Exams are over & I am free as a bird!
Not really, still have work at USS and NTU Contemp Black Box Series under Kay. Can't wait to dance under Kay.
So what's uni life having completed the first semester?
Ngeh.
It's okay.. Whenever people ask me what I study (which has been very often in the past few days at work), their reaction when they I tell them "Lit" is mostly the same. But behind that wide-eyed face it could be either amazement or admiration - at taking something so impractical. Haha. But hey, I pretty much like what I'm studying (except American Lit, oh gosh).
So the first sem has been pretty smooth. Assignments have been manageable and lectures have been enjoyable. Learnt to navigate myself around school and move to places other than HSS (my school). Kudos to the forever lost me. In fact, I am SLIGHTLY looking forward to taking up new courses. Just slightly.
What I'm really looking forward to is Christmas and my Penang trip!!
And Siren dinner next week.
P.S. I'm typing this post on my one day old MacBook Air 13". So happy :)
Materialism just gets the best of us, doesn't it?
Yes so now that I'm done updating you, dear reader, about my life, I'd like to move on to another happening. It's fricking pissing.
My Ballet teacher who has been teaching at an all girls' Primary School X for over 10 years just lost her job there because of a totally unreasonable and absurd occurrence. One day, she had her elder student, Miss Y, substitute for her School X Ballet class. While she was teaching, a Ballet student got hurt outside the class for some reason. Miss Y went out to check on the girl, brought her to the general office and resumed the class. The general office lady asked the girl to call her mother.
The mother of the girl was appalled when she heard her injured daughter's voice on the phone because she would expect the school to call her instead. Next she became angry at Miss Y for not attending fully to her daughter's injury. The principal was brought in and this thing was blown up and my Ballet teacher (who was not even there) lost her job.
10 over years of hard work, good relations and generations of Ballet students - poof!
I was so angry when I heard this story! And you'd be shocked to know, the girl's parents are lawyers. Representatives of Singapore's law and righteous system.
Firstly, I do not see how things that happen OUTSIDE of the Ballet class is the Ballet teacher's responsibility. As long as it is outside of the Ballet class, on school property, it's the school's responsibility. How the hell is the Ballet teacher, an external instructor, reliable for such accidents, such that she must see through the entire process? And what? Not teach her students?
Secondly, the principal is just finding a scapegoat and wanting the matter to clear off. Firing the external instructor was totally uncalled for. It's saddening that schools have come to an age where they are more fearful of parents than parents are of schools. Where's the dignity? It used to be teachers complaining to parents about their children's misbehaviour. Now it's parents scolding teachers. WHAT?!
You'd be shocked to know that the father of this girl was the same man who discouraged his daughter a year or two ago from learning Hip Hop (under the same dance programme as Ballet) because it "encouraged Black culture".
From this point I will be scolding this man.
Black culture? What do you even mean? This racist remark speaks for itself and I am ashamed that there are even such people living on this planet. Did your ethnocentrism eat your brain until you became so narrow-minded? Please educate yourself. YouTube, my good sir. If you're saying that by learning Hip Hop dance, your daughter will be absorbed into Hip Hop culture, then you mean that by learning to sew you're going to be a tailor? By wearing a Sari you're an Indian? Yes I'm sure the world works like that.
Please keep in check your stereotypes because from what I learnt in school, the African American race has come a long way, travelling away from slavery in the South to the North in Harlem, developing their own arts in impoverished and overcrowded streets to fight the discrimination and build their own wealth and status - to move up their class. A class definitely above you.
You limit your daughter's options in learning and God knows what kind of influence you would be on her.
- End of scolding -
While we all harbour our own stereotypes, we shouldn't let them go to the extent of hindering another person's growth. I hope the principal's guilty conscience resonates at her pushing the blame. Someone should sue these lawyers.
