跟屁虫

This is going to be a first for me... a title in Mandarin. 😂 Been a rather interesting month. Got transferred out of my school because apparently I must have pushed the Principal too much to do something about a colleague who was verbally bullying the students. Yup! Even in ‘famous’ schools like SMJK Keat Hwa 1, such things happen. And the Principal seemed powerless to do anything to stop it. So, here goes...

跟屁虫 is a character who works in a school. It is a well-known school in one of the northern states. He has a real name like all of us but for now, the name 跟屁虫 will do. This moniker was given by students who were so used to seeing him follow the school principal around...

His name has very significant meanings. He is a very good bag carrier and an exceedingly good follower. His greatest talent is stooping to every conceivable level, including grovelling when he feels that will get him to the top.

跟屁虫 is the best kind of follower one can ever have because he will stop at nothing to stoke your ego. He learned from a young age that everyone loves their egos stoked. And he is the master ‘stoker’. 😂🤣

Well, such people who have no principles, lie through their teeth, tongue and and whatever orifices of theirs. After all, butt polishing is their talent, sweet talking is their modus operandi... and lies... 跟屁虫 is the master, unsurpassed...

You see, 跟屁虫 is living proof that you don’t have to be honest or principled to get to the top... and you can continue like this at the top.

So they say it is a new dawn...

May 9th came and went, and they say it is a new dawn for Malaysia. Is it? I guess in some way it is. A new gavornment after 60 plus years. Never thought it would happen in my lifetime. After my whole life of living under an affirmative action hijacked by racial issue, it is a welcomed change, and perhaps with it, a little more hope of a better Malaysia.

Yet in the truest sense a lot of things still remain the same. Change, some say, will need to take time. I guess no one can deny that. But then again, we live in heady times. Technology is rapidly changing us. Things are moving at dizzying speeds. And perhaps with that sort of speed, maybe change will speed up too.

I think there many displaced people from the current change. Like me who have grown old under ‘affimative action hijacked’ they too are affected. For those on the other side of the divide, and in Malaysia the divide separates us into Bumi and non-Bumi. Within the Bumi side, there is the Malay and Others; Muslim and non-Muslim too. So imagine, for them too, having grown ‘old’ and being told that they were the ones needing the help; it is a time of feeling lost too.

It always strikes me as funny that we always claim how compassionate the God we believe in is. Yet when it comes to living out our faiths, how often too we become the ‘oppressors’. How we dress, what we eat, what we say..these remain the areas that are being harped on. I’ve come to a conclusion that for raee relations to work, we need to take out religion from the equation. Religion is divisive; not because it teaches us to be that. It is divisive because the believers are humans who want those carnal things ... power, wealth and status.

But, I still look forward to the hope of better things to come.

Die, die also hers....

It is mind boggling how selfish we can be at times these days... especially when it involves kids.

I recently helped a friend's kid figured out a concept for a Science competition. The way I ended up helping her was actually rather crazy. Her Science teacher had threatened them to deduct marks from their monthly test if they did not complete the project for this competition, which was to come up with an idea or concept that is workable based on the United Nation's Envision 2030 plan. Basically it was a vision with 17 goals to transform the world, with sustainability at the core of its vision.

The purpose of the competition was to identify kids with talent to be discovered, our future engineers and scientists so to say. It is a good competition, I would say. Students had to come up with an idea that meets the Envision 2030 goals and produce a video as well. However, this is where things went wrong. The threat of mark deduction was really effective in getting to students to produce something. The teacher only wanted them to produce a video and upload it. They were to put her name as their mentor. Somebody was on her back and she wanted to show that she could... minus all the work, of course. These days, many teachers work on the premise that students are capable of doing everything themselves.... makes me wonder why they even need teachers then?

Well, my friend's kid was flustered. And so she asked me for help. I tried to give some pointers but a week later and still clueless, the kid was even more flustered. And with the school hols coming to an end, the sense of urgency increased. So, with all that, I sat down and typed out an idea for sustainability of city living, complete with the script. What the kid needed to do was just to put it down in video, which she did. In the process, she learned quite a bit about the subject matter and video making too... and so the video got uploaded, just as her classmates. Marks saved.....

Or so that's what we thought... until the results came out. Her work got shortlisted... Was it supposed to be a big deal? It was the only one from the state that got into the list. One of 15 nationwide and her teacher provided no guidance, no comments or anything whatsoever.

This where the whole thing becomes a joke... teachers idea (you could call that guidance, I supposed..). And it got shortlisted. Oh ya! I forgot to add. The said teacher praised a work done by another group saying that it was really good. But ah.. that's just her way of crapping. I took a look at that particular video... it was just a lot of verbose presentation... but did not meet the requirements. So, who should accompany the kids for the selection round? The best 4 will get to represent the country... 8) Their Science teacher is now dead set on being their mentor... LOL!!! Or might I add, this is an international competition.. in English. She can't write well in that for squats... but she wants credits to put on her resume for she is eyeing for so many things... from the lofty menara gading to the acclaimed guru cemerlang.... Makes me wonder... (and no.. I am not keen to go, dread the travelling and waiting. The latter can literally 'kill')

This is the state of our education. Rather a sad state... a script hashed in 10 minutes without much thought is warranted good enough of an idea. Either I am damn creative or the teams could not figure out anything better... And a teacher who is clueless and might I add, without the lingo mastery feels that it is her right to showcase her 'work'.... We are after all in a show and tell system... So, die, die also hers.....

