The Education system is a joke.

No carrot. No stick.

No carrot: Our salary is trash and there is zero incentive to rise up in the ranks because the workload is not proportionate to the pay increase. At GEO 3, I can easily go home at 2pm for 3 to 4 days a week. For $400 more a month, you need to take on a fuckload of responsibilities and roles that make you stay back for 3 to 4 days a week. $400? I make that in 1.5 hours / 2 students (per month) as a private violin teacher. $400? I give you sua. Imagine the reward for doing good work is more work. That sounds so familiar. Platoon 1 finish doing stores? Go help Platoon 2 do. Lmao. Imagine M*E have to put rules in place to ensure that teachers do not moonlight too much. Fk you, you think we so free so much time and energy arh, weekday teach finish weekend still wanna teach some more? You really want to stop moonlighting then fucking pay us more you retards.

No stick: Basically for a male teacher, as long as you don't touch girls and don't put pinhole cameras in the toilet, there is no punishment for being a bad teacher. M*E will never give up hope on you, they will send you for courses to upgrade you and train you bla bla bla. To some extent, I can see where they are coming from. Not everyone is a distinction teacher. Ahem. But to see so many GEO 4 and 5 people doing absolutely nothing and being at that rank simply because of time is just sickening to many teachers. They are basically abusing the system where there is no reason to sack them from M*E and they can just continue cruising along being as mediocre as they can be. Hmmm.. why does that sound so familiar? An ITE drop out sign on become 3rd SGT and being an absolute degenerate can continue having a job in the S*F. Hmmm.. 

Teachers who actually have the passion and talent for teaching would absolutely see through this system and leave. Better pay, better environment, less saikang in private. Teachers who stay are generally people who have seen through this system for what its worth and just continue milking it for as long as they can. Who doesnt like to go home at 2pm?

Here's the guide to go home at 2pm:

1) Tell your RO you want to prioritise your family. Not interested in going to the leadership / teaching / specialist track for the time being (forever)

2) Do as little as you can. Be as dumb as possible. Offer as little as possible. If you know how to edit videos, don't be a moron and say it. Act blur live longer. If you are given a task, achieve the bare minimum and dont try to value add. Ask for the template and just blindly follow. Don't kay kiang take initiative and offer better suggestions. Leave it for the people who wants to promote.

3) Aim for a C- in your performance grade. C- is the magic threshold. D you will be put on probation with no performance bonus. C- you still get PB and the BEST thing about C- is that you CANNOT be promoted for 2 years. That is an absolute godsend. If you don't get promoted, you will not be given more work, if you are not given work, you would have less opportunities, lesser estimated potential which means you go home at 2pm.

4) Doing all those above would have 2 outcomes. 1 would be you staying low profile and hence just fly under the radar being a fked up mediocre teacher. The other would be the school might post you out to another school for them to deal with your fuckery. Either way its fine because going to a new school just means more honeymoon periods since they can't arrow you too much in your first year and things would come slowly. Win-Win. Repeat step 1.

Personally, I have my own boundaries when it comes to teaching. I will never compromise my students learning. I still take pride in being a distinction teacher that provides fun/differentiated lessons in a safe environment. However when it comes to stupid shit saikang that has nothing to do with teaching, I offer absolutely nothing to anybody except negativity and whining. You arrow me to do, I will do, but expect shit work that is done last minute because I dont give a fuck and you have no time to make me redo. Not happy with the outcome? Next year get someone else that cares to do. What you gonna do? Gimme a C-? Yay! You wanna give me a D? Come observe my lesson and learn the difference between you and I. Ask the SLs come also. See how you write your report to justify =)

See? No carrot. No stick.

Teaching is just a job to keep you employed from 730 to 130. The real money comes from what you do after 130. Or you can just go home and have some me time before your child comes home. Or you can just sleep so that you have the energy to deal with your child later on.

When I leave the education system, I will probably make an actual video to teach people how to exploit the system. Just like in Maplestory, I had to make a video teaching people how to bot so that it becomes a huge problem before it gets fixed. In RoK, I had to make a video teaching people how to exploit the migration system before it got nerfed. In DragonNest, I taught my entire guild how to exploit PVP prefixes for all classes till we took 8 out of 10 spots in leaderboard and it eventually got nerfed. 

Sigh. Why must like that? It seems like the people coming up with such systems are equally fked up and mediocre. And they get paid alot of money. What a joke.

Control.

 "I am so desperate to be in control of my time and life you have no fking idea".

6 months have past since the previous post. I also told Zoe everything that was bottled up because I really felt very negative and that feeling suffocated me. The straw that broke the camel's back came when she got pissed off at me for something absolutely retarded. For about a year since my maids departure, Arelia has been going to kindergarten. I was the one who woke her up, prepared her milk, wash her privates (sometimes backside if she shits), brush her teeth, change her diapers and uniform and together with my father in law, sent her to school. Can you imagine waking a 2 year old toddler at 6am everyday and convincing her to do all this stupid mundane routine stuff? The amount of rage from her and the amount of control I need to have was insane because I needed to reach school on time as well. Now why did I have to do all that alone? Because Zoe was teaching in a far away school which required her to leave by 6am. So it was all up to me. Totally fine. I did not say a single word of complaint. Mind you that was including her 3 gym days. There were days where my daughter would not even see her Mom for an entire day from the moment she open her eyes till she closes her eyes. Not because she is busy. Totally by choice. For an entire year. I kept my mouth absolutely shut which in hindsight was not a good idea. It just made me extremely negative and I had literally zero outlet (which explains the previous post)

Fast forward to 2021. Zoe got transferred to a new school that was OPPOSITE Arelia's kindergarten. It was already pre-discussed before-hand that she would fetch Arelia to school since her own dad can fetch them both to Arelia's school and she can just walk opposite. One night she came up to me" Eh Papa, tomorrow you continue to do all the usual stuff and send her to school." I was like wtf? why? "I don't know what to do and how you do it and I need some time to adjust. New school will be very tiring bla bla bla bla bla... why you cannot understand how difficult it is for me?"

