Couple of Cupcakes

Had an enjoyable Sunday baking and decorating cupcakes with Ms M. Just wished they tasted as great as they looked. But no worries, I’ve got plenty of time to perfect my skills.

Motivating men

We caught up briefly at Ngee Ann City, just sitting on the bench to chat for a few minutes before we each got something to attend to. 

In this phase of our lives, we are all some sort of planning to settle down with our respective partners, and our topics frequently revolved around house-hunting, weddings, and how to motivate men on such things.

“He seems very laidback about this house-hunting thing,” she commented. “I prefer to ride on the enthusiasm and get things sorted. But he prefers to wait and think and he takes so long to come to a decision!”

The other two of us listened on, expressionless. “That is normal,” I said calmly. “Is it?!” she asked. “Yes,” the other girl replied. “Men just like to be very chilled  about things but their inaction need not mean a lack of interest.”

It was a pretty amazing ten-minute girly therapy session. For the longest time, I thought I was alone in this motivating men business. But argh, how do we get them to do something without behaving like a nag?

Wonderful bridal shoes

I’m totally inspired by the colours in this wedding featured in the Bride’s Cafe, especially the fiesty green heels. I’ve always thought that bridal shoes had to be white, cream or silver with beads or diamantes but hey, I am a total convert to this quirky, classy combination.

In Style Weddings Blogroll

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fantastic wedding ideas here. Great inspirations!

Kill all, burn all, loot all

More than a decade I put together a paper on Unit 731 and read about The Rape Of Nanking. With a heavy heart I rented Nanking the DVD last week but put it off till today to watch it. With extensive documentary and written evidence on the atrocities, I am baffled as to why the Japanese still choose to believe these accounts are JUST a pack of exaggerated lies.

360 degrees

I keep bumping into students whereever I go these days. Some recognised me and came to say hi, while some clearly were too engrossed in whatever they were doing to notice me.

Yesterday I was at Bugis to meet an ex-student, Winnie, for lunch when I heard someone call my name. It was a tall girl with long copper hair. “You don’t remember me?!” she asked. I looked at her again. She was in mini shorts, a low cut blouse, high heels and she was holding on to a stick of Virginia Slims.

“I’m Jojo from Informatics!” she said. Jojo? The quiet Vietnamese girl in my class? The slim petite girl who wore glasses and no make-up? The sweet, plain girl who was ever attentive in class and delivered good work?

Of course I couldn’t recognise her now. She’s put on a bit of weight, she’s swapped her glasses for dark blue contact lenses, she has long metallic coloured nails, she’s drawn her eyebrows too thin. She was puffing away at a cigarette as her Western boyfriend waited in the corner for us to finish catching up.

“It’s been two years since you left us. We still talk about you though. Almost everyone in the class is still there,” she said in a slight American accent. I noticed she had a piercing above her lip.

As we reminisce old times, I wished she hadn’t called out to me. That way, I would be able to always remember her the way she was.

罗汉丸子

I am pining for these Luohan Vegetarian Balls I chanced upon in a restaurant in Shanghai. They are made with potatoes, carrots, vegetables and flour and then deep-fried. Very original, yummy and addictive!

Heart-to-heart

My mum nagged at me to tidy my bursting letterholder and so I did last night, going through all my mails and throwing out old letters and bill statements.

I read through the cards I’ve kept over the years, soaking in the warmth of the affectionate messages addressed to me during special ocassions.

Then I found a birthday card my mother sent to me when I was studying in Cardiff. Among other things, she wrote this, “My deepest regret is not being able to offer you a complete family.” It instantly brought tears to my eyes as I read it, and I know that I must have cried buckets when I first got it.

I walked to her room and hugged her. I told her that I hope she doesn’t see my impending departure as abandonment. I wanted her to know that I am committed to caring for her and being with her, despite the distance.

She replied to say that she knows I would not “dump” her and that I need time to do what I want. “I understand how you feel, because when I was young, I didn’t get the opportunity to pursue what I want in life,” she told me. “I support and respect your decision.”

And then we hugged and blinked away tears.

Teach With Your Heart

“Teacher, did Erin Gruwell’s husband really divorce her, or was it just the movie’s storyline?” many of my students asked me this after we watched The Freedom Writers. “I don’t think her life could be so dramatic,” some said. “The plot could be exaggerated.”

Well, I must admit, for a teacher to give up her relationship because of her students does sound very extreme. And after we discussed about this in class, I too wasn’t sure if Gruwell really did it. Curious, I bought her memoir, Teach With Your Heart, from Kinokuniya.

And the students were right about the story being dramatic. But ironically, the drama came from Gruwell’s story in real-life, and not from movie’s plot. If anything, the film portrayed only a tiny, extremely watered-down part of her experiences.

Yes, in the film we saw that Gruwell’s husband left her and she did invite Miep Gies to Wilson High. But it left out many of her other notable achievements: she raised enough money to take her students to Amsterdam to visit the Anne Frank Museum, to Auchswitz in Poland, and then to Sarajevo just after the Bosnian war.

She even met with Steven Spielberg with her students, ran for Congress and delivered talks nationwide even on the day of her father’s death.

I was left humbled by Gruwell’s determination and her love for her students.

It reminds teachers that it doesn’t matter if we are rookies or veterans, whether we have bright or not so bright students, whether we teach Maths or Literature, whether the kids are young or old. What matters most is a teacher’s sincerity.

Teach With Your Heart: Lessons I Learnt From The Freedom Writers by Erin Gruwell is available at Kinokuniya at $25.68.

China does it, why can’t we?

China has never been considered an environmental role model. Given a population of 1.3 billion, unprecedented carbon emissions, many would say the country is the prime example of environmental failure. Look at the smog which hovers above major cities like Beijing and Shanghai everyday.

Yet on the first day I arrived in Shanghai on 1 June, all retailers in China started to charge RMB0.20 for their plastic bags, after the State Council banned shops from giving out free bags.

This move would reportedly save 37 million barrels of crude oil used in plastic bag production each year, as the Chinese use up to 3 billion plastic shopping bags a day.

I was pretty impressed to see China joining countries such as Uganda and South Africa in banning the use of plastic bags and doing their part for the environment.

Four years ago, Bangladesh banned plastic bags when officials realised they blocked drains and led to flooding. Since then, customers have taken to using bags made of jute or cloth for shopping. Last year, San Francisco, California, became the first U.S. city to outlaw plastic checkout bags at supermarkets.

Environmental organizations, including Greenpeace, praised China’s move by saying “China is ahead of the U.S. with this policy”.

I wonder how long it would take for our country, a supposedly first-world nation, to follow suit.

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On another note, I returned to the office the other day and was so pleased to see that the manager had taken up my suggestion to get a recycling company to set up a bin in our department. And judging by the amount of paper trash I saw in it, I know my colleagues are supporting this effort. I am more than glad!