I woke up today with just one thought on my mind,

“Seriously, what is the whole point of being nice to everyone?”

Then I questioned myself with all the times I was there for people, and reminded myself of the times when I needed someone and nobody was here for me.

I am having a rather dejected week.

I send an average of 20-30 job applications a day.
I attend 2-3 job interviews a week.

And I am still unemployed in Singapore after 2 months.

The obvious downside is that I have been living without any income in the world’s most expensive city, but the upside is that I get plenty of alone time to find myself back again.

I met up with an old friend who invited me for lunch together at Sentosa Cove, and sometimes people from a different social status helps you to put things into perspective.

We went to one of the restaurants along Ocean Drive and dined directly opposite the yacht club, One Degree 15.

My friend remarked, “Look at all these yachts. They all belong to other people.. It’s like eating in a restaurant while staring at a carpark.”

It was such a simple statement but yet so profound. Made me wonder why are people paying premium prices for the food here when we are really dining in the back of someone’s floating garage.

As he drove me back home, we saw several luxury cars and I casually mentioned that I would like to experience what it’s like to drive a Porsche.

He replied, “What? Come on, aim higher.”

If only life would be more kind to me.

Yesterday I was chatting with a friend. We were weighing my options of working in Thailand against those of working in Singapore.

I told him, “Actually you can’t really compare. Working in Thailand has its own problems. Working in Singapore has its own problems.” This was a belief I held, because there can be no perfect scenario.

I continued explaining that before I moved to Thailand, I had trouble finding a proper job here so I ranted about the lack of career options available in Singapore. My friend himself is having second thoughts about his current position (he has been with the agency for about 2 years) and has plans to switch soon.

So I asked him about his future plans and also what job prospects are there for the both of us.

He thought for a while, and said,

“Actually it doesn’t matter what you do in Singapore. Just do whatever brings in the money.”

I think it’s a very sad and harsh truth about living here.

I was having lunch with some friends when one of them asked me, “Do you think Thais are good in English?”

I answered without hesitation, “No.”

I then went on to explain why, and I gave an example of a Thai teacher who teaches English in my school. I said that when this Thai teacher teaches English, I can’t fault her for not pronouncing the words correctly due to her accent, but I can’t forgive her when she spells words incorrectly.

The worst part is that when I tell her how the words should be correctly spelt, or when I correct her on the spot, she gets angry.

My friends then exclaimed in unison, “No! You can’t correct her. Just let it be!”

I was baffled. “What do you mean let it be? Then all the students will copy the misspelled word?”

And their reaction was even more baffling. “Yes! Just let them copy. If anything, just blame it back on the teacher.. But you can’t correct her!”

After 11 months here, sometimes I still don’t understand how things work.

It has been more than 10 months since I’ve moved here and my current contract with the school is also coming to an end.

It makes no sense for me to be spending the summer holidays here because I really would like to escape getting roasted in 40-degree weather. School has already ended for almost 2 weeks now and I have cleared all of my administration work. My presence in office for the past few days were as good as being absent because I hardly contributed to whatever the other Thai teachers were acting busy with.

Today, I sorted my stuff out into 3 luggages. 2 of them will be going home with me and the remaining one will be kept here until I return. I guess I could say that my apartment is pretty cleared out by now and the only stuff hanging around are my daily necessities as well as some clothes.

I guess I could leave for home anytime soon, but I am probably gonna linger here for a few more days because I just submitted several job applications and I hope to receive some calls in the upcoming days.

Happy New Year.

Honestly, I don’t really know what to expect this year.
I have plans and I have a list of things that I hope to accomplish, but nowadays I don’t believe in myself so much anymore so I’m just taking one small step at a time.

And I must apologize for abandoning this blog because I express myself so much on Twitter now that I’ve became lazy to type anything more than 140 characters.

With that being said, you can catch most of my updates on Facebook and Twitter if I’m ever missing in action from this blog again.

I know parents complain about teachers all the time in Singapore, and I am determined to keep a clean record.

Unfortunately, yesterday I received my first ever complaint from one concerned parent.

The issue brought up was that her daughter has enrolled into my class for the past 6 months but still can’t identify basic vocabulary like “window” or “door”. Furthermore, I was also accused of not allowing my students to bring their books home. (I have no idea how that accusation came about, since I don’t keep a single textbook, workbook or exercise book.)

Being the professional and responsible person that I am, I took full blame of the complaint, but secretly vowed to get down to the bottom of the issue.

Today, with the help of some other teachers, I managed to identify who the student was, and it explained a lot of things.

Firstly, she just enrolled into the school this year and was placed in the primary 5 class. She has a history of switching schools for whatever reasons unknown. For the past 6 months that I have taught the primary 5 students, my emphasis has been on the proper usage of present tense and past tense. If you want to learn vocabulary like “window” or “door”, you should be in primary 2 or primary 3, because that’s the level you get introduced to simple vocabulary. You may come without a solid background in English, but if you are enrolled into my primary 5 class, you can’t expect me to be teaching primary 2 or primary 3 vocabulary during my lessons. If you ask me for a solution, I am sorry I will not slow down my class just for one pupil, but you should enroll your child for tuition classes.

And secondly, I noticed that this pupil isn’t even regular in her attendance. There are only 4 hours of English lessons each week, so if you miss 2-3 days of school per week, you probably only get 1-2 hours of English lessons every week. I am an English teacher, not a magician. I can’t perform magic or miracles.

I am not afraid to voice out because I feel that parents also have a part to play in their children’s upbringing.

While I take responsibility for whatever happens in school, parents have to take responsibility for their own children’s development at home.

Additional commentary: If your child has learning disabilities, please seek proper treatment. As much as you would like your child to grow up in the same environment as everybody else, you need to acknowledge that your child needs extra help.

And with this, I would like to say that I still maintain a clean record.