In a shitty Situation ..again..

Harassed teacher has to leave school early as had left  Child's diapers at home and sent child to nursery without extra diapers except for the one child is wearing when being sent today at 7 am . Child is now in the nursery perhaps being wrapped by some banana leaves/old newspaper or worst soaked with soiled unchanged diapers. Harassed teacher has no one to blame but only self as stayed up to watch Liverpool terrorising Chelsea the night before and woke up late today.

Home Sweet Home

 My love hate relationship with Kota Bharu begins as far as my first memory takes me.  A town that, in my younger eyes, offers me nothing (friends were mostly in KL and since most of my school holidays was spent in KL the huge difference between these two places were enormous) a town where everything is in slow paces and the hippest place where me and my teenage friends hang out was this supermarket called Hankyu Jaya. Supermarket...when did u last used that word?!
Ask any 90s teenagers of Kota Bharu, they'll speak of Hankyu in this reminiscing, nostalgic tone. We had Grandy's there back then, a very cool porridge outlet, I don't remember Mac D or anything like that and MIDORI, an ice cream parlour. Kinda reind me of Pop's from Archie.My first date was at this particulour eating outlet called "Rasanak" ( Rasa Nak). Can u imagine that? Make sense for an eatery, but way too humiliating for a  dating scene. The word Rasa Nak alone would take away any sense of romance and if you eventually marry the guy whom you dated at Rasa Nak (lucky for me I did not), that's not gonna be the story you want to tell the guests at your wedding. They would probably laugh, thinking that you're joking. Unless that's the effect that you want.
Anyway, back to my earlier point, It's love -hate for me because, often enough I compared Kota Bharu to KL and because of that I lost any sense of wonder that I have of that place. Plus, the Kelantanese, we are loud, and we speak in a language that can only understood by another fellow Kelantanese and known to be very cliquished. All those things,as  pointed by my non-kelantanese friends, caused me to want to detach myself more from Kelantan. I never denied that I was a Kelantanese but I never really allowed myself to think of Kelantan/Kota Bharu in that sort of way. To me it was just the town I grew up in.Other that that,  I don't have anything to do with it. Putting it bluntly, I can't really help where I grew up right?
Memories are funny aren't they? Things that u are not aware of would one day creep up slowly into your subconscious and there..it becomes one of your most significant memory. It's funny how certain time at mid afternoon (around 2ish) that specific time would alwiz bring me back to the afternoons I spent at my late grandparents house in Jalan Telipot KB. Or some breeze could touch my face as I watered the plants in my house's  compound in Selangor  and that, that very moment, that breeze, that moment, would just take me back to my childhood days in Kota Bharu.
Now, that KB becomes the town I 'visit' during holiday breaks, the town that awaits the arrival of me and my siblings come Hari Raya, and dutifully waved us away after a week, I sense myself craving, pining for its recognition of me as its 'people'. As I passed by the little old shops along its streets, memories of me with my late grandad, him holding my arm (a very funny way to hold someone's hand i thought, but here was a loving man who had trouble expressing his emotions) as we crossed the streets, as I drove pass some old eatery outlets my parents had brought me and my brother Bo to when there was only the two of us, or passing by the streets that are now being turned into a parking space for some hypermarket, I can't help feeling lost and yearning at the same time. My years of displacement that I brought onto myself have turned its table. It wasn't only memories that causing me to get all nostalgic.They don't get called roots for nothing. Hometowns are like mom's cooking or parents' old big  bed. They give you comfort no matter what life throws at you.
Yes, we can't help where we grew up, I'm sorry KB that it took this long for this cik mek to come home.

If only death knocks before it makes its grand entrance...

Today, a collegue's world collapsed. Her husband, involved in an accident about 3 weeks ago, succumbed to the injuries and left her with three kids to look after, to continue living, to pick up the pieces.
Suddenly I found myself crying, sobbing and my heart went out to her. I don't know Anna that well but we had been thrown in the same committee to run a school function's about 2 years ago and would say Hi everytime we passed by the corridor. I sobbed for the three fatherless children, I sobbed for a friend whom at the age of 35 lost a husband, a friend, a lover. Most of it, I sobbed for myself. I sobbed for the uncertainties that life holds. I sobbed for the fear that I too could be her, as death is the only certainty we have. That I too, could lose my husband, that all of a sudden I could be a widow. Life is that fragile. And all the anger, the little things that bug you about your spouse, that he never takes out the thrash unless you ask him to, that he never bothers to hang the towel after using it, that he never really understands why flowers are a big deal to you, that when he eats, he makes that small annoying noise and that he could never sit through a movie with you because he would fall asleep half way through, all those things would not matter anymore. All that you want is for him to be here, next to you, till your eternity, praying that that eternity would stretches way into the unseen future. Growing old together, annoying each other ways that only people who have known each other for more than 50 years can know how.
Sadly, for some of us, the journey ends earlier and one party is left to lick the wound that perhaps would never heal. Every love story has a sad ending, and today, a friend discovered hers.