I lost it. I totally lost it. Difficult it is for you? You? Difficult?

Yes, I totally know what to do when I first started. Lol.
Ya, only you tired. Lol.
Sure, I am the one not understanding.

What I don't understand is how someone whose entire career and job training is dedicated to taking care of kids have the balls to tell me she don't know how to take care of her own kid. 

What I don't understand is how someone can try also dont try and say dunno already. If its somebody elses kid sure fuck it. Your own kid. Hello. Try also never try give up already. 

What I don't understand is how I did EVERYTHING and uttered ZERO complaints and somehow I am still the one that cannot understand how difficult it is for her.

What I don't understand is how she thinks a 3 year old with all the morning routines already established for a year by me can be more difficult then me starting at 2 with zero prior scaffolding.

What an absolute failure of a Mom and Wife. 

In hindsight its totally my fault. I KNEW I was going to be a terrible father. I KNEW I was irresponsible and inconsistent. Yet when Zoe got pregnant, I only suggested an abortion but didnt push for it hard enough because I was not in control. 

Come to think of it. Since when have I ever been in control in this relationship? I did not want to have a wedding ceremony. Did it anyway. I did not want to take wedding photos. Did it anyway. I did not want to do any of her fucking customs because 10 years in the relationship I have never seen a single teochew trait coming from her or her family and suddenly she needs 4 random pieces of gold that she will never ever wear. I did it anyway. Did not want the baby. Had it anyway.

I vividly remember a conversation we had in Ajisan years ago when we visited Michelle after she got her first baby. At Michelle's house, we had this conversation where someone asked her "Are you ready to be parents" and she replied "Nobody will ever be ready". And that statement tilted me so I discussed it with Zoe over dinner. I think we were not even married at that point. I remember being very condescending towards that statement because as a teacher, I have seen so many parents who are failures. Being ready for a kid means you need to know HOW to parent. What kind of language to use, how to scaffold, what are the values we want her to have, who plays what role (authoritarian / disciplinarian), setting up rules and boundaries and expectations etc etc. The amount of time and effort to raise a child is fking insane and I was sure as fk not ready to be one.

I remember when Zoe came to me with the pregnancy news I was making a bossing video for Maplestory. My first instinct was "Can we abort? What are our options?" I totally didnt want the kid but due to societal norms and expectations, I remember the final verdict to be "Our financial capability allows us to have a kid and her age is 29 so just nice no need to go through alot of health checks and baby is less likely to have defects"

That was the mistake. That was a defining moment in my life that if I could change, I 100% would do it differently. I lost control of the subsequent 20 years of my life because of that 1 mistake. I lost control of everything in the relationship because of that 1 bad decision. If I knew what it would take, if I knew what I had to sacrifice, if I knew how incompetent my partner was, sigh.. if I knew. 

Paraphrasing a joke from Dave Chappelle on the stance of abortion. It is the women's unequivocal right to choose whether they should abort or keep the baby. Her body her choice. However, if  they do choose to have the baby, the man shouldnt have to stick around if they dont want to. His money his choice. If women can decide to KILL the baby, the man can at least ABANDON it. Right? Think about it. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoudH-RPnEE&ab_channel=NetflixIsAJokeNetflixIsAJoke

Fast forward back to me being a terrible husband that doesnt understand how difficult it is for his wife to not even try to be a mom. I lost it and said everything and more. Basically everything from the previous post. This time round. I will be the one in control. I am at the state where I am extremely ambivalent about the outcome (reminds me of the Rat (Pariston) in HunterXHunter). If we divorce and Zoe wins custody, fine by me. Lesser work for me. If  we divorce and I win custody, fine by me. I am the better parent and my parents are better grandparents as well. GGEZ. 

Fast forward 6 months. Now Zoe is the one doing the morning routines. She cut down her gym days to 1 and things are slightly better now that she is taking a little more initiative. It pains me that I have to purposely take steps backwards just to give Zoe the opportunity to learn to be a better mom. I have to purposefully engineer scenarios so that Arelia can show her love and appreciation for Zoe more than me. Now let me be absolutely clear that when I say I am a better parent. I am purely comparing myself to Zoe. Compared to other parents who truly love their child. I only have the pedagogy but not the love. Its like knowing how to do martial arts but no strength. I also told myself, if an accident happens again, my statement would be "Abort or I leave with Arelia".

My life. No more bullshit. I decide.

Control.

Mid Life Crisis. Divorce thoughts. Negativity. Self-Destructive Spiral. Who am I really? Is this the life I want for the next 30 years?

Typing this at 4am in the New Year. 2020 passed by so quickly. 

Referencing my post 3 years ago:
" My dear Arelia, I will try my best to not have feelings of resentment towards you. I will try my best not to be a bad role model for you. Goodbye to my comfortable beanbags. Goodbye to my nice padded flooring. Goodbye to my days of rowdy gaming with my 猪朋狗友 late into the night. Goodbye to my privacy of having my own room. #为了你我忍 "

Once again I marvel at my own foresight. It is actually painfully accurate to what my life has become. From an avid gamer, to an emasculated fat fuck, I dont even know if I can finish typing all my thoughts or I will just give up like my previous posts, just like how I always give up in real life.

