Worry

As a citizen that very much cares about this country, and as part of this country that very much loves our nation, I am worrying, can’t help worrying over the events happened recently!

Last year, I used to sit in front of the TV and went after the stories about the scandals of the Taiwan first family and their politics news! At that moment, I was very much amused by those Taiwanese politicians who always acted such ridiculous and clownish, and I felt really pity for the Taiwanese for being governed by such crazy regime too! Those stories and news really spent me a bundle of time.

However, later, I found that I am no much better than the Taiwanese. Then, instead of facing the TV screen, I shifted my seat to the front of my pc to go after the politics news of our own country. And the recent events that happened in our country have really worried me, or maybe many other innocent people of this country that crave for peace.

Regarding to what had happened in Taiwan and Myanmar, obviously, any domestic crisis that befalls a certain country will always reveal the weaknesses and defects of the concerned regime!

In fact, we, the innocent people of Malaysia, have actually known how to live harmoniously and peacefully together, and so, let’s pray for the wisdom of our politicians before we say good night!

Last Week of the Term

Survived on panadols almost every day during the last week of the school term! Collapsed 2 days before UPSR result was released!

My laptop 'collapsed' together with its owner on the same day too! As there were files needed urgently in the laptop, so, sent it to a computer shop without further delay to try to rescue those files, and thanked goodness, the files were all saved! Then, feeling most uncomfortable with fever, rushed to a stationery shop to get some presents for my year 3 students who had been doing well in their tests throughout the year, and before going home, got myself some panadols too!
After getting all the presents wrapped, I could hardly stay awake any longer, so, took the panadols bought and then threw myself onto the bed at once!
The next morning, feeling better and took 2 more panadols to control the fever before going to school. Anyway, the overwhelming gaiety brought by the excellent results of the students had very much revived me on the following day!
Feeling really exhausted when holidays begin, and craves for a really good rest in the holidays, but, holiday class begins immediately when the holidays start...
And that's life of a cikgu or... a cow ^_^??

So long, Mr Quek!

Before the school term ended, we bade farewell to another senior colleague of us, Mr Quek. Mr Quek had been serving in our school for around 18 years. He loved our school with all his heart, and showed it in his continuous commitment to his career. He is always a kind, patient and friendly teacher either to his fellow colleagues or his beloved students.
Farewell, Mr Quek, your contribution is very much appreciated, we will miss you and best of luck to you!

Well done, 6P!

At last, UPSR result was out!
And it was a really exciting morning to me! My science class students had brought me their most excellent results, 40 of them had aced their science paper! Well done, girls and boys, your wonderful results had really cheered and inspired me a lot! Thanks for your greatest effort and you are now reaping what you have sown, a great harvest indeed, right?! Thank you and keep up your good effort!
Proud of you indeed!

PBL2007

At last, all the projects were done!

Girls had been doing very well, and boys had finally shown their capability too, anyway, all were very excited looking forward to presenting their work!

Today, they presented their work to the guests from KL as well as teachers and students from the schools invited, the aim of sharing their work was to tell all, especially the students that learning could be such fun! And they had been performing a really impressive presentation, proud of them indeed!

visiting the pet shop

Girls and boys, thanks for your persisting spirit throughout the year to get involved in project-based learning, you had proved that learning didn't mean for UPSR only! We believed that all of you should have learned a lot from your projects, and both teachers' and your hard work was not in vain.

Besides, I would like to express my most heartfelt thanks to all the teachers who had been sacrificing and contributing so much time and energy in planning, teaching, guiding and training the students, you are such wonderful teachers and your effort and hard work are very much appreciated!

Last but not least, thanks for the greatest support from the school, our PTA, Mr Khor of the Edutech, Miss Oh, the manager of CSS Management Sdn Bhd and her staff, and our fellow colleagues Mdm Pang, Mdm Toh and Mr Seng for their greatest help in making the presentation a success!

A Visit to the Sentosa Island

Went to the Sentosa Island of Singapore yesterday with our year 6 students and enjoyed the visit so much.

Lots of childhood memories were recollected while visiting the Images of Singapore. Shouting and screaming as loud and crazy as those young girls while watching the 3D and 4D movies in the Cineblast and 4D Magix, I had never been shouting and screaming that much before even during my young age, just didn't understand how could this happen to me so late, ha! Besides, enjoyed the exciting luge ride and skyride too! We had also visited the Underwater World, there isn't much difference in it since I last visited it 20 years ago. The jelly fish were such fascinating, not forget the fantastic weedy and leafy seadragon too! The dolphin show wasn't quite attractive but enjoyed the show at the Songs of Sea a lot before leaving the island.

