My hug0 school project was finally completed yesterday night. We started in a flurry of chaos, went through it in a tornado of insanity, and packed up the place in a disaster of Hurricane-Katrina proportions.

Even then, there's still loads of mopping up to do. We have lost property to find, I still have reports I need to write *groan* and there's a massive stocktake that needs to be done of the stuff that we used.

But, on the greener side, the kids had massive fun. Most of them were bundles of raw nerves before it all started, and when it was finally ended, everyone was giddy with excitement. And for us, we're just glad that the massive part of this project is over.

And the mops for cleaning up, we're only gonna take out on Monday. :p

Do u get sick of cities sometimes?

I get this feeling every time I get onto the bus at the wrong times. This is when there are tons of sardines, oops, sorry, people on it, the whole can of a bus is shaking too hard for you to handle your MP3 player and get the music starting, and everyone just pushes past you like in a bowling ball manner when it reaches a stop.

The worst part of it could just be the sar-, people. People on buses during rush hour turn into either predatory animals or mechanical bulldozers.

Example of a predatory animal - The lady who shoves her way to the front of the bus queue before the bus even reaches the stop. And then who shoves her way into the bus and hurries to the back of the bus to get a seat.

Example of mechanical bulldozer - The ones who pretend there is no one dearly hanging on for life on the bus handles and walks through the aisle pretending not to notice the people they push aside in the process.

It's enough to make me turn to homicide, sometimes.

And everytime this happens in the bus, I can't help but think this is because I'm living in a city, and especially a little red dot of a city with 4 million people jostling for their own personal space. The bus is just one example of a greater picture. When you have that many people who need to be in that space, you get a lot of shoves and a lot of disgruntlement.

This is really frustrating. Once in a while, you get murderous fantasies of jabbing elbows into the peabrain next to you, or aiming your Charles and Keiths into the arsehole of the guy in front of you. Anything, just to create some space around yourself.

And I think this is what I don't like the most about the city. Barbarianism begets barbarianism. When you get enough people pushing and pulling at you, eventually you get real pissed off and you start to push other people back. Because this is the only way to finally get some space to yourself. But then the other person gets pissed off and it goes on and on and on.

If I ever go back to tuitioning, it will be because of this. Because of being able to walk through the streets freely, without having to overtake people, and without incessant 'excuse-mes' because blessedly, there will be no one ahead of me or behind me.

I never thought an empty street would be such a luxury.

Random Ramblings

A week's holiday has passed.

An extra Friday's holiday has passed.

With each holiday, it gets increasingly difficult to go back to work.

*sigh*

The past week I got screwed twice by 2 different colleagues, details of which I have to tell u guys face-to-face so as not to compromise Internet Anonymity. Suffice to say justice was served by a higher authority in one case, and in the other, I'm still waiting for her to get her karma.

This is not something I need, what with the Major School Event coming up. I half thought I was going to give myself another migraine episode like last year, but the headaches stopped mercifully when retribution was served.

There are days when I think I may go on doing this for the rest of my life. There are other days, like this, when I find myself wishing I was doing something else. At least something that doesn't require me to wake up before the sun.

There are major pay revisions coming up to ensure that more trained professionals don't leave the line, but judging from the real-life examples of Yenn and Ondine, this is not enough anymore.

Ironically, the needs of the future economy is the very thing chasing us out. To rear enough trained professionals to keep Singapore running, you need equally-if-not-more well-trained professionals. Push the pressure on these trainers, and you more or less keep the economy going. Push too little, you get morons out of school. Push too hard, you get a lot of very good trainers leaving.

And right now, the Gahmen is caught in a kind of ratwheel. It doesn't know how exactly to keep more teachers working in schools, it needs to continually attract people with pay and perks, and yet it needs to stem the flow of those who are sick of all the pressure.

It can give those who want to excel loads of opportunities to climb the ladder, but what about those who just want to perform the simple function of teaching and nothing else?

There is almost nothing for such people, because they want even these mediocre ones to climb th ladder.

So if there is nothing for them, they leave. And the Gahmen has to work at the promotion and the advertising campaigns and recruit another batch of people and go through the same stuff with them again.

It's like everyone is caught in this giant ratwheel that goes nowhere.

I want out one day. That's all I know.