There are just these times in life where memories from the past come back to overwhelm you. Just leaves you speechless and not knowing quite how to react to it. Today was such a day.
It started with a packet of kitkat. kitkat, the chocolate that all of us should have eaten (or at least heard of) before, but it just stood out today among all the items on the shelf in the convenience stall I just had to grab one. As I unwrapped it from its new wrapper, the characteristic aluminium foil long gone, and the 4 snap-able bars that used to be side by side replaced by a shorter, 6 bars in 2 columns package showed itself.
Strangely, this advertisement came to mind. I used to find the pandas very funny as a kid, and now still do, but with the added perception that the whole video was actually quite corny. they say innocence is lost with age, I can't agree more.
However, one bite into the chocolate was all that was needed to know that some things do not change. Cliche but how true. The same chocolatey taste, wafflery texture and somehow addictively crunchy biscuit that my dad would always buy boxes of. Back then going into JB to do grocery shopping became a very big and frequent thing at home and 48 bars of kitkat in a box was one of the cheap bargains. As the law of diminishing marginal returns hold true, the first 2 bars of kitkat were always then most enjoyable. The remaining 40+ bars will go on and sit in the refrigerator for days on end, then 40+ bars became 100+ bars, cos the dad never realised we could not finish the old stock and still kept buying. It brought back memories of bringing kitkat to school out of my own will, and I'll end up sharing or giving it to friends, which I still see it as a nice gesture and probably why I had become rather hospitable over these years. Should I ever suffer some memory loss in the future, (you know shows where people suddenly forget everything and try so hard to get them back), kitkat is surely going to do the trick for me.
Then when I came home and called to my mum on the phone, she told me that my tutor, Mdm Khoo was giving my youngest sister her last lesson today. Once again, time just rewinded to the day as the 13-year-old me, running down the stairs to the row of shophouse right below my apartment to greet this middle aged lady who really looked more like a housewife than a tutor. She had been recommended by a family friend and had the record of her students scoring no lower than A2 for mathematics. Of course I had my doubts, considering how I had struggled with the subject I thought was never making much sense (especially those model sum questions solved with algebra) and that tuition fees were really considerably alot more expensive. Then again as a secondary one schoolboy, there was to be no democracy in the family, I just had to sit through the lessons and make sure we saw results.
Somehow, Mdm Khoo just had this magical voice and method of explanation that always made things so simple, and the rest was history. Maths became the pet subject and even in a university module, basic maths for economists, I saw the systematic approach she would have used it to solve the questions in my answers. Of course, there could be a correlation that I had good maths teachers in school too, but it was definitely in her lessons that I found the interest in the subject to continue thereafter.
Even though I had already stopped lessons since graduating from BPGHS, my 4 sisters continued under her tutelage, and I still catch up with her everytime she came for lessons. She came over to Europe last year while I was doing my exchange and we even managed to meet up for an afternoon. In this day and age where the age-old, clearly defined relationship between teacher and student grows thinner with facebook and msn, I treasure this huge amount of respect I have for my tutor, and it comes as even more precious a thing that tutors can nowadays be replaced as quicky as an advertisement billboard. Even though it will be very much harder to see or hear from her next time, I'll be looking forward to asking her over for dinner when I get back.
On another equally important but probably overlooked point, its the end of the tuition era at home. The youngest sister is one step closer to the finishing line of this paper chase craze, and its one less burden on my mum's shoulders.
Wow, so much for flashback in a day. Thoughts like these make for some of the most excellent chicken soup for the soul.
It started with a packet of kitkat. kitkat, the chocolate that all of us should have eaten (or at least heard of) before, but it just stood out today among all the items on the shelf in the convenience stall I just had to grab one. As I unwrapped it from its new wrapper, the characteristic aluminium foil long gone, and the 4 snap-able bars that used to be side by side replaced by a shorter, 6 bars in 2 columns package showed itself.
Strangely, this advertisement came to mind. I used to find the pandas very funny as a kid, and now still do, but with the added perception that the whole video was actually quite corny. they say innocence is lost with age, I can't agree more.
However, one bite into the chocolate was all that was needed to know that some things do not change. Cliche but how true. The same chocolatey taste, wafflery texture and somehow addictively crunchy biscuit that my dad would always buy boxes of. Back then going into JB to do grocery shopping became a very big and frequent thing at home and 48 bars of kitkat in a box was one of the cheap bargains. As the law of diminishing marginal returns hold true, the first 2 bars of kitkat were always then most enjoyable. The remaining 40+ bars will go on and sit in the refrigerator for days on end, then 40+ bars became 100+ bars, cos the dad never realised we could not finish the old stock and still kept buying. It brought back memories of bringing kitkat to school out of my own will, and I'll end up sharing or giving it to friends, which I still see it as a nice gesture and probably why I had become rather hospitable over these years. Should I ever suffer some memory loss in the future, (you know shows where people suddenly forget everything and try so hard to get them back), kitkat is surely going to do the trick for me.
Then when I came home and called to my mum on the phone, she told me that my tutor, Mdm Khoo was giving my youngest sister her last lesson today. Once again, time just rewinded to the day as the 13-year-old me, running down the stairs to the row of shophouse right below my apartment to greet this middle aged lady who really looked more like a housewife than a tutor. She had been recommended by a family friend and had the record of her students scoring no lower than A2 for mathematics. Of course I had my doubts, considering how I had struggled with the subject I thought was never making much sense (especially those model sum questions solved with algebra) and that tuition fees were really considerably alot more expensive. Then again as a secondary one schoolboy, there was to be no democracy in the family, I just had to sit through the lessons and make sure we saw results.
Somehow, Mdm Khoo just had this magical voice and method of explanation that always made things so simple, and the rest was history. Maths became the pet subject and even in a university module, basic maths for economists, I saw the systematic approach she would have used it to solve the questions in my answers. Of course, there could be a correlation that I had good maths teachers in school too, but it was definitely in her lessons that I found the interest in the subject to continue thereafter.
Even though I had already stopped lessons since graduating from BPGHS, my 4 sisters continued under her tutelage, and I still catch up with her everytime she came for lessons. She came over to Europe last year while I was doing my exchange and we even managed to meet up for an afternoon. In this day and age where the age-old, clearly defined relationship between teacher and student grows thinner with facebook and msn, I treasure this huge amount of respect I have for my tutor, and it comes as even more precious a thing that tutors can nowadays be replaced as quicky as an advertisement billboard. Even though it will be very much harder to see or hear from her next time, I'll be looking forward to asking her over for dinner when I get back.
On another equally important but probably overlooked point, its the end of the tuition era at home. The youngest sister is one step closer to the finishing line of this paper chase craze, and its one less burden on my mum's shoulders.
Wow, so much for flashback in a day. Thoughts like these make for some of the most excellent chicken soup for the soul.
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