I have always wondered, what went through my Dad's mind when he decided to leave my Mom and I. I am slowly but surely starting to empathise. I have never hated my Dad, I'm more like Naruto where I never really knew my own Dad well enough to forge any meaningful connection hence the lack of sadness. To a certain extent, I had this feeling that my mom was part of the reason why he left. The constant condescension and passive aggressiveness with unrealistically high expectations almost made me take my life when I was barely 8. I could still remember thinking about it constantly, opening up the kitchen drawer and taking out the biggest knife and running my thumb along the blade. Opening up the window and staring down, wondering what it would be like to just take the leap. One thing that stopped me was basically the logic that both methods would not guarantee death and I really hated the notion of going through alot of pain and suffering and yet not die. Come to think of it, I wonder if I was in the US and guns were lying around would I still make the same decision? 

I also made plans to leave the house for good. I still remember the entire plan that I crafted for weeks. I saved up $27 in my snoopy wallet. It was alot for a Primary 2 or 3 student back in the day. I made a list of places where I could steal food without getting caught and I would go to public swimming pools to bathe / drink from their water cooler. Back then I was not allowed to go out on my own so the plan was to just not take the school bus home. I told my grandma about the plan because I trusted her and I wanted her to bring me food if I ever ran out of money. She ratted me out and my mom secretly stole my snoopy wallet hence putting a stop to all my plans. Life was slightly better after that.

Fast forward to now. 2021. I truly appreciate the effort my mom made to raise me up and I can totally empathise how difficult it must have been. Doesn't mean she didn't destroy my childhood, she totally did. But I understand how difficult it was and now she is really trying her best with Arelia. 

Here's my hypothesis: My dad actually didnt want kids. My mom had an abortion once. I was not the first child. By the second child (me) my mom decided to keep the baby, my dad was a free-spirited chef that liked fast cars (F1 macau racer once) / gambling / smoking. My mom was a university lecturer. The 2 of them absolutely dont click. Basically my mom's family was poor in China and my dad's family basically bought a fk ton of stuff for them like washing machines and bicycles and clothes etc. So basically my mom married a fuckboy for money/family. There is no way they could stand each other when their core values are so different. He would gamble away all his money until no milk powder money etc. bla bla bla basically he was too immature to start a family and hence divorce.

Divorce is something that has gone through my mind constantly these few years. Is Zoe really the right person for me? Is she settling for me? Am I settling for her? We share close to zero common interest other than singing. Sure we both like to travel but the places and style of travel is vastly different between us. I seek to explore while she seeks to relax. Nonetheless small thing. She hates gaming. She doesn't watch the same shows I watch. We basically have no common interests / topics between us. At this point, I simply view her as Arelia's mom. I have no desires for her, because I simply don't respect her intellect. I don't see any value in talking to her, she is unlikely to provide me any value other than being Arelia's mom.

Being Arelia's mom is actually good enough for me to just trudge along in this relationship. But sadly / unfortunately, her ability of being a mom is fking terrible. As a fellow teacher, it is actually pathetic to watch as I am the only one disciplining Arelia. Many a times her absolute failure of being a mom would make me so upset that I would just storm out and takeover while venting all my frustrations on Arelia. Over the years I have just grown to accept that she is a simply a bad disciplinarian. I am 100% sure she knows how I feel and often she would just throw Arelia to me simply because it is the easier option. 

Long story short, the only things she bring to the table is that she cooks 1 meal a day for Arelia. I can easily do that. She liases with a part time helper to clean the house. I can easily do that. She orders things necessities like toilet paper / washing powder etc online. I can easily do that.

Every single routine that Arelia has started with me. I send Arelia to school, I pick her up from school. I bathe her, I wash her backside, I teach her how to brush teeth, I even taught her how to fold toilet paper and clean her own peehole after urinating. Fking unbelievable. Bed time routines, eating routines, establishing boundaries, everything me. This was all fine.

She signed up for a gym membership. Sure. Her money, her choice. Her passion was exercising and I am of course supportive. Thinking that she is a rationale responsible thinking adult, I am sure she would know her priorities. Unfortunately thats where my respect for her started to dwindle. She would go to the gym 3 times a week at night. After putting Arelia's dinner in the cooker, she would just be gone for the rest of the night. Leaving me to fetch / bathe / dry hair / play / feed / wash bowl / wash backside / change pyjamas / read story all by myself for 3 times a week. 

Unbelievable. 

When Arelia is finally taken care of, is it time for my own passion? Unfortunately because Arelia is sleeping, I can no longer play games that require me to talk / communicate because my voice could potentially wake her up and guess who's the one to go in and soothe a crying toddler? The one and only thing that defines my life, the one and only thing that makes me happy, is gone. I am relegated to playing mobile games with a $4000 gaming setup. Alone.

Unbelievable. 

What have I become? Who am I really? Is this the life I want for the next 30 years?

The straw that broke the camels back was when I had a fever + a splitting headache on one of her gym days. I told her explicitly that I was not feeling well, was breaking out in cold sweat. She gave me panadol and just left. 

Unbelievable.

I really think I don't need her in my life anymore. She offers close to zero value and her existence tilts me to no end. It is a constant struggle of watching her fail and watching her hypocrisy. She told me one of her resolutions was to spend quality time with Arelia. The next week she went out 4 out of 5 nights.

