i usually find going to weddings a chore but...

Happy for 学姐 sia.

rita: for people who havent seen one another for a few months, we sure must have a lot of things to talk about

kinda a loaded remark, since she was incessantly commenting on how quiet i seemed throughout the dinner. haha. hi yah, i can also be very quiet quiet one mah

me: rita, you must be comfortable with silence lar!

which turned out to be pointless Zen-ish advice when we went to:

Ice-Cold Beer and the inhibitions loosened up....(what a subtly provocative photo)

aside: efficient + helpful + dependable: woah, i will live up to such high regards in 2007 man

******

random questions that popped out of nowhere in my head

mr heng,

1. would you wanna teach

a) GP only? b) PW only? c) GP and PW?

i'm surprised to find that actually i don't have an answer. i just received news that marking SPA is frightfully tedious, so the grass maynt be greener on the other side

2. as a marker, are you

a) too lenient? b) too strict?

3. is PW gonna be one of the defining moments in my career?

this thought consumed me for the past week: do i even freaking care whether i would be a competent PW tutor (read: one who can mark a WR draft within 20 mins, with detailed/thoughtful/comprehensive comments)? am i too demanding to hope that my job will nurture and nourish me? is it really so important that i be fiercely passionate about what i do for a living? at the end of the day, teaching is just a means to an end, a grind of the motions i have to go through to make it another day

don't get me wrong. i don't bemoan the late nights i had to spend churning out reports in the computer lab and i will do it all again in a heart beat. but i'm an idealist after all. i need a sense of purpose, a larger cause that will sustain me and reassure me that what i'm sacrificing isn't in vain, that what i'm doing adds up to some holistic picture even if the prospects seem unbearably obscure, that i'm involved in something important (or non-trivial, at the very least) and am contributing towards my kiddos' education

it irks me tremendously because i recognise that i need to believe in PW before i get my kiddos to believe in it also. but i can't seem to make peace with it, which is a source of irritation in itself because i want to be professional despite my personal misgivings. i want to be able to stand in front of the classroom and persuade with conviction that i believe in the sacredness of PW (okay, this is me being melodramatic....)

i re-read and came across this in the book:

"It's like that old story: three guys laying bricks are asked why they're doing it. the first guy says, "i'm doing it for the wages." the second guy says, "i'm doing it to support my family." the third guy says, "i'm helping to build a cathedral."

woah, i do believe that i'm building a cathedral--from the things that ought to be included to compose a substantial report to the ability to draw conclusions and examine assumptions from printed material to the nature to be introspective always to the need to be confident that one won't falter during public speaking. such sparks of illumination are carelessly doused when i just wanna meet deadlines and move on

but they are there.