Before I continue, I just want to apologize for the lack of updates, and even if I do update it’s all about teaching. It’s just that: 1. teaching consumes my entire life now and 2. it doesn’t seem too appropriate for a teacher to be posting too many camwhore pictures etc (plus, surprise surprise I’m not that vain anymore!). So…sorry that I’m no longer the same silly and stupid sweatlee.com

Anyway, I have a few pictures that I took over the weeks so I’m going to write about a day in my life as a teacher!

I wake up in the morning around 6.30 am and get ready for school (like a student hahah).

When I get to school (which is only a 2-minute walk away), I pack the materials for my classes immediately. My schedule is really packed everyday, I usually have back-to-back classes and if I’m lucky, 40 mins-1 hour between classes to photostat materials etc.

This is one of my form 1 classes! I’m actually not allowed to post pictures of my students since they’re under 18 (it’s apparently a law in Malaysia) so here’s one of their backs haha. I’m pretty sad that I can’t post their pictures because I’m planning to write some of their stories here with pictures for effect but guess I’ll blur their faces or something..

I hate making them copy questions from board cause it’s a waste of class time and I think it’s a lot more efficient if I could give them photocopied questions to answer. BUT we have to pay to photocopy and I’ve already spent more than RM100 so far for my 6 classes so.. Now I get why teachers make us copy the questions.

Actually, now that I’m a teacher, I totally get why teachers teach the way they do in Malaysia.

You have NO idea the stuff that we have to do. More than 50% of our time has to be devoted to a lot of other unnecessary administrative work and it’s so tiring to maintain our energy in all our classes. Sometimes I just want to be a teacher who asks students to copy notes and sits while they copy cause I have no energy at all! Thank god so far I’ve managed to remain super active but can you imagine how it’s like for a teacher who has been teaching for years? I don’t blame them for being worn out.

In the picture above, the seating arrangement is a little weird because I got so fed up of the kids complaining that they can’t see the board (it’s true, the board is terrible) so I dragged their tables to the front. The front kids were actually like 15cm from the board. Now they can’t complain anymore!

Ok continue. So I teach till around 2.40 pm and will finally get to sit. Sometimes I’ll eat my bun for breakfast/lunch but if I didn’t buy any then I’ll have to wait a little longer.

On Tuesdays and Wednesdays, there’ll be cocurriculum so we’ll have to stay in school till 4.30-5pm.

This was taken during our Merentas Desa activity last week. ALL the kids have to run 8km for that two days. I felt so bad for them cause they were already so tired from school and some of them didn’t even have time for lunch yet!

But it IS nice to run around the paddy fields

I’d choose to run here over congested city roads anytime!

After running, they had to sit under the BLAZING HOT SUN to listen to some speech. Super kesian!!! I sat with them to know how it feels and seriously it was not fun at all. I think teachers should sit under the sun with the kids to know how they actually feel everytime during assembly.

This was taken yesterday during the house practice. We have a very nice big field

Anyway! Around 5pm, I’ll go back to the staff room to pack my things. By then, I’d have been wayyy too tired for anything else and just want to shower and nap.

Then I would punch out and collect my mail. Got a postcard from Melissa! I have no idea which Melissa this is. Melissa Kong is that you???

I feel so loved!

When I get back home around 5.30ish, I’ll shower right away and die for a while on my bed. Lunch is out of the question, I just need some sleep.

Then I’ll wake up and cook dinner! We don’t have a fridge (cause we’re poor teachers) so I’ll eat whatever we have in the kitchen. Here’s an awesome meal of rice with omelet. Looks simple but it’s really good ok!

Sometimes I’m too tired to cook so I’ll eat outside. There’s a chinese restaurant, a mamak and a tom yam shop nearby.

Then I get back and mark my papers/homework and plan lessons for the next day. Planning takes a huge amount of time and if I don’t plan my lessons ahead, my classes will definitely not go well.

I go to bed around 12.30am every night because I cannot function without at least 6 hours of sleep!

On weekends, I’ll key in students’ homework marks etc in the tracker. We have to track each and every student’s progress, which is very hard if you have around 150 students :S I basically don’t have weekends at all..

That’s basically my life for the past one month that I’ve been a teacher!

Oh I also took plenty of photos last week cause for CNY, my dad and sister came back home! This is the first time in many years that we’re all together so it’s a momentous occassion!

Waiting for my sister and mother to finish their makeup at the photo studio. We were there to take our family photo! Can you see my brother and Peter (sis’ bf) sleeping at the back wtf

Yay family photo! Bad quality cause I sneakily took this picture from the computer.

I love my siblings! <3

Went back to Teluk Intan for Chinese New Year!!!!!!! So happy to be back and so happy to be getting my first angpau in 5 years!

Pete and my grandma downing shots together hahahhaa. My grandma is super hardcore ok!

With my cousin

Ok now I want to show you a picture, but you must promise to still love me after this.

Promise?

Promise??

Promise??????

So because we were so bored while visiting relatives (somemore some of them got no cookies in their houses how can!!!!), we had a “See who’s the ugliest competition”

Guess who won?

Me! wtf

Sigh such striking beauty

Chapped lips, big teeth, what more can you possibly want in a girl?

Anyway, *abrupt* we went to Singapore after that!

Yays!

Walked until I wanted to die.

By the way, I lost some weight recently. Conclusion: be a teacher if you wanna lose weight! I’ve been trying to lose weight for an eternity but never did so I’m quite happy! But I’ve also been sick and have not been eating well, plus teachers have to move a lot.

Ok the end have to sleep now. I just want to take this opportunity to congratulate myself for successfully finishing my first month of school T________T *tears of joy

Things are definitely getting more difficult now. Kids are misbehaving more often now that they’re used to me, and my energy level has been quite low but everyday I see something that inspires me to be a better teacher.

Rakis, an orang asli kid from my most challenging class, came to me today and said “Cikgu, saya faham SEMUAAAA yang cikgu ajar dalam kelas!!!” (teacher, I understood everything you taught in class!) with a huge grin. He was so proud of himself for being able to answer the questions, and looking at his proud smile made me cry a little inside.

This small boy has failed all his subjects before this and has probably not understood much in class before. He cannot read and write, and yet he is so hardworking in my class. All the kids around him are so disruptive, but he has always paid full attention to me when I teach. I’m just so inspired by him.

When I was exiting the class, I saw him walk to another boy and said “Amirul, cikgu ajar senang nak faham kan? Saya faham SEMUAAAA hari ini!” (Amirul, it’s easy to understand what teacher taught right? I understood everythinggg!) with his huge cheeky grin.

I just wanted to hug him there and then and tell him I will do everything I can to make sure he will succeed. Rakis, you don’t know this, but you inspire me in so many ways to not give up and to be a better teacher.

–

p.s: very impressed with myself for writing this super long post hahah

that is all.

Read my article HERE if you want to know how I save money! Do like the article and the page too! I’m happy they chose me to write on this topic so I can spread my dogma on my kiam-siapness wtf

Do check out the entrepreneurs workshop that Prudential is organizing too if you’ve always wanted to know how to start your own business It’s on February 18th in PJ Live Arts Jaya One! More info here.

I’ve been having acute abdominal pain for the past two weeks since I moved to my new school. At first I didn’t think much of it since it could be due to the stress of settling in a new place, teaching or maybe the water etc. Saw 4 doctors and they told me it could be gastric/wind so I took lots of gastric medicine. The pain got much worse and some nights, I can’t move at all without cringing in pain. Miraculously, the pain would subside a little in the morning so I’d still teach (thank god).

But on Thursday night, the pain got so bad I can’t even do anything. Can’t breathe, can’t talk, can’t move. On Friday, I drove home (painful drive) and went straight to the hospital since there’s no proper hospital near my school. Saw a gastroenterologist at first cause I thought it had to do with gastric, then he referred me to a gynae cause it could be pelvic infection and finally I was referred to a surgeon cause it could be appendicitis.

The thing is, I’ve had the pain for too long for it to be appendicitis, so no one knows exactly what is wrong. So my surgeon gave me antibiotics and if I don’t get cured completely by Monday, I’ll have to have a surgery done to remove my appendix.

Surgery?? Now?? I am so upset cause I cannot afford to miss any teaching days or my kids would get soooo left behind. My mom was with me but she was more worried about me missing Chinese New Year wtf.

