Basket.

One day in a life.

We pay more and more every year so that fucking MRT trains can contrive to have mysterious and unexplained delays which make me nearly late for school? Well, a shining start to what was to develop into a magnificent day at work.

Making efforts to round up summary practices like little lost sheep, I come in to discover a couple new ones on my desk, by the stipulated deadline. The bad news: quite a number more have yet to come in. I pursue the matter after assembly, a short few minutes later. Sardonically, I ask one offender whether he requires me to beg him for his work. He answers in the affirmative with a cheeky smirk, and gets the first earful of the day from me. It sets the tone for what is to follow.

I get back to my desk and idly flip through the summary practices I have. The first book I pick has the wrong practice done. So does the next... and the one after that. A chill runs up my spine, and a familiar throbbing begins thudding behind my eyes. Fortunately, only one more is erroneous. A sigh of relief and some hope.

Shortly after, in Geography class, a student betrays the utter lack of attention he has been paying to my lesson by telling me about "surface runoff" from the "upper course" of the river. His friend whom I assign to aid him fails similarly miserably. They certainly are taking this whole "teach with patience" thing for granted. Nothing I can't live with, however.

Everything then goes as smoothly as it possibly can (ie, not very) until Social Studies. I am mid-writing-on-board-and-explaining when this Secondary One pupil strolls nonchalantly into my Secondary Three classroom, unfolds a sheet of paper and begins asking me about a misplaced hall pass, allegedly in said classroom. I had literally stopped in mid-sentence and mid-writing to look on in astonishment as this little gremlin treats my classroom as his living room. Naturally, he gets the second good earful of the day. My Secondary 3 pupils comment that I made him cry. Bullshit - I can only fucking wish our students were that remorseful about their actions.

School ends, and I go on to invigilate some Secondary Fours who need instructions repeated again and again and again and... again and... aga- GOD CAN'T THEY JUST FUCKING LISTEN UP AND FOLLOW AM I FUCKING SPEAKING ENGLISH HERE? Good heavens.

And then my day ends with yet another earful, for those who fail to give me my "lost sheep" (see above). Some of the best students in the school, it is said. Future of the nation, it is said.

You know that old joke about the little boy and his father that ends with "The Prime Minister is screwing the Working Class while the Government is asleep, the People are being ignored and the Future is in shit"? It is increasingly becoming black comedy for me.