Saturday, January 01, 2005

Enter the New Year

Bummer.

The whole rigmarole begins anew tomorrow. I'm not looking forward to it. Like my kids, my work isn't complete. I reiterate, teachers make the worst students.

Usually the staff conference on the last day of the year serves as a timely reminder of things to come and the culmination of it being the last day of 2004, it being held at the Jurong Bird Park which is as boondocks as it comes. And usually these things last about an hour and a half followed by a brunch spread. Then we go home and prepare for the New Year. This time, because it was in the Bird Park and had to pay for the conference room for half a day, our conference ran that long with Bird Park related games like walking round the bird park and come back with a thought or a metaphor that could encapsulate the "vision" of the organisation. As a result, a whole lot of bird brain jokes that go along the line of "birds of a feather flock together" or a more original one like "each teacher is like a feather and it takes a whole lot of feathers to keep the bird (school) warm".

I spent a lot of time looking at the flamingoes since we were at the Flamingo room and I can tell you for a fact, they're not pink! Everyone was commenting on how "luk sek"* they were. Apparently, they need shrimp to get that pink pigmentation and I guess the Bird Park can't feed shrimp to all the hundreds of flamingoes they have. And, like in every big group, there would be one that was out of place and in this case, it was a pelican that seemed to have gotten lost in the lake of flamingoes. So, for the entire morning, it just paddled up and down and looked intensely lost, wondering about the strange birds with really thin legs that didn't seem to do very much.

Out of sheer boredom, we decided to come up with a list of things that flamingoes must do and think of the whole day.

7 am- wake up since the early bird catches the worm
8 am- dig around for food.
9 am- wonder about the strange people who are encased in this glass enclosure that faces them.
10 am- decide whether to stand on the left or the right leg
11 am- right leg it is!

And the next morning, the same thing goes through their head except they decide - Left leg!

And the following morning, "Look mom! No legs!"

So, it was a productive time for us even though it followed a major wig out about the year to come. According to Dan, I do it every year, but it doesn't feel that way, perhaps because I forget that I wig out.

Anyway, the resolution for the year...To try and get through this year as painlessly as possible and remember that it's just 2 years more to a new life.




*luk sek- lack of colour, washed out...

Ondine tossed this thought in at 23:28

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