The day began at 5.30. I woke up in a jolt. Am i late? I screamed out. That's pretty normal nowadays, if u are wondering, I often made Joe jumped, waking up like a psycho like that. My head of department is less than impressed with my tardiness. Easy for her to say, she got less class tahn me!! Went to bed late last nite, scrambling to finish marking exam papers. I know I got no one to blame but myself, but, oh tryyyy to read these students essays and tell me if u're not gonna go bonkers having to reread the paragraphs over and over again.  English is not their first language, but looking at their attempts, it look like English is not a language at all to them. Joe stirred. 5.30 he mumbled. 5.30.
I went downstairs to make myself a cup of coffee and vowed to start the day early and relaxing and be all composed and gorgeous when I get to school. Always envy of all those teachers that managed to arrive in school with immaculate make-up and not even a line of crease on their dress. Me? Half of the time I arrive, hair's everywhere, make-up nowhere.
Hmm..5.50..I still got time, I thought as I sipped the coffee..so refreshing! Could never function without coffee. I put my feet up on the footstool and closes my eyes for a brief while.
Damnned!!! 6.37!!!!!!! I'll be late for school!

Dream Teaching- taken fm Tok Workshop Handbook 2002

I am first in line for coffee
and the copier is not broken yet.
This is how dream begins in teaching high school.

First period the boy who usually carves skulls
into his desk raises his hand instead
to ask about Macbeth and for the first time,
I see his eyes are blue as melting ice.
Then those girls in the back
stop passing notes and start taking them
and I want to marvel at tiny miracles
but still another hand goes up
and Butch the drag racer says he's found the meaning
in the Act III soliloquy. Then more hands join the air
that is now rich with wondering and they moan
at the bell that ends our class and I ask myself,
"How could I thought of calling in sick today?"

I open my eyes for the next class and no one's late,
not even Ernie who owns his own time zone
and they all have done their homework
that they wave in the air
because everyone wants to go to the board
to underline nouns and each time I turn around



they're looking at me as if I know something they want
and steady as sunrise, they're doing it all right.

At lunch the serpentine food lady discovers smilling
and sneak me an extra meatball. In the teachers' room
we eat like family and for twenty-two minutes
not one of us bitches about anything.



Then the afternoon continues the happiness of hands
wiggling with answers and I feel such spark

when spike-haired Cindy in the satanic tee shirt
picks up the right pronoun and glows like a saint.
And me, I'm up and down the room now, cheering,
cajoling, heating them up like a revival crowd.
I'm living only in exclamatory sentences. They want it all
and I'm thinking, "What drugs are we on here?"
Just a crusher Granorski screams, "Predicate nominatives
are awesome!" the principal walks in
with my check and I almost say, "That's okay,
you can keep it" When the bell sounds
they stand, raise lighted matches
and chant , "Adverbs! Adverbs!"
I drive home petting my plan book.

At night I check the weather without wishing for blizzard
then sleep in the sweet maze of dreams
where I see every student from years of school days:
boys and girls, sons and daughters who're almost mine,
thousand of them stretches like dominoes into the night
and I call the roll and they sing, "We are all here, Mr. Romond!"
When I pick up my chalk they open their books,
look up and with eager eyes , ask me to teach them.

-Edwin Romond-


I encountered this poem in one of those handbooks given out at one of the teacher conferences that I attended. Everytime I read this poem, never without fail, I will have a lump in my throat as I get to the last stanza and eyes all welled up at the line "...sons and daughters who're almost mine". So, I thought, okay, shall put this up as my first entry, coz it will alwiz remind me, harassed as I claimed to be, deep down inside, I know, this, teaching, is home, this is where perhaps I want to be.