Piers tried to pay me a compliment the other day.

“Your skin is so smooth,” he said.

I was about to modestly protest when he added, “Like a pumpkin.”

“What?” I said.

“No, wait,” he said thoughtfully, “Pumpkins aren’t very smooth, are they?”

“No, they’re not.”

“Okay,” he tried again, “Your skin is as smooth as a peach.”

Obviously, it wasn’t going very well.

I said, “Huh?”

He said, “Peaches have got these little hairs…”

I made a face. “Are you calling me hairy??”

“No, no, of course not,” he said defensively, “Peaches are not hairy.”

“They’re fuzzy,” I told him.

“That’s kinda smooth isn’t it?”

“How is that smooth? It’s fuzzy!”

He thought about it for a while, then said, “Okay, okay, not peach. What should it be then?”

“Tofu,” I said.

“Eew!”

“What?”

“Tofu is slimy!” he declared.

“It’s not.”

“Yes, it is!”

“It’s a common analogy to say a girl’s skin is soft as tofu!” I said.

(Actually, I’m not sure about that at all. It was just the first thing that popped into my mind. Silken tofu is very soft and smooth, isn’t it?)

“That’s disgusting!” he proclaimed again, “Tofu is slimy and wet.”

“It’s not slimy!”

(Which is true. Tofu may be wet but it’s not slimy at all.)

But he had one last argument.

“If tofu weren’t slimy and wet, Takumi wouldn’t have to worry about spilling it.”

I’m sorry if you haven’t watched Initial D (the Japanese anime) and therefore don’t get the Takumi reference, but don’t worry about it because it’s a stupid reference to begin with.

The point is that, after all that, I didn’t feel at all complimented because the conversation ended on “slimy”.

We didn’t go any further than that; I generally try to change the subject when Piers gets too silly.

Luckily for him, he’s useful in many other ways (such as fixing broken things around the house) so we can happily overlook his flaws (such as likening me to a pumpkin).

For his information (since Valentine’s Day is coming soon), I don’t need roses or compliments. I’ll happily settle for an iPad 3 (and not the gimpy 16GB Wifi one)!

:D

You know how, in relationships, you reach a point where you run out of things to talk about?

Piers and I got to that stage a few months back. We gradually replaced our bonding sessions with TV. Lots of TV.

I was starting to get addicted, too, because England has no end of interesting, crazy TV shows.

Not very productive.

Fortunately, things are beginning to change now that I’m back at school. Piers will ask about my day and I will have many stories to tell him. We can last hours this way.

That wasn’t possible just two weeks ago.

Our daily updates went like this:

Piers: How was your day?

Shey: Um, same as yesterday. How was your day?

Piers: Same as yesterday.

Shey: What’s for dinner?

His job is a bit boring. He sits in front of three monitors and stares at pixels all day long. If the pixels are not worth staring at, he stares at his iPad.

For me, two weeks before, I played Facebook and iPad games full-time. Sometimes, I blogged.

But now, we can have more engaging conversations, like this one that just happened:

Piers: How was school today?

Shey: We learnt how to transfer water and beans from container to container.

Piers: Gosh.

Shey: And how to open and close padlocks.

Piers: Wow. Sounds interesting.

Shey: Yes.

Piers: You must be becoming very useful.

Shey: I think so.

Piers: I can get you to do all sorts of stuff around the house now.

Shey: Do you have beans that need transferring? I can do that.

Piers: No, but now I know you can, I might get some.

Shey: I can do mung beans, butter beans, soya beans and aduki beans.

Piers: Amazing. You’re so smart! Proud of you.

Shey: Thanks!

We went on to talk about nuts. I tried to convince him to buy me honey roasted cashew nuts to practise on, but he wouldn’t hear of it, insisting that I haven’t been trained to work with nuts.

I have, though. I’ve been living with one for almost a year now.

Yes, we’ve been dating for nearly a year, so it’s understandable for us to run out of things to talk about.

But not anymore!

I think tomorrow we learn how to use scissors. Yes, Piers and I are going to have another exciting conversation!

I know people are expecting to read about my experiences as a wannabe nursery teacher but, really, at this point of time, it’s just lectures and lots of reading.

The good news is that we start going on job placements in about two and a half months’ time so I might have more stories to share then.

The bad news is that we’re not allowed to photograph children in nurseries. All students (and I expect staff) have to sign confidentiality agreements.

That means you’ll have to put up with my crappy drawings.

We sometimes do get to talk to the kids at the nursery. Bournemouth Montessori Centre has nurseries on the first floor and classrooms on the second floor, so we sometimes encounter kids on the way to and from classes.

One morning, a three-year-old boy was standing right in front of the baby gate which we have to pass through to get up to our classroom.

He was chilling out or something, I don’t know. He had his back facing me so I couldn’t tell what he was up to.

I walked right up beside the boy and said to him, “May I pass, please,” fully expecting him to stare at me blankly, or even cry. (I have this insane fear of causing babies to cry.)

To my surprise, he smiled at me brightly and said, “Yes, you may!” Then he promptly stepped aside.

I quickly recovered my shock and said, “Why, thank you!” as I unlocked the gate and let myself through. He stood there and watched me with a grin on his face.

