The final countdown
POSTED AT 05:04 PM

Happy National Day! I have been waiting ages for this day.

It is the beginning of the end.

Baking
POSTED AT 11:27 PM

Of late I've developed quite an enthusiastic interest in baking. I like the sense of satisfaction of transforming discrete and unexciting ingredients into culinary masterpieces of pastry. Plus, the added bonus of enjoying the delicious fruits of labour is attractive as well!

After my recent successes with a chocolate cake and a cheese cake, I've decided to up the ante with a tiramisu - my mom's favourite. I'm quite a coffee lover myself so I think this could really turn out to be quite popular. I've had a look at the recipe on the internet and it seems do-able.

One of these days when I'm stuck at home with too much time on my hands, I'll get down to baking a tiramisu. Stay tuned for the results!

Bookworm
POSTED AT 09:12 PM

I thought the NLB's annual sale looked pretty enticing. Life! called it "The Book Sale worth waiting for", branding it as the "Must-Go Event of the Week". So, as a dutiful Life! reader and book enthusiast, I went.

Perhaps it would be prudent to note at this point that Life! also quoted an NLB employee as saying, "It's a mad house." So I was forewarned, though the gravity of the statement would only come later.

I had a pretty good experience with the Popular Warehouse Sale in February, so with 300,000 used books in four languages, this Must-go Event seemed ready to top that.

Or so I thought. I was wrong.

My honest appraisal of the NLB's annual sale? It disappoints. No offense to the National Library Board; I'm sure it's a pretty good move on their part to put up all these used books for sale, but somehow the newspaper's preview of the event and my own expectations combined to give me a much better impression of the event. Instead, I came away empty handed and disappointed.

The crowd was immense. I was there around 10am on the first day (it opens at 9.30) and it was already full to the you-need-to-elbow-your-way-around point. The queue to enter the hall stretched all the way around the Singapore Expo compound, so long that I couldn't believe it was for this sale when I first saw it. Truly a madhouse.

Inside, the selection was pretty limited as well. Perhaps the early birds had already made off with all of the good books within that half an hour before I got there, but what was left was pretty mediocre. Sure, they were cheap, but most of these books were the sort that get left on library shelves week in week out, and hardly get loaned out. Pickings were paltry.

To its credit, I did find a book that looked really impressive (a German-English hybrid storybook), but apart from that gem most of the other books I gathered were really buy-for-the-sake-of-buying purchases. They weren't worth the long queue at the cashier, so in the end I dumped everything back and walked out empty-handed.

I think I'll wait for the next Popular/Times/MPH/Borders/Kinokuniya Warehouse Sale, and pay the extra cost happily for a smaller crowd and more attractive selection.

Moonlighting
POSTED AT 04:57 PM

A friend of mine recently asked if I was interested in taking up a job as a tuition teacher. It sounded like a refreshing break from everything that I've been involved in so far, so I agreed. Coincidentally enough, another friend approached me as well with the same request, and now I find myself as a tutor to two A-level students.

At first I was a bit worried about whether I would be competent enough to take up the job; after all, I haven't touched any of this material in almost two years. So I dug up my old lecture notes and tutorials and spent a week's worth of hard work revising all the old concepts and solutions.

Personally, I've never had tuition before, as a student. There were times in the past when my mom came close to getting a tutor for me, but I managed to convince her that it would be unnecessary. Revision, hard work, peer support and self-discipline, I decided, were able substitutes. And they worked.

I had my first lesson yesterday as a tutor, and frankly I'm quite surprised by the kind of fees that tuition can command. Of course, I am putting in my best effort to be a good tuition teacher, but from my point of view it's just a matter of going through the notes and worked examples with my student.

Sometimes I feel that tuition is all about having a structured study plan. With weekly, regular lessons, from the point of view of the student, it provides a fixed routine to spend time on school work and revision. And sometimes this direction is all that many of us need.

Of course I hesitate to generalise, and tuition is also an opportunity for students to clarify any doubts that they might not be able to clear in the setting of a lecture or class tutorial. And it provides personal tutelage, at a pace and depth that the student prefers.

I'm not doing it for the money; rather I value the direction that it gives me. It's a perfect opportunity for me to get back into the whole realm of what I consider to be normal and relevant to myself in the near future - academic study, revision of work, intellectual discourse - some things which I haven't come into contact with since leaving school behind in 2004.

I'm quite motivated to be a good tutor. I don't want to be stuck with a concept or problem that I'm unable to explain to my students. So it means more time to be spent on revising my work. I realise this might mean I will have to sacrifice the German course that I was planning to take at the end of the year. We'll see how it goes.