Almost there..

I can almost see the end. Just, almost. Faintly, vaguely. If I were to wipe the mist off the windscreen, I can see it faintly waving to me, urging me to push forth and think happy thoughts. Think positive thoughts, think happy thoughts.

Focus on the positive, put the negative thoughts behind. That’s what I like to use to tell my EL class – focus on the positive, look at the negative with a critical eye and see where improvements can be made. If I can say that, I need to walk the talk too.

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I’m supposed to be working, but here am I, blogging instead.

Today, one hefty load off my shoulders, and I must say, it went pretty well, with plenty help from my class. Thanks! (: You guys made me a happy person today, and you made my supervisor one happy lady too! I have just 3 more to go – 3 more to go! The end line is near, the sprint hastens, speeding towards the finishing line. Actually, just let me look forward to Friday first. Fridays are always nice, provided I get to knock off early and amble aimlessly without having a list of things-to-do floating about in the head.

3 + 5 + 4 = 12 more working days. And we continue to wait, and work in the meantime.

Some of the words my supervisor said to me, reminded me of why I love teaching in the first place. Along the journey of teaching, somehow somewhere I thought I had lost sight, lost sight of why I’m here and why I’m doing this in the first place. Negative thoughts clouded the mind, making it a nasty and unhappy place to reside in. Encouragements help, compliments even better.

Some teachers teach for the passion of the subject. I teach to see the smiles on my students, to see that enlightment when the lightbulb within them lights up. So I think I can safely say that it’s not the passion of the subject that fuels my motivation for teaching – it’s the students. That means I’m taking a huge risk – because this can go either way – students may really hate me and affect my teaching, or they like me for who I am and work with me for their goals in the academic route.

And we wonder.

Plenty to do, loads to mark. I should get back to planning my lessons for tomorrow – lest I get myself into a fix again, and we sure don’t want that, right?

蔡艾珈 – 不痛

Woke up to a very nice morning today, and sat in front of my computer, refreshed my Facebook home page.

Saw a friend share this particular video on his profile, and I was suddenly reminded that we had singers who went to take part in the PK match in Taiwan for 超級星光大道. Was extremely pleasantly surprised with this:

Nicely done, Singapore! This was from the show on 7th August, so it counts as a small birthday gift to our nation’s birthday, right? 🙂 I do know that Diya and Zhiyang went over as well, and my mum did manage to tell me that it had been mentioned in the recent papers that Diya didn’t manage to 踢舘成功, whereas Zhiyang and the other Singaporean who went on his/her own expenses managed to.

I wonder if they will continue to pk next week, or take the money and leave. 黃韻玲has shown interest in Zhiyang’s voice ever since they started reaching to overseas contestants – like in 星光3，where they brought Sugi and 黃靖倫 over, where Zhiyang auditioned and got through, but did not manage to defer from National Service in time for the competition. Thus, I’m glad to see him go over this time round to 踢舘, even though this time round the Singaporean singers don’t get to stay long in the competition and develop like the previous 星光.

In any case, I was really in awe of 艾珈’s singing. I followed Campus when it was broadcast on the network, but I think her style of singing has changed slightly since then. No matter what, good job done! Look out for 陶子’s response at the timing 1:05! Me thinks its hilarious. Hurhur.

Pixar.

We are growing up in the times when cartoons no longer mean, The Lion King or Mulan.

Instead, we have animation films, like Up, Wall-E, Ratatouille etc. Everyone agrees (well, everybody I know, at least) that Pixar films are classic – they are the animation films that stick by you for a extremely really long time. Plus, they make you feel really good.

I remember, Finding Nemo came out in 2003, and I was in junior college during that time. Finding Nemo got us all into a nemo-crazy period, when we would grab each other’s belongings and start saying, “Mo-ine, Mooo-ine.” You know, the really classic “mine” phrase that sounded part French. We still do that from time to time, at least RL and I do. It reminds me of the good old days when we get all gooey at really cute things.

Actually, I still do get really gooey and squeal-ly at cute things. My friends commented that I could not stop squealing at Remy the rat when we were watching Ratatouille. I squealed through Wall-E and nearly drove my friends up the wall. When I was watching Partly Cloudy (a short film that Pixar traditionally plays before every Pixar full length movie), I squealed at the sight of adorable babies, kittens and puppies. The boyfriend was really very amused.

You get the gist, don’t you.

My sister adores Toy Story, she can watch that over and over and over again. I can watch Ratatouille over and over and over and over and over again. That is the impact that Pixar has left on us, the storylines could be entirely out of the world, but because they are animation films, we go along for the amazing ride and we are never disappointed.

Warning: Stop reading, do not click – if you don’t want to read spoilers to the movie, Up