rain.

something amazing happened. it's what prompted me to blog in the middle of the week, anyway.

it was raining, and i decided to just make a run for it, without an umbrella. i was running late, but i don't suppose that'd be much of an excuse.

so i prayed the rain wouldn't drench me too much, and started out.

then of all things, a car horned, and stopped, and someone passed me an umbrella. a stanger gave me an umbrella.

was completely nonplussed. dumbstruck. whatever you call it.

it was just amazing, amazing, amazing.

so i got drenched a few seconds more before taking it all in, and said thank you so many times over. i don't think they heard me.

i'd heard two cars horn just before that, but i hadn't stopped. i'd just crossed one of those small roads, and was under the impression they'd been rebuking me for not looking before i walked. one car turned, and that's why i'd thought what i'd thought, after all.

i'd like to think, they were trying to do exactly the same thing. it's an amazing world.

God's given me amazing friends. and He's blessed me with amazing people to share this world with.

i'd prayed that i wouldn't get sick, or get too wet, but i hadn't prayed for an umbrella. it just never came to mind.

God is good.

and while i waited at the bus stop, i hadn't taken a bus in rainy weather in a long enough time that i didn't think to stand back. when the first truck drove into a puddle that had water splashing halfway over the entire length of that sheltered area, i wasn't so much feeling anything but being stunned. then i realised, it was more than twice as many cars that purposely avoided the puddle made by the road sinking in a little just at the bus stop. they'd slow down, deliberately, or even drive in the middle of two lanes, just so they wouldn't get people wet.

and it's times like these when i just have to stop, and wonder at how amazing God is, how amazing life is.

a filler. from between week to week.

uh huh. lasted all of a week. and what a week.

at least the primary sixes are sitting tight in their exam rooms by now. just one more set of exams to go...

from what i gather majority of parents here are insanely achievement oriented. insanely. if their precious in-their-eyes-precocious nine year olds don't score in the realm of band 1, or (horror of horrors) drop a further 5.5 marks to below 80...

well, they'll whip the cane out, and for good measure get rid of the ineffective person who claims to be giving tuition to their kids once a week.

i read a book. apparently caning's the culture. wacky people. (oh no, i should say, traditional...) i have concluded. i am blessed. not to have parents like that. or the parents who gleefully impart their disciplinary secrets. "don't use canes, canes leave a mark. use rubber bands."

what is freaking wrong with you?

in any case. i'd have had to be going, anyway, by the end of the year. it's bad enough that the primary school year overlaps into our first semester. i wonder if i should tell them that, or let them politely ask me to get lost first. maybe i'll let them refine that art of office politicking.

but enough people are decent enough themselves. as are the kids, all three of them (i know, small basis for comparison, but that doesn't make it any less real), that i don't know how i'm going to be decent to them in saying 'i quit'. if the action itself doesn't already count that impossible.

i don't know. i don't know. (so i know i don't know. is that supposed to make me feel any better?)

i don't type in capital letters because that makes it feel too formal for me to be honest.

the kids aren't all bad. infact they aren't bad at all. and it's not as if i don't wish for them to be happy, or do well. i'm just not in a position to achieve either next year. so that leaves till the end of this.

i'm awaiting eviction in the case of the primary sixes. it's just science and mother tongue, if i'm not wrong, that's left. and i do hope they get all the a*s they want or need. as for the aforementioned primary three kid, well. just a little while more, before the exams come a-caling. here's to practice papers i'll have to churn out if i don't find good enough assessment books in time. and to hoping.

(too mild a word, but) dislikes.

while playing rs i come across enough people who fall into the category of 'annoying and insufferable', two words (like surreal, for example) that i've found too much cause to use recently.

i never did find cause to hate them, though. i don't usually hate people. it doesn't quite seem possible.

only things i've actually ended up hating are ideas. subjects. disciplines. that sorta thing. (yes this is another rant, so you might like to bail now before the smoke gets thicker...)

in no particular order, these would be the things i despise, sometimes, some of them most times. (i'm not about to argue the usefulness of a subject, that's been drilled into me enough times. i may intellectually know it's useful, and has a point, but that doesn't mean i don't have the freedom to hate it.)

chemistry. particularly, atomic theory.

physics. why must you say precisely why this thing happens this way? it just is this way.

basically, branches of science dedicated to explaining the obvious, or predicting what doesn't need predicting.

locations aside, much of physical geography.

philosophy. i enjoy philo well enough, but when religion explains it all, and religion can't be brought in for religious purposes, all the theories and imperatives those poor guys spent years sweating over seem nothing more than glorified posturing. it's at those times that i don't think much of it, but it's more useful a tool than i could ever have imagined when faced with friends, people, who don't think much of religion, at all.

