I am beginning to get the impression that, for a primary school kid, a teacher represents the highest authority in every given situation.

We’re on a TV set, right? Everyone knows that the director is the highest authority. Next in line is the assistant director or producer. You need anything, you ask any one of them. You have questions, you ask them.

DON’T ASK THE BOGUS TEACHER LAH.

In the past month of filming of this kids’ drama, I have been fielding questions (mostly from student extras) that should have gone to any member of the production crew, instead.

“Teacher, really write or pretend write?”
- with regards to a scene in which the students are doing a test.

“Teacher, can I go toilet?”
- in between scenes.

“Teacher, where is the char kuay teow?”
- during tea break.

“Teacher, he steal her pencil!”
- from a tattletale.

Do they even realise that I’m not a real teacher? I’m only an actress pretending to be a teacher. Yet, they consult me for everything, as if I’m the only authority in the whole place.

When I attempt to explain the situation — “That’s nice, but don’t tell me, ok? Tell the director because he’s the one in charge.” — they just stare blankly back at me as if I’ve just spoken to them in a foreign language.

Is the concept of teacher as authority so deeply ingrained in our kids that anyone who looks like a teacher and dresses like a teacher and goes by the name of 唐老师 (Teacher Tang) is immediately the authority to answer every problem and every query in every situation?

Is it just our kids? Do kids in other countries and other cultures behave the same way?

On the flip side, it can be quite heartwarming. They greet me cheerily every time they see me, like they would a real teacher. It makes me feel loved.

Sometimes, while walking around the school compound, I even get greeted by real students in the school we’re filming at, which is kind of amusing.

I don’t know what real teachers think but, from my limited perspective, I think teaching is a very noble profession because teachers carry so much influence in a kid’s eyes that they have the chance to literally shape the kid’s life.

I would be scared stiff to be given such a sacred responsibility.

Categories: Acting Journal
25 Comments »

My second article for BackStage.com is out! Click on the image to read:

When I wrote the first draft, it was 800 words. I had a point to make and I made it short and sweet. But my editor wanted all the gory details. So I worked and reworked it and threw in 500 words more. So it’s now long and detailed. Haha. I hope you enjoy reading it.

Categories: Acting Journal
9 Comments »

Super busy! Full day shoot today with a persistent headache that started the moment I woke up in the morning and refused to go away until after dinner.

So I’m not going to write anything interesting or entertaining or funny or controversial or whatever. Just going to post pictures from today’s shoot.

My teacher’s costume today is pretty cute. I like!

Time to do hair.

I don’t really like this hair. I feel very nerdy. But I guess it goes with the role.

Me and my main kids.

Reading to the class.

Cute Scotty being lazy.

Cute Benji being an imp.

Cute teacher being silly with a PSP.

P.E. teacher!

Eek, my face looks fat on screen.

Today was very tiring. And very hot. Another full day shoot tomorrow. Zzz… no energy to write anymore so, bye!

Categories: Acting Journal
17 Comments »

The Goonfather just discovered the coolest ice cream place!

Okay, he didn’t discover it. A friend MSN’ed him the link and he took me and Nanny Wen to try it out the very night.

The place is called Ice Cream Chefs and it has a cute purple signboard. The moment we stepped in, we saw this guy “cooking” a blob of ice cream.

Hahaha. Interesting.

The idea of this place is to mix ice cream with your choice of fillings. It’s way better than Ben & Jerry’s because you get to create your own recipe, the fillings are fresh and the “chefs” mix ‘em up so that every bite has an even spread of ice cream and filling. Coolness!

They have interesting flavours such as Nutella, Lychee, Peanut Butter, Horlicks and Granny Smith. There are 18 flavours in all but the sad thing is that they don’t carry all on any given day. Because the ice cream is homemade and handmade, they only serve maybe eight flavours a day. I can’t remember the exact number but it’s about there.

Anyway, the highlight of this place is the mix-ins. I was very attracted to the pretty jars with colourful yummies inside.

All my favourite snacks! Wow.

It was harder choosing a mix-in than choosing an ice cream flavour!

But I finally made my choice. Horlicks ice cream with rice krispies!

First, a lump of Horlicks ice cream was flattened on the, um, icy cooking thing (like a reverse temperature teppanyaki stove). And then rice krispies poured onto it.

The nice fellow making my ice cream even asked if I wanted more krispies. How sweet!

He also suggested that I add some Hersheys chocolate sauce to make it more yummy. It looks yummier already!

And then the mixing.

And… ta dah!

OMG THE TASTE WAS DIVINE!

Smooth, creamy ice cream with just the right amount of sweetness and crispy crunchy rice krispies. I wish I’d ordered the large one. Hahaha.

The Goonfather loved his peanut butter ice cream with nutella spread. I prefered mine.

Nanny Wen chose Hersheys chocolate ice cream with marshmallows, which I thought was too sweet.

I think she also preferred mine, so she kept stealing from my cup!

See her scheming look?

