Stop me if you've heard this before - teachers aren't supposed to have favourites. that would be the case in an ideal world, but the world is far from ideal, and teachers are human after all. i mean, just take 2 students on the opposite ends of the spectrum. one engages with you, understands the content you're teaching, and makes you feel like you're making a difference. the other either can't or won't understand what you say, and doesn't appear to be trying or asking questions to bridge the gaps in their knowledge. it's not hard to choose which student i'd prefer in my class. having said that, the duty of a teacher is to treat both students equally and offer them the same opportunities to learn. whether each individual kid takes up the offer or not is out of our control. but looking inward, i also wonder if there's something else i can do to engage the latter kid in the example above. by playing to their interests, or offering some other incentive. 

i can't believe i didn't think about the idea of offering incentives earlier! the brainwave struck me while i was at the primary school on tuesday. since i don't drink the carton of milk provided as part of daily school lunch, i had the bright idea to offer it as a reward to the first kid who could have a simple english conversation with me. it worked well with the primary 5 kids! not sure if other levels will be equally enthusiastic, but that's what the remaining lunchtimes in the primary school are for - to conduct experiments! don't think it'll work well in the secondary schools (not in secondary school A, at least; nobody wanted my milk even when i offered it for free!) but i'm tempted to try it in school C as well.

a thought struck me while i was helping some kids with after-school study today. the thought was that while i want them to do well, i'm not like, invested in them. and whether they do well or not doesn't affect me in any way. no, that's actually the background thought, which leads to the real thought - my teachers probably thought the same when they were teaching me! at the age of 15 or so, our view of what's important in the world is highly constrained. skewed, even. when i was 15, i think the important things in my life were trying not to get retained in sec 3, trying to make the school team in bowling, and trying to get some guys' attentions. i should try to see more things from their perspective, i think. it's not that easy, since i don't know what students in japan typically have to contend with. also, some issues aren't apparent at a superficial glance. but hey, it's only midway through year 1. i'm sure more things will reveal themselves over time.

did i mention how much i surprised myself at the after-school study thing? the kids are free to study any subject they want, so there's a wide variety. i found myself helping out in english (obviously), science (because chemical symbols are international), and to my shock, maths. numbers are also universal, but terminology is slightly different. i still don't know how to say multiply and divide in japanese. the sec 3 kids are learning about indices and surds (simple english: powers and roots), and i did what i could to help them. it surprised me, because anyone who knew me back at that time would tell you that i was (and still am, actually) hopeless at maths. so for me to be able to explain mathematical concepts, and in japanese, no less, is pretty impressive! i'm becoming more convinced that proficiency in almost everything in life is about time spent on the thing. i wish i could tell my sec 3 self about this, just to see the look on his face when i go "you know, maths isn't actually that hard". that might be a half-truth, though. calculus still kills me, as i'm sure most things maths that are JC level and above will.

just wanted to get some thoughts out of the way. the school term is ending in about a month, after which it'll be summer break. that's going to be a huge change in my schedule. but it gives me more free time, so who's complaining?

-random thought of the day: Talk a bit about pens.-

Higher temperatures are, in my mind, becoming the reason for rising tensions recently. apart from those mentioned in the last post, i was involved in a little conflict of my own. not with the students, thankfully, but with the other english teacher. it wasn't even my fault! as you will know, i don't go to primary school B. but she and the japanese teacher who teaches english do. yesterday, my supervisor told me that the board of education was organizing some summer activities (glorified babysitting) for the kids in primary school B. and she asked me to attend. i said yes as i need more activity in the summer.

this morning, we were talking about whether the kids would remember the english that they'd learnt, and i offhandedly mentioned this arrangement to the other teachers. the other english teacher took offense for some reason, and passed a few snarky/sarcastic comments at me in class. i have no idea why, either. maybe she feels that i'm intruding on her territory. or maybe she wants the extra hours of pay. whatever it was, i think the way she expressed her dissatisfaction didn't look good on her. and she's supposed to be the veteran out of the three of us. she's been in japan for longer than the japanese english teacher's been alive! so to experience such childish/petty behaviour from someone of her status is sad.

