Essential reading for dating and romance

Sat, 3 Jan 2015
2 min read
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(PHOTO CREDIT: Laremy Lee)
(PHOTO CREDIT: Laremy Lee)

A friend recently revealed to me that she was in love-limbo – that is, deciding between staying put with her partner or moving on to graze on greener pastures.

To help with her decision, I promised I’d share nuggets of knowledge on dating and romance that I’ve found over the years – an essential reading list, as it were.

I realised, after pasting all the links from the Lare-pository of Wisdom (hurhur) into an e-mail message, that it was actually worth a blog post.

So congratulations, everyone! You get to benefit from the spillover effect/positive externalities of an attempt to make good on a promise – or collateral damage, as it may turn out to be.

  1. Choosing a partner (before you start dating):
  2. Building a good relationship (dating and marriage):
  3. Building a great marriage:

The section on “How to build a great marriage” is pretty skimpy, for obvious reasons (I haven’t reached that stage yet, although the plan is to get there soon).

Nevertheless, feel free to leave a comment with a link to your favourite article, if anyone has stuff they’d like to add.

Adventures in teaching Boom by Jean Tay (Part II)

Sun, 22 Dec 2013
2 min read
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Yikes! Very overdue but I’m going to post this regardless because I’ve been meaning to put it up.

—

How does Tay create an atmosphere of melancholy in this passage? Explain your answer with close reference to the passage.

So when we last left off, I was busy making the horses thirsty.

One of the ways in which I did so was to allow them to devise their own exam questions – in a structured manner, of course.

Without going into detail, I crafted the lesson with the objectives of making the students:

  1. Revise the question requirements for the O-Level exams; and
  2. Think about the issues in the particular passage, and thereafter the text.

While carrying out the lesson activity, this happened:

Student A: (reading out what he had written) “How does Tay create an atmosphere of me-lan-cho-lee –”

Student B: (from the other end of the classroom) “Eh, what melancholee – you think what, this one Indian food ah?”

Student C: “Ya lah, later you go to Lew Lian there the Indian stall you tell them, ‘Uncle, I want two kosong and the curry you gimme melancholee one’ and then you see what happen after that.”

Temporarily could not take it because was laughing so hard, so had to tell the students to give me a moment to finish laughing before we carried on with the lesson.

Adventures in teaching Boom by Jean Tay (Part I)

Tue, 22 Oct 2013
2 min read
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Why does Tay title her play BOOM? Support your answer with close reference to the text.
Why does Tay title her play Boom? Support your answer with close reference to the text.

So as part of making the “horses” thirsty, I had to teach Boom by Jean Tay for Literature lessons.

It’s a pretty good text in that it’s accessible to the students and rich with literary features that make it good for teaching.

For example, one of the essay questions we worked on in class was “Why does Tay title her play Boom? Support your answer with close reference to the text”.

I doubt this question would ever come out at the O-Level exams, but I thought it was a pretty good way of getting the students to think about motifs, symbolism and themes – and their relationships – in the text.

Regardless, the students – being students – have no qualms about asking teachers questions/interrupting the lesson in the hope that we’ll digress/tell them stories instead.

So while I was writing the question and instructions on the board, this exchange took place:

“Sir.”
“What.”
“Jean Tay your friend ah, sir.”
“No.”
“You’re also a writer, right, sir.”
“So? All writers must be friends is it?”

And midway during the discussion…

“Sir.”
“Whattt…”
“You got watch the play or not?”
“NO. (Beat.) Why?”
“You look like one of the actors lah.”
(Pause.)
“Brendon Fernandez, is it?”
“No lah, the actor in the play.”
“Yar, he was one of the actors in the play, right? That’s his name!”
“Y’all are friends ah, sir?”

Guess it was payback for all the times I annoyed my teachers in class…