one step at a time.

I always need to remind myself, ONE STEP AT A TIME. 

a long list of things waiting for me to do..

1. staple papers and soon, mark the papers.

2. take pictures for a school event that is coming soon.

3. settle the bio peka files.

4. train students for next year's basketball competition.

5. extra classes for form 5.

6. the data thingy.

7. start planning for the year end school event.

8. and get ready for the many in-betweens.

And I really hope that they will assign someone else to do the sek. berprestasi tinggi stuff because i really had enough of all this filing stuff. I am not complaining, I am just too frustrated. 

Breathe in, breathe out.

ONE STEP AT A TIME!! 

lest i forget.

Soon, this year is coming to an end.

The past one month has been crazily busy! CRAZY!!!!

Looking at the analysis of the results for F2 Maths final exam, i couldn't believe i have made it through another year with tonnes and tonnes of hard work, sweat and tears. And indeed, there's reward at the end of the race. i must say that i am pretty impressed with my self. :)

"be careful that you do not forget the LORD your God,
failing to observe his commands, his laws and his decrees that I am giving you this day.
Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down,
and when your herds and flocks grow large
and gold increase and all you have is multiplied,
then your heart will become proud and you will forget the LORD your God,
who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery."
Deut 8:13-14

There were many opportunities to push myself to do more this year.

In this final week of school, i guess there's no better time to rethink and reflect on all that i have gone through.

it's been a fruitful year. and i know i have really done my very best in everything that i laid hand upon.

*great experience in Kuching for basketball competition. that was one of the most exciting times of the year where there's adrenaline pump everyday for one whole week.

*extra maths classes for the E Gang that bore fruit where all of them went from an E (fail) to at least a C, one even went from E to A. Ok la, except one boy la, he failed ALL his maths paper this year, oh poor thing. Anyway, it feels good to see their eyes lightened up when they got their maths papers. And it feels even better when they came back to thank you before they leave school for holiday.

*f4 bio - during Sept test, i scolded (this is an overstatement) a boy who got 7 out of 40 objective questions correct. i told him if he were to do this again, he is going to TELAN the OMR paper. And guess what, he passed his bio paper this time and improved a whole lot in other subjects too! Oh gosh. it's pretty unbelievable. well, i am glad that he put in effort to make things better for himself.

*f5 bio - i have really done all that i could. it's up to God to make things work. i have to remind myself that whatever the outcome is, it cannot be my fault anymore. Simply because i have done my best to teach them, to do extra classes, to meet some of them for 'private' tuition.

*Borneo Jungle School - what a great experience living in the jungle! A sakai like me have seen so little of the real world. The best moment - standing in the dark, all torch-lights were off, all you see is the starry night with all those weird weird sounds of insects.

*The sacrificial cow - that was the first time i saw how people slaughter a cow for Ibadah Qorban. And funny as it is, i kinda turned it into a science lesson while the adults are butchering the cow. I didn't know that the trachea of a cow is as big as the pipe that is fixed at the washing machine for the water to flow out. The best thing, haha.. the heart of the cow. For this i know why i identify so much with Cristina in Grey's.

Of course, not to forget the great times spent traveling around.. March Kundasang-Sandakan-LD trip, April-August Sandakan trip, April KK trip... with friends coming to visit.. blah blah blah.. :)

It's not just a bed of roses. i just don't feel like wasting time to count those thorns.

And tomorrow, i have one more assignment to do - kursus in semporna. hehe.

Enough of typing for the day!

that's me trying

Green turtle hatchling.

i have been trying very hard to make things work.

but the harder i try, the more i fear.

this is really sickening.

The rough weeks after The Turtle Trip.

Chagar Hutang, Gloomy Morning with turtle trails

i have been working 6 days a week for 3 consecutive weeks.

long hours of meetings.

night classes.

the-very-terrible-bio and the-terrible-maths results.

after-school activities.

i thought of the mama turtles.

and i know i must press on, in whatever i am doing and planning to do.

i won't let you bring me down.