younger me might have confronted her, maybe with some colourful language. older me knows that that's winning the battle but losing the war. so, i took the high road and went to talk to my supervisor about it. hopefully things get sorted out at that level. and yes, i did ask the teacher if something was wrong when i noticed her change in mood. she went for the "it's nothing" move, so i figured that i'd take her at face value and not kill brain cells unnecessarily.

the cause of her unhappiness probably stems from imperfect knowledge. like, maybe she doesn't know that i didn't propose the program, nor did i ask to be involved. my supervisor asked me, and i said yes. i'm not getting paid extra, in money or days off. in fact, i draw a fixed salary no matter whether i go all out or do the bare minimum. i have no desire to steal her work or put her out of a job. i'm quite satisfied with our current arrangement, because it gives me more time to focus on the secondary schools. believe me, i need all the time i can find to pull some of those kids up.

branching off from that, it seems that most of the people in this town don't know much about JET. for instance, some of the school staff were surprised that i couldn't choose my own placement. they also don't seem to know the requirements for JET. some of them thought i was a trained english teacher. for the record, i still don't know technical terms like past participle or present perfect. i think my knowledge scope for english is: noun, verb, adjective, adverb, pronoun, singular, plural, past tense, present tense, future tense, continuous tense, active voice, passive voice, vocabulary, grammar, punctuation, uppercase, lowercase, letter, word, phrase, sentence, paragraph, essay...ok, i'll stop. that's more than i'd thought! what was the point again? oh, right. things about JET that the general public doesn't know. i wonder if i should use my newsletter column to address this? i'll let future me decide. present me needs sleep.

-random thought of the day: Another week is over.-

Recently, like since last week or so, i've been having this odd feeling. and yesterday, i finally realized what it was. it's similar to a craving, but i kind of get the additional feel that something is missing from my diet. but that's the extent of my revelation. i have no idea if i'm really missing anything, and if so, what it might be. carbs/bread is the first logical guess, but i don't think it's that simple. since my main food groups (vegetables, meat, oil/salt) are well-represented, it might be a trace nutrient. or maybe it's a certain food texture. i'll update when i find out what it is.

also yesterday, my laptop gave me a huge scare. it suddenly stopped charging. i saw that it was charging again this morning, and rationalized that the battery was overheated, causing a failsafe to kick in somewhere. i was worried, because i didn't want to have to struggle with sending the laptop in for repair and surviving for however long without it. not to mention negotiating everything in japanese! hopefully a good cleaning will take care of that problem. or else, it's time to buy compressed air. i'd actually been meaning to get it for a while now, but it kept slipping my mind. well, this saturday i guess, when i go to the next town for groceries and maybe a haircut. it's not necessary at this point of time, but i looked at new laptops in preparation. a gaming laptop with a 3000 series graphics card is likely to set me back close to a month's salary. let's hope it doesn't come to that while i'm on JET.

maybe it's because of the weather getting hotter, but people's fuses are getting shorter these days. in just the past 2 weeks, i've seen or heard of 5 different teachers lose their tempers in their classes, some of which i was in. it was...awkward, to say the least. especially the most recent one, because it came from nowhere! one moment everyone was talking normally, the next moment the teacher was chewing the students out. i think i missed a few signs that the mood was going to change. that's just a communication gap that needs bridging. while i feel bad for the students, i think that they deserve it to some degree. they've seen the other english teacher since they were in primary 1, and she's a decently good teacher. there's no way to explain why their english standard is as atrocious as it is. i almost wonder if whatever good we do in the 2 or 3 hours we see them each week is undone during the rest of the time when we don't see them! i studied japanese for 2.5 years, 7 hours per week. they studied english for between 7 to 9 years, 2 hours each week. in terms of absolute hours, they've been exposed to english for longer than i've been exposed to japanese. and yet, i'm fairly confident i can write a more complex essay in japanese than they can in english. yes, it's not an entirely fair comparison, but i'm just saying that the standard between our non-native languages shouldn't be THAT wide. well...i can lament all i want, but that doesn't change the situation. i've got to somehow find something to help them, but i'm not having much luck thinking of ideas. surely there's a better way than hardcore memorization, right?

