G is for grammar

I really hate grammatical rules, which is a strange thing for an English teacher to say. But I never learnt them, so perhaps my antipathy is justified, or perhaps not! Believe it or not, I only began to learn them when I had to teach them!

But I am convinced that there is no point memorising grammatical rules, because theory and practice are two totally different things. I have students who can answer grammatical quiz questions perfectly, yet when they write paragraphs and essays none of that comes through. Why? Because when we're writing, we're not thinking about the rules. We're thinking of ideas, and how best to convey those ideas... and when you're an ESL (English as a second language) student, it's about all you can do to think of the appropriate vocabulary to articulate your opinions. Grammar becomes secondary.

I didn't realise how influential reading is until I became a teacher. Reading helps one to internalise grammatical rules and sentence structure: it's how you "just know" something is wrong, because it "feels" wrong or "looks" wrong. You may not be able to explain it, but your brain has seen a particular arrangement of words so many times that it just knows that's the way things should be.

So in a way I feel it is pointless to teach grammatical rules, except to give the students some understanding of why certain things are right and others are wrong. But in the end, harping on grammar will get us nowhere. However many times I tell my students that verbs have to change depending on whether the sentence has a singular or plural subject, they still write "Many students likes"... and when I point out, "What did you just do there?" they're like, "Oh yes! Sorry, teacher!" and jump to correct their mistake. They know the rule, but they don't practice it. It's not a part of them... YET.

I also feel that grammatical rules are ridiculously complicated and full of jargon. Coordinating conjunctions, subordinating conjunctions, adverbial clauses, noun clauses, relative clauses, independent clauses, dependent clauses, what?!? If all these things make my eyes glaze over, how much more will my students' eyes do the same! I feel that it's way more important you be able to write good sentences, than to know what all these things are called. Unfortunately, it's difficult to teach how to write a good sentence without using jargon. Especially when you have to explain where to put what and how to arrange all the words and blah.

All of which makes me a rather weird language teacher. But language is not about rules! It's about usage! I don't want my students to get sidetracked by all the details and focused on knowing every single grammatical rule. I want them to be focused on trying to write well. (And of course I'd love them to pass, too. Just sayin'.)

F is for favourites

"What's your favourite book?"

I get all flustered when people ask me that question.

Granted, I love to read, and I have many books. Toooooooo many. I have books in almost every room of my apartment, barring the kitchen (wouldn't want to accidentally set them on fire!). I have books of various genres: classics, general fiction, biographies and autobiographies, travel writings, short stories, poetry, sci-fi, fantasy, romance, crime/detective, general non-fiction, comics, crossword puzzles, writing, etymology... and I try to shelf them by genre, too, which is just mad.

But I don't have a favourite.

I wonder if others feel this way. Do fashionistas have a favourite dress, or outfit? Does anybody have one favourite song? I like so many songs... The Piña Colada Song (Rupert Holmes), the theme from Mahogany (Diana Ross), You are the Sunshine of My Life (Stevie Wonder), Starting Over Again (Natalie Cole), Annie's Song (John Denver), and... okay, I'd better stop. See? I couldn't ever choose just one!


I don't even have a favourite colour. I love maroon and burgundy (see shoes below!!), but I also love a deep rich blue which I have yet to figure out the name of. And I love dark purple and turquoise. When I walk into a clothes store, those are the colours that catch my eye. Every. Single. Time.

So, no, I don't have a favourite book... and I think that's a horrible getting-to-know you question. I'm going to fumble and look like a flake who doesn't know her own mind, and you're going to doubt I read anything at all, much less like to read, and it's all going to end in disaster. I'll choose a book just to be able to name something, and in my panic I'll probably say something like, "the dictionary" and then you'll look at me funny and think I'm a total nerd. Which I am, but, y'know, didn't want to reveal on the first date. Ah well. The truth will out!

E is for energy (or the lack thereof)

Today has just been one of those days. I haven't had the energy to do anything. I woke up at two p.m. (there are definitely advantages to being single and living on your own) and then I just didn't want to get out of bed. I felt so tired I just laid in bed and read a book, then went back to sleep and when I next opened my eyes it was 9:30pm.

I don't have anything clever or witty to say. I'm afraid I might have depression because I've been struggling through unusual lows and sudden, random bouts of weeping the past two weeks. It isn't the unending dark tunnel that I experienced before, but it is alarming. There is a crushing loneliness that all the good friends and caring in the world cannot assuage. I don't know what to do with my feelings and am frustrated because it all makes no sense.

Some days are better than others. Some days I tell myself I'm just tired, or that maybe it's hormonal. Useful things to blame, hormones :)  I'm hoping it's just a temporary phase and that things will get back to their normal even keel again, soon. Meanwhile, I'm trying to hold everything together, do the stuff I need to do, and not do anything stupid or reckless which I might regret later!

D is for dream

Confucius apparently said, "Choose a job you love, and you'll never have to work a day in your life." Who would've thought that would become my dream? For the longest time, I didn't even realise that was my dream -- I thought my dream was to be a journalist.

