Tutoring

How do you deal with the sheer boredom of coaching you daughter in the finer art of comprehension?

My kind of evening

Birds chirping overhead
Tall trees casting long shadows
In the orange dusk under a cloudless sky
A gentle wind sending sheets of ripples my way
As I stand beside the river

Trees that stand the test of time
Waves that wash the shores
Land and sea in game
Of give and take and give and take
Over time over time

State church gov

The British gov parliament seems to have always been out of touch with what people want if the crown series is to be believed .

And the church insists onncontrollingnthe private lives of people in order to hold on to it's own desperate power

Which is worse

Which is worse
Killing someone or dying

Depends on the context really

If it's a war
Better to kill someone than die i guess
If it's an accident
I'd rather die than kill someone
I couldn't live with the guilt

Pleasure

Guilty pleasure

The singular pleasure
Of gnawing on strips of dried skin
Shredded from the bottom of one's heel

Nothing comes close

Church

The church and its desire and power to interfere in loves of ordinary men and women is no simple matter.
How can the church England oppose marriages of divorcees? King Henry the viii started the church if London because he wanted to divorce and remarry

In bed

Nowadays in bed
There are three of us
Me my husband and his phone

Reflections

The story of the fall .eating the fruit of knowledge and not being able to unsee things

One would think with perfect knowledge people will be perfectly happy
But no.
With more knowledge we only learn things we cannot demand we yearn for simpler times
When ignorance was bliss maybe

Reflections

The story of the fall .eating the fruit of knowledge and not being able to unsee things

One would think with perfect knowledge people will be perfectly happy
But no.
With more knowledge we only learn things we cannot demand we yearn for simpler times
When ignorance was bliss maybe

Katate

R1 stanza has 7 line each line 4 syllables
About my favourite image that I have kept secret for sometime
Cant keep it secret anymore
What is it

Low hanging tree
Leaves of the Almond

shades
Me as I sit

Sheltered under
the almond tree,
its low hanging
branches spread out,
protecting us
from the noon sun,
we silently watch

the waves gently
lapping the shore.
Heat shimmering
off the water
time stands still now.
In my minds eye -
My daffodils.

Soft sand beneath
us, green leaves above
us, we sit here
Under the shade of
the almond tree
watching the blue green
waves rise and fall

gently writing
Lines on the shore
Heat shimmering
off the water
time stands still .
In my minds eye -
My daffodils.

Office lunch

Working lunch
-----------‐
In front of me
Rolls of white sticky rice
Wrapped in crisp green seaweed
Peppered with orange eggs
That will never
Become fish

Sometimes

I need to write
To make sense of this world I'm in
I love my workplace
My colleagues
My bosses
It's a safe place I live in

We all start from someplace and grow
Wonder what I can do
To raise the sensitivity of colleagues art and artists can do what policy cant
Tell the truth as it is as it is felt

I am here today to celebrate my country
My kids are excited its Singapore birthday
I still feel tears welling up when I sing or hear the songs sung
this bloody country is worth fighting for
The barbs and stupid acts stem from ignorance
I'm a teacher
The road is long
But I can and will teach

I feel like I'm in the workd of the giver
Where once I didn't see anything
Now I see colour the lack of it
Among our bosses. All Chinese.

Just said the pledge.  Regardless of race.

Churchill

Just read and heard churchill's eulogy for the king
Words are powerful things
Very powerful.

So hard or too easy

So hard to concentrate or too easily distracted
Which is it?

It's the time of the year national day
And I am usually very patriotic
But this year it feels ... bitter sweet
A sense of moving on
Yet anxiety lines the horizon

I feel so lonely tonight
Wish sutha or sham or malar or kannan or subair were around
For me to meet with them
For them to calm me down

Distraught and distracted
Wondering about my place in my own country
I could cry
But why should I
All we have is some borrowed space on this precious earth for a micro second of time in the massive tapestry we are part of
And we shouldn't take ourselves
So seriously

Am also incredibly touched
By the amount of noise this is
generating by so many Chinese
Maybe I move in a privileged circle
Of writer fb friends
But still

I take offense at the Gov letting go  of the corporation and chasing after the individual
How can an individual win against a state here in sg
It defies belief
But if he thought we'd nod our heads like so many sheep or cows
He's got it wrong
That bulldog of the pap
He can't shut us up with the strength of his voice the size of his xxx
Too many are asking questions.