My parents are convinced there’s some black magic stuff and that I’ve been charmed (jampi-ed wtf) and got angry at me for choosing to go to a rural area. My mom called all her aunty friends to collect stories of people getting sick through black magic to scare me wtf. Also, the pain only started when I moved there but why would anyone want to harm a teacher?? They want me to transfer out now but no way I’m doing that. I’m sure it’s either just appendicitis or a case of very bad bacterial infection.

Anyway, aside from that I’ve been doing ok. I have so many stories to share! I spoke to this form 5 boy at length the other day and his story is quite eye-opening so I’ll write about that later.

I also kinda broke down for the first time last Friday after my very tough class with my more challenging kids. I taught them a song but only half the class would sing along, the other half was too shy/didn’t want to try. I sang the song to them over and over again, encouraged them, got them to pronounce the syllables etc but nothing worked.

I was also in pain so I can’t project my voice too much, then two boys started punching each other. The other boys immediately rushed to the crime scene, wanting to be part of the action too. I finally got them all settled down, sang the song, and talked to the boys about their conflict.

When I left that class, I felt my tears welled up. I felt like I just wasted these kids’ time because nothing probably went in their tiny cute heads. I had assumed that they could at least sing a song with me, I didn’t plan too much in advance and didn’t take into consideration their lower level compared to other classes. It was entirely my fault that the lesson went haywire.

And the worst part was, I only had 2 minutes to compose myself while I walk to my next class. 2 minutes to change from this distraught teacher to my usual cheery joyful teacher mode.

Life is just beginning to get a lot tougher for Cikgu Suet. But, all izz well.

I realized I haven’t blogged in weeks, but things have been crazyyyy! I wish I could get someone to blog for me because there’s so much I want to say but don’t have the energy, time and internet to do so.

So, I’m officially a teacher now! Students call me Cikgu Suet Li cause I think Cikgu Liew/Ms. Liew is too formal. I just drove the 2.5 hours home from a long day of teaching, so I literally  cannot feel my legs now but I want to update about my first week as a teacher in a rural school!

On the way to my school!

Yay, almost there! but another 40 mins more -___-

Cows crossing whenever they want, super scary!

The other day, I saw a goat lying in the middle of the road like he owns it. LIKE A BOSS!

My school! and view from my balcony. I live IN school!

I moved in last week and things were quite tough at first because we hadn’t got our electricity until two days ago. Use candle only T__T But! I surviveddddd. We also had to clean our inhabited house, we cleaned the cobwebs and dead insects and scrubbed the entire house! I’m very proud of myself that I survived cause I’m actually quite a princess. I don’t clean and I need aircon all the time, but now I’m such a kampung girl! *pats self on back

Angeline, the other TFM fellow, cleaning

Srs bsns

EUGHHHH. BUT it’s super clean now ^_^

Meeting my kids for the first time. So excitinggg

Anyway, about teaching! It’s been………challenging. Very challenging. I mean I know it’s going to be tough with these kids, but it’s beyond imaginable. First of all, I’m having problems with the boys catcalling and making kissing noises at me wtf. It sounds stupid but it’s a very real problem! Whenever I walk at the corridors, the boys will start, sometimes they even call out I Love Youuu.  I’m a teacher and this is really disrespectful! If it persists, I’ll have to talk to other teachers and get them to talk to the boys. They wouldn’t like it if people do that to their mothers/sisters too. Plus, I’m new, so maybe they’ll stop when they come to respect me later.

As for my classes, I found out that I have sooo much work to do with them. I was given the “back” classes for Form 1, and their diagnostic came up to be 0%. Some of them are illiterate, it means I have 7 years of catch up to do before I can end this year for them to be on par with the proper form 1 level. FEEL SO ANGRY that teachers let these kids waste 6 years of their lives! 6 years of going to school and coming back with absolutely nothing, learning absolutely nothing.

I guess that’s the biggest motivating factor for me. These kids don’t deserve to go back with another year of nothingness. They deserve to learn, they deserve progress and success. There’s absolutely no way I’m giving up until they show 7 years of progress in one year. It’s going to be hella tough though, but I’m glad my anger at the inequity is fueling my passion.

I also have one “best” class in Form 2. To be honest, I’d say they’re the best class only because they are well behaved kids. They don’t run around when I teach, talk or punch other people. Academic achievement wise, they’re averaging at a B-/C. Definitely NOT good enough.

Eventhough they’re well behaved, the other naughtier classes were definitely more engaged and active in class. The “good” class has a blank face whenever I talk to them, and would say yes in unison to ANY question; it’s as if they have been programmed to be that way from years of formal dictator-like schooling. It’s really sad and I’m planning to change that culture

My school is literally a drive-thru fruit farm! We have fruit trees all over and we can just pick the rambutan, durian, langsat etc anytime

It’s not official until you have your teacher name tag!

My poor kids had to carry their tables and chairs from the 3rd floor of a building to the 3rd floor of another building. They were so tired by the time they got to class!

Sometimes it’s Cik Sweat Li, sometimes Suet Le, sometimes Sweet Le -____________- Call myself Li la sigh

Meet Mr Chicken! He’s my timer for all my activities and I get the students to say “Hi Mr Chicken” and “thank you Mr Chicken” and they love it! Soooo cuteeeee

There are definitely plenty of challenges ahead but I’d say my first week of teaching went pretty well It’s just a lot of hard work so prayers/positivism/words of encouragement are welcome!

Will blog again when I have time. Thanks for reading, everyone. Sorry for the lack of updates!

Let’s backtrack all the way to where I stopped. Three weeks ago, Kem Skorlah ended very ceremoniously. It was a very exciting but draining week because we were putting in everything we had to make sure the kids got the best out of coming to holiday school, and we slept an average of 3-4 hours every single night. We all had a big goal, 30% improvement in English and Math, and the kids all knew and truly worked hard for it as well.

In Institute, we learned a great deal about investment. Our students have to be invested first before they can achieve success, and we have various strategies on how to make sure the kids know they can, want and will achieve. I think that’s really what’s missing in our schools. Teachers tell us to do well so we can get a good job yadda yadda, but there’s absolutely nothing beyond that. For kids who have families who care about education, you’re all set. But what about the many others who are not as lucky? They get left behind. Nobody tells them that they too can do it, so that’s why investing these kids is so important before we can even begin to change their life trajectories.

A secret trick to get them invested – give them food! Hahaha well not really lah, but making learning fun is definitely a good investment strategy.

Or you could get Deborah Henry to give them certificates! Haha.

To encourage them to speak more, I had an inter-class debate the other day. I gave the kids less than 24 hours to prepare and bear in mind that these are kids who NEVER ever speak English. They took the debate very seriously and all went back to prepare for it. Coincidentally, the media came over that day so they took lots and lots of pictures! The kids were so thrilled and excited to be in the limelight!

After the debate, we had a sharing session and my kids told me that they were really upset because they didn’t think they did well. I was just SO happy that they tried and were so into it despite not knowing how to speak at all, and I practically forced them to speak in front of a huge crowd with reporters and journalists and people from the ministry! Even I would pee in my pants.

We lost and they were disappointed but I was still so very very proud of them *tear. Thank god on that very same day I had to break the news to them, Deborah Henry was observing my class so I got her to give the certificates out. They were starstruck that they got to shake hands with our former Miss Malaysia and forgot all about their loss hehehe

I made a poster on the importance of punctuation! Found the idea online

The big day!!! We gave them a diagnostic on the first day and a final test on the last day to see how much they had improved. Remember, our goal was 30% improvement each.

We didn’t sleep the day before the last day of class cause we were up writing personal letters to all our kids. We want them to know that they can succeed after Kem Skorlah if they remain confident and if they continue believing in themselves.

Revealing the results! 31% increase for Math and 21% for English!!!!!!! We were all extremely proud of them, although they were clearly disappointed that they didn’t get the 30% increase for English. I told them that the 30% is our big ambitious goal and we purposely wanted them to aim high so even if they fall, they wouldn’t fall too far behind.

21% improvement in just 4 weeks, imagine what they can do if they had a year!

I was ecstatic for them! I had 3 kids who got more than 40% improvement, they went from a 40% to 80% in 4 weeks!!! From barely passing to an A!

When I broke the news to them individually, Fadzlan, my cheeky student who got the highest improvement in class was on the brink of tears. He couldn’t believe that he had improved, much less improve that much!!! When I told him that I wanted to call his mother to tell her that I’m extremely proud of his achievement, he couldn’t believe his ears. Seeing the look of pure unadulterated joy on his face made me want to cry so bad as well. He was so happy because he never thought he could do it at first, but when I asked him how he think he did, he was so confident that he did improve because he worked hard for it himself.

