Don't Bloody Piss Your Teacher Off!

I was kinda upset today, but at the same time I knew I might have been a tad sensitive about the whole issue. Maybe I'm taking work way too seriously. Hell, I ALWAYS take work seriously!

I gave my adult students an assignment last week for today's lesson. They have to bring their favourite English song each and then do a presentation on what the song is about, the mood it creates, how they can relate to the song etc...

There were 3 students in my class today. It was a Pre-Intermediate level. There was a Jewish couple and business owners, S and A, whom I really like and a nice young lady, D, who is a marketing executive in a medical company.

S went first and we listened to a love song of her choice. She then talked about how the song was the first to be played at her wedding and that for 10 good years and still counting, it has been the ringing tone used everytime her husband calls her. That's why I like the couple, especially S. It's not true that only the students learn in class, teachers do learn from the students too - that I strongly believe. S and A showed me the beauty of 20 over years of married life. I love the way they look at each other and tease each other and laugh. S, especially just radiates of positivity and love. They taught me alot about life and beauty of love and family. S makes me laugh alot and vice versa. She's no dainty woman, she speaks her mind and carries her full figure with such confidence and a dash of arrogance.

My goodness I'm really getting carried away here lol...Anyways, next came D who unsurprisingly, didn't bring any song. D's always busy with work and yes she has a good career going for her, going to congresses all over the cities non stop. She used S's fancy phone and chose a song from there and played it in class during her presentation. It was my all time favourite, She by Elvis Costello.

Obviously unprepared, she went on to say how the song was all about a woman and how it seemed the singer was really in love with her. She continued saying it was a lovely love song and the woman was very lucky indeed.

During presentations, I always try to get my students to talk more because most would just get 'stuck' or be satisfied to give a short and simple speech. They usually get discouraged coz of their limited knowledge of English but this is something I always push for them to overcome. I always aim to boost their confidence in conversing in English and the only way is to PRACTICE!

I asked D questions like is ıt scary to love somebody so much and to elaborate her opinion on that. She replied yes that one shouldn't go crazy in love. Yup, exactly one sentence. I then asked her if women are usually victims in love compared to the men and whether men are emotionally stronger when it comes to love.

She looked at me exasperated and said, 'I am boring.' I knew she meant 'I am bored'. Smiling, I asked her why and she said it was all too much on love and emotions. I was pissed but one thing I learnt from my humble teaching experience is to never show negative emotions especially to adult students coz some would not think twice to use that against you.

After the last presentation by A, again smiling, I thanked them for their efforts and sharing their opinions with me. Not really letting go of the issue, I told the students that if they don't like to talk about love, they can bring a different type of song to begin with, that there was no restrictions at all for the assignment and that was why I asked them to bring THEIR favourite songs. On that note, I just settled my eyes on D for a couple of seconds and smiled. Oh how deceiving smiles can be!

I know I might take this a little too personally but nothing irritates me more than having students telling me they are bored. IN MY CLASS. Turkish students are outspoken and they are frank. They say what they wanna say, period. I took this personally coz I am rather a perfectionist. I MUST be that sought after teacher, the best one in the school. My lessons are usually filled with laughters, save to say they're not just my own.

Another thing that annoys me was the fact that teachers DO work their asses off and students DON'T realise that! We don't sashay to class, batting our eyelashes and just pick a topic on the spot and just do it! We freaking plan our topic and battle with our inner selves debating whether the topic will engage the type of students that we have. We plan our lesson plans thoroughly and are always thinking of fresh ideas, epecially for ADULT students cos they normally hate repetition unlike children, who need them in order to drill new info in their heads. We constantly do research coz well... we are EXPECTED to have answers, it's like we are the walking Wikipedia.

Thus when we ask you to do a gawd damn assignment, just bloody do it! It doesn't take 1 hour to find your bloody favourite song from your stack of cds or mp3, if it does I don't think that's REALLY your favourite song is it?! So don't freaking tell me you are bored of talking about love and emotions when you played SHE BY ELVİS COSTELLO in my class! Geez that song always nearly brings me to tears what else can I ask about pertaining to it, GLOBAL WARMING?!!

Later on during our break, all of us had 'cay' (Turkish for tea) at the balcony and D said,'Omg, we've attended this course for 6 weeks already!' I looked at her and went like,'And.........?' She continued saying when the other songs were being played earlier she couldn't even pick up the words of the lyrics. -.- I didn't know why but I took it personally again, wasn't that like saying omg, 6 weeks learning English with THIS teacher and I couldn't even pick up some songs' lyrics!

I put down my cay and that was it at the balcony I kinda lectured them, showing I meant business. I didn't even care that S and A are much much older than me, I wanted to have my say and I did. To address D's concern, I told her random songs are the worst way to gauge her capability in English. Most songs are not grammatically accurate and they use a lot of slangs and short forms in order to accomodate the melody and rhythm as well. That was why Jane Austen was never a songwriter nor Eminem, an author. I told them all if they want to gauge their comprehension, they should do it through the proper channel - listen to BBC, you can never go wrong.

