Listen…to the rhythm of life

Alright, I have received complaints about the frequency of my postings. It went from weekly to fortnightly to monthly.

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My reasons? (1) I don’t have enough time! (2) I missed classes more often now (2) I don’t really understand the discussion since I am always late and thus were not really inspired to write. I guess I need to urgently realign myself with the progress of the class!

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Speaking of missing class, I ponteng class today because I couldn’t bring myself up from my bed this morning. But, I was looking forward to tonight’s big event - la buffet de la franchophonie and meeting our ex-classmates whom we dearly missed!

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Our last year’s experience with this buffet taught us to arrive early to ‘chop’ seats at the Olio cafe. So, Evelyn, our chef de la classe, emailed everyone to arrive at 6.30pm (the buffet starts at 7pm). There were myself, Evelyn and Choon Hau at 6.45pm, and almost nobody else. The buffet spread was not opened yet. Everybody was still in the auditorium attending the prize giving ceremony of Runme Shaw Cup Compeition, awarded to the outstanding students in AF.

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After we have territorized one big table at Olio, almost instantly, hungry people gushed out from the auditorium, spilling over the entire lobby and the stairs. The VIPs had their private buffet spread at Olio. Meijia came out of the auditorium and happily announced to us that our current classmate Louisa has won the first prize! That equates to a return air ticket to Paris on Air France, and a week stay at the Institut International de Rambouillet.

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Among the frenziness, guess what was the first thing we went for? Choon Hau and Vincent quickly grapped the wines (yup free wines). Evelyn and I were eyeing the Inniskillin ice wines at the corner. Don’t be mistaken, we are not alcoholic in nature, only in situations when it is gratuit.

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Choon Hau and Meijia braved through the crowds in the lobby to take food for us. See below - how Choon Hau squeezed through the queue and got a full plate of food.

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As we were waiting for them, we were too hungry to resist helping ourselves with the food from the VIP buffet spread. So we went for it, and got captured in someone’s camera for doing so! Perhaps there were overwhelming attendance, or perhaps the food was not quite enough, most items were gone within 20 minutes, some of us didn’t get to sample the fromage, c’était dommage!

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We were very happy to meet Ming Wei’s petite amie and to see Daniel and April again. It was so enjoyable to recount our days in AF with them. We suggested Daniel to open his bread bar outlet in AF and call it ‘Le You-cha-kuei’.

• Daniel: Is it ‘le’ or ‘la’ You-cha-kuei?
• Choon Hau: It’s definitely ‘le’ because it’s a foreign word.
• Ping: (sigh), still want to argue about ‘le’ or ‘la’!

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Well, I look forward to the day when Choon Hau, Daniel, April and Meng rejoin the family, if that day ever comes.

Salut! Sorry for the long silence again. Something happened in February and my focus has been drawn to quelque chose which you will get to know in due course. Ironically, I only have time to update this blog tonight when I am out of Singapore and, undistracted.

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Last Saturday (1 March) was the last leçon of our 2nd Taxi 3 session with Manu. On a fait une révision des leçon 7 à 12. For some reasons, Evelyn continued to be the target of Manu’s imagination.

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In the previous leçon on la grève (strike), the classe talked about alternative mode of transport in the event of strike. Some said à la pied, some on bicycles, les rollers, le moto, etc. Kevin came up with a ‘heroic’ suggestion - sur le cheval. Manu then imagined Kevin as a knight riding the horse and fetching Evelyn with him, her long curly hair flew along with the breeze.

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This time, as Evelyn read out a sentence constructed from les mots clé given by Manu: "femmes - admirer - Manu":

• Evelyn: Toutes les femmes admirent Manu à Orchard Road
• Manu: Oui merci baby…err..Evelyn![then wrote on the board: Toutes les femmes (et surtout Evelyn) admirent Manu]
• Ping (to Evelyn): How come cannot be the other way round? Manu admire toutes les femmes à Orchard Road.

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And so, Evelyn has acquired a nickname - Baby - solely reserved for Manu’s use only.