Both teachers and children were exhausted at the end of the visit, but everybody seemed enjoying the visit as much as I did! And my greatest joy was I got to meet and visit certain places of the island with my darling girl who came all the way from her hostel to me, thank you, girl!

'yuntun' noodle

'yuntun' noodle

This afternoon, my colleague, Mdm Pang's son went back home with me in my car. On the way home, I stopped at the road side to pack a packet of fried noodle as my lunch; suddenly, the boy fancied,

"How nice if my mom sells 'yuntun' noodle, then I can take 'yuntun' noodle everyday!"
"Then, ask your mom don't be a teacher anymore but sells 'yuntun' noodle in our school canteen." I said.
"Ya, and when she sells others for RM2 a bowl, you can just pay RM1 for it!" he said.

I was really touched by the boy's most sincere offer, isn't he a true friend of mine? ^_^
That's kids, they are always so true and innocent!

Game Girl

Sitting on the sofa, Nigel was very much concentrating on the Game Boy held in his hand! I got close to him and mischievously told him, "I want to play Game Girl." The little boy paused and pondered for a while, and he then turned and looked at me, with a serious look on his face, he said, "No Game Girl."

No 'kakak'

While telling 3-year-old Priyanti the story of the Snow White, I asked:

"Do you know why the seven dwarfs' house was so untidy and dirty?"
She shook her head and gazed at me while waiting for my answer.

"Because they didn't have a 'kakak' " I said.

And she gave me a smile, as if telling me that she didn't quite agree with my explanation.

Anyway, we still continued with our most interesting story of the Snow White...

Loss of a Superstar

Luciano Pavarotti, had finally succumbed to the pancreatic cancer after fighting against it since last year. The opera's superstar died today at the age of 71......

Attached is 'O Sole Mio', there are many more popular and beautiful songs of his like Ave Maria, La Donna E Mobile, Come Back To Sorrento, Cielito Lindo ... here.

Batman

Today, I challenged my students with a rather "stupid" question:
"Is the batman a bat or a man?"
And ha, the answer they gave was:
"He is a bat-man!"

Kukup

Together with several teachers and students of the Sunday class, we visited to Kukup on Saturday.

We had a discussion session in the afternoon after settling ourselves at the resort.
And we set out to the Kukup Island, an island covered in mangroves the next morning to enjoy the beauty of the nature.

More about Kukup can be read here, here, here and here.

Entrance of the Air Masin fishing village

Path that leads into the mangrove forest

The exciting hanging bridge

A bird’s-eye view from the viewing tower of the mangrove forest.

Fruits of the mangrove tree.

Mangrove roots

The beautiful giant bird nest

See, how sharp the teeth of the shark are!

Both adults and children enjoyed the exploration in the mangrove forest very much, and the children had learnt a lot from the beautiful nature world too.

Dana

Dana, the practice of giving, will help to eliminate the defilement of greed, and to cultivate generosity in oneself.
Teaching children practicing dana helps to plant the seeds of generosity in them since they are young.

Reunion

After 6 years, here we met again--the boys and girls from 6M as well as their cikgu!

Though not all of them were here, but still feeling most excited to have most of them here!

It’s a night that filled with laughter and chatters of joy!

Most heartfelt thanks to the Quek’s family for generously sharing their most precious time and most comfortable home, especially Mrs. Quek for her most sincere effort to get us together again.

Time flies, the children are all grown, so young, so pretty, so vigorous, so witty, so lively……and they are yet to be matured, to be wiser while greeting the challenges lying ahead!

Good luck and all the best to you, girls and boys, the world is rich, be humble, and you will gain a lot from the world!

Placid Water

Peaceful mind is just like placid water, it helps us to see and recognize the world around us clearly, and with a clearer mind, we will be able to make wiser decision and to resolve the problems encountered in our life efficiently.

Traditional Visits

We visit to our grandma once a year during the Chinese ancestor praying season.

This year, eldest bro’s 2 boys were reluctantly dragged out from underneath their warmest blanket early in the morning as they were wanted to come with us. They were not blamed for not interested in the visit as they really don’t know their great grandma at all. We had to set out early as the traffic at the graveyard would be really heavy some time later.

