today is for slacking. yesterday was my last day in ri! wasn't actually planning to wake up late, but since i always wake up late when i'm not working... i went to sleep last night after watching Berlin Phil's performance at Waldbuhne on arts central, thinking i'd probably wake up late today. but it turned out differently. i was wide awake before the alarm clock rang. which was too early for me to do anything much cos i don't think the baby downstairs has woken up yet. so i continued reading a storybook i brought to ri yesterday to kill time... it was incredible, i managed to read almost 100 pages during my free periods yesterday. haha that just goes to show how slack tuesdays are.
ok so today wasn't totally for slacking, i practised too. like duh, as usual right. but still lazed around watching nonsense shows on tv without actually watching them... if you know what i mean. hmm looking at the last few posts, i think i just blog mainly on wednesdays. haha cos wednesdays are slacking days.

oh emz, there are no study loans for people going to study overseas. just too bad. nevermind la. i'll just have to settle for staying in singapore. we can always save money and do our masters somewhere! =) and in the meantime i shall practise hard for exams to make my achievements not look too ugly.

emily passed me the musical baton... so here goes...

yay today's tuition was fun! and more effective (hopefully) in getting him to learn to read. created little cards with words and he had many creative ideas of games we could play with the cards. haha he's so spontaneous. at first when we finished the work i brought for him, and i asked him to choose one of his story books to read, he was so downcast. cos on monday his mother "tested" him to see if he could read them by himself since she's heard me teaching him how to read them quite a number of times. oops, think he's always been dreaming away and just "blindly repeating" what i say... so he didn't know how to read except for words like "the" and stuff he already knew. when we finally finished ploughing through one of the books, (super tiring to read word by word slowly and trying to get him to actually look at the words instead of pictures!) i thought he was super exhausted and wouldn't be enthusiastic about reading more words on more cards. but i took them out anyway. to my surprise his face lit up and he got very excited describing his first game to me... haha so fun and it gets him to read the words too. though sometimes he gets a bit too carried away and forgets that he's supposed to read the words...
at the end i got him to "play" a "game"... reading all the cards with words he knew and counting how many cards he had in the end. he ended up with 21 and i had 37 in the pile he didn't know how to read... so i "won". i said i'll teach him some words every lesson so that his pile will get thicker and mine will become thinner. he still had many other ideas of games at the end of lesson and was very excited, asking how come i only come on mondays and wednesdays... think i finally caught his attention. think when i have more time i shall do another set of cards with the same words and then we can play the memory game. hopefully it makes words stick in his head more.

i'm totally wasting away... haven't been working this two weeks since they're having common tests. so i spend time rotting at home, only practising a tiny bit and wasting the rest of the time. still doing tuition with the cute k2 kid... yay now i really enjoy tuition with him. he used to be quite resentful of me cos i suppose tuition meant that he got to spend less time with his mother, but now that he's gotten used to me he's really a bundle of energy and surprise every lesson! i don't think i'll get tired of him... and at least he's more enthusiastic about doing work than the lil vampire. i met the lil vampire's bro's tuition teacher one day... haha both of us were on the way to tuition, and the cute k2 kid was staying in her block. so now it's double the distance for me every mon and wed, and that means i have to gobble down dinner doubly quick! i always get there perspiring alot cos even though i've found the shortest route by cutting through other blocks, it's still quite a long way to rush... thought of taking a bus but there's the waiting time, and it's just a few bus stops away, plus i'll still have to walk from the bus stop. might as well save on the transport and do some exercise. lol since i'm slacking around at home all day.

thanks to pohning, i've decided to ask about study loans... to see if their repayment plan is ok. before that, my parents were totally discouraging. they said that it's not that they didn't want me to get a loan, but when i come back i'll be hundreds of thousands in debt. they were really against the idea. i was thinking, if the loan was repayable in ten years, assuming i borrow $200,000... i'll have to pay about $1666 every month. if i earn $2000 a month (hopefully), i'll still have about $333 left. that means i'll have to live frugally, but i think i'll be very contented with that if i have a chance of going overseas. so i msged pohning to see how she was getting on with raising money... see if got any lobangs mah, since she always sounded so confident about going to birmingham. she convinced me that it should be fine since moe is apparently rather short of music teachers so it'll be quite easy to get a job when i come back. i'm still wondering how to convince my parents. it's not going to be an easy task... money doesn't come easily for them so they're worried i may not be able to repay the loan. what if i can't get a job? they bombard me with so many what ifs... makes me so confused. but after all the confusion, i think i should just pluck up my courage and take a big leap. i'll never know if i don't try right. i'll try to talk to them again tomorrow.

but i still got to pay nafa by this friday... just in case everything doesn't work out, i still have someplace to go. at least i'll still get a full refund of the tuition fees if i withdraw within 14 days before term starts. yep, that leaves me with some time to settle the money stuff. hopefully it works. i'm not going to have high hopes on the moe scholarship cos during the interview they didn't look like they were very excited about giving me a scholarship... except one lady who was smiling and listening very attentively, and looking at me throughout the whole time. i know i'm probably not what they're looking for in a scholar la.

ok, going to sleep... thinking of going on a practising marathon tmr. cos my szymanowski etude really sucks. or maybe i should just say, everything i'm playing now is terrible. and lesson is on thursday! totally my fault for slacking away during the weekend... sigh

here's a quiz i did from pohning's blog... haven't done quizzes for a long long time!

Green You are a very calm and contemplative person. Others are drawn to your peaceful, nurturing nature. Find out your color at Quiz Me!