good news about the combi oven! it seems that using metal stuff in it while it's in oven mode doesn't induce sparks. less good news - baking starter in there takes way longer than frying, and produces worse results. might be because i don't preheat the oven, which would add to the time anyway. i tweaked the flour to water ratio of the starter (less water, more flour), and i'm starting to see a decent rise. could be a little drier, though. maybe i'll get it to the point where i can bake bread this weekend? would be a nice project, i think. but i'll probably need more flour. just nice that the supermarket issued 5% off coupons to be used any day from today until sunday!

-random thought of the day: Maybe fruit is the missing component.-

Better get the mental backlog out of the way, so that i can focus on house cleaning this afternoon.

last week, i impulse-bought a pack of donuts at the supermarket. 4 for 150 yen, so about 50 cents each. i regretted it after the first bite, because while they were light and crumbly, they were also cloying and sweet like you wouldn't believe! since i live alone and don't have anyone to share them with, plus my good/bad habit of not wanting to waste any food, i ended up finishing the whole pack eventually. i really should have looked at the nutritional information before buying them, because i later saw that the whole pack was about 800 calories. that's basically a meal in itself! well, what's done is done. at least i can learn from that.

my sourdough experiment is progressing, albeit slower than expected. at first, i did the discard method - throw away half, feed the starter every day. i was also a little more cavalier with measurements, eyeballing everything because i figured that scientist training would help. spoiler: it didn't help much. end result was that i got something that was too liquidy and smelled just a hair shy of bad. so, i scrapped that batch, and tried a no-discard method. what that is is feeding the starter a 1:1 ratio by mass of flour and water every 24 hours. it's day 9 now, and it smells much better. there are bubbles too, but i haven't seen the ridiculous doubling in volume like in the youtube videos yet. might be a temperature problem. although it's called a no-discard method, i have had to get rid of some starter when the container i'm using gets too full. instead of throwing the excess down the sink, i pour it into a hot buttered pan and make starter pancakes. for something that only contains flour and water (and that has undergone fermentation), it tastes surprisingly good! the surfaces are crispy and the inside is just a little chewy, which i really like. even if i never get that tremendous rise or bake a loaf of sourdough bread, i think having fermented pancake batter on hand is also quite a win.

international driving permits are valid for up to a year, and mine is due to expire this november. considering that i plan on staying beyond that, i have to get a japanese driver's license. the process is decently simple - get a translation of my singapore driver's license, go down to the licensing authority to submit paperwork, take a theory and practical test. i just sent in documents to get the translation, and that should take about 2 weeks? the overall goal is to get everything done within summer break, so that i have some buffer time in case things go wrong, or i fail a test. the interesting thing that i learnt while sending my documents in is that japan has special envelopes used for sending cash in the mail. it was a little worrying, but the nice post office lady assured me that the envelope and its contents would be returned to me if there were any issues. now i'm just hoping that i filled the form out correctly...

over the weekend, one of the singapore JETs told us that he'd be ending his term in august, ie. 2 months from now. i don't know whether he decided not to recontract back in february, or changed his mind more recently. he said that it was because he applied to MOE to be a teacher, and he had to be in singapore for a face-to-face interview. that, and he was feeling isolated and homesick in his posting. honestly, i don't blame him. his placement is quite possibly the most remote out of all of ours, on a small island off of okinawa. if i had been in his position, i wonder if i'd have even accepted the offer at all, and even if i had, how long would i have been able to stay in it? i have a feeling that i'd constantly be applying for a transfer. this means that i'm the only male JET left in the 2020 cohort from singapore. not that that's a good or bad thing, just a point of interest. it also highlights the biggest downside of the JET programme - you literally don't know what you're going to get until you get it. sure, some people (like scary JC friend) will say to treat it as an adventure, but not everyone thinks like her. and even then, there are limits to one's comfort zone. being dragged too far out isn't productive either.

