Creatures of habit.

People and animals sure are creatures of habit. This can be proven by my driving my mother's car to work today.
The guardians of the children are so used to seeing my beat up old car, that I know that were not listening out for it, nor do they realise, when I honked my mother's car to the same rhythm patterns and yet they don't know it is me who is honking.

Take for example, my dog. The moment I turn off my beat up car engine, my dog starts barking. And this is my dog being tied up and unable to see from the back of the house. He even barks the same for my brother's car. Whereas, if it is my mother's car, he doesn't bark at all? This just shows how much of the environment the dog is aware of.
Of course, it only goes to as far as to the dog is trained and knows. When I drive my mother's car and turn off the engine, he doesn't bark, coz he still thinks it's my mother.

I think the correct term is conditioning. A lot of us do things by habit, because we are so conditioned to it.

Conditioning also explains why it is we do not observe things in the environment because we are so used to travelling on the same path or route most of the time. However, if we take a different route or path, it is so different that we actually have to concentrate and take notice of the little things here and there.

This theory explains why my out of town friends are better at the road directions in town than I am, who is always struggling and trying to remember the names of the roads, nor do I remember any of the landmarks or signs, or even how to get there *sigh*. A good example cited to me is Ellis. Ha ha. Of course, it would be the same for me if I went out of town.

I mentioned this to the children, and they understand that it their guardians (the first time round that is), did not recognize the car. The only difference between us and animals are, we can think faster and remember after the first time of seeing something new, whereas animals can't and may take a bit longer....and of course, they run by "instincts" much more than we do. Heh.

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The haze has been playing havoc on the weather the past few days. Today's weather was bad, as I could see huge blankets of the haze around even in the afternoon. The smell of burning wood is so strong that I can smell it when I wind down the window of my car. The children still have to attend school nonetheless.
Jasper has been sick, and Zhi En broke her arm, that she carries a sling around. I know coz her dad brought her to school yesterday.

Xin Qiao asked why didn't I put my "shoulder gloves" on. (she was used to seeing me put it on).
I said that was because the sun was not out. (due to the haze!) I told her that if I did not use it, my skin would become very dark.

She remarked something about about me "loving my skin", so I answered, "of course!".
Me: If I didn't love or looked after my own skin, who will look after it? My parents can't take care of me forever. Your parents can't take care of your skin for you. So you have to take care of your own skin.

Then she asked me something about the gears of the car. I told her that she can't touch the gears, coz they controlled the movements of the car, and if people play with it, the person driving the road could crash into another car!

XinQiao then went on to show me how her parent unlocked the lock of the gears, and then I said, oh, different cars have different ways of displaying the controls, like this car doesn't have the gear lock, but all cars still have gears but displayed in a different manner.

I was thinking about cars, and thinking in my mind when all of a sudden, Cheng Wei remarked to me "red Toyota car!" had passed by. Cheng Wei is pretty observant, and I know that he could not mistake a Toyota for anything else, but I didn't know if he meant the red sports Toyota car that I passed by everyday, so I stopped to see if the car was there, and I pointed out the red sports car to him.

Whenever I forget who didn't come to class, or wasn't in class, all I have to do is ask Cheng Wei, and he will rail out all the names of the children who have been absent or sick. Pretty good notebook there, huh?

Anyway, I just found this really good idea for blogging.....haha...
Nah, I wont share with you what it is yet.....but just going to ruminate on it...*he he*.