Picking myself up.

 Windsurfing's been pretty demoralizing ever since I got back from the travelling. I can't remember if I'd took so much effort to deal with my sail prior to exchange but it's so fucking tiring to get it out of the water these days. Everyone's been really nice about it, telling me that it's only cause' I haven't been sailing much recently and the wind's really strong for the past few times that I've been down but, deep down, I know those are just really lousy excuses for my poor performance and it only makes me feel much worse.

I confided in Chubs today and asked him to give me a no-nonsense 'prep talk' of sorts to get me going, and that he did - no sarcasm (one of the few rare occasions) and just telling me very plainly what is it that I need to do. I can't help but feel very appreciative of his words, even though he's probably said that a million times to people who felt like giving up windsurfing at one point or other.

It makes me feel terrible from inside out, the constant falling down, struggling with my heavy sail and what-not, but I'm going to do this. Come next week, I'll down-size to a slightly smaller and lighter sail and see if things pick up from there... and I'll probably have to keep telling myself that I can do that!

Okay - end of emo rant.

Time for something light-hearted that's in a more chronological order now.

Caught Horrible Bosses with Jenny and Mat on Monday and Jennifer Aniston's duper hot in it, even though she's already in her forties (seriously, you can't tell too right?). It was funny, but I didn't think it was that good like what so many people said to me.

Celebrated Siao's birthday on 1st September with the primary school clique (the actual day - digressing, Teachers' Day now falls on the first Friday of every month woohoo to long weekends!) by having laksa steamboat at the row of shophouses between Serangoon Central and Kovan.

It was a great catch-up session, as usual, though I can't help but wish that we'd meet up a little more other than for birthday meals. There's just that little selfish part in me that hopes that everyone will be less involved with growing up so that there's more time to do silly things before we have to stop altogether. Anyway, I'm really glad that everyone's doing well now and glad to see all of them again (sans Aileng).

Happy birthday Siaos!

And just yesterday, I visited the national museum with Shiqi and David for some exhibition that I did not really pay much attention to :x It was nice to look at the permanent exhibits again (I really like the Food and Fashion halls), and we also checked out the works of Abbas (an Iranian photojournalist) who had some really powerful black/whites.

Following pictures taken by my new phone, the Galaxy S2 (loving it)! I used the app Pudding Camera but I really don't like how the pictures come out blurry more often than not bleargh, because it's not really doing justice to the 8-megapixel built-in camera.

 

#1 Faceless. One of the twelve faceless figures holding on to strings that are tied to 12 bright-red helium-filled ballons.

#2 Salted egg yolks

#3 Large pebbles

#4 Tok tok bike

#5 Ribbon Tea

#6 Tok tok noodles

#7 Tabao

 

#8 Vintage poster

#9 Same same, but different

#10 Feel it

#11 Remnants of WWII

No more excuses for self from tomorrow onwards.

I don't like dried figs

I pick them out of those bags of dried mixed nuts because I don't like the taste of them. I've tried to convince myself otherwise but nope, that doesn't seem to be working. Not especially when I've sunk my teeth into a couple of the rotten-tasting ones; tastes just like tasteless, crumbly wood if I may describe it this way. 

pick-outs from today

I have absolutely no idea what the fresh ones taste like, and I'd love to try a fresh fig some day. Hopefully, they don't taste as horrible as the dried ones.

#4 My sibling

Didi. 

Or YF, as you may already have heard me call him countless times here and in real life.

When we were much younger (like more than 10 years ago), we slept in the same room in our 3-room HDB flat; our beds were made of a two tier wooden frame and the lower one had small roller wheels attached to the bottom so that it could be more easily pulled out. Looking back now, I think those nights were some of the best nights of my life, growing up. Before we slept each night for most nights, we would sometimes wrestle and fight over meaningless or petty issues - there was once where YF used his yellow power ranger figurine to knock out one of my teeth (without intention to actually), laugh at our own stupid jokes, share funny/interesting stories about our school lives - usually about some cute guy or girl, talk gossip about some of our relatives and discussed some of the kiddy big dreams (not in the literal sense) that we had for our future.

Those were such good times.

After moving over to our new place where we each have our own room now, we've more or less stopped talking as much as we used to (not to say that we don't anymore). Nowadays, I try to annoy the hell out of him as much possible by clinging onto his arm tightly or just pretending to be his girlfriend while we're outside. He loveeeeeeees it, not. Hahah.

He's currently in his final year of study at SP, doing something that my Dad used to do in his younger days. I'm really happy for him that he's going to places most of his same-age peers will not even consider going because it's just too damned tough out there for most of them.

I love didi very much... though I really hate it when he uses vulgar language on me these days. YF's matured a lot over the last few years and even though we're probably not as close as we used to be,  I'm still immensely proud of him (I've never told him that because I'm too paiseh to). 

Probably need a bit of this now.

Something that yf left on my bed not long after I got back from India. He quite cute hor?

Anyway, just want to share this video that I've been playing everyday now for the past 3 days (ever since I came across it on Youtube on Tuesday) just to listen to the beautifully haunting music and to catch glimpses of giant shoals darting about in the clear waters; the elegant movement somewhat synchronized to the music.

Just too beautiful.

5日台北游 - CKS Memorial Hall and Ximending

Haven't been posting much because of teaching practice but now that it's over, I guess it's time to resume my updates more regularly. 

Have really been enjoying my time not doing anything of particular importance and just lazing around for the past few days; it'll be like that for another week before Boracay, following which will be the opening of a new semester at school. I feel like I've been on the longest holiday of my life, so, I'm really looking forward to the start of school!

Anyhow, I'll be sharing some pictures that I've taken on my short trip to Taipei while I was still away on exchange. Nothing that you've not seen in my Facebook album, but with more in-depth descriptions here. Here goes.

