doppelganger

She says, "Why do you say 'it sucks' for the things you obviously enjoy?"

This was in reference to me whining about having to spend 3 days a week going to KoolBlueSkool - today it just became 4 days due to my uber enthusiastic (or desperate) korean student. I am disturbed by people who uncannily identify the obvious contradictions in my being.

I must admit going to KoolBlueSkool has lately been fun due to one particularly bad-ass, in your face student. The ones with attitude are the most exhilarating to teach because of the challenge. Last term it was Chatterbox the monkey face puller. This time, it's a 14 year old female, whose favourite phrases include

"What?! Are you 15 or something?" and

"I can't do this, dude!"

And the first thing she says everytime she walks through the door is,

"I'm going to play my way, ok, don't make me change anything."

Everything she does contradicts what she says - as much as she keeps saying everything is too hard, each week she whips out some complicated thing and ambitiously decides she is going to play it for the lesson, and then whines her way through it.

Today, she decided to make me play her complicated piece.

"No! I'm looking at this for the first time..."
"I don't care!"
"Ok fine. *played (and lost credibility)*
"...showoff...(mumbles)"

Whatever.

Anyway I figure no one will really believe she is totally evil because she looks the spitting image of Eileen Boylan.



They even talk the same way.

Maybe each one of us has our split halves; sometimes we find them, sometimes we don't, and even if we find them, we might not necessarily like what we find because coming face to face with your doppelganger is scarily self-revealing. Unless of course, you're a thoroughbred narcissist.

failing to hide

What are you staring at?

Leave me alone already.

hit by a train

I totally get it now. For the longest time I was wondering what I'm doing social work for, why study it when I don't intend to do it. And I was wondering what's the point of learning things like reflection of feeling, or unconditional positive regard. And then in a random online chat with someone that broke all the Rogerian rules, I realised how little it takes to make someone feel better, even if feelings are subjective and transient, and how easily you can make someone feel worse without intending to, and how it is so difficult to find some one who understands, much less communicate that understanding.

i miss the purple

KoolPurpleSkool can no longer be called that because they did away with the purple shirt and replaced it with KoolBlue shirt. So now it will be called KoolBlueSkool.

I went back on Wednesday, it very strangely felt fantastic to be back. Maybe because it is place where I feel safe and sane and far away from school. (That is mostly an illusion because school is 3 bus stops away). Or maybe it's because I had new students and it was fun starting again with new people, on top of the old ones being pleasantly surprised with what the kids can do. Or maybe it's because I found that the cafeteria had fantastic $1 iced latte.

This semester I go down twice a week, before and after lectures, and I foresee that may kill me eventually but heck. I exhibit obvious masochistic tendencies and my gynaecologist has noticed that too. On the less dysfunctional side I noticed the uncanny resemblance between one of the teachers in the school and this guy, except he's blond and this guy isn't.


James Denton a.k.a. Mike Delfino from Desperate Housewives.

Eye candy once in a while is therapeutic.

giving birth

Writing a thesis is like bringing a foetus to term.

There is no process of ovum fertilisation though. It is asexual reproduction because you do it alone. There's the arduous search for the supervisor a.k.a. the gynaecologist, who performs routine checks on the health of the foetus, who is also not always around because gynaecologists are busy people, despite the falling fertility rates (few people doing thesis).

Then you have to feed the foetus. It grows bigger with reading, so you get perverse cravings to visit freezing libraries. It also grows bigger with data collection. You go around interviewing people, but as the foetus gets bigger it becomes a burden. Typing transcripts for long hours at a go gives people backaches. Sometimes the foetus threatens to dislodge itself from the uterine lining. That happens when the existential crisis strikes and you don't know why you are doing what you are doing and you want to rip up all your work. You threaten to abort.

Maybe the foetus eventually behaves (you finally figure out a framework to organise your data with). Maybe the foetus doesn't behave (writer's block).

But with time the foetus grows, and then the water bag bursts. (1 week before the deadline and you still have 8000 out of 12000 words unwritten). Eventually you give birth, with the tearing of hair and ripping of guts and bloody mess (the partners you dumped, the family members you snapped at, the social life you killed, the all-nighters you pulled).

I'm still at the asexual reproduction stage and this is what it looks like.

quartet conjuration

When shall we four meet again? In thunder lightning or in rain? (all in abundance in recent days.)

it's over it's over it's over.

