i'm like crushed to the max at this point.

Jiaaaaa is still in school at this hour.

Today has been a frustrating day, especially for maths. I am going to talk about Maths. All the dissatisfaction expressed below goes to Maths, not Bio, not Science.

I have started with the chapter on Ratios, Rates and Proportions. 

For the past few weeks i have spent so much time doing Algebraic Expressions and Linear Equations with the students. Exercises were given. Extra questions were given. We even had an extra class last night just to go through the chapter on Algebraic Expressions. I can honestly *and proudly* tell you that i put my heart, mind, and soul into helping them to understand.

But today, their silly questions that have not been processed in their brain really crushed my spirit to the max. 

Earlier on, we learnt this - 

2(2x + 1) = 4x + 2

Today, while solving one of the questions with the students... we came across this...

(2x + 4) x 8 = 16x + 32

One girl gave me her 'standard' blank look and her 'famous' head shake....

'Teacher, why 16x.....?'

I almost wanted to shout at her 'You blind ah? Can't you see it's 2x multiplied by 8?'

Ok. Almost.

And I almost wanted to ask them 'Please stop asking silly/stupid questions.'

Of course I didn't use that kind of words. 

"OK. Listen up. Open your eyes and observe carefully..... we are doing multiplication here. That's why it's 16x"

The drama is.. she still couldn't get it!!!!!!! my god!!!! I seriously wanted to just disappear into thin air at the very moment. And I know my face had turned as red as tomato which i only wanted it to be like that during the lepak drinking time. Not in front of those brats who are not using their brain.

So, we had to go through it again to tell her that both are the same. We are still doing multiplication for goodness sake! Ok great, finally she got it. And these brats are already in the middle of being a Form 2 students. I wonder what happened during primary school and their Form 1.

Then, another drama came. This girl couldn't understand the steps to determine if a pair of ratios are equivalent or not. Goodness gracious. oh crap. this is really bad, i tell you. I was already quite agitated with the whole 16x incident, and now there's another crappy 'why-is-it-like-that' question. We almost fought. Her friends who have already understood way earlier than her kept explaining to her but she refused to listen and kept pestering me with her questions.

Argh, give me a break!

I took a deep breath and told God, "Oh God, you've got to do this crap. I don't know how the heck to explain any more."

"Hey, pay attention and listen carefully...." blah blah blah... i tried again. and again. and finally i don't need to try again. It finally dawned on her why we are doing this and not that... etc etc etc...

May I tell you how tired I got every time i walked out from the math classes, particularly for that class?

There's no satisfaction in that. is it rewarding? i am not feeling anything of that kind. seriously.

Next week they will have their Math April test. I don't know what will become of me if they failed the test. And I have the feeling that this is going to happen to some of them. this is crap, because some of them can't even do proper addition and subtraction of positive and negative integers. Such basic stuff and yet they can't give accurate answers.


I am in ruins.

in deep thoughts

there's always something on your mind

once in a year! ;)

Happy Birthday  

MacroQueen! 

here you are.

sometimes you wonder why you have to be in that system. and you're stuck there, at least for quite a while.

do you know what's worth fighting for?
when it's not worth fighting for?
does it take your breath away
and you feel yourself suffocating?
~21 Guns~

i guess sometimes we need to know when to back off,

simply because it's not worth fighting for.

i will

persevere.

cloudy.

and gloomy.

Pirates!

and the policemen! I can finally have some pirates-police stuff after 3 months in LD.

jiaaaaaa went to this place called Borneo Paradise Eco Farm in Lahad Datu this afternoon. It's a school Biology field trip for the Form 5 students. They are supposed to go there, look at some mangrove trees, the whatever pneumatophore and viviparity thingy, and then do a report on this whole trip as one of their PEKA projects.

Tomorrow i will be going there again, bringing the second group of students.

One of the policemen with higher ranking gave us some briefing on safety and emergency stuff. He kept talking about "kalau ada apa-apa ancaman...." (if there's any threat.....)

ancaman...

ancaman......

ancaman......!!

In my heart, I was like thinking, "what kind of threat? Tigers? Snakes? Crocs? Poisonous frogs?"

And so, I asked the teacher standing beside me.

"The ancaman he's talking about.... he's refering to ancaman from animals, right.......?"

He looked at me with his eyes wide open, and he said to me...

"Nooooooooo.. it's ....."
and he made the word lanun with his lips.

Wah... i was like... weeeee.. got pirates stuff finally :p

i'm so crappy, right? hahahaha.
anyway, the pirates better not show themselves up tomorrow coz' i will be there. :p

this 2 weeks i am going to be dead busy.

oh nooooooooooooooooooooooooo

I thought holiday just started yesterday.

gosh.

and school's starting tomorrow!

it's saturday and i need to keep my cool

OKies ... here are some of my 'bday' pictures and some other pictures telling you The Story in Lahad Datu.

