Two years ago I was in Padang, Western Sumatra for three days.

The people were wonderfully friendly, from the family in the nasi padang restaurant (best chicken wings ever) who told us that their relatives had set up shop in Singapore to the ‘uncle’ who posed behind his ancient cash register for us while we took up space chomping on gado gado salad in his odds-and-ends shop.

A week or so after Lorraine and I left, they experienced an earthquake. The tourguide who had brought us around for a day told us via e-mail that his camera had fallen off the shelf and was broken. His tone was more matter-of-fact than alarmed though – we had been told several times that this city sat on a precarious faultline.

Two years later, I wonder whether these people are okay, whether the fishing villages we saw by the edge of the beach, and the houses I saw perched by the hillside on my drive past Padang en route to Cubadak, survived.

If you are so inclined, please give something. The link for international visitors is here.

Ignore the idiotic commentary.

…. then, you get to sink your teeth into this:

After my fifth time back in Vietnam, I think the spell’s finally broken.

There have always been two groups of people in my mind – those who love Vietnam, and those who hate it. I’ve friends in the latter camp, who carp about the heavy traffic, the money-grubbing vendors, the rude cyclo drivers, the perpetual honking. And I’ve always seen what they see, having been cheated by cyclo drivers before, driven away from a pho stall by a vendor who didn’t seem to like Chinese tourists very much another time, and spoken to coldly by sharp guesthouse owners more than once. But I’ve also been mesmerised, in some strange way, by the abundance of strong iced coffee, luxurious restaurants, endless fields, still lakes, and human drama enacted in pyjama trousers and with babes in arms on the city pavements. I have returned year after year to cheap streetside meals, the promise of tailored clothes, evocative homegrown artwork and elegant lacquerware.

The jostling crowds at the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum in Hanoi this time round started to get under my skin, however, and I was particularly riled when the inexplicably enraged female security personnel tried to snatch my mom’s purse away from her, probably yelling about how we weren’t allowed to carry such sacrilegious objects into the presence of Uncle Ho’s sacred body. And the Ho Chi Minh Museum, such a strange delight the last time, was crowded beyond belief this time. All the air-conditioners in the city seemed broken, and we resorted to taking two showers a day (one a mid-day shower) to obtain relief. The friendly che stall owner had disappeared and the cool dessert was now only served in the evening, when it wasn’t needed quite as much. The price at Cha Ca Va Long had risen again, this time by 30,000VND (S$3), and with no pungent purplish nuoc mam provided, even. (It’s a condiment, people – give it for free!)

I would still go back, with good friends who enjoy good food, good art, and slow sweltering walks through old quarters. Hoan Kiem Lake was as beautiful and entertaining as ever, with its snoozing policemen, active old ladies, colourfully clad middle-aged dames, and creative bridal couples. The food was still pretty amazing – crabmeat soups and shredded chicken porridge being my new discoveries this June. But there is no longer that magnetic pull that was so difficult to explain or qualify to people who know me.

I watched the French film “The Class” on Cathay’s surprisingly fantastic entertainment system (it actually beats Krisworld, at least on some of the planes) last week. It was quite a sobering examination of education as a profession, and I wish everyone who presumes to offer advice to teachers (parents, community at large, random strangers), and believes that teaching is all Dead Poets and claps-on-the-back would/can see it.

Sometimes, teaching can be wonderfully rewarding, so rewarding that these moments make up for many others. But there are also emotionally corrosive encounters, insurmountable tensions, and too many sad stories to bear. And no, teaching in a Singapore school is not really on the same level as teaching in a public inner-city high school in France or the US, but where there are 25 students per class in those schools, there are 40 in ours, and even in the most average schools, there are a number who slip through the cracks.

Competent teachers are scarce enough; what we need more urgently are competent teachers who can take the bad with the good, and keep themselves intact.

I’m sick, as in end-of-the-term sick (I hadn’t known there was such a phenomenon till I found out at least two other teachers were sick, including my mom). After a long parent-teacher meeting on Thursday night (which lasted till 10), during which I chugged down three full glasses of water while conversing with parent after parent, I woke up with a splitting headache (before the alarm clock went off, ugh!) on Friday. We teachers stood in the parade square for over an hour while prize after prize was given out and announcements made. For most of the day, I moved frequently between the heavily air-conditioned staff-room and the humid detention area to see and sit with students.

My throat started seizing up and I started feeling giddy at about 1pm, but I persevered, trying to plug the holes that kept opening up, before finally succumbing to the lure of a cab-ride home at 3.30pm.

Would it be strange to say that it’s somewhat pleasant to be mildly ill – with my head so heavy I can’t stress out about things even if I wanted to; with my mind only being able to focus on Travel&Living and children’s books; with my body finally being able to sleep and sleep and sleep, without starting up automatically at 5.40am or because there are things left undone?

The beginning of a long weekend is pure joy, especially when there is a thunderstorm at 5am and you wake up and realise that, yes! you do not have to wake up 40 mins later in order to prepare yourself for a day of hurtling through corridors.

Today is such a lovely day. I have marked only 8 summaries so far, and am planning to take a nap with Ursula LeGuin’s Voices soon. Then, it’s a phonecall, and off to meet Yvonne for dinner at a British pub, followed by a Swedish movie.

Could I actually be getting my life back… at least for this weekend? It’s not really the activities that make the difference – it’s the vast emotional space I suddenly find myself in the possession of.

Sundays are hot, listless days. The head aches from naps interrupted by thoughts of incomplete tasks and impending failures. Life seems to have flashed by me again, somehow. A series of numbers remains: 14 scripts left (check); new trigger temperature of 37.6 degrees (check); 6.5 hours of sleep tonight (I hope); 11.5KM to run (if I get off my butt).

Now, if only I could quantify inadequacy and tackle it accordingly…

Have I been too complacent? I have been forced to ask myself this lately. Unfulfilled expectations, self-doubt, disheartening moments, frustration, tears, loneliness – I’ve had encounters with all of these within the last two weeks.

I would like to talk about teaching, if only because it has consumed the past two months of my life. But all I can say is that it’s been alternately frustrating and rewarding, and always challenging. Today, after seven weeks here, I can finally state that I made the right decision.

Now off to unwind with yoga and some nice Indian food with my teaching college friend…

Susanna Clarke’s collection of stories, The Ladies of Grace Adieu, is a spin-off from her tour-de-force, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. I do like her light-hearted, almost archaic way of writing. The illustrations in this book are also marvellous, and I’m pleased that I’d gotten it from The Strand for US$5.

This, I believe, is really the last book I read in 2008. (Or did I finish it on New Year’s? I forget.)

100 books in the past year.

Favourite new finds: Fred Vargas and Peter Temple (both crime writers – one French and the other Australian)

Favourite book, which I should have read earlier: The Earthsea Quartet by Ursula LeGuin

Continued to love: Terry Pratchett

Realised anew the beauty of: Short stories

Got tired of: Haruki Murakami and Alexander McCall Smith