This is why I chose to teach, because kids like Fadzlan should be given the opportunity to experience such intense happiness from his own hard work.

We had a class full of crying kids that day. All of them had improved and they couldn’t believe it at all! “Cikgu, saya tak pernah improve langsung! Happy teramat amat lah! Tak pernah rasa saya boleh dapat penaikkan markah!”

It was such an emotional day, seeing their happiness and tears, bidding farewell to them, giving last minute parting advice. We told them that they had gone through enough negativity in their lives. Many people had told them that they cannot do it, that they cannot succeed, but today they really proved everyone wrong. They proved to the rest that if they worked hard and believed in themselves, they CAN achieve, and there’s no such thing as being born smart.

My first group of students, what a sweet memory.

Yay!

Ok I’m done talking about Kem Skorlah but there’s still so much stuff to talk about! Now you can see why I’ve been so busy. The only free time I have these days is spent either sleeping, eating or shitting. Sometimes cannot shit also T__T

This is from Inner Child Night! We spent an entire night playing and relieving all our childhood memories doing face painting, playing Twister, singing and dancing to Backstreet Boys, blowing bubbles!

Playing Pepsi Cola!

Childhood snacks! We even dressed up super kiddishly in our pajamas and were clutching our soft toys all night.

We work extremely hard and play hard as well whenever we could.

We celebrated Christmas yesterday! It was mainly dedicated to our TFM trainers from the states and the UK because they have to spend Xmas away from home this year. I super love my TFM family

Institute is coming to an end in 3 days, and everyone has been feeling extra melancholic these days because we’ve really bonded and have treated each other like family after 2 whole months of seeing and being with each other 24/7. We’ve seen each other’s smiles, tears, blood (yes) and sweat, we’ve held each other’s hands in challenging times, we’ve pushed each other and supported one another emotionally, and we’ve learned about everyone’s quirks and interests.

We came alone to change the world, and we’re leaving with an incredible network of 49 other similarly idealistic teachers.

I didn’t blog about this cause I was emotionally drained, but I broke down the day before the last day of Kem Skorlah. I didn’t think that I’ve been doing a great job, I thought I didn’t prepare my kids well enough, I thought I had completely wasted their time blabla but I had amazing people to support me and to hold my hand when I cried. I couldn’t have done this without them so thinking about being separated after this really saddens me

But I know I can do it because I really want all my kids next year to experience the same joy Fadzlan and my kids at Kem Skorlah experienced.

Gotta run now, thanks for reading!

So I’ve been doing the same thing for the past three weeks, I’ve been teaching at Kem Skorlah (refer to post below). Next week is our last week there, and then we’ll have two more weeks of training before we get catapulted to our respective schools next year.

We had a meeting with our respective schools next year and I’ll be staying at the teacher’s quarters with my other fellow TFM fellow for the next two years. While it’s good to be a stone throw away from school and only paying next to nothing for housing, it’s scary to live on the school ground as well. It’s like I’ll have to be a teacher 24/7 and can only escape when I go back home once in a few months or something. Also, I know I really wanted something really different that’s why I asked for a rural school, but as it gets closer, it’s scary to know that I’ll REALLY be in a rural area.

The quarters that I’ll be living in is completely unfurnished and the electricity has been cut, and to get the electricity, we’ll have to go to Kuala Pilah which is 1.5 hours away. There’s only one bank and it’s Agro bank. There’s no KFC/McD obviously, no supermarkets (only small kedai runcits), one furniture shop to get our furnitures…and that’s it.

Ok don’t want to think about it. For the kids, for the kids!

That’s my personal mantra for the next two years. When the going gets tough, I’ll just tell myself that I’m doing this for the kids. I’ve already decided that I’m going to invest 90% of my time, energy, and emotions into doing this, and only 10% for everything else in my life. I’ve been finding it terribly hard to balance things outside teaching (personal relationships, friends, family, other interests/hobbies etc), but it’s okay because I have my 90%. I know this thinking is warped, but if I want to do a good job then this is what it takes.

Speaking of doing a good job, we’ve been getting a lot of visitors lately in our classes. From our board of trustees, to the staff members, to our corporate partners, to the media. There’s so much pressure to perform it’s crazy! Good thing is I think all of us are trying really hard and it’s definitely translating to students’ achievements. Bad news is, we’re told that while we’re on the pathway to be an effective teacher, we’re nowhere close to becoming a transformational teacher.

Transformational. Even hearing that word sends shivers down my spine. If it already takes so much to be an effective teacher, how much more does it take to be a transformational teacher? A WHOLE lot more, that’s what.

An effective teacher makes sure her students are on track to finish that academic year, that they’re not left behind academically. A transformational teacher goes beyond that and makes sure her students have completely different life trajectories after being taught by her. She instills in them that they, without her, would be able to believe that they can succeed and will work to succeed even without her help. A transformational teacher expects her students to achieve as much as what she would expect her own children to achieve, she would not accept failures and will have high expectations for her students.

Bear in mind that our students are on average 4-5 years BEHIND their academic year, so we have to catch up with being an effective teacher first before we could go anywhere close to being transformational.

So I’ve been teaching for 3 weeks now and already I’m swamped with so many challenges. I think talking about the challenges itself will take a few posts and I’ll get more into it later. All I can say is, academically, the disparity between our students at Kem Skorlah (and they’re not even in the worst schools, which we’ll be going to next year) and with the urban middle-income students in Klang Valley is HUGE. I saw the detrimental effects of PPMSI on the ground and it’s not pretty at all. It did so much damage to these kids whose basic English literacy skill is almost nonexistent. They fall further and further behind, and from not knowing how to do Math and Science already as it is, now they can’t even understand the questions!

Don’t get me wrong, I agree with having Math and Science in English, but definitely not when around 60-70% of the nation’s population is not even well-versed in English yet. Improve their English first then think about such a huge policy change! It’s not what benefits the Klang Valley middle-income people. I learned Math and Science in Malay and yet I could do well in college after that, and yet I’m positive I can compete with anyone else globally. Why? Because of my level of English. So how do you expect people who don’t know basic English to keep up? I can talk about PPMSI for eternity and don’t get me started on MBMMBI (do we really need such a long acronym?).

Anyway it’s been a long rambly post and I have to get back to my lesson plans. I’m compiling my own “kids say the darnest things” logbook so I can remember all the funny things they say, hopefully I’ll post that soon!

Have a great weekend ahead, and thanks for reading despite me not blogging that often anymore!

This is from last week:

Me with Jacintha and Oga. We were waiting to take pictures with Deborah Henry who was there with Joyce Tagal, Edmund Bon and Zain HD for a session on inspiring youth leaders, but everyone was trying to take pictures with her so we gave up and just took one of ourselves hahah.

This was on Sheau Wen’s birthday! Muzzie was singing Happy Birthday to her, it was so sweet!

I love everyone who’s here with me, all 49 other Fellows and 10+ staff members. We’re like one HUGE happy family and are always there for each other!

A session with Brett, the founder of Teach First UK! He flew in from London just to see us!

Jasmine, Victoria, Connie, Priscilla and Nina!

The day before the D Day, everyone was busy working on our posters for our classes!

Worked the entire day but it was so fun cause we could hear everyone going “eh pass me scissors!” “who got silver marker pen??” “wahhh your poster so nice!” and the team spirit was just so strong!

Karthik and I with our posters. The one he’s holding is of our motto in class “I want, I can and I will!” (we get them to say this quite often and believe it or not but they’ve actually begun to internalize it!) and our BIG goal for the class after 4 weeks: 30% increase in achievement! I’ll explain the fire poster later.

Golden tickets for students who participate in class! They got so excited when they saw us giving this out and participation rate increased dramatically, and this was even before they knew what these were for!! Hahahha

The tickets are for a raffle at the end of the week

The amazing training team is beyond amazing. On Monday, our first day of school, they stuck quotes on our doors.

They also gave us free hugs and made a huge banner that said “GOOD LUCK transformational teachers!” and when we came back they held up one that said “Welcome Back, Teachers!”

On Tuesday, they gave us chocolates with more inspirational quotes. On Wednesday, we got individualized cards that say “Happy Wednesday! You’re halfway through your first week!”, on Thursday, more encouraging notes on doors and on Friday, a huge cheer for all of us.

I don’t think any of us would have made it through our first week without their support and love!

We have 6 vans that bring us to our two respective schools every morning and our journey to the schools takes 45 minutes each way.

We usually start the journey at 7am, teach till 12pm, get back and rest, continue training till 7pm and work on our lesson plans till 1 am. Repeat everyday. I’m exhausted!!!!