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We also discovered Manu’s obession with King Kong. In many of the revision texts he gave us, he compared himself with King Kong:

• King Kon est aussi cool que Manu King
• King Kong est moins sexy que Manu King
• Manu King a plus de femmes que King Kong
• Manu King a autant de force que King Kong
• Rouh Ling (to Manu): Pourquoi cette obessession avec King Kong?
• Manu: King Kong…c’est mon idole, mon reference…

D’accord~

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Hooi Ping @ China World, Beijing

What a beautiful date 02.02.2008 is!

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Did you know that 2 Fevrier is La Chandeleur en France? It’s also called Fête de la lumière, or crêpe day! It is a Catholic feast to commemorate the purificaiton of Virgin Mary and presentation of baby Jesus. If I knew this earlier, I would have organised a crêpe-eating session with my fellow camarades. I remember Pascal once told us that he liked to play crêpe-throwing game quand il était jeune. Instead of the traditional way of catching the crêpes in a pan, he tried to get the crêpes to stick on the ceiling!

see http://french.about.com/od/culture/a/chandeleur.htm?nl=1 for more information on La Chandeleur.

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Today’s leçon examined a right that is very French - le droit de grève (strike). It’s Ming Wei’s (le futur advocate) and Wiwi’s turn to be interrogated. Note, Ming Wei is Singapourien, Wiwi Malaisienne.

• Manu: Est-ce que le droit de grêve existe dans votre pays?
• Ming Wei: Non.
• Wiwi: Oui, les gens peuvent faire la grêve sur l’autorisation.
• Tacha (asking Manu): C’est comme ça en France?
• Manu: Gila you. En France, personne cherche pas un permission. "Monsieur, on voudrait faire une grêve.." Gila you!
• Classe:…(Laughs)….
• Ming Wei: À Singapour, il y a un droit de assembler, mais c’est très limité.
• Kevin (agreeing): Oui, s’il y plus de 6 personnes, il faut faire l’autorisation. 6 personnes! C’est comme un BBQ!
• Classe: ….(laughs)….?
• Manu: Est-ce que vous déja vu une grêve?
• Ming Wei: Non.
• Wiwi: Non, mais j’ai participé dans une manifestation dans mon université aux États Unis.
• Manu (and the rest of the class): …(eyes big big)….
• Manu: Une manifestation pour quoi?
• Wiwi: C’etait une manifestation contre la guerre à Iraq.
• Manu: Si vous pouvriez faire une grêve à Singapour, qu’est-ce que ce serait?

The dialoque continued with us whinging about l’augmentation du coût de la vie comme prix de taxi, le roti prata, chicken rice…

Pui Siang emerged as a ‘PAP representative’, she rebutted almost every negative point we made against le gouvernement de Singapour! She works in SMU and described herself as ‘pro-government’.

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Announcements

Wiwi is relocating to Paris this month pour trois ans! We can visit her if we can realise our trip to France in Sept.

Ming Wei has been given his first choice uni for his 1 year exchange, c’est Montreal! This is another destination for us, next year perhaps.

Bonne Nouvel An Chinois à tous!

I’ve forgotten to update my blog! I used to feel uneasy if I haven’t done so by Mon, but I conveniently skipped writing for 2 weeks (I didn’t attend class one week), and now when I have time to update, I don’t remember very well already!

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We are still stucked in the submarine, but we are hopeful that they might move us out soon, simply because we constantly disturb the SIA group by coming in late. We hope that the SIA group will lodge a complaint against us for shamelessly interrupting them week in week out. Then we might be freed from the submarine!

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Just last Sat, a gang of us arrived at 9.30am - Albert lugging his violin, me and Hui Ping dragging our sleepy face, only Ming Wei looked awake. The leçon was on la fête. As usual, we asked each other questions about faire la fête.

1.Quelles sont les fêtes auxquelles vous participez/interessez?

• Participer à, interesser à -> therefore ‘auxquelles’ is used

2. Est-ce qu’il y a une fête à laquelle vous avez participé à l’étranger?

3. Comment se déroulent-elles (les fêtes)?

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Ming Wei and I worked together in pair, both of us like Christmas the most. I like the ambience and fairylights, while he likes the spirit of giving.

