A different holiday

After a two-week not-really-a-holiday trip home, I am back in Singapore, at my uncle's place pending the move back into the campus. As I don't have a hall at the moment, I temporarily shifted out of the campus to here. After all, I have a standing invitation from my uncle to stay over on weekends, which I rarely used.

One of the things I planned to do back home was to pay my critically-ill uncle a visit (I had written before that he had a stroke, which was later diagnosed as terminal cancer). What I didn't know was that it was actually on his deathbed. He expired in the wee hours the following day I visited him at the hospital. Though not really close to him, he was someone I had seen quite often since young. I was saddened by the loss of a family member, and sympathize his eight-year-old son, who smiled and played around as relatives poured into the house, and seemed knowing nothing about what had happened. On a lighter note, I felt blessed that my family is financially more sound, and we didn't go through the pain and trauma they went through for four months, though we experienced the same loss four years ago.

On the other hand, I was drafted by my mum to help at her kindergarten as a relief teacher, in order to free up her teaching time and enable her to focus on the preparation for the upcoming annual concert. Controlling a class (sometimes two) of 5 or 6-year-olds is harder than I had imagined. Is it because I am (or look) relatively tame compared to the other teachers?

I also realized that my mum's job is not as easy as it seems from the surface, and she does it just for my brothers and me. Someone asked me once about my reason to continue studying, which I answered quite implicitly "to further my knowledge". Now, apart from that, I would answer: to get the degree I am pursuing, because I cannot disappoint her.