知足常乐

i don't know why they translated that into 'we care, we grow, we grow together'.

contentment brings happiness.

this was taken last Sunday, before picking up my housemate from the airport. i actually wanted to take picture of the plane landing on the air strip. so i stopped the car by the roadside and waited for the plane. so cool, right? the adrenaline rush was awesome. my heart beat so fast as the plane began to land.

:)

i didn't get any nice touching down shots but i got this.
contentment brings happiness.


it's something of positive encouragement but my eyes see only jimo-ness,
especially after changing that into black and white.

i do not want to get 'over-contented' and end up being stuck at the same place for the rest of my life.
how should i strike the balance?

school life has been super busy ever since the year started. last week was the worst week i ever had. it was disappointing and i was utterly disgusted by how some situations turned out to be. i tried to be helpful and i ended up being back-stabbed, being accused as an irresponsible teacher. it became my fault. how could they? it was really sickening. i could feel my heart being squeezed out of its blood the moment i heard about the 'story' that was being circulated. gosh. i couldn't believe how brainlessly unhelpful some people are, everything also i don't know i don't know. tell me, what do you know? it's really tiring. i work as a teacher, i don't sell myself into this profession. don't drive me around and make me your slave, oh you pharaoh! to teach is to touch a life forever. that can be true if you are doing things out of your freewill. with the kind of system i am in - it killed my joy, it robbed my passion, it poisoned my mind, it sapped all my strength, it crushed my spirit, it shrunk my mind.

that's the problem in this system.

i will be in KK next monday, and then in Kuching from tuesday til friday for basketball competition. And awesome, i will be going for my 2nd Kundasang road trip right after my Kuching trip. i'm hoping to get nicer pictures after having known how the place is like and with some better plannings. go to kinabalu park. go to the cow place. go for sunrise.

:)

we are all survivors in our own THM situations.

this January

practice makes perfect. 195 is an awesome number.





:)
test me test me.

and i am truly glad that holiday is coming SOON and i can get out from this THM place, although it's just for a week plus!
school -- i am so lazy to talk about school. i realized i have not been blogging about school since it started. OK, maybe i should give a brief update. i am teaching form 2 Maths (AGAIN!) - a boys-only, and a girls-only class; form 4 Bio; form 5 Bio. A total of 18 periods a week. Itu saje. I should be somewhat free but in fact, i feel that i'm busier than before. i guess that's life under the new regime.

whateverlar.

holiday is coming soon. and february will fly pass. and it will be march!
then it's going to be april and soon, may!
and then that's it!
*i hoped, no, i will ensure that!*

i am a rock star, baybeh!

i drive a manual car

taken from postsecret.

and i feel so awesome about it.
:P

i'm back from The LAB Tour

it was an awesome weekend. the super long hours of train ride. the rain. the walking around. the big B's..

we had 3 SLRs, 2 DSLRs, and an iphone, oh, and my K770i. and a super big amount of pictures taken over the trip. not too many jimo pictures though. the jimo-ness somehow slipped away from me during LAB tour. whatever.

i am quite lazy to form proper sentences, so, phrases will do. :)

AJ, George and TimCheng at Telaga Tujuh.


Ben at Kuala Perlis.

*splashy*

sunset at Kuala Perlis.

There are many other pictures and i am lazy to wait for it to be uploaded. and this is the best booze tour i ever had. we had free shots in 1812, good thing Bolton won! going ga-ga in Coco Valley. trying crazy things. running out to the beach during heavy rain and wondering what are we trying to do.

the thought that came by the end of the trip?

Life is short. Brave the rain storm.

changed it to b&w. and this adds some creepiness to
Ben's version of The Legend of Telaga Tujuh.



Let's
Do
It
Again
!!

i am just a docile house cat

*ouchh... *

i'm alright, don't i seem to be?
cat pic #2
***

yesterday was a weird day. today was a weird day, too.

i am in such a state where i am feeling utterly defeated by circumstances of life and people around me.

everyday i go to school, i am reminded of how terribly i failed.

