惊喜 (Don’t worry. This is an English blog entry.) [Part 2 of 2]

For the first part of this blog series, click here.

TSA 120. The glorious 120th Anniversary Celebration of our dear alma mater Tiong Se Academy, the oldest in the country. One word to describe everything that has transpired: unbelievable.

Sure I have crammed myself into doing something major in the past, but I was never this tired. Now that everything is done, when I look back, I always feel it was just utterly hard to believe that we actually made it!

November. One month. Six events. Three of which I have personal involvement in the organization. The school had Student Ground Demonstration (November 8), Student Work Exhibit (November 16), Grand Celebration (November 16), Repeat Performance (November 18), and Grand Alumni Homecoming by the TSA Alumni Youth (November 30). But the most taxing for me is the TSA Historical Exhibit (which by the way is still open until February 2020) at the Chinatown Museum.

惊喜 (Don’t worry. This is an English blog entry.) [Part 1 of 2]

For the last part of this blog series, click here.

惊喜. Jingxi (can be read as “ching hsi”). Chinese for surprise.

I tried to look for other terminologies for “surprise.” Google gave me “shock” and “thunderbolt”, but both of them are usually attributed to unpleasant events.

2019 is neither a shocker nor a thunderbolt for me.

So instead of just giving a cliché title “2019: A Surprise Year,” I just resorted to give you the Chinese word. I am Chinese teacher by the way.

Most entries in the internet as of this posting are leaning towards looking back at the entire decade. If I were to do that, might as well I write a Wattpad series.

To be fair with the bandwagon going on, I feel the urge to do a decadal recall: I graduated from high school on my birthday in 2010, went to China for four year tertiary studies, made many friends from around the world, attempted to have relationships but to no success, started working at my alma mater Tiong Se Academy in 2014, willingly went back to China for a hundred-day training, working contract expired in 2019, extended service afterwards… That’s pretty much of my 2010s. Anyway, you can read some bits of my decade in this blog.

Year 25 Checklist

BEFORE YOU SCROLL DOWN.
To make things easier for me this year, I intend to make a checklist (a bunch of yes-no questions) of what has happened to me in my silver (25th) year. This also serves as a reflection on which aspects I did perfectly well or horribly wrong.

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT.
Outlook mostly positive? YES
Felt any changes in personality? YES
Exerted effort to correct imperfections? YES
Are you a patient person? NO :(
Find ways to de-stress? YES
Had a "Me Time"? YES
Do you forgive to forget? NO :(
When in fault, do you apologize? YES
Pride and ego hurting others? YES :(
Faced fears and obstacles? YES

Notes:
I am starting to look on the brighter side (a trait which my students got me affected) whenever "bad" things are happening. But I need to check on how I see myself, so that I can improve my persona.