The Dysfunctional Pilgrim

1. It is the ache in your spine 2. It is the hollow of your ribs, when your lungs have vanished 3. It is the swell in your eyes, but not from tears 4. It is the stickiness of tears, finally falling 5. It is the blank blue of the late night 6. It is the clear grey of the early morning 7. It is the soft pulsing in your skull, not hurting but ever present 8. It is 9. It is 10. It always is

Story 1: I had lent my student my copy of "Eldest", because he, in his words, "got obsessed with it". I didn't think too much of it. He came back after holidays and said "Miss, I read it like 5 TIMES I CAN'T BELIEVE *spoiler spoiler* HAPPENED. And miss, I can't stop using 'ancient language' (like 'thee' 'thyself', etc)" Ahaha kid, you're cute. You sound like me when I was your age (gosh I'm so old). We discussed some parts of the book together and I had to stop myself from chatting too long to avoid showing favoritism. I'm really grateful that I grew up in a reading environment. Having read widely, I have a small catalogue of books and authors in my head. It's easy now to figure out which book my student would like and recommend them quickly. I've been doing that for a number of my students who told me they didn't know what to read. It's almost like prescribing medicine based on what their int...

It seems like every fortnight there is a new trend sweeping the classroom. First it was the dab, then it was bottle-flipping - I'm someone who's sensitive to sound, and the consistent but sudden smack of plastic crunching the floor tiles nearly drove me insane. Then there was that "yee" video, I have yet to be enlightened on what the joke is. I do not wish to be enlightened. I would prefer styaing in the suffering of ignorance. Somehow it moved on to rubics cubes (we're still going through that phase), and fidget spinners, fidget cubes, and now, for some ungodly reason, the librarians thought it'd be educational to sell 'slime' to the students, which of course led to the class flipping their slime, mixing it with more water to make sickly wet slime, spinning, looping it around like professional Italian pasta makers, trying to make their own prata bread and other creative functions. The problem with all these new distractions and trends that student...

Goosehouse is a group of singers/musicians from Japan. They have original songs but also perform covers. Usually their performances are done on via livestream, where they will talk in between their songs, which they upload in chucks after the livestream is over. Generally, all their performances are acoustic and done live. In fact, it's extremely difficult to find any studio versions of their songs online (except the ones that have recently become openings for anime shows) . They don't livestream that often, but it's pretty much a mini concert whenever they do. A good 5 or 6 songs would be performed in one go. I love how cute they are (even though the cutest looking one is like, 30 years old. Seriously, how????) , and in some ways, it's fascinating to watch them grow and improve as vocalists and musicians.  When I first started following them 4 years back, some of their vocals weren't as strong, and because they seem to be constantly picking up new instr...