The World of Tai Tai

I was assigned by my principal to conduct creative writing workshops every Friday afternoon at school.  The following is one of the activities: Creative Writing Workshop (II) Read the following paragraph and try to make it a better one by adding some appropriate descriptions from (a) to (c). You may add your own descriptions too.  Originality is better. The sun had just set. The scenery was very beautiful. There were not many boats on the river. I wanted to row but my father forbade it. The boatman came to my aid. He said that he would make sure that I did not cause any harm to the boat or to myself. In the end, my father agreed. I sat in the place of the boatman at the stern and had the joy of rowing for almost ten minutes. Imagine my joy of rowing and my ability to keep it on course. My brother envied me.   a) Descriptions of the sunset ·          The sun had just dipped below the horizon, staining the sky with red, orange and ...

I n the shade of some dripping palm fronds, I was sitting at the edge of a bench, waiting for my brother to pick me up.   Many tall buildings of glass and steel adorned the area in the vicinity of KLCC, the busiest hub in the city.   My eyes, fretful with impatience, were searching for the rust-biege colour of my brother's car amidst the traffic that drifted up and down the road.  A spell seemed to have been cast upon everything, pulling them along the road in opposing directions.  As time passed by the frenzy took on a more feverish note.  Weren’t we all moving along life to earn our keep?  A break would interrupt the flow of regularity, and the gap would have to be mended before reestablishing the continuity of your journey, or so I thought.  From somewhere just beyond the depths of my own thinking, a strong singing voice pulled me back to reality. I directed my eyes to where the singing came from, amid the free-flowing crowds, to the owner o...

I entered the bright hall, and found myself surrounded by oil paintings, video installations, sculptures, photographs. Migration said the wall description but I had other things on my mind. I looked at them without seeing, lost in my own thoughts. But when I turned a corner, the brightness dimmed suddenly and I was jolted.  In that half dark room, there was a sea of faces, each face dazed, as if they had been punched between their eyes. So many faces, looking, dead ahead. A faint light reflected off their faces as they watched a screen, silent, mesmerised, oblivious to me, oblivious to their surroundings, looking at something beyond my shoulder.                 I stepped back deeper in the darkness and looked at them. They were cast from the same mould these people. Their foreheads were low, their eyes large, their jaws wide.  They were far from home,  leaving loved ones behind in pursuit of...

Over the course of the first twenty days of the new school year, I realized that my teach ing had been spiraling out of control.  Although the amount of assignments had increased, it failed to keep pace with the slow learning students as evident by pages of unanswered questions in their exercise books, especially those in Dua Niah, a class of fourteen-year-olds who seemed slow in learning and, at times, rather naughty.   To remedy the situation, a thought struck me:  teach the students how to write through drilling.  Give them a foundation.  For several days, after some trial and error, I came up with a worksheet that I thought would motivate the students.  With the eagerness of a child, I took the worksheets to Dua Niah.  As I was about to introduce the activity, the sight of some dazed-looking students and others caught up in their busy chatter, dampened my spirits.  Taking a deep breath, I raised my voice and said, “Class, today I’ve some...

                      Mr. Hong - 6th from left, the headmaster                               who inspired me to learn English Prior to Primary Six, learning English had never been easy for me.  English was the only subject taught in a foreign tongue, so it was a living nightmare for nearly every pupil since for many of us it was our third language, rarely, if ever, spoken at home or among friends. Unfortunately, whoever taught us had the habit of following what had been prescribed in the textbooks, to the letter—so utterly predictable and boring that even when singing the language, we were glued to our seats, mechan ical ly clapping our hands or waving our arms.  The confident ones could say the words out loud, while the rest of us mumbled or mouthed them voicelessly.   Our lessons were mostly characterized by reading aloud and filli...