::Looking back..
12:15 a.m. - 2007-04-20
Today i felt a sense of despair and disillusionment that i haven't quite felt before. I don't know if its shock or if its disappointment.
As many of you might know my mother's a teacher at a secondary school and i too taught there for 1/2 a year or so. We were talking today about a certain incident that happened today at her school. Apparently a member of the public jumped to her death and her decapitated body was found in the basketball court.
I refuse to mention the school's name as this method i guess should be broached with professionalism. If you know it, please keep it to yourself. We were talking about the chaos this caused and the kind of trauma involved. My mother does a wonderful job of being counsellor and senior teacher(and you wonder how i became me ah!) and she had her hands full for most of the day.
Then she mentioned some kids who went to take pictures and videos of what had happened. I do understand that there are bound to be one or two naughty kids no matter what the circumstance and i have seen such kids before. But this..
This was heartless.
I hope to become a teacher someday and today i was listening to so many other stories about children these days. And my mother, who has been in this profession since the age of 21 or so said at some point in time, "I don't think i can be a teacher anymore la. I don't know how to reform these kids."
Its getting from bad to worst and at times i wondering if its monsters we're rearing. I think maybe the fact is that kids are getting way more intelligent. In the past, they used to just be naughty. Now they are smart and naughty. So they really get away with it.
I wish they had lesser guts. Its scary isn't it to think that schooling used to just be for higher order thinking but now its almost become a place to actually make man out of animals.(ok thats highly exaggerated i guess). I wish that morality wasn't such a pressing issue and these kids would realise. But i am also willing to understand that this is a phase and they will snap out of it. But i just wonder if it will hit a point where its just too hard to turn away and reverse your actions.
There are some kids who do swing the complete other way. One of my tuition kids is rather interesting. He's 16 and i in a sense feel that he lacks the worldly experience. Imagine asking a 16 year old to write a composition imagining himself and 3 of his friends 10 years down the road. And to that he thinks very hard and then says, "I don't have 3 friends". And i will have to say that this really does affect his perception and the way he writes and thinks. Because essentially you need to be able to feel and experience things before you write. And i guess he really lacks that and it in return has affected his grades. I don't know how to actually tackle this problem and it goes beyond what i've typed here. If anyone wants to know, do come and message me about it. And i'll share my stories. I just don't think its right to type them in here.
Interesting eh? Well i don't know. Maybe when i do eventually become a teacher, this debate will ensue. That is based on the assumption that i do actually become a teacher. Oh well.
Anyway, that little essay i gave my student inspired me to start thinking of where all my friends are right now.
Right now, i'm on a little experiment. I'm trying to tread into my past and see how people i used to know a really long time ago are doing.
The first person i'm searching for is this guy called Mark. We had one of those silly IRC relationships and the reason i talk about it so openly was because it just humors me at the moment. It was considered a relationship to us at that point in time but it probably goes nowhere near any of the actual relationships i've had.
It was cheesy and silly but at that point in time, it meant the world to me. It was such a big thing to me and i guess i just find it all to be cracking me up right now. Its interesting though cos its been about 6 years or so and i really want to know what he's doing in life and all.
I have to also mention that Mark is Chinese and at that point in time i was very Chinese-influenced cos of my friends and all. It was one heck of a phase in my life. When i did some really silly things.
So i got hold of another friend today and she managed to get me his link. This friend and myself had a few clashes regarding this guy before and i think they were way too juvenile and embarrassing for me to state. But yes, they did happen. I remember the many tears i shed and the many angry letters we all wrote and there was somewhat of a divide even after that. But we kissed and made up much later when we figured its just not worth the fights.
She updated me on a few people in my life. A friend who now has an adorable son. A few others in Polytechnics, many overseas. Its so interesting to know because at one point in time, we were all the same. And now we are all so vast and different. Amazing but i guess we are all bound by our little polka-dotted past.
I wish i had pictures of me in my secondary school days to make this entry complete. Unfortunately or fortunately i took very few pictures as i used to look AWFUL and thus i shall spare you guys the eyesore.
Nevertheless, i hope to be able to find more of these people and regale you guys with stories of them soon.
Cheers. If any of you have interesting stories about your lives that you want to share, please by all means share them at aarthisankar@hotmail.com. I'd be more than willing to give anyone a platform to air their views if they are in line with this blog's general attitude.
