Trapped in a GIF file

Cute, sweet and affable with a smile that’s frozen for eternity.

Having been trapped in such an inanimate state since the beginning, however, her face is suffering from cramps from all that smiling.

Thus she yearns for the day when she can free herself from the shackles of her static .gif file and get herself featured in a Youtube movie − where her mathematical adventures would be retold in an engaging fully-animated manner (must be in full HD), and where the world would see and hear how she scolds her students conducts her joss sticks sessions in full 3D surround sound.

And so the avatar Miss Loi could only watch with static envy and jealousy when the real (flesh & blood) Miss Loi received an invitation to blog about N.E.mation! (pronounced ann-nee-mation not nee-mation) − a yearly competition where groups of highly-creative students come together to see who can come out with the next Initial D anime series best one-minute animation clip.

Started in 2007 and now back for the 5th year, N.E.mation is a competition for youths to express their notions on Total Defence through animation.

What’s interesting about this competition is that the contestants themselves are no budding Pixar or Dreamworks wizkids, but are instead regular students with no prior experience in animation. Given only 3 weeks of training to equip themselves with the necessary skills, they are tasked to create their very own one-minute animation clips to be judged by a panel of industry professionals and voted by a very demanding and yim chim armchair public (i.e. all of you reading this )

Winning teams have had the ultimate honour of having their masterpieces screened on major TV channels – viewed by excited parents who would then hao lian to aunties/uncles that “MY SON/DAUGHTER DID THIS!!!“, by coffeeshop bookies waiting for their next football match, and by a Miss Loi pretending to look at the TV screen to avoid the guy peeking at her from the next treadmill when she’s working out in the gym.

This year in N.E.mation! 5, students are asked to use their creativity to produce storylines centred on the theme of “Home – We make or break”. The animation clips of the top ten finalist teams will be judged by a panel, including industry professionals from DreamWorks and Bluesky Studios. In addition, the public can now vote for their three favourite clips at www.nemation.sg or via SMS. The winning team will win a coveted trip to visit DreamWorks Animation in the USA!

After a long and grueling selection process, we are now down to ten finalists who will battle it out among themselves for that free USA trip. Check out each finalist’s interesting promotional videos where team members talk about their project, experiences, how their holidays got burnt etc. etc. (as an added incentive to click, there are many handsome guys and pretty girls in the videos too )

1. Bamm!
2. Cancer Patients
3. XJST
4. The Spectators
5. Sock Bulls
6. Search Our Souls
7. Phoenix
8. Con Bravura
9. Carpe Diem
10. Little Bopeepz

So please support these students’ hard work (and make the burning of their holidays worthwhile) by casting your votes on your favourite animation clip! Click the image below to view the clips and vote:

And perhaps, whoever the real Miss Loi voted may even get to win an exclusive contract from The Temple to bring Miss Loi’s avatar to life

© 2007-2011 Jφss Sticks. Copycats will be mercilessly hunted down.

Miss Loi finds herself performing several important rituals to bring the season to a close i.e.

1. Eat her bak kut teh.

2. Eat her tok tok mee.

4. Buy some Christmas presents for herself because she gets very few presents each year.

5. Have her nails done up for the new season.

Pweeety? A student said this resembled the pattern on her water bottle.

6. Have her head/neck/shoulder massaged and hair washed at this neighbourhood salon.

7. Have her feet massaged …

… and her sore back (accumulated from 12 months’ of teaching at The Temple) unknotted and ‘reborn’

Temple abuse victim (newly-released file picture)

6. Plan her 2011 Weekly Schedule, and at the same time issue preliminary warnings to all potential “aeroplane pilots” who are going to be heavily involved in their CCAs next year – especially academic life force-draining ones like SYF. (somehow Miss Loi has a phobia of events that contain the word ‘Youth‘)

Those coveted weekend slots are going … going …

7. Umm … get more practice on the chapter of Probabilities, Permutations & Combinations.

Practice Tools

8. Most importantly, she gets the chance to stand idly and stare at little fluffy clouds in the sky (when it’s not raining), and place her thoughts far from the maddening world of trigonometry, geometry and quadratic equations …

Little fluffy clouds … little fluffy clouds …

Greetings my Sexy Maths Tutor!

boomed a Darth Vaderish-voice in her head.

“It’s you! I haven’t heard from you in a long, long time – not since you saved me from the tsunami!” she replied.

So how art thou, my Sexy Maths Tutor?

“I did as you told. I’ve built the Sanctuary of Learning and it has grown. Correspondingly, the number of devotees has grown, and I try to save as many as I can.”

Thou never answer my question! Minus marks! How art thou?!

the voice thundered.

