The Weeks in Pictures

It's the rainy season, until October. It rained every day, and I like it very much because I prefer the cold. This is taken at 730 am in the morning, when the school was about to start. My plants get more than enough water and the weed grew like, oh well, weed. Have to pay somebody to have them cut soon... 

The bane of them all.... Science presentation. I took the month off teaching and forced my students to do it instead. The result? TERRIBLE. But they appreciate me a lot more when they understand how difficult it was to make people understand, making the complicated, simpler i.e. be a teacher.

(Most presentation were show-and-tell. They read from texts and were not able to describe the process clearly, or even methodically)

I am teaching again as usual, after warning them to never ever get in my way again while teaching. 

They agreed, readily. Lesson learned.

Students at the assembly square.... on a Friday.

My multi coloured chili plant. I love this plant, as it flowers and produced chilies everyday.  My thai basil and mint are doing ok. But my basil plant died of fungus infection (damn it!). I may want to but some flowering plants soon.

I love sunflowers, but was not able to grow some. 

This was taken during a fire drill sometime ago. The firemen talked about how to extinguish certain type of fire, using two types of fire extinguishers. I was chosen as the teacher representative to extinguish the petrol-fueled fire in the picture.

It's a 'meh' experience. (Arson was a childhood hobby).

Me and my niece at a wedding reception. I drove my mom here, her friend's son had this ceremony at a new university hall.

My niece Qasrina is having ice cream as dessert. When I was her age, we couldn't get any ice cream., because it was never part of the menu. But as weddings got bigger and more exorbitant, the menu and decor reflect thus.

People eating in the hall, wedding reception.

The place where the bride and groom shall take their place for the guest to admire, see. This is also called sitting-in-state ceremony @ 'bersanding'. 

The set up in this picture in typical for a big wedding, where smaller weddings may have 1/3 of this size.

The ultra luxury weddings may even have living flowers and armies of followers to company the newlyweds on stage.

(I rarely wait for the bride and groom, I like to leave early before the rush) 

The food. Typical high cholesterol, glorious blood clotting food!

Fat is flavour!

And lastly, some of my students accompanying me to eat at some nearby food shop. I do this sometimes when I stayed in school as warden for the day.

To answer why I am infamous to some people.... it is mostly my own fault. I was a fiery teacher who spewed profanity whenever I don't get my way, even in class. Not only my words were harsh, I ruled all my classes with an iron fist.

Students tolerate me, hate me, or whatever.

And these students will tell their parents, and their parents will contact the people above - why is this monster teaching our children?!!

I don't know where you come from.... But if a teacher cannot scold you for anything... what will you end up being? Spare the rod and ruin the children.

But no worry. The new Government, with the new Education Minister is accelerating the rot by restricting teachers a lot. "The students cannot be harmed emotionally. The students cannot be scolded. No punishment will ever meted. etc "

Don't worry, it was the end of Fiery Ramzu. Well Hello Docile Discipline Teacher!   

The Gall of Some People @ O Great Pretenders

This morning as I was walking to the school office from my car, I heard the teacher-on-duty berating the assembled students about the incident yesterday. She said there had been SEVERAL students who had 'fallen sick' and wanted to be taken to the clinic.

Today is Thursday and tomorrow's Friday. Next week entirety is the Eid Mubarak's holiday and students may return back from this Friday evening.

As an entity born with a dark soul, I know how these naughty students think. They pretended to be sick so the good people in the clinic would give them a couple of days off and MC certificates. Then they can happily skip school much earlier than the rest, and I believe their parents are also in cahoot in this dastardly proceedings.

So as I stopped by the ranting teacher, told her to announce that if any students wished to go to the clinic today, they have to see me first. She immediately expressed my request on the PA for everybody to hear.

Now it is almost an hour after the announcement.... nobody shows up, as I predicted.

My reputation for being a thorough investigator and all round nasty person do have its merits.

This was a ferret of mine, Disco, who died last year. These photos were taken years ago when we played by the beach with some friends of mine. He was an affectionate boy from most ferrets, I could see him smiling when he was happy. 

I looked up for his pictures here in my own blog and would like to share the memory of Disco with you people :'(

We, Teachers are under Attack! (because of the bloody haze!)

This godawful haze, originated from Indonesia has created many problems for the neighbouring countries. The rise in respiratory illnesses spiked this time of the year. A lot of outdoor events, some major and important are also cancelled because of the worsening air quality.

And schools were closed for days too..... People should stay indoors for health reasons.

This created a new problem, for parents at least. When schools are closed, where do you put your children for care? Most parents cannot bring their children to work, and the hyper active ones will bring major headaches without supervision.

