The World of Tai Tai

(front view of the old folks' home, blocked by two buses) Although Mama is no longer the chief caretaker in the Old folks' home, she still misses her friends there. Mama keeps receiving phone calls from them every now and then, complaining about their having no one to take them to hospital and their having very little to eat. She has often told Uncle David, director of the shelter home, about their predicament but he does not believe a single word she says. To him, the present group of caretakers are good Christians who treat the old residents with kindness. He is the one who forced Mama to resign through dishonest means. However bad he is, Mama still loves him.Uncle David is her younger brother. She looks up to him as the first overseas graduate of the Teo family. She looks after him when he is sick. She cooks for him when his wife is busy with church activities. She never harbours any grudge against him. Uncle David always shows a perceptible contempt for Mama. He lours...

Situation: One day, I was having lunch with some male teachers in a coffee shop. Mr. A: The food in Miri leaves a lot to be desired. It is Not as good as that in Kuching. Mr. B: Agreed. We are spoilt for choice there. Mr. C: I find it quite alright. The chicken rice I'm having is palatable enough. Mr. A:(face turning in my direction)Mr. Lo, are you smoking? Me :(baffled) No, I am not. Mr. A: Are you saying that you are not smoking? Me : Yes, exactly. Mr. A: A-ha!You have just committed a serious grammatical error! Me : What's wrong with my sentence? Mr. A: Are you a non-smoker? Me : Yes,I hate smoking. Mr. A:(smiling slyly)As an English teacher, you should have responded to my question by saying,'No, I don't smoke.' Me : But your question was 'Are you smoking?'. I thought you'd mistaken me for smoking! Mr. A: I was only testing you. I wanted to find out how good your English was. Apparently your English leaves ...

I have just taken the first step to ending my over-reliance on writing on the laptop. A few moments ago,I bought myself a diary at Popular Book Store. I also bought two pens, two pencils, a sharpener, an eraser and lastly, a pencil case to keep all the newly-bought stationery. I will fill the pages of the diary with all ramblings and musings of mine. They will reflect the core of my mind and the depths of my heart. My thoughts tend to veer from hither to tither, and diary-writing can help organize anything that comes to my mind. It can also develop any inchoate idea of mine. Diary-writing is not new to me. I did it when I was a kid. However, I was not consistent in it. You may ask me why I revert to diary writing? Isn't online blog writing more fun and convenient? My answer is I want to retrain my fingers for manual writing. They have become too weak to hold a pen because of too much typing on the laptop.I can't even produce a paragraph if you give me an hour to write a stor...

One day during recess at school. Teacher S: Mr. Tai Tai, Have you marked all your students' compositions? Tai Tai :I have marked all of them. Teacher S: May I see one of them? Tai Tai: Yes, here you are. Teacher S:(reading through the composition)You made one mistake, Tai. Tai Tai: What is it? Teacher S: You did not do the student justice. Her original sentence is 'I was stressed out in work' but you changed it to 'I was stressed out with work'. Her use of the preposition 'in' is correct. Tai Tai: There's nothing wrong with my sentence. Teacher S: No, it's absolutely wrong. Tai Tai: I am very sure I am right. Teacher S: I have been teaching English since 1983 and I know what I am talking about.My English teacher, Mdm.Txx taught me to say 'I was stressed out in work'. (Two Other English teachers passed by) Teacher S: Hi, Miss N and Mdm O, come over here. Miss N & Mdm O: What can we do for you? Teacher S: Which sente...

On 13 August, I attended a Creative Writing Workship at Wisma Anglican, Sabah.It was the follow-up of the first one in April. Its main objective was to help all participants to produce the first drafts of their short stories. The speaker was again the famous expatriate writer Robert Raymer. The workshop was divided into seven parts(I may be wrong. My memory may fail me). a)Part I The speaker asked us to list out 15 topics we would like to write about. Mine were as follows: 1)My childhood neighbour's dog 2)How My Father was cheated when I was ten years old 3)My first day of teaching 4)How my mum got married to my Dad 5)How I met a girl who had constantly appeared in my dreams 6)My fight for dignity at school 7)How I became an English teacher 8)My love-hate relationship with English 9)My first injection at school 10)How my aunties chased an unwelcome visitor from my mum's home 11)How I became a lapsed Christian 12)How I was ostracized by my friends at college 13)...