"Failure teaches success," says the slogan of a form 4 class.

when i enter my math classes, i see the word failure all over their faces, like how people see food -humans everywhere when they are trying lose weight by denying themselves the most important thing to them. it's like i have failed to enable them to perform well in maths. when i mark their exercises, i don't just see their correct/wrong workings and answers, i also see the word failure all over the pages. some of them always give me ridiculous answers. and i always wanted to give them a good scolding. as i marked the exercises, i thought about the things i want to lash out on them in the next lesson. however, when i went in to the class, i purred like a cat instead of roaring like a lioness (or tigress, whichever will do). i failed to even scold them.

at the end of every lesson, most of the time they are able to answer the questions i give them. isn't that a fair indicator that they have at least understood the topics? but their maths results sucks like mad for my standard. monthly tests results sucks. mid year exams results also sucks. recent mock test results also sucks. fair prediction - it will be the same for the coming final exams. it's as if i haven't done anything in the past many months. it's as if i have been fooling and playing around and going on a miserable long holiday in such a terribly faraway land. and apparently i am guilty of a new charge against me - there is NO (or minimum) freaking correlations between the reflections in my lesson plan with their ridiculous maths results.

there's this girl who tried to bodek me in the beginning of the year. she once told me she used to do well in maths, between A and B. but her maths results in form 2 is never good, she has never gotten at least a B so far. and now when i look at her face, all i see is a face with wandering thoughts and lacking of interest. did i just kill her interest in maths within a year? 2 or 3 of them have been failing most, if not all the tests and exams. is it my fault that i didn't reprimand them for doing badly? is it my fault that i allowed them to learn on their own pace which is painstakingly slow?

what should i do?

the same thing happens for bio. not to mention, science.

the form 4 had their bio papers today. last night and last thursday night, i went back to do revision with my class and some students from other classes joined us too. yes, i have to admit that i have seen the questions because i was the one having the softcopy and getting it ready for printing. i didn't purposely drop hints on the questions coming out. the students asked some good questions and we discussed the facts and the answering techniques. and yes, some of the questions they asked really did come out. and therefore to some, it seems like i leaked out the questions. my fault, again.

even if what i did is considered as leaking out questions, my class still didn't do well.

i failed to speak the maths lingo, or the bio lingo or the science lingo that can register in their minds.

am i expecting too much?

i really felt defeated. purposeless. void.

oh sigh.

let's trade shoes

i guess we would have to walk a mile
in each others shoes at least
What size you wear? I wear 10's
Let's see if you can fit your feet

In my shoes, just to see
what it's like, to be me
i'll be you, let's trade shoes
just to see what it'd be like

to feel your pain, you feel mine
go inside each others mind
just to see what we'd find
look at shit through each others eyes
-Beautiful, Eminem-

*

36 to go. the counting down and complaining make me look like some kind of ungrateful idiots. haha. there's nothing much in school, except covering the work left behind by some people, doing some revision with the math classes, marking papers.. planning for the hospital visitation in November. Math revision has been super disastrous.

treat them with as much respect as you can muster,
teach with as much passion as you can find.
- shen -

i'm trying my best.
they make me feel like i'm a big time failure. yeah, i think that's the word for the year.

*
old pictures of you and me
when we were young and were free

my laptop died and resurrected for the second time. everything within it is gone. gone. i don't even want to describe how angry, how frustrated i am. sigh.

i need something to keep my sanity.

LD says

"welcome back to this lake of burning fire"

**
8++ more weeks.
60 ++ more days.

**

to-do list

1. set maths final exam papers. let them die die die!
   
2. finish off the maths syllabus. one more chapter on Statistics.
   
3. rush my bio like mad! seriously. have to give night classes to cover the syllabus.
4. borneo paradise trip on next monday and tuesday. here comes the pirates! yeah!
   
5. next weekend - i will be in KK for some 'Perfect Score' program. the thought of 7-8 hours of bus ride from my place to KK makes me want to pengsan.
6. mark the bio PEKA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! oh my gawwwwd....
   
