electric prods/slit their necks. It would be ignorant and ridiculous to insist that you are always right when you don't know about anything else, wouldn't it? With knowledge (reading widely about various stuff, obviously.) acquired, people can hence make informed choices. The keyword is CHOICE! We make choices all the time. You choose delicious cheesecake over your bulging waistline. Your desire for convenience makes you choose driving to the mall, which may just be 10 minute walk away (in the case of my Mum.). You know about animals sufferring, but still choose to eat meat 'cos your love for meat triumphs over your sense of empathy. It's as simple as that. No, I'm not saying you're heartless...it's your right to make a choice. Just don't expect everyone else to think and behave like you do, and don't get all overly-defensive and aggressive when they don't.

Then some of you throw out claims that "we are trying to limit the suffering." How about you limit MY suffering and shut the hell up about your stupid diet for a change; nobody cares. Even if the number of animals that die in combine deaths every year isn't in the millions, even if it's just one, are you suggesting that the life of one baby rabbit isn't worth saving? Are you placing a value on life? Enjoy your tofu, murderers.

Nobody cares, Mr Maddox? Think again. Check out the intentions, baby: limit HIS suffering. Ahhh...so it's all about him (I knew I was getting somewhere with that ex-girlfriend hypothesis..hehehe.) and his silly ranting. Congratulations, Mr Maddox, for you have shot yourself in the leg for the squillionth time. "are you suggesting that the life of one baby rabbit isn't worth saving" - isn't this contradictory? I mean, so you pity the poor little fuzzy thingy, vegetarians are bigass bullies who have double standards yadayadayada...and you eat..........what? Say it, you twit. I see no reason in continuing the rest of that particular point. Lesson 3: Don't shoot yourself - again!

Poor guy. Maybe he should cool down, lay off the dairy and meat for a bit, and have a refreshing bowl of salad. That should soothe his frazzled nerves and allow him to think more clearly. Check out PETA's reply to his article and his immaturity and flawed logic becomes more evident. Cheers.

hey all. I'm back from enchanting Bali. No jet lag this time but I still feel rather tired for some reason...photos will be up soon, but there aren't many. Gonna just end off here so I can finally get a good rest on my own bed.




"I wish I could morph into him for one day and bring you out and tell you how you're such a wonder girl..."
Sweetness that brought a faint smile to my lips.

I'm getting that horrible feeling again. Like the world is spinning too fast, like the days fly by too quickly and everyone seems to be moving forward so fast that I can't keep up. It's just one of those days......and it's at times like this when I start thinking about things that frustrate/ frustrated me, putting me in a even more rotten mood.

I want to hate you 'cos I can't forget you. I hate it that some things you said about me were true......I hate it even more that it was you that said it, I freaking hate how you did so. Every recollection of that conversation squeezes a bit of air out of my lungs......everytime I think of you I get this awful ripping sensation that starts from the pit of my stomach. You self-righteous bastard, I'm surprised you didn't get whiplash from making such a quick turnaround. I hate the fact that the hurt doesn't go away, I blame you for putting me in. A. Fucking. Emotional. Stalemate. Most of all, I desperately, absolutely want to HATE you for the smug existence you're living, for the scornful words I can't make myself forget..for the FEAR, the PARANOIA, of SEEING THE TWO OF YOU WHENEVER I GO OUT. I really want to bash that smug grin off your face, I really do. You asshole...you notice how I say "I want"? It's because (this is all. your. fucking. fault.) I won't want you to be unhappy either. I guess I still care about you even though you don't give a shit about me anymore. This is the thing that truly irks me at the end of the day......the self-loathing, the insecurity that resurfaces over and over again......like some eternal nightmare that doesn't end. It's gonna be a year soon, and if you know that I'm still NOT OVER IT, you'll probably laugh at me. But fuck you.