Before the kids got in!

Our amazing kids!!!!! We had a really fun ice-breaking game where they had to pass an orange around under 30 seconds. They were all sitting really far away at first and they had to figure out how to make the goal.

They got to 20 seconds, and we made it even shorter, and shorter.

To only 2 seconds!

We didn’t even tell them anything but they figured that they have to get closer…and closer..and finally put only their fingers together to “pass” the orange to everyone! We used this activity to show them that the goal may look ambitious but it’s definitely do-able with teamwork! (didn’t tell them that it also means there are shortcuts in life )

Our first day was quite bad because we had to give them their diagnostics to see their current level. They’re at about 10% for Math and 40% for English – failing both of them! They are failing Math primarily because they cannot understand the questions that are in English. The effects of PPMSI on real kids in somewhat more suburban-rural schools, which is about 70% of the schools in Malaysia!!

Lotsa work to do for us then!

This poster is part of our Classroom Management Plan. If a student misbehaves (talk when teacher is talking, not listen to instructions, defiant etc), we put them in the yellow part and give them a verbal warning. If they get to the orange part, they have to meet with us and if they get to the red part, we will call their parents.

No one got to the yellow part even, our kids were extremely well behaved! Which I really think is because of our other Classroom Management Plan:

We fully exercise our Classroom Policies: be courageous, be respectful and to have teamwork. We constantly explain this in great detail and point a lot of our objectives and activities back to this and it works!

But this is the one that worked the best! It’s a Happy-o-Meter, and when the whole class behaves really well and are really participative, we move the thermometer up one scale. When it gets to 10, we give them a reward! This week’s reward is a 2-minute dance party (which we just did today!!!) and next week’s is Game Party!

This week went so well. It was rough at first because they weren’t used to all this, but once they got invested in the classroom culture, everything went so smoothly! From 0% participation rate, they now fight to answer questions. We just had a dance party today and it was awesomeeee! They were so shy and didn’t know what to do at first when we blasted the music, but after teaching them the lightbulb and pet the dog dance wtf, everyone had so much fun! They all went back with a hugeeee smile

Oh, we also have individual behavior log for every student, and they have to get us to rate their behavior and performance at the end of the day. It works like a charm because it shows that we have our eyes on every single one of them! We always forget to rate them but they will constantly remind us at the end of the day.

I love my kids, they’re so awesome *tear

I wanted to give them a sense of ownership of their class, so I asked them to name themselves. The Justin Bieber fan club in my class came up with “Never Say Never”, which I thought would be apt for our motto hahaha. But the rest of the class decided on Intelligent Geniuses! I greet them every morning with “Hello my intelligent geniuses!” and “Bye, have a nice day today geniuses!”

The view outside the school, beautiful!

Some of the kids in our school. Here, they were singing happy birthday to one of the Teach For Malaysia staff.

This is me, dead. from lesson plan preparation. It takes about 4-5 hours to plan and get the materials ready for each lesson T___T

Proud of our hardwork!

I have more pictures and stuff to talk and show you guys but I’m so tired! I just made a huge Shout Out Board in our class and the responses were crazy! I tell them to leave us notes and write anything they want on the board, and we’ve gotten so many “I love today’s class!” and “I want to learn more!”. I also got a “Tak suka duduk belakang la cikgu” hahaha. We change their seat arrangement everyday to get them used to working with different people everyday.

It was also through this board that I found out that one of my kids was having a very bad day, and we talked about it over lunch. It’s quite a depressing topic and very personal, so I won’t talk about it.

That’s all for now, will try to update more soon! I have so many stories to tell! In fact, I have one story for every single kid in my class because they’re all so unique and interesting. Actually lemme tell one story!

There’s this one kid who’s probably the 2nd weakest in the class. On the first day, he didn’t want to participate much and was very quiet. He didn’t come the next day but he came day after that and saw the change in the classroom. Other kids were already ahead in terms of points (we give kids points for participating) and I guess he wanted to be part of it too.

We also set up a one-on-one session with him to keep him updated about the previous lessons that he missed, and since then his change in behavior was so dramatic. He became a superstar in our class. Still shy and still weak in both English and Math, but he participated regularly and became extremely invested in wanting to learn more. I’m so proud of him *tear

There’s this other boy who is clearly the naughtiest kid in class. He has this very cheeky grin and would make jokes in class. We knew we had to get on this kid’s good side because he was clearly the “leader” here. I think the sweetest words I’ve heard from him was “teacher, I will see you tomorrow!” in perfect English. It means he’s coming the next day and it means I did something right today!

He comes 1 hour early to class everyday and would sit with me to go through our previous lessons. He also likes to make sure I don’t forget my bag.

Ok, for real, that’s all for now!

So! First of, I’m obviously alive. Ha ha ha *laughs at own lame joke.

Secondly, we’ve been here for our training for two weeks now, and we’ll be going to school next week!!!!! Super super duper nervous about this because we’ll be teaching real kids now. Teach For Malaysia’s training is composed of both theoretical and practical parts of teaching, and they organized a holiday camp for a few hundred high-need kids so we could try out our crazy creative ideas on them! (but raise their academic achievement too of course, we have pretty ambitious goals)

Week 2, feels like Month 2.

Photobooth time with Kugahn and Kok Hin!

See how many crazy fellows you can fit in one picture! and spot all ze eyebags T___T

my eyebags are so bad they should be illegal hahaha

Team Pioneer- always coming in first!

This is the “how am I doing today?” board in our room. We change the colors of the paper according to our moods so they know how we feel that day.

Filling in the 6 main strategies for highly effective teachers! We follow the Teaching As Leadership model – which is an amazing framework that employs characteristics of a transformational leader into being a teacher.

How a typical session looks like

Dzam with Shannon and Giles who’re our trainers from teach for america and teach first UK. We have 6 phenomenal trainers from both TFA and TF who will be spending the whole two months with us here at Genting!

They are people who have gone through the same program in their home countries and know how it’s like working with a high-need community. Interesting how you can draw parallels between a few so seemingly different countries and learn how to adopt best practices into a more localized context.

I think our trainers are what maketh our training. I expected the training to be amazing, but everything keeps blowing my mind away again and again. They are extremely interesting and engaging, and most importantly very invested and motivated, exactly how we want to be as teachers later. I feel sooo blessed that we got to work with such great people!

If a bunch of Americans and British would put so much effort day in day out to make sure we succeed and make sure our kids achieve, I don’t see why we as Malaysians can’t do the same.

Silly picture to lighten the mood. We’re definitely getting more and more tensed as the day progresses.

We’ve been spending the last few days working on our first ever lesson plan, and it just takes so much effort and time. It’s unlike what I thought most teachers have to do and the amount of work expected to be put into each lesson is crazy. I officially spent about 6 hours planning my first 45-minute lesson.

Taking a quick power nap before we work into the night.

The thing about working with all these super high-achieving people is the fact that everyone is such a perfectionist! We push ourselves so hard and are quite harsh on ourselves, and I’m afraid we might burn out even before we start our actual school year next year.

Like I said, things are getting very tensed these days. We’ve met many people – people who are our biggest stakeholders, the ministry, the education minister, the principals and teachers, our corporate partners, the media – and everyone seems to be expecting so much that we’re all so afraid of failure.

Despite all that fear however, I think it’s what really drives us forward too. We expect the best from ourselves and our kids, and it’s not about having high absurd expectations but having really big goals that I know I can achieve. The training’s been extremely fun though, and I love working with like-minded people with similar values and passion

Anyway too much work tonight so will update more next time! Tell me what you guys want me to talk about, or if you don’t even wanna hear about my training/work at all wtf.

Things are very hectic here. We spend about 13 hours each day with each other for our formal training, and only about 1-2 hours before we sleep every night to complete work for the next day. I have completely no time to do anything else, which is good because it keeps me focused for these 2 months. I brought my kindle and my super thick Murakami book, but I’ve only read 1/2 page so far before I had to complete my work for the next day T__T

It might be too early to tell, but I don’t think I’d ever go through anything this strenuous and intense again. Our trainers (all of them from either Teach For America or Teach First UK) are all extremely committed and energetic, and despite the sessions being that incredibly long, they made them seem so fun and engaging. The people here are all beyond amazing, and each and everyone of them constantly inspires me further everyday. Everyone is so invested in the same vision and goals, it’s just nice to feel all that energy and motivation. Definitely makes me forget that I’m extremely sleep-deprived everyday.