7. update the stupid 001 cards that are left blank by ALL the previous form teachers. darn it. what's wrong with them?!
8. go around to take more pictures to keep my sanity.
9. go trippin' with colleagues to mataking?
10. go lepak somewhere before i go back for holiday on nov 18th?
    

the best thing has to be this~!!!!!!!!

prepare to come home for year end holiday.
the countdown has begun.

i am 'trying' to be happy

It's a common belief that positive thinking leads to a happier, happier life. As children, we're told to smile, be cheerful and put on a happy face. As adults we're told to look on the bright side, make lemonade and see glasses half full. Sometimes reality can get in our way of the ability to act the happy part though. Your health can fail, boyfriends can cheat, friends can disappoint. It's in these moments when you just want to get real, drop the act and be your true, scared, unhappy self.

Ask most people what they want out of life and the answer is simple...to be happy. Maybe it's this expectation of wanting to be happy that just keeps us from ever getting there. Maybe the more we try to will ourselves to state of bliss, the more confused we get to the point where we don't recognize ourselves. Instead we just keep smiling, trying like hell to be the happy people we wished we were.. until eventually it hits us... it's been there all along. Not in dreams or hopes, but in the known, the comfortable, the familiar.

~Grey's~

water-less

I have no idea what's wrong with the water tank. my housemate and i have been relying on the water from the kitchen sink. to bathe. to wash. to clean. to mop. sigh.

and the thing is -- even the water from the kitchen sink, it only comes at specific hours -- early morning for a short while, in the afternoon for 3 hours, and at night for another few hours. probably that's the reason why the water tank couldn't be filled up with water.

Collecting water has become our favourite past time.

everyday we have a total of 25 bottles of water - this water is for washing, bathing and the 'manual flushing system'. and there are another 6 bottles of filtered water for drinking and cooking purposes, and 6 more bottles of mineral water which yet to open.

i have calculated -- based on the situation we are having now, on average, we are somewhere near the recommended basic water requirement. check here.

okay, it's time to get ready the bottles. water from the kitchen sink will be coming in soon.

what kind of life.

i want to hide.

complex feelings.
jimo.

i don't know how to translate those chinese words into english.

RED ALERT!

NO WATER!!!!!!!!!!!

SHUCKS. THIS IS TERRIBLE. ONE FULL DAY WITHOUT WATER. THIS PLACE SUCKS I TELL YOU. I CAN'T TAKE THIS ANYMORE. ONE WHOLE WEEK OF RE-ADAPTING TO LIFE HERE BUT IT'S NOT DOING ANY BETTER.

sigh.

yesterday was some teacher's day celebration in school.

i got a bag from the students under my mentor-mentee group. hmm.. ;)

gosh. i got so much work to do. yet i can't muster the strength and mood to anything. shucks big time.

:(

there are voices

And so this is the 3rd day of school.

cooking doesn't excite me anymore. it doesn't make me feel as happy as it used to be. probably because now i needed a higher dose of dopamine in my brain to give that kind of thrill and excitement.

probably i should play some aggressive badminton to stimulate the release of dopamine.

this is depressing.

do you think you are that good?who do you think you are?why do you want to leave?what's wrong with you?what are you going to say about the past 4 years?are you trying to run away?are you sure that's what you want to do?what if you're wrong?what if you are supposed to stay?why are you like that?why are you looking only at the bad times?no good times at all?

questions. and more questions in my mind.

it's like.. at one moment, i made up my mind on some things. and the next moment, i found myself swallowed up by a sea of questions.

and it keeps coming back.

***

Your grace is sufficient.

i am like ..

so sick of feeling sorry for myself and the darn place which i have to go back in less than a week's time.

the past two weeks was filled with dramas -- trying to figure out what is it that i really wanted; trying to make some tentative plans, hoping that will help me to survive the second half of the year.

some said i should wait and see.

some said i should be more impulsive.

i don't know.