too many aspects of trigonometry.

statistics. accountancy. i don't know how accountants survive. even with excel those little numbers're enough to drive you over the edge.

basically, mathematical proofs that set out to prove the obvious, or topics (think, congruence, symmetry etc) that require you to prove the obvious.

scales. if they're meant to be important, why am i only forced to learn them the first time i take an exam? if i'd known that, i'd have told them they needn't have bothered. for a sheet of paper (fine, two sheets), it doesn't hardly seem worth it.

my mother tongue. (to go into specifics might entail being sued. it's possible. believe it or not.)

to those people who call "everybody's mother tongue" the most beautiful language because it's the language of their most treasured memories and innermost thoughts; amid answers like gaelic, french, chinese, greogrian, farsi, german...
you obviously haven't been forced to learn this language. it also stopped being the language of my innermost thoughts a long time ago.

to those who'd call me derrogatory names for a pro-western non-westerner...
i've got news for you. being anti-my-mother-tongue ≠ being anti-asian ≠ being pro-western.
heck, even anti-asian ≠ pro-western.
i'm fine with every other asian culture, i'm fine just about every other culture, and every other language. besides english and that bit of german, all the other languages/bits of languages that i know are asian. i'd sooner learn korean and farsi (beautiful script) than another western langauge. don't you dare generalise to the point that you'd pin that on me.

to those people who'll look scandalised at that revelation, and start spitting in outrage...
i learnt to read, speak, and write the language before i could make the conscious decision to condescend to learn it. i would have condescended to learn it anyway, not least of all so those as inflexible and wont to judge a person by their culture as you would shut up. after all, it's people like you who simply cannot be less blind who drive me to despise this language in the first place. so bugger off.

bearing in mind, again, that this is my considerably flawed opinion, incomplete in the sense that i dropped most (sadly not yet all) of these subjects as soon as i was able. and though i may know why i shouldn't have, and should not when i do get the chance, i'm not about to argue for the opposition. i also don't think much of those arguments at all.

bearing in mind, also, that i wouldn't have hated those things if they hadn't been forced on me. so let them exist, but don't force me to have any unnecessary, overt contact with them.

that's just superficial though, isn't it?

what would count as something i'd genuinely hate is evil.

hate's an ugly word. i was wondering whether it'd be right to hate evil, i googled it, and came across this. it's strange, really. the general message is hate isn't necessarily a bad thing. it's a matter of what you hate. that to hate someone that's gone beyond anything remotely decent or human; that would be the type of hate that ends wars.

i don't know.

it makes sense, and in a way, it doesn't. i'll stick by proverbs 8:13. "to fear the Lord is to hate evil".

and in the meanwhile, i'll try to figure it out.

the week ahead.

one last post before i try to keep away from this blog for a week.

try being the operative word.

you would've thought i'd have learnt by now that writing something off the top of your in response to anything at all gets you nothing but trouble, and the need for a longer, more organised and well thought-out reply.

i haven't, but i'm about to. just a few minutes then i've got to leave. no time to reply coherently now, so it's exile to blogging off the top of my head again. back on topic.

the week ahead...

monday's the day you most feel like dying. dead tired because you slept at 2.24 sunday night kind of dying.
tuesday's the day of most stress. skipping-lunch-and-dinner-cos-you're-rushing kind of stress.
wednesday's the day of scary timetabling. insane timetabling. scarily insane. insanely scary.
thursday's the longest day. the day that's stretched like taffy that's already been stretched like taffy that's already been stretched like taffy across earlier weeks.
friday's the day of unexpected length and unpleasant surprises. friday's traditionally the day of exams and dental appointments, last sightings and lost books.

saturday's almost worse, but by saturday i'll probably be back to rant about it.

have a good week ahead, y'all.

why.

sometimes i wonder why i play runescape. then again, it's usually not so much me not knowing as me playing for such a long while without needing to know that i lose sight of it.

like this whole day, for example.

i've played for a good three hours, in toto. on my skiller, because it's fun just to talk without the weight of that hanging over (besides your head), your every word. (the wrecking the stereotype that all level 3s are macros and n00bs doesn't aid much in the get-off-this-account-and-rs-already! hype.) the fact that it's a rare monday public holiday also factors.

and after a while, it gets boring. sure. it gets pointless (though i dissuade myself with the justification for creating that account in the first place). and that's what i mean by losing sight.

then wham everything comes together.

i play rs for the same reason some people fantasise, or read books. it's a satisfactory enough escape from some things real. when i talk people can't see the anger seething just below the surface of each word, can't see the tears.

when i type happy, people think i'm happy, and then i become happy too.

or at the very least, calm.

i don't play rs for fun very much, anymore.