Doesn't pay to be kind

Yesterday was yet another dark day. I didn't even see the sunlight for the entire day! Sure, there were times when there was light but the looming clouds obscured the sun all the time. It rained the entire day. It seems like the monsoon winds are bringing more rain.

I loaned my umbrella out yesterday. When it was returned, it wasn't mine. Dammit! To make things worse, it was a broken one! I tried to trace back to who actually borrowed it but I was just bounced all over the place like a pinball. I'm certain that someone took it and replaced it with a faulty one. That motherfucker. May boils erupt on his/her chest and upper back and he/she shall find no peace in lying down to sleep. Sleep deprivation will overwhelm the person and he/she will eventually suffer a fate no less severe than those who are lying on their deathbed with full-blown AIDS. Sounds twisted? No. Not at all. All I can do now is to curse that person.

It doesn't pay to be nice, does it? Every single one who has die was a good person. No wonder there fewer nice people around here. How about those who are nasty? They seem to be particularly hardy. Apparently, being bad means you get to live longer. I shall stop lending my things to others now. I used to be selfish and all my belongings are well and good. Be generous and I get a spolit replacement. Obviously, kindness begets nothing. Or rather, it gets your stuff damaged. I shall stop lending my things to others. If they are going to be wet because I did not lend them my umbrella, then TOUGH LUCK! Live with it. It's your problem, not mine. Don't make your problem become my problem. So what if it's CO who wants to lend? Too bad, you didn't bring yours, you get wet.

This incident has left a deep impact and formed a scar. I will remember this for a long time to come. Yes, I bear a grudge. So what? Nobody is going to compensate my loss. I am no saint and I definitely don't have the ability nor the inclination to sacrifice myself for others' (except for those close to me) well-being.

This brings me to another thing. I was getting a little pissed at the standard of work that my tuition student was giving me. I think I'm getting too involved. Perhaps Chia was right. He said as long as I get paid, there's no reason for me to get upset over the quality of work handed in to me. I get the money, I teach. Nothing more, nothing less. My dear would have totally objected to his point. She would say, "No! How can you think in such a way? You have the responsibilty to teach him well. It's only natural for you to feel upset when he gives you crappy work." Same Taurean, different perspectives. I guess there's no point in feeling upset or anything. He's not my son, you know? If it's my son, then it would be justifiable that I'd be more concerned.

After this two incidents yesterday, I developed a new mentality. Based on the amount of renumeration that I receive, I will then adjust my work output to match the said renumeration. That is to say, I will do nothing more or less; just enough to justify the renumeration that I get. At work, I get paid to perform various responsibilites of an Ops Spec, then I shall just do so. Lending umbrella is beyond my job scope and definitely not included in the allowance that I get, so I shan't lend (in future, that is). On a similar note, I get paid to help the kid with his school work and teach him to do his sums and improve English, not paid to feel upset that he hands in substandard work. If he doesn't want to learn or display the apparent lack of interest, I shouldn't be bothered too. Simply put, I'm not paid to worry.

There's a few skirmishes going on in the office since yesterday. I think it was Leonard who started off by shooting a rubber band and this sparked off an all-out war. We were waiting for a report yesterday but it was after office hours. I think he grew bored and played around with the rubber band. Shots were fired and mayhem ensued. All the superiors were gone and we had fun trying to shoot one another while avoiding their projectiles by hiding behind office equipment like monitors and desks. OCS was born. No, not Officer Cadet School. Office Counterstrike! It is alot like CS, just that the reload time is largely dependent on how fast you can find a rubber band to shoot and how far back should you pull the rubber band before letting it zeroing it on the target. The plus point is you won't game over. As long as you can get the "ammo", you can continue to play.

I went to the bookshop to look for English assessement books after work. After seeing my student's essay yesterday, I really wanted to find out the standard of a essay of a Normal Technical student. Guess what I discovered? A standard N Level essay requires a word range of 250 to 400 words. I My best bet is that it's is about 2 pages worth of writing without leaving a line on an A4 piece of paper.

The essay handed in to me is terribly short. 2 paragraphs, each made up of 2 or 3 poorly-constructed and grammatically-erroneous sentences. At the bookshop just now, a book entitled "Model Composition" caught my eye. It was a book consisting model compositions meant for Primary 1 students. Guess the standard? At least 5 sentences. Coherent ones. Does that mean that my student's English standard is only comparable to that of a Primary 1 student's? 7 years fo difference in age and yet the standard is the almost equivalent? To think he actually calimed that he could score 60 marks for the work he handed to me. Fair enough, 60 out of a million perhaps.

I guessed the solution for him is to read more widely and attempt to write more. I attribute my competency in English to the time I spent writing than reading. It's true I read a fair bit during my younger days. Bookworm short stories, encylopedias, and Reader's Digest. However, it is only through my writing that I get the chance to use the new words that I picked up. My tuition teacher made it mandatory for me to hand in an essay to her for every lesson but was liberal with me regarding the topic I wrote about. As such, I wrote almost anything under the sun.