Unbelievable.

On Saturdays, I have private violin lessons in the morning till the afternoon. After my first lesson, I have to buy breakfast for her, pick up the car from her parent's place, drive back, have another lesson, drive Arelia to ballet, drive Arelia back to my mom's place, drive out for dinner, drive her and arelia back, return the car and go home by myself. Despite the fact that the car is from HER parents and she also has a driver license. 

Unbelievable.

After ranting for 3 paragraphs, I am starting to sort some thoughts out. It just seems to me that I am very upset with her lack of initiative. To the point that I have lost respect for her as a human being. Every time she steps out of the house I question her value. If I can do it by myself, why do I need her? Alot of people have noticed my significant weight gain this 2 years. I have also sorted my own thoughts out and wondered why. I came to the conclusion that I was stress eating and also somewhere deep in my heart, I think that the fatter I am, the lesser "ego" I have. By lowering my own value, I hope to limit my own wandering mind of what-ifs.

Unbelievable.

I need someone who can bring out the best in me. I need someone who can challenge me intellectually, to have opinions that are interesting, to have ideas and conversations that can bring our lives forward. She is not it.

At the bare minimum, dont tilt me. She tilts me. 

Now the more important question comes. What can I do? Personally, the ideal outcome would be that custody be granted to me and SHE pays me alimony. I am a better parent and we both know it, her parents know it, my parents know it. I should definitely do it while Arelia is still young just like how my Dad left early.

I will give myself and Zoe 2 years. 2 years for her to prove that she is worth something. I will take the next 2 years and lose weight. 

This time round. I will never make the same mistakes I made. I know exactly what kind of person I am looking for, everything has to be on my terms. No more fking marriage. I need to find someone better than me both spiritually and intellectually. 

Happy New Year. I guess that's the most convoluted, depressing, negative way of reminding myself about my 2021 resolution.

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Lmao I found this rant 6 months later still in draft form. Fk it.

2018 to 2019. #LoseRespect #HDBViolinTeacher #YouTube #Maid #MoneyBuysHappiness

Goddamn, this blog is slowly deviating from its original purpose. Instead of leaving memories, I am just treating this as a ranting platform for my own ego. It has come to a point where I am getting closer and closer to my blog's title of being a narcissistic overrated underachiever. You know how people would look back on their younger self and see the embarrassing immaturity of their past actions and words? Its the total opposite of how I function. I chanced upon this blog a few days ago clearing my history and re-read my own posts and rants, instead of feeling the humiliation of my lack of maturity, I actually feel fking proud of myself and gave myself multiple pats of the back seeing how my brain used to be able to cross reference gaming analogies with real life. I actually chuckled at my own wit and that was the embarrassing part in hindsight. Oh wells at least I am 10/10 self-aware.

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What an interesting year. The reason for this ranting post is truly to consolidate my thoughts and also exploring options for what this blog can do (instead of downloading all my insecurities and frustrations on Zoe which is totally unfair and negative, maybe ranting here would suffice). So alot of stories would lack alot of context since I am lazy to provide them and the keywords themselves would be enough to trigger my own memories.

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#LoseRespect Part 1

Where do I even begin. Lets start from patting my own back and affirming myself. I am a music specialist that graduated from N*E with a distinction in practicum. I had a god-like mentor that was leaps and bounds ahead of me and every single day in practicum I was learning new things, reflecting on how to improve, linking the theories I learnt in N*E to practical application in school. When I entered my current school, I had a reporting officer who was a Chinese teacher turned Music Coordinator because she could play the piano. She didnt even have the qualifications to teach Music much less any sort of Musical pedagogy. I was a beginning teacher and of course I was humble and kept quiet about things I didnt agree with.

As time goes by, I was trying out new things, kids enjoyed my music lessons. I self-arranged ensemble songs like "Lion Sleeps Tonight" / "Pirates of the Caribbean" / "Shape of You" etc using recorders and classroom instruments. Children enjoyed it. They were practicing their recorders during recess, they were practicing their recorders at home. Students from different classes were exchanging scores to learn each other's songs. Teachers enjoyed watching the kids perform, they gave very positive feedback about using songs relevant to the children and some of them even asked me for the score so they can bring home and let their kids play. Sounds like I am on the right track? My RO told me to stop. Here are the 3 reasons she mentioned.

1) Don't teach the same song every year. Its boring. Teachers watching would also find it boring and question how come every year the P4s play the same song.

2) Don't teach pop songs. Parents MIGHT complain because the songs might contain inappropriate content/lyrics. This is to protect you.

3) Your songs are harder than my songs. Its unfair for students to be assessed differently.

Holy Moly. Just.. Wow.

1) I teach the same set of songs every year to DIFFERENT people? The point is only valid if my entire P4 class retained for one year?

2) Recorder songs have no lyrics. No MV. Its just notes on a stave. However, fair enough since there are definitely some anal parents. I think this is valid.

3) Wow. This is truly the epitome of education not moving forward. The concept of differentiated learning is totally lost on my RO and it is so insulting to think that I would go through all this trouble of self arranging such fun songs just to make things difficult for my students.

Imagine how mind blown she would be if I told her that when I assess students playing difficult songs my standards are lower. Imagine how mind blown she would be if I told her that students enjoy playing these songs and to me it doesnt really matter how well they play as long as they took the responsibility to practice and ultimately have fun.

