Confucius says

Confucius says...

Woman who cooks carrot and peas in the same pot is very unsanitary.

"I see", said the blind man, as he picked up the hammer and saw.

Sir wrote these one liners on the whiteboard while he was teaching us all how intonation can give grammar description. Realizing there's a 'Confucius says' on the board, we all became agitated and a little bit worried that the words are actually meant indirectly towards us. The last time the name Confucius sprung up out of nowhere, it was the time we got our pre-test diagnostics' result, where most of the class scored miserably

I immediately put my pen down after a while of copying down everything from the slides in front. I looked around and saw a few nervous faces, or perhaps that was only my imagination, though I did hear someone trying to interpret the lines. I kept thinking and thinking, what could have possibly gone wrong? What is the meaning of those one liners?

Then Sir stopped teaching halfway, and went on to the lines to explain them. Fearing the worst, giddy with anticipation, another silence seemed to overlap the already presiding silence from before, as the class waited for him to explain the meaning of the words...

(Disclaimer, this is not the actual words of Sir, just a vague recall from a humble me)

"Now looks at these words. What will happen if you put a stress before the word and?" Sir said as he went on to put the stress mark before the word 'and' and erased the letter 'a' and replaced it with an 'e', which resulted in the emergence of the word 'pees' in the place of the 'peas'

The class "Woman who cooks carrot... and PEES in the same pot?!" and we laughed hard at such realization. I guess no one ever saw that one coming, including myself

Sir went on to repeat the same thing with the second one liner by putting a stress mark before the word 'and'. When he repeated the line, not forgetting to stress the words "and SAW!" and made the expression of someone who could suddenly see again, the class chuckled with relief, or again, that was just me. What a magical hammer, I thought in the afterward~

Oh well, thank you Sir. Though you're very strict in your marking, it had in a way helped me to improve myself in the subject. Though sometime your jokes in the class can be deemed quite inappropriate for children some age and below, I really enjoyed laughing to myself at such jokes. Though you have such a thick American accent, I really loved it, cause it somehow makes the learning all the more unique

Last but not least, Sir had taught me to love Confucius' quote too~

不患人之不己知，患不知人也。
I am not bothered by the fact that I'm unknown. I am bothered when I do not know others