• Ping (asking Manu): L’esprit de donner?
• Manu: Quoi?
• Ping: The spirit of giving?
• Ming Wei: ça existe en Français?
• Manu: Non, la joie de donner, pas l’esprit.
• Ping: Oh, the joy of giving…

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This was then followed by l’interrogatoire de un ou deux étudiant(s). Albert and Ming Wei were initially picked. But Manu suddenly had a bright idea of asking Albert to play his violin for us. Manu loves listening to the violin. Albert refused initially but we insisted and eventually persuaded him to pick up his violin stick - Manu pointed out a new vocab, the string is made from la queue de cheval (horse tail).

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Albert started with his favourite tango, which invited applause from the next door SIA group. We thought he would have stopped, but he couldn’t! Manu tried to stop him politely but he continued playing a few short pieces, and ended his concert with a piece composed by his expat friend! The SIA group applauded again, this time with screams of ‘encore’.

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Those who want ‘encore’ and who like to watch this expat Russe can go to AMK hub during CNY to see him play. Dates and time schedule to be advised.

Bonne Année à tous! The year 2008 kicked off to a great start for Alliance Française, business is especially good for them that all classrooms are filled up on Saturday mornings. So full that our class have to be housed in a ’submarine’…

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To be exact, we are at Level 4 Seminar Room 2. Now, there is actually only one Seminar Room. But they are so short of classroom that they have to partition it into two rooms. The outer half which have access to the main door is given to the SIA group (because they are more ‘presentable’?). The inner half, through a small submarine-like door on the divider, is us!

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As we walked pass the SIA group, I couldn’t help but took a quick sweeping view. So did Evelyn and Allison. Then, we had this conversation:

• Ping: How come the SIA group look er…so-so only? Maybe they are the ground staff?
• Evelyn: Aiyah, they have no make up mah. I think they are the crew.
• Allison: …(no comments)…hahaha…

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Our class grew in size, despite the absence of Meng and Choon Hau (we miss you, please come back!). And, it grew younger too, with two new classmates (Louisa and Esther) who are undergrads, though there is one new classmate (Kevin) who is roughly our age.

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Manu asked us to write our new year resolutions in a piece of paper, anonymous, and have Kevin and Pui San read them aloud. Most of us hope that we do our French homework more regularly and continue to take French lessons. Some want to work less, travel more. Sounds like we are a very congruent group!

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The lesson’s theme was le bonheur. Qu’est-ce que le bonheur pour vous? Pour moi, à parti de être heureux, rester une bonne santé et avoir une famille, le bonheur signifie que je peux dormir jusqu’à je ne veux pas dormir, ne me lève pas par le alarm clock! The three new classmates were asked to sit in front of the class and answer our questions on this theme for us to know them better. I was just glad that I wasn’t nominated because my French is rusty from 2 weeks of total shut down.

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From the textbook, the French has a bizzare way of feeling ‘bonheur’. Some French just enjoy participating in a flashmob - a group of people who contact each other via mobile, and gather at one place at certain time and perform an act together. Manu described to us with enthusiasm. He personally witnessed a flashmob on Champs Élysées - a line-up of ladies and an opposite line-up of men opened up their umbrella in rainbow colours. They remained in their pose for 2 minutes or so, attracted crowd to take photos etc, then dispersed into the crowd. Manu said he would very much like to join the flashmob when he is back in Paris in June. He viewed it as an art, an act of expression.

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Manu tried to persuade us to form a flashmob of classe de Manu, to pose as statues at Orchard Road. He then asked the guys to mimic his signature sound - the forced inspiration hiccup sound (E-heeh-heeh) - which he always do to break the silence or distract us when we are working on the exercises he gives us. Ming Wei, Jonathan, Kevin, Albert all repeated after him and did quite well! Louisa was the only gal who attempted it. He asked the rest of us to go home and practice so that we can form a flashmob with that funny sound!

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Reminder:

Remember our new year resolution - do homework!