As I had no siblings, I had no one to talk to when I felt down. Writing became an avenue for me to vent my frustrations. More often than not, my essays will revolve around a maniac with a murderous intent to kill and multilate anything that stood in his way. Only in the essays can I seek revenge on those who crossed my path and be a vigilante of my own. I guess my imaginative traits played a big role in moulding the contents. Despite gory scenes of limbs strewn around the place, my tuition teacher did not condemn any of my writings. She always read them with an approving nod and only corrected the spelling/grammatical errors, not censor the content. Perhaps she knew I wasn't the one going around terrorizing others. Perhaps she liked my way of expressions. And because of her approval, I wrote without fear and the limits of my content were endless.

As I grow up, I took a liking for fantasy stories and my characters would be battling mammoth-sized monsters which are armed with razor-sharp fangs. It's a real pain but I often choose one unlucky guy to die. Makes the story more emotional and dramatic, don't you think so? When we were taught to write argumentative essays, I was equally interested. I like to debate over issues with logic and reasoning but my flair for gathering facts is not as good as imagination. Facts are facts, either it's true or it's false. You cannot bend it to your will.

A change of subject now. I think I had one too many piece of BBQ pork as my throat is somewhat sore. Rats, I hate sore throats. I feel a little unwell too. Must be the weather. Rain and sun, cold and hot. Doesn't make the best combination for the immune system. Looks like I must rest more and work less. By the way, the EPH bookstore has wound up its operations in Heartland Mall. Sad. I'll miss those spacious aisles, wide collection of books and the few numbers of shopppers that make the place look a lot more bigger than it looks. Maybe it's precisely that lack of patronae that they decide to close down the outlet.

Haven't been living up to my word of constant updates here. Everytime I feel like blogging, another voice in my head will persuade me to procrastinate.

It's been a dark period, every other day filled with rain. I wonder what went wrong with the weather. Usually, this time of the year, it shouldn't be raining so frequently. El Nino? Greenhouse effects? It has been raining almost non-stop for the past few days. I guess it's time to build mini dams across all our major monsoon drains to harness the extra bit of hydroelectricity and to use the electricity to reclaim more water from the sea or our excretion.

Friendster seems to have slow down drastically. When Zhiliang told me it was slow, I brushed it off lightly, telling him that he was the unlucky one who got the 'special' treatment by the server. Looks like this treatment knows no barriers and has no differential capabilities, for I'm getting it too.

The SAT went well on last Saturday. It started about two hours later. Cramming more than 2000 candidates into an exhibition hall to take the test isn't the wisest of choices. The amount of adminstration simply bogged down the entire operation. On the other hand, I had ample time to get accustomed to the place and calmed down sufficiently to take the test. Similar to one of my presentation during poly days. My girlfriend was before me and she had warmed the audience with her jokes and the atmosphere was very much relaxed. I was so tickled that my nervousness vanished almost instantly. One can say that she contributed to my good grades then.

However, Saturday turned out to be the darkest day in my life, as far as I can remember. To kick things off, the zip of my cargo pants went loose, resulting in incomplete zipping. Small issue there, at least both sides are still held together. Later at night, the zipper went burst during a visit to the washroom. Alright, still not so bad, as my tucked out T-shirt was long enough to hide the embarassment. It was raining the whole day and many potholes and depressions in the ground were filled with water. I guess my right shoe had taken one too many dips and the sole decided to come off, leaving only one half left attached to the shoe.

It's my Nike Goretex!!! It was supposed to be water resistant! My heart ached when I saw the sole flapping. I spent a good $170+ on it and it had served me well. I didn't expect it to wear out this fast. I had noticed some cracks a few months ago and dismissed them as normal wear and tear. Seems like that was a warning of more to come. I'll get them glued back and see how things go.

And my handphone died on me. It was my fault for not checking the battery status the night before. In the morning, it had only 1 bar left. After dinner, it was depleted. When I was going home, I waited at the traffic junction to cross the road legally. Usually, I'll jaywalk but the grass was muddy from the rain so I decided to walk the concrete instead. There was a pool of standing water right in front of me and a car went past it at high speed, sending huge waves to its sides. Naturally, I was in the line of fire. Since my pants are wet from the rain, it doesn't matter to be wet by the splash. Still, I'd like to categorize this as an unlucky event.

All in all, a downright unlucky day. 5 things, zip came loose first, then zipper burst, handphone died on me, shoe sole came off and being splashed by some inconsiderate speeding motorist. As they say, there's always a balance to things. Perhaps I have used up all my luck in guessing the answers for my SAT and thus I suffered from misfortune for the rest of the day. If that's the case, I'm expecting to see at least a 1500 in two weeks' time.