that leads me to the next thought - COVID vaccination. i'm scheduled to get my first shot on 29 july, and the second one on 19 august. i wouldn't say that it's fast by any means, but considering that close to 50% of the town are senior citizens, it seems to be on schedule. despite being scientifically trained, and knowing that getting vaccinated is the best move based on current information, i must admit to feeling some fear. it doesn't help that i've been reading about people dying after getting the same vaccine that i'm supposed to be getting too! but rationally, i know that it's a very tiny minority. the irrational part of me just goes "what if you're in that minority too?" i'm sure things will be ok, but i should probably put some precautions in place, like asking my supervisor to stand by, and informing my neighbour(s). looking at it from another perspective though, if (and that's a really big if) i were to die now, it wouldn't be the worst time. i'm debt-free, and insured for a fairly decent amount. probably the only difficulties would be moving everything back to singapore, and settling the final fantasy watch that i'd helped my friend to order.

which ties in nicely to my point about the watch that i may or may not get for myself. currently, i'm still viewing it as a thing that i'll use, and not an investment to be resold at a later date. i do have enough cash to get it without feeling too much of a pinch, but i still question if that's the best use of my money. well, i've still got 8 or 9 days to think about it.

school was held this saturday mainly for a guest lecture. some neurologist/brain expert. one thing he mentioned was that people who ate breakfast earned more money than those who didn't. i don't know what he based that conclusion off of, but it sounded far-fetched to me. i half wanted to bring up the whole correlation doesn't imply causation thing. also, maybe it's the reverse. people who earn more money can afford to eat breakfast vs. people who earn less. then i thought better of it, because given my standard of japanese, i wouldn't understand his reply. plus, there was a risk of offending him. the last thing i want to do is create trouble for the town by offending a guest speaker! this is a classic life lesson, not specific to japan, but applicable everywhere - pick your battles. it's not necessary to win every single time...winning just the important ones is good enough.

well, that's all for now i guess. time for lunch, then major house cleaning in the afternoon. had a false surprise a while back, when the scales showed i lost 2 kg last week and put back on 1 kg at the most recent weighing. not the first time it's happened; makes me think that the scales are a little off sometimes. or it might be that that was really the case, i don't know. still, i'm happy that the overall trend is towards weight loss. i've been losing about 600 grams a week on average since arriving in japan, and that's from diet alone! well, i suppose having a semi-active job helps as well, but i haven't factored in additional/deliberate exercise yet. probably over summer break.

-random thought of the day: Maintain this trend!-

Lows and highs are part of everything in life, including jobs. teaching english in japan is no exception to that, unfortunately. it's nothing serious, just having some difficulty with getting the kids interested in english. i'm trying to understand their difficulty, but i'm not having much luck there either.

so, background time. as you may imagine, schools have KPIs. and one of those KPIs is tracking students' learning, and that's done through tests and quizzes. here's what happens typically. a few weeks before the test (depending on how major it is), students will be told what's going to be tested. it's not a 100% reveal, but it's already giving too much away for it to be considered a true "test" in my opinion. like for this round of tests, kids in a certain grade in a certain school were told that it would be a test on giving directions by train, and that the directions would involve changing trains. they were further told that they would have to recommend an activity at the destination, and say one more thing of their choice as a goodbye. and get this - there is a basic script for this conversation in the textbook. considering that they were told about this test 2 or more weeks in advance, i would expect the only issue to be pronouncing the station/line names, or dealing with unfamiliar vocabulary in the test brief. but the majority of them couldn't give directions properly, and couldn't do the additional tasks. the kid who performed the worst kept totally silent. i was shocked, because those tasks involved grammar that they've learnt years ago! the last task (add one thing in parting) can be as simple as saying, "enjoy japan!" or "take care!". nobody got it, i think.

