Rain, rain go away... to Australia preferably.

It keeps raining. It just KEEPS ON RAINING. It has been raining since my birthday (which was Jan 10 - today is the 21st, lol) every single little day. I wake up, it's raining. It starts raining in the afternoon every so once in a while. It rains every single night! Last night was a bad one. There was thunder and lightening, which I haven't seen in a while and I dunno, the flashing lights in my cold dark little rather empty room really scared me. Wish I wasn't alone in there. *sniffles* I know it's silly but I couldn't shake away the feeling even if I wanted to.

But that wasn't the bad part anyway. I woke up and went to Pusat Bahagia, the school the ISB year 8's were heading to for their field trip. This school is for disabled children, and I was surprised Brunei had a school like this. I was like... wow. A school where there are actually ramps for wheel chairs and multi-tiered handle bars literally in every part of the building. However, I was disappointed that the school was in really bad shape. Like really shape. And it's in an odd location with like... gates everywhere. No one could tell there was a school there. My mum told me that rumours had it that the school was a detention / rehab centre for drug addicts. Oh yay to Brunei. We can easily see what kind of attitude they have for the disabled (although I've no idea why they insist on barring the school with weird metalic gates).

Yesterday's rainstorm was rather chaotic. The huge roundabout in Kiulap area has this tunnel (like the only one in Brunei I can think of). I guess drainage is non-existent as it flooded right to the top of the tunnel apparently (although by the afternoon much of it went down - although the road was closed the entire time). Traffic was everywhere since people had to get around and take detours. There were a million landslides all over the place, no electricity in the Gadong area (ISB and Pusat Bahagia both had no electricity). One half of the secondary school at ISB was flooded (the Art, DT workshop, Geo, History and Math rooms) so they shut the school down by 10:30 (and wanted EVERYONE out of the school by 1 PM). During the trip I went back to ISB for a short while to print pictures with Mr. Green, until I realised there was no electricity (and Mr. Green's class he went back to teach was cancelled).

Anyway, onto Pusat Bahagia. Uhh... I got there, no teachers. The year 8's were playing rather dangerously on the swings. I couldn't decide whether to tell them to get off or not, since if they broke anything, ISB and the teachers would be in for it. Anyway, there were 3 main activities as there were also 3 classes. Teachers there were Mr. Green, Mrs. C, Ms. Natalia and Mr. Grieves. And yeah, system was that the classes roated around these activities. We had tree-planting, painting the corridors and running activities with certain students at Pusat Bahagia. I sort of jumped in between, did nothing most of the time, take photos, supervise them, helped paint and pass messages and stuff. And had to tick off names a lot. I got yelled at during one point in time where I was in charge of superivisng the painters for a while, but then Ms. Natalia in the other group was calling for me (without knowing I had other things to do) and I left the group and well... Mr. Green was not happy. I have not been sort of 'yelled' at for a long long time (since that does not happen in uni anymore). I still dislike the feeling of being scolded. It scares me. Although it was restricted and after that I was in Mr. Green's car and we chatted a bit - he was nice so that was good. Since yeah... they can't reallly scold me much as I'm not a student and I'm... sort of old now (and if I become a teacher I should be an equal). But I do must learn responsibility better. And to have authority. I talked to quite a number of students today but I was talking to them like how I would talk to my friends, lol.

Back at ISB... well Mrs. C wasn't around so I was suddenly vulnerable when I was left there. But Mai, Freda and Ms. Wong were ever so kind to me. So that was nice. Hehe. On our way back from ISB, Mr. Green told me that it was illegal for disabled students in Brunei to walk around in the public (so that's why we don't see them often) without certain permission. I didn't know this, and I was really shocked. Can you imagine a parent being told it is illegal for your child to go outside? What kind of law is this? It was good to watch the year 8's try hard to work with the students of Pusat Bahagia. Although a number of them were constantly complaining about how bored they were, that irritated me to bits. Should be happy to get out of class, I would be more bored sitting about doing calculus all day. I should be more bored then they are, I just wandered around literally doing nothing for most of the time. Although I have a 7 year head start in terms of age to develop something known as patience so can't blame em' I guess.

Pure Exhaustion

Haha, today was an extremely tiring day at ISB. Okay, about my volunteer time at ISB. How that started was that umm... I needed some much needed distraction. As a way to get me to be as normal as possible again. So that I'm busy enough so that I can stay sane relatively until I get back to Aus. I think the idea of volunteering at ISB part was from Manju. So on the 5th of Jan I think I recall walking up to the front office, and asking whether I can get work there. She took my name and number and they only really took me in cause I was an ex-student. Freda (The Secondary Principal - Mr. Canterford's secretary) phoned me later in the afternoon letting me know that Mrs. Canterford (henceforth will be known as Debbie) would took me in.