Tell me, what is right anymore???

2018

Time flies... that's when days are filled with things to do. 24 hours feel rather short now but some day, I guess 24 hours in a day will feel long. When they are things to do, time is always short. When there is nothing to do, the tick tock of the seconds reverberates and keeps reverberating, leaving echoes that keep will keep bouncing back, I supposed.

Seasons come and seasons go. When I was still a wee kid, I always thought that being a grown up is such a long way still. Then the secondary school days came, followed by university... and then the wheels just kept turning, and turning. And before long, I am now back at that point when I was just a wee little kid thinking about how far adulthood was. That was the point too when my parents were busy with so many things cos they had so many mouths to feed. 

Busy... everyone is so busy these days. Whatever little community life that remains is almost gone too. What used to be time which we looked forward to small chats with our neighbours or friends are so scant these days. And that little time is now sold to the small screens that never seem to cease entertaining, connecting, occupying our lives... so connected yet so disconnected to everything real at the same time. 

In my lifetime, I have seen how how homes were invaded by the telephones only to leave it. The telephone is now replaced by one which is no more tied to that little desk or corner of the house. And there is no longer just one phone in a house these days. Phones outnumber occupants very often these days. 

Cars... used to be mostly one car one household when I was a kid. 2 cars are the norm these days but anything more than 2 is not unusual too. But who knows, perhaps I will also see this four wheel mechanical transport ease out of our lives too only to be replaced by something that can be summoned from a common pool. 

The one thing that I have learned is when you are a kid, you tend to think that everything you knew would remain the way they were. They don't. Lots of things are fluid. Life itself is fluid, I guess. 

Another year, another attempt at reviving this blog. Somehow, it goes back to time again. There just doesn't seem to be enough of them for now.

Seventy Plus Seven

Seventy plus seven

It would have been

Today

But now elusive

Forever

Memories

They are

All that are left

Knee Jerk

When you hit your knee with the small little hammer, your leg jerks. It is a totally involuntary movement. Your knee jerks because something acted on it. So, a knee jerk reaction is basically that... a reaction that does not go through the process of reasoning. It is spontenous. And it reflects the content of the heart.

I guess it is pretty clear that knee jerk reactions are mostly 'emo' driven and not brain driven. And I think most of us are aware what kind of results they usually bring. Knee jerkers usually are more interested to show that they are in control than appraise the actual situation. They are also usually very quick to think adversely of others without realising that they are guilty of worse.

Knee jerkers... lately, there just seems to be more of them around...

What Gives Meaning...

Was scrubbing the floor this morning when this thought came to mind... what gives meaning actually to the things we do? I think we'll get all sorts of reasons... convictions, remunerations, threats, fears, compulsion..... the list is there.

Housework is one of those thankless jobs around and many of us would come up with all kinds of excuses and reasons why we need not do it, or if we have to do it, no need to be so particular about it. Was just thinking. What if housework is also paid in cash? Would the same sort of arguments against it now be used? Or the job will get the kind of attention that we so often reserve for those paid ones?

Even though many women work these days, their husbands generally do less housework in Asian countries. While many try not to say anything adverse about who should get the housework done, women generally still shoulder the bulk of the house stuff... from seeing to the food on the table, to laundry, getting the groceries, clearing and cleaning. And women themselves too, put housework at a level lower than paid work too. There was a working lady who told me that she is not too particular about the number of times the floor of her house needs to be swept every week. I wonder if she would say the same if housework is paid.

The thing was this. As I scrubbed away the dirt on the floor outside, I was suddenly amused by this thought that if that job would pay the me same as I was in my job, I am sure everyone would stop labelling being fastidious in household chores as being being naggy. Being fastidious would be a very good thing.

And here's this. To those wives, and mothers who toiled laboriously year after year, and in the end still get the shorter end of the deal, it is you actually who truly understand what it means to be accountable and even admirable in those mundane, meaningless tasks that you do day in and day out.

Oh ya... this is a sober reminder. Even for those of us who hold jobs that pay us money, there is also an expiration date to on us in that job. And at the end of the day when we are told that we need to leave because we have reached expiration dates, I think many of us do not know what to do with our lives too, cos all that we've known in all those productive years of ours is work equals remunerations that can be quantified. Some of us lose the focus in life. We become listless. Some of us are fortunate enough to find a second calling. Others just float along. Then there are those who simply just expire.

So, what gives meaning... Wonder Woman is the current blockbuster. In the movie, Diana finally decided to fight for humanity because of love. Love manifests itself in many forms. For those of us, whose mothers toiled unrelentingly in the kitchen making sure there is food, or fastidiously kept the floors clean so that we could just plop on the floor anytime of the day, or even coming home to not a single unfolded clothes lying around... perhaps that is what actually gives meaning.

While eventually all these mundane tasks might be taken over by bots or drones or whatever things robotic by nature, meaning in life sometimes does not necessarily have to be big things only. It is the small things that enable big achievements.

Ah well... ramblings on a morning of floor scrubbing...