Picking up calls

Answering the phone and hearing "mr sim!" is still such a strange phenomenon

Unexplained Things

So strange things often can't explain. Here's a quick list I came across/ thought of.

A shadow always appearing either at the edge of your vision or at the exit which disappears every time you glance at it.

Sometimes you will think you hear someone calling your name, but nobody seems to be doing so when you turn around.

When you look for lost things, you will look in the strangest places, like opening the fridge to look for your car keys. What's even stranger is that sometimes you search in a certain place, can't find it, go somewhere else and come back to search at the exact same place, you will find it as if somebody pitied you and decided to put it there.

When you're doing something and suddenly think of doing something else not exactly related, like googling a certain thing. Sometimes, in less than 5 seconds, you will forget what it is. There's a funny theory online, that every time you forget something almost immediately after thinking, it's because you have somehow come in contact with aliens and the MIB have come in and wiped out your memory, which explains why you can't remember what you were doing.

Reserved for idiots

As someone who has done a lot of stupid things and enjoys doing stupid things for the sake of doing stupid things, I have to say, to the general public, don't do stupid things.

It's usually reserved for idiots like me or the Jackass crew.

I don't play well with others

I think at it's core, there's a huge contrast in personality that creates a lot of friction between me and a lot of other, shall we call them type X, personalities. I think the same would be true if I hung out with a lot of slackers as well, as evident in army. By that understanding, it can't be the fault of "other people". There's only so many times you can shift the blame to other people before realizing the problem is with yourself. I'm okay with that. It's a part of life that I have to accept, like luck.

The idea that "work = results", and by extension "more work = more results" is so universal and ingrained into our psyche that nobody takes any disputes to this seriously. Certainly, no education system would. Interestingly, anyone who has witnessed any results presentation (A or O levels results) would say that hard work is not enough. We've seen enough tears to know otherwise. "Smart work is the way to go" people will say. Well, of course smart work is the way to go, but we haven't quite nailed down what smart work means.

I often wonder how much of my grades are affected by anything other than what I already know or how much work is put in. It's interesting to think that if we put a sufficiently large sample size of monkeys or chimps and have them do MCQs, would we get a significant result. What about the teachers' mood when he is marking or your handwriting, especially when it comes to open-ended answers.

From the perspective of someone who never does homework on a regular basis, it makes it a bit hypocritical to suddenly place so much value on it. Most teachers have a belief that work should be given to students every time there's a break of more than 1 day between lessons and because my subject demands kids to know how to write, naturally they get them to write. Looking at this logically, it makes sense, like how a person who sucks at standing broad jump should simply do more standing broad jumps. Yet nobody gets to the gold standard doing only standing broad jumps, even if they do it for 1000 times a day. It helps you get out of a certain standard or band, but after which, it depends on a multitude of other factors, which can be trained by other exercises.

There is no one-size-fits-all answer for this. Learning is different for everyone and continuous writing does not always translate into results. What's smart for me may not be smart for you and vice versa.

I also happen to be of the opinion that JC students should be able to take learning into their own hands. I guess that's why I stopped making anything compulsory except for the very very weak. My personal style is that I prefer my better students to teach my weaker ones because that was how I learnt. Teaching or mentoring was in some sense a game-changer because as an above-average (for GP) student, it provides a sense of responsibility and shifts the focus from yourself to the weaker pupil. It also exposes a lot of gaps you never knew you had in education.

Ultimately, what students need is a level of self-awareness and self-critical(ness) that allows them to see what is working and what isn't.

Because of what I believe, it's quite obvious why I seem to have less work than my fellow co-workers. I do spend a ridiculous amount of time just staring at my lesson plan and waiting for an idea to pop up.

Haven't written something like this in a long time.

Excerpts from my iPhone: Education system

Having an education system instilled a sense of assuming subconsciously that everything you need to do and know is set aside for you and you just need to listen to instructions and do as you're told.

31/12/11

Excerpts from my iPhone: Worries

You know what I'm worried about? That my results in A levels will cause a repeat of what happened in Sec 2. That because I didn't work hard for my results and still got them anyway, I'm going to think I'm some punk ass genius and arrogant my way throughout Uni. Yes, I just made arrogant a verb.

22/01/12

Excerpts from my iPhone: Uncomfortable

I just realized how uncomfortable I am around smart people. I guess it's unfair to lump all smart people into one group and label them "uncomfortable to hang out with"

Replay

I am very tempted to replay all the old final fantasy games after listening to the music and watching some of the cutscenes. I just realized that I didn't finish most of the games because I lost interests trying to complete all the sidequests. The only one I am certain that I beat the final boss was FFX-2 because I tried to get new game plus to obtain some of the rarer items. That said, I actually spent 100+ hours on it if i remember correctly.

Anyway, I'm only interested in starting from 7 and ending with 10 or x-2 because they are the ones that don't look that ridiculous.

Anyone interested in doing this with me?

The Office

Another stupid professional mistake. WAH LAU EH.

Yo manners, why you gotta have so many rules man?

*depressed*

(I feel like a fifteen year old girl after writing this)

Tired

I sometimes wonder that how is it possible that at such a young age I can be so tired, and not tired in the physical sense, but just weary of the world and everything. It's a marvel how most people grow old and trudge through life as if it were mud at chest level.

A friend once asked me about dying. She said what would you have done if you knew your death was imminent, would you regret not having done enough or certain things. I would, but if it happens, it happens, I just feel as if I'm not looking forward to anything so nothing should really hold me back in that regards. Of course, I would regret things like leaving my family behind and my friends would have one less person to care about, but it's quite surreal to think about it.

To think about dying is to essentially think about leaving and not coming back. My mum and most of my relatives like to talk about dreams, particularly dreaming about my deceased grandmother. Like how she seems to be waiting for something, or holding someone's hands, or walking to or away from certain places and in certain peoples' dreams, crying. They like to speculate about how Mother was trying to send them messages, because the older generation in my family are having quite a situation with themselves over greed and such. It's not in my place to say, not that I know anything significant anyway.

In my work, I have encountered many instances where I am encouraged by people not to say anything when I don't know enough. Which is fair, because as GP teachers they apparently really listen to anything I'm trying to describe and i end up having so many holes in my descriptions that it sucks as a story.

Anyway, back to leaving, if I really hard about not doing certain things, I would have regretted not enjoying life more, like having sex or going for skydiving. But these seem trivial compared to the grief of those around me. That would really be my only concern, if any.

I just can't believe such a young mind can grow so weary despite experiencing so little.