Last night, one of my colleagues asked me “do you ever feel lonely living in a foreign country”? and without hesistation, i said “yes”. and she asked “when do you feel it the most” and i said “at meal times”. It was a special day- yesteday.

is most acute after you have experienced something exciting and then leave with nothing ‘cept a single goodbye.

sometimes i feel so tired i drop everything I have around the house and vegetate in front of the tv. WHY DO I FEEL SO EXHUASTED?

Calbee Crispy Potato- Hot & Spicy (Premium Quality).

i love teaching in japan. i love teaching in the schools that i teach in japan. why? because the students i teach are so open, uninhibited, crazy and just simply lovable. They are responsive, they try their best to understand me (generally) and they laugh at my terrible drawing, gasping in amazement when one of their own actually GETS IT and shouts out the right answer.

They are often honest with their thoughts and extremely uninhibited within the safety of their classroom.

They can’t speak much English, but they compensate with their eager desire to communicate and befriend you. It helps your self-esteem that some of them think the world of you.

I drop an eraser, and suddenly a boy races to the front to pick it up for me.
I sit in the garden and a boy calls out from a window on the 2nd floor ” Anne sensei! Destiny!! Destiny we meeto”
I attend a tea ceremony and a girl keeps telling me that I am ‘kawaii’
Before I say “How are you” , a student preempts the question and moans ” I’m TIREDDDDDDDDDDD”

It just feels good that to be recognised and found to be worthy of attention… most of the time.

I adore them and some of them adore me. Which makes me want to be a better teacher for them. Adoration then, works both ways I guess.

I live within a housing compound that consists of 5 teachers (which includes me). On my right lives my JTE (Japanese Teacher of English) who I teach 3 of my classes with. Let’s call him CG. He is shy, is passionate about basketball and probably devotes all his time to the basketball team in school. Someone once labelled him a ‘herbivore – or a grass eating man’ which in japanese basically means he is a new age guy who is mild.

Living next to me is a PE teacher who moved in recently. Let’s call him S. I don’t know anything about him cept that he drives a big toyota land rover-ish car, understands a little english, and trains the basketball team with CG. He is also very quiet in his house and all i ever hear through thin walls are the washing machine at 12midnight and footsteps. I think he probably hates me. I put on music, talk to myself, laugh uproariously while watching TV and whine while skyping. it’s good he is only home after 7. and no. I do not evasdrop. the walls are REALLY that thin. I try to be quiet but it is hard.

On my left lives a home economics teacher. a dear lady with a nice garden that reminds me of home. She is always smiling, takes notice when guys visit me, and is perpetually taking photos. I like her a lot.

On my far left lives a maths? teacher and his wife. I hardly speak to them at all because they are so far away and I nEVER see his wife. However. he is nice and waves to me when he sees me. I wish I could communicate more.

so here’s a picture of where I live

It’s been 2.5 months since I’ve set foot on Japanese soil and yet i’ve not posted a single entry here. Why? why? why? – I would love to say that i’ve been busy enjoying myself so much that i’ve not had time to write. but we all know that would just be a load of bull. So here, I will recount my journey towards attaining online status in inaka japan.

Right from the beginning, I met with many ‘barriers to entry’… ethernet didn’t work in tokyo during the orientation, i didn’t have my internet up for the whole of august and half of september – which sent me spirialling into potential deep depression as I felt cut off from the world and all that was familiar. The computers at work had so many blocks that i didn’t see an online image till september… it was a dark dark period in my life.

I couldn’t skype and when the car accident happened, i chalked up a bill so high it was as traumatic as the accident itself. it’s nice that they are paying me a nice fat salary.

When the company finally connected me to the internet, my computer couldn’t detect it and it took 2 weeks and a brilliant idea (of another of going to an electronic shop for help) to get it up and working.

then i spent so much time skyping that i hardly slept.

It has been a month since my net has been up and i’ve not done much on it cept youtube, facebook and plan my trips. (side note: it’s strange that youtube and facebook have become verb-like)

Life has taken a turn for the better with the start of school, the presence of the net, the start of a social life and the arrival of the car. and now. I am ready to blog and expose my life and thoughts to those of you who want to know.