But why did I want to be a journalist? Because I loved to write, because I knew I could write. In the midst of my very nerdy, bookwormish, slightly awkward teenage life, this was the one thing that stood out. Nobody ever encouraged me to write, but nobody told me I shouldn't, either. I wrote unceasingly -- not made-up stories, but stories about my life. I sent reams of letters to penpals all around the globe, and got frustrated when replies weren't forthcoming in a timely manner. I never found anyone who would write as much, and as frequently, as I did. Ever.

And there was the poetry. Startlingly bad poetry, which still makes me cringe to think of it. I'm sure every writer has stuff like that, bits of work you can't bear to throw away because they're something you wrote, part of your history, something you know you'll never be able to replicate if you were to get rid of it -- but that you fervently hope will never see the light of day!

Anyway. So I wanted to be a journalist, and I became a journalist, never mind the bumps along the way (like deciding to study law in university). And journalism was fun. It was easy. It was exciting. I was living my dream, or so I thought.

Until I realised it wasn't my dream any longer. I became restless. The work wasn't fulfilling. I wondered what the problem was. Was it me? Do I simply get bored too easily? What if I were to try something else and didn't like it, either? What would I do after that? Would I keep hopping from job to job? Should I just stick it out regardless of what I feel?

Driven by my real dream, the dream of doing something I love, I finally decided to try teaching. How I came to consider teaching is a whole other story, too long to get into here; but I can tell you that I never, in a million years, would ever have thought I'd be a teacher one day. If you had told me, ten years ago, that I would be a teacher today, I would have thought you were mad!

Yet I am a teacher, and at the end of my first semester of teaching, when my principal came to the classroom and sat through the lesson, watching me teach, evaluating my work, he told me, "You're a natural in the classroom." I was gobsmacked!

When something is right, it just is right. I can't explain it, I don't understand it, I have no idea how this happened, but teaching is right for me. Within a year I was telling friends that I could see myself teaching for the rest of my life, which is a HUGE thing. It's so ironic that the job I thought would be perfect for me, wasn't, and the job I never saw myself doing, is.

So now I've achieved my dream and I don't know what to do with myself! What do you do when you already have the biggest, most important thing you ever wanted? I mean, I still hope to meet and fall in love with a great guy one day, and get married and hopefully, have a family, but I can't do anything to make that happen. (Sing with me: "You can't hurry love, no, you just have to wait...") Barring that, I don't have anything to work towards now. I completed my Masters in 2012 and don't particularly want to do a PhD (*shudder*), so what's next? What's next? Can one be happy, yet slightly restless at the same time? Humans, never satisfied... lol. I need a new dream!

C is for Chinese

I did not know the term "banana" until I went to college.

I can't even remember how I learnt it, because I don't recall anyone ever calling me a "banana", despite admittedly being quite banana-ish! Amazing.

What's a "banana", you ask? Someone who is "yellow outside, but white inside": a Chinese who doesn't speak Chinese. Not really derogatory (at least, I've never taken it as such), but it does imply that you've forgotten your roots and discarded your heritage.

Actually, I always kinda feel like I'm undeserving of the term banana. I can speak Chinese! I can! At least enough to order food in restaurants -- priorities, hello? -- and to exchange some social pleasantries! And I celebrate the Chinese New Year (yay, angpow!), I know what the mooncake festival is all about (even if I don't exactly know when it is), and I like origami. Oh wait, that's Japanese. Darn.

"I wasted all that money sending you for Mandarin classes," my dad says to me.

When you're 8 years old, and no one, absolutely NO ONE in the ENTIRE WORLD speaks Mandarin to you, why would you want to learn Mandarin? I didn't see the point. Now, well... okay, now I feel a bit regretful. Especially after my younger cousins laughed at my pronunciation the last time we met. Twenty years younger than I, laughing at me! I get no respect around here. *shakes head sadly*

My family is definitely not traditional at all, despite celebrating Chinese New Year, which is the only Chinese festival we do celebrate. Last CNY, nobody wore anything new (you're supposed to dress in new clothes on the first day of the new year), and not only that, only three of us cousins wore red! Gasp! (Red is an auspicious colour for the Chinese.) About the only CNY ritual we follow is giving angpow (red envelopes containing money... yay, money!). And, of course, eating. Chinese New Year would not be complete without lots and lots and lots of food.

To compound the problem, not only is my family untraditional, I also read! Reading is dangerous! It can change you. Having grown up reading timeless favourites like What Katy Did, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Heidi, Black Beauty, Little Women, and Anne of Green Gables, to name a few, many of my attitudes and ways of thinking are decidedly "western". At the same time, I can't deny that I'm Chinese and there's still a teeny weeny bit of Chinese influence floating around somewhere. I'm sort of stuck in between two worlds, and don't fully fit in either.