I didn't know how burdened I was with the cello exam until after the cello exam, I felt I could bounce with my cello. And I was grinning foolishly at everyone after that, from the stewards to the person at the Old Chang Kee stall, to the taxi driver. But I discovered it's not good to keep smiling so as not to invite strange stares, from various people.

Actually the grinning started before that, when I registered with the steward. Because I knew my agony was about to end. (The steward is the one who copies down your IC number, collects your program notes and makes sure your chair is of the right height etc.) So I started talking to the steward to pass time, and found out some of her life history, and fished her unhappy experiences (this morning) out of her. She was adamant that I kept absolutely mum about it. It apparently is a deep dark secret she doesn't want anyone to know about, and I'm wondering why I got dumped with it. Well maybe I shouldn't have asked.

Tons of deadlines of different sorts coming up but I'm not feeling too stressed or anything - after the whole busyness since the holidays and SingaPopera, this is the first time in a while that I don't have any performances - just teaching. And that is absolute heaven.

the lost

New KoolPurpleSkool term starts for me next week. I self-declared the past two weeks as break because I was still sorting out the new students and the horrid timetable changes - now the lunch times are staggered for the different grades. Sorting that out is tons worse than bidding for modules.

This post is in memory of Chatterbox who has (thankfully) stopped lessons. He must be flipping out. He was the cutest of them all, and the most entertaining, with new stories of his crushes and crushees every week.

At the beginning, they came in a pair.

And then there was one.

"But why! I'm such a good boy.."

Because this is what he is normally like, most of the time.

this is just fine

One day before my cello exam, and I'm listening to Sibelius Violin Concerto just for kicks' sake, in memory of all the violinists I know.

I am also discovering the wonders of Bluetooth, very late I know, but my ibook was not bluetooth-friendly unlike my MacBook. So now I am editing funky music files so I can have new ringtones. Well, 'funky' might be an overstatement - now I have K pop and Dvorak Piano Quartet in my phone. This might encourage me to keep my phone on audible mode more often.

The ipod touch is gorgeous but it looks too much like the iphone, although when they both make their way here I'll probably get...neither. I want the ipod classic, if only because it has 40 hours of battery life for music. My 4th gen ancient iPod has a measly 4 hours now (it used to be 8 hours).

I swore I would never allow my blog to degenerate into the mire of stream-of-consciousness-ness, and the chronicalling of non-eventful events, but after weeks and months and stress, I deserve a break from having to piece things together in coherent thematically-focused posts. I am saving brain cells for the many essays coming my way.

Now is the appropriate time to show my sentiments behind this post, albeit in the face of another.



His face is totally kick-ass huh.

no more questions already

Am generally too tired to do anything so I decided to set up my MacBook. It's cool. The screen is brighter, but it's harder to type, and harder to do the mouse clicking thing. They gave a free wireless mouse but I haven't gotten down to using it yet, because of the big "Microsoft" on it.

It's raining heavily.

I spent 1 hour of my free day sitting in an office going through the most painfully inane details of some application form. I also found out I have to start my lit review for my thesis, among the many other things to do. I carefully filed that away in one dark corner of my mind, an area that is expanding with every new thing I have to do but have not started on.

Just before I left the room, she said the most random thing.

"I feel sad to lose you to music."

After getting past how weird it sounded, I still didn't know what to say so I didn't say anything. And she just rambled,

"I know you have other interests, and social work is just an undergraduate degree...*makes dismissive motions with hands*
...but I'm not talking about social work per se, you could always become an academic or something..."

The ellipses were audible.

And with every second of non-response it was getting increasingly awkward.

So I started talking about the annoying MCYS woman, and how if doing social work means I'll screw myself up like her, I would kill myself first. She looked faintly amused. And then I made a hasty exit to avoid anymore questions.

This is the second time she's talking about this, and it just reinforced again the whole 'what am i doing in social work' feeling.

death and life

This is my last post from my iBook. From tomorrow I shall be using my black MacBook. Impulse buy at Comex. Retail therapy is absolutely necessary when I've been working myself to death.

Plus I bought this Phiten titanium-infused cloth strap/necklace/bracelet thingy because it apparently does wonders for vibrato and reduces numbness and aches in arms and whatever part you put the strap on. (last two words are not to be considered together as a noun.) If I'm going to do practice marathon this week I'll probably need it, if not for the real benefits at least for the placebo effect.

My weekly check on my cello teacher yielded the same response

"Lisabet! Am still not ok...*audible pout*"

Well at least she's still alive.

That is more than I can say for what I'll become at the end of this week.