Sometimes he'd even sign 'you're going!'

We used to have a lovely smiley security guard in my condo. He used to see me coming up the little hill and give me this big wave and smile and welcome me home.

Some days he even used to cry (with joy I might add) 'You're back!!!'

I never knew his name (he was called Smiley Security Guard Man in my head), and I hadn't seen him in a while so today I asked where he had gone. It turns out he left to go work somewhere else.

Today was such a pisser of a day I could have done with a nice cheery 'You're back!!!'

On the other side of exam stress

Exams are all great until you have to mark the %$&!*@ things.

I reckon I still have about 6 hours ahead of me (still!) and classes and reports and (kill me now) a Geography Field Trip to go on.

I don't want to close my eyes (although Carly says I can)

I'm just watching 'Armageddon' on TV. Of everything I ever achieved throughout my schooling, I consider the feat of watching it on my U6th Biology field trip and not crying one of my finest moments. Yes, it's far fetched and ridiculous. But Bruce pushes Ben back into the elevator thing and tells him 'I always thought of you as a son. I'd be damn proud to have you marry Grace.'

Ok, so perhaps if you imagine yourself to be 18 years old and surrounded by people crying you'd think it was more amazing.

I like the Aerosmith song on it. If you listen to the very end you'll hear a super arrangement of strings on it, which I don't imagine you hear very often on Aeromith songs.

So with that, here's October 07's playlist:

Biffy Clyro - Machines
I really like this. If you ask me the guy singing sounds Northern Irish and I'd bet you all the money in your pockets 'Grey's Anatomy' will use it sometime.

Newton Faulkner - Dream Catch Me
Newton is funny name to have isn't it? But what's funnier is his middle name is Battenberg. Maybe it's a double barrelled thing? [Which reminds me, I was doing the Nazi-Soviet Pact a few weeks ago with my Year 3s and came across officially the worst name ever. Reginald Ranfurly Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax (he was a low level British official sent to negotiate with the USSR. The Russians weren't interested. No wonder). Anyway, we have a winner, sorry Newton.]

Annie Lennox - Why
I just took a notion for this. I love the line is 'these are the contents of my head'.

Climie Fisher - Love Changes (Everything)
Not that dreadful Michael Ball Love Changes Everything song. No, no this is classic 80s pop. I don't remember the song from the time but from my Music class at school. We used to do GCSE past papers as practice but there weren't very many for us to do so we'd repeat them. A lot. In one paper (which we did again and again) they used a snippet of this song and we'd all have a sing song in the middle of the paper. Exam conditions? I think not. We then had to say whether it was classical, baroque, pop or country. Hard stuff eh? Anyway, Chris Moyles played it during the 40 Years of Radio One so in it goes.

Avril Lavigne - How Does It Feel?
I used a video on You Tube for a class recently about a girl called Maria Hertogh who was born to Dutch Catholic parents in 1937. Somehow (views differ) during the war she ended up in the care of a Muslim woman and was raised Muslim. There was a custody battle for her in 1950 and it led to riots here. Really interesting story. Anyway the song got in my head.

Carly Simon - You Can Close Your Eyes
She was on Oprah and sang this song. Beautiful piano. A-maz-ing.

Big news day

I watch Sky News in the morning when I get up. As I may have mentioned before, I'm not a morning person and the encouragement of knowing I just need to stumble to the sofa and lie down again helps me enormously with actually getting out of bed in the first place. At 6.30am in Singapore, it's 11.30pm back at home and they are reviewing the next day's papers. Today there were reports from the Independent about intelligence and race and lots about Sir Menzies Campbell. (Just by the way, I think he got screwed every which way.)

Then when I go into school, I read what's online on the BBC News website. I'll give you the highlights:

Christmas trees in Ballymena - it's going up on November 1st which one would have to say is a more than a little premature. Mind you, I saw my first one in a shop here at the weekend. And people say all meaning has gone out of Christmas! Pah!

Digital switch over - the first town in England has had its analogue signal turned off. Turns out it's only the BBC2 one but still. Back in the 'head we're all still eagerly awaiting the arrival of Channel 5 to the analogue signal.

The great storm - it's twenty years since the hurricane, although this report pardons Michael Fish who was actually referring to another hurricane. He said, she said, I don't care. I think the real issue here is that it has been twenty years! How did that happen?! I remember that? Things that happen twenty years ago are things that I should not remember!

Good school lie - 14% of parents lie to get their children into good schools. The only surprise to me is that it's only 14%. Of course you'd lie. 'Education is potential, bad schools rob children of that potential, ergo I must lie to get my child into a better school.' Nevermind the child's, or for that matter the parent's, responsibility in it all.

Teens take over - another school story. Teenagers ran a school for three weeks for a TV programme. They started out with all sorts of grandiose liberal ideas but then went all traditional and conservative. But they did learn from teaching others.

I had my own news to share with my classes, as I decided that today should be the day I tell my classes that I won't be back next year. I had put it off long enough and if I didn't tell them today then there wouldn't be another chance for a couple of weeks because of exams.

I told my form class first during tutor time. I said 'and the last thing I have is the sad news that I won't be back in school next year, I'm going home'. Then braced myself for the reaction...and nothing. Silence. Absolute silence. I like to think it was the shock. (It should be noted that my other classes were much more vocal in their reaction. My Year 3s went through the whole gamut of emotions. Shock, surprise, disbelief, despair. I tried to focus on the positives - no more Moodle discussions and no more video worksheets.)

But with my form class, after an age of silence this little voice came from the front and said 'but Miss you teach here now.'

Break my heart, why don't you.

Harry who?

It was Hari Raya Puasa on Saturday so even though I work in a Christian school we still got today off because Saturday was a public holiday. Aside from the religion thing, I'm really not opposed to days like these off (there's a Hindu holiday coming up soon too!) But today had the added bonus of my parents being here. So off we trotted to Sentosa for tasty pizza on the beach and a visit to Fort Siloso. Fun times.

But now they've gone (for now - soon to return) and I have work to do and I have the cold and I've only two more episodes of Grey's to watch.

I don't know which is worst.