“You say leh?! More students means more phone calls, more scheduling, more preparations and longer hours. I hardly have time for myself and you have no idea the number of meals and Hong Kong drama episodes I’ve skipped! Now my Chinese sinseh is complaining that I often sleep and eat too late. On some nights, I even dream that I’m teaching when I sleep! The many hours of standing and bending over to check my students’ work have left my back resembling a Lego® brick! Frankly, all these seem to have taken a bit of a toll on me, as I find myself feeling tired easily these days ”

There was a brief moment of awkward silence and then …

My soon-to-be-not-so-Sexy Maths Tutor, thou art getting OLD!!! OLD OLD OLD OLD OLD OLD …

*clap of thunder*

The background receded rapidly away from her, a couple of birds fell from the sky, and those little fluffy clouds morphed into a dark swirling mass of Cumulonimbus, as the cold, stark reminder sliced through her soul like a hot knife through butter.

And so, while she turned and ran towards her long-neglected health & fitness & beauty centre, she decided that her New Year’s resolutions for 2011 (in true ‘O’ Level math question format) would be:

As with many tricky math questions in the pasts, the above may look simple but Miss Loi is pretty sure that this will be one of THE most difficult problems she’ll face in her life – far more difficult than any found in a top school’s killer prelim paper.

Oh well … at least she has one whole year to complete and hopefully score full marks (not counting that bonus mark) for this.

So what’s your (hopefully more achievable) New Year’s resolution(s)?

© 2007-2011 Jφss Sticks. Copycats will be mercilessly hunted down.

Whether it was at trendy Myeong-dong in the day,

or at arty Insadong in the night,

Miss Loi couldn’t stop bumping into this guy, waving his little green leaf at her from every conceivable corner in Korea.

Sneakily peeking at her from a distance away from the maddening crowd.

Sometimes, when Miss Loi was looking to the right, he surprised her by appearing on the left.

Sometimes his twin brother was with him, waving their little green leaves in unison.

He watched over her whenever and wherever she shopped.

Even when she was … umm … bra hunting.

Popping up in the most unlikely of places.

There was no escape.

But when he turned up in Jeju Island to ruin her ‘arty-farty poser’ shot,

… she decided that was it and yelled,

Enough! Leave me alone and let me have my holiday in peace!

When she turned around, she saw no one but instead heard a solo violin piece coming from the nearby woods.

Her curiosity piqued, she made her way slowly into the forest, passing underneath canopies of falling autumn leaves, drawn towards the beautiful yet sad tune.

She soon reached a clearing, and in the middle of it stood the guy decked out in a dashing white suit, his smile all but vanished as he focussed intensely on his violin piece.

And so Miss Loi stood there and watched and listened, mesmerized by the beautiful piece.

안녕하세요 (Annyeong Haseyo). I am sorry to have caused you alarm.

He said in his soft-spoken voice, upon spotting her.

Why are you following me everywhere?

Loi 교사 (Miss), I have read your blog and I know you are a very good mathematics teacher.

I saw from your blog that you are in Korea. I followed you a long time but I don’t have the courage to ask you because my English is no good and because I am shy.

But now a very, very, very dear friend of mine is having problems with her mathematics and I desperately want to help her.

However, I’m much better with my musical instruments like the violin, guitar and piano than my mathematics. So I hope you can help me improve my mathematics.

Suddenly, he gripped Miss Loi’s shoulders gently with his hands, and his words seemed to flow straight out from that pair of irresistible heart throb eyes …

Please! I need your help!

Help me improve my mathematics so that I can help her – because her boyfriend cannot be trusted with his mathematics!

Please! Loi 교사 Help me!

Please! I need your help! …

.

.

.

.

.

Eh Miss Loi, I need you help. How come I already cancel here cancel there and then cross multiply still cannot get the answer?

She jolted and suddenly found herself in the familiar surroundings of The Temple.

Eh Miss Loi, why are you smiling just now? Thinking of your boyfriend is it? Or I too handsome until you cannot concentrate? Hehehe.

Aiyo!!! Told you so many times already and you still make the same silly mistakes! And can you stop asking me stupid questions about my smile?!! If you carry on like this you’re gonna get a F4 F9! … … *BISH*

.

.

.

Eh Miss Loi, so were you thinking about your boyfriend just now?

*BISH*

© 2007-2011 Jφss Sticks. Copycats will be mercilessly hunted down.

On one hand, you get kawaii teeny girls like Miss Loi shopping away in Myeong-dong with their favourite K-pop songs blasting away in the background, seemingly oblivious to events that had happened elsewhere.

Peacetime shopping

On the other hand, just a couple of metro stations down the line, Miss Loi came face-to-face with battalions of riot police in full gear.

Miss Loi’s initial impression that this was some GI-Joe/Gundam-like performance for tourists was quickly dispelled when the situation became a little tense …

… and developed into what was a stand-off with a group of boisterous demonstrators (apparently something against South Korea’s ‘weak’ response to the North’s shelling of Yeongpyeong Island – NOT the romantic Yongpyong Ski Resort where a Harry Potter-like Bae Yong Joon met Choi Ji-woo in Winter Sonata – don’t think the North Koreans are that sacrilegious!)

还我清白！还我 Yeongpyeong!

And then things got a little out of hand.

Miss Loi thinks it’s really time for her to go home now. *rubs teary eyes*

© 2007-2011 Jφss Sticks. Copycats will be mercilessly hunted down.

