Yes, the unbelievable has happened. I have contracted chicken pox.

To get it at this stage of my life! Even Piers is laughing at me saying I’m so cute-obsessed that even the diseases I get have to be cute.

What rubbish? There is nothing cute about chicken pox, I told him, for it is the ugliest, most evil disease. But he argued that only little children get it usually, therefore it’s cute.

Why is it happening to me, then? What the hell, you stupid poxes?

It’s like these Chickenpox-men from outer space have decided to land on my body to have a picnic. They’re celebrating some alien festival by having a week-long party and the whole bloody colony is invited.

At first, they send a small expedition team of maybe five to test the water, so to speak. These brave pioneers, upon finding the land fertile and the water fresh and unpoisoned, ring home eagerly to mobilise the rest of the colony.

They start coming in droves, the quickest ones getting to pick choice spots around the body. But there are plenty of good spots to go around, so there is no need to fight. The whole body is an endless field of fun and sunshine all for the taking. They even bring camping equipment to make it a nice holiday.

“Look, Ted, let’s set up our tents next to the navel. We can play bouncing castle in it after our picnic!”

Ted and his friend are soon joined by more friends, who set up more tents and mats around haphazardly. It’s a celebration, folks! Come, have fun and don’t worry about anything! Bring your old, ailing grandparents and newborn babies, too, why not? The more the merrier!

And then, inevitably, some of them wander up to the face.

“Come quick, Amy, I have found us the perfect lookout point for our picnic! The view up there is gorgeous!”

While Amy is swooning at her oh-so-romantic beau, my brain is going, “No, nooooooooooo. Anywhere but my nose!”

Or my cheeks, for the matter.

Or my whole bloody face, you poxy vermin!

But the Chickenpox-men (and -women) don’t care. The whole point of their existence is to have a bloody picnic on my body and face. They just plonk themselves right down anywhere they like and then text their friends to hurry up and join in the fun.

Between the crazy itch and the disfigurement (and the fear that, if I so much as sneezed the wrong way, the disfigurement would become permanent), I am finding it hard to keep my sanity.

My flu isn’t getting any better after one whole week of holing myself up at home and surviving on oatmeal and honey drinks. I haven’t gotten much quality sleep, what with the painful throat, coughing, sore intestines (from coughing), blocked nose and my chronic neck pains.

And stupid university students who walk past the apartment every night to go to the bars and clubs in the town centre.

These nincompoops are worse than the Chickenpox-men because I know the Chickenpox-men will soon get tired of revelling and go home to Chickenpox Land.

These university students are there night after night, year after year. There’s a large university hostel near my apartment, so that’s where they come from. No matter what day it is, no matter what unearthly time of the night, they’re outside my window singing drunken songs at the top of their voices.

Sometimes they don’t just walk past. Sometimes they stick around the carpark just across my apartment and hold ear-popping rock concerts.

I am not exaggerating. This morning, Thursday, 4:10 am, group of blokes singing in unison loud enough to wake the dead. The ones who can’t sing are laughing their asses off, trying to drown the singing with their laughter, but it’s a tough fight.

This goes on every night between 11 pm and 6 am, with different groups of students streaming past every so often. Nobody has put a stop to this for goodness knows how long despite the fact that there are like 30 affected apartments between the hostel and the city of sin.

I don’t know why. There’s even a police station smack in the middle of the path, but I guess the police knock off work at 5 pm like everyone else does in this country.

I can understand the fun of drunken romps, but have none of these people yet realised that they’ve been doing it in a residential area, which apartments are stood out in the open right in their faces?

The amount of partying these kids do is unbelievable. I mean, never mind their studies, they can flunk their asses big time and live on government welfare for the rest of their lives, but what about their livers?

Oh, yeah, healthcare is free in this country so that’s covered, too.

I guess there is no reason not to party yourself to your grave, then.

Piers and I have been talking about moving out to a nice big house some time in the future and leasing this apartment out, but I’d feel really bad for the future tenants who would have to put up with this insanity.

Oh well, at least they won’t be having chicken pox, too. That much one can be thankful for.

Not for me. I thought I’d already gone through hell week (with the flu) but now it’s beginning all over again, meaner and poxier.

I was wrong about the pace of study at the Montessori College being comfortable. It very soon turned uncomfortable and then — avalanche! I have been feeling snowed under for the last couple of weeks but I’m hoping to get used to the pace soon.

I’m enjoying it, though. At the moment, for practical classes, we’re learning how to do the activities that we will, in the future, teach children.

That includes household chores.

I don’t want to be a bore, but I have to explain it lest you think we are either crackpots or slave-drivers. Very briefly:

Small children love doing chores, as a matter of fact, so if you let them help out around the house (and not get impatient if they do it too slowly or poorly), they will develop a keen sense of responsibility and grow up independent and confident. At the same time, chores also help develop their co-ordination and motor skills, among many other useful life skills.

Better yet, they will grow up to become helpful human beings even without your nagging.

One day, in class, our teacher surprised us by making us do presentations on the following activities:

1. How to scrub a table.
2. How to clean the floor.
3. How to wash up dishes.
4. How to wash a duster.

Previously, she always showed us how to do each task before we practised on our own.

You would naturally think it’s easy to scrub a table or wash up some dishes. But we have to do it in a systematic way so that children can watch and copy easily. Also, we have to use all the set equipment provided for each activity because there’s also a system in there.

It turned out that some of us didn’t know how to use certain household tools.

Some of us had grown up having domestic helpers in the house and aren’t too good with chores.

Some of us did stunts with the tools in a way that would stump three-year-old children (for example twirling a tea towel with one hand while rinsing a glass with the other).

Our class turned into a huge giggle fest as everyone laughed at everyone else stumbling over their presentations. Our teacher corrected us as we went along: “If a child tries to copy you doing that, you will end up with a broken glass.”

The hardest activity to present was probably the washing dishes one (because it has the most number of items).

My classmates who got that task fumbled at various junctures and stared helplessly at the equipment. It was very entertaining. Both of them happened to have grown up in, shall we say, privileged households.

(Which is not to say that the rest of us did any better with our chores.)

I am not naming names nor placing faces!

The following photo is a re-enactment by two volunteer classmates who might or might not be the two aforementioned ones, lol.

In any case, we all respect and appreciate each other’s fumblingness in class. It’s quite enjoyable if you can see the humour in the situation.

Kai and Charlotte enjoyed the re-enacting very much. And we’re all experts at chores now, after our lesson.

My activity was to clean the floor, which I found rather challenging because the only floor cleaning tools I’ve ever used are vacuum cleaners and those long-handled Magiclean floor wipers with disposable dust-eating sheets.

In class, I had to scrub a pretend floor with a mini scrubbing brush using two hands, even though just one hand alone could swallow up the entire brush. (Children need two hands to get enough strength, so we have to show it to them using two hands.)

But that was the easy part. The hard part was trying to figure out how to use the cloth and sponge, and in what order. (Answer: After scrubbing, mop up watery residue with sponge, then wipe floor dry with cloth.)

Give me my Magiclean wipers any day, but the children have to learn to do it without gimmicks.

(I’m not being a very good role model here but I don’t think three-year-old children are reading my blog so it’s okay.)

Well, we may be “experts” at chores now, but I’ll bet the children in the nursery downstairs are a lot better at doing them than the bunch of us in the classroom. And they enjoy it, too, so, good for them!

Oh, and Piers is a natural born chore genius, which trumps any supposed expertise, so he can continue doing the chores at home.

Thanks!