These are some of the 4Z boys. They are quite good boys - hardworking, polite, cheeky at times. ;)

This is their dress code - black and white, during 'masa prep' which is their weekdays homework time starting from 2.30-4pm. Look at the big cake with nice fruits on top!

Here you have some of the 4Z girls and a naughty boy nicknamed Ben at the back. It's a pleasure to teach them Bio and be their form teacher, probably because they are older and they don't need to be treated like kids as much as the form 2 brats. Anyway, they are still brats at times. arggghhh. The week before the school holidays, i let them presented some subtopics of chapter 4. It was quite fun to watch them, esp Hana (the girl at the left of the 2nd and3rd picture) who did most of the presentation on Carbohydrates. She took the marker pen and started to teach us the types of carbohydrates, the formation and breaking down of carbohydrates.. lalala.. It was nice to watch, seriously, because it made me feel so encouraged in a way. Not just her, other kids as well. The best thing for me is to see students TRYING - trying to understand, trying to speak, trying to give good answer after thinking through with their brains. Their English isn't good, some bad, but they tried to present in English with some BM in it. it was good enough.

What's your favourite Form 3 Science topic? Tell me it's Reproduction! :p haha, i tell you.. that was the funniest lesson i had with the two Form 3 classes. They presented the subtopics and it was them who wanted to do the boy-girl way - the boys talk about the girls', while the girls talk about the boys'. hahaha. it was HILARIOUS i tell you!!! oh my gosh. am i tooooo cruel? oh no, look what have i done to the poor souls of 15-year old kids? :p

Ok. enough about school. ;)

This is the main road next to the wet market. The town is really crowded especially on Sundays. You can see people pushing the wheelbarrow everywhere, selling canned drinks, fruits, and some other stuff. Besides that, there are many young and old men selling 'duty-free' cigarettes of various brands like Astro, Suria, and some other brands with funny names from Indonesia and Philippines etc, all packed inside a black plastic bag. It's common to see children coming over asking for money, or selling plastics bags.

This is the Lahad Datu wet market. I was waiting inside the car and it began to rain and what other things can be better than taking pictures of people! ;)

Sigh, my laptop is aging and it's getting a bit senile. :p
I wanted to transfer the pictures from my camera to the laptop but it just refused to load. There's a lot of pictures inside the camera, some pictures of the Tawau trip or some other random pictures of Lahad Datu. grrrhh. i need a new laptop! and the celcom-slow-like-tortoise-broadband is really frustrating. :p

This was the day 1 rainbow. it's not that clear la.
And that's the runway of the LD airport, just nice for Fokkers :p

times like this ease the pain of wanting to be home.

oh that's Tawau ;)

I went for a one day trip to Tawau with 3 friends. It's about 2.5 hours drive away. We actually have not idea how the road is like, neither have we been there. The other two friends went there before but they are not too sure with the directions as well. I drove from LD to Tawau while my friend, J, drove from Tawau back to LD. There's lots and lots of oil palm plantations along the way, snake-liked roads which go uphill and downhill, pretty light traffic (ok, got some slow moving lorries once in a while, a skilled driver like me can't be beaten by that!). The sun shone brightly in the blue sky and everywhere you see green. It was a nice drive, i must say! ;)

We were there for about 7 hours - a colleague from Tawau brought us to go around here and there. We went to the seaside, market, Servay, Giant... I guess it was a good break from the LD life although it's just for a few hours.

School is starting on monday and a string of events is going to unfold. Come what may!

OK, it's going to be 10 weeks of craziness and insanity and stress, and soon it will be intensified to hundred folds by the longing to be home. hahaha. Minus the exam weeks, i'll only have about 7 out of the 10 weeks to teach - to cover Form 4 Biology till Chapter 6 Nutrition; Form 3 Science til chapter 7 Electricity; and my favourite, Form 2 Math til .........*gosh, i can't remember, or maybe i am subconsciously suppressing the knowledge about it, haha*

alrightyz.. i am going to pengsan on the bed after one morning of driving and a day of walking here and there under the hot sun and then ended the day with Paulaner's friend from Netherlands. It's time to think about what to cook for tomorrow's lunch and dinner! ;)

jiaaaaa is a happy girl when she isn't jimo-fimo-finding-nemo.

what does He require of me?

He has showed you, o man, what is good.
And what does
the LORD require of you?

To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.
Micah 6:8

where's nemo?

Every time i pass by the LD airport, it never fails to remind me of my first day in this place, how a total shocker Day-1-in-LD was for me when i landed here; and how at the end of the first day, i was greeted by a rainbow over the sky as my housemate drove pass the airport heading towards town. alrightz. This afternoon the radio was playing Train's Hey Soul Sister as i was driving along that stretch of road and i thought of rachelchoong and gah.. i almost wanted to burst out in tears. almost, and therefore thank God i didnt. if not, it would be so embarrassing. *sorry rachel, please don't scold me for being jimo :p*

jimo-fimo-finding-nemo.

