The World of Tai Tai

I love English more and more with each passing day. My knowledge of English enables me to plumb the depths of countless literary works. Reading them regularly makes me more knowledgeable, humane and appreciate beauty better. The discovery of new words never fails to encourage me to strive harder to master the language.  Since young, I have had the habit of copying new words, idioms and all sorts of descriptive sentences into my diaries or notebooks.  When I write they become my reference materials, providing me with food for thought on how to make my articles or stories more alive and interesting.   To improve my spoken English, I like watching television programmes the likes of BBC and CNN, which open my eyes to how native speakers use the language. Hence, I make it a habit to stress the last syllable of every word I speak. "You sound like a clicking lizard," is my students' usual comment. Because I went through the Malay Medium, my understanding of Geogr...

A Filipino friend taught me how to cook this peanut stew.  It is normally cooked with oxtails but I replaced them with beef knuckle.  I loved how it tasted.  To say that it was flavourful is an understatement.

Being an English teacher for twenty years has taught me many things. In the first five years of my teaching career, I always found myself groping in the dark, experimenting with different teaching approaches and making countless stumbles.  A well-planned  lesson could go wrong with a silly grammatical slip, a torn teaching aid, a noisy, attention-seeking student, or an unexpected question posed by an intelligent student who wanted to see you babble helplessly.  As a new teacher, I was given the opportunity to attend many courses. At the time they were mostly held at grand hotels and I had the privilege to meet many outstanding teachers such as Susan Soh, Arthur Wee, Patricia Wong, Robinette Tiong and Paul Chiam. Each time I returned from a course, I was raring to implement what I had learnt at school. However, the attempt frequently met with failure on account of my poor class control and my weak English. To avoid making errors like a fool, I held fast to textbooks...

This cute bunch of students would like to wish you and me a Blessed Chinese New Year. May you achieve all your new year's resolutions.

The New Year does not augur well for Papa's health. A couple of weeks ago, on my way back to Papa's car from a shopping mall with Ah Hui, we saw him slumped in his seat, his eyes dazed and his jaw seemed lolling off its hinge. Ah Hui opened the door and asked if he was feeling all right.  Papa nodded his head but I could see some yellowish hue under his pallor. "Do you have a temperature?" I asked, extending my hand to touch his forehead.   "Ya, a little." Papa warded off my hand weakly, his hand cold against mine. Ah Hui took over driving and that night, a sharp pain shot up from under Papa's chest, waking him up and reducing him to a moaning heap. Ah Hui rushed him to hospital immediately and left me a message. However, I was sound asleep in my house and my cellphone was only switched on when I woke up at seven the next day. Being immobile, I could not do anything, but I felt bad for letting Ah Hui handle everything. Papa was diagnos...