Manu’s ‘test’ was actually an open book evaluation (not Alliance Française’s test) - he designed the questions pertaining to the 6 leçons from sections of the textbook which we didn’t have time to go through. Instead of following the textbook syllabus, some parts of the textbook were taught while other parts were turned into an exam-type ‘evaluation’. I thought this is quite a refreshing way of teaching.

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Our oral test was just ‘une grande intéraction’ which took place in the library. Our group - Meng, Choon Hau, me, Mei Jia, Albert, Shi Zuo - was supposed to pose questions to each other on our plan to visit Europe for 1 month. We ended up targeting Choon Hau as our super rich sponsor (as Meng suggested) and conjured up a discussion made of nonsense, which is of course unworthy of getting a mention here.

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In the end, none of us finished the écrit section of the évaluation, as most of us were distracted by the chance of taking a class photo with "the king of the king of professeurs" (see below). Jonathan once asked, if Manu is "the king of the king of professeurs", who is "the king of professeurs"? Unable to answer, Manu wanted to ketuk Jonathan’s head.

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The holiday mood continued to The Marmalade Pantry as we made our way down in the capable hands of two drivers - Choon Hau and Meng. Choon Hau missed the carkpark entrance of Palais Renaissance but kept his cool and immediately found a solution. "I am a driver of 135k km," he said. "That’s equivalent to a senior pilot in air miles I think." While we were impressed by his agility, we were glad that we have not had our lunch yet.

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The food in Marmalade Pantry caters to a wide spectrum of tastes, other than modern western cuisine, there is also modern japanese, kids’ menu, and even squirrel food (as Meng put it).

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Seared foie gras on apple prune brioche (as starter)                                      Grilled chicken & bacon club

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Squirrel food

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As usual, in the presence of Ivy, my camera couldn’t stop snapping away to capture her sweet face and cute action. She is already 3 ans. We have witnessed Ming from getting pregnant to the birth of Ivy and then dropped out of French class to look after Ivy on Sat mornings. We’ve watched Ivy growed from a baby to a sweet little kid in these 4 years.

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To my old friends (I think you guys can be upgraded to ‘old’ friends now), thank you for the wonderful 4 years at Alliance Française (and beyond). I wish we can visit France ensemble one day, perhaps next year? Joyeux Noel, à l’année prochaine!

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"Manu office, 4 eme étage"

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A note outside our usual classroom (Rm 200) read. When me and Allison arrived there, we realised that some NAC staff has taken over our beloved classroom, so we made our way up to 4th floor. But where is our class? Most of the doors were closed and lessons were already ongoing (bien sûr, parce qu’il était 9.30 am). Allison tried to listen through the door. Well, we had to resort to calling Evelyn in the end.

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Unbelievingly, we were put in the teachers’ office, the door that reads ‘Administration’!  There were two slim tables squeezed into a pathethic corner. Manu had to make do with a small white board. After our arrival, suddenly the teenagers and twenty somethings made their appearances, colonizing other teachers’ tables and chairs since our corner is full. Mei Jia came in with Ming Wei, Albert and Jonathan, and had difficulty finding a seat.

• Manu: Mei Jia, tu t’assois ici (point to the seat beside him). Beaucoup de chi-ko-pek la-bà huh!
• Dunno who answered back: C’est un grand chi-ko-pek ici lah (pointing to Manu)!
• Manu (self-admitting): Quais, la roi de chi-ko-pek.

Mei Jia 乖乖的 walked to the front and sat beside Manu, comme il a désiré.

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We revised grammaire (l’expression de la durée) and vocab today, in preparation for next week’s end-of-session test.

se plaire - nous - vivre - douze - nous - ans - ici - parce que - y (faire de phrase avec ‘depuis’)

The correct sentence: Nous vivons ici depuis douze ans parce que nous nous y plaisons.

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Somebody asked what does ’se plaire’ means.

