Back in Cambodia for a different reason..and with 20 primary sch kids but feeling more alone than the previous times..
Found this cheap place which only costs USD0.50 per hour so I decided to blog everyday since its opposite my guesthouse..

I realize I do miss Cambodia..especially the people..
Saw mr kao..woah..he has slimmed down a lot and has lotsa white hair..think he’s overworked..=( dunno why leh..whenever I looked at mr kao, always reminds me of my Cambodian father..

Mr Kao, Edward and I sat down at Princess Angkor Hotel to discuss over some things and Edward kindly offered us breakfast. I thought it was a nice gesture and that we can have a free meal..but we were charged USD7!! Disgusting. “there’s no free meal in the world”

Cambodia’s receiving lotsa support from foreigners..when I was at the airport, I saw a box wirting “donations to kg phluk”.wanted to find out who the box belongs to but I din get a chance..met these 2 girls who brought some donations to give away..so she wanted to get the contacts to me to pass to..hmm..den Mr Kao brought me around to 4 places and all these areas have been touched by Singapore..

The first one was Tapanng. Got this uniformed group of red cross, npcc and girl guides just came..shared with teachers (31 teachers, whom Mr Kao, gathered for them) first aid knowledge..den set up the library for the kids..but the sad thing is cos they add with styrofoam boxes, the boxes had resulted in some kinda land pollution behind the school..

The 2nd one was Stung. Stung has 2 adddiotnal schools built by Greenridge and one other school. The 3rd one is Cheong Mun which has an additional classroom built by Assumption..hope I din get the facts wrong.

The last one was this Training Center for the Street Kids and Orphans. Mr Kao said he helped to collect the kids too. Greenridge secondary school was there to build a classroom.only there for about 5 days.thity over students to build a smaller classroom than ang chagn chass.i asked the teacher how to engage all the 30 over students.she said they did but I din get to see la.and she kept on emphasizing that it’s a difficult job. (ya..i know..) but i was touched..touched by the bonds that the students shared with their Cambodian friends..suddenly realised that i missed that kinda feeling..

Mr kao brought me to a Cambodian wedding today! So happy.its my first time going to a Cambodian wedding but the photos I took all sux.my camera can’t take night scenes..
Some interesting things..the style is like the Chinese style wedding dinners..but its only applicable to the rich people tho..the groom was from the military so of course they are rich..if not, it would just be some makeshift shelter and blast loud music..

Some interesting facts..they dun start at the same time for everybody..once your table has 10 people, the dishes will start coming in..once u finish, u can leave..a total of 8 dishes..hmm..let’s recall, the first was a cold dish, den some cold meat with raw vegetables, den some fried fish cake, den some fired mixed vegetables, den fish, den tom yam soup den fried rice/rice..got one missing..forgot what it is liao..anyway the things all a bit sour..
The bride and bridegroom almost dun eat and they keep changing their attire..oh and Cambodians like beady and glittering stuff..they issue envelopes to the table so that you put money in accordingly..similar to ang pow but this time round they give the “red packet”itself..
The most interesting thing is that whoever wants to drink has to initiate cheering with the rest..so lame..and cos I pai seh to cheer, I would just not drink lor..but initially, I forgot about it so I just accidentally drank a few times..

a boy with a tear drop

oh..i'm going to be an Enable-a-Family (EAF) volunteer..hmm..embarking on a journey to work with children..moving slightly away from teenagers as a VPO..dunno if i will still continue VPO.. it has not been easy..esp when the probationers do not hope to meet you..

went for the first training today..
and the trainer was sharing with us this story of a boy in Boys' Home..
he was caught for theft, put on remand but failed the remand cos he kept fighting..
in the end, he was sent to boys' home..the trainer was introduced to him..
so the trainer asked about his family..the kid said "ok lor"..
but the trainer realised there was something wrong with his tattoing..
he checked with the in-charge about his family..both his parents are drug addicts..
and that clearly explains his tattooing..

a tattoo on the face..near the botoom corner of the eye..a tear drop..

my heart sank for a moment..

random thoughts...

hmm..i guess i should be doing work..but its not really helpful staring blankly at the table of topics and trying to type something in..

oh..its the last day of school but i will be back for the almost the whole of next week..almost all the teachers have gone home..but im waiting for 2pm before going to clinic to work..

sometimes when i think back, its ridiculous that im taking up so many jobs..sometimes, keeping myself busy is probably a good chance to make myself stop tinking too mcuh..luckily edwin dun complain much about my busyness..

hmm..my cousin's wife just gave birth..the girl had some kind of big red markings on her face..not sure if its birthmark..my cousin's wife was so sad that she cried..hai..i guess its inevitable for her to feel sad..but somehow, i was glad that the baby was perfectly normal..its amazing how a new life is born..most importantly healthy..im always full of admiration for parents who have to take care of children with physical or mental disabilities..sometimes, in the clinic, you see parents wheeling in their special kids, as i emphathise with them, i am also full of respect for them..i often question "next time when i get pregnant and during one of the screening, the doctor diagnosed my kid with some disabilities, would i still have the courage to give birth to him?" i dunno..i can never answer the question..i just pray hard that it wouldn't happen to me..