Just as I was done locking the gate, he started telling me something. I wasn’t sure what he said. It was a long sentence, about twenty or so words. I’m quite sure he was saying something sensible and not just spouting baby talk. It’s just that I’m not so good at deciphering kiddy accents yet.

Not wanting to traumatise him by saying I didn’t understand him, plus I really had to get to class, I just said, “Thank you for telling me that!”

He smiled as I bade him goodbye.

“Good bye!” he said back.

As I went up the staircase, I looked down again and this precious three-year-old was still watching me with a happy smile.

“Bye!!” he said again, waving at me vigorously this time.

If I can bottle cuteness, this boy is going into my bottle.

But it seems that he’s not the only one. Many other kids in the nursery seem to enjoy interacting with students who pass by, as my classmates also report similar encounters.

I’m really looking forward to working with them for real. I just need to brush up on baby accents!

Today, I taught two classmates how to unroll and roll up a mat*.

It went reasonably well. I’m sure they were very impressed by how I patiently paused at every step of the process to make sure they understood, and to covertly whisper to them, “Erm… What’s next?”

I’m sure I’ll be a brilliant teacher by the end of the year.

The pace of study at Montessori College is comfortable. We have 15 hours of lessons a week, not counting workshops, talks and interning, which will happen when they happen.

We have a lot of private study time, which is good. I will need a lot of time to practice everything, in view of what happened today.

Today, we were taught the proper way to show children how to perform specific activities (for example, to walk quietly, which is to encourage them to respect the environment by walking calmly instead of dashing about like little torpedoes and knocking over other children and furniture).

It’s quite easy and straightforward if you understand why everything is done the way it’s done.

But when our teacher said, “Okay, now you try it on your classmates,” everything flew out my head.

For example, before we demonstrate an activity, we’re supposed to tell the children what we’re going to show them, and then assure them that they will get to try it after. This is to give them an incentive to watch patiently.

I had thought, “Great idea,” as I scribbled all the steps and reasons in my notebook.

But when you’re actually doing it, and there are people looking at you expectantly, your mind suddenly becomes empty.

I missed out on half the steps and only remembered them when we returned to our seats. (Like, I forgot to say they can try the activity after me, and I forgot to invite them to try it.)

Yep, gonna need a lot of practice.

Maybe I can practise on Piers. Guys can be such children so he will be perfect target practice.

Oh yes, I’m going to be just brilliant.

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*Children are taught how to unroll and roll up mats because they do much of their Montessori work on mats. They’re shown how to set a mat up when they need one, and how to put it away neatly after they’re done. This teaches them responsibility and respect for objects they use.

I got told off this morning.

All because Edgeworld, a game I’m playing on Facebook, sneakily told all my friends that I’m playing it.

A lot of Facebook games do that, in fact. You can’t even log in to Facebook these days without everyone immediately knowing that you’re at the moment skiving off instead of working/studying/blogging.

So, this was what happened.

I totally didn’t know an update was posted when I logged into the game, and then suddenly I got a notification that someone had commented on my activity.

To further illustrate my point about Facebook games being sneaky tattertales, there was this one morning when I woke up and went about my daily routine, which was:

1. Turn on computer.
2. Turn on MSN and say hi to Piers.
3. Open all my current Facebook games to use up stored energry/collect daily credits etc. Then, if I have time, play for a bit.

((I know it looks like a very sad routine but looks are deceiving so let’s leave the judging for another time because today’s topic is not to discuss my Internet/gaming addiction (although the word I prefer is passion)).

So in the midst of doing my routine this one morning, an MSN message suddenly flashed on my screen:

“You logged in to Edgeworld before saying hi to me!”

Now, before you get the wrong idea about Piers, he was just teasing me and not being stalkerish. It’s impossible to develop an impulse to stalk a girlfriend who wants to stay home all day and play games. I would say I’m quite safe from having a stalkerish boyfriend.

To clarify the situation, I did in fact turn on MSN before I opened my games, but it’s just that Chrome loaded my games a lot faster than MSN signed in, so it would have appeared to stalkers, should I actually have any, that I prioritised games over going on MSN.

This incident brought home the point that Facebook is quite dangerous so we should never add our bosses, teachers, parents, elders and people we don’t like on it.

Who knows what other kinds of things, in the future, Facebook will tell about us without us knowing.

Of course, we can (and should) try to be more careful. And if we strive to be honest and reliable and diplomatic in all things, we don’t have to worry about Facebook telling on us.

Like, if you wanted to turn down a date from someone you don’t really fancy, just say no and don’t come up with stupid excuses like “I broke all my fingers so I can’t come out” and then the next thing is he sees you playing Edgeworld on Facebook.

I’m sure I’m not saying anything new here. Everyone already knows the dangers of Facebook. But then people still keep getting caught in embarrassing situations. We really can’t be too careful.

In the meantime, I’m not too worried. I can live with the odd person telling me I game too much. Not that it’s even news, duh.

And Justyn should be quite happy now so I should be able to log in to Edgeworld without further repercussions.

It is very hard to please everyone but that doesn’t mean we can’t try our best.

So, be happy and make people happy! Just don’t burp or pick your nose when Facebook is watching.