Monday, March 1, 2010

说说演演 2010 - 2

题目:我最喜欢的活动

老师、同学们,

大家好!

课余的时候,我最喜欢看电影。有时,爸爸妈妈买录影光碟,让我和哥哥在家里一起看。有时,爸爸妈妈带我到电影院看电影。这是我最开心的事了!

到了电影院,爸爸先去买票。这时,我吵着妈妈买爆米花和汽水。妈妈说,爆米花不可以常常吃。所以,当妈妈买爆米花的时候,我和哥哥都开心极了!

走进电影院,里面又暗又冷,妈妈帮我穿上外套。找到位子,我们就安安静静地坐下来,等电影开始。看电影的时候,我们不可以大声说话,因为大声说话会吵到别人,那是不对的。

看完了电影,我们要记得把自己的垃圾丢进垃圾桶里。

我看过很多电影。 其中,我最喜欢的是变形金刚的电影。变形金刚很厉害,到现在,我还是忘不了!

同学们,今天我带来了爆米花跟大家分享, 希望你们会喜欢。也希望你们跟我一样爱看电影!

谢谢!




*These photos were taken a long time ago when we first tried to make popcorn at home. We made the popcorn last night, similar to these shown in the photos.

The caramelised popcorn, or 'PC' as WF calls it, is WF's 'prop' for this 2nd CL Show N Tell this year.

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

里外不是人

古人有一句话:见贤思齐焉,见不贤而内自省也。

意思是说,当我们看见正义、好的事的时候,我们应该多多向它看齐;当我们看见非正义、不对又不好的事的时候,我们要提醒自己,千万别跟它一样。这,就是人与兽的不同。

我想,古人是生活在一个比较清幽、俭朴的社会里。那里没有今天的世界里的那种虚伪和装作。

为了正义而把事情说穿了,本来就是对的。即使知道‘不贤’的当事人听见了一定会火冒三丈,还是大义灭亲。

哪里知道,道高一尺,魔高一丈。各种上下不接的‘解释’汹涌而来,让受了委屈的人也不得不说‘是,是,是’、‘好,好,好’等等。

为什么要委曲求全呢?

我不同意委曲求全是好事。现代的人,就是以为大家肯定都会委曲求全,所以随心所欲,把仁、义、道、德,全抛到脑后。借一句‘我忘了’或者‘我不知道’,就草草了事。说不相信,就被指是蛮不讲理、固持己见。

怎么能让人心服口服? 黑能变白?哎。

反正,伸张正义的,现在是猪八戒照镜子。反被赤责是‘反派人物’,是个又好管闲事又爱钻牛角尖又爱把小事化大的闲人!还被提议去看医生!值得吗?!

等着吧。自古,忠言总逆耳。或许,有朝一日,人们不再把只有好的、美丽的,说给你听,让你觉得自己是多么的幸福, 而是把真实的呈现在眼前。

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Politics

The greatest evil on earth has been not greed, but politics.

Not the politician type of politics, but politicking type of politics.

Don't make sense? Never mind. So long as we know and remember, that's fine.

Complainant also politicking. Complaint until sky high, then later pretend to be so 'understandingly' understanding, accepting without any questions all sorts of 'explanation' offered. Yet after that, revert to not believing anyway.

Shitty. All shitty.

Friday, January 22, 2010

Just Wait

I was told this morning, "It's the nature of my job. You don't like, then boh-bian."



Really? I boh-bian?



Ya, maybe for now I boh-bian. Just wait. I am waiting. Waiting for my sons to grow up. Then I will correct the wrong I have done. Then it will no longer be I boh-bian.

Maid = Solution?? *pui*

This morning, M said to me that it is about time to get a maid. She said she is very tired already.

That she is tired, I can understand. Tired of marketing, tired of getting WF ready for school, tired of cooking etc etc. I can accept this. In fact, I have been telling her to stop marketing, stop cooking, stop doing this and that, but she would not listen.

What I cannot accept is all her protests and arguments when I disagree to engage a maid. And her yelling at me because she thinks that I will 'retaliate' by sending WF to a student care.

Based on my experience, having a maid makes more trouble than there already is. Maid is not a solution for me. Why?

I have neither time nor patience to train and train and train the maid to do things as I want them done. It has never worked out before, and it never will. I ended up previously getting all agitated everyday, so much so that I was just a hand away from hitting the 1st maid. The 2nd one drove me up the wall similarly. You don't know what a relief it had been, when we were suddenly maid-free.

Everyone at home had assumed that I was the fussy one. That I was the difficult, miserly and mean employer. All the time, they 'good-intentionally' told me to close one eye here, another eye there and to lower my expectations/standard etc. I did. I really did, but it still didn't work out. I was going crazy, relapsing into the hyperthyroid thing and getting headaches every day. Why?

Because not only did I have to put up with the maid's nonsenses (which was quite a lot, too), I had to listen to daily doses of complaints and complaints, loads and loads of them. Earful after earful at the end of a long day's work, everyday. Cannot believe me? It's because you haven't tried this yourself.

Actually, now that WY and WF are much older than before, there should be even less reason to get a maid. Afterall, we never allowed the maid to handle the children nor marketing nor cooking because we don't trust the maid to do these properly and to our preferred standard. All that the maid did was laundry, ironing and washing up the dishes. Oh yes, and mopping the floor. That was all.