It’s amazing how quickly time passes when you are enjoying yourself or indulging in nothingness as I have been doing for the past few months. My weeks fly by so swiftly I confuse the month that I am currently living in. However, I feel the urge not to lump all my days together and consider them wasted as I feel that I have spent some of them meaningfully with people I love. And so the recording of Anne’s latest history begins

18.6.09
Spent a wonderful afternoon and evening at Lynn’s where we experimented with making lagsane and pennecotta (i can’t spell) and indulged in playing bridge.

19.6.09
Met up with Junko for a little more sightseeing and managed to sit the Flyer! Now most people will, at this point, give you the ‘you-are-so-boring-what’s-so-great-about-spending-$30-to-sit-the-flyer-and-see-only-construction?’ look. But, hold your horses… it is precisely because we have the advantage of seeing the before and after landscape of Singapore that we should ride the flyer… what more if you have a student pass? (Tip: Students pay $10 a ride during weekdays)

I spent the evening with my family as we celebrated Father’s Day with a dinner and a movie at my brother’s place. It was extremely cosy and I really enjoyed myself. Drawback was, I got extremely exhuasted after that as this was the 3rd late nighter I had pulled in a row.

20.6.09
Woke up at 6am as I was bound for a weekend getaway with the girls in Batam. Whilst excited, I suddenly wished that time would just stop for 4 additional hours so that I could get enough shut-eye. It didn’t help that once I got the opportunity to nap for a while on the ferry, I spied tiny insects crawling behind of my seat. Any intentions to sleep went up in a poof. To further aggravate the sleep deficiency problem, a challenge to stay awake for the entire night was thrown down whereby the penalty for the first person to fall asleep involved toothpaste and many fingers. and so, we stayed awake until we called a truce.

Had a massage and pedicure done and had a really great time just hanging out with my favouritest people=)

21.6.09
Spent the morning and afternoon still in Batam. Had a quiet evening recuperating from the string of late nights.

22.6.09
Had dinner with my JC friends and tried this Japanese restaurant at Illuma. Highlight of that was the long and ardous ordering process due to an electronic stick which we used to identify our order on the menu. Seriously, just use waiters.

23.6.09
Nothing. Just had a vigorous tennis lesson

24.6.09
Nothing. Spent my day marking papers and preparing for my lesson in the evening.

25.06.09
Had dinner with Liting and her friend Eric. Learnt alot about backpacking in Europe and entered one of Singapore’s newest mall for the first time. Got LT and WK to adopt my guppies.

26.06.09
Helped out at my mom’s workplace. Marked papers and prepared for my lesson in the evening. Sent in my resignation letter. Fell sick.

27.06.09
Laid on the bed like a blob. Used up half a box of tissue and read all about MJ. Farrah Fewcett is dead too but i doubt anyone will remember that.

Junko touched down in hot and humid Singapore last night! So, Liting  and I met up with her for dinner and drinks. It was great fun =) Conversation snippets shall remain private, but we touched on many funny topics. Had dinner @ Chatterbox and free drinks at St James, but forgot to take photos of the food -_-”

Just to backtrack a little, Junko and I met in Davis, California when we were on exchange in ‘05. She stayed there for 10 months and I for 4 but we have stayed in contact through the years, so to finally meet her after 4 years was really exciting.

The Japanese girls I met have a standard response when they meet someone for the first time.  They go…  ‘Kawaii ne’ before saying hello. Everyone of them. As someone who doesn’t speak Japanese, I was lost for words and didn’t know how I should respond.  So I said to one of them ‘ You are Kawaii too’  and then ‘arigato’? which when I uttered, EVERYONE EXCLAIMED  amazement-_-”" It was absolutely hilarious.   When I asked Junko, she said that as a Singaporean Girl, I was rare. Ok so i’m a good kawaii specimen of a Singaporean girl=) *high five* LOL

@ the Regent Hotel

Drinks@ St James

We were telling Junko about Ladies Night in Singapore and she likened it to the discounts ladies get on Wednesdays for movies. Instead of paying USD 18 to watch a movie, ladies pay USD 10. Apart from being appalled by the price of watching a movie in Japan, I think it’s an idea movie operators in SG should implement. GIMME $5 tickets coz i’m a gal;P