Before entering the graveyard compound, we had to pray to the God of Earth……After praying to the God of Earth, we found that the oranges that supposed to be offered to the God were still in the plastic bag held by Cliff, bro’s youngest son… Well, we guessed that the God of Earth would definitely not blame the boy as this was his very first visit and he was such ignorant of everything here.

We offered incense, candle light and some fruit to grandma, we had also ‘banked in’ some ‘cash’ into her ‘account’. We hoped that with the cash banked in, she could go and get her necessities herself as we didn’t bring her any as others did.

Next, we went to the Christian cemetery to pay our respect to our late aunt, our dad’s only sister, and uncle, as well as their eldest son. Just like my nephews didn’t know about their great grandma, I had hardly any impression in my memory about our aunt as she passed away in her early age when I was still very young. But, I was told that both aunt and uncle were our benefactors when we were young, without their kindness and generosity, we might have been starving during our childhood, and some of us might have even been given away to other family to ensure our survival. They were very much appreciated in our family!

Finally, we went to visit dad. Dad’s cremains were brought from a temple in Malacca back to our home town a few years ago to be placed at an organization that he participated before.

Visit to our deceased family members is a way of paying respect and appreciating their contributions to our family before, it also reminds us to treasure our present relationship with our beloved family members and even other people around us. It’s a traditional practice that has been carrying on and on for decades among the Chinese……

Birth and Death

After midnight, it will be the birthday of Tiangong!

A neighbour auntie on our right passed away on the 5th day of the Chinese New Year, and the funeral will only be held on the birthday of Tiangong.
When the neighbour auntie on our left knew about the decease of her neighbour, she never even expressed a word of sorrow but just grumbled, " I have to pray to Tiangong leh!" as if the mournful family will cause the Tiangong refuses to visit to her place tonight …...

If I were there to hear that auntie’s grumble, I would have told her that Tiangong would surely understand that if there is birth, there will definitely be death too!

Let us wish Tiangong and that auntie a happy "天公诞"! May Tiangong bring lots of luck and happiness to that auntie throughout the year…….

What? Who is Tiangong?

God of the heaven!

Farewell....

How sad it was to leave the school that she had been serving for years....
Our senior colleague, Madam Tan left all of us today after completing her service as a teacher……

Sad indeed to see her off too, we had been having a really good time working together for years. We used to discuss and solve various problems faced in the subjects taught together, we used to go for courses together, travel in the same car, stay in the same room.......we used to respect each other, and we really got along very well!

It's sad to see all the senior teachers retiring one after one, as most of them are really good teachers who used to be working really hard, sacrificing a lot in educating numerous students, responsible and loyal to their career!! They are teachers that very much worthy of respect!

May Madam Tan live a peaceful and restful life after her retirement, with a most contented soul that leads to genuine happiness as well as a life time of beautiful memory! May she be well and be healthy!

Strengths

Moral conducts such as well-behaved, well-disciplined, obedient, hardworking, responsible, honest, compassionate, helpful, filial, thoughtful, friendly, loving, kind-hearted, persevering and many others more are commonly recognized in our society. One who possesses these strengths will be greatly admired and highly honored. However, these strong points would turn into weaknesses if we attach to them too much........

Being too much attached to one's strong points will become a threat to one's life and might even bring lots of troubles or disasters into one's life. It will gradually blind one's mind too, and eventually, one will get lost and become such confused and ignorant in identifying between the right and wrong, and those strengths will then be exploited by others as a tool to deceive, to harm and even to ruin one’s life.

The moral conduct standards established by mankind and religions, or derived from the societies and traditions are not absolutely practicable in all situations, for instance, being obedient doesn't mean that we are always doing the right things. If we insist in doing some things which are against our will or some things that do not seemed quite reasonable or applicable just because we want to be obedient, then we will be placed in a dilemmatic position, and we will have to struggle and suffer for the decision to be made!

Thus, we should make use of our strengths wisely but not being tied down by them!

Perfectionism

Craving for perfections in this imperfect world will just put one into a disappointing, frustrating and desperate situation, as a perfectionist will pursue his perfect way of life endlessly, and it will cease the enthusiasm or passion of one to live a beautiful life but pushes one into the abyss of misery! Perfectionists will always live a reclusive life that divorces from reality, they do not seemed to belong to this imperfect world though most of them would used to contribute some thrilling heritages to this imperfect world that doesn’t seemed to belong to them too!

So, live naturally and moderately, and life will be such beautiful!