Of course in the end I didnt say any of it and just let it go. I took her suggestions humbly with 0 resistance. This year I taught traditional folk songs like Rasa Sayang and Arirang. Nth wrong with these songs, the kids still enjoyed them because I am a distinction teacher. I also didnt have to arrange anything new and these songs were easy af so technically speaking my workload decreased. However, when the year closed, feedback from 2 sources came.

1) P4s: Mr Jay, how come last year the P4s learn "xyz" song but we learn rasa sayang instead? When are we going to do those fun songs?

2) P4 form teachers: Jay arh, last year the performances were better, this year the songs abit boring.

Lol. What to do?

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#LoseRespect Part 2

Every year, rubrics have been a big part of discussion. Every year holistic assessments have been a big obstacle to overcome. How do we give a fair holistic assessment and grade students on a fair rubric? N*E didnt teach us shit about assessment. Or maybe I wasnt listening enough because to me music assessment is honestly not a big deal to me. I am always the advocate of having fun in music lessons. Lets be brutally honest. Music results are USELESS. The only time music results were useful to me as a child was when I failed everything else and I went home telling my mom " At least my Music got A" to which my Mom also told me in my face that it was meaningless.

Lets say a child is looking to enter an arts secondary school like SOTA. SOTA doesnt even look at music results from school. They look at ABRSM results and certs. External / Private music education is far more advanced than what we teach in primary schools. To think we spend so much time thinking about what kind of holistic assessments to give and come up with rubrics and descriptors to grade students etc. What a joke.

Every year I seek to improve our assessment rubrics by suggesting changes to make assessment more fun and make it easier. If its easier, we spend less time on useless things like grades and rubrics and more time on actually conducting fun and meaningful music lessons.

Long story short. 3 separate incidents of discussion with my RO regarding assessment.

Incident 1

1) Our Guitar Rubrics are as follows. (simplified for context)

	Good (0 to 3 marks)	Very Good (4 to 7 marks)	Excellent (8 to 10 marks)
Chord Accuracy	Able to show proper fingering of 0 to 1 chord	Able to show … 2 to 3 chords	Able to show… 4 chords
Strum Accuracy	bla
Chord changing	bla

Any Tom Dick Harry Ah Cat Ah Dog can tell that there is something logically wrong with these rubrics.

My question to RO:

If a child is able to play all 4 chords perfectly on the guitar. He deserves an excellent. So should he get 8 marks or 10 marks?

If a child is able to play 1 chord, does he get 1 mark 2 marks or 3 marks?

Why is there a range of marks that are not proportionate to the skills we are testing?

ROs answer:

Because we need this guitar assessment to be upon 30. Since other components add up to 70.

Me:
Why do we need it to be upon 30? Why cant we just set it to be 30% and avoid the range?

RO:
Because I dowan to deal with decimals. Because other core subjects like Chinese is not doing that.

Me:
Whats wrong with decimals? We dont even have to deal with it. Excel does it for us. We are not a core subject, we are teaching Music which is subjective by nature.

RO:
Are you not confident of  your own capabilities in handling the assessment? How are you helping the weaker students such that they are able to play more than 1 chord? Do you need professional development to help grow your skills in assessment? If you want to make changes, make it in other schools.

Me:
????????????????????????????

Incident 2

Student A missed 3 out of 5 piano lessons due to religious reasons communicated to the school.
Hence I made the decision to let Student A forego the assessment and pro-rate her results at the end of year to not include Piano.

Student B missed his piano assessment as well as the make up piano assessment due to health reasons.
Hence Student B forego-ed the assessment since the Piano vendors have already left and my RO explicitly stated that I was not allowed to administer the assessment for god knows why. I am waaaay more qualified to assess compared to external Piano vendors but oh wells whatever. Less work for me. 

Student C didnt take the piano assessment because he enrolled into the school in Term 2.
Hence he received no results.

Amazingly at the end of the year, my RO actually questioned me:

Who gave you the authority to decide that Student A shouldnt take the assessment?

Why didnt you get the piano vendors to come back specially just to assess Student B?

Why didnt you inform the school that Student C didnt receive any results?

Can you take assessment more seriously?

..............

Can I take assessment more seriously?

Can I take assessment more seriously?

Can I take assessment more seriously?

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Incident 3

Student S broke his leg. Did not attend close to 4 Ukulele lessons, did not take the assessment due to being absent. After which it was mid year exams and he left immediately after mid year exams to Korea to fix his leg. After which it was the June holidays.

RO:

Jay, when S comes back from after the June holidays. Take some time to assess his Ukulele. 

I snapped.

I fking snapped.

Me:

You are asking me to assess a student who did not complete the course due to an injury, did not practice for 2 months due to holidays and exams? How am I the one not taking assessment seriously? Its a lose lose situation. If I assess him without giving him time to re-practice and he doesnt do well, its my fault. If I assess him and give him alot of personal time and attention and he does well, its unfair for others and its my fault again. How is this taking assessment seriously? How is this not testing for the sake of testing? Why are you making me do this? How does this make sense?

RO:
Are you not confident in your capabilities to handle the assessment? Why are you questioning me? Why are you raising your voice? Since when did I say you did not take assessment seriously? Would you like to go down with me to the principal and discuss this together since you do not seem to agree?

I was sooo fking frustrated with this bitch. I swear. At this point I cant even bring myself to continue typing this post. What the actual flying fuck.

