The World of Tai Tai

I move through a tangle of ferns and feel the crunching of dried leaves under my feet. Branches meet overhead and shafts of light filter into the depths of the jungle floor through the thick canopy. Insects that blend well with the surroundings launch into a cacophony of drones, adding some touch of cheerfulness to the air.  The patter of water onto the broad leaves of some unknown plants stills my nerves and I inadvertently hum some snatches of my favourite songs. A stream is running alongside me, the branch of a river that corkscrews through the jungle. Faint sunlight glints off the ripples on the stream, and there are occasional bubbles created by tiny fish that poke through the surface for air. You won't lose your way by following the direction the stream flows.  The walk along the trail was easy at first, but it gradually becomes steep and winding, a little too challenging for my body to cope. But I smile and tell myself it is not a big deal. In life you ha...

Last Wednesday a senior assistant observed me and to make my lesson more interesting, I asked my students to translate two Malay paragraphs into English. A Bidayuh girl, who is a top student,  translated a sentence 'Jenayah melampaui batas politik dan sosial' as ' Crime transcends politics and society' and I marked her wrong, saying that the word 'politics' should be written as 'politic'. Before I asked one more student to translate I quickly realised my error and apologized. The senior assistant smiled and said nothing to reprimand me after the observation. I would have been reprimanded if it was my Ketua Bidang who observed me. Sometimes I am prone to making uncharacteristic errors.

A friend of mine is a local newspaper stringer and a few days before she published her article I found one spelling error in it - 'Potpurri'. I told her the correct spelling was 'potpourri' and she thanked me for correcting her. Yesterday, I read the local newspaper and saw her article. To my dismay, the word 'potpurri'  remained uncorrected. What made her stick to that error? I may not be as experienced as she is in writing but leaving an error uncorrected is unbecoming for someone like her.

To break the monotony of my lessons I taught my Form Four students how to write using all the seven senses of touch, sight, hearing, smell, taste, feeling and intuitive perception. During induction set, I showed the students a few novel extracts that incorporated all the seven senses. Then, we tried out writing a paragraph together, making sure that each sensory group was covered. Having done that, I divided the students in groups and each of them should produce a sensory paragraph.  They were eager to write and in twenty minutes, all of them had completed their writing. They wrote out their paragraphs on mahjong papers and put them up on walls. I walked around with a red pen in hand, correcting all the errors. Many of their writing issues had been fixed and I was pleased with myself to see the satisfied look on the faces of my students.

One day, A colleague did not come and I received a 'sit in' slip to look after her class. Curious about what her students had been doing in her lessons, I asked a top student if I could read his exercise book. He proudly showed me his book and I read it. While flipping the pages, a sentence caught my eye:'Onslaught of the Library Club, I would like to give a speech on the advantages of reading.' At that very instant, I did not know what it meant, was the student under the attack of the Library Club? I read the same sentence repeatedly and it finally sank into my mind that the student was trying to say 'on behalf of the library club'. How atrocious! the whole meaning was distorted. There was one more thing that made me more shocked. the student received a double tick, a merit mark for the use of that word. On the whole, he obtained a 29/30, an almost perfect score, but aside from the glaring error, there were other errors too! The likes of ' reading books ben...

I made mantous on the whim, but they turned out well, very light and fluffy.                                                Letting dough prove for two hours                                                           Double in bulk                                         ...

Do you believe it? I was censured by my Ketua Bidang for looking up the dictionary in front of my students. The word was 'contrive' and although I knew its meaning, I found it more effective reading to the students the lists of definitions in the dictionary. After my lesson, my KP called me into her cubicle and scolded me. "There's nothing wrong with my action," I said in my defence. "But you were compromising your credibility as a teacher." Apparently a student had come out of the classroom and complained to her about my so called incompetency. A spy to be exact. I put my foot down, refusing to admit that I was wrong.