"Cher, chill."

1. (having returned from the toilet where I chased him to because he had a stomachache after recess and just sat there groaning) "Cher! I go toilet ah, then pooooot, then no more already. Nothing come out. Inside got wind only..."
"Why are you telling me this?!"
"Cher can I eat lollipop? Please?"

2. "Cher you know what's fetish?"
"Yes."
"You got fetish?"
"I'm not about to tell you what it is."
"OH means you got lah!"
"Everyone has fetishes."

3. "Cher, so you going to join SDU lah?"

4. "Wah Cher who taught you to write cursive?"
"No one! Do people not write cursive anymore?"
"Yah. But I write cursive."
"I like cursive."
"Yeah...!" (with cool rocker hand signs)

He-who-everyone-fears. "I want everyone to take out a book and be doing something meaningful in the next minute! Do you know how many of you can be promoted from Normal Technical to Normal Academic at the end of the year?! Do you know you need an average of 70 marks for your CA? By the looks of it, none of you will make it."

(I nearly burst out laughing, the boys were making faces behind his back)

Oliver James, lost in the rain...

I want to surprise myself

If a person feels that he hasn't really lived, but this person has incredible dreams every night that take him to impossible places, and if life is what we perceive of it, and memory is what we wish to feel and remember, then has this person lived?

I marked about thirty comprehension passages today and felt so sick calculating the marks (8/45, 33/65...), scrawling them big and red, cross cross cross cross my heart that I dislike comprehension and sorry I would rather let you read your love letter with orange highlighter hearts the girl from the neighbouring class gave you. I felt like I let them down by caring about comprehension and what it stands for (part of a chain effect that will possibly eventually repress them and prevent them from realising how great they are as people), but then I thought about it and realised it was (mostly) Singapore that has let them down. Just like it lets all of us down (the razing of Green Meadow is enough to make me throw myself at a wall AND MY FAMILY HEIRLOOM ROSEWOOD DINING TABLE SET WITH OPAL FLOWERS SPRINKLED-SET-IN HOW DID I LET THAT HAPPEN) but we may eventually stay here forever because we believe in something though people like possibly your own brother that you love and grew up with drives and honks with hatred and anger, and wants to be rich, and thinks a perhaps certain way about those students and those prcs and you can't help the fact that you love him and grew up with him though the days of toasted-bread-with-peanut-butter-and-sugar-and-milo are nothing more than a saccharine memory that glows in a space of broken teeth and unscrubbed smelly tongue.

But I'm glad I did not try hard enough to get a job and am going to wake up early to go to school tomorrow.

Everyone here is mad!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! My grandmother cannot stop asking if the lights are turned off at midnight and the new maid brought her up empty bottles and thermos of no-water because she forgot.

Pappy

I let him pick me up late from Yio Chu Kang MRT
though he falls asleep during the 9:30 news.
I smell of spice! spice! spice!
(The thought of India is a lovely
exploding cardamom in his ulcer-prone mouth)
He thinks of lice! lies? lice!
And warns me not to burn incense.
"Very smelly leh," he wrinkles his nose,
back hunched in a sheer white pajama-shirt.
Oh, Pappy.

When I went away to India
it was like he threw a kite to the sky
where it roamed tentative but quite, rather free
breathing sky air and kissing wispy cirrus
floating on cirrocumulus and plummeting
through Big Bad Cumulonimbus Storm Cloud;
they don't usually form in his head.
When the kite came back via Arabic wind
he had to rein it in a little for fear
it would get stuck in a tree someday.
There are many in Singapore but only the
wild untamed ones are worth a Singapore Dollar.
Sometimes only trees in a Mexican orchard
streaked with golden rays, delicious mud,
a lightness you don't quite feel here
are pine fresh fun yes yes yes.

So, mister Papa

I will miss you terribly one happy day
I will be so sad I don't know how to breathe, and-
"I love you," mouthed Triton, Ariel's father,
as her red hair flapped in the lashing sea breeze.

'Cher's rubber band collection

My pride and glory!