The closer I get to starting my teaching journey, the more convinced I am that the goals Teach For Malaysia is trying to achieve will become a reality. Actually, I can’t even begin to describe how I feel at this point. I really need sleep.

A video that inspired me today:

“There is no movement without the first follower. We’re told we all need to be leaders, but that would be really ineffective.

The best way to make a movement, if you really care, is to courageously follow and show others how to follow.

When you find a lone nut doing something great, have the guts to be the first person to stand up and join in.”

By the way, Teach For Malaysia‘s 2013 cohort’s application is now open! There are 50 of us this year and 75 of you next year. Apply if you want to make a difference too!

Happy picture because this is a happy post!

Happy post because I’m finally leaving tomorrow for Institute (Teach For Malaysia’s training for two months) (back story: I’ll be joining Teach For Malaysia’s first cohort and will be teaching in a rural government school in Negeri Sembilan next year for 2 years)

I’ve been talking and waiting for this day for FIVE months since my graduation, so it feels quite surreal that it’s finally becoming a reality! I just finished packing and it was the hardest packing session I’ve ever done because I cannot bring ANYTHING in my wardrobe T___T

We’re only allowed to wear baju kurung during the formal sessions (7am-9pm everyday), and only trackpants and big t-shirts outside those times. So……yeah…..bye bye pretty dresses, scanty shorts and nice tops for the next 2 months and 2 years. (This is probably my biggest sacrifice )

Trackpants from high school days. For some reason, they’re a lot longer and bigger than I’d remembered them to be, I think I’ve shrunk in height. Honey, I shrunk my legs!

Bye bye, my entire wardrobe. Awesome maxi dress from Vanity Dreams.

Cute stationery, moleskin, Murakami, kindle, Teaching As Leadership textbook – I’m all set and ready for Institute!

This was taken on the way to my future school last week. Very picturesque 2.5 hour ride but I got too carsick to fully appreciate the view. There’s no highway to Simpang Durian, and the entire ride there was through extremely winding roads that have no street lamps. I don’t foresee myself coming back for the next 2 years, bye bye civilization!

Other random pictures from my phone:

Very happy day cause I got Murakami’s latest book! I’ve read all his other books so I was pretty determined to get this one as soon as it came out too. Could have gotten it on my kindle, but I’m a true fan *teary eyes from overwhelming loyalty

Before my haircut a few days ago. I was so tempted to get a super short haircut again, but I’ve waited almost two years for my hair to grow from my previous short boycut so I chickened out

This is all extensions by the way, my hair is not that long

Real hair length

This was taken a while ago while I was still volunteering at the refugee school. I was on a very competitive batu seremban competition with a bunch of 11 year olds. Lost terribly to all of them. The champion of batu seremban in that class was this small Myanmarese boy who was super good!

They were all damn cute, when I was on the verge of losing, everyone kept trying to encourage me. “Teacher, don’t throw so high! Teacher, you can do it!” and when I managed to complete one round, everyone clapped enthusiastically and gave me a “I know you can do it” look T_______T

I love kids so much T____T

We conducted an experiment in class the other day on density columns!

Sorry suddenly jump to a picture of food wtf. This is the making of maggi goreng with luncheon meat

Tastes really good but not as good as mamak standard yet. Need to spend more time standing next to the mamak guy while he cooks so I can steal his skillz

The day I got a pimple so big I almost got swallowed whole by it. Pimple doesn’t look malicious here, but it was so evil that I could hear it plotting for my demise. Popped it THREE times and it finally died a slow painful death. Took 2 weeks to recover. Moral of the story: drink more water

When Angie was here last week! Crashed someone’s birthday party at Kampachi *awkward smile

That’s all, I don’t know when I’ll get to blog again. Do follow my Twitter for more regular updates, especially if you want to know how the training goes and know more about my teacher life!

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Advertorial

Xplay’s next party is here again! The last parties at KK and Sepang were a blast, so this time Xplay is throwing another big party for Kuching folks at Paragon Club on the 19th of November! The best part of this event is definitely DJ Malika, a super hot DJ from Russia AND my favorite DJs at Zouk, Twilight Actiongirls!

Xplay parties are always free, so get your free passes here! : http://on.fb.me/XPLAY11

As with the previous Xplay parties, all you have to do is follow the Xpax (http://facebook.com/xpaxfb) and U.O.X. (http://facebook.com/uoxfb) Facebook pages for more information on how to register and get your FREE passes! Have fun ya’ll, while I go on a no-partying-sabbatical for the next few years

My favorite Chinese tourist in her super China pose! Angela was in Singapore last weekend and Audrey and I were supposed to head down to see her, but to save more money, she came up to see us instead <3

Angela is Audrey’s soulmate from college, and someone I’ve grown to really love after spending one year in college with her. Angie, Aud and I all went to the same college although I’m 3 years younger than them (doesn’t look like it, I look like I’m the oldest wtf)

We had ramen at this SUPER awesome place in Fahrenheit. Quite expensive though, RM25-ish per bowl.

A very adorable picture of Tim and Aud!

Poor Tim, had to entertain 3 girls in our bimbo talks about hair, makeup and boyfriend problems. He looked like he enjoyed it though wtf. Angie and I stayed over at Tim’s place so we had somewhat a sleepover and talked a lot about our love lives and he listened very attentively and even gave pretty good input wtf.

We spent the ENTIRE night taking pictures. I wish I was kidding when I said the entire night T____T

It was a Saturday night, we all complained that we were too sleepy and tired so we went back at 10.30pm. Upon reaching home, we suddenly regained tremendous amount of energy and proceeded to camwhore for the next 3 hours while Tim cursed away playing his Starcraft.

A million pictures under the cut. Warning: super narcissistic and vain pictures so I’m a bit shy of them wtf

I was wearing Aud’s extensions, hence the long hair. I look like my old self again *tears of joy T______T

It was painful but I successfully eliminated the 100+ pictures we took (wish I was exaggerating) to only 8 pictures. Quite proud of myself ^_^

As the night progressed, we got more and more stupid but too lazy to post those stupid pictures up so head over to Aud’s blog to view them if you have too much time on your hand!

The next day, we went to Aud’s house to see her new room! It’s sooo pretty <3

With Jiameei too!

I love my friends so much T____T I haven’t been spending too much time with them since we’re all very busy with our own lives, but whenever we’re together we always have so much fun. So sad that I have to leave them behind for the next two years, and god knows when I’ll get to see Angie again (she lives in Canada)

I got new clothes from Azorias! I’ve always really liked all their clothes just because they are extremely different compared to other blogshops around. When I first tried the clothes on, I was really amazed at the quality of the clothes! None of those flimsy cloth, bad stitching and runny threads found on typical clothes from blogshops these days.

I really really loved this top and skirt. Look at the lace and cut and flow! It’s dressy enough for a nice fancy dinner, and yet casual enough for a girly day out too.

I chose all the pink items because October is Breast Cancer Awareness month! Azorias is currently working with Breast Cancer Welfare Association (BCWA) for Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and they’re having a fun contest on their facebook page to raise awareness. Basically, you just have to take pictures of yourself with anything pink and get instant 10% discount voucher and a chance to win a pink outfit of your choice!

I’m so proud to help Hui Wen spread the word on Azorias because I truly believe in her and the work that she’s doing. I’ve not seen someone so passionate about fashion and so dedicated to making it work like her! Top-notch quality clothes that are really unique in style and design, now I kinda wish I’m not going to be a teacher so I can wear more of those to work!

Sadly, only baju kurung for me..

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p.s: the reason why I password protected the previous post is because I don’t want it to be too public. I’m definitely okay with people reading it, but I don’t want it to be out there on the front page. The password to that post is the same as its title. Sorry for making some of you email/tweet/facebook me about it!

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Ten days….this is crazy. It’s really beginning to dawn upon me that I’m REALLY going to be a teacher in a rural school, that I’m REALLY doing this permanently for the next two years, that I must be REALLY out of my mind. I know I talk about this too much these days but bear with me, I just can’t stop thinking about it!

I mean..I’ve been talking about this for months on end now and everyone around me is quite sick of it too, but it feels so different now that it’s getting so much closer and I’m beginning to slowly start packing my life up for it. I love talking about the fact that I’m doing this, but on days like this when I sit and think about it more, I sometimes feel like my knees start wavering and that I might pee in my pants that all the talk has to translate into action now.

IT’S SO SCARY!!!!!!!!!! BUT I’M SO EXCITED!!!!! BUT SO SCARED!!!!!