By silencing one minority voice they silence whole lives
Cowards

Who am i

I am that token Indian in my workplace

The one who gives other Indians some measure of pride

That token friend who allows you to see
That I am just as human as you can be

I am the reason you arent quite as racist as you could be
Knowing me allows you to say
I have Indian and malay friends
Without me your life would be duller
.because of me
You see
That brownface is wrong

Everyone needs me
Or someone like me

Being Indian

Being Indian or Malay 

Is not a costume that you wear, 

Make up that you wipe off

To go back to being comfortably 

Chinese 

Are you a better Malay or Indian 

Than a Malay or an Indian? 

"Light hearted humour" 

You say in defence

To whom is it meant to be funny? 

A cheongsam,  a saree, 

A baju kurung...

These are clothes.

We can wear them

For a couple of hours.

What we can't wear

Is one another's skin,

Though we could try 

To walk in the others'

shoes.

The meaning of f

Dear Gov,
Let me elucidate you
F has many meanings now
And you just stuck in an older era

F u. That's a cuss. That's an f word used to swear.
This F ing delicious.  That's an f word used to mean 'very'.
I wanna F u. Here F means " have sexual intercourse" .  Depending on tone and context it can be a sign of aggression or intimacy.
Stop F ing it up. Here F  means "messing it up".
I am so F'd. Here F means dead, in trouble.

At least 5 different meanings to this F word and you assume it's used as a swear word against a race. You put your flawed interpretation out as the truth and condemn them. You order the video taken down so people can't easily verify the truth. You play Power F ing well .

Brown face

Where do I start
I'm uncomfortable
The easier wrong to call out is the rap
What were they thinking saying  fucking Chinese.
It can come out in a novel maybe not a rap. Not in Singapore
Even in America I cant think of people being okay with a rap song that say s fucking nuggets or fucking whites

Sorry I stand corrected. She said the Chinese were fucking things up. Would it have been less offensive if she had said Chinese were messing things up?

So easy to call out so easy to get distracted

The harder wrong to call out is the brown face
A Chinese man portrayed a Malay lady in a tudong and an Indian man with an oily curly wig with darkened skin

Most Chinese may not be able to see the harm in it
Apparently he cross dresses often and this is in character
How would non Chinese know that?

How do we explain why brownface is offensive?
Caricature. Reducing people to physical appearances.
Suggesting cant fond talented people of NJ oriy races to portray in the ad. Which is rubbish. We have a good pool of TV talent.

For a minority to call it out the minority have to be brave . Risk being called sensitive and dealt with awkwardly in future conversations. Not even fellow minority may support you coz they risk ostracism too. Some minority may not get whh its offensive too.
Sigh

Like when i was a new teacher and did not how to articulate what made me uncomfortable about girls dressing skimpily in what they called sarees. And that child walking into serangoon road and saying we so smelly. Or that girl desceiving me as having golliwog hair and possibly not knowing how offensive that is

And my stupid well meaning boss saying I'm one of the better Indian mums he knows! Who is comparing me against? Paragon of virtues the Chinese mum? Like there is a type! Grr

Back to the issue at hand. I just realised the rapper didnt say fuckingnchinese. They said the Chinese were ficking things up. And it stated not all Chinese. Just the racists.

The power of politics.
1  they present the tap song as attacking a whole race
2. They remove the video so no one can verify it
3. They mistake the use of the word fuck as a label vs a synonym for messing things up.
4. They distract from the larger issue and attack the small easy to smack problem.

Plus..  the guy in the video has been cut out of another cna video about local musicians. Coz people are terrified of the state.
Animal farm and 1984 well and alive beneath a veneer of all being well

I have many questions

How come the agency thought it was okay to use a Chinese guy to rep malay and Indians?

Why are we not talking about the aeriousbstuff preeti brings up at the end

We may never talk about the tough stuff we need to talk about. About race in Singapore.

What we can do now
Talk about why brown face is offensive in the papers and in social studies
Talk about these at the curriculum planning level first