gain and forfeit

This whole week has been filled with meetings and basketball trainings in the afternoon. The training - so far so good, I go there to oversee je, since I still don't know much about training people for basketball competition bah.. sheeeshh

Classes -- it's quite tough to teach the kids bio because language is really a problem to them. I let them tried some objective questions and the best score was 20 out of 35 correct, which is actually quite low. Maths - alright, i think i did go too fast in some parts and therefore i am now slowing down and preparing them for the Feb test. Science - boleh tahan la, although one of the classes is a bit slow but still can cope. The principal will be coming in to observe me teaching next friday. adui. and then have to be observed by ketua panita and ketua bidang for all the subjects i teach. *pengsan*

This weekend i am going to cook pasta again. My housemate and i actually came out with a menu.. well, soon i can open a restaurant. :p bought some cockroach-lizard traps and it worked. A lizard was trapped and the ants that come after the dead lizard were also trapped coz' it works like the fly paper. They are stuck on the trap.. *sticky sticky*

Had a mini discussion with my form 4 kids on 'what does it mean to be successful'. One boy mentioned 'Beriman' and that sparked off this verse on my mind and i wrote it on the board.

What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?

and this verse really got them thinking.

including me.

nothing new

Week 3.

the battle with the creatures continues. i am sick of talking/complaining about that but it still gets into my nerves. grrh.

i have a new timetable which started last week. 25 periods a week. they took away my form 2 science and replaced with 2 classes of form 2 maths. sigh. MATHS!

this week the various clubs, societies, games and houses are having their AGM. i still tak paham-paham why the ketua for ALL positions must be a male and the assistant must be a female. garh. shouldn't we look into the equality of chances to perform, to show our abilities and capabilities to take up [heavy] responsibilities? whateverlarjiahui!

i am now officially THE COACH for the girls' basketball team and there's a interschool match on 23-25th February. *pengsan*

tell me how to train a basketball team..

bukankah today the end of week 2 in school?

nothing extraordinary. thank God :p

it has been raining in LD for the past few days. and i began to miss the sun and the heat in my house .. my fan-less house .. *_*

cooking is fun. well, in this no-life place, you create life.. and so, you cook! you cook to make yourself happy, you cook to feel good, you cook kill time, you plan your meals for the whole week, you plan what dishes you want to cook, you think about the dishes in your family restaurant and you re-create them in the land outside of ipoh old town. not bad eh? :p

*darn. my email is taking ages to load and it's still blank and i need to email the pelan-pelan to the ketua bidang.. *

hope the PIC can process the papers and give me my well-deserved pay as soon as possible.

stupid insects, lizards and arachnids!

sigh. and how come there's still 4 more weeks before CNY?!

there was a giant killer bee

it flew into the kitchen.

then it flew in and out of the living room. i thought it was gone.

i went in to my room and was shocked to see it lepak-ing in my room near the window.

so i started the battle against the giant killer bee with the Smack That song.....

smack that. it's on the window. smack that. give me somemore. smack that. til it get sore. smack that. ooooh oooohhhh..

it fainted on the floor. i tah-pau it in a plastic bag. then my housemate said, "eh, it won't bore a hole and escape, right?''

ok.. to make sure it's really dead and won't bore a hole to escape, she started to chop the plastic bag with a hand-held fan like she's chopping garlic.

R.I.P., giant killer bee.

a world lives in me

You can kiss your family and friends good-bye and
put miles between you, but at the same time you carry them with
you in your heart, your mind, your stomach, because you do not
just live in a world but a world lives in you.
-Frederick Buechner, Telling the Truth

****

I ordered nescafe susu one morning from the school canteen. While drinking it, suddenly i felt so jimo coz' i remembered all the fun i had during teaching practice in SA with my friends. Then one afternoon i went to eat pork noddle, then jimo-ness came again coz i remembered the times when Kokhow brought us to eat at Sun Sea, and Suitlin brought me to eat at one shop in Taman Bahagia. Sigh, jimo...

Schools dismisses at 11.15am on Fridays. So i went to the town with my housemate (this is the 3rd time within 5 days) to get some household stuff, groceries, to photostate some exercises and documents. to and fro usually takes about 30-40minutes, depends on the traffic. Yes, you can get traffic jammed in Lahad Datu.

The house looks slightly better. maybe perhaps i have adjusted a bit to that kind of condition but sometimes it still gives me the one-of-a-kind feeling.. eeeewww... They said put egg shells to con the stupid lizards. i am trying and waiting to see if it is successful.

God is good.

did i tell you, the guru kanan of Maths and Science department in my school looks like my ex-boss, Cheffrost? :p

coming to the end of week 1

Thursday is my busiest day coz i have 6 periods a day. *pengsan*

so far... i am appointed to be in-charged of the school basketball team *gosh*. Then me and my colleague need to do the organisation chart of the school staff. Then i might need to be the Guru PEKA to work out the Science PEKA stuff. Then the school might put me in-charge of the library. Then i don't know what else will come.