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#LoseRespect Part 3

Have you ever lost respect for someone so much. So so so much that you just feel lazy to speak / talk / justify / look at that person? After all the shit that happened, I was still respectful of my RO. Yes I raised my voice. Yes I was being aggressive. But I was all along aggressive towards the issue and not the person. On the other hand, every time I questioned the rationale of her actions, she would resort to questioning my capabilities.

WHO.ARE.YOU.TO.QUESTION.MY.ABILITIES?

How dare you? A measly Chinese teacher, dare to question a distinction music specialist? The only reason you are my RO is because ur dad fked ur mom earlier den my dad fked my mom. Thats it.

The final straw came. When one day I was called to see the vice principal together with my RO.

Vice Principal:
Jay, according to ur RO, you were rude towards her. She also mentioned that you would go for dental appointments periodically and miss after school activities. She also mentioned you came late twice for the past 3 years. On June 3rd 2018 u said this.... on feb 2nd u said this... on 4th April you went for dental on 3rd march u were late bla bla bla.

In short, this little bitch compiled a list of my shortcomings in the past 3 years and launched a complaint to the school with the exact dates. It was at that moment, I lost total respect for this person. 

Its fine to be incompetent in your job. I am absolutely ok with incompetence, I am the pinnacle of incompetence in NUS. I am used to being carried despite my incompetence. The keyword is to let yourself get carried. My RO refuses to admit her incompetence, feels the need to question my competence, feels insecure about her incompetence, compiles a list of small things including my dental appointments AFTER school just to make her case stronger. 

I am just so blown away. Such people truly exist. And the saddest part is, she is a nice person. The only reason she is like that is because she has no life experience. Teaching was her first job, she was literally my senior both in AHS and TJ and NUS. At 34 years old, she has no bf, no life, stays with her parents and lives in a bubble. She gave her life to work. She was thrown into the deep end of the pool, straying away from her comfort zone as a Chinese teacher and being made to come up with a music syllabus from scratch with no training. At this point, I just feel sad for her. She has no people skills, no leadership charisma, just a nerd living in a bubble.

Anyway heres the funny part. I believe in her head she expected me to be intimidated by this meeting with the VP. However I went into full serious mode and explained every single point from every single conversation with all the rationale. Her facial expression was priceless. She thought she was prepared with all the dates and whatnot but she sure as hell wasnt prepared for the "joker turned full serious mode" me. I am so used to standing up against authority she had no idea. I am so grateful for my NS experience where I went head to head with Majors and Colonels. I am so thankful for having a supportive wife that listened to me rant so many times that when I finally needed to string the words into an argument, I could do it with no rehearsal.

Long story short, I admitted I was rude. Explained I was only rude because my professional capacity was often criticized when I was questioning her rationale. 我是针对事，她是针对人。 Explained how conflicting it was to be told "not taking assessment seriously" and yet ironically being made to test for the sake of testing. VP agreed with me. Didnt even talk about other small things like dental appts after school. I know the VP will eventually play both sides because this is truly a fking small issue. The only person that made it a big deal was my "nerd living in a bubble" RO.

Now, my RO is very polite towards me and vice versa. I have made plans to move to another school. I will continue to fake smile to her. Offer no more suggestions. Offer no more value adding. Just nod and go home at 2. This is how young aspiring teachers get jaded and leave the system. Once again I have NS to thank for allowing me to exploit the system of 铁饭碗. I recall being so upset that incompetent people cannot get fired because they are employed by the government. Now I shall be that fked up person who just exist and stays in the system. I have no aspirations of promotion, I have no aspirations of improving the system. Just exist. 

Which brings me to my next milestone. #HDBViolinTeacher.

#为了你我忍

I can't remember why I started the blog, I've always felt that it was "lame" for guys to blog ever since secondary school unless the blog had a specific purpose that I felt it was "not lame". Eg. I always felt that CK's blog was to chase and bluff those xiaomeimei into thinking he is some superior philosophical intellect when in actual fact he is just a smart troll and therefore the blog had a noble purpose. #respect

As I was re-reading my posts, it dawned upon me that I am the faggot. In the sense that I am actually using this platform as an outlet to verbalize and vent my frustrations whenever I feel extremely overly tilted by life.

With this title and the long hiatus post, here is a brief summary of the changes in my life.

1) I am married for 1 year with a house of our own.
2) I am a father of a cute baby girl of 3 weeks.

At 29 years old, this would probably be the average age for all those to happen. It also meant that the transition from child to adult has to end and I need to be a fully responsible adult asap.

Marriage is an interesting thing. Quick summary on the things I am unhappy about.

1) Having a banquet is a fking waste of money. Its just us putting up a show for people I have never seen / never will see / never want to see for the rest of my life. AKA her relatives.

2) Yes we earned from the wedding, at what cost? All the time / effort spent in preparing, its just so not worth it. Imagine taking the money, time, effort into an overseas trip together, holy fk. It just blows my mind why I have to do it.

3) Retarded wedding customs. As a guy from a Shanghai / Hongkong descent, I have literally ZERO requirements. In my 12 years of knowing Zoe, she has not exhibited a single Teochew quality nor made a statement on how proud she is in being a Teochew. Literally fking zero. Suddenly wedding comes around and we have to start preparing all sorts of bullshit like 4 pieces of gold that she will never fking wear, giving cakes and cans of pork and dunno what fk to dunno what fk people, have to put angpaos and red blanket on beds etc. Now to be fair, she herself has no idea wtf is going on, everything is orchestrated by her parents and that was the beginning of my demise.