Sorry just had to get it out of my system. I’ll probably say the same thing every few days from now on, so pretend you’ve not heard of it before and just layan me ok! It’s just me starting this very foreign journey so out of my comfort zone. It’s like..tasting durian for the first time, so scary but exciting! Or like getting married and having children, or like deciding one day to completely move somewhere far away forever, or like falling in love for the first time, or like getting drunk for the first time, you get the gist.

Most people I talk to don’t understand my fears, cause they think we’re just going to be teachers and how hard can it be right? My mom met a friend during dinner the other day, and she told her that I’m going to be a teacher because “it’s too hard to find another job”. They then proceeded to talk about why it’s a good job not because I’ll be changing lives or making an important impact on the future of tomorrow, but because it’s an “easy job ma! so many days off and get good pension also.”

Why I know this is going to be much harder than just doing what a conventional teacher does (not that that’s not hard already): We are expected to finish our pre-reading of a 300-page book, another 200+ pages of articles on transformational leadership and teaching, and we have to run a community project and write an essay on it, all due BEFORE the training.

After going through 3/4 of the pre-reading, I realized that this is going to be way harder than I’d thought. We’re going to be expected to bring the students in our classrooms (whom I assume will be at least 3 years behind their grade level) up to their respective grade levels. This means we have to make sure that at the end of the year, they would have progressed THREE years from the level they were at in the beginning. This is if they’re only 3 years behind, which I would be very lucky if that’s the case. (context of being 3 years behind: if 13 year olds in my rural school can speak english as well as what’s expected of 10 year olds (can converse in simple English, can write short paragraphs))

It’s intimidating and extremely daunting, but I’ve learned that we have to set very high expectations and goals, and merely going through the syllabus with them is no longer sufficient.

Actually I’m getting a bit rambly, and the content of this post is getting so specific that many people may not be able to relate. But be prepared to read a whole lot of this when I start cause I don’t think I’ll be capable of talking about anything else wtf. Sorry if I’m boring you T__T

On a more personal but very related note, I’ve been an emotional wreck the past month or so. It has started a big grotesque circle of destruction, where I get upset at anything and everything, and I get upset that I’m upset at anything and everything, and THEN I get upset at the fact that I got upset but not do anything about it because I simply can’t control my emotions, repeat cycle of destruction everyday and you get a very drained me.

It’s like I’m PMS-ing every single day of the month of the year.

Why this is related is because if I’m all over the place, if I can’t even keep my emotions in check, how am I going to be able to stand in front of these kids and be a role model?

Umm, maybe I shouldn’t talk about this in public…what if the team reads this and think I’m too unstable for this job wtf

But I’m documenting this, and documenting all my rambly thoughts because I think they’re important. They reflect my exact state of mind prior to my journey, and I want to remember where I started.

I start here, completely scared and nervous, completely uncertain and uncollected, but I know I can do this and I’m determined to progress as much as my students. That’s the spirit….right? *gives self pep talk

Just realized that I’m leaving in 2.5 weeks and I only have 5 pairs of baju kurung, and we HAVE to wear baju kurung everyday for the next 2 years and 2 months (even during training).

So if you or someone you know have some to give away (ugly also nevermind wtf), please consider giving them to this poor teacher!

Email me at expectationx [at] gmail [dot] com

KTHXBAI

I have so much stuff to read before my training *stress. About 500 pages of pre-reading to do, and reflection essays to write. Will blog soon!

p.s: speaking of clothes, I’m actually really upset that I have to bid farewell to my entire wardrobe for the next few years. Bye bye pretty flowy dresses and skimpy sheer tops and shorts. Hello baju kurungs of every imaginable design and color.

I’ve always wanted to talk about how important internships are for my own personal and professional growth but never really got around to it. Prudential approached me recently and told me that they want to create a platform for young adults to share experiences and advice on life. They found that most often than not, formal education does not actually prepare us for life at all. I cannot agree with them more!

So they created a forum for young people like me to contribute and I talked about how internships have prepared me for life after graduation (very happy with the topic ) Do visit this page and like it, and while you’re there, read my super long (but very genuine ok) article and like it too!

Faster read ok I took a lot of time to write it. Actually, that article is akin to my CV except a lot more wordy hahaha. So there you go! my full resume for all to see. Please hire me wtf

It’s a melancholic night in exactly a week after I turned 23 in the company of people I love most. Just a week, but feels like forever ago.

Reading status updates of my eager juniors in college excitedly talking about first days of classes, discussing what to wear to the infamous annual major party, bitching about schoolwork. Graduation was 3 month back, but feels like forever ago.

Saw your face upon arrival, suitcases scattered all over the place, handbag slipping off weak shoulder, you smiled your warm glowing smile. I was so in love, but feels like forever ago.

Drunken night by the lake, throwing pebbles off the dock, freezing my ass off in the company of similarly happy tipsy people, exchanging scandalous stories and ambitious life goals. Can remember vividly how hard I partied but working just as hard in the library the day after, but these memories feel like forever ago.

Eagerly awaiting your Skype calls, sour conversations, dim yellow light by bedside, pouring my entire heart out to a pixelated image on my computer screen, falling asleep and waking up to see that you’ve left. I used to do this everyday, but feels like forever ago.

We used to laugh and love so hard, cry and scream, hurt and be hurt, promise and break promises, smile and hope. We used to be happy, but it all feels like forever ago.

Kept trying, fixing, mending, building and destroying and rebuilding and redestroying. We both knew we couldn’t continue fixing what’s already been broken, but we exhausted ourselves and kept trying anyway. I thought I could fix you, and you me, but we came out of this more damaged than ever. The promises of a better tomorrow still ring in my head, but they feel like forever ago.

Today all the forever agos came to me like rude uninvited interrupting guests, their presence so heavy and yet so unimportant, so abrupt and yet so planned. I was certain that if I stared harder into the distance and pretended that I was no longer thinking about them then they’d leave. They didn’t. Then I stopped trying to pretend, and they left as swiftly as they came.

For now, I have some backlogged pictures to post! (especially from my birthdayyy, which will have to wait for another day)

Two weekends ago, I followed a friend to Kuala Kubu Bahru with the EPIC team to help build a house for this orang asli family! I’ve been doing nothing on weekends so I thought I’d better do something productive and not while my life away watching more TV shows and spending more useless hours in the mamak.

I was quite nervous at first cause the last time I really roughed it out was yearsss ago and I’ve been such a girly feminine girl since, how to build house and carry bricks and bathe in rivers?? But I’m really glad that the entire experience was so amazingly positive that I would definitely do it over and over again

The team had been there two weekends prior to this to build the basic structure of the house, so this was what greeted us upon our arrival on Saturday morning!

Ibu Biah’s (not in pic) old collapsing house. She has many daughters, sons and grandkids and the small house is clearer way too dilapidated and small for them.

So we began working!

Our team was tasked with fitting the doors and windows, and because the power drills were not working, we had to manually screw each bolt and screw in. IT WAS TERRIBLE. but not impossible so we screwed and screwed away.

Jason’s an expert at screwing now.

River time! Extremely rewarding 20 minutes.

Back to work we went. We worked from 8am-6pm both days *flexes biceps

The old house and the toilet next to it (the outdoor one with white cloth)

New house! 60% done

Just keep painting, just keep painting

This dog’s name is Chicken!

Tired but happy, I can paint for a living now

Inside, after day 1

Our view from our dorm

Day 2! Break time with ice cream uncle!

I’m also awesome at hammering. Seriously awesome. Awesome giler. Awesome until don’t know what. Too awesome can die. Awesome is my middle name. I’m awesome. Awe-some.

The inside!!!

Almost there!

The back kitchen area

Very proud of the drain Triffany and I painstakingly shoveled in the rain *flexes biceps again

View from the hill behind the house!

Ben drilling with extreme focus and concentration

7 pm, almost thereeee!

Group pictar!

8pm, giving moral support to those who were installing the last panel!

9pm – DONE! Inside the house.

And then we went for dinner, the end wtf.

All in all, it was a very VERYYY tiring weekend, but every single effort, every single sweat drop and aching muscle was completely worth it when we saw the smiles on Ibu Biah and her kids’ faces upon completion of the house. I would never have thought I could ever build anything other than Ikea shelves, what more an actual real house.

EPIC aims to make the world a better place, one home at a time. If you have the time and energy on your hands, do volunteer to help them out but make sure you remain committed! I always believe that the best charity is one that is consistent and not just done on random spurts whenever you feel charitable.

Even if you can’t volunteer, do spread the word and hopefully more people would sponsor such an amazing grassroot initiative!

