monday – run
tuesday – swim
wednesday – badminton
thursday – laze around
friday – run
saturday – swim
sunday – laze around
and i’ll give myself 15 out of 52 weeks allowance for screwing up this plan, not including the first week where i need to get mentally prepared and ready for this adventure!
ppl around me are starting to work. they are sending emails. cc-ing to me. they are getting dates and proposals done. they are getting ready for 2011.
me? i see the cc-ed emails and i just close them, with little intention to put in the effort to follow up with those emails………
i have less than 11 days to get out of this rut. i dont want to be a robot next yr. and its scaring me that im still not willing to get the mood back. its different than when you dont feel like working but will still do the job. now, i dont feel like working and im delaying putting in the effort to get the job done.
im being a very bad employee……….. i need to get my fix of adrenaline rush to get my system rebooted. 2010 has done quite a bit of damage to me man. now i know.
why cant ppl live with just minor illnesses? why must there be life taking illnesses?
my cousin who lost his mom to asthma is now at the verge of losing his dad to cancer.
he’s heartbroken. and i dont know what to say to him. in fact, there’s nothing i can say to him. im heartbroken.
i feel like crying because he is so dear to me. and i just feel its so unfair that he might even lose his only other parent. he’s crying so bad he cant even talk………… im so heartbroken……..
there lived a girl who dreamt and dreamt and dreamt of the day she could walk out of the door, get into a car, get to work, work. get into the car, get back home………
today, i finally experienced what that really means……..
i followed my dad’s car to sch today, cos i didnt dare to go without any form of guidance. so he drove in front of my for a while, and then i drove ahead of him with him on my tail. and then he left when i was 1 traffic light away from sch. yes, i am not confident of my own driving ability. that an effect of being so dependant on an instructor…
brought my cadets to HQ for ZPN, brought them back to sch. took some stuff from sj room, and brought it down to my car. and boy, was it a great feeling to finally open that back door, put those 2 huge bags in, drive out of the gate and wait for the kids to clear. and when all was done, to get back into the car and drive back home. in the comfort of air con. music. a seat. you dont need to carry heavy things around. you could talk to yourself and no one will even care. you can hum a tune. you can sing along. who cares if you are tone-deaf…. you could shake your head along with the music. you could turn up or down the temperature. who cares… its your car!
believe me……… for at least 5 yrs, ive been waiting for this day to come. it finally came.
i hope i’ll grow more confident of my driving ability. not over confident, but confident. i dont want to be a road hazard to other ppl. i’ll drive safely…….. but more importantly, i need to learn how to park backside in!
cheers everyone. today im happy ive finally realised a dream ive had for quite a while…..
i find myself being rather obsessed with relationships and all………. especially hard this year because……. well…… we know..
i used to go back and visit my sec sch until my first semester in uni. after that i stopped. reason being, most of the teachers i knew had either left or werent around at that time i could visit. for the couple i got to see, we spoke a few words… i wasnt the best of students. i was a lazy kid, choosing to do the minimum unless i really needed to get something done.. the couple of those i spoke to remembered me, but it wouldnt have mattered to them whether i came to see them or not.
so when many of the trs leave, many of their ex students wouldnt see a point in coming back. why would they want to come back when the ppl they want to see arent around? just like when i go back to my sec sch, i cant identify with it anymore cos there are just too many changes.
a new principal is coming to my sch. with that, changes are definite. what keeps the culture of a sch going? the teachers. what happens when trs leave?
the identity of the sch changes.
stability, being so important is still hard to balance with fresh new ideas to take things to a new height… but here i am behaving like an old lady who refuses to shift from her house so that land reformation can take place………. im still lingering in the past when everyone is heading towards the future.
one day, i might leave sch to find another future. the ppl i leave behind might miss me. or maybe i’ll just be another person who came and went.
i dont quite know where im going with this post. all i know is ive been quite sad since getting back home 2 nights ago.. a mentor will be leaving. there’s one less person i can look up to in sch.