These days, WY's schedule is such that he will be out of the house even before the sky turns bright, and won't be back until the sky darkens. So where got need to get a maid to attend to him? Maid can coach him in his studies, meh?

And WF? He now knows how to shower and dress himself. It's only that if he 大便, then he needs some help to clean the buttocks and wash up. He eats by himself and loves to make his milk all by himself. He packs his school bag in the evening, so there's minimal that he needs to do to get ready for school. So how will the maid help? Coach him in his studies?!

Marketing? Cooking? I don't trust the maid.

I seriously don't think getting a maid helps in any way for me. Maids are, to me, a great liability and source of frustration. I was lucky to have been spared those nightmare of eloping maids, prostitute maids, lover-maids, voodoo maids, torture-kids maids and killer maids that we hear about both in the media and from our colleagues experiences.

The solution, as far as I can see it, must be a resolution of the problem itself and until the problem is acknowledged, there will be no solution. There Never Will Be.

Have I told anyone how my kitchen has ceased to be mine? How I cannot squeeze a few apples into the fridge because it is already packed? How I have to spend one hour or so everyday washing the dishes after dinner, scrubbing pot after pot? Bliss, you say? And I chose this?

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Good Morning!

Starting from the 1st day of school this year, I have been coming in to the office at about 7:40am everyday. Only on Fridays, I arrive about 8:30am.

That's much, much, much earlier than I have been arriving at the office last year and the years before that. Then, it was common to find me in the office only closer to 9am.

A typical school/work day will start off when my alarm clocks rings at 5:15am. Once up, I wash up a little, then set about cleaning the table, boiling the water and getting the boys' water bottles ready etc. Then I wake R and WY up when breakfast is ready at about 5:45am.

As R and WY eat breakfast, I go for my shower. Then it will be time to settle the lanudry (sometimes it is to put the clothes to wash, sometimes it will be to hang them out to dry). By this time, R would (have to) finish washing up the dishes and be in his shower. WY would also have been shoo'ed into his shower.

By about 6:40am or so, everyone would be dressed up and ready to set off for school. We only briefly check that WF is ok (still sleeping soundly on his bed), then we would dash off to the lift.

The journey to school via PIE is generally quite alright with only an unexplainable slow-down just outside Kallang Swimming Complex. The challenge comes when we exit at Whitley Road.

The crawl from Whitley Road to the junction where The Equatorial (which has been morphed from Hotel Equatorial) is, will take an average of 15 minutes. During this time, I will watch the dark morning sky slowly cracking up to a new, soft glow. The process seems no faster than our crawl on the jam-packed road.

When we finally turn into Bt Timah Road, the going will be a little smoother along the stretch just outside NIE. But once we hit the Bt Timah Road / Farrer Road junction, we will have to slow down once again.

Starting from Coronation Plaze (where a long line of cars waits to turn into King's Road, presumably for NYPS), it will be a slow crawl until Gate 2 of the school. In between, there will be many cars inching in from the left to the right, and from the rightto the left....

The ride up to WY's classroom block is a great relief from the jam on the road outside the school. In fact, it is nice to just look over the field and tracks, where some runners will be jogging on. What a contrast to the crazy jam just on the other side of the school fence.

After WY alights from the car, we will proceed slowly to exit at Gate 3 where the wait for our turn to go out to the main road will take an average of 5 minutes. Then to get to the U-turn and actually making the U-turn into Dunearn Road will take another 10 to 15 minutes.

All in all, we will be on Dunearn Road by about 7:20am - 7:30am. Our ERP-less ride (ERP has not been switched on yet at that time, phew!) to the office via Stevens Road, Scotts Road, Orchard Road, Penang Road and then Havelock Road and South Bridge Road (or sometimes we use Temple Street in Chinatown for this part) takes about 10 minutes.

It's refreshing to be the 1st person around my work station to arrive in the office each morning. I am still not very used to it yet, but I think I will soon; the guards at the lobby always sound very loud as they cheerfully greet me, "Good morning!" :)

Thursday, December 10, 2009

Back To Reality

Starting from 1 June 2009, I had stayed home full-time and away from the office for 6 months.

The 6-month stay at home had been a mix of everything - marketing, cooking, household chores and general 'aunty-ing'. There had been lots of studying, worrying, cajouling, scolding and even some yelling. Then there had been some games and other exercises. And much laughter and joy.

There just hadn't been much time for much computer work though, and hence the blogging drought (save for a few posts).

But fear not! Yesterday, I returned to the office. And so, there should be a little more time for more regular updates starting from now. I only need a little more time to sort out the boxes of stuff sitting in my work station (we moved recently to a temporary office space whilst awaiting our new 'open-concept' office to be ready) before the updates can be done. (I almost couldn't locate my stationary yesterday!)

Also, we haven't had time at home to organise the photos that we had taken on our Taiwan trip. So the travel stories will have to come later. Suffice it to say for now that it had been a good trip, both educational and entertaining.

Why else would WF's questions at the beginning of our trip like 'Mama, why did you choose to come to Taiwan?' morph into questions like 'Mama, when can we come to Taiwan again?' at the end of our trip? :)