I was very pleasantly surprised at how amazing the people I’ve worked with that weekend were. Everyone had either a full time job or was studying, but still took time off the entire weekend to slave their asses away. It’s not easy AT ALL to build a house from scratch and it’s great how everyone worked together as a team despite the varying levels of experience and skills. Malaysians are so amazing *tear wtf

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*Advertorial*

To folks who missed the last XPLAY party at Johor, don’t worry cause there’s another one coming up in October! This one will be way bigger as it features some of the best DJs like Paul Van Dyk, DJ Gluseppe, Terence C, Darkroom Tale and Mister Ariffin.

Details of the party:

: 22 Oct 2011

: 7pm – you want to go back

: At Helipad, Sepang International Circuit

As with the other parties, admission is absolutely free and it’s really easy to get the tickets!

1. For Xpax or UOX members, just have to reload! Register by sending XPLAYPVD to 28881, reload RM50 and you’ll get a voucher for one free ticket!

2. Subscribe to Instanet monthly at RM50/month and win 2 tickets! (while stocks last). More info: www.instanet.com.my

3. If you’re a Celcom Broadband customer, activate Musicube and stand to win 2 tickets! (while stocks last). More info: www.celcom.com.my/broadband

4. Download special XPLAY packages from THE CUBE (www.thecube.my or visit the WAP site at http://m.thecube.my) and stand to win 2 VIP passes.

To East Malaysians, don’t worry if you can’t make this party cause you can still go to the next XPLAY party at Kota Kinabalu! It’ll be at Bed Club, 8th October featuring DJ SHY (she’s super hot)! Entry is also free, just have to go http://on.fb.me/XPLAY11 and register for your free passes!

More info on all XPLAY parties here: http://xpax.com.my/promo_xplayfuture.html

Advertorial

I was invited to XPLAY’s last party at Opera, Sunway Pyramid a few months ago but I couldn’t make it! Apparently it was huge and featured lots of local and international artistes like Funky Kopral, Estranged, Projek Pistol and Wicked Aura, and MC Vibe.

There was also a battle of the bands! (tell you a story, I used to date band guys so I was quite crazy over bands for a while. That was also when I started getting gung ho about learning how to play the drums, started falling in love with local bands (DISAGREE!), started being all hipster..and I also organized a battle of the bands. The story is, I managed to get Dragonred and Disagree to perform for us, FOR FREE. The event was terrible, the bands in the competition were bad, the venue was bad, the crowd was meh..but can you believe it! I damn cool wtf)

Anyway, XPLAY is hosting their next party again but this time it’s going to be at Johor! So for all you southern folks who hate coming to KL, don’t miss this out!

Details:

Date : 24 September 2011

Time : 7pm till late night

Venue : Cabana Club, Johor Bahru

Featuring DJ Shark, DJ Benz and DJ Ken

(P.S: ON MY BIRTHDAY)

Excited? How to get free passes!

Super easy, all you have to do is like the XPAX Facebook page and register your details to get free passes!

Summary for all you lazy people:

1. LIKE Xpax Facebook Fan Page @ www.facebook.com/xpaxfb

2. Check out the XPLAY app in the page

3. Choose the XPLAY location that you wish to party at (JB or KK…or BOTH!)

4. Register your details to get 1 FREE pass!

5. Print & show your e-mail confirmation at the entrance!

More parties coming your way in November, some in Kota Kinabalu, some in KL, so make sure you don’t miss them out

——-

As for my birthday THIS SATURDAY, I’m going to finally get my car. I really wanted a Saga but everyone is so against it especially my parents, so I’m just gonna get a Myvi. Wuwu so common T___T but I don’t wanna get a Saga and it breaks down and everyone will laugh at me.

*whispers* I’m also getting a tattoo for my birthday. Finally got my parents’ approval….ok fine they didn’t approve but they didn’t say no either. So I guess it’s a yes wtf

I wanted to party for my birthday at first but since I’m going to Arthur’s Day with TAIO CRUZ tomorrow, I think I’ll have a quiet birthday this year

Have a good weekend!

Right…wtf. Couldn’t resist hahaha

But this piece of news is actually even more exciting than that! Yesterday, I found out which school I’ll be placed at and which subject I will be teaching!!!!!!

I was in the gym when Shannon from Teach For Malaysia called me, so I said I’ll call her back later. She called back after 5 minutes and said SUET I CAN’T WAIT FOR YOU TO CALL ME BACK, I need to tell you that you’re placed at SMK Teriang Hilir and you’ll be teaching English! Hahahahha she’s sooo cute!

So yes, I will be at Simpang Durian, Jelebu, Negeri Sembilan for the next two years! I specifically told them I want a rural school over an urban school because I thought if I’m trying something so unconventional already as it is, might as well go all out and do something I will never ever get to do again! Live in an area that is so far from home, a part of Malaysia so unlike my comfortable suburbia life.

I don’t think I’d feel right being in my poverty-stricken school dealing with people from low income households, only to drive 15 minutes back to my comfortable home and privileged life after that. I feel like then I wouldn’t get to immerse myself fully in what I’m doing, that there’ll be such a huge disconnect everytime I leave the school and the kids.

I know it does sound quite noble to want to relocate to a very different place and environment for this, but of course I do fear how incredibly challenging it’ll be too. I’ll be around very different people than those I’m used to, doing completely different things and living a vastly different life. Funny how it’s only going to be 2 hours from Klang Valley, but I’m sure it’ll be quite foreign to me. But I’ll always remember that if it’s not challenging then it’s not worth doing!

So, about this place! Some people from the team have visited the school and kept raving to me how beautiful that area is. I google imaged it and true enough!

Credits to Momoc Blog for that picture.

Simpang Durian is actually famous for its durian, which is bad for me cause I LOVE DURIAN TO DEATH. I don’t want to OD on it T___T

And I’ll be teaching English! Quite unexpected actually, I kinda thought I was going to teach Math and Science but it’s a good pleasant surprise still Need to start thinking of creative ways to teach a completely foreign language to these students.

AHGHHH I AM BEYOND EXCITED! (and scared) BUT MORE EXCITED THAN ANYTHING! I can imagine myself going to this place and frantically taking pictures like a tourist already wtf. Actually! my parents want to take a roadtrip there so they can check it out first before I go. Hearing this makes me happy cause it means they’re finally supportive of my teaching job

I really hope I’ll have internet connection still though..I can do without the general comforts of life (okay maybe the much younger me could, but I will learn to adapt..) but I need my internets! Broadband will have to do I guess.

Alright that’s all for now, this weekend I’m following a bunch of EPIC folks to Kuala Kubu Bahru cause they’re building a house for an Orang Asli widow. Thought I’ll try it out so I can get used to rolling my sleeves up and roughing it out wtf. I’ve been such a girly put-makeup-wear-a-dress-girl for so long so I hope I can get used to this fast!

Oh also, Happy Malaysia Day! Spend this weekend wisely

Having the time to read and just focusing solely on how the plot in the book thickens

Being alone in a very public area with lots of loud chatter – and to not only not mind but actually enjoy the solitude

Girly afternoon tea with my best friend who convinced me to screw my diet and just enjoy the taste of good red velvet cupcakes and macaroons while it lasts

Trying to inject colors to an otherwise dull lesson plan

How did you use to remember the colors of the rainbow? Mine was Michael Jackson Killed His Brother In USA hahaha poor MJ.

Well behaved kids who actually pay attention to everything I say

Making an otherwise boring topic like the convection of heat really fun. This is a mini homemade tornado!

Those pictures were taken with my Ipod touch and edited with Instagram, the rest of the pictures were taken with my camera.

Happy dainty earrings

Creative tag lines by an organization I’m extremely proud to be a part of

Today, we visited a school in Batang Kali for a half-day meet and greet session with 150 students and their parents. All 8 of us future teachers were quite nervous since it’s our first proper school visit where we actually have to interact with our students in full blown Malay since they almost don’t understand English at all.

This school is chosen for Teach For Malaysia fellows to be placed at for 4 weeks during our training, so we had to convince them kids that it’s REALLY fun and they should attend the “summer camp” even though it’s during their year-end holiday. I think we did a great job, cause they were all super enthusiastic at the end of the day! We also had to convince the parents, which wasn’t too hard since all we had to say was it’s FREE and they were sold.