I asked each and everyone of them if they felt they've improved from the 1st lesson till now and all of them said yes so that was good, I kinda breathed again lol. I didn't stop there though, I went on and on like I was lecturing my child. All eyes were glued on me and for some funny reason, I felt as though they were all getting motivated listening to me! They were nodding passionately in agreement to what I was saying, even D. They all looked serious but inspired. Wow. Amazing. To think I could come up with some 'inspiring' damn speech just because I was pissed off.

It's definitely easy to blame the teachers for your lack of improvement but seriously, we DON'T have magic wands, you can't make you a whiz by or within a period of time! If you can't help yourselves, neither can we. We can only afford to teach but you guys should work hard at it too.

Before I ended the class, I divided the board into 3 sections and told each of them to take a section and handed them each a marker. I gave them vocabulary quiz on what I've covered before. The whole board was covered with little writings. I went through their mistakes, which was quite a significant number and before I wrapped up my lesson, I smiled and told them all those countless words on the board didn't even add up to 1/5 of the vocab I've taught them so far, for the past 6 weeks so get moving and revise EVERY SINGLE thing covered coz there'll be a surprise test or quız at next lesson. Now are you gonna piss the teacher again?? *roll eyes*




xo;
V

Vampires Amongst Us?

Do you believe in vampires? Yes ladies, wouldn't you like to think there are a bunch of Edward Cullens walking around in this planet and the guys, don't think I don't know about your fantasies of sexy vampires with long raven hair and cleavage spilling out of their corsets!





Whatever you vision of how vampires may be, have you ever pondered about their existence? Are there vampires roaming around in midst of us human beings?

I always surf and read in bed before I sleep. Old habit. I read about anything and everything. Last night I read about an interview with a so called real life vampire. What brought about this whole vampire phenomenon? Well... you won't believe it but it was actually Kim Kardashian. (I can imagine lotsa of you going, "Huh??")

I was watching Kim Kardashian on the Jay Leno show yesterday on TV. I told Em that Kardashian told the whole world she's a size 2 (err..yea, then I must be a Size -10). Em said she probably just said it for publicity stunt, after all there's no such thing as bad publicity. Em further commented that there was a Turkish singer, Mustafa Topaloglu, who claimed he was an alien. I laughed my head off at such ridiculousness but curiosity got the better of me thus I started googling this Mustafa guy. Unfortunately almost all of the sites about it are in Turkish. Thus I started wondering about the existence of vampires.

I recalled watching a Conan O'Brien's talkshow before where he invited a young man who claimed he was a real life vampire. It was such a dramatic start as couple of men carried what looked like a heavy coffin, up the stage. I was in stitches when the 'vampire' had to unglamourously nudge and push the coffin open before he made his way up the stage! He was even wearing a pair of fake fangs! hahahaha... Needless to say Conan was kinda dissing and poking fun at him throughout which I must admit, I couldn't fault him since it was so obvious that this guy was DELUSIONAL and moronic.

Anyways all that got me googling about vampires last night. I found a site where the writer interviewed a so called real life vampire who was born in 1712 Charleston S.C. The writer said he has never met the vampire before (interview was done via email and telephone) and it was up to the readers' discretion whether to believe or not.

I must admit the interview seemed pretty convincing. Questions poured in by readers and the vampire agreed to answer them as well. I was surprised that lots of readers had glitters in their eyes, they seemed to be so enchanted by this vampire (a he by the way). Many published their emails (one even stupidly gave his/her phone number) on the public site asking the vampire to contact them and extending friendships to the vampire. Couple of them asked the vampire ways and means on how to be one as well. It all sounded so ridiculous to me, the readers more than the vampire I must say as they seemed to be worshiping the ground of the vampire! Weird.


Anyways here are some of the interesting 'facts' that I've learnt from the site:

1) Vampires are not created from birth. They started off as humans and are 'made' into vampires by other vampires. What exactly does 'made' entails, I have no idea and wasn't answered by the vampire.

2) They CAN go out during the day, even under the sunlight. Only the newly made vampires tend to be a little sensitive of the sunlight but generally, no sunlight can perish them like what most movies seem to portray.

3) They MUST feed on blood from a BREATHING human not some blood bank nor blood off animals.

4) The puncture marks made when they drink the blood out of humans will quickly be sealed by their saliva.

5) Most vampires aren't evil. They kill for survival.

6) They can hear 100 times better than humans and can read humans' thoughts. They also just have to glance at a house to know whether anyone is inside and what the person is doing. Basically they have heightened senses.

7) Some of them have human lovers who are aware of their identities.

8) Once they are 'made' into vampires, their looks will be preserved. They will retain that physical appearance for hundreds of years. Even if they go for a haircut, it will grow briskly to the length they had when they were 'made'.

9) They can be killed by having their heads chopped off or their hearts taken out.

10) They don't readily 'make' other humans into vampires.

11) Most vampires are found in USA with a lower number in Europe.

12) One vampire who had previously killed another fellow vampire is currently believed to be residing in.................. Turkey!!!! *shudders*

13) Holy water and garlic do NOT work on them so sprinkle all you want and get all smelly-breathed.