Now it may seem that I am extremely disrespectful to her relatives and her side of the family. Yes I am. To be fair, I am not disrespecting them as human beings, I am disrespecting their intellect for forcing me to adhere to their customs and requirements. Its like, there are pro-life people who say that euthanasia should be illegal. Look, its my life, if I want to end it, who would be in a better position to make that decision other than myself? Similar to religion, you are free to believe whatever the fk you want, but do not force it on others. Its the exact same logic. 

People always say "结婚不是两个人的事，结婚是两家人的事”.  Nope. I love Zoe. Only. If I'm marrying their whole family by following the customs then sure, ask her sister lie down also.

At best I am neutral about her family, but fk her relatives (and mine). 结婚 used to be about both families but this is 2017, our parents could all be dead and I would still marry Zoe with zero difficulty in finances.

Its so fking unfair. I have to adhere to silly customs and the entire banquet facade. What if I tell her parents that it is Shanghai custom for the guy to sodomize the girl's entire family? Would that work? Can I turn around and say that they are not respecting my customs if they reject my anal demands? Fair what. And so what if I do not adhere to the customs? You will not let Zoe marry me? Sure. Goodbye to 11 years of relationship because I am unwilling to arrange the set up of oranges in a particular manner at a particular timing.

So as you can see. I am losing control of the things that I am SUPPOSED to be in charge of.
I am the one getting married.
I am the groom.
Yet I control nothing and am being controlled like a slave.

If you ask me, here is my desired "wedding ceremony".

1) Invite close friends and close relatives on separate occasions for a dinner.
2) Announce our marriage
3) Treat them to a sumptuous meal
4) Go on an extremely atas high quality overseas honeymoon trip

No red bombs. True blessings from people. Efficient use of money and time and effort.

Maybe this is part of being an adult? Losing myself, losing my own voice and listening and following blindly? I dunno. All I know is, I love Zoe. so #为了你我忍

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Fast forward to February 2017. This is the year of presidential elections. Since both of us are civil servants, we have been appointed to be election officials and are required to go for training. Thankfully we were given the choices to select our training dates and we went down for a full day training course together. By lunch, we felt that we have fully understood the course and decided to skip the afternoon session where they simulate the actual day itself. So we went home.

Fast forward to November 2017. I am a father. Fuuuuuuuuuuck.

I swear to god I have been pulling out for YEARS and it has ALWAYS worked. This sperm was one hell of a swimmer. Fuuuuuuuck.

The topic of parenthood came up plenty of times during our dinner dates in the past. Based on science, females above 30 are considered 高龄产妇 and hence has to take alot of injections and tests to ensure the baby is not retarded or something. (The odds increase a few % every few years)

I have always brought up this question "Are we ready to be parents?" Instead of using body clock as a catalyst and reason to have a child, it seems more logical to consider the following factors.

1) Are you ready to commit at least 18 years of your life?
2) Do you and your wife have similar expectations of the child?
3) What kind of opportunities do we want to give our child? And how much before its too much? Do we force it thinking we know better?
4) Finances?
5) 你的梦想是什么? Think about it, it has been only.... 3 to 4 years after we have been truly financially independent. We have just reached a point where we have PLENTY of options to explore. Are you working in a job you like? Are you passionate about the things you are doing? Eg. If travelling and exploring the world is your dream, having a child would surely delay/inconvenience that dream. Are you ready to settle down with a child? Are we going to end up being very negative and end up using the child as an excuse to why we are not achieving our dreams?

People always say "You will never be truly ready". Fuck you. There is definitely a point where a guy/girl is ready to settle down and this is especially true when you are teachers. We have seen enough fked up children and fked up parents to understand what is required to raise a "successful" child in the current meta. We have also seen what it takes to truly commit and be responsible for raising a child.

Here is a simple test to see if you are ready to be parents.
Your child is screaming its ass off in public. How to react?
Your child is violent towards others. How to react?
Your child is doing poor academically. How to react?

There is a high chance that the average person would not know. If all you have is money and a house and not the right mentality, you will just grow to resent the child.

My dear Arelia, I will try my best to not have feelings of resentment towards you. I will try my best not to be a bad role model for you. Goodbye to my comfortable beanbags. Goodbye to my nice padded flooring. Goodbye to my days of rowdy gaming with my 猪朋狗友 late into the night. Goodbye to my privacy of having my own room. #为了你我忍

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Just realized I saved this as draft so as to not hurt people's feelings that soon. Its now 2018. Arelia is 1 years old.  I am starting to treasure and value my own memories and intellect more than the feelings of others.

The party that we deserve, but not the one we need

This is based on a true story Mr Yandao's party is dominating the Zakum helm market. Everyone will eventually get their Zakum helms if they buy the Zak helm service from them. There is order, there is stability, there is efficiency and reliability. Now, another party composing of lvl 120s that barely make the mark in terms of equips and gear, feel that it is unfair for people to pay for Zak helm service and feels that players should get a chance to get it on their own. Therefore they took the initiative to form their own Zakum charity runs that took 8 hours to down compared to 30 mins of Mr Yandao's party, sometimes the runs will fail due to poor internet, poor equips, inexperience etc. At first, people were drawn in to the free helm service, but the lack of gear and equips and structure and experience slowly took its toll onto the people. Over time, people started to understand why Mr Yandao's party is charging so much for Zakum services.

Practicum.

This post aims to serve as a reminder when I am jaded and burned out that I was good at what I am doing and hope this would reignite the passion.

What is practicum?

Practicum is very similar to playing Dota/LoL. You dedicate 10 weeks of your life to just playing normal/ranked games.

