meet the new boss, same as the old boss

today marks the beginning of 9 days of pure torture as i get a taste of what it's like to go to work every single day of the week. and on top of that i get the bonus of having a "boss" that i really, really loathe with a passion.


here's absconded future reporting, from sunny serangoon, singapore:

pet peeve no.1
being stuck in a train like a can of sardines at rush hour in the morning - highly toxic gaseous mixture of over-perfumed people and sweaty douches pose serious health risks.

pet peeve no.2
changing to the north-east line at outram park station - i'd rather get stabbed in the eye with a pencil, period.

pet peeve no.3
staying awake on red bull - i swear this stuff will kill me some day.

pet peeve no.4
unresponsive subject - after days of painstaking tutoring, subject (student) still dumb as a nut, possessing the brain capacity of a snail, with memory worse than a sloth.

pet peeve no.5
having to see subject every day for the next 8 days - i'm doing it for pure materialistic reasons and nothing else. oddly enough it feels like charity work. subject doesn't deserve my energy.


that's all from absconded future. until next time.


+listening to: won't get fooled again by the who

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one for the road

bacon and eggs and cereal for breakfast, wonderful. i'm really starting to enjoy this home alone thing. but... i've been getting stomach cramps all day.


i guess it's the weather. it's the first time that the weather has turned depressing in a long time. i can't even remember the last time the sky looked this dull. i guess i'll have to get used to it, since the winter in illinois will be void of decent sunshine for most days and it will snow like there's no tomorrow.

wednesday is officially the daftest day of the week for me, and somehow all the bad things seem to happen on wednesdays. i shall not start ranting about my job at this juncture, in fear of sounding rather mellowdramatic but seriously, it really gets on my nerves. plus the endless train rides and going up and down the northeast line from one end to the other, it can get real depressing.

midweek always seems the most ambiguous day of all the seven days. on one hand most people are counting down to the coming weekend after having just settled into the mundane rhythm of their meaningless lives, and on the other hand they are constantly reminded of the fact that it's only been a couple of days since the last one.

anyways i've already started chatting online with some buddies and planning some extensive road trips for next spring break! or even possibly as early as this christmas. and to think school hasn't even started yet and i'm not even in uncle sam territory, i'm kinda proud of myself.

why can't every day be one of those really happy and sunny ones? but then again i guess we all need some of those gloomy, rainy days to remind us of just how sweet the good ones are.

i wanna be a free bird.


+listening to: free bird by lynard skynard

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new outlook!

i'm dead stoned, but it was so infinitely fun that i'd do it over and over and over again. i haven't woken up at 6.30 in the morning for a while now, needed a huge kick in the ass just to haul myself out of bed, not to mention resisting the dying urge to pulverize my alarm clock.


it's the first full-day holiday session and it went great! other than a bit of a delay coz i insisted the boys have a longer warm-up, everything else went just according to plan. though a few inevitably dozed off during the video session. and the unforeseen shitty weather in the afternoon reduced us to playing touch in the heavy rain. to hell with the lightning alert.

what i thought was gonna be a difficult thing was actually quite effortless to be honest and i can really see myself enjoying this one. it just takes a bit more thinking to come up with more creative drills i guess that don't necessarily strangle everyone and still achieve the intended objective.

now i feel like a real coach. previously there was just too much frustration in me that i was screaming my head off half the time. today was just as intense but everyone seemed more energetic somehow. i guess it's because of the holidays, and everyone's fresh in the morning. school really does suck all the life out of you.


+listening to: when i first kissed you by extreme

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wednesday

it's wednesday again. why?

the perfect week somehow always seems to be ruined by a shitty wednesday. it's as if wednesday for me is destined for misery. and it never fails to amaze me why some of the worst storms i've ever seen occurs on wednesdays - the only day of the week that i have to travel afar. today, again, is such a day. worse still, wednesday also means tutoring my least favourite student.

so i was all wet by the time i got to the mrt station, even though my house is only about 200 meters from the station. and it didn't really help that there was a huge wet spot on the front of my pants. even i thought i wet myself.


then there was the dreadful journey to this ludicrous estate on the other side of singapore, where it is rather inaccessible by public transport to a poor lad like me. because, frankly, everyone there is so lazy they seem to do everything with their fancy cars. even things like going down the driveway to pickup the mail. well, maybe it's because they've all got such obscene mansions that their mailboxes is like 10 miles away from their doors.

