Oxymoron In The Tropics

Last year the admin thought it a great idea for me to be put in charge of the school magazine. Wow. Gee. Hooray. So I got to work. I kinda made a mash of the committee meetings... LOL, there were none! With teachers anyway. But plenty of gatherings with my editorial board. Plenty of pizza too. Went through a steep learning curve, learned how to use software (that I won't mention as I can't even afford to breathe on the CD box) and brushed off dust from old skills in design. I may prefer to dress simply and sometimes monochromatic but I know what looks good on a cover. I even dragged in an old friend Sufri into designing the cover (lucky thing he's school alumni). Well, Bornean 2013 is done and I'll hold the finished product in my grubby hands today... yay!  I consider it my first draft. Bornean 2014 will be a groundbreaker. Can't wait... :-)

I was looking for some info in my blog this morning when I noticed the number of posts I'd been making the last few years. Wow, only two last year and two the year before that. Heh heh. It's a sure sign that I'm in a happy place. Angst is a great trigger for prose... no wonder the most prolific writers tend to be the ones struggling with lots of personal grief. Well, to be fair, I love to write whatever my personal feelings may be at any given time. It's just that I've been writing more on my other blog. I'm very happy with my career at the moment because I'm where I should be.. in school. Any school will do... as long as there are students in it and I get to teach English.

Debate competitions are so tiring!  Yet I enjoy them so much. Thrilling exhaustion...It's an oxymoron, I know. This year, my school was assigned the task of hosting the Kota Kinabalu Student English Language Debate District Level for 2013.  We spent the last two months in meetings and preparations.  Also some bickering and elbowing.. but hey, what's a big event without some conflict?  The guy in charge, Eric C had to deal with some putting out of fires but he's good at doing that, so why not? In the end, everything turned out right.  The speakers and timekeepers were primed and trained to do their work according to the rules and regulations.  Although one or two stuck to their scripts like Nazi commandants and refused to deviate from the prepared list of names.  One of my friends Audrey J was introduced as Dayang Nurul (something like that) and she found that amusing.  We also had a debater who didn't wait to be invited to speak.  Luckily I was one of the judges on ...

Dear Blog I'm so sorry I let you gather dust and cobwebs... but I've been busy working..and living.  Working in Maktab Sabah is great, least of all just 'cause I get to be with students.  Students are fun to be with and most of them actually want to learn something.  Their only agenda is to score better marks or improve their skills.  My legal eagle other half scolds me sometimes for trusting people but you know what, assuming people have ulterior motives is very tiring.  Plus it's such a waste of my time.  I prefer to opt out of that existence. As for living, I've been tending to my new home... gardening is pretty exhausting work.  My best 'witnesses' are my back and my arms.  Oh, and I found out that feeding birds with dried rice kernels makes them think all other stuff in the area is meant for them too.  Such as my newly-sprouted vegetable seeds.  Sigh.  But I do like them birds.

A year ago, I reached a point in my life where I felt like deactivating my Facebook.  I'd found myself checking Facebook every few hours, just to see who was posting what.   And at the same time, I was seeing little spats flare up all over.  The reasons were petty (to my way of thinking).  Someone made a comment to a friend, a third person thought it was a dumb comment (even though it wasn't directed to him) and made the mistake of saying so.  You can guess the rest. But friends persuaded me to rethink.  So I did.  They said it was a great way to inform teachers of activities.  So I created groups and added teachers.  Later I made some of them admins.  They didn't need me around. They said it was a great way to share photos. Unfortunately I don't really like sharing my photos, unless the photos were of school events. They said FB helped keep friends in contact. I gave it a go... and found myself using email and SMS more often than ...

I am moving workplaces again :) Last Friday I received a letter calling me to a briefing for Form Six Academic Teacher placements.  My whole day perked up.  Would I finally be able to go back to school?  The word 'promotion' was also in the title so that made things a bit more shiny and bright and sparkling.  At this point, I am tempted to use the synonyms 'dazzling', 'gleaming', 'radiant', 'resplendent' and  'CORUSCATING' but that may be overkill. Anyway I went for the briefing last Monday and HOORAY I'M POSTED BACK TO SCHOOL! The strange thing was that after nearly three years at the PPD, I finally accepted my fate.  In December, I began planning for 2012.  I had BIG plans.  BIG programs.  All of a sudden, I have to abandon all those plans.  It's so ironic that the moment I stop hoping for something, it happens.  But perhaps there is a lesson for me to learn here :)   

Some people seem to think that weddings and prudence cannot go together.  A wedding has to be BIG ... even if there's no money to pay the bills for the froth and flash. I've heard tales of young couples maximising their credit cards just to pay for one reception at a hotel because they wanted to impress people.  But will their financial troubles later on impress those same people?  I've even heard of grooms borrowing money from Ah Longs (moneylenders who charge extortionate rates in exchange for no-questions-asked loans).  What on earth happened to the common sense normally found in every human being? What is the point in looking impressive for one night and suffering for countless years later? What is the point in borrowing money you cannot pay back from moneylenders (and risk broken limbs) or money from relatives (and risk broken relationships) or money from colleagues (and risk losing support at work)? For a Christian, the most important part of the weddin...