These days I wake when it's still dark, have breakfast with my school-going sister, and take the bus with NS boys towards yishun. Work clothes are kept conservative, personality is reined in somewhat. The pen I hold the most now is a red one; the tone I adopt a stern-friendly one in the face of hoards of hot-blooded adolescents not sure what to do with their restlessness and newfound lust, and girls unsure of the attention they are receiving from the rascals. I am called 'Cher a million times a day- one of the best nicknames ever.

FUN, FRUSTRATING TIMES.

The system has reduced the beauty of what language really means (the love of reading, of telling stories, of understanding each other through words) to commodified vocabulary lists to be memorised and applied in contrived manners, comprehension questions to be categorised and tables of letter-writing formats. This is what is focused on as exams draw near. Throw them with a Revision Package, why don't we? These contain proverbs like Still Waters Run Deep, when some don't even know that it's = it is. D'you think, if teachers somehow manage to show children, from a young age, that reading can be one of the most beautiful things -to escape into another world, to hear a tale, to feel things you can hardly feel in daily existence- then the love for english would become a most natural thing? A neighbourhood school student can love and appreciate harry potter as much as a top school student can, and if he can't do as well for the exam because he may not grasp grammar or sentence structures as well, his love for the language will probably mean he will be more patient and open to learning these. Thoughts?

"My childhood is was a happy one but when I was younger, my grandma used to chase me with the cane."

I wish I could join the boys in having rubber band wars!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (You've never seen such experts in making bullets, manipulating rubber bands around their fingers, shooting secretly)

Instead, I confiscate them for my infinite bangle.

CHER, HE SHOOT ME FIRST!!!!!!!!

p

p

P.S. Trying to relief-teach english in a school where hardly any students speak proper english has only increased my loyal love for the glory of Singlish. Maybe one day, there will be Singlish Lit and the first book will be one that can make Singaporeans feel like never before; it will replace the pro-pah British English used to describe Singaporean life thus far. Written in a stream-of-conciousness way, no heed will be paid to singular/plural words, proper use of past tense, or varying vocabulary whatsoever. It would be a thoroughly real feeling. Sample portion: Mummy ask me if I want to eat dinner then I say I want lah but I kind of shout. Then after that she get angry and say I always think her dinner not nice so she go toilet and cry then wah lao, I don't know how to feel so I just lock in the room and cry also.

hokkien mee and milo monday to sunday

Old military band, upper peirce reservoir

Ivy's kingdom

Eau de Singapour

grandmotherly feet

marilyn with pride

my reading baby

Grandpa's shoes

http://advancedstyle.blogspot.com/

She smelt of old roses and he of cigarettes and mint!

grey gray nimbostratus

disappearing heures

the time was left in bomb-ay!

a few nights ago i dreamt that i had to go through a very dark, long passage with just a torch to guide me. i had to do this with esmonde. neither of us knew what the convoluted passage would lead to; it was something we knew had to be done, and we knew there would be terrifying things along the way. we set off; somewhere along the way, he turned into sunil and michelle.

people living in the last kampong in singapore pay $30 for their monthly rent.

there's going to be a rolls royce facility at the seletar air base estate.

Charleston! Charleston! Charleston with me!!!!!!!!!

Swing dresses and loopy hop steps may take over bamboo sticks and knives.

What was Enid's darkest story?

Bob dylan singing scratchily on the record player is the bestest sunday night.

When people of the past had to slowly aim the delicate record player needle on the glossy black surface of a record and stand there for a while listening to the crackly marvellous sounds of it starting and watching the black lovely delicious disc spin with such elegance, they were probably more calm at heart than they would be if they had a grey and white itunes screen organised in boxes and grids. the circle invites a hug, and a mug of chocolate.

'the empty-handed painter from your streets, is drawing crazy patterns on your sheets'

p

And The BFG exists; he eavesdropped on us that night, right outside my window.

White Cloud Potato Soup

Does anyone remember this, and the possibilities?

p

Shoe-box building; snow-dome; collage; sock people; seed and pasta drawing; post office games. Magic pack of cards in little hands and big-as-the-sky imaginations.

p

These are a few of my favourite things / I'd like to teach the world to sing / Raindrops keep falling on my head / I think I love you / The young ones, darling we're the young ones

p

And the young ones shouldn't be afraid.