Neutral Tones

We stood by a pond that winter day,
And the sun was white, as though chidden of God,
And a few leaves lay on the starving sod,
—-They had fallen from an ash, and were gray.
Your eyes on me were as eyes that rove
Over tedious riddles solved years ago;
And some words played between us to and fro-—
On which lost the more by our love.
The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing
Alive enough to have strength to die;
And a grin of bitterness swept thereby
Like an ominous bird a-wing...
Since then, keen lessons that love deceives,
And wrings with wrong, have shaped to me
Your face, and the God-curst sun, and a tree,
And a pond edged with grayish leaves.
-- Thomas Hardy

Shopping trip in Bugis today! I bought pretty strappy sandals, some facial essentials from Beaute de Kose and a feminine-looking peasant top from Levis. Spending more than $120 at the Kose entitled me to a free beauty bag with samples of cleanser, toner, moisturiser and a hydrating gel mask! I'm such a sucker for free cosmetic samples. :-) All this was topped off by a delicious meal of vegetarian wonton noodles (I think "wanton noodles" sounds hilarious; what, your noodles are lewd, malicious or lascivious is it?! Yet it's such a common sight on the signboards of stalls in our local hawker centres. heehee. ) so needless to say, I'm one contented girl.

Lounging at home due to the absence of employment has made me quite a TV junkie. I'm hooked onto shows on afternoon TV (Ellen Ellen Ellen!!!) and it's more glamourous cousin --- primetime television, and I'm quite ashamed to admit that I've recently been forgoing my evening skipping sessions just to catch 'So You Think You Can Dance' on Channel 5. Yes, I know, I know! Sheesh...the knowing smirks......

Anyway, I managed to catch 'How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days' at 10 p.m. on Wednesday, which stars Matthew-I've got great pecs-McConaughey and Kate Hudson. For those who haven't watched it, this is the plot summary: (lifted directly from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0251127/plotsummary)

Benjamin Barry is an advertising executive competing with two female co-workers for a major campaign for a diamond merchant. He cuts a deal with his competitors that the account is his if he can make a woman of their choice fall in love with him in 10 days. In comes Andie Anderson who, in turn, is writing a story on how to lose guy in 10 days as a bet with her boss to be allowed to write more substantial stories. With a hidden agenda in each camp, will either party be able to complete their mission?
----------

Basically Andie (Kate Hudson) does all these ridiculous things to drive Ben (Mr Sexy Pectorial Muscles) nuts, hoping that he will dump her so she can produce that winning article with all the juicy details about her successfully failed (oxymoron, i know. :p) relationship. On the other hand, Ben tries his hardest to put up with all that nonsense, so that he can make her fall in love with him. She actually names his dick "Princess Sophia"! HAHA! Go rent the VCD or try to download it illegally -at your own risk - if you're in the mood for a chick flick...plenty of laughs guaranteed! One of my other favourite romantic comedies was showed on Ch 5 yesterday night too. '50 First Dates' stars Drew Barrymore as a girl with the inability to convert short-term memories to long-term memories and Adam Sandler is the man who has to make her fall in love with him over and over again every single day. It's not peppered with cliches and it's not your usual happily-ever-after flick, but if you're a total softie like me you'll probably be touched by the extents Adam Sandler's character goes to for the girl of his dreams. There are many real-life instances of couples whose relationships remain undaunted by the presence of illnesses, diseases or unfortunate accidents, and this movie seems just like a reel-life projection of that sort of thing onto the silverscreen. I once read a story in Reader's Digest about a couple who had Alzheimer's and couldn't recognise or remember anyone except each other...in other words, they face foreign and unfamiliar situations and people together with fear and apprehension. The story was written by the couple's daughter and ended with 'Thank God they have each other'. We're all divided on the issue of "true love"; some people think it's possible, some don't. I guess no matter where you stand, you have to admit that this is definitely the closest-to-perfect example of true love in real life...besides a parent's love for his or her child, of course.

Ta.