"This is the secret of Jeremiah's persevering pilgrimage - not thinking with dread about the long road ahead but greeting the present moment, every present moment, with obedient delight, with expectant hope: 'My heart is ready!' " - Eugene Peterson

okay. stop finding nemo, jiaaaaa. stop it!

alright, i am already in the middle of march. garh. there's still some work not done yet. i have to prepare the PEKA list, mark the PEKA reports; and get ready to continue teaching Math after the break, lalala... then the school is going to have Hari Anugerah thingy, Sports day.. blah blah blah.. geeee.. whateverlar..

did i tell you that my 4 Zamrud kids celebrated my birthday during their prep time? It was the first day of school after the cny break and they actually bought a cake on sunday and asked their canteen aunty to keep it in the fridge. it was a huge cake i tell you. i will show you the picture some other time. i really appreciated it. well, the quiet 2*th birthday ain't that quiet after all. :p

I began to see and understand how difficult it can be to 'serve' the country in a place other than where i wanted. Things are so different when you experienced them first hand. Emotions is one of the scariest thing i need to deal with. How do you balance the positive feeling (that your job can be pretty rewarding although not in financial sense, of course) and the negative feeling (that you are in a sense, living in lack, lack of the comfort you wanted and needed)? Well, honestly sometimes i get kind of jealous of friends who are staying back in the other side of my world. They have access to different things, simple things such as cinemas to enjoy good shows (none in LD), proper shopping malls (none in LD that matches that standard), driving along nice highways (nope, you have snake-liked bumpy tar roads), nice hangout places which you can sit there for hours drinking tea, coffee or Paulaner (none here, except some shops that show poor imitations of KimGary, Ipoh Old Town, etc) , and the list goes on. I'm not exactly complaining or grumbling although it sounds like it. AH, i knew it!

Above all, it's the company of friends (besides family) back in the other side of my world which i missed the most. It's like you meet hundreds of people every schooling day and yet you feel the immense longing to be with people who forms the world that lives in you. seriously. that's what i'm feeling every day. every freaking day. i didn't want to make things so jimo but sometimes i just can't help.

January and February were months of finding my place in LD and getting used to the all-too-quiet life here. In the 3rd month, i am pushed to deal with the emotional aspect of life as i continue the search of a place for jiaaaaa in LD. I am learning how to strike a balance between the positive and negative feelings. I am learning how to deal with emotions, how to deal with the quest of finding nemo when such quests are needed.

As if to add to the jimo-ness, [V] is playing Celine Dion's All By Myself.

gah, how many times have i told you that you'll be fine?

a few weeks ago

these were some of the pictures i took during my CNY break back at the other side of my world. gah, i was hit by the worst nightmare when the dvd which i used to save the pictures turned out to be 'empty' when i checked it the other day!! *pengsan, but good thing is i haven't deleted them from my camera* so, at the mean time i have to retrieve some of them from facebook coz' i am lazy to get them from my baby canon. :p

my cousin

this is a CNY jump!

oh yeah.. i bought the celcom broadband thingy. at least now i got something to do after school which is to lepak online. haha. astro is still not here yet. gah. did i tell how terrible miserable horrible it can be when there's only TV1 and TV2, and can't even get TV3? i have never known how suffering it could be until i landed here in this place. :P

think positive, jiaaaa!! Happy thoughts!!!!!

and so yesterday was the first day of school break and i actually woke up early to catch the sunrise and walked along the trail to school to take some pictures. hmm, at least it is something constructive and therapeutic to do. :p

you'll be fine.

one week away from the 'norm'

counting down to 11.15am!

it's school holiday again! *jump for joy*

gah.. but i won't be going any where la, except going to the town to get groceries, curtains, etc. Well, there'll be a huge spring cleaning in my house next week. The two rooms in my house are in terrible condition. There are spiderwebs, dust, old furniture and insects. That makes the rooms look like some haunted rooms where no one has slept there for a very very long time. Haih. Whateverlar.

I felt one of a kind when my housemate and i went to get Astro a few days ago. It's like it suddenly dawned on me *again* that i am here not for a short period of time, probably 3-5 years and hopefully not 10 years. I don't know why it can be so hard for me to get use to the fact that I have to work in a place away from home. sometimes i am ok. sometimes i am not. sometimes i can get really jimo-fimo-finding-nemo, especially when certain songs are played. Some songs reminded me of my days in 4th Kolej, some the days in MC, then 3rd Kolej... and some the last part of uni days which was my teaching practice in SA. in a nutshell, a huge part of me stayed in that 4-years of bittersweet memories.

