rushed...

School’s starting again and I’ve not prepared anything! So what else is new…Back home for a week and New York seems like a long and lazy dream… 4 weeks just blinked by…

Touched down on Sunday night and I’m back to school on Monday morning to prepare for the Bicultural Course that the students didn’t want to attend. But it afforded me my first “close” contact with my form class, they seem like quite a happy-go-lucky bunch, very vocal and mischievous, the boys coming up to me to ask if they can skip the 2nd day of the course because “its so boring!” and the girls laughing at how I cannot remember their names and have to ask them repeatedly whether they have taken their attendance or not. But upon reading the reflection letters they wrote for their poor performance in their mid-year, their sunny appearance seems to be hiding a lot of underlying resentment… the pressure and lack of motivation adding to their stress…

I don’t know how I can help them, being so inexperienced that I often can’t catch what my responsibilities are as a form teacher, thank goodness I’m surrounded by so many helpful teachers that often take the trouble to explain what I’m supposed to do in detail after they made the official announcement. And that’s just the admin stuff, I don’t know how I can help them in the way they need me too…I just hope I won’t let this class down…

Spent the days in school and the nights in town for this last week of holiday, caught up with a couple of friends before school work whirls me away and caught 3 films too.

Monday was the hilariously funny Korean My Boyfriend is Type B with Lin, had a very relaxing time with the de-stressor movie and calming company. Girl, we have to meet up at least once a month no matter how busy we are ok? Being with you is a necessary therapy for me…

Wednesday was the strangely erotic Eros, a 3-short-films-in-one movie that I very much did not understand. Watched is with Shufen and I’m really very apologetic about the movie choice. Wong Kar Wai’s film was still ok, his nostalgic style unmistakable, but the remaining two has a very weird tone to it that wasn’t very enjoyable. But it was wonderful to meet up with Shufen after the long break, except that I was too tired to hold up my end of the conversation after the first day of the course…

Thursday was the moving Be With You or いま，会いにゆきます, a very sweet heartbreaker with breathtaking shots of sunflower fields and the most adorable little boy ever. The courage it takes to embrace love, despite knowing inevitable death lies ahead. Caught it with Mei who sadly isn’t as touched as I was, the pragmatic girl she is. She’s the one that always brings me back down to earth when my head is still in the clouds.

And the weekend arrived and it’s back to the books, as the whirlpool that’s my job takes me away once more… might not surface until the September holidays…

A Day of Museums...

One good thing about summer masquerading as spring is the wonderful sunny weather one gets to appreciate the colorful riot of spring blossoms. Visited the Cloisters on Tuesday and the bountiful flowering gardens are a wonderful sight, set against the glittering East River and green lawns. The peaceful terrace gardens and monasteric exhibits give a sense of calmness… Cloisters is a branch of the Met, a museum that contains bits and pieces of various medieval monasteries and chapels, including 4 different cloisters, private monastery gardens surrounded by covered walkways. The gardens are meticulously kept, the gardeners actually tries to use only medieval plants! After visiting 4 museums on Friday, I rather enjoyed the gardens, flowers in every shade of the rainbow and the textures and scents…

And yes, I did 4 museums on Friday, in one day… Museum of Sex in the morning which was quite an attack of the senses, the Frick Collection in the afternoon, and the Guggenheim, which I visited more for the architecture, and lastly, the Asia Society which was quite a non-entity.

The best stop of the day was the Frick Collection, the collection of one very wealthy man with very good taste set in a beautiful house. The whole style is similar to the Gardner in Boston but even better. Gardner had a cluttered feel to the place somehow, but Frick's collection is extremely well arranged, every room is artfully done in a way that all the paintings and sculptures and design meshed together for a very cohesive feel. I love all the rooms, from the stately living room to the very male library. Esp love the drawing room with the Fragonard paintings, The Progress of Love (very sensual and very sweet) and the Boucher room ( the cherubs are sooo cute!) and his 4 season paintings. The audio guide adds a special personal touch to the paintings.

Other museums visited include the Noguchi with its intimate and Zen garden filled with stone sculptures in various calming shapes and shadows. Also did the Queens Museum of Art for the breathtaking panorama of New York and the Tiffany collection which was small but did include quite a detailed explanations of the various glass used in the Tiffany productions.

Overall, that’s quite a varied museum list… and says a bit of my weird tastes...

entertainment

Went to 3 immensely entertaining shows recently that are worth a mention…

The first isn’t really a show actually, but its one that I really enjoyed. Went to the Sunday Gospel service at a Harlem church, the inspirational singing was really powerful and the way the congregation stand up and join in, singing their hearts out was very moving. The songs were hymns I think, but done in a way that made it seemed alive. There was even a part of the service that had two guys called the Sons of Light doing raps! An awesome show.

The second was at Comedy Cellar, a bar-like place with comedians taking slots on the stage. Its amazing how entertaining the comedians are, the entire thing was very casually done, the comedians just come up to the stage and talk. But their scathing remarks and dry wit simply have me bending over with laughter, I laughed so hard I was in pain at a point! The yummy desserts of truffles pyramid and tiramisiu was definitely a distracting plus.

The third was Broadway under the Stars. A concert at Bryant Park with the Broadway stars delivering songs from various shows. I think the entire New York turned out for the event, you couldn’t find a speck of lawn in Bryant Park that wasn’t taken up by 7pm and the show only starts at 830! Luckily, we were forewarned and came at the ridiculous hour of 6 and managed to grab two chairs and proceeded to sit tight (well, P did leave to get food). It was a cloudy night, so you couldn’t really say we were watching “Broadway’s brightest stars under the stars”, but it was still a great show and an enjoyable experience

a bite of the Big Apple

Finally got the internet connection up and running… It’s the sixth day in the Big Apple and New York is hot! Met a native today that recognized me as a tourist from the Lonely Planet bible in my hands (which P borrowed for me from the local library as I forgotten mine in the half an hour mess of packing I did right before my flight after rushing out the 5 day translation course outline), and he actually apologized for the weather, it’s August-summer- sweltering and seriously seems worse that Singapore! Thank goodness the nights are still relatively cool in our Brooklyn apartment…

But sauna weather aside, it still didn’t deter me from my determination to shop, I must have gotten bitten by the retail bug… went to Soho, East Village, and the Lower East Side and had quite a good haul. I do enjoy the different form of shopping from the malls, popping into individual boutiques, each unique and personal in design and browsing through their collections… stopping to rest with a glass of iced tea in quaint cafes. Esp love East Village with its good collection of vintage stores and cafes. The abundance of sushi restaurant helped as well :p Also went to the Garment District which seemed pretty much catered to wholesalers but I was sidetracked by the Asian stores of Little Korea on the 32nd anyway. However, I did manage to find the tote bag I was looking for, so am very happy :)

Other activities include walking around Brooklyn Heights. Went to Brooklyn Promenade for the incredible view of the Manhattan skyline and harbor with the islands as well as the harbor front park for a marvelous view of the two bridges. Strolled across Brooklyn Bridge, the weather was pretty good that day, sunny but windy so you don’t feel so sticky, and the close up look at the Gothic architecture of the bridge as well as the view you get hiked up above the traffic was worth the trek.

Also went to Chelsea for gallery-hopping today and saw a couple of collections that I liked (minus the whole lot of abstract paint-flinged-onto-canvas and stuffing a mixture of stuff into stockings and piling them up). Esp. liked the one by a French photographer detailing her 92-day trip to Tokyo, counting down to the day she got her heart broke on the very last day. Another gallery had a video clip comprising of a collection of photographs of daily New York scenes superimposed with garish cartoon like splashes of color depicting war scenes of destruction set to the soundtrack of lullabies and a radio report with helicopter noises in the back. It really strikes the heart, esp the familiar scenes of knee deep snow piled in parks and people walking their dogs….there’s a chant inserted somewhere in the soundtrack...”Its never going to end” which seems so true.. as long as there are human beings, there’ll always be war…

Broadway show count is at 4 currently, with Naked Boys Singing on the top of my list. Perhaps I’m just not a big production kind of girl, always do like the smaller budget shows that seem to be more personal somehow and speaks to me in a way…