tell me about it

While walking to the staff bathroom, I looked down at the parade square where I noticed my Literature class having PE. And when my student looked up at the second floor and saw me looking at them, he broke into an impromptu rendition of Kurt’s ‘All The Single Ladies’ dance from Glee.

Oh dear.

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Hong Kong in March, Penang and Tokyo in June, and hopefully (hopefully!) Israel and Turkey in December. Yay! Sorry Jas – Melbourne holiday shelved till post-baby years. Stay in Melbourne! I’ll visit some day! :D

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I’ve had this problem for ages but it comes and goes and it seems like right now it’s here to stay. Even when I was in JC there would be times when my eyes would be red, swollen, and teary in the morning when I woke up. My eyelashes get crusted shut and the skin around my eyes feels raw and painful. Occasionally it would get so bad that my eye(s) would be completely puffy and swollen shut. No amount of eyedrops helped. A few years ago another doctor prescribed me antihistamine eyedrops and those really helped – but only after the fact, and only if the eye was mildly red and teary. If the eye was completely monstrous, the eyedrops didn’t help. And now it’s happening again – red, raw, painful itchy teary eyes in the morning.

I’ve wiped my bedside table and bed down, swept the floor religiously, cleaned the ceiling fan, changed the bedsheets – nothing works. I still get the eye thing. And it doesn’t happen when I snooze on the couch – only on my own bed, and even if I’m only taking a two hour nap!

A friend and my mom said it might be my powdered detergent – a doctor once told her that liquid detergent is more hypoallergenic than powdered – but the other thing that helps me is to place a damp facetowel over my eyes while I sleep, and I wash my towels in the same detergent.

What gives? :(

I read on a website that overusing antihistamines makes you develop a need for it and also lessens the effects and I can’t have that. I’m taking antihistamines almost three times a week for allergies – rhinitis, eyes. It’s getting to the point where I feel dependent on pseudoephedrine to get through the day. God bless whoever made Zyrtec and Telfast and De-cold, but I can’t be taking meds so often. Sigh.

What do I have to do? Wash the bed in Dettol?

Yesterday in class I was reminding my kids about the importance of using EITHER British spelling OR American, and to be consistent about it. So my kids asked, “Is recognize spelt with an S or a Z in British?”

I replied, “Ess is British, Zee is American.”

To which one student smartly responded, “Oh no, ‘cher…Ass is American. Arse is British.”

Time is passing ridiculously quickly! It’s almost the end of January and we’ll soon be celebrating our 5th month of marriage. Tralala. So far so good! :D

We’re making plans (or, haha, I’m making plans) for our June holiday. After what our babied-up friends have told us (go on long expensive wild holidays while you’re still babyless!), we’ve decided to make the most of our babyfree years and travel to places that at least our budget allows. We’re debating between Tokyo and Melbourne!

Personally I’d prefer Melbourne simply because I’m dying to spend some happy afternoons with Jas and Kathryn and other Melbourne friends. Also I’ve been longing to go to Australia for the longest time and finally, finally it seems like it’s the right time to go. BUT, if we do make the trip in June, it would be winter. Blahhhhhhhhh. When shops close at 5pm and ironically the penguins aren’t as active on Philip Island and it’s just going to be bloody cold (although that’s really quite the fun part)(I never learn – I get so miserably cold sometimes but the minute I get back to SG I’m longing for cold weather again). I want to try skiing and I want to see the Twelve Apostles (or what’s left of them). I want to eat gelato and I want to see all the things that make my Ozzie friends not want to come home.

Tokyo is the other option and might actually be a bit more affordable I think in terms of doing things – eating would be fantastic but not knowing a word of Japanese except, er, “arigato” is not going to help either one of us very much. I picture ourselves ending up frustrated and pointing at things and all. Then again, my first years in Bangkok I had no clue of Thai either and I got along just fine!

You can tell I’m a bit more enthusiastic about Australia although the thought of Japan also perks me right up. I would like to do both, haha, but unfortunately the life of a teacher dictates the impossibility of traveling well and often and during non-peak season. BAH.

1. Frying pan
2. Pyrex casserole dish
3. Wooden spoon and frying thing
4. WMF pots
5. Convection oven
6. Spatula
7. Big metal mixing bowl
8. Philips handheld blender
9. Herb and spice rack
10. Rice cooker

I am utterly bewildered by the huuuuuuuuge selection of wedding photos I am suddenly deluged with!