There's one way in which I'm very Chinese, though: I always eat noodles with chopsticks. It just doesn't feel the same if I use a fork and spoon!

B is for besieged (did I spell that correctly?)

It's been one of those days when everything seems to be happening at once and I've been feeling overwhelmed and couldn't write anything. Now it isn't even Apr 2 in my part of the world any longer, but I know it still is in the US, and that's what really counts, right? Right?? I will cheat and adjust the date to Apr 2, anyway. I don't know if that's allowed, but in my head it's still Apr 2, okay? Shhhh... I won't tell if you don't.

Sooooo. It's too involved to get into but SOMEONE was supposed to do SOMETHING so that I could then do my work but this SOMEONE insisted it was not her job to do the SOMETHING and that I should do it instead. But this SOMETHING is a task I have never ever done before, and I wouldn't have any idea where to even start, so I was quite sure that it was SOMEONE's responsibility to do it. Then I found, in black-and-white, where it was written that SOMEONE was definitely in charge of this SOMETHING, and she finally agreed to do it... but at 7:30pm, when I was about to sit down to dinner, SOMEONE called me and said she was sure she wasn't meant to do this SOMETHING and told me I had better check with the boss!

Why am I so stressed out? This SOMEONE and SOMETHING are holding me up and I have a Tuesday deadline for submitting the work! If SOMEONE doesn't do SOMETHING, and fast, I won't be able to make my Tuesday deadline. And then other someones are going to be upset with me and everything will get backed up and... urgh. You know how it is.

Added on to that, I'm going to be teaching a new subject at work -- most likely, hopefully, if things work out the way my boss has planned, barring any unforeseen circumstances. Did you see that list of qualifiers? It all depends on the number of students we get and which levels they end up placed in... and I won't know until Friday. Guess when classes start? Monday. Exciting, eh? I'm looking at the new textbook, thinking up activities and making Powerpoints -- and can't decide if I hope I will or won't have the new subject. There's this nervousness about teaching something new and different with greater complexity, and I hate the uncertainty of it. Don't tell the kids: sometimes we teachers aren't totally sure of what we're doing!

Loads of other things going on at the same time, both in the office and on the personal/home front. I hate that feeling of being torn in pieces when I need to break up my brain and spread it over so many places, situations and things to do. I work really well when I can focus on just one thing, but the moment I have 5 things going on, I feel overwhelmed and stressed out. The only positive thing about being stressed out is that it's good for my waistline. Some people snack more when they're stressed. Me, I lose my appetite and forget to eat.

A is for annoyed

"Want to go to Puchong for lunch and eyebrow threading? I'll drive!" chirped my colleague.

Said colleague has been bugging me to thread my eyebrows FOREVER. And also bugging me to use make-up. Me, I go to work with a naked face. It's honest, it's easy, it's cheap. As for the eyebrow thing, I don't have a unibrow or fierce bushy eyebrows, so who cares?

Let me just clarify here: I've done threading before. It's not that I'm opposed to it. It's that I just couldn't be bothered to get it done regularly. Low-maintenance, that's me. I do dress up and do the accessorising thing (I love shoes and earrings btw) and I try to look pretty and presentable. But with a naked face! And natural eyebrows!

So anyway, in a moment of weakness, I caved and agreed to go with my colleague. You know every time you read "in a moment of weakness", the outcome's not gonna be good, right?

Right.

I tell the lady, "Don't make them too thin, just shape them." This has always worked for me before -- but of course, I went to a different place and person before. Guess what? Yeah. Now my eyebrows look like they were drawn on with a black marker. One with a thin nib.

"Oh, but you can fill them out with eyebrow pencil!" gushed colleague.

WHAT IS IT WITH WOMEN? You take out your perfectly good eyebrow hairs, then draw fake ones back in. What is the point?!

Just like how the orthodontist told teenaged-me I'd have to take out four perfectly good teeth in order to get braces in. I said no. My dad said, "Thanks for saving me four thousand bucks."

Back to my eyebrows -- because this post is about them, even though it's A and not E -- oh, they are now perfect little outlines of a semi-circle. They look freaking artificial. This is one of the things I hate about ridiculous conventional standards of beauty: you're beautiful only if you look like everyone else. We'd all be clones with high cheekbones, long legs, a slim waist (with no tummy! Which woman has no tummy, I ask you?!), long lustrous hair, thick long eyelashes, flawless glowing skin... oh, I could go on and on. I used to write advertorials for cosmetic companies. I know all the adjectives.

Of course, in times of stress the Voice of Mum™ always rings in your head. As a child, whenever I got a particularly bad haircut, my mother would always say, "Why are you upset? It'll grow back!" Yes, thank goodness my eyebrows will grow back. And in future I shall summarily glare at any woman who dares to suggest I thread them. Note how it's always the women who pressure you to do such things, not the men! Men couldn't care less about eyebrows, I'm sure. Unless you have eyebrows like a gorilla's -- wait, do gorillas have eyebrows? *goes off to google it*