I wrote this poem in 2 minutes today!

Winter's the perfect time for poetry
Because when it's cold,
You look into yourself
And think of the possibilities
Or the impossibilities
To be happy.
Then you either wallow in self pity
Or cry out to God,
Both of which
Inspires poetry.

Chinglish encounter!

New revelation today.

I've finally realized why I've had trouble at the ATMs of this particular bank for months. (here in China, you can withdraw money from the ATMs of any of the local banks, provided they have this 'Union Pay' logo)

What happened was each time after I keyed in the amount I wished to withdraw, the machine would prompt me to enter one of 3 options:
1) Correct
2) Confirm
3) Cancel

So I'd always press 1) Correct

but what happened was the amount I'd keyed in would disappear, and then I'd have to key that in again and I'd press 1) Correct again and I'd get the same result.

What's wrong? I'd keyed in the amount I desired, and I should press 1) Correct, isn't it? That was the CORRECT amount I wished to withdraw.

Then today, by some stroke of good luck and wisdom, instead of 1) Correct, I pressed 2) Confirm, and voila, I was successful!

And then it dawned on me that the machine's using 'correct' as a verb and not an adjective, as what I thought it was.

correct (verb)
-- to set or make true, accurate, or right; remove the errors or faults from:
eg. The native guide corrected our pronunciation. The new glasses corrected his eyesight.

correct (adjective)
-- conforming to fact or truth; free from error; accurate:
eg. He gave me a correct answer.

The poets lied! There's nothing romantic about Autumn!

Aha, here's finally a post in months that isn't about music. Yeah I know, recently, my blog has become like a classical music review site. But that's because I've been attending so many concerts since I've been here. There are simply so many top acts that stop by Shanghai. And most of them don't visit Singapore. So, going for all these concerts will be something that I hope to achieve during my stay here in Shanghai.

Apart from that, here are a few more things that I hope to accomplish while I'm here..

1) Travel around the city and beyond, to learn more about Chinese culture and improve my Chinese (my Chinese has sadly regressed after my final HCL lesson in Sec 4)

2) Continue attending bible study and be an effective and loving teacher in the children's class (my new area of service here)

3) Eat lots of good Shanghainese food! (just for the record, yesterday for dinner, i gorged on 6 xiao long baos and 4 large fried dumplings for a grand total of 10 yuan - 2 singapore dollars! yes, food is that cheap here)

4) Learn a foreign language (no, not Chinese nor Shanghainese haha...i will tell you more if this plan of mine ever comes true)

5) Be a nurturing form teacher to my primary 6 class (i had hoped to teach sec sch here, cos i've always been teaching at that level in Singapore, but since God led me otherwise, I want to do my best for my class....well, so far so good.)

Okay, I shall stop at 5 items for now....no point being too ambitious and end up accomplishing nothing.

Anyway, I think I've been spending a little more than I should on winter clothing these few days. The temperature's falling drastically and winter clothings abound in the department stores. Just to let you know, I'm quite a goondhu when it comes to shopping. What I mean is that I ask the salesgirl very silly questions sometimes.

I remember back in Singapore when I was buying jeans and I couldn't differentiate between male and female jeans so I had to ask the teenage salesgirl. Afterwards, the whole bunch of them starting whispering behind my back and giving me dirty looks.

Then today, I kept asking the salesgirl whether a certain white or blue jacket's nicer, even though everyone knows they undoubtedly give politically correct answers and will tell you that you look nice in everything.

Okay, I'm going to mark my students' compositions soon. They wrote mystery narratives....I hope there will be some outstanding ones, and not too many about ghosts and gore!

I think I shall post a picture of my form class.