i remember AK’s reminder to make sure i sustain gold. but he doesnt know that gold is not what im mostly concerned with. what im concerned with is how to straighten out the sec 2 cohort cos they’ll be leading the corps for the whole year. how to make them more confident. how to educate them on so many things. how to get them to teach the juniors abt correct behaviour. abt how to be an appreciative person. abt so many things. how can i myself be a better role model. etc…… how can all these be substituted for an award? an award that does mean alot to the sch. but to me, not as much as each student’s personal development…
………………
it still pains me that she’s leaving. i never knew that was how much of an impact she’s left on me. i never realised it. what do ppl do to leave such an impression behind? if i ever asked her she’d most probably say, “nothing what.. just do lah” haha.. im going to miss her responses.
hiyah… ppl come and go…. thats to be expected.. i’ll go one day too. so will the officers. and so will the new officers…. which makes handing over ever so important.
with so many changes next yr, i guess there’ll be new ideas in sch. maybe that’ll help eradicate some of the perhaps-not-so-good-things that’s been happening. change is good.
ya… this post has become some ‘dear diary’ entry. my thoughts are all just so trapped in a cob web that i end up having tears almost everytime i think of next yr. sigh…… im going to miss her. alot.
what are 3 things you’d grab?
once again, i really wanted to answer this question, but i kept delaying it cos i really couldnt think of any. now that i force myself to answer… errr…….
1) my bag (which always contains my wallet and handphone and external hard disk and other non essential items.
2) probably my laptop and (will probably forget to bring my charger in the haste) cos it contains so many things on the past few yrs of my life. my life would be lost without my soft copies of so many things…
3) i cant think of any…
to be honest, in a fire, all you want to do is to get out.. so… i’d be really glad if i got those 2 that ive written above…
but theoretically, what else would i want to save from the fire……..?
probably my certificates and bank related documents. unfortunately, they arent kept in the most accessible place and both files are at different places in my room. it wouldnt be easy to grab. but, ya.. those would be good to keep.
i would be sad though, to see all the gifts from my friends burn to ashes. the notes and letters i recieved. my NUS books. my sec/jc textbooks and notes and files. so many things in my room are a part of my history. so many things……..
hmmmm….. maybe burning them would be a good way to leave the past behind and move on..
perhaps…. lets see……… hmmmm….. now that i think of it, maybe nothing else in my house is of that much sentimental value or importance for me to consider taking out in the event of a fire. and whether i get these 2 things out depends on from where the fire is closing in on me in the first place isnt it..
what 3 things would you grab?
it was an exciting start to our railway adventure after reading abt it and seeing its pics on NSS’s FB. after what was considered a necessary delay, we headed off for lunch at the tiong barhu market (where one stall sadly sold lor mee with shark meat). after lunch, we cabbed down to the bt merah bus interchange, walked abt 5 min and got to our starting point…
we crosses that man-made bridge, climbed the slope and had our first view of the railway track…… this had to be exciting! and you bet it was..
walking on the hard stone and gravel tracks was hard and only became harder… but hey, that was the fun of it… it was meant to be an adventure wasnt it.. 
here’s our starting distance marker and who knew we’d keep calculating how far we’d walked..
we saw many of these purple flowers..
and many of these red/orange lantana-look-a-like flowers too..
tall long grass flagged either side of the track, and honestly, we did get a little worried that we might come face to face with a snake… haha..
so while we were checking out these grass on the other side of the track………. hugely immersed in the fear and excitement, BL said, ‘train’ in a very calm tone. we turned around, and had approximately 2 seconds to GET OFF THE TRACK!!! the train went right past us, and my friend said she say the train drive scold us as he FLEW past us…
and somewhere in this whole mess – i instinctively snapped a shot of the train with my back facing the track…
this being taken without zooming, that was how close we were to the train…… no wonder the man scolded us……….