Ok that's all I can remember offhand. This morning, I woke up and found myself typing away 15 questions to ask the err... vampire on that same site. My questions have yet to be published (needs to be approved by moderator) but I'll update here if they've been published and answered by the err...vampire.

Here are my questions:

1) Do vampires have sense of humour and amusement? Having lived hundreds of years, I can imagine you must have heard the oldest joke in the book and who knows, can actually guess the coming punchline of a story.

2) What about I.Ds? Do you guys carry i.ds or any form of identification documents? If you're really living your lives like an average human being, you must have been asked for your i.ds at some point of time. What about passports? How do you get them?

3) You talked about killing people before. What happened when the bodies were discovered? What was it classfied under, did it baffle the cops?

4) Have you ever killed someone to feed yourself and stumbled upon a newspaper report about his/her death the next morning? Was there guilt in you or something you feel had to happen for survival?

5) If a teenager with active acne were made into a vampire, does it mean he/she will look like that his/her entire life - acne at the same spots for hundreds and hundreds of years? (Hey I couldn't resist asking!!;p)

6) Do you like how the media portrays vampires as sex symbols? Do you find it amusing or offensive and ignorant?

7) Does life get boring having lived it all?

8) What is the best invention ever in your whole entire life?

9) White men can't dance (or so they said). Can vampires dance?

10) As a vampire, do you have any phobia? (aside from life after death) Do you have phobia like us humans do - of cockroaches, heights, spiders etc?

11) Do you know of any celebrity vampires?

12) HOW do a vampire make another vampire? What process does it entail?

13) You claimed vampires can hear the thoughts of human beings. Supposedly if you take public transportation or so and just hearing thoughts of random people, a) what usually goes in their heads? b) What was the most touching thing you've heard?

14) If vampires keep on multiplying and humans are sacrificed to feed them, what will happen to the world? Won't it be exhausted of its inhabitants?

15) What are all the things that vampires and humans have in common?



As you can see, either I have too much time on my sleeve, too curious a human being or that I simply need a freaking hobby.

I am open to the possibility of the existence of vampires, however I'm not quite 'sold' now. The world is certainly more exciting if they really do exist but a huge chunk of me is cynical as well.

What do YOU think?




xo;
V

August - My Last Month!!!!!

Here's the gist of it - I am leaving. Not from this earth no, but finally stepping out of a country I have spent 27 years of my life in! Not to sound like an ingrate or something, I love Singapore, truly I do. Sure all countries have its assets and flaws, I sure do have my grouses on my homeland, no doubt about that but I do give credit for this almost perfect little country of mine.

Perhaps this last month here, I will do major contemplation on this country I call HOME. I've never been known for my patriotism. I have never spent a cent buying Singapore's flag to hang up for all to see during our National Day nor would I do it even if I got one for free! Yes, yes shame on me.

Here is what a typical flat in Singapore looks right around National Day:

I don't wish to be sued for unauthorized picture *horrors* thus this is credited to keropok.com as highlighted on the bottom left hand of the picture hehe... Awesome display of patriotism there isnt it?

So aside from a sudden strange passion I have for my country, I know I will miss my friends a bunch too. Great that I don't have many! haha... I am certainly not an easy person to get along with, I sure do have my charms when I'm in a good mood, HOWEVER, as typical Geminis do, we are pretty much temperamental as it is! Another I rather stay weekends at home alone than going out with 'friends' whom I don't quite fancy.

I guess it's good and it's bad as well... I am pretty much honest about my feelings be it resentment or love. If I don't like you, chances are I won't bother going out with you or being nice to you and that I truly see you as a waste of my time. I do have a friend with wide circle of friends and I credit it to her good naturedness and also to the fact she bothers to go out with people whom she don't quite fancy and blending in with them. Again, I do not see anything wrong with it, I mean whatever rocks your day really, just that I find it too tiresome to put on a facade and personally, I feel it's as though I'm lowering myself just to have company. That, my friend, I see as a weakness - to be dependent on something/someone. What about you? Quality vs Quantity. What's your take? Do you enjoy the friends you hang around with? Or do you just keep the few gems in your life?

Speaking of friends, 2 special ladies I wish to show off:




They are both on the left (SY) and middle (T). Im the one on the right. Speaking of right and left, if not for the mole on my left hand, I would have no clear idea on how to distinguish these two. Thus if I'm in the cab and the driver asked for direction to my destination, chances are I'll do a quick glance at my mole for reassurance before directing the driver to turn right...or left. I never have problems with forward and backward though hahaha...

Aaah don't we just look like we swallowed some orange light bulbs or something? The way we freaking GLOW in the pics!!!! Aaaah the wonder of photoshop. I'm a designer in profession thus photoshop is kinda my best friend. Not to say, it totally diminish my problem skin (in a false hope way) so I look absolutely forgiving, leaning towards fantastic in pictures! How I wish they'll invent some photoshop machine as well!!!! I'll be the first in the queue to snap it!