First week of school has been good. and yay, tomorrow is friday! ;)
The students here are generally well-behaved, so there's not much discipline problem. Partly because the students are not very exposed to the world outside. Their routine is a killer. No TV, no internet, outing once a month, wake up at 4.30am, daily assembly at 6, class from 6.45 am to 1.35pm, lunch, afternoon study time, evening exercise, dinner, night study time, supper, then tidur. And the cycle repeats itself.

The main problem is teaching them Science and Bio in English. Half of the time, if not most, i need to repeat using my super limited BM. Here we can't do all the canggih-manggih ICT stuff as often as we want to. Everything is like my good old school days. Marker pen and talk.

i enjoyed teaching the form 2 class. Form 3 classes are ok, but i should go slower. Form 4, language is definitely a problem and i am trying to figure out how else to teach them, have to work on how to explain better. The good thing about the students here --- they don't act like as if they know everything, and they are waiting for you to teach them things. And that's a reward in itself.

i'm already in the shutting down mode.

i got only 2 periods tomorrow.

and here comes the weekend.

and the spring-cleaning. stupid lizards are annoying. they like to lepak at the ceiling in my room. cis, and poo on my bed like dropping some atomic bombs. the ants are still kings and queens at my place. the cockroaches pay their visit every now and then. the spiders are the landlords. and the swallows have made my flat their Gua Niah or Gua Tempurung, their faeces is like a red carpet all the way down from my floor to the ground floor. Discovered the only English radio station which Traxx fm. TV - nothing to watch but snowflakes while listening to the conversation.

ok. i told you i'm in the shutting down mode.

day 1 in school

ok

i went to school on Sunday afternoon to get my timetable and also to look see look see and meet the principal, some teachers and students. At night, the form teachers had to go back to school to meet the students and see them getting ready the classroom. it is not easy to understand their BM but it sounds nice. haha

jiaaaaa is given the mandate to teach 1 class of Form 2 Science, 2 classes of Form 3 Science *gasp, coz' they got PMR*, and 1 class of Form 4 Biology which I am also their form teacher.

And so .. day 1 was good. Thank God! I went in to the Form 2 and 3 classes. Without textbook, no nothing, only got marker pens and my own timetable, only knew the first chapter of the subject coz' i got them from AJW.

Ahaha... i played the Geo Challenge game again, just to illustrate some points on Repetition and to kill some time. What else to do when i got 2 periods with them? Gah... revised je lar some of the Science topics they have learned last year and then tried to relate it to the first chapter of Form 2 and 3 science..... :P

Oh.. i forgot to mention... school starts at 6.45 am!!!!!!!!! *scream my lungs out*

tomorrow is going to be a good day.

geee.... i guess i really need to befriend lizards and spiders...

and die la you, stupid cockroaches...

day 2 in LD

i am officially at the other side of 'my' world.

31st Dec - 2015 left KL, as the plane was taking off.. the girl going LD with me cried wei.. *oh god.. tahan!* touched down at KKIA at 2240, tumpang at Sek. Men Sains Sabah for a night. i heard the sound of fireworks but i was too tired to go out and see, more of like not in the mood for anything. then the next morning i reached Lahad Datu at about 1130, the school bus came to get us from the airport. it was a 20 minutes drive from the airport to my school, Sek Men Sains Lahad Datu.

i am staying in the teachers' quarters. 4th floor, highest. no fan, coz the ceiling fan in the living room has been ROSAK for a year. the room, no fan also, urgently need a stand fan. it's like a furncae here. TV - die, can't watch anything wan. the bathroom reminded me of the neriton bathroom *gasp*. there are lots and lots of droppings of swallows along the staircase. and i think i can get bird's nest tooo. there are many big spiders, not to mention their spiderwebssssss. ants here and there. lizards and their droppings. i met two cockroaches last night. one of them had the same colour as the floor! :( i still haven't cleaned my wardrobe. i want to pengsan when i looked at it coz it has been 'home' for a few big spiders.

the sight of the place quite put me off. seriously and honestly. and no choice, i have to display my OCD-ness. super looking forward to cny and quickly fly back. trying to book the tickets but the internet is so slow, it has been 'processing transaction' for almost an hour.

Not that LD is not nice or what.. and not that i don't like LD but i just wonder how people can like that place, unless that's your hometown. i am giving myself 2-3 years here, hope not making it to 4 years. i will try to survive the years quarter by quarter... open hearts and happy thoughts, jiaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!!

ah.. thank God the housemate is from Sabah and knows how to get to places. thank God for Rainbows; for lame jokes from family and friends; for connections; for safe flight. thank God for family friends, hehe, thanks for sending me off. haih, thank God for a spacious apartment that i will call 'home' for at least many months ahead, despite the *ahem* condition.
ahaha, and Digi Yellow Man is proving his worth. ;)

what else...?

tomorrow got work in school. the kids are coming back. my, heard that all new teachers have to be class teachers. oh wells.