the aftermath, we were dumb founded at the fact that the olden day train hardly made any noise in approaching as did the modern day MRT! train tracks may or may not have vibrated, as we thought it would. the only sound it made was the horn sound.. and it was scary. we had jumping into the scary grass patch irregardless of the fear we had of snakes hiding in there… we looked at each other – shocked… and there afte, we turned back almost every few seconds just to make sure we had more time to react.
moving on…
ants getting their meals…. some on the thorny stem. some inside the flower getting its sweet nectar..
we continued to walk..
so glad we were when we reached this junction where a mosque was. surely there’d be ice cold water here somewhere… unsure of whether we were allowed to enter a mosque, we slowly approached. no one said anything, and we went in to get a drink..
this tree in the mosque had HUMONGOUS jackfruits..
several ppl crossed the railway line at several places, like this..
zand we did come across a couple of make-shift houses…
light at the end of the tunnel???
no… we still had a long long way to go..
but seeing some form of civilization made us feel like we werent alone.. i love travellers palm… so majestic..
we checked out GPS now and then to find out how near we were to some amenities..
tired, we continued walking… we walked and we walked… and we walked… somewhere along, i saw this ‘leaf’ that looked awefully long and skinny to be a leaf. i looked hard and followed the leaf end to the leaf start – only to realise i was looking at the tail of an oriental whip snake………
its gorgeous almost luminous green was amazing!!!! we stood there for at least 5 min, watching the snake slowly inch its way into the thick hide of the grasses… of course we made sure there was no train on our butts…
no sooner than a few steps later, we saw this dead snake….. not a moult, cos we could see its vertebrae…
and we walked..
reached another small bridge… where we rested and looked around for a while..
cant remember the name of this grass..
tulip seeds were falling, like some magical fairies.. haha… couldnt get a shot of that.. but i did get one of a fallen one on the ground..
more grass flowers with feathery stigma..
and one that looks like christmas lights..
and we walked… and walked… and walked…..
a pic of the modern MRT with the KTM Line…
which meant we were near a station… the buona vista MRT station..! haha.. we were near where our bosses worked!
i spotted this nest…… huge insects were flying around it.. at first i thought it was a baya weaver nest or something.. but, no.. it was an insect nest.. but, wasp or hornet i dont know..
after a tiresome walk, what else could make your day brighter? we had to thank the vandals who did this cos it did bring a smile.. BUT, DONT DO IT NEXT TIME!
and you would think that after all these, we must have walked quite a distance…. but…
nahhh… we are just 2.5km from where we started..
ppl actually own this huge house..
along the way, we saw parrots….. and other really tiny bird with red eyes??? our cameras werent good enough to catch them, and seriously NEED a pair of binoculours!
isnt this leaf amazing.. the light green parts you see are unopened parts of the leaf… what is the name of this???
orange fungus after the previous day’s rain..
and canopy of trees are always give a warm feeling..
more railway line…………….
bees pollinating tiny purple flowers..
changing the track – interesting how ppl those days figured these out..
we had walked for 4 hours…
for a distance of..
7.75km…
you can imagine our joy when we finally saw this signboard…
WE HAD REACHED!!!!!
we finally walked down to the bt timah road and eagerly walked, ever so quickly to the King Albert Park mcdonalds – all we wanted was that sip of ice cold drink….
whats up with that upside down signboard??
but then that wasnt enough… the other 2 wanted to have dinner… so we walked to the nearby toh yi drive market to grab some food, again..
it was a great experience.. and i can only imagine how more fantastic the experience would have been if we didnt have to constantly look out for trains coming behind us… when the officially stop the trains in june 2011, i really hope the goverment will support Nature Society (Singapore)’s proposal to make the KTM railway line The Green Corridor connecting so many parts of Singapore.
Please read their proposal
and Support this Cause.
ive written the directions quite clearly i guess. for those who want to walk the track, please respect the fact that train that high speed WILL kill you. please think of your safety first. stay out of the tracks as far as possible. when you reach narrow lines, cross quickly. respect nature and keep safe..
if you are interested, NSS is organising a walk on the 11th of Dec along the Jurong Line. you may contact them..
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