Flip flap

Bang goes the front door.

I frown.

Flip flap. Flip flap.

Clank! The keys land on the table.

Flip flap. Flip flap.

The sound comes nearer and nearer.

Flip flap. Flip flap.

I brace myself.

Flip flap. Flip flap.

I roll to the side

covering my head with a pillow.

Flip flap. Flip flap.

Bang goes the bedroom door.

I grimace.

The whole house vibrates.

Peace and quiet restored.

A Fly in my Drink

My friends and I were having lunch at a prominent hotel in Bintulu. Today, we found this in one of our drinks.

Eeeeew.

The waitress was quickly informed and the drink was replaced.

But it didn't stop us from feeling eeewww.

A teacher is ...

A teacher is a person who gives lessons in a school, college, or university, or to help someone learn about something by giving them information. That is what the Longman Dictionary says.

But in reality, a teacher plays many roles in school. Today, I have the privilege of interacting with teachers from around the state in a seminar. And all of us agree that in today's education system, the actual teaching in the classroom takes up the least portion of our time. A lot of time is spent on other activities - attending meetings, planning, implementing and evaluating projects, supervising school/divisional/state/national programmes, organise events, and so on and so forth. On top of that, teachers need to plan for lessons, grade essays, prepare examination questions, mark examination scripts and God-knows-what-else.

In school, we teachers are not just teachers, we are all superhuman beings. We are expected to know many things and be able to do many things.

I am expected to know how to trim a students' hair, if it is a tad too long. Never mind had I no training before this. I am expected to train debaters at school though I have never debated in my entire life. I am expected to choreograph a traditional dance, though I have co-ordination problems even in doing aerobics exercises. These are just a few examples.

I guess it would not be inappropriate to call teachers Jack of all trades and master of none.

I am not a superhuman being. What should I do? Quit my job?

My School Canteen Sells This

Canteen food. What picture does that conjure in your minds?

Certainly, it's nothing near to gourmet.

This is what teachers and students can buy at my school canteen every day.

For RM1.00, one gets Char-Kueh-Tiaw-almost-kosong, for it comes with a few shreds of cabbage and miserable slices of chicken sausages.

Fortunately, it is pretty tasty being flavoured with spices and soy sauce.

Well, I don't know what other school canteens sell. But I just want to give you masses a glimpse of canteen food at my school, at least. I will be posting some other items on the school canteen menu soon.

Cheers.

Rice-wrapped Peaches

I am a pure Teochew. Both my parents are Teochews. My paternal grandfather hailed from Swatow, Southern China. And that sums up all I know about my ancestry. Dismal, eh?

Talk about Teochew, and what comes to mind is the humble porridge and steamed fish. Well, according to this article written by Sharon Tan featured here, the Teochews are known for other dishes such as braised duck, orh ni (yam paste), lek tau suan, and a variety of kuih. Heck, I did not even know that lek tau suan was Teochew in origin.

One of my favourite kuih is this :

I don’t know what the masses call it. In Sharon Tan’s article, it was christened ang kat toh or Teochew toh kuih. A quick search in the web resulted in names like Teochew perng kuih, or Teochew peached-shaped dumplings.

My household refers to this kuih in Teochew as bao perng toh. That translates to English as rice-wrapped peaches. It is quite common at home. My mom and her sisters make it often for our own consumption.

Well, making bao perng toh is laborious. Mom usually prepares the filling a day before. The glutinous rice needs to be soaked overnight, and then steamed. Sliced pork is stir-fried with pounded dried prawns, sliced shiitake, beancurd, chestnut, dried radish and Chinese parsley. These are all my favourite ingredients for the glutinous rice as it brings a lot of different textures to the rice. Oh yes, sometimes I will ask for chopped roasted peanuts for the rice. It just complements the rice nicely. But I do suppose the ingredients vary from household to household.

The cooked glutinous rice and stir-fried ingredients are mixed together before they are wrapped in the glutinous rice skin and moulded into the shape of a peach. The glutinous rice skin tears easily and so one needs to get the exact consistency of flour to water. The shaped dumplings are them steamed, after which they are glazed with peanut oil.

