catch-up (mega-edition)
Today is the Teachers Day holiday here in Singapore, a school holiday which follows the Teachers Day celebrations* yesterday, and I'm getting some much-needed rest. Actually slept for eight hours last night, and woke naturally to the gentle cloud-diffused sunlight leaking in through the bamboo blinds in our bedroom. Breakfast was at our favorite coffee stall in the nearby hawker centre: strong local coffee, charcoal-toasted bread with butter and kaya, and half-boiled eggs.
I'm catching up on a bit of blog-reading and writerly maintenance: sent in my submissions for the Hint Fiction anthology edited by Robert Swartwood (just under the wire too), and now working on the second draft of my Daily Cabal entry for September.
And while I'm catching up on those things, I thought I would also catch up a bit here. The last 4-5 weeks have been nightmarish in terms of marking papers, and I've had almost zero time for blogging, either reading or writing. This school term was perhaps the most stressed out I've ever been at a job, and this was aggravated by the shortness of the term (only seven weeks instead of the usual ten), as well as the sudden request that all my rolled-over assignments needed to be marked and keyed in by 11 September, rather than in Term 4 as I had expected**. My free time, such as it was, dwindled to zero, as I ended up marking papers every afternoon after school, as well as on the weekends.
But somewhere in there, I have managed to do a few things I actually wanted to.
1. On 10 August, I attended the long-awaited Nine Inch Nails concert at Fort Canning Park. It was a tiny venue, with maybe only a thousand people (many of whom, I suspect, weren't particularly fans of the band, but were just there for a loud rock concert), but Trent Reznor and krewe (Robin Finck on lead guitar, Justin Meldal-Johnsen on bass, Ilan Rubin on drums, and Rob Sheridan on lighting and visuals) played a kick-ass show, just as hard as if for a huge amphitheatre or stadium. It was a solid two-hour show with no breaks, and I was as breathless at the end of it as if I had been on stage; the intensity of the show gave me a new admiration for Reznor's stamina and strength in performance.
Despite being a big-time fan for over 15 years, this was my first NIN live concert, and it was an amazing experience; much of the setlist was similar to the live album And All That Could Have Been (Halo 17), but there were a few tweaks to incorporate more recent songs, as well as David Bowie's "I'm Afraid of Americans" (which Reznor collaborated on after its original release). It was hot and sweaty and smoky and loud, and probably the all-time best concert I've ever been to. YouTube user ii53 recorded the entire concert (mostly) in HD, and posted it as a 24-part playlist; I posted some of my own photos on Facebook and videos on TwitVid and Vimeo, but ii53's videos better represent the experience.
2. This past weekend I attended the launch party for Cyril Wong's new collection Let Me Tell You Something About That Night at the nonfiction specialty bookshop Polymath & Crust. Cyril is well-known as the author of seven poetry collections (and it has been suggested that he is Singapore's best-selling poet), but this was his first foray into prose-writing. He read two of the shortest stories in the collection, and then answered questions for a while afterward.
I gulped down the book over the next two days (the stories are all fairly short, and read quickly), and was quite taken with the fable-like style Cyril chose to employ. It gives the stories a timeless quality, a deceptive simplicity that feels appropriate for children until the more subversive elements sneak up on you. I tweeted that fans of Margo Lanagan's fiction would adore this book, and I think it could rightfully qualify as Young Adult in the US; American publishers take note.
It was great to be able to see Cyril again and talk for a bit before the reading began. I ran into a few other familiar faces in the Singapore lit scene, which made me happy that Karen & Kenny (who run P&C, as well as their original store BooksActually) have become a focal point for the community here (and I must thank them once again for taking another 20 copies of A Field Guide to Surreal Botany; they've been fantastic champions of our little book). I wish I could have stayed longer, but I left around 9:30 because...
3. The following day, I conducted a two-hour workshop in Science Fiction & Fantasy Writing as part of the annual Literature Seminar hosted by the Ministry of Education's Gifted Education Branch. The seminar was held this year at Nanyang Girls' High School, a beautiful campus just across the road from the school where I teach. As expected, the workshop attendees were almost all male, but three young ladies also signed up, which I was very glad to see. My presentation went well (and OMG do I love Apple's Keynote so much more than PowerPoint), and the students (all Secondary Twos and Threes) seemed to get something out of it. One of the young ladies also bought a copy of Surreal Botany.