• Manu: Se plaire huh, par exemple, je me plais à Singapour.
• Evelyn: I enjoy Singapore?
• Manu: Oui.
• Manu: Zidan plait à tout les femmes. Se plaire à un lieu, mais plaire à quelqu’un.
• Jonathan: Do you say somethig like je vous plais?
• Manu: Oh…je vous plais (made a seductive pose with one hand on the head leaning on the wall)?
• Evelyn: You enjoy me?
• Classe:…(laughs)….
• Manu: Don’t ask je vous plais huh, it means est-ce que vous me trouvez belle, vous aimez mon vêtements, coiffure, etc.

Then, he acted out a scene where Ming Wei asked ‘Je vous plais’ in a metro and then being rewarded with a slap. That’s Manu, always so comical and dramatic.

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At break time, Manu stood beside the door waiting for us to get out. As I walked pass him, he asked (and posed at the door at the same time): "Ping, je vous plais?" I laughed, flung my head and walked straight out of the door.

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Here’s a glimpse of our terrible studying condition on Sat, 8 Dec 07.

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Wiwi, Jonathan, Hui Ping & Shi Zuo                       Choon Hau, Pui Siang, Albert (far left at the back)

It’s Christmas Bazaar day at Alliançe on Saturday! Pots of poinsettia and ‘air plants’ greeted the students at the entrance and various ’stalls’ selling nicknacks, fashion accessories, home decor, products from Provence, etc filled the ground floor and the corridor of the 2nd floor. I didn’t have time to browse as I was late (again) but planned to do so during la pause.

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Attention les célibataires. Le thème de leçon était les club de rencontres. As usual, Manu asked us to come up with questions on the theme and this time, Shi Zuo was put in the spotlight, and incidentaly, she is single. Since this is a rather sensitive subject, we didn’t quite dare to ask too many questions.

• Albert: Est-ce que vous êtes interessé de joindre un club de rencontres?
• Shi Zuo: Non, je n’interessé pas. Je le trouves artificiel.
• Hui Ping: Qu’est-ce que vous faites pour rencontrer quelqu’un?
• Classe: ….Wohh…(laughs)…
• Shi Zuo : ….(smile and looking shy)…
• Manu: Òu est-ce que vous allez? le bar?
• Shi Zuo: Le cinema….et…le voyage.
• Manu: Le cinema? (started acting as Shi Zuo, whistling a guy to come to sit beside ‘her’ in a cinema)
• Shi Zuo (laugh while thinking in her mind): …(I didn’t mean this way)….
• Manu: Vous voyagez avec un groupe?
• Shi Zuo: Non, tout seul. J’ai rencontré plusiers des femmes pendant mes voyages.
• A new Malay classmate (I forgot his name): Qu’est-ce que votre but pour s’inscrire au un club de rencontres?
• Shi Zuo: Si je m’inscrivais au un club de rencontres, mon but est bien sûr pour rencontres quelqu’un.
• Manu: Oui, mais le but peut-être est pour coucher avec quelqu’un (showing his cheeky face).
• Manu (animated action of ripping off his own shirt): Voulez-vous couchez avec moi ce soir?
• Classe:….(OMG)….

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Funnier moments ensued when Meng and Puisan played the scene of a speedating in front of the class. They had 7 minutes. Their scirpt was truly the dream of any single joining a single’s club. Their hobbies matched and they hit it off straight away.

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Not so lucky were the other two pairs - Shi Zuo and (oh I forgot the Malay guy’s name), Albert and Hui Ping.  Albert and Hui Ping had a funny and sarcastic script that ended with Hui Ping asking for a change in partner!

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For me, my partner was Evelyn. We didn’t have the ’sparks’ like Meng and Puisan (we are both femmes!) but we had a happy ending of making tiramisu together….tis the season to be jolly….hohoho

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Malheureusement, I will be missing class again next Sat. I just found out that we were not the only ones who completed Reflet 3 and went back to Taxi 3. Apparently, Puisan and the Malay guy did Reflect 3 too! This should make us feel better.

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Announcement:

Our 4th Christmas gathering lunch is set on 15 December at The Marmalade Pantry (Palais Renaissance) at 12:30pm.

Samedi matin après une pluie, I overslept again, so was Evelyn. As I pushed the classroom door open at around 9:30am…

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"Hah!"