In the latest development, the following disturbing footages were recovered some thousands of miles from Singapore, depicting events that were seemingly in direct conflict with Little Miss Loi‘s physics beliefs … like …

No camera tricks were used in these videos

Sorry for your missed calls. Miss Loi will respond as soon as she finds her way out of the twilight zone

© 2007-2011 Jφss Sticks. Copycats will be mercilessly hunted down.

Touching Down on Paradise

Time to reply her frightening backlog of emails amid a gentle rain and a serene chorus of croaking frogs. No prizes for guessing where she is right now.

In any case,

Happy Teachers’ Day!

More photos to follow …

© 2007-2011 Jφss Sticks. Copycats will be mercilessly hunted down.

Famous icon

Maybe she’ll bump into Kym again when she goes shopping later.

No prizes for guessing where this is … hmmmm … maybe a prize ought to be given to the first reader to guess correctly Miss Loi’s current location.

© 2007-2011 Jφss Sticks. Copycats will be mercilessly hunted down.

UPDATE (a week after APRIL FOOLS’): To those of you who have been asking Miss Loi for the contact of her ‘very, very famous Feng Shui Master’, he doesn’t exist since this is an APRIL FOOLS’ joke. Repeat, an APRIL FOOLS’ joke!

UPDATE (post APRIL FOOLS’): Chopsticks is such a silly name (for a tuition centre)

UPDATE: In view of the huge amount of work involved in ‘converting’ Jφss Sticks to ChΘρsticks, this blog will be shut down for a scheduled maintenance from 12am tonight (2 April 2010).

Hope to be up and running again by Saturday!

Truth be told: Miss Loi has been regularly consulting a Feng Shui Master (a very, very famous one if she might add) on matters pertaining to her outlook in life, place of residence, business and … umm … the affairs of the heart.

High on the list is, of course, the well-being of this beloved blog of hers and she was devastated when being told, in no uncertain terms, that the name Jφss Sticks is extremely inauspicious and that it would bring great woe and misfortune to her (and possibly its readers) should it be continued to be used in the future.

Overcoming her initial reluctance to part with a name that she (and presumably all readers) had grown attached to all these years, she nevertheless got down to business and, after numerous in-depth brainstorming sessions in the past weeks with the Master in his office (hence the lack of blog entries during this period), she has decided (with the Feng Shui Master’s venerable input and blessings) that …

… From the perspective of many weak students, mathematical topics are often like tiny grains of rice scattered all over the table. And since Miss Loi’s role is to facilitate the task of “picking up” these concepts as quickly and elegantly as possible, it is only supremely fitting to name this blog after the ancient tool invented for this purpose.

And so with immediate effect, Jφss Sticks shall be renamed

And Jφss Sticks Sessions are now ChΘρsticks sessions!

And with further input from the Master, based on the Chinese old wives’ tale that one (or one’s future husband/wive or whoever) will be cursed with a pock mark for each uneaten grain of rice, the tagline shall henceforth be changed to

Nice, witty and creative don’t you think? What else do you expect from Miss Loi? *flicks hair*

As you can see, the blog header has been amended to reflect these changes, and the rest of the website shall follow suit in due time, since the wise Feng Shui Master has ordered ALL traces of the nasty words Jφss Sticks to be removed by a certain auspicious date/time or else …

Lastly Miss Loi would like to thank you (her readers) for supporting Jφss Sticks (oops must refrain from speaking the words!) this blog in the past years, and though it has been painful for her to change the name, she looks forward to your continued loyal support for ChΘρsticks from now on.

*braces herself for lotsa work this long weekend*

© 2007-2011 Jφss Sticks. Copycats will be mercilessly hunted down.

Welcome to Morocco! And after this, you must speak French!

… so said the man (for the 10^nth time) to Miss Loi as she downed another bottle of Arabic Coke at the Marrakech cafe.

Looking down at the indefatigable, eternal show that is the Djemma el Fna, Miss Loi smiled at the Moroccan man (for the 10^nth time) and began massaging her sore feet.

Feet that were sore from the past days of wandering aimlessly and getting lost in the endlessly labyrinthine souks …

and from the long treks to the villages …

with those countless mounting and dismounting from her friendly mule on the way up the mountains …

… who promptly abandoned her when the snow began to fall (just joking)

In any case, as Miss Loi prepares to embark on the next phase of her journey to the Road of A Thousand Kasbahs, she would like to take this opportunity of a good internet connection to wish all

And remember in Morocco, you MUST speak French!

Au Revoir!

© 2007-2011 Jφss Sticks. Copycats will be mercilessly hunted down.

Staring idly at the hanging houses of Cuenca

Now to take care of the other two ‘M’s, Miss Loi will be flying off tomorrow (after hopefully seeing a certain Cristiano Ronaldo in action later) to a place that’s been repeatedly sung in the following music video:

A place which will hopefully be a little warmer. But a place that’s surely rough and tumble enough to cause Miss Loi to postpone her shopping here in the Spanish capital …

No Gucci bag for you today!

Till next time/year then!

© 2007-2011 Jφss Sticks. Copycats will be mercilessly hunted down.