After last year's LitSem, I was frankly surprised to be invited back. My workshop was on "Prose Writing for Publication," and I made it clear to the organizers that it was supposed to be for students who already had some writing experience and would like to take the next step in submitting their work for publication; however, when I got there, I learned that the attendees were randomly assigned to different workshops, with the result that only three out of thirty students even enjoyed writing in their free time. I had to adjust my entire approach on the fly, and (at least to me), it felt rushed and less organized and below my own expectations. However, the students gave some surprisingly effusive feedback, which led to my invitation this year.
Last year's session was three hours long, which meant retooling my presentation and exercises for one fewer hour, and cutting any of the fat. This meant a leaner and more dense workshop, and to my delight I ended right on the dot. I had a lot of fun conducting it, and the students (who actually got to bid on the workshops this year, and hence wanted to be there; I was told that mine was the most popular, and "sold out" almost right away) seemed to have fun with all the exercises. I also prepared a packet for the attendees, including links to SF Recommended Reading lists, print-outs of my slides for later reference, and the second edition of the Turkey City Lexicon. It was a great experience, and I hope they ask me back again next year.
4. Payment for conducting the LitSem workshop was in gift vouchers for Books Kinokuniya (which I got before the ones on Teacher Day), and while I would have appreciated the money, I can absolutely spend the vouchers at the bookstore. After the Teacher's Day celebration yesterday, I headed over to Orchard Road and the main branch of Kino. An hour was spent browsing the shelves; I was specifically looking for books that I might not buy otherwise, nicer editions that were a bit more expensive. Not to waste money intentionally, but especially now that my home office has been turned into the baby's room, my bookshelf space has been drastically reduced, and I didn't want to blow the vouchers on a bunch of books for which we didn't have the space.
I picked up a couple of Sudoku books for Janet, two books by Victor Pelevin (Homo Zapiens and The Blue Lantern: Stories, and the first two Library of America omnibus editions of Philip K. Dick's novels, edited by Jonathan Lethem (Four Novels of the 1960s and Five Novels of the 1960s and 70s). The two PKD LOA books I had been coveting since they were announced, and I'm happy to see them now on my bookshelf.
The books accounted for less than half of the vouchers, so I'll be making at least one more trip to Kino. A few books that caught my eye (but that I put down as my basket was getting too heavy) were The Complete Maus: A Survivor's Tale by Art Spiegelman, Listening to Grasshoppers: Field Notes on Democracy by Arundhati Roy, and All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays and Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative Essays by George Orwell. It's interesting to note that these four titles are all in hardcover; I've hardly bought hardcovers since coming to Singapore, as they're so expensive here thanks to import duties, but I'm more willing to consider them if I'm not paying in my own cash.
5. Okay, I have a few things that I need to get done today, so I'm going to get to those. I have papers to mark, but it's questionable whether that will get done. Today is a holiday after all. :)
* I'm not aware of an analogue to this holiday in the US; the only thing I remember being close to it when I was growing up was the occasional "Teacher Work Day," which I suspected was something like what was presented on an episode of The Simpsons, where the teachers would all gather and drink margaritas and play mini-golf and ride rollercoasters at Six Flags or something, although I'm sure that the reality was much more mundane, and that the teachers used these work days to catch up on grading and lesson preparation.
What it entailed in Singapore was a morning "concert" by the students (more like a variety show, with some singing, some dancing, some cheesy performances), and a small prize ceremony for the teachers (I was a co-winner for Most Popular Online Lesson, based on the IT Home Learning given at the beginning of the term; my prize: gift vouchers to Books Kinokuniya. Yay books!). This was followed by a mass return to the staff room, where the teachers were mobbed by the students, and given thank-you gifts and cards. I have to say, having the students appreciate you like this (not with gifts, although they are appreciated, but with thanks for your work in the classroom) at the end of an incredibly difficult term does much to alleviate the resentment and frustration teachers can face during the school year. At least for a little while.