another example i can give is the concept of retests. so, say a kid scores below a certain mark (usually 80) for a quiz. they will have to do corrections, and sit for a retest. don't know how it's like for other subjects, but for english at least, this retest is 100% identical to the original test! worst thing is, there are kids who fail the retest too. i have seen up to re-re-retests, meaning that the kid took the (same) test 4 times, and failed on at least 3 occasions. i know singapore has a rep for producing kids who excel at tests and not at real life, but i think i'll concede that dubious honour to japan.

in other news, i'm quite amused at how things have worked out in school A. as i've mentioned, i've been feeling less close to them ever since the cute teacher's rejection via passivity. the english teacher there has been scheduled to attend workshops on a few fridays, which also happens to be when i'm scheduled to visit in the afternoon. so, since there's no english class, i feel less bad about asking to be allowed not to go, and to do my own work at the board of education instead. it saves me some driving, and the best part is i can knock off punctually. all the better since friday is my go home early day (because i start work slightly earlier too). so, i'd say is all for the best. the only mildly annoying thing is that i still find him attractive, but at least i can do a better job of keeping it in my proverbial pants.

since i'm talking about it already, there's a new teacher in school C who is really cute too. the thing is, unlike the teacher in school A who i thought was attractive from the get-go, this teacher's been growing on me. i sat in for one of his classes, and he came across as funny and engaging. did i mention he plays the drums? there's something attractive about musicians, maybe because i've never been musically talented. we're getting along pretty well, and he seems to be interested in speaking to me in english. we also shared a bit of a moment on wednesday, and he kind of sets my (admittedly, broken) gaydar off. he's got that "soft" aura about him. i don't mean that in a bad way at all. it's like, i feel the urge to take care of him. but before all that, i don't know which team he plays for, so i'm not going to have expectations. funny, didn't i say the same thing about the other cute teacher too?

up till today, if you'd asked me which school's students have a better standard of english, i'd have said school A without hesitation. now...i'm not so sure. let's break it down by level. the sec 1s of school A are better in english, no question. both in terms of writing and speaking. there's this girl who has the most beautiful handwriting! it's big and clear, and the letters are so nicely rounded. just marking her work brightens up my day! as for the sec 2s, i think they're just about even...although i'd say that school A wins by a hair. mainly because there are fewer people, so the distribution is less spread out, and most of the kids there are decent. unlike school C, which has some decently good kids, but some on the other extreme end as well. i was told that some of the sec 2 kids in school C have learning disabilities. pretty sure one of them is dyslexic (this is my personal opinion, and not a medical diagnosis by any means). after today, my impression is that the sec 3s in school C are slightly ahead, but it's difficult to make a fair comparison because they're at different points in the syllabus.

yesterday, i had an interesting conversation with school C's principal. over school lunch, i asked him why some kids regularly don't come to school. it's understandable why some kids in the big cities refuse to attend school -  mainly because of bullying and academic stress. but here, the class sizes are small enough for any bullying to be taken care of quickly, and the stuff that the kids have to learn is hardly rocket science. the principal told me that it was mostly family issues, and economic issues. i interpret that to mean parents not having money or time to send their kids to school, and it saddens me. people shouldn't have kids if they can't provide for them. it's a parent's responsibility to care for their kid, and that includes giving him/her the best chance to succeed in life. but this is my thought pattern brought about by growing up in singapore. my definition of success may be different from how they define success here. attending school may not be part of that equation.

weekends are a lot more flexible in japan. like, it's common for people to work either saturday and sunday, then take off-in-lieu. it'd have been unthinkable to me in singapore, to be asked to come back on weekends. well, actually that's not entirely true. my first grad school supervisor made it a habit to hold meetings on weekends, his logic being "since you have to come to the lab already, you'll probably stay around and do some work before leaving"...which was true. one of my friends said that he'd make it a point to leave right after the meeting, just to prove the professor wrong. that amused me somewhat. back to the topic. i'm scheduled to work this saturday, and i'll have next monday off. i think it'd be nice to be free on a weekday for once. have to do a round of vacuuming.

got to be up early tomorrow, so i'll end off here. prompt list for next time: sourdough experiment, license conversion, weather(?), donuts, final fantasy watch.

