different and similar

woke up hating the feeling of hunger.
usually happens when i keep falling back to sleep after the alarm rings.
yet, i'm still not eating.
cuz there isn't anything at home that i like to eat for breakfast.
some time back i bought some slices of picnic ham so that during some mornings when i'm feeling good, i would cook some for breakfast.
but given how lazy i am every morning, eventually my mum took the initiative and cook the whole bunch for the whole family. haha..

anyway, yesterday was 中秋.
a very important festival in korea, a less important, yet still significant day for the chinese.
mum specifically requested me to be home for dinner, which i did.
it kinda felt like it's been a long time since i've dinner at the dinner table with my family. probably becuz i was busy for the last week.

what striked me most during dinner was the issue on the pregnant fried fish with all the eggs in it. can't rmb what it's called, but my sis said some japanese word.
anyway, dad and me thought it was just normal fish, but smaller and could probably just eat the whole thing. so each of us grabbed one. as soon as i bit into it, the 一粒一粒 feeling came. i could feel the multiple eggs that were inside my mouth. and then i gave mum the i-have-something-weird-in-my-mouth expression. did i mention i don't like eating fish eggs? haha..

immediately, i gave my mum the half-eaten pregnant fish and washed down the eggs with soup. at the same time, my dad gave the shocked look and quickly put back the pregnant fish. thereafter, mum and sis were eating the pregnant fish happily. -_-

as how things are, i'm rather similar to my dad in terms of being picky at food while sis is rather similar to mum in terms of these peripheral stuffs. dad always have a lot of weird and funny ideas, sometimes ridiculous beyond comprehension, and perhaps that's where i got my own weird and stupid ideas. but in terms of character, i seemed to be closer to mum and my sis closer to my dad. mum is pretty conscientious, but dad is rather... unorganized. he could make dinner plans and then say he didn't make reservations. haha.. but only a few times did we not succeed in having dinner at the planned dinner place. so i guess, me and my sis are both different and similar to my parents. it's a bit mix and match.

been under some pressure lately with the forensic ppt coming up fast, the fyp preparation for meeting later which frankly speaking, i'm not progressing much as i have just a general direction. the data entry work is constantly bugging me in my head, since there are stacks of it beside me and a whole big yellow box which is beside my damn big double mattress bed on which i sleep alone.

by the way, my mum has threatened to one day, throw away one of the mattress, just becuz she don't like it. used to belong to my sis, but since she threw out her bed, i kept the mattress cuz i thought it was a waste to throw it away. i've gotten used to sleeping on high grounds already. and i kinda like it. except for the rare occasion when i dropped down from the edge becuz i rolled too much; it happened once. still, i know that she's not going to do anything soon. cuz the bloodly mattress is queen size, and is stacked below my current one. without the help of anyone, my mum won't be able to get that mattress out of the house. so, at the moment, it's safe. unless she engaged the assistance of my dad. at the age of 53, i think my dad is still much stronger than me. it's like comparing an engineer to armour. in armour, we just sit inside the tanks. in engineer, they build bridges. different strength requirement, different build.

i'm actually quite excited about this evening meeting with the 2 profs. but the knowledge that i'm under-read on all my articles on deceptions and micro expression kills me to the point that i don't even have the motivation to start. plus the fact that i'm still hungry after typing so much ain't helping. eating mooncakes make me thirsty so i'm avoiding it.

and so to perhaps distract myself from hungry and work, i would talk about something else.

last night as i entertained the thought of reading, or just going to bed, a friend pushed me over the edge by saying there would be a surprise if i read for an hour and a half. of cuz that puts me in the mood for a while, but still i drifted off to the internet at some point of time. the surprise was a picture of little folded stars saying "well done" with some magazine cuttings of my name. truthfully speaking, i thought it was quite sweet as a gesture. and it's like i'm being in a real example of operant conditioning; positive reinforcements. except, perhaps i need more pairings to go, and also someone to validate that my readings are really "well-done" as said.

anyway, when i woke up this morning and looked at the picture again, i began to think that maybe becuz of her background as a teacher before, and her interactions with kids, she's tuned to motivating others with positive reinforcements, as a teacher should. not that it makes the gesture any less sweeter than it already is, but i wonder if the background is different, would the same gesture remains?

this also got me thinking about me being a lousy teacher.
i've tutor since the age of... 11? but i was doing buddy-reading at 9 or 10.
anyway, it has never really cross my mind that it was my job to motivate the tutee, or kid, or my friend. becuz for me, my motivation comes from within. a matter of intrinsic VS extrinsic. but you never know when long-term extrinsic could slowly crept its way into the intrinsic side. and with the readings i had from human motivation some sems back, there are different levels in btw the extremes. so, i'm just simplifying the situation here with just a binary.

i'm not sure how good am i at teaching, cuz i only taught them solutions. but never did motivate. even if i did, it's bare minimal, like "come on, you can do this." so when the kid is not motivated to learn, i become disheartened. but when he/she is motivated, i'm motivated myself. so basically i'm just letting things go as nature would have depict it, or perhaps more of the environment, rather than asserting force on the kid to bring them to their fullest potential, which i would feel is rather constricted with the 1.5 hrs i have with them, 2 hrs max.

my motivations as a child was nothing more than interest. a bit of achievement-oriented i must say, but that's for subjects like english, chinese, and the stupid science i hated. i even failed once. mathematics is a whole new different story. i would get engaged in it, spend hours looking at questions, trying all sorts of solutions, and if i can't solve, i'll look at the answers and work my way back. if the solutions weren't clear to me, i will try every possible way that i could think of until i get back to the original question, and then spend hours deciphering why is the solution show, why this works and why that didn't. i'll reason my way out, think until i get frustrated, and then get a sense of fulfillment after i finally understand one question. yes, that's mathematics for me. the olympics and new south wales maths test were always of interest to me. even till now.

yet my interest in mathematics has not been a viable choice as a career as i know the advanced level of mathematics test on the foundations of formulas with messy numbers. which, i cant really think of a job for that except for being a teacher. i like teaching solutions, just not teaching in general.

alright, it's nearly lunch time.