In Continuum.

The Yellow Beetle

I still see the yellow beetle parked in the driveway,the lights from the house soft and private,Snowy sitting in the front lawn,smelling flowers and tumbling amongst the carefully trimmed grass.The dews on the tip of every one of them,from the watering routine in the afternoon.The front door opened,a lady in white and long pants greeted myself and my mother,welcoming us with opened arms.She was my English tuition teacher in Primary School,and this is an entry for her.

I remember the front door to my home opening,a lady with long hair and glasses came in through.She was greeted by my mother and they shook hands,while i peeked from around the corner of the corridor,wondering if this new stranger is going to slice me up into diced meat and then bury me under the floorboards.Because i had a phobia about teachers,which might seem silly to you now but,i think i was somewhere in Primary Two or Three,and every teacher with the ability to hold a ruler or feather duster in their hands were deemed as devils or even Lucifer himself.But anyway,hiding behind around the wall,i stared at her as she waved at me.She had a smell i remember,a smell i couldnt put my finger on.It was like,the smell after you cuddled in bed for too long,and it was strange for such a person,as i thought about it.She was a teacher at TKGS then,i in her mid twenties i imagine.I remember the gold cross she hung around her neck,she was a devoted christian.

I dont have a lot of recollection when it comes to the tuition classes with her at my place.I remember those hard plastic tapes with a sticky surface on one side,which people usually use to punch their names on,then sticking it on their textbooks.She used that to teach me English,by punching the names of various objects in my room.I remember her using a yellow tape once,punching the word 'plug',and then asking me to stick on the plug itself.I still have that same plug,with the tape stuck on it,reminding me of those lessons that i had with her.

I was her special student when she came to my place.Not just because i was awfully bad in English(Come on,i am a Taiwanese),but because i had an odd way of going through one of those spelling sessions.I remember not being able to spell a single word while sitting down at the table,as she repeated the same word over and over to me from a list of vocabulary,given to me in the previous lesson.But the funny thing was,if i walked around the room,paced the carpet in circles,then i'd be able to come up with the right combination of alphabets.That was a gift of some sort,and i became the master of spelling,though grammar is still - to this day - my weakness.I remember her laughing to my weird habits,and then allowing me to walk around in circles every single time during a spelling test.After all,getting the word right is everything,right?

A couple of months later,or classes moved to her place.I remember her house,a quiet house just down the road from mine.In a maze of housing estates,she lived with her parents,and drove a yellow Volkswagon Beetle.I remember commenting to her that it was like the beetle from Transformers,and the dog was awfully cute.It was huge,maybe even bigger than me.But it was gentle,and though i dared not go close to him,he would linger around at the back of the kitchen while we had our lessons in the dining room.I remember the cold glasses of Root Beer she used to make for me during the lessons,and then the Pictionary games she used to play with me during classes.She said it'd improve my English,and it sure did as i remember trying to guess 'Shower Head' with her bad drawing.

I dont remember when we lost contact with each other,probably right after my PSLE.My mother picked up the phone once,and she didnt ask for me.They talked about my result,and because they soon became close friends,they talked for a long time about other subjects.But i've never seen her again,not even her yellow beetle anymore.

My friend Alvin lived down the street before he moved to Bukit Timah.I used to hang around at his place,though it reminded me of a Haunted House somehow.But anyway,i used to take the longer route back from his house to mine,walking along the road down to her place to check out the house.I remember seeing the dog a couple of times,i called it Snowy.It came to the gate once,sniffing my pants,almost as if it was recognising my smell.But she wasnt there,and not even the yellow beetle.I wonder what happened to her,if the lights from the second floor window and the moving shadows were hers at all.I looked that fine summer afternoon,and moved on down the road to my house,never looking back until now.

I guess i must thank her for everything,my love for English.You know,how she sparked off my interest,placed me in the right direction and then added the rocket behind me to push me on down the road.Without her,i mightve been speaking like any other average Singaporean,blogging with bad English,and not to mention Singlish.It's not wrong to do so of course,but i guess i wouldnt have been able to stand myself if that really happened.Right?

I hope,that wherever she is now,she remember that little kid who paced around the room while doing spellings,and then the wonderful cups of Root Beers that tasted paricularly different for some reason.I hope she is doing fine,and still injecting her passion for the language into her student,still loving her work and then loving her students.Because really,i never had the chance to say this proper.I never saw her as somebody who is going to make a difference to my life.She was somebody,who appeared in my life a sort of demon,and then transformed all of a sudden after a series of lessons and bad drawing games,into a person i truly respect,and helped shaped me into the person i am now.I can't say that she makes up a large percentage in my passion for the language,since it is mostly taken up by dead or half dead writers in the last century.But i guess she started me off,got me interested and got me involved.

So here,full heartedly,i'd like to say this to you.

Thank You.