-random thought of the day: The centipede died in captivity.-

From the lack of a follow-up post, you might have guessed that plan "wake up to blog in the morning" didn't work out. somehow, the urge to write just isn't there. well, that's a learning point, i guess. the feeling of being tired after work is persisting, to the point where i'm in bed by about 10:30pm. feels like i've gone back to the pre-internet days when i first moved in. on one hand, i suppose sleeping earlier is healthier and better for me. on the other, there are things i want to do online! maybe i need to shuffle some things around, or reallocate the time i'm spending on certain activities to other pursuits.

warmer weather means that insects and other small things are becoming more active. i've encountered 3 cockroaches, many mosquitoes, some odd flying ant/wasp things, a couple of spiders, and my first centipede. good thing i'm not afraid of bugs, or i'd have freaked out a long time ago...especially when the spider ran across my blanket and out of sight. centipedes worry me the most, because they're aggressive and venomous. worst thing is that the one i found was on the ceiling at my sink area! would have been horrible if it had fallen on me while i was brushing my teeth, or worse, shaving. it's currently hanging out in a small tupperware container, and i'll probably find somewhere far away to release it. kind of tempted to kill it, but part of me wants to be merciful/compassionate.

my carb...fixation/interest(?) has extended to bread. again, i'm not sure why, either. i think at least a part of it is finding a pretty nice fermented butter in the supermarket. that, and cream cheese spread. i don't get how the japanese think of bread, though. i've been served a slice of plain white bread as a side on multiple occasions for school lunch. there was once when it was accompanied with blueberry jam, too. as if the carbs from the main dish aren't enough! but i understand that school lunches have to hit several nutritional targets, like X amount of calories, carbs, protein, and so on. maybe having a slice of bread is just the most convenient way to get there. it can't be easy, especially when preparing lunch for about 300 students and staff, all in.

the sourdough experiment is going...ok, i guess? there were trapped bubbles for the first couple of days, but i think i made it too watery on wednesday or thursday and it went flat. hoping that i don't have to start from scratch, because it means maybe 100g of wasted flour (less important) and a wasted week (more important). the reassuring thing is that it smells yeasty/fermented. well, i guess i'll know tomorrow. the plan is to attempt a loaf of bread, although i don't know how that'll work out with my small-ish combi-oven. also, i'm not even sure if it can be run while empty for preheating, although the grill function will probably do the trick. well, if bread fails, i can put the flour to other uses, like pancakes, waffles, maybe even a cake!

due to the hot weather, i've recently changed my bedsheet and pillowcases to the cool-touch ones. given how hot it is in singapore, i'm actually surprised that it's not a thing back there! sleeping is more comfortable thanks to the sheets, but i've also resorted to using the air-con for a couple of days last week. not for the whole night, but for like a few hours with the auto-off feature. it's not even the hottest part of the year yet, and already i feel uncomfortable. to be honest, it's more of the humidity than the heat. you'd think that living in singapore for over 30 years would have made it somewhat less of an annoyance, but no. i still hate it. at least i know what to expect, and how to deal with it!

price and value are sometimes used interchangeably, but they don't mean the same thing. like, say i were to sell a bag of air for 1 cent. the price is low, but nobody would buy it because air is free! so i made an unnecessary purchase recently. i bought a pair of slippers (left or top, depending on your screen size) for close to 4000 yen (about 50 SGD). a pair of slippers by that same brand costs about 1200 yen at other shops. the difference here is that the 4000 yen pair are an LGBT pride limited edition. i think that it's obvious enough to be noticed, but not over-the-top loud like the right/bottom pair, which i'm thinking of getting for my big brother figure (assuming he doesn't own a pair already!).

while the price may be expensive, i think its value is worth the price. because it's something that i believe in, the design and colours look pretty good to me, and did i mention that they're donating 7% of sales revenue to an LGBT charity? the free shipping just helped to sweeten the deal. i have to say, i was quite impressed by the packaging. because even when i buy slippers from this brand in singapore, they're more or less grab off the shelf and go. here, they packaged the slippers nicely in a drawstring carrying bag, which was then put into a shoebox (slipperbox?), along with a cloth mask! i was really surprised. now, i suppose the question is when to wear them, considering that i already have a pair of slippers for regular use. i'm sure an appropriate occasion will present itself. worst case, these can be spares until my first pair breaks.