The place has about three tables in it, so it can’t accomodate many people. But we were there at a weird hour (dinner time) so it was relatively empty and we enjoyed hanging out there for a while, stealing each other’s ice cream. We were also served water while the two (I think) owners chatted with us about the business of ice cream. I love the service!

We finished our ice cream all too soon but I’m definitely going back there again.

In case you’re interested, the address is 520 East Coast Road (Ocean Park – Besides St. Patricks School) #01-06. Here’s a cute little map from their blog.

Categories: Food
26 Comments »

Hey, cool. I just realised my blog has been nominated for Most Entertaining Blog in the Ping.sg 1st Anniversary Blog Awards.

Haha. Thanks, whoever nominated me.

Well, I’m not going to ask people to vote for me because my last experiment was a raging failure. I asked my supposedly hundreds of blog readers to kindly vote for me to bump me to the first page of ranking. But, to date, I have 13 votes. Yippee.

I understand it’s a pain having to register at the website in order to vote, so I’m not really complaining. It’s fine. But I sincerely thank all 13 of you who voted for me. I know who you are! ;)

Anyway, back to Ping.sg.

I got to know about Ping.sg when I attended BlogOut 2007. It’s a nice site with a friendly growing community. I don’t really hang out there since I don’t really know them, but it’s great receiving a nomination, anyway.

Only members can vote, so, yes, you have to register in order to vote for me. So, don’t vote if you hate registering. Vote if you really find my blog entertaining and feel compelled to +1 me.

Click here to vote if you feel like it. Mine is the 4th blog in the Most Entertaining category.

Whether you vote or not is not important. What’s important is that I appreciate you reading my blog and I hope you continue to enjoy reading my blog because I like writing stuff for people.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart! =)

Categories: Blogs
18 Comments »

Day 8

Name of outfit: Street Sweet

Self-Rating:

Destination: Golden Village VivoCity (Yeah I know I go there a lot)

Notes: Nothing much to say about today’s outfit because it’s just something casual I threw on in a hurry because I was, well, in a hurry. No “legs” today. Hahaha.

Categories: Fashion
9 Comments »

Morte and Wang Wang just bought a plasma TV so we all invited ourselves over to play Wii on their lovely new TV.

Nanny Wen made dumplings for our dinner. (Even though the Dumpling Festival is already over.) You can count on Nanny Wen to do stuff like that.

Quite appropriately, she wore her Little Miss Late t-shirt.

In reponse, I wore my Emily t-shirt.

We decided that it was damn cool, so we camwhored a good while before leaving for Morte’s place.

When we got there, the boys played Bleach on the Wii while the girls heated the dumplings.

The fruits of Nanny Wen’s 4.5-hour labour!

Wang Wang dug out her stylo teapot for us.

Nanny Wen’s dumplings rock! Yum! And then, it was time for Wii!

Mario Party 8 is currently THE best party game because up to eight players can play at one time. Provided, of course, that you actually have eight wiimotes.

We only have four wiimotes collectively, so we had to take turns.

[Edit: I got mixed up with another game. MP8 can only accomodate 4 players at a time. Thanks to Mince Pye for the correction!]

It’s a cute game!

But I’m not going to talk about it because I’ve put it on video.

We spent like three hours playing it because it’s a progressive competitive game that takes quite a while to get to the end, plus we had to do it twice so everyone got a chance to play. But it was so fun I wouldn’t have minded playing again.

But the boys wanted to play Project Gotham Racing 3 on the Xbox 360.

How could that be???

Super zzz.

After MP8, PGR3 is like watching water boil.

Categories: Gaming
30 Comments »

I got fan mail!

But this one made me scratch my head, raise an eyebrow and lose a brain cell.

Hi Sheylara,

Nice blog you have got there.
Are those cars in your Blog all from your country (Vietnam)?
Was all the photo take by you? Wat camera are you using?

Sincerely
BuB

This is pretty self-explanatory, I’m sure. But I still want to say it.

When the hell did I become Vietnamese?

Hahahahaha.

OH. You have to see this next bit of info:

The person who sent this email is a Singaporean. I know because he included his blog URL and I went to check it out. (To protect the innocent, I’m not revealing the URL.)

How can a Singaporean not tell that I’m a Singaporean??

It’s not like I try to be international in my blogs, right? I sometimes use Singlish. I talk about Singaporean things, places, issues, people. The word “Singapore” was used in my blog titles four times in the last month.

So how, oh how, is it not painfully obvious to a Singaporean that I’m a Singaporean?

Mystified.

I replied the email. No answer yet. But then, it’s only been two days.

BuB, if you’re reading this, thank you for your email. It’s very entertaining.

In an unexpected twist of events, the email actually made me very happy. Two days prior to receiving the email, I was asked to audition for a Vietnamese girl role, a role I really want because it’s a leading role in a telemovie and looks fun.

How weird is that?

So, I’m happy someone thinks I look Vietnamese.

I think.

Categories: Random Musings
16 Comments »