hmm..flying off soon..so much to do..but i dunno what to bring for the kids there..been looknig at photos to develop but in the end, how muc would it mean to them or is it a one-sided thing on a part? but at least i know that when i look through the photos of when i was still a kid, it brings back great memories..

so i will be away for 3 weeks..my mum was saying " how cum ur bf never complain u so busy? now somemore flyin off".. hmm..i also dunno y..he has been accomodating to me..perhaps like what others put it, cos its the start..putting up with all my nonsense..my sister was saying " you are always so good to your friends but not to your family or bf"..yah..so i guess he probably suffered lots..but dunno y..its just in me leh..hai..mum keeps saying i should be more appreciative of him..i am..but i just dun show it ba..these 3 months maybe short but it seemed long..perhaps cos we have known each other for a long time..waiting till late for me outside my clinics, at my tuition places..and suffering hungry pangs till late night..hai..its tough to be my bf..as many of my friends would put across..but having a bf has been a great help..oops..like when he sometimes helped me with my work..wahaha..typed answer keys..sort out papers..adding up marks..going through all my mood swings..my stress..esp when i thought i lost my students' workbooks and exam scripts..helping me to carry 34kg worth of donations to my house..but of course planning a wondrous birthday..just felt thankful..this week has been tough with lotsa misunderstandings..but glad its yu3 guo4 tian1 qing2...relieved..but i never know when i will have to wake up from this dream..hai..

there was a gathering for 6A'97 people yesterday..mingmao called and asked if i was going..i wasn't..wanted to go back home to do things..(although i din do much in the end)..but mingmao mentioned something that struck me "i never had so much fun talking to guanghui, xianming, junjie, xiong jie until recently..we just click..last time primary school also never talked so much.."

yah..it was david who kinda brought 6A'97 people back together again..i still remembered that 28th oct morning..which was about 3 weeks ago..it was 8.30am.suddenly melvyn msged "do you know what happened to our primary school classmate, david?" I was stunned..haven really been in contact in me. the last time i saw him was in nus when he came to evangenalise. yah. had his msn. only talked once. hai.i said " i din know"..he asked me to look at the orbiturary to confirm if he was david..sigh..it was..to my shock..

hai..i spread the msg around..realised i had lost my hp and lost many people's contacts..but amazingly..from a few spread to many..in the end, over 20 people turned up..it was more than half the class. even our beloved primary school teacher, Mrs loo (aka miss see toh) was there. and we set off in 4 cars..hai..everyone has grown..there was one doctor..one lawyer..one teacher (me) some were already working but many were still studying..

it was from the night service that i found out so much about david that i never knew of him..such an active volunteer..we would have been great friends if i know his commitments in community service..hai..God is unfair..why did he choose to take someone who was so faithful to him away..i dun understand..mayb the christians can explain better..hai..

it was strange..we gathered outside and had a good laugh at how everyone has grown..mingmao commented i was becoming ah lian..mayb cos the way i have to talk to students..but strangely he added that " i thought you are supposed to influence the students..how come the students influence you now?" yah..it din occur to me..we had jokes and laughter..people have grown prettier, taller and we couldn't even recognize some of them..it was a contrast to the scene inside the hall..his family was mourning..

somehow david brought us together..it was a strange way to meet..a way that i wouldn't have wanted to meet the rest..but it was through this gathering that we came back together..its exactly 10 years..

till now, its still like a shock..i still vividly rem the sight of a friend lying in that box..he wasn't just sleeping..he has left us..and images of long, just and even ah gong just flashed through..

it doesn't seem to come to my mind that my ah gong has passed away.. just like when i asked hl why she's going back to malaysia..she replied "to see my ah ma" den she paused for a while..oh! my ah ma has passed away..go back to see my cousins..

i truly understood what huiling meant when she would sit at the coffeeshop and waited for her grandfather to come..and only to realise that her grandfather has passed away..i remembered when seeing familiar backviews of people looking at my ah gong and i called out to them, only realising that my ah gong has passed away..i remembered when i visited edwin's dad at the hospital, i thought i saw ah gong in one of the wards..i wanted to go in to visit..only to realise it wasn't and i was there to visit edwin's dad..

hai..yesterday huey ling asked " what would you do if the doctor says you only have 3 months to live.." she added..everyone has to die eventually..so do give it a thought..hmm..a penny for thoughts...

oh..i remembered when we bidded farewell to david's father, he was aksing "who's xiaojun"..i was shocked.."uncle, im xiaojun.how come u remember me?" "Oh! you were always the top in class in primary school.." my heart sank further for the night..den i meant edwin sng and he asked what i was doing..den i said "teaching" so he asked"scholarship"..i said"no"..hai..i kinda felt terrible after that..whats the point of excelling when you were young and you became nothing when u grew older..hai..graduating after 3 years cos i couldn't make it to honors..sometimes, its not about not wanting to study..it was about me unable to qualify..

