unfair.

I wonder if all funfairs are unfair. or typos of unfair. 

Those windows over there.

Those windows over there, with the curtains rolled up. That’s my house. I live there. My children, they don’t have space to run around here. They sit near that window everyday, holed up in that tiny apartment. 

I feel sad. I feel this world is unfair. I feel my eyes glistening as I think back to what he said to me. His parting statement was that he couldn’t afford anything more. He told me, his past year in this school has been a painful one, an unfruitful one. He told me, he spends a greater part of his time chasing people to hand up files, cut their hair, wear proper shoes. He told me, when he stops learning, he stops being a teacher. 

Yet he never fails to awe me when he teaches, scribbling the cryptic equations on the board and making a step I would never have thought of to solve a complicated problem. Yet he never pushes away questions which is beyond the limits of his knowledge. He gives either the clear cut answer or a promise that he would return with the answer. Yet despite his brilliance, he is understanding, he sees the tiredness marked in our faces and gives us a break where he feels it’s necessary.

I feel indignant. He deserves more, he ought to have more. 

I respect his spirit, his willingness to learn, his ability to teach, his very vision of what teaching should be like. Ah, I’ve never thanked him personally. I will one day, for he deserves more than that meaningless chant of “Thank you sir, good bye sir” which is repeated to every teacher, regardless of race, language or competence.

Laugh.

That boy sitting beside me. He was bored and couldn’t find anything to do during a justifiably boring lesson today. The result, absolutely hilarious. Enough said.  
  

A break in.

I suppose the strongest reason why we have a police force is rather similar to the reason why we have an army; They are useful as deterrents, as a threatening presence as the stick which prevents our society from devolving into another one of those lord of the flies style societies. However, when faced with a task they are really supposed to handle, does anyone know how effectively they do it? Much as it is important to be known as effective such that it acts as a good deterrent, is it as important to be effective? Just yesterday, I heard from a neighbour that his house had been broken into. Evidently, the maid left the door ajar and some dishonest creature had sneaked in and got away with a briefcase. I am unaware of how the police handled the case, but I was told they were called. It seems they had not done anything conclusive. I suppose it is hard to blame them for such a case. However, it got me thinking, how effective are these police? Not quite the standard of those police on CSI I reckon, but how good are they really? For any of you who do still read this blog, have any of you all ever had to contact the police? How effective were they?

ON HOLD.

Ah put it on hold, on hold on hold.

Too many things I’ve had to put on hold recently. Sigh.

Rather annoyingly,

Rather annoyingly, it is often difficult for one to change who he/she really is. Yet there are a million and one reasons as to why one would want to change a certain aspect or characteristic of himself. Cliched as this may sound, I’ve come to realise this much myself. 

The key to these problems might then be how we work around it, what our attitude towards it is. Every so often, I hear the moans and groans of why one is not as intelligent as that top scorer, as driven as that mugger or rather amusingly, why one is not taller like that abnormally towering beanstalk. I don’t think it’s quite sufficient to console yourself with the fact that you may be better in playing guitar hero compared to your friend though you’re not quite as good at doing integration. It’s somewhat like the economic concept of comparative advantage though I’m not referring to helping your friend play guitar hero while he does your homework.

What I think I might have known previously yet not applied was that life shouldn’t be all about changing yourself to make yourself someone else, but embracing yourself and finding workarounds to your deficiencies while maximising your strengths. 

For example, if you’re quite an arrogant ass, the idea is not to destroy your beautiful arrogant character but to work harder to make sure you’ve got lots to feel arrogant about. That way you have two complementing characteristics and you may then succeed in life! Briliant isn’t it. haha.

Times like these.

I hardly come to this place anymore. I wonder why. I wonder where all my times flies away to. I wonder how, I wonder why!

Yet it’s times like these when insanity threatens my very soul, when there are no new episodes of tv shows, when there is no longer time to play useless games, that I visit this sanctuary. The nice clean lines of the design soothes me. The blank body of space for writing, consoles me. It tells me, it matters not what you write here, your ass is not on the line. 

Quite unlike that document titled World Literature Draft 1, open right now in another space. Quite unlike that EE document hidden in my work folder. Quite unlike that ToK draft for which there is still no document. wow.

Touch typing

Now in this day and age, touch typing is needless to say, a very useful skill. Before my current English Teacher decreed that we needed to practice writing out our literature commentaries, every essay we wrote in and out of class was neatly typed out and printed. I wouldn’t bother to estimate the total number of words we have in the type-written assignments we have done in the past year and a half, but you can imagine the string of numbers which would appear here even if we were to disregarded the words which we had typed and erased from existence with the magically useful backspace key. 

Typically, I don’t quite think as fast as I can type. Taking time to phrase each sentence, rephrasing it; the ability to type fast seems to be of no use whatsoever. However, the usefulness of touch typing comes in when at 1am, I realise that I have yet to finish whichever assignment it is I am working on and hence decided to start writing absolute rubbish. 

Another use of touch typing comes when I wake up at 6am to realise that I’ve fallen asleep in front of the computer and left my commentary unfinished. The ability to touch type would allow me to churn out more rubbish without wasting time to turn on the lights! This of course assumes my hands have been positioned in the correct place above the keyboard. Hence the importance of tactile feedback in typing. (Yes I don’t have money for a backlit keyboard)

Speaking of touch typing, lately we have ventured into statistics and probability in our mathematics syllabus and this skill of touch typing has somehow come into handy in a rather different manner. Row upon row and column upon column of mindless data is to be fed into the calculator to do brainless calculations which mean nothing to us. Sadly, I have not quite mastered the ability to touch type on my calculator. It hasn’t been too easy, switching between the Casio layout and the Texas Instrument layout. Can you imagine typing on a DVORAK keyboard after years of having typed on a QWERTY keyboard? Does the Texas Instrument calculator proclaim to reduce Carpal Tunnel Syndrome?

I do need to go back to practice, my scholar classmates can touch type on those calculators faster than I can. heh.

Leave me a comment with your contact details if you would like to contribute to my buying a backlit keyboard for my TI-84 Fund.