I am freezing! FREEZING. What a change from before :/ It’s down to 1 degree here and we had hailstones yesterday. Hailbloodystones! Tiny ones, but nonetheless ridiculously exciting if not for the fact that I’m shivering all the time and I don’t dare t go pee because your bare butt hitting an icy toilet seat is really not conducive to one’s wellbeing. Though a bursting bladder probably isn’t either :/

And there’s a terribly bad smell like a baby puked up two weeks’ worth of food in the room, and we can’t find the source of the baby puke. So we’ve endured the last few days with a stinky room. I’ve been spraying perfume all over. It’s really bad. Luckily the toilet here is quite nice. Actually all I require from the toilet is to be clean and to have really hot water and they’ve fulfilled both requirements, phew. The toilets in Yunnan were really terrible – this is fine.

Nanjing Massacre Museum tomorrow – I think that’s going to be very interesting.

I be hot and sweaty and gross in school :( Man these classrooms are sweltering. I don’t know how my students stand the heat, in their uniforms all day long. No wonder they’re always begging me to let them take off their ties. Lucky for me I’ve been acquiescing – now I know how they suffer! It’s broiling in here and I’m in a lined dress.

Oooooh I hear thunder. Please rain please!

Anyway I’m in school for meet-the-parents session. Ha – I’ve been the student, cowering in fear of what my teacher might tell my parents; now I’m the teacher, delivering the good and bad news to parents. One day hopefully I’ll be the parent being grumpy at having to attend these things.

So if the student hates it, and the teacher hates it, and the parent hates it…why do we have these things?

It’s going to be a late night. It’s only supposed to end past 7pm. Sniffle.

A reminder of mortality today. We’d gone for a free health screening a couple of weeks ago – civil servant entitlement apparently. Nothing more than a quick blood pressure test and drawing of a three small vials of blood for some basic tests. Blood sugar levels etc. I opted for an extra test for cervical cancer. So anyhoo my colleague got a call today from the medical people and apparently out of a normal 5 for cancer markers, her stomach area registered a 5.6. And she’s really young, really sporty, and has two sons. She’s going in for a checkup to see – they said it could possibly just be an infection. But it’s so scary. I really hope she’ll be okay.

Off to Nanjing tomorrow. I haven’t packed nor have I changed money. Gyarrrrrh.

It’s really hard to watch my babies grow up. I’ve had them for the last two years and it’s funny to think how intimidated by them I was at first – especially the girls who were so poseur ah lian, combing hair in class, talking back at me, challenging me in class. But now those are the two that snuggle up to me the most in terms of attention and affection-seeking, and I have a terribly soft spot for my whole batch of Normal Technical children. They even call me Mummy. How do I not love them? :/

They’ve officially graduated from school though they’re still doing their NT national final examination, and I get a bit panicky and afraid wondering who on earth is going to take care of them after they leave the school. When they go to ITE. Who’s going to understand them and love them and protect them? How can they possibly be allowed to grow up? They’re all teenagers, on the cusp of adulthood – most are older than 16 already. They swagger about and talk big about things that they don’t really understand. But in reality they have such childlike hearts and minds and many of them have such fragile emotions as they don’t get much in the way of affection at home. Which explains why I’ve become surrogate mother. Aargh it’s so silly because they’re not even my kids but their growing pains are etched on my own heart. I love them to bits.

I know the best thing for them is to go out and experience the world – of all children these are the ones who need to understand hard knocks and how to cope in a rough world. They’re the ones who are largely going to survive with simple jobs and menial work and probably won’t be super well-off (unless they go into the beauty industry and become fabulous hairdressers or makeup artists etc). They’ll need to know how to live with what they have and cope with problems that I have difficulty comprehending. So I know it’s best for them to be…released into the wild, as it were, to learn to deal with the real world, to recognize authority, to learn responsibility and accountability. Sigh. But I’m so afraid of letting them fall down. I can only pray they learn how to pick themselves up and go at it again.

It’s so hard to let go of my babies. How on earth did my mother cope? :(

Doped up on medicine. Wheeeeeeesplat.

The Straits Times did a bang-up job misrepresenting the situation. For the record, our insurers have already compensated the church for the damage, and our insurers are now suing SMU’s insurers to compensate THEM for compensating US. So whether our insurer wins the case or not it’s got nothing to do with us as we’ve already been compensated for the damage a long time ago.

Technically the insurer does act on behalf of the client but it’s really got no impact on us whatever the outcome of the case is, because it’s our insurer who will benefit, not us.

I think the case now is merely to determine if the SMU contractor is really at fault and how much the insurer can claim back from him.

I’m not sure why this is only making news now when Tomlinson Hall was pulled down maybe 6, 7 years ago? I can’t remember. I suppose legal gears move slowly.