I am a very slow reader. It normally takes me two to four weeks to finish a book.Hence, I only read an average of one book every month. The following are the books I have read from January to August: January: E.M. Forster's 'A Passage To India' February: Charles Dickens' 'The Great Expectations' March: Jeffery Eugenides' 'Middlesex' April: Robert Raymer's 'Lovers and Strangers Revisited' May:Aung San Suu Kyi's 'Letters From Burma' June :Doris Lessing's 'The Golden Notebook' JuLy: Virginia Woolf's 'To The Lighthouse' August: Wiliam P. Young's 'The Shack' The Book I Am Reading Now: Thomas Hardy's 'The Mayor Of Casterbridge' The number of books I have read is rather low. My aim is to read more books to improve my language.My preference is classic novels.

I did not know how it all began. A dreadful, churning nausea welled up in me out of the blue.The air around me seemed to have become viscous and I could not breathe properly.My chest and throat felt dry and tight, as if being constricted by a snake.I saw tiny balls of light flashing before me.Was I hallucinating? A powerful surge of fear washed over me. My hands shook involuntarily. My forehead, armpits and palms were damp with cold sweat. My heart was throbbing fast and my head went reeling. Holding my chest in anguish, I plonked myself down on a chair and asked my students to do their own work. The students let out an uproarious cheer and started chatting among themselves. Most of them had not been paying attention to my verb conjugation lesson. They were so thrilled to be left on their own devices.None of them bothered to ask why I stopped teaching. Chattering and playing games mattered more to them. The classroom was a cacophony of voices. The students were having the time of ...

SHE walks in beauty, like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that 's best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes: Thus mellow'd to that tender light Which heaven to gaudy day denies. One shade the more, one ray the less, Had half impair'd the nameless grace Which waves in every raven tress, Or softly lightens o'er her face; Where thoughts serenely sweet express How pure, how dear their dwelling-place. And on that cheek, and o'er that brow, So soft, so calm, yet eloquent, The smiles that win, the tints that glow, But tell of days in goodness spent, A mind at peace with all below, A heart whose love is innocent!

Title: Three Hundred Ringgit I can never forget that day, when the calm of our uneventful childhood was shattered by an experience that brought fleeting joy and then pain into our lives. It is the pain I remember the most. Perhaps pain is the usual harbinger of unpleasant things to come. It was late in the afternoon, I remember, and we three children were sprawled on the floor of our living-room, playing Billionaire, when a white Mazda pulled up in front of our gate. The driver, a fashionable young man, came into the house looking for Papa. His dark-purplish sunglasses captured our interest. Papa's face brightened when the visitor mentioned something like two hundred and fifty in his thick Fuzhou accent. He shook the young man's hand and thanked him profusely. Then,he saw him off at the front gate. In a flurry of excitement, Ah Hui, my older sister, ran to Mama's side with my brother and I in tow. Tugging at Mother's sleeve, she asked: "Mama, is it true...

I had a strange recurring dream last year. In that dream, I reached home in a lazy evening. The moment I crossed the threshold of my house, a young woman in a crushed flower dress appeared before me out of nowhere and gave me a hug. I put my arms around her and kissed her cheek in response. I did not know who she was but found myself drawn to her in spirit. I could feel the warmth of her touch and smelled the light floral scent from her slim body.Not long after I heard children voices ringing around us. We were surrounded by three to four kids of six to eight years old. I stroked the soft hair on their heads and lifted up a girl in my arms like a father.Soft, fuzzy light moved like an undulating stream among us and my heart was flooded by an overwhelming sense of peace. I always laughed off the dream as something daft and illogical. I had never thought I was cut out for marriage life. I cloistered my heart with impregnable walls of reserve and it was not easy for others to penetra...

I was appointed as a DG41 teacher last Wednesday. It was my second promotion this year. I had my first in January, from DG29 to DG32. I had been a DG29 teacher for thirteen years. DG29 is the job title for any diploma-level teachers in Malaysia. Believe me, it was both difficult and humiliating for a DG29 teacher to work in a school predominantly occupied by DG41 and DG44 teachers. Many colleagues looked down on me as a shallow-minded non-graduate who was no better than students. They had little faith in my credibility as an English teacher. Hence, I always got patronized as far as English was concerned.They constantly expressed their doubt over the validity of my marking and never gave me a chance to handle big projects like debate, speech and writing competitions.I was assigned to teach the worst classes. If they saw me reading a classic novel,they would ask if I was reading an abridged version in a most condescending manner. One of them even had the cheek to tell me that it was n...