** Anyone leaving a comment like, "Oh, just give them all C's and go shopping," will get a virtual punch in the neck; this kind of comment reveals a profound ignorance of how secondary schools (at least in Singapore) micro-manage the marking process. There are constant standardization meetings to make sure all the teachers are marking in exactly the same way, and at least once during the school year, student files are taken up by the department heads to double-check the handouts and notes, as well as the thoroughness of your marking.
I'm catching up on a bit of blog-reading and writerly maintenance: sent in my submissions for the Hint Fiction anthology edited by Robert Swartwood (just under the wire too), and now working on the second draft of my Daily Cabal entry for September.
And while I'm catching up on those things, I thought I would also catch up a bit here. The last 4-5 weeks have been nightmarish in terms of marking papers, and I've had almost zero time for blogging, either reading or writing. This school term was perhaps the most stressed out I've ever been at a job, and this was aggravated by the shortness of the term (only seven weeks instead of the usual ten), as well as the sudden request that all my rolled-over assignments needed to be marked and keyed in by 11 September, rather than in Term 4 as I had expected**. My free time, such as it was, dwindled to zero, as I ended up marking papers every afternoon after school, as well as on the weekends.
But somewhere in there, I have managed to do a few things I actually wanted to.
1. On 10 August, I attended the long-awaited Nine Inch Nails concert at Fort Canning Park. It was a tiny venue, with maybe only a thousand people (many of whom, I suspect, weren't particularly fans of the band, but were just there for a loud rock concert), but Trent Reznor and krewe (Robin Finck on lead guitar, Justin Meldal-Johnsen on bass, Ilan Rubin on drums, and Rob Sheridan on lighting and visuals) played a kick-ass show, just as hard as if for a huge amphitheatre or stadium. It was a solid two-hour show with no breaks, and I was as breathless at the end of it as if I had been on stage; the intensity of the show gave me a new admiration for Reznor's stamina and strength in performance.
Despite being a big-time fan for over 15 years, this was my first NIN live concert, and it was an amazing experience; much of the setlist was similar to the live album And All That Could Have Been (Halo 17), but there were a few tweaks to incorporate more recent songs, as well as David Bowie's "I'm Afraid of Americans" (which Reznor collaborated on after its original release). It was hot and sweaty and smoky and loud, and probably the all-time best concert I've ever been to. YouTube user ii53 recorded the entire concert (mostly) in HD, and posted it as a 24-part playlist; I posted some of my own photos on Facebook and videos on TwitVid and Vimeo, but ii53's videos better represent the experience.
2. This past weekend I attended the launch party for Cyril Wong's new collection Let Me Tell You Something About That Night at the nonfiction specialty bookshop Polymath & Crust. Cyril is well-known as the author of seven poetry collections (and it has been suggested that he is Singapore's best-selling poet), but this was his first foray into prose-writing. He read two of the shortest stories in the collection, and then answered questions for a while afterward.
I gulped down the book over the next two days (the stories are all fairly short, and read quickly), and was quite taken with the fable-like style Cyril chose to employ. It gives the stories a timeless quality, a deceptive simplicity that feels appropriate for children until the more subversive elements sneak up on you. I tweeted that fans of Margo Lanagan's fiction would adore this book, and I think it could rightfully qualify as Young Adult in the US; American publishers take note.
It was great to be able to see Cyril again and talk for a bit before the reading began. I ran into a few other familiar faces in the Singapore lit scene, which made me happy that Karen & Kenny (who run P&C, as well as their original store BooksActually) have become a focal point for the community here (and I must thank them once again for taking another 20 copies of A Field Guide to Surreal Botany; they've been fantastic champions of our little book). I wish I could have stayed longer, but I left around 9:30 because...
3. The following day, I conducted a two-hour workshop in Science Fiction & Fantasy Writing as part of the annual Literature Seminar hosted by the Ministry of Education's Gifted Education Branch. The seminar was held this year at Nanyang Girls' High School, a beautiful campus just across the road from the school where I teach. As expected, the workshop attendees were almost all male, but three young ladies also signed up, which I was very glad to see. My presentation went well (and OMG do I love Apple's Keynote so much more than PowerPoint), and the students (all Secondary Twos and Threes) seemed to get something out of it. One of the young ladies also bought a copy of Surreal Botany.
