I wonder if you know the Italian writer Edmondo di Amicis and his very moving book "Heart of a Boy".

My mom writes a letter to her class every year, and then asks them to write a letter in return, as their first assignment of the year. A few days ago, she met a woman, who in conversation turned out to be the mother of a student she had taught 10 years ago. My mother came home, opened up a file, and removed a photocopy of that student's reply letter, and said to the mother, you can give this to your child. In the letter he explained to my mother that he intended to work with computers. What is your child doing now, my mother inquires of the other. He is in Informatics. In the Amicis, the boy's father reads in the paper of the retirement of his old school teacher, whom he had long assumed to have passed on. The father takes the boy with him to pay the old man a visit. At the end of the visit, the old man opens a drawer filled with yellowed papers, searches within, removes a sheet, and hands it to the father. It is an old exercise the father had done. The old man has kept one piece of work from every single pupil he has ever taught.

 

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It's my dad's turn to be swamped with students today. This lot was only taught by him 3 years ago. I know them pretty well from grading too many of their maths papers, and hearing all about them from dinner table stories. [That was the time between JC and Uni, and I was very eng. It was different to be the one staying home and seeing my dad off to school (he cycles to school, and I'd run ahead and open the gate so that he can sail through and I'll shut it after him) I passed time by offering to grade my dad's papers for him.] I think it's amazing how grading work makes you feel close to someone's mind. After a while I begin to get a feel for each name and the way each of their minds work, from the approaches to questions, the kinds of mistakes made, the handwriting, even marginalia - who are the ones who obviously had worked out answers on a separate sheet and those who scrawl quick calculations in the margins.

I went down for a while to welcome the boys and served drinks: My mom is not home and somehow I feel as if as the daughter of the house I should go down and be hostess. Although I don't know how to be a hostess in English. I'm only any good if I'm speaking Chinese, and I prefer to switch to Chinese if I have to host people. In English the tone is all wrong, and it doesn't feel qin1 qie4 at all. I feel awkward. These days the parents are tutoring at home and so people are always flowing in and out of the house. men2 ting2 ruo4 shi4! I seem to be pretty good at this, receiving ppl and seating them and keeping them occupied until the parents come down. I suppose also because my room is the one that has the balcony and faces the street so I can see who's at the gate, while my parents' room faces the back garde. But this is very different still. My mom always taught Sec 4, so most of my childhood, the people who came to the house were always grown boys in pants, much older and taller than me. I'd shyly come down amongst them or peek at them from the top of the stairs. Some of them were cute too, aha. Though it could just be that they were all much older than me, aha. On the otherhand my dad teaches primary school so that's a completely different thing. You can't possibly be interested in or awed by 12 year olds, even if you're only 8. Especially not now. These are mere infants. Still in shorts! I think I feel like an old auntie. Darn it, I'm getting old. Von mocked me cruelly only yesterday about shelf life. ARRGGH. Where are the men!

[Speaking of men, Senegal beat France! Was eating satay and orh luah in front of the TV last night when that happened, at my Aunt's place in Serangoon Gardens. Incid. Tiger has a v funny ad on TV. It shows males from all over Europe falling asleep on buses, snoring in front of tvs that are buzzing with non-transmission static, bleary-eyed boys trying to stay awake in schools, and then the smug message, this World Cup, time is on our side. And then a lot of relaxed Singaporean men sitting in a pub after work enjoying the World Cup and chinking their mugs of Tiger Beer. ]