Holidays The End

The be more specific, it was more of a one week break than holidays.

I told myself to finish my homework by the weekends, but I only managed to do so yesterday. The homework was nothing left but chinese.

So I spent yesterday evening working on essay skills, and went through an badly done expository essay with my dad.

What about the weekdays that made up the term break. I could say that I was probably feeling very dreary about my badly done essay, and thus I took up a lot of my time re-doing it(with many distractions of course)...and now it is not as bad but still very bad. No choice, I tell myself now. Chinese is not the whole world, so I am not redoing it anymore.

As for revision, I did before the holidays, after it, but none during the holidays.

In addition, I have also harnassed the free time during the holidays to excercise more as NAPFA will be coming soon. Hopefully I can run 2.4km in 11 minutes, which has quite a slim chance of being accomplished. On Friday, cmc and I went to yck for a swim, one that i never had in a few years. At first, I felt quite 'drowny' when I entered the water and felt very tired after swimming half a lap, but soon got used to it. In fact, my breathing became better after the swim and I had more stamina when running later. Thus, we should swim more.

So, what have I accomplished during the holidays? Honestly speaking, I am not sure. Other than activities planted here and there and all over the place, the rest of the time was probably just doing I don't know what in front of the computer or spinning my pen and staring at my homework.

I had a good rest though during the very short holiday. Now once again, life gets hectic.

My Weekend - Wasted

Yesterday my mum asked me what I wanted for dinner.

"What do you want to eat for dinner?"

Out of frustration, I replied. "My tuition homework!!!"

The moment I sit down to look at the small chinese characters printed all over the paper, it is just like a drug, or a spiked drink which makes you want to doze off. It was worse than my schoolwork. Not to say the difficulty, which was alright. It was the plain uselessness and waste of time doing it which makes me want to gobble it up and quit it wasting my time.

But I can't.

This year, I got signed up for some chinese tuition lessons. We just got tricked by the advertisment the centre put up through their holiday programme. That was not bad, but since then, we found out that that is only their way of promotion.

Firstly, its location is terrible. At bugis, with all the pollution and urban heat. In the shopping centre itself, full of the smell of incense. Just watching my dad's car nearing the area, the aura of regret starts to seep in gradually yet surely. By the time we reach the rochor centre carpark, my brothers and I would feel inanimate already. Stepping out of the car, I get a headache, not only from thinking about the boredom that was about come, but the air pollution.

Next is its curriculum. The fact is, there is no curriculum. Everytime I enter the class, I will just see a worksheet on a new topic, and have no idea where this class is heading for. It's just drills, drills and more drills. Things that I have learnt in school already and could practice somewhere else.

As the principal once talked to my parent, she said something like, "Our curriculum is flexible and we do not follow what other centres teach..." The more she talked, the more my parent got unsure of what we were going to learn.

Okay, let me accept their 'special' system for once, but what about their teaching style? That is the next thing I can't stand second to pollution. Each lesson starts with a silent reading of a report and apparently the teacher does not even discuss anything about it, and just make us read it. Okay, she expects us to be independent learners...But again, as the lesson progresses, the teacher makes use of 'high technology' teaching. Colourful powerpoint slides - A Rainbow background with a pageful of characters in white slamming onto its blinding background. We have to read those aloud. Don't they just lack training?

Now thanks to all these, my mood of doing tuition homework is completely spoiled. I spent the whole of yesterday afternoon taking my time to fill in numbers and scribble the penmenship page. After that, I wrote word by word giving my 30 % to the essay homework, while lightning blinds my view and thunder disrupts my already so minimal thinking. It threatens to strike my window at anytime, and me, not being the bravest, ran to the kitchen to eat. Afterwhich, the storm continued and I decided to freshen up my mind and went to sleep.

So there, that is my saturday. And on Sunday, its lessontime again. The fact is, I usually start on my tuition homework 15 minutes before I leave the house on Sunday but this time I had purposely left my homework undone the previous lesson, so I had more to do.

Neither is it for our own good. Many people in my family (including parents) resent it.

Finally, this is how a typical Sunday morning with my siblings and I go:

-"Are we going to be late?"

-"Hopefully"

-"I think we are going to be late if he doesn't finish his milk soon"

-"Hooray!"

-"I rather get punished than to go through that lesson."

-*Makes fun of tuition centre by twisting and making puns out of its name to remind people of not-too-nice things*

-"I'm going to get scolded by your mother if you don't quickly finish eating."

But the simple and cruel truth is: We were signed up for half a year.