The dumplings can also be pan-fried. The crispy, burnt skin makes them even tastier. I remember that when I was small, my maternal grandmother would pan-fry the dumplings for me and serve it with her own home-made sweet soy sauce. I still remember the taste of that caramelized soy sauce. No one at home makes it anymore. When I talk about it, Mom only smiles nostalgically. Even she is not really sure how that yummy soy sauce is concocted.

Well, I don’t really fancy buying rice-wrapped peaches from kuih vendors. I suppose I get disappointed too often. Theirs are often with skin so thick, and texture-less filling. The best dumplings are still home-made.

Dad and Mom Go to Metropolis . . .

I miss this.

Prawn & Vegetables Salad

It's a salad that I whipped up one evening for our dinner. It's really easy to make. Just tear up the vegetables and toss it in dressing and there you have a healthy vegetable dish.

I had cos lettuce, green and red coral lettuce, cherry tomatoes and shrimps. And then I used an Italian dressing, balanced with a little bit of honey. A dash of olive oil would also be great.

All three of us agreed that it was yum. Just for your information, I made that when I was in KL for my bro and sis-in-law-to-be (siltb) and myself.

Well, dad and mom have just landed in KL a while ago to visit bro and siltb. They will be staying for at least a week, i suppose. Do have fun, you guys ... but please remember me in the midst of your revelry ... ;-P

Is Teaching A Half-day Job?

Many people think that teaching is a half-day job. Well, I think that this notion is largely misconstrued, at least in my case.

On days when I am on duty, I leave my house at the ungodly hour of 5.40 a.m. It is still pitch dark at that time, and I suppose most people would be still snuggling in the warmth of their blankets and bedclothes. It takes 10 minutes for me to travel to school.

Why so early, you may ask. Well, because it's school policy that the teacher-on-duty stands guard at the gate before 6.00 a.m. when the students start arriving. We need to assure parents that there are teachers present at the gate to see their children enter the school compound safely, lest they wander off the the tuckshops nearby.

In training college, nobody told us we had to double as security guards too.

Roll call begins at 6.40 a.m. That's when students' attendance is taken. Disciplinary problms are ironed out too at this time. Spot checks are carried out on certain days for prohibited items. Announcement of school activities are made, and wisdom words from the school authorities are conveyed during the roll call.

Classes begin at 7.00 a.m. right up to 2.05 p.m. on most days. Each lesson is 40 minutes long. There is a 25-minute break from 9.45 a.m. to 10.05 a.m.

On Wednesdays, the school carries out CCA - Co-curricular Activities. It begins at 2.30 p.m., and ends at 5.00 p.m. On the other days, other activities are carried out, such as sports practices, meetings, extra classes, staff development activities and so on.

I leave school at 5.00 p.m., and it takes 30 - 40 minutes to reach home due to the heavy traffic.

When I reach home, I'm beat.

April has been a crazy month. And heck, it's only been 2 days into the month!! I have to organise a seminar on Saturday (yes!!! I also work on Saturdays!!!), I have to prepare for a study visit by teachers from abroad, I have to plan activities for our annual Academic month, I have to oversee the preparation for the inter-school public speaking competition, I have to manage an English Language Learning Programme for Mathematics and Science teachers who are yet to be proficient, I have to get ready the activities for English Camp ... the list is endless ... and for each of the activity I had just mentioned, paper work entails .....

That aside, I cannot put aside my core business of teaching. I need to get ready my lessons every day, I need to mark essay exercises which I have given out, I need to set exam papers for the coming semester examination ....

I haven't even begun talking about the sorts of characters that I have to put up with in school. Not every student is an angel. There's the smart aleck, the punk, the liar, the wanderer, the prankster (fortunately I escaped April Fool's unscathed) .... another endless list ...

That's why I get extremely annoyed when people quip that teaching is an easy peasy job, that it's only a half-day job and it comes with plenty of school holidays. Has this person been living in the 50's all this while? Perhaps teaching WAS a half-day job then. Whatever it is, it is no longer so and it's about time he wakes up that realise that we teachers are doing an honest pay's work!!