So two days later, I went in for an 'informal' interview. They were already gonna let me in but Debbie wanted to know what I wanted and stuff. And I didn't really want anything. Kind of weird making demands when you were the one who suddenly barged in. She had another assistant already, an ex-IB student on GAP year - Nicky (who the IB peeps from my year level should know, she's just one year below). But yeah... since BGIC is next month she'll be working on that and I'll be working in Debbie's extremely busy office (I guess this is what happens when you are the school counsellor, English, Geography and PSE teacher, CAS Coordinator and whatever various other little projects at the same time. Her room has visitors every 15 minutes.

I generally make posters, cut things, clean things up, organise things, pass around messages, make phone calls, book rooms, and do so many little odd jobs I can't even remember anymore. On an average day I do around 10 differents tasks in a timespan of 7:15 AM - around 2:00 PM-ish. I wasn't too happy there at first, all the teachers are different so I was a bit lonely. Don't have friends at ISB either (I dunno the IB people cause like... I wasn't the one who knew our juniors and yeah... I left ISB 4 years ago anyway). So far I've talked to a number of em' though. Ms. Hancox was still around and she reconigsed me instantly, I suspect that she might be why I got in from her comments (said something like "I told em' I knew you" and that "If this is the Celine I'm thinking of she is a responsible, hard-working.. [insert compliment here]". Ms. Wong reconigsed me after a few days (this was funny, I just bumped into her, sad "Hi" shyly and walked off to the staff room kitchen and she did the same... but ran back to me and was like "Are you Celine?? Celine Hong???". She gave me a hug, said I looked impressive now (all grown up and pretty~). Haha, I knew Ms. Wong since I was 9 or 10 so... being 20 now is pretty funny. Ms. Wong is the same as ever (young and beautiful *__*).

Besides that... umm.. Debbie got me to meet a lot of the English teachers. So I generally help out Mr. Grieves once in a while, and I head over to primary two times a week to sit around in Mr. Barett's year 6 class. And yeah I do odd jobs for everyone else. Mr. Grieves is an aussie from Williamstown, so it was funny when he was bringing in aussie slang to English class (he said maccas!! XD). It has been raining in Brunei lately, on a daily basis (since my bday actually) so it's a bit... meh. The gloom and all. And my shoes are getting dirty since I have to walk around so much. I should mention that I've so far barged into dozens of classes passing messages and things. Even if people have no clue who I am they can recongise my face, lol. I dislike barging in though, cause everyone stops moving and stares at you. T.T And I'm just like... "uhhh... yeah.. umm... uhh what was I doing here for again.. oh right!"

Tomorrow is a year 8 field trip to Pusat Bahagia, an arts and crafts school for disabled children. The kids are painting a mural on one of the building walls, cleaning the school up, helping the kids make the crafts and interacting with them. At this school, the crafts made are sold to help raise funds. Apparently ISB wants to take some of these crafts and sell them to donate to the school (although we currently have a lot of fundraisers happening, I would know cause I seem to make posters for all of them - at the top of my head... bake sale to raise funds for a poor Viet toddler who lost a limb to a dog, donations are for his reconstruction surgery, collecting pencil donations for Malaysia flood victims through the organisation: Mercy Malaysia... and it goes on). Funny enough, Mr. Barett's year 6 class is heading to Gadong tomorrow (there doing some colouring worksheet where they count the number of stuff like certain stores, public facilties, bus stops, loading zones and what not). He asked me to come but yeah... one or the other, I think it's more worthwhile for me to check out Pusat Bahagia as I've not been there.

At home... I uhh... go online, do absolutely nothing and continue being bored. The past week I've gone on a reading streak, I've spent ages making this book list (complete with pictures), currently still calculating how many novels I've read so far (it would near about 80). I want to buy so many books now to check it out, it isn't funny. And most of the stuff I want are chick-lits! I seem to be going back into wanting to hear mushy love stories about the most sweetest guys and a women's dodgy and difficult love life where she finally finds the perfect guy in the end (and they live happily after - although we always know that things are never happily ever after - but it's good to hope). Currently reading...


Haha, yeah, Sophie Kinsella lololol. Well, it's an easy read so I wanted it. A bit refreshing after a semester of Dickens and Bronte. Tony Parsons newest book was an impulse buy. I never read his ever so famous "Man and Boy" but yeah, it's pretty interesting. About an English man who's family moves to Shanghai to find a better life. Then he realises what a place China is, especially their "second wife" system, you know... with all those 40 year old secretly having mistresses or a 'permanent girlfriend' as they call with young and beautiful women. I know about this all too well (haha my greatest fear maybe? Marriage is happily ever after until you get old and ugly and someone wants something more new and exciting).

Sophie Kinsella is Sophie Kinsella. Shameless and materialistic, but hilarious. There should be a movie coming out soon for Confessions of a Shopaholic. Am trying to finish both books by the end of the week. Then hopefully I'll continue and finish off Jonathan Stroud's "The Golem's Eye" and maybe either start on the second book of Twilight or Cathy Ahern's "Thanks for the Memories".