After last year's LitSem, I was frankly surprised to be invited back. My workshop was on "Prose Writing for Publication," and I made it clear to the organizers that it was supposed to be for students who already had some writing experience and would like to take the next step in submitting their work for publication; however, when I got there, I learned that the attendees were randomly assigned to different workshops, with the result that only three out of thirty students even enjoyed writing in their free time. I had to adjust my entire approach on the fly, and (at least to me), it felt rushed and less organized and below my own expectations. However, the students gave some surprisingly effusive feedback, which led to my invitation this year.
Last year's session was three hours long, which meant retooling my presentation and exercises for one fewer hour, and cutting any of the fat. This meant a leaner and more dense workshop, and to my delight I ended right on the dot. I had a lot of fun conducting it, and the students (who actually got to bid on the workshops this year, and hence wanted to be there; I was told that mine was the most popular, and "sold out" almost right away) seemed to have fun with all the exercises. I also prepared a packet for the attendees, including links to SF Recommended Reading lists, print-outs of my slides for later reference, and the second edition of the Turkey City Lexicon. It was a great experience, and I hope they ask me back again next year.
4. Payment for conducting the LitSem workshop was in gift vouchers for Books Kinokuniya (which I got before the ones on Teacher Day), and while I would have appreciated the money, I can absolutely spend the vouchers at the bookstore. After the Teacher's Day celebration yesterday, I headed over to Orchard Road and the main branch of Kino. An hour was spent browsing the shelves; I was specifically looking for books that I might not buy otherwise, nicer editions that were a bit more expensive. Not to waste money intentionally, but especially now that my home office has been turned into the baby's room, my bookshelf space has been drastically reduced, and I didn't want to blow the vouchers on a bunch of books for which we didn't have the space.
I picked up a couple of Sudoku books for Janet, two books by Victor Pelevin (Homo Zapiens and The Blue Lantern: Stories, and the first two Library of America omnibus editions of Philip K. Dick's novels, edited by Jonathan Lethem (Four Novels of the 1960s and Five Novels of the 1960s and 70s). The two PKD LOA books I had been coveting since they were announced, and I'm happy to see them now on my bookshelf.
The books accounted for less than half of the vouchers, so I'll be making at least one more trip to Kino. A few books that caught my eye (but that I put down as my basket was getting too heavy) were The Complete Maus: A Survivor's Tale by Art Spiegelman, Listening to Grasshoppers: Field Notes on Democracy by Arundhati Roy, and All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays and Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative Essays by George Orwell. It's interesting to note that these four titles are all in hardcover; I've hardly bought hardcovers since coming to Singapore, as they're so expensive here thanks to import duties, but I'm more willing to consider them if I'm not paying in my own cash.
5. Okay, I have a few things that I need to get done today, so I'm going to get to those. I have papers to mark, but it's questionable whether that will get done. Today is a holiday after all. :)
* I'm not aware of an analogue to this holiday in the US; the only thing I remember being close to it when I was growing up was the occasional "Teacher Work Day," which I suspected was something like what was presented on an episode of The Simpsons, where the teachers would all gather and drink margaritas and play mini-golf and ride rollercoasters at Six Flags or something, although I'm sure that the reality was much more mundane, and that the teachers used these work days to catch up on grading and lesson preparation.
What it entailed in Singapore was a morning "concert" by the students (more like a variety show, with some singing, some dancing, some cheesy performances), and a small prize ceremony for the teachers (I was a co-winner for Most Popular Online Lesson, based on the IT Home Learning given at the beginning of the term; my prize: gift vouchers to Books Kinokuniya. Yay books!). This was followed by a mass return to the staff room, where the teachers were mobbed by the students, and given thank-you gifts and cards. I have to say, having the students appreciate you like this (not with gifts, although they are appreciated, but with thanks for your work in the classroom) at the end of an incredibly difficult term does much to alleviate the resentment and frustration teachers can face during the school year. At least for a little while.
** Anyone leaving a comment like, "Oh, just give them all C's and go shopping," will get a virtual punch in the neck; this kind of comment reveals a profound ignorance of how secondary schools (at least in Singapore) micro-manage the marking process. There are constant standardization meetings to make sure all the teachers are marking in exactly the same way, and at least once during the school year, student files are taken up by the department heads to double-check the handouts and notes, as well as the thoroughness of your marking.