life's sad..i would rather not be known at all since young..everyone has expectations of me..everyone tinks so highly of me..but in the end, i have failed everybody's expectations..life's tough facing all these expectations from people..i even dread to go back to school soemtimes..bumping into friends who knows of my excellent results in the past and shocked to know that i have graduated..

hai..but life still goes on..but im always stuck with tis ugly history..

its been about 2 months since i wrote something here..its about finding the timing..finding the mood..finding the "un-laziness" to blog..there has been so much thoughts, feelings along the way and i guess i have forgotten quite a bit..better start blogging before i start losing all memory..



i think my blog's very boring..not much picture..but my pict size is really big..so have to resize den post it..a bit de tedious..for those who don't know, im already teaching..hmm..i dun haf the full workload yet..only 3 classes..one sec 1 science class (normal academic but supposedly the best normal academic class), one sec 4 and one sec 5 (chem and bio)..somemore chem and bio classes are co teach..so i think its quite slack..but having to cope with my 10 other tuition kids whom i still had at that time..a bit hard to breathe..yea..finally only left with 2 tuition kids and its later, i will finish my last tuitions with them..



Sec 1s are little hard to teach..sigh..i think less than half the class are listening to me when I teach in class..sad..the rest are in their own worlds..staring blankly..sigh..no wonder the nie trainer was saying that most of the teachers have adopted this attitude "i only teach those who want to listen" so the teachers just keep on blabbering..its not an effective lesson..



its true that nowadays kids are different..i told them i would be having extra lesson but come the day when I was supposed to have extra lesson, the kids said i did not say..some kids said they were going to ask their parents to complain somemore!! so some of them did want to stay so i told them to call their parents and asked their parents to talk to me..so true enough, they really did so and in the end, the parents still asked them to stay but they gave black face the whole lesson..hai..its really different..last time if teachers said stay we would just guai guai stay..



den comes the next scenario was these 2 boys refused to copy any notes..and they returned the revision notes to me!! super attitude..so i asked them " why do you all come to school?"

Boy 1: Come to school to study la

I: Den why you don't want to write notes?

Boy: Lazy and tired..dun want to copy..



Boy 2: Come to school to make friends and play lor..

I: But now can't play. why not do something else and not waste time?

Boy 2: Don't want. very boring.



sigh. dunno what to do with the kids.



sec 4 kids are nicer to teach..some might be playful..but in the end, most still make the effort to learn..



but i still enjoy teaching..enjoy listening to my students share about their problems with other classmates..share about new happenings which I have never heard of..laughed at their childishness..haha..like when i pulled a trolley of workbooks to a classroom, they were like saying " miss lin, you just came back from the airport? what u bought for me ar?"



hmm..yah..and its nice to see that my Sec 1 kids improved..esp this boy who got the highest in class for Science exam (never was the highest), he came up to me and said "Miss Lin, i also never expect to get the highest leh..but i studied your notes den get the highest. thanks." and he ended with a really joyous smile. so happy for him too.



hmm.yet, i do see guys who worked hard but did not score and yet, guys who did not work hard and scored..sometimes life's unfair..

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that was something i blogged 2 weeks back..kept in the drafts so now im continu-ing..looks like i have really got lots to write..
hmm..somehow the education system is skewed..in the end, results do matter..some of the kids dont do well academically but they do have other better skills..such as like good at communicating with others..(which many people do lack)..leadership skills..yet, when the results come out and they don't do well..they might just become a forgotten lot and left behind..
hai..so how do i break out of this cycle? how can the education system gives a more rounded assessment of the students?I spoke to a senior teacher with 20 years' of experience..he was encouraging.."things are slowly changing..it takes time"..

beginning to see more of the extra things that teachers are doing..all sorts of planning during the holidays..just finished a Science Challenge where we had some sort of amazing race with science games for primary school students..the school had a series of outreach programmes ot pri sch kids..next up will be open house..
and im planning with my mentor a new environmental science module for the school and collating exam papers..video-ing chemistry practicals demonstration
yah..sounds a lot..but i guess the other teachers have more to do..
but im really ok with the work..still think the workload is manageable..
maybe im really a workaholic..
haha..

had a talk with a teacher yesterday..he was advising me to think carefully if i really want to teach cos i haven been presented with the full idea of teaching..i had nice classes..less workload..
teachers had much more admin..form class, CCAs, teachers' committee, departmental duties..
hmm..but in the end, he just concluded, "you are just someone who hopes to lead a simple life, who wants to reach out to people. perhaps teaching can be for you" ..mayb its true..i hated the person who invented..den there won't be poor people in the world..

ok..i will end here..back to my work..
i have got so much to write....but..hai..i need time to do my work..