So where do the parents go to vent their anger and frustration? The Internet, especially FACEBOOK.
Who they blamed? The TEACHERS for closing schools.

The war between these narrow minded parents and teachers online has gone critically viral these couple of weeks.

I must make this very clear; The decision to close school was made by the Ministry of Education, not us lowly teachers. A directive was issued for the schools to be closed for certain times in certain areas. And the schools were closed not by whim, but to save a great many children from travelling to school in hazardous situation. (So why blame the teachers? We don't create the haze to close schools for pleasure). 

Some of the comments by these frustrated parents are dangerously scathing. Other than blaming the teachers for closing schools, they accused most teachers to be improperly trained  and not really serious about the well being and education of their children.

And some comments are seriously not proper to be typed here.

Teachers retaliated (including yours truly) by pointing how narrow minded these adults were. We teachers ARE NOT glorified nannies, to care for your children while they work.
We educate and improve minds and body. A school is NOT a daycare centre.

(My actual nuclear bomb; If you cannot care for your own children for a couple of days without us, you have no business whatsoever to breed!)

About the level of education of teachers, those of us with high levels would seek these misguided parents in their Facebook domain, challenging them to see whose education is higher. (Mind you, we teachers got so many university grads and even PhDs. ) After heavy fire, many FB accounts of said victimized parents were terminated by the owners.

It maybe petty and bullying. but WAR IS WAR.

There are still a great many parents who thanked us teachers during these hours. A lot of the people understand, and are still happy to send their children to school, trusting us with the education and growth. For this kind of parents, we teachers are very happy to accept the responsibility.

Now picture time; (something to show that a teacher is not only good in class, and I already posted this in my FB account to prove)

This is me calmingly waiting for something....

Here, in a hospital ward, at midnight...... (seriously, after midnight)

For this student of mine, who had his foot stitched because of an accident at the hostel room. 

We are TEACHERS, and We do Serve.

But We are NOT your damn NANNIES!

p.s.
- Facebook can be a very very bad place to be when people with limited intellect decided to share their piece of mind :P

In need of inspiration...

Cici from Liquid Mind, Sanguine Soul replied to my comment on her blog thusly;

"Always good to hear from you. How are you doing? Still have same roommate? Still in the same house? How is the job?"

I feel bad about my mood swings to blog. I used to enjoy blogging so much, I'd blog almost everyday a few years ago. Life is not that boring, yet I the fire to tell everyone via long words is almost diminished.

I blame Facebook for this!

I haven't opened my email for quite sometime, mainly because there is nobody (interesting) to correspond with. So when I saw Madam Cici's message.... I say what the heck, let's put this in an entry.

"How are you doing?"

Truthfully, this is the saddest week I had this year. One of my three ferrets died suddenly. Please do not ask why, if it was because of my negligence or was it truly his time. I had him since he was 2 months old in September 2009. Disco (his name, a male sable) was a bit poorly for a young ferret, yet when he had grown, was more active than his normal mate, Kaos (another male sable). I will miss the hyper guy greatly...

This picture is of the two of them in 2009. Disco is on the left, Kaos on the right. They were a few months old then.

"Still have same roommate? Still in the same house?"

:) Yes. I still live with the same housemate, in the same house I bought for my ex-wife a long time ago. He is now working as a registration officer for a local university, a huge leap from his previous post as a front desk officer at a holiday resort.

I do love my house, but I hate to clean the bit of land it has around it. Two night ago, I burned some empty boxes on a spot where the weeds were too high for my liking. I poured on some petrol, light it up with a lighter and whoosh! I burnt a bit of the hair on my leg from that stunt.
Fortunately I didn't burn any hair or eyebrows, ha! (Notice to myself; petrol is not your friend to start a fire).

I might gain a new housemate in 4 months time. But that is a news for the future :) 

"How is the job?"

For those people who is new to me, or simply have forgotten, I am a Science Teacher by trade.
Life is NOT GOOD for teachers this new century it seems.... Every fault that can be found in a students can be blamed at the school or the teachers. 

Your child is stupid. Blame the teachers for not teaching well. Your child is rude. Blame the teachers for not telling them off. Your child is depressed. Blame the teachers for pressuring the students with homework etc. Your child plays a lot. Blame the teachers for not handling the class well enough. Your child is caught for a misconduct. Hell, no, its not my child fault, it is you who didn't monitor your students well. And it goes on and on.

Sometimes I wonder what is the POINT to have parents?

I love my job, yes, teaching. But sometimes I wondered why people do these things they do.

No wonder why they say a teacher's job is next to sainthood (a good teacher anyway).

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I wish you a good afternoon. Now i will continue my day wondering what to do this happy school holiday. (Yes, I am at home, not working, and bored!) Thanks for reading :)