Traumatic…

I’ve gobbled up 6 books in 1.5 weeks – and 2 in a day last week.

Yesterday, I finished Kotzwinkle’s “The Bear Went Over the Mountain” and then started on Goethe’s “The Sorrows of Young Werther”. Prior to Kotzwinkle, I’d finished Pat Baker’s “The Ghost Road”.

Here’s the thing…

Moving from “The Ghost Road” to “The Bear Went Over the Mountain” was no problem. Then starting on Goethe was like being plunged into a world of teenage angst-ridden self-delusion and overwrought emotions.  This is a huge departure from the wry, ever so lightly cynical undertone of Kotzwinkle.  It’s like stepping off a bullet train into a river of melted toffee.

I wonder if anyone else has these strange reading experiences…  Maybe it’s just me.    Normally when I read something fluffy, I desperately need to read something with substance and bite.  But after Kotzwinkle, it was almost a desperate need to read something equally paced, but with a lot more texture and nuance.  Ah well…

Am reading Goethe, it is amazing and less like toffee, but I need to find another Pat Baker.  And soon…

My Golden Trades
Ivan Kilma

- Horrific Suffferings of the Mind-reading Monster Hercules Barefoot: His Wonderful Love and His Terrible Hatred
   Carl-Johan Vallgren

Specifically, basal cell cancer, morpheic  variant.

http://www.answers.com/topic/basal-cell-carcinoma?cat=health 

Mine sure as hell does!

I’m thorny and grouchy today. As in a durian being hurled by an Olympic champion discus thrower on EPA aiming at your soft parts.
That kind of thorny.

So, my beloved laptop – a Fujitsu S Series Life book running on XP with 3 windows open is running like a &$(%&^ 286! I only have a mail application, powerpoint and Firefox open ‘fer cryin’ out loud!
Typing on this is like having a long distance conversation on the cheaper VOIP services. There is a distinct lag time, and having a visual mind is essential when trying to get anything down on the screen.

Sigh… I know, I know, I know.

This is systemic of something bigger. Being thorny and grouchy and tired all the time, and being rude to the Boss and the guy who sucks up to him all the time means something. No, not preggers – I hope not, at least.

Maybe it’s just all the waiting for the letter to come back and say that the scholarship has been reinstated. That I have a job with the University. That I can leave this one and do something else.

Maybe…

This is a day for going home, hiding under the covers, turning out the light and just sobbing myself to sleep. not for entertaining my mother and listening to her complaints about my father and then hanging up her curtains.

Sigh…

So, when I got myself my spanking new Nokia 5700 – not because I want to use it for music most of time – that’s what my trusty little FM radio-cum-mp3 player is for, I decided that I should try to keep it relatively scratch-free for a bit.

Hence, the mobile cozy…

Pink isn’t exactly my colour, wool is not my favourite yarn, but in the middle of the night…

Well, there’s a first for everything ya?

My first mobile cozy, my first pink thing, my 1st post in Craftster…

http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=209381.msg2243556;topicseen#msg2243556

As a child, I worshipped JBJ. I watched Parliament for his fiery rhetoric, snide jibes and his obnoxious and inflammatory comments, which sometimes bordered on the defamatory. I was only 10/12, so was often forgiven under the banner of “She’s very young. She doesn’t understand…”

However, just like Songs of Innocence and Experience, I grew up, and my hero lost his lusture with his increasingly below the belt attacks. The rise of evidently insane Opposition Members who sabotaged their own causes did not help either.

But now, I have heroes I can lionise and wave pom-poms for. Some them have already been seen as such a threat that they have been told to join political parties to spar with the ruling party. Others have been chided in other ways.

They are my heroes for saying what I do not dare. For voicing aloud what the rest of us say at coffee shops, in private conversations, at closed-door meetings. They are my heroes for loving the country so much, they they are willing to represent the rest of us, who quietly hide behind our cynicism and apathy.

I salute you

Catherine Lim – http://catherinelim.sg

Cherian George – http://journalism.sg/

mr brown – http://www.mrbrown.com/blog

I’ve always wondered what these greats are as parents…

As a teacher, we’re always complaining of irrational, irresponsible parents with their wealth of ridiculous requests and comments.  But what happens when the shoe is on the other foot?  Do educators make better parents? Do they actually apply what they know, have learnt, teach?  Are children of parents the luckiest people in the world, or the most stressed and misunderstood?

I’ve just finished a 10-week module with a constructivist and another with a psychology researcher with the sweetest of personalities.  How cool can they be?  How wonderful are they in and outside of class?  Unbelievably so.   How are they as parents?  Does what they know translate into how they raise their kids?  Does that change the way they ‘become’?  If I want to have any hope in my progenies, should I too, go back to being an educator?  Should I get off the treadmill and teach, nurture and mould?

Sigh…

I’ve lamented and vented, hated  and cursed the MEd for the past 10 months, and now that it is going to be over, I want to do something else. Something that will occupy my time after work.  Something which will make my brain work  little more than the MEd.  Perhaps a law degree?  How about an engineering diploma at the Poly?

Maybe it is time to agree to the PhD…

But there’s San Diego in Feb and Michigan and Stanford after…

Choices, choices, choices…