****

For the 2nd half of the year...

1. do something about 4Z's Bio -- almost half of the class failed. probably will have to start a weekly tuition class.
2. do something about 3N and 3Z's Science -- none got A for the mid year exam and they are going to sit for PMR soon. probably should psycho them because they are plain lazy. sloths!
3. push the form 2 kids like mad in their Maths. And I shall not tolerate any brainless questions from them anymore. NO way. more exercises and more exercises. i don't care if you are drowned in a sea of math questions.
4. settle the innovative and creative project by end of July.
5. settle the loan.
6. find out more about the neuro(with/without Edu) stuff.
7. continue with the basketball training.
8. cook more.
9. do something about the stupid house.
10. LOOKING FORWARD TO MY HOME-COMING IN SEPTEMBER!

What a long list!

i will be pretty busy once the school reopens. key in the marks. evaluate the innovative and creative projects submitted by students and give ideas to improve. sigh. i don't like that. prepare for the soon-to-come in-house presentation of the biology department. shucks like mad.

i am going back to that side of my world so that i can come back to this side of my world!

the drama continues!

'secrets'

i wonder what people will think of me if i really ..... yes, i am driven by what people think of me, to a certain extend, even though nowadays i always say that i don't really care. whatever.

i am not in my right mind. maybe because i am right-handed and therefore left brain dominant.
what the crap. i am talking nonsense.

i am being too rational and i think too much. and because of this gift, i am always afraid to take risks. and therefore cutting off my spontaneity.

i hate food poisoning.

i don't want to give up so soon but i don't know how to carry on.

we are all drama queens.

and i miss you. you were in my dreams.

the point.

i have reached a point where i am trying to figure out how the heck am i going to continue my life in that place.

i am kind of getting sick of that place. sick of that job. sick of living that kind of life.

like i told you, i don't think i can do what i wanted to do or be what i wanted to be.

half a year doing that job in that place has really pushed me to the cliff and i don't know how to move on - to jump and die together with the students and the whole system, or to retreat and get out from that place and do what i am really interested in...

and stop being the shadow of someone else's life, doing things i thought i could do.

people kept asking me about life in that place, whether i have gotten used to life there or not... i know they meant well but in my heart, i really wanted to tell them straight at their face - please stop asking me that question because life there sucks and you know nothing about that place and i don't want to repeat the terrible tale about that freaking place. i am angry, i am pissed off and this feelings is amplified many fold when i see how awesome life is back at this side of my world. period.

ah, come on!

back in Ipoh!

After 12 hours of traveling with a good one hour break in Coffee Bean with ajw, finally i reached home at about 6.30pm yesterday. And the Ipoh air smells really good! *screams and jumps like a mad fellar*

It's so good to see tall buildings, wide highways, normal cars, etc etc etc. Like what i told some of them -- the feeling of reconnecting with 'civilisation' is beyond description. No offense when i mentioned the word civilisation. haha. until now i am still trying to explain to my self what exactly i am feeling at this point of time. When i was in the bus going back from the airport -- it's like my heart was shouting

'
this is where i belonged to ....

i am supposed to live a few years of my life in a place like this..

and not spending them in a faraway land without this, without that .....'

*ok, i think i was possessed and taken over by the insane jiaaaa when those lines came out from the brain cells* please try to understand how pissed i can get at times.

anyway, i am glad that another quarter of the year is gone. thank God. a few more months to go and i will be done with my year one in that freaky place. i took pictures of the toilet in my flat and i shall show you all some time later.

half a year -- i realised some things.....

1. how big the gap between this side of the world and that side of the world is.
2. i am not altruistic and i cannot be like that.
3. at times, i couldn't care less.
4. i chose to go for posting and that's why i ended up there.
5. i think too highly of my self. i don't think i can be what i wanted to be or do what i wanted to do.
6. i am slowly giving up.
7. i want to do something else. seriously.

Ok, probably the above are reasons why teachers get to have a long mid year break and a long year end break. hahaha :P