one place where i'd heard the whole price vs. value thing was at an investment workshop thing which i attended a few years back, since then, i'd been following the founder of that company, and i don't know...something about him just feels off. i mean, he appears to be successful, to be running a solid business, to have the perfect family life...but why does he see the need to brag about it on social media? maybe it's to attract more people to learning the secret of success from him. the thing that i don't like is that he hypes up his successes but doesn't mention his failures. i mean, that's sort of expected, but i don't like the inconsistency. also, given the nature of the stock market, he's got an easy way out - by saying that the market is unpredictable in the event that something which he promoted ends up flopping. so when the price of a stock on his list goes up, he'll be like, "see, didn't i share this with you before? all those who took action have made so much money." and when the share price doesn't rise, it'll be, "the market is unpredictable." or "it's not the right time." i don't like it because this logic means he's never wrong. i also don't understand why these so-called genius investors by far and large refuse to invest other peoples' money along with their own. the arguments i've heard here are that they don't want to be responsible for people losing money, and the whole "teach a man to fish" thing. i don't know...it sounds pretty flimsy to me, especially if i only ask them to help me invest what i can afford to lose. on the other hand, i also agree with the opposing view that if you're good at something, never do it for free. so i guess at the end of the day, we can only rely on ourselves. also, i'm not saying that the guy mentioned above is shady or anything like that. it's just that he's covered all his bases in a way that doesn't sit well with me. but at the end of the day, results speak for themselves, so he's doing something right somewhere.

anyway. i'll worry about investments later, i guess. not like i can make any transactions now anyway, with my secure token thing being out of battery. also, i left my password to my account in singapore, and i don't remember what it is. well...no biggie, i think. after all, it's a cyclical process. the market will crash a few more times over the next few decades. gives me more time to build knowledge.

-random thought of the day: It's Pinkdot today!-

Why is it that although i work so few hours in a day, i feel more tired and that like i have lesser time outside of work? might be the change in seasons? although that doesn't make sense too, since daytime is longer. well whatever the reason, i hope that it's nothing to worry about. come to think of it, i'm having a little bit of a health problem. not going to give details because it's (1) mildly embarrassing, and (2) slightly gross. so far there's no cause for alarm yet, but i plan on getting it checked out if it doesn't go away by itself in a week or two.

i feel almost completely settled down already, which means it's time for me to expand my comfort zone a little further. i'm doing 2 things now, cycling and cooking. for cycling, my aim is to practise for at least an hour every week. so far so good; i'm more or less able to cycle in a straight line on a flat road. still shaky on narrow roads, and upward slopes. also, i have no idea when to change gears, and don't even get me started on braking. but i figure that it's just a matter of allowing my body to acquire the muscle memory over time.

for cooking, i've been making dinner every day, so i'm not going to count that. rather, i want to try some more ambitious projects, like recreating some food that's common in singapore. chicken rice has been a success (largely due to the spice pack), and i've tried cooking pork ribs in anticipation of bak kut teh. soaking the ribs first really removes a lot of the blood. that's an amazing tip i learned from the internet. i've also recently started a sourdough starter, which is in its first day of growing. hopefully my combination oven can be used to bake bread and other fun stuff. which reminds me, i need to get glassware from nitori. that aside, i'm also planning on making ondeh ondeh and kueh lapis. probably spent a little too much to get the ingredients delivered, but it'll be worth it if it works. the one ingredient i'm having difficulty sourcing for cheap is pandan extract. might just make do without it.

going to stop here for now to try a crazy idea - sleeping early and blogging in the morning before work. i wake up early anyway, so maybe i can put that time to better use. i just hope that i can remember everything that i want to say, because i'm drawing massive blanks now. let's see how it goes tomorrow.

-random thought of the day: Need to cut down on snacking.-