Sometimes i came back from school feeling as if all my strength has been drained away, especially on the days which i have math classes. Everything turns black and white and gray. And you found yourself all alone in your world. Ok, such dull colours are mainly my problem because i set up walls and i don't let people in so easily. That's it. Well, the weeks after the CNY break has filled the lower side of my 'ups-and-downs chart'. It's getting more and more stressful in a way, whether it's due to work, or the adjustment and adaptation to the new environment which is not what i had expected.

"If you have raced with men on foot and they have worn you out, how can you compete with horses? If you stumble in safe country, how will you manage in the thickets by the Jordan?"
Jeremiah 12:5

oh by the way, jiaaaa will be going back to the other side of her world on the 29th May.

29th May!!! There's about another 3 months to go!! oh my oh my
*may i give you a
loooooooonnnngggg siiiiiigggggghhhhhhhhh?*

On a Sunday evening

'Do you think the way to tell the story of the Christian way is to describe its trials and tribulations? It is not. It is to name and describe the God who preserves, accompanies and rules us' - Eugene Peterson, The Journey.

Ebenezer.

Different ones of us have our own stories to tell. I have finished my second month in LD. And I am beginning to go thru' days 'one-month-at-a-time'. I count it as an achievement, a great leap from being stuck at 'one-week-at-a-time' for almost two months.

Because You're with me, I will not fear.

This afternoon I heard the tune of Amazing Grace. I woke up and realised that it came from my dream.

'Grace does not depend on suffering to exist, but where there is suffering you will find grace in many facets and colours' - William Young, The Shack.

I have to constantly remind myself how i worked through the struggles and difficulties for the past 4 years that led me to where i am this day, lest I got entangled in the jimo-ness of being far away from the other side of my world and ensnared by the disillusionment which comes when things do not turn out the way we(i) wanted it to be.

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the LORD. "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than you ways and my thoughts than your thoughts."

I am still living like a 'tourist' in LD, as if i am doing a long term teaching practice in a place very far away from UM. It feels weird to be in a place foreign to you. A stranger on that place, no matter how long you are there or how familiar you become with that place. You know you don't belong there and you yearn to be back Home.

Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.

Sometimes you can't help but wonder how some people go through days doing their tasks halfheartedly. They expect people to take over their task, to cover for them whatever that was left out. They pay no attention to important things, yet they are always so into making sure that the trivial and menial stuff is ok.

Do not judge, or you too will be judge. The speck of sawdust in their eyes and the plank of wood in my own eye.

and

Where do you spend most of your time in your mind, in your imagination, in the present, in the past, or in the future? my jimo-ness caused me to spend a lot of time in the past. my anxiousness and the desire to be in control of situations caused me to spend too much time in the future. Am i really living in the present?

As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it. You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands. Instead of thornbush will grow the pine tree and instead of briers the myrtle will grow. This will be for the LORD's renown, for an everlasting sign which will not be destroyed.

this is how it has to be.

here i am..

we shifted one floor down. spent about 2k on 6 electrical appliances, not too bad. the new house is slightly better. the good thing is, sleeping in the living room can be quite nice actually.

Life in LD goes on as usual. school. basketball. tutorials on monday nights and thursday afternoons. meetings every now and then.

Can i tell you how frustrated i can get at times?

*speechless*

teaching maths is a torture to me. seriously. i don't understand what is it that they don't understand. many examples were given. exercises pun berlambak-lambak. yet, many of them still couldn't answer correctly. i really want to pengsan whenever i thought of that. how are we going to do other topics if they can't even do well in such simple topics?

*overwhelmed*

there's school tomorrow, great.....!

*why are you so downcast, o' my soul?*

Bio is ok. so does Science, but it's going to get a bit one-of-a-kind to me soon once we started getting into topics related to the Electric and Electronic stuff.

I lift up my eyes to the hills—
where does my help come from?
My help comes from the LORD,
the Maker of heaven and earth.
He will not let your foot slip—
he who watches over you will not slumber;
indeed, he who watches over Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.
The LORD watches over you—
the LORD is your shade at your right hand;
the sun will not harm you by day,
nor the moon by night.
The LORD will keep you from all harm—
he will watch over your life;
the LORD will watch over your coming and going
both now and forevermore.
Ps. 121

last week was the basketball competition. we lost 2 out of the 3 games. it felt different to be the one sitting outside the court giving instruction than being in the game. the girls really pushed themselves to the max. i was quite happy with their performance despite the results. well, there's still room to improve. However, nothing beats the disappointment of the canceling of the inter-residential schools basketball competition in Sarawak-Sabah Zone. We will not be sent to Kuching because of financial problems. gah.

ok, there's always 'next year'.

i am looking forward to the one week break in mid march ;)

it's time to go take some pictures.

anyway, i'm still surviving and i will survive!