A Saturday Morning's Game

Hello, lovely people.

I come to you from my home, listening to Honne on my Good Vibes Prepared-ness playlist on Spotify (yes, that's actually what the playlist is called) after a nice round of musical chairs with my parents and our cleaner who came in this morning (AT 7AM ON A SATURDAY 😩), where we were chased from the dining room to the kitchen and finally to the living room with all our feet up as the cleaner mopped the floor.

A great way to start off the weekend, really. Musical chairs with the visiting parents and a clean apartment. Who knew, right?

So I'll start off by saying that I GOT MIKE SHINODA TICKETS. He's coming to Bangkok in August and I decided that you know what? It's about time, at twenty seven, that I left the country for the first time. Yes, I have, for real, never left Malaysia's shores. Not even to Singapore, which isn't even that far away and can be reached by bus.

The only downer is that there's a very real chance that I might have to head out there alone. I mean, my first trip overseas. I'm not going to have a clue what I'm doing. But I shall persevere. And possibly ask my mother to come with me. Because I'm twenty seven and I still need my mother, thank you very much. Stop laughing at me.

There's also going to be an album listening party for Mike Shinoda's new album on the same day as my favourite colleague's farewell dinner. Great. Now I don't know if I want to win this listening party contest or just go for a nice farewell dinner where I mentally list out all the things I won't be doing once fav colleague is gone. Like stopping by his desk whenever he decides we need to talk or whenever the presence of free food at the pantry needs to be announced. Like laughing at his excel sheet to calculate how much we owe each other for lunches and/or Grab rides. Like discussing men and women and gender stereotypes that annoy me. Like walking at half speed while our other colleagues all race ahead because of his bad knee. Oh god, I'm not ready for this.

But as I mentioned to another colleague who was being even more dramatic than me about it, he's leaving the company, not dying. So I'll be fine. Mostly. Even if I don't get to see him every day and I won't have a work husband any more.

Fine, I admit it. I'm sobbing on the inside.

Tragic pretend divorce from my work husband aside, here's a little mini update from my Good Vibes preparation. Yes, that's right. There are preparations happening. Important preparations. Like listening to Lorde for the first time. And Honne. And basically all the acts besides The Neighbourhood.

But there are also serious preparations going on in the wardrobe slash makeup department. I've never paid so much attention to primers and beauty blenders and setting spray in my life. This thing is turning out to be a serious investment. Digression aside, my point was that all my orders from the various online shopping apps should start coming in soon. And my first order came in this week.

ISN'T IT PRETTY?

Obviously that's not my leg, I'm still Indian and I still look it. Just saying, this is the picture displayed on the site right? You know what arrived?

ONE leg chain instead of two, to begin with. Which promptly broke when I was trying it on, just because I was trying to take it off. It might have just broken on an exhale. It took almost a month to get here. FML. Order Dispute option, here I come.

Them other orders better arrive in pristine condition and not fall to pieces when I stand still and breathe. Seriously, it's in three.

Separate.

Pieces.

I wish I was kidding.

But you know what? It's hard to stay annoyed when I'm genuinely excited about watching Mike Shinoda live, even if I do have to go alone. I'm genuinely excited about Good Vibes, which I don't have to go to alone! Yes, even if I'm going to be wearing a broken leg chain while I'm there. Complaints for comedy aside, life is good people.

Have a very happy weekend y'all.

A Comedic Workplace

I'm so going to start writing down all the random things that the students at the tuition centre do. They bring all kinds of comedy and ridiculousness in between classes (sometimes even during them) that I really shouldn't waste all this blog-worthy hilarity. 

So as I previously mentioned, I started working at this tuition centre at Hartamas called Pusat Tuisyen Minda Inspirasi in January. It's been really great and I'm really enjoying the work and the company of our nutty kids. Yup. Enjoying time spent with kids. Who would have thought, right?

Last Monday I was teaching Yusuf, one of my Maths students about locuses. And I just heard his voice in my head reminding me that they're called loci. FINE Yusuf you one upped me this time, they are called loci. I'm surprised he learned anything that day though. See, I have this eye infection that back then looked like someone had just punched me in the eye (Now I look like the hunchback of freaking Notre Dame, but who's keeping track right?) that really fascinated almost all the students in the centre. On the bright side of this sudden spotlight, some students who I think had never had a reason to talk to me finally did and I made new student friends YAY. 

Anyway back to Yusuf. He was so distracted by my eye that whenever I taught him something, all he would say was "Does it hurt?" or "How long has it been there?" or "Have you seen a doctor?". I felt the love. I did. 

OR.

He could have just been distracting me from locuses.

FINE I meant loci. Jeez.

Yusuf story, check.

On to the two little boys who are pretty much the darlings of the whole centre. Kabir and Luvdeep are Larry's students and they're at the centre almost every day. When they're not being crazy mischievous or rock-concert loud they. Are. ADORABLE!

One day when I was passing by Larry's class to grab a book or a cup of coffee or something, I did a classic double take and walked back to the door of his classroom to make sure I wasn't seeing things. Allow me to describe what I saw.

Kabir was sitting quietly and doing his work all diligently and Larry, having already given the boys their work to do, was getting some stuff done on his laptop. And what was Luvdeep up to, you ask? Oh nothing much, he was doing his work at the table too.

Except he was....under...the table.

Larry looked up to see my puzzled 'What the hell' face staring at him from outside the class. He shrugged helplessly and gave me a 'Don't even ask' face in reply while Luvdeep smiled in wolfish mischief from under the table. I proceeded to laugh for the next 10 minutes at the mental image that refused to disappear for the next 10 minutes or so.

Then there's RJ's student Beatrix? Beatrice? who came around the other day offering us a box of chocolate, saying, "Food?" Larry and I laughed and we had a nice discussion about whether or not chocolate could be described as food. It was a 'you had to be there' kind of funny but I wanted to blog about it anyway :D

Oddly I have met three students who remind me of my friends!! Only one of them is my student though. Her name is Leea and she reminds me sooo much of my friend Elisabeth. The way they talk is really similar. Then there's this Form 1 boy Daniel who is a carbon copy of my friend Chek, only of a different race lol. And there's this boy Hardiv who I could swear has been cloned using my friend Sanjeev's DNA. 

It's very interesting. I have a theory that if I do this long enough I'll eventually have a student who reminds me of myself. I wonder if I'll love her or hate her for it lol.