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Evelyn stormed out behind the door, attempting to scare me. Goodness, this was the last thing I would expect Evelyn to do. "Aiyoh…just woke up in the morning, please don’t do this," I said in Mandarin, as my brain has not tuned to English channel yet, let alone French.

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"Bonjour les retards!" Manu greeted us (me and Evelyn) as he entered the room. The rest were doing some sort of exercise (not physically) on crafting some questions to some given responses. The theme was l’Europe et des études en Europe. After going through the questions we came up with and invariably our grammar mistakes, Manu presented us with his perfect questions. He picked Hui Ping this time to answer the questions and we were supposed to pose questions to her using Manu’s perfect samples.

• Pui San (to Hui Ping): Est-ce que vous avez déjà étudié en Europe?
• Hui Ping: Oui, mais seulement un mois.
• Manu (can’t resist to ask question): Où avez-vous étudié?
• Hui Ping: À Paris.
• Manu (kay poh again): Vous avez rencontré un homme?
• Hui Ping: …(laughs)….
• Pui San (rephrasing): Vous avez rencontré un homme sexy?
• Hui Ping: (laughs again)…oui, j’ai rencontré beaucoup des hommes…
• Manu: Vous avez le photo?

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Suivant, Manu was the one asking most questions (nosy?) and we were just behaving like an observer. From this oral practise, we found out that almost all of us would like to go study in France for 1 year or more, just like Pin Nee realising her dream now. I guess the first step is always the most difficult, i.e. quitting your job or taking 1 year sabbatical. Papa Meng did it again! He quitted. "Je suis au chômage" is once again his line. He has a problem of being institutionalised because it deprives him of his usual 1 month break in December.

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Speaking of December, I am in the midst of organising yet again another Christmas lunch. I can’t believe this will be the 4th Christmas lunch I’d be organizing. After browsing through my old blogs, I confirm this is the 4th time! We have been in Alliançe for 4 years?! It doesn’t feel so long at all. Recollecting the restaurants we’ve been, all three were French restaurants (Sebastian’s in 06, Creperie AR-MEN in 05, Maison de la Fontaine in 04) and two of which have closed down! To avoid killing more French restaurants, perhaps we should try non-French eatery this year? I have send out the email with my proposed venue, please rsvp. Merci!

Last week, we made a request to Manu that we wish to go back to our favourite classroom 200 - the one near Olio cafe, because we are used to the big long table and executive chairs, instead of those small flappy table tops connected to the chairs.

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Bons nouvelles! We managed to do a swap with another class and snatched Salon 200 back! We have another new classmate, in addition to those we met last week. I couldn’t quite catch her name, sounds like ‘poisson’?! (Evelyn later told me that it should be Pui San) She saw some of us using photocopied textbooks and told Evelyn that she photocopied her exercise book so that she can write notes on it (what’s wrong with writing onto the exercise book itself?).

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Manu moved swiftly to leçon 2 (we didn’t do much for leçon 1!), the theme is immigration. He prepared a list of 12 questions for us to work through our answers. Then, Wiwi was hand-picked to take the hot seat of being interrogated. We were asked to ask her questions from the list. She speaks very nice French, with proper French accent! Her accent reminds me of Grace.

• Pui San (asking Wiwi): Si vous quittiez votre pays pour installer dans un autre pays, quelle serait la première chose que vous feriez?
• Wiwi: Lorque j’arrive, dans l’aeroport, je téléphone à mes parents.
• Manu: Hmm….
• Evelyn (laughing at Ping’s answer to the same question): Haha…[you] chercher la supermarché…
• Ping (to Evelyn): Shhh….

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Manu gave us un petit devoir.

• Manu: Vous souhaitez immigrer en France. Préparez une série de questions que vous poserez à Manu King, (emphasizing) sauf des questions sexuelles, afin de savoir quelles seront vos conditions de vie dans ce pays. D’accord?
• Manu (disturbing Ming Wei): Ming Wei euh, combien de petite amis je peux avoir? Combien de femmes je peux embrasser? Je te introduis mes amis!
• Choon: Je n’ai pas des questions, mes questions sont interdit!

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