We ran a one-hour long activity filled with games and basically drilling to them that learning can be fun and why education is important, and at the end of the day I was completely drained! Not only did I have to speak out really loud to get their attention (using my teacher voice, NOT to be confused with screaming like a lunatic), I’d also underestimated how absolutely tiring it is to speak in Malay. No idea how will I be able to have the energy to teach for one whole day if I already feel like dying after one hour T__T

But it was all completely worth it cos we were able to get the kids to be excited about school! They were probably just excited to see such young enthusiastic people as their teachers, so I hope they don’t hate us too much when we begin to make them work harder than they’ve ever worked before.

You know what, I think I’m going to really enjoy my next two years I foresee lots of “WHY THE HELL AM I DOING THIS TO MYSELF???!” but I just have to tell myself that it’ll all be worth it. And it will be.

After my one month internship with TFM, I was travelling for a bit and was bumming A LOT (for 3 weeks to be exact). I did nothing at all for these 3 weeks, practically just eat shit sleep everyday. Watched a whole season and a half of 24 (love it!!! watch it if you want a fast-paced chair-gripping show which pushes you to think beyond what your ethical boundaries are), watched a little bit of Game of Thrones but stopped cause I “accidentally” read the whole synopsis so I know the ending is quite sad and I don’t want to depress myself wtf

For the next two months, I will be volunteering at a refugee school in Sentul. I really want to get teaching experience before I start Teach For Malaysia, but I won’t be paid for the next two months and I have to go alllll the way to Sentul so I hope I don’t chicken out! Anyone drives to Sentul from Subang? Boleh tumpang? Otherwise I’m taking KTM and it takes 2 hours *slits wrist

I’ve also been sleeping at 4/5am every night, so starting from tonight I have to sleep by 12am and I don’t quite know how to do it T___T It’s 1 am now and I feel like the night is still so young! I tried to trick my mind into thinking that it’s late by adjusting my watch to 4am but because I consciously adjusted the watch with a sane mind, the trick didn’t work wtf. Why I so stupid how to teach -____-

Random picture (actually not that random, I specifically wanted to put it here to show you that I am actually capable of smiling with my teeth! Whee! Very rare so must post up and pretend to call it “random” so it doesn’t appear that I’m vain and that I just cin cai found these pictures so might as well post them up)

Today I went to Fitness First cause I bought this monthly trial thing and the trainer used the machine to check my body composition and told me that..

she..she..told me *sobs hysterically* that… I…

I….*grabs tissues and blows into them*

that I….*makes loud blowing noise*

I have 30% body fats…

T______________T

The first thing she did after printing the paper out was made a very loud and noticeable gasp and said wow…

and I was like HUH why why tell me why am I dying wtf

and she said “30% is A LOT. Maximum for women should be 24%”

MAXIMUM is 24% and I have THIRTY percent body fats. That’s like obese or something already!!! ONE THIRD OF MY BODY IS COMPOSED OF FATS. Not vital organs, not bones, not skin, not muscles, but pure FATS. And all this while I kept consoling myself and told myself that I’m not fat, just big boned WTF

Actually I know it can’t be true and it’s a trick to get me to sign up, but what if I think it’s a scam and disregard it and it’s ACTUALLY true *slits wrist

I mean…I know I gained weight but this is very shocking. So I’ve decided to go to the gym everyday from now on but today I ate a fruit tart cause evil Julian forced it down my throat wtf. So tomorrow I’ll try harder to be more disciplined!! *game face on

That is all.

Anyway I really really enjoyed Kuching. Not as much as I loved Sabah, but a very close contender. The more I go to Borneo, the more I feel like I belong there more than in KL. I always feel like if any place is the true epitome of what I imagine Malaysia is all about, it’ll be East Malaysia. The perfect harmony between very different kinds of people, the breathtaking sights, the serenity with a slight but good blend of chaos, and the hunger for food and nature.

I was expecting lots of REAL cats, but I only saw one small kitteh the entire time I was there. All the other cats I saw were either statues or souvenirs -__-

The first thing I did when I was there was get my hands on some Kolo Mee. How can I not!!! I need to eat THE real kolo mee which I’ve been dreaming of ever since I planned to go Kuching! Will post pictures of food at the end of the post cause there are so many that I need to focus on them properly, also need to build up momentum for the climax!

The waterfront, which is one of my favorite places there. I really hope the river of life in KL will end up becoming like this cos it’s so beautiful! I heard it used to be quite dangerous here though, since the river separates the kampung from the city, and apparently people used to come over to rob tourists all the time..

The spectacular DUN building on the other side of the river, which probably costs more than it should and is placed ironically next to the atap houses of the kampung

If you do go to Kuching, make sure you take the sunset cruise down the river! It’s about RM19 for an hour and is super worth it. The sunset here wasn’t amazing for the first few days but we were lucky to catch the cruise at a good time to see this breathtaking view. The hour-long ride was also a great time to unwind since it’s so calming to hear nothing but the sound of the boat wading through the water and to feel the light breeze of the Borneo wind. That’s if a crocodile doesn’t try to jump on your boat and eat you up.

You can also get a sampan to cross the river for 40 cents, which we did a few times just for the joy of being on the sampan. I have decided that if I do move to Kuching and if I was rich, I’d buy a sampan and row up and down the river all day long *writes it on my Bucket List

Right across the river, there’s a kilang kek lapis that’s called….kilang kek lapis I think hahaha. Bought a few loaves here and loved them!

If you want to know which camera I used to take these pictures.. (an excuse. just so i can post camwhore pictures without looking like i’m posting them without a purpose wtf)

It’s an old Canon G10. There’s the G12 now which is super duper awesome cos it has the rotating screen which you can use to take a million pictures of yourself!!!! *hyperventilates

Carpenter Street, which is right behind Main Bazaar (across the waterfront). Right near this arch, there’s this awesome place that serves amazing pork satay!

I met up with Melissa and Daphne, who were extremely kind to bring me around for the entire day! We were at Bing Coffee, which is a very nice new-age coffee place from Kuching Bing, come to KL please, I’ve been looking for a nice hangout cafe here that’s not Starbucks or Coffee Bean but has better coffee than Oldtown. We need our own Malaysian breed of chill out coffee places, and more brownie points for you if you have board games and old mystery novels!

Tiramisu drink from Bing! Which is nice but a little too sweet for me

We went to Damai beach and stayed there for a night just to get away from the city. The beach is nice, but a little too deserted for our liking. We were supposed to stay at Damai Puri for two nights, which was scarily quiet and eerie, so we checked out the next day There were only like two other groups besides us, and there was absolutely nothing to do or eat.

It’s good that the Cultural Village is really close by the hotel, so we spent the next morning there!

This is uhh..rumah melanau *smart ass captain obvious

This is in Rumah Bajau I think. I saw the fire burning (fire burning fire burning on the dancefloor #lame) and asked the woman there what they’re cooking since theres nothing on top of the fire. She pointed to the top of the house, and said in a hush hush voice “see those skulls? we need to keep the fire to chase the evil spirits away from them”

Then I looked up and saw 3 skulls looking grimly at me.

!!!!!!!!

*pees in pants

We went for the cultural show next and this bottomless dude asked me up on stage to demonstrate the use of the blowpipe  -___- I was umm..a very good blower.

looking very pleased with self haha

Random: I’ve decided that I like this minimalist makeup the most. Just eyeliner on top and mascara I’m a grown woman now!

OKAY

TIME TO POST FOOD PICTURES!!!!

Are you excited?? Cause I am! These are the best Kuching food I’ve eaten, food that my kind guides brought me to eat, and food that I’ve found after tons of research. Most of them are also non-halal, sorry!

People in Kuching LOVE their food, that’s all they ever talk about and the pride is a little overwhelming at first. Whenever I tell Kuchingites I’m going to Kuching, they’d be all “you HAVE to eat this from this place, make sure you try this from that place, oh also this this that this YUMS”. My expectations of the food obviously were raised way beyond the bar, and I got very disappointed at first because I mean…I’ve found similar, if not better food in West Malaysia anyway.

But! Thank god I had amazing friends to bring me around and I found better food after that Otherwise I’d always moan about being deceived by Kuchingites for years to come. Thanks for bringing me around Eve, Kenny, Melissa and Daphne!

1. Kolo Mee

This is the first bowl of Kolo Mee I had and also the best. Kenny brought me to this place called KY Cafe at Sekama. If you’re staying near the city center, you can’t walk here so get a cab or something!

I had kolo mee at ten different places after that but this is definitely still the best. There are a few places at Jalan Pandungan that are okay too, but just not as good.

This is the other famous one at the Carpenter Street and Bishop Gate junction, it’s at a restaurant called Min Joo or something. Apparently it’s supposed to take up to an hour for them to serve you, but I was lucky cