Happy Loving Day!

That’s what my Primary 4 student, Emily, wrote on the Valentine’s Day card she made for me when I went to her home on Saturday to tutor her and her Primary 1 sister.



How can I not love my job?

I’m beginning to develop an attachment for all my children. I have nine students now (another recent 2 additions, whom I will meet this Friday).

Sec 2(N) – Zhen Ling
Sec 1(N) – Guan Hui
Pri 2 & 6 Brothers – Jing Xiong & Jing Rong
Pri 1 & 4 Sisters – Lina & Emily
Pri 4 & 6 Sisters – Stella & Vivian
Pri 2 – Daryl

Emily and her really petite Primary 1 sister, Lina, are an extremely endearing pair. On the first day when their Mum decided to put Lina together with Emily for tuition with me, Lina sat at the table half an hour before I came in sheer anticipation. The two obliged me with their diabetes-causing saccharine smiles to get those “Well done!” rubber stamps by my next session with them.

Primary 2 Daryl is my chubby ice-cream-, chocolate-, sweets-, basically-food-loving boy who told me in sincere candidness when I sneezed, “Wah, Cher! Your sneeze can frighten people ah!” And who affectionately waved, “Bye bye, Miss Devil” at the end of the lesson where he saw me in my red hair. He is the boy who used his chin to wipe the table, and later with a piece of tissue after I tell him how unhygienic that action was. Following which, he uses that same piece of tissue to wipe his sweaty face.

Secondary 2 Zhen Ling was my first student and the one whom I’ve had the most number of sessions with (16 to be exact). He can be offensively blunt, loudly telling me that I have something stuck in my teeth and that I look ugly without my glasses in addition to other random insulting commentaries. Yet, I can’t help feeling a sense of affinity with the boy. Teasing him when he completed his homework way before the last-minute-time-period (a rare occurrence), I told him I was so happy with him that I’d give him a kiss. “Err.. No, thank you… I don’t deserve it,” came the pretentiously humble but self-preserving reply.

They are all charming children whom I know will produce a surge of the awful I-wish-I-didn’t-have-to-do-this feeling in me when the time comes for me to part with them.