and you'll know when you're there because they've got every store imaginable just for their own little estate, but things are that little bit fancier there. the water from their taps are apparently not water, i think they call it elixir of life over there. the air they breathe is enriched with platinum dust, health benefits unknown. they seem to have cold storage stores like us regular joes, but upon close inspection, the sign says "cold storage SPECIALTY", and you're only allowed inside if you have a net worth exceeding a trillion dollars. even the shopping trolley's are bigger in size, and plated in solid gold. and you'd think people would try and steal it, oh no you're wrong, they can't even be bothered. why steal some lousy shopping cart plated in gold when your entire possession is plated in pure platinum, including the family pets and kids. now that's what i call taking the moral high ground.

and before i go absolutely insane, i must say that certain people are such gentlemen, whom i have much respect for. like alex and andreas' (my students) dad. so after an agonizing hour with alex repeating the same stuff we've done over the past few weeks. he doesn't remember a thing, neither did he do his homework, as usual. it feels like i'd be better off tutoring a rock.

and then finally when the agony is over and i look forward to tutoring andreas, who's a complete opposite of his brother, i was told he was on a school trip. but their dad generously remunerated me in full even though i didn't tutor andreas and he insisted that i take it even when i declined. i'm genuinely surprised by it.

argh... off to watch some more nonsensical dr. house. i need a serious pick-me-up. drowning myself in a bathtub of tequila would be heavenly, or some magical pill that could make wednesdays go away...


+listening to: night prowler by ac/dc

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wow

wow what a day. seems like my prayers have all been answered all at once. all the shit seem to be behind me.

woke up feeling something is amiss. i looked around and realised it was only 8 oclock. haven't seen the clock point at anything before 9 for a while. and then i realised that my cough is gone. what's left is only a little sore throat. it feels so good not to feel like you're gonna die any minute.

then there was the usual wednesday afternoon affair. alex didn't complete his homework as usual, but somehow this time he actually tried to do like half of it. i was genuinely surprised. and he paid his full attention the whole time. andreas was his usual well-behaved self with homework all done up for me to check, which leads me to wonder how can 2 brothers from the same family be so different.

the highlight of the day was definitely attending my godma's masters graduation ceremony. but before that i had to kill about an hour at PS waiting for my godbro to finish school before we go to the ceremony, and also contemplating whether to buy a t-shirt, which ended up with me recalling that i'm broke at the moment.

so the ceremony was really an eye opener. i saw an indian-american professor whose speech was so hilarious that he'd put russell peters to shame. and then my godma introduced me to her best friend/colleague who's a true blue (no pun intended) french lady but speaks a few languages fluently, among them CHINESE. i swear she speaks better chinese than i do and i was seriously floored, and ashamed of myself. and she's married to a chinese guy who's probably 10 years younger than her. what an interesting mix.

i haven't been this happy for a while, especially talking cock with my godbro. imagine sitting in a room full of "ang mohs" and you can simply make fun of them and say just about anything without giving a damn (we were speaking chinese of course).

i wish i could feel this good everyday...


+listening to: yellow ledbetter by pearl jam

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tired

it's been a long day and i've just reached home. dinner's cold, i don't feel like eating anymore.

i think it's the weather. the rain just dulls everything.

kinda annoyed that alex forgot that he was supposed to have a lesson today. afterall it was him who requested this session because of the test tomorrow. and i had to travel so far at such a screwed up time to fit into his schedule. so, again, he didn't do his homework, neither did he revise the stuff that we were supposed to go through today. not surprisingly it became agonizingly slow and torturous. i can't be bothered anymore, at least andréas was good enough to remember to do his homework, so as a reward i gave him permission to eat straight from a jar of nutella throughout the lesson. i think their dad will freak out if he sees it. oh well...

lately i've had a lot of run-ins with middle aged men with really warped fashion sense. i dunno, i think it's some kinda midlife crisis thing. so while i was on my way back, i saw this uncle, probably 50-ish, with blond highlights. and get this: he was wearing them gigantic red-coloured thick frame glasses, a very flowery dress shirt, and black skinny jeans with those white pointy toed lacoste-style gayboy shoes. i almost went blind.

why can't they just be contented with their age and accept it graciously like all the middle-aged ladies do. how often have you seen balding men with beer bellies in those tiny little porches trying to look cool while they are stuck in traffic.

and i also saw another random guy whose t-shirt says KKJ. coming from a neighbourhood primary school, i can only think of 1 possible combination for that acronym. and erm it isn't exactly a pretty word. what self respecting firm could possibly have allowed for such a ridiculous acronym as KKJ? Koo Koo er... Joke?

i dunno. bleh.


+listening to: endless sacrifice by dream theater

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