teachers day eve eve eve eve

My mother was right. There was a jam going into thomson plaza tonight because everyone was desperately buying presents for teacher's day, which is going to be celebrated tomorrow. There was a stall in the middle of the first floor selling super nonsensical presents like a puffy cloth heart saying HAPPY TEACHER'S DAY and horrible fake flowers. I forced them to steer away. We went to the flower shop. Okay, who do you have to buy for? A male chinese science teacher. Why not a turtle, and tell him he looks like one. Fake flowers abound. A little girl started taking a long glass stalk of rose. Her father asked her to stop and she said, 'But my teacher likes it!!!!' He said, 'No, she doesn't like it.' The father looks very absorbed in trying to choose something as the girl walks around in a white and pink dress. They eventually (i think) choose small bunches of small flowers. A little boy twirls around the shop saying Flower. Flower shop! We go to popular after paying (as we enter I think I hear a boy asking his father where his sister is and he says, put-put!) and so begins the search for cool stationary. Like...post-it flags? Pencil box? Bunch of chops that say GOOD WORK, DYNAMIC, CREATIVE. My sister is the english monitor but doesn't really like her english teacher and doesn't want to buy anything for the teacher, doesn't care really. What about anonymous adult diapers, or bras, or something. My mother eventually finds nice net bags and a cow clip and a teacher's day card that gets her stressed because she can't find its price (and one can't get the exact same thing for teachers, what if they compare?). All over the shop people are desperately hunting for silly presents. One mother (american?) showed her son the pink stuff toy (pig?) she chose for Miss ___. He says, yeah!

All I remember from past teacher's days are desiree staying over to bake chocolate chocolate-chip cookies (pre-mix bought from ntuc), the old kitchen late at night, shifting the drumset away so we could sleep on the blood-red carpet floor of my old room in our old house. Do you remember, ah choo?

I wish there were teachers to bake chocolate chip cookies for in that way, school tables to put your presents on the lower rung under the table, school bells and chalkboards for someone to write happy teachers day on the board between lessons and all the silliest presents in the world.

robin egg blue car

for nobody else gave me a thrill

with all your faults, i love you still

it had to be you

wonderful you

9th august 2008

don't pass me by
don't make me cry
don't make me blue
cause you know darling
i love only you
you'd never know it could be so
i'd hate to see you go
don't pass me by
don't make me cry

i'm sorry that i doubted you
i was so unfair
you were in a car crash
and you lost your hair
you said that you would be late
about an hour or two
i said that's alright
i'm waiting here,
just waiting to hear from you

-don't pass me by, ringo starr, the white album