Taipei happened right after my last night of deadline-rushing in Hong Kong. I thought that booking my flight on the day of my last assignment deadline would serve as motivation for me to get my work completed more promptly - lesson learnt: it doesn't really work for procrastinators like me, never going to do that again. I was so knackered at the end of the first day it felt terrible.

#1 HKIA.

After checking in at the hostel (TaiwanMex) on the first day, I took the metro (also known as MRT or 捷運) and headed down to the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Mall (國立中正紀念堂). The map looked a little confusing to me initially because it was all in Chinese (not that I couldn't understand, just felt a little disoriented) so I asked for directions from two locals and they were so helpful that I couldn't believe it at first. 

#2 National Concert Hall (國家音樂廳) at CKS Memorial Hall (國立中正紀念堂).

This memorial hall was erected in memory of the former president of Taiwan (or Republic of China), Chiang Kai-Shek (蔣介石), after he passed away in the 1970s.

#3 國立中正紀念堂. CKS Memorial Hall.

The memorial hall has four sides and an octagonal roof. 

#4 The Climb. 國立中正紀念堂. CKS Memorial Hall.

#5 國立中正紀念堂. CKS Memorial Hall.

The 89 steps on the 2 sets of white stairs that lead to the monument's main entrance represent CKS' age when he died, according to Wikipedia anyway. And yes, I did feel a little short of breath when I finally reached the top.

#6 Inside the main hall; large bronze statue of CKS.

#7 One of the two guards standing at the entrance of the memorial hall. Changing of guards take place every hour but I didn't manage to see that take place.

A few more pictures of the plaza where the monument is located:

#8 Liberty Square (自由廣場)

#9 Grandfather and grand-daughter duo who were feeding the pigeons just moments ago.

Decided to head down to Ximending (西門町) after to take a look at one of Taipei's most famous consumer district.

#10 Just missed my train.

#11 While waiting to leave CKS Memorial Hall Station

#12 阿宗麵線. Dig in!

Had my first taste of the greatly-famed Ah Zong Mee Sua (阿宗麵線) in Ximending and it was delicious! The vermicelli is broken into shorter strands so that it can be more easily eaten with a spoon, gravy/soup that the mee sua is soaked in is viscous and savoury, and the bits of intestine found in the bowl are really chewy. There were not too many people when I arrived late afternoon so service was really prompt; after all it's pre-cooked and all the stallholders had to do were to scoop them into a bowl to be served. I've heard how friends have raved about it but I had no idea what to expect; I wasn't even expecting the shop to not have any dining tables, not that it really mattered. Plastic stools were provided at the shop front, and there were a couple of rotating electric fans standing around to make the heat more bearable. 

Heard from a friend much later that this Ah Zong apparently made so much money with his mee sua that he was kidnapped a couple of times. Disclaimer - I don't know how true this hearsay is huh.

Literally translates to Frog Lays Eggs (photo grabbed from Google Images)

Other than the vermicelli, I also tried this drink with a very interesting name, 青蛙下蛋. Basically, the 'eggs' are very similar to the pearls that we find in bubble tea (tasting slightly less sweet). I had half my cup filled with 'frog eggs' (I thought that was a tad too much), and the other half filled with a syrupy liquid that wasn't too sweet. There was nothing mind-blowing about the drink honestly, it's one of those foods that you try only because the name makes it too interesting to give it a pass.

And that, kinda marked my first day in Taipei. 

I headed back to my hostel and concussed in bed after; woke up halfway through the night's sleep when I heard my uncle room-mate shuffling out of the room for a toilet break, but I managed to get back to sleep in a bit so all's good.

I can't help but feel a deep sense of dread waking up every morning at 6 after a slightly-longer-than-3-hour sleep, and I really hate to have to translate the lesson plans that I have in mind onto word documents and sending them to my CTs (one of whom is too busy to entertain me, most of the time anyway) for formality's sake. Oh, and not to mention feeling demoralized when CTs go through lesson reflections at the end of lessons; especially when everything that you thought wouldn't go wrong went wrong. 

Other than that, I'm getting better at speaking to my P4 class of 37 students and P2 class of 27 young children. I've been really lucky because both classes haven't been giving me too much problems (discipline-wise) and they're more or less responding better to the instructions that I've been giving them. I'm learning not to spoon-feed the kids so much like how our teachers used to, and my colleagues have been helpful in suggesting ways to do so. It's really not easy to try to remember everything that's been said and apply them in our lessons, but I'm getting the hang of it. I think.

No learning journey's ever going to be easy, and the same goes for whatever shit we're going through now. It's only going to be tougher this 5 weeks (and the 10 weeks next year) since we're all hoping for good grades, but once it's all over, things are going to be much easier and we'll be able to better enjoy the teaching process (amidst all that fire-fighting work) for sure.

Push on, everyone! :)

And so, my 6-month long break finally comes to an end

After spending some of the grandest times of my life in HK/Indonesia/China/Taiwan/India in the past 6 months, it's finally time to get down to some serious work, regretfully. The third installment (out of four) of our practicum 'debt' was dished out to us on Monday.

first-day-of-school outfit

So far, it's only been a week, but things are crazy enough to drive me up the wall. There seems to be an endless amount of lesson plans and presentation slides that have to be completed. It's the first time that we'll be receiving a grade for our efforts (or lack thereof) so it shouldn't come as a surprise that all of us are feeling so stressed up about the darned powerpoint slides, amongst many other things. 

I want to say that I'm coping well, but I probably won't say that now because I'm really not. Not for now anyway. Hopefully though, I'll be able to get used to the hang of things in another 2-3 days. 

As for now, all I want to do is let out a big scream.