Normal games are the classes that are NOT observed / informally observed.
Ranked  games are the 8 compulsory lessons observations by your CT/NIES/SCM
Promotion series are the moderation observations in the event you are close to either
1) Failing your practicum
2) getting a Distinction for your practicum

How to get a Distinction for practicum?

Similar to Dota/LoL, this is a team game. You are only as good as the lousiest person on your team. Your skills can only carry so much, the rest is up to your EQ.

How many times have you lost a ranked game before the game even started? Trolls in champ select, flaming, picking 5 lategamers with no CC etc. It is EXACTLY the same in teaching.

You can be a superstar teacher with excellent pedagogy and classroom management, all it takes is one troll in your class to act up during a formal lesson observation and there goes your Distinction.

You are 50/0/50, ganking all 3 lanes, taking objectives, snowballing the game, leading your team in a final ALL MID push to victory. Out of nowhere, your Drow/AD Carry blinks/flashes into 5 enemies and get ass raped. You lose 4 v 5 and lose the game.

"If you cannot carry 4 retards against 5 retards, consider the fact that you are just as retarded as them." - Albert Einstein

Classroom management

The beauty of practicum is you have a fixed team every day. So find out who are the trolls in your team. Find out who are the special needs children from your classes, take time out to deal with them, explore classroom management strategies that appeal and works for them. Get them to be cooperative and make them work for you.

For the potential teachers out there: be encouraging, positive reinforcement REALLY works to a certain degree. Praise your special needs children. Take the small insignificant things they do and praise the crap out of them from the perspective of VALUES.

For example,
1) When they are spacing out, praise them! Tell the class to look at how well xxx is paying attention, how nice it is of xxx to be focused and not disturbing his classmates. "Class, don't you think xxx is behaving very well? I want all of you to follow his excellent example bla bla bla"

2) When they randomly say thank you to you or their class mates. Praise them! "I think this is such a gracious and well-mannered class and xxx set a very good example of being polite and respectful!" 

3) Adversely, if you HAVE to scold, make sure you remind them that you have praised them before when they did well. Get the class to re-affirm if you want so that your class and the special needs children understand that you are a firm and fair teacher that is 赏罚分明. Scolding can also sound positive. "XXX, I have seen you behave well. Class, did I praise XXX last week for blablabla? XXX, did I praise you last week for blablabla? I know you can behave better than this. Show me how you set a good example for your classmates."

So you get the point. It is just like saying "n1" or "gj" or "thanks" to your team mates who gank ur lane. 小孩子 end of the day 还是要靠哄靠骗, especially children with special needs.

Start and end your lessons on a positive note, either by praising/encouraging them for a good lesson or give them points for walking in 2 rows properly etc.

Just like how Singapore dedicates majority of their education resources into ITE infrastructure, teachers should spend the most time on lower ability students and special needs students. High/mid ability children have better family support system, they can function perfectly fine without you. Low ability children are the ones that need your help. Build rapport with the class, build trust with your LA students and get them used to your classroom management so that when lesson obs come, you will look like you are familiar with this scenario and you will look like you know what you are doing.

Pedagogy

Just like Dota/LoL, you do not straight away go into your ranked games immediately, u will always warm up your fingers and grind certain champion mechanics in normal games first before trying it out in ranked. Try out your strategies in normal games first, find out what worked/did not work and why.

Similarly, do not be afraid to try things out in regular lessons. Always always try out your formal lesson ob plans with other classes first before executing it in your formal obs. In fact, if you can try out your formal obs lesson plan on the exact class one week before, just do it and make the formal obs lesson an extension.

For example,

Week 7 is moderation observation for Class X. They will let you know one week in advance if you are lucky your moderator is not an asshole. Else maybe you will know 1-3 days in advance trololol.

If you have 1 week to prepare, more or less confirm Distinction already since you get to run through your lesson plan with Class X during Week 6. So during your actual moderation observation in Wk 7, Class X will be familiar with what you are doing and you can play on their prior knowledge to achieve an extension of the Learning Objectives from Week 6.

If you have 3 days to prepare, just try whatever you wanna try with Class Y or Z and reflect and rehearse for Class X.

EQ

The word reflect should CONSTANTLY be on your lips and thoughts after every lesson. Write down what you did and how it can be done better. Be pro-active in seeking feedback and guidance from your CT and colleagues from N*E. Anything your CT ask you to do, just do first, question later. If you are a guy I am sure you know what I mean. If you are a girl, get a guy who gone through NS to explain. A happy CT = happy trainee.

Do not think that the whole world is out to make you fail, nobody is so free to scheme and plot against you just to make you fail. Teachers are busy enough already, be pro-active, offer to help mark/key in grades/look after CCA/relief/take minutes for meetings. (Of course only offer to help when such things are mentioned. Don't be the over achieving zealous tryhard moron. Want to por lampa also must see timing and look natural.) Every extra thing you do is an opportunity to experience. Yes it will be saikang in the future, but while you are in practicum, learn as much as you can.

I personally feel that I could have passed practicum easily even before going N*E. Simply because I have the EQ and common sense. If you are someone that worries about failing practicum even after N*E, I think you are not ready to become a teacher.

Confidence is important, the key to finding the balance and appearing confident yet humble lies in how you verbally reflect. Be able to justify your rationale for doing things and verbally reflect while evaluating the reflection in an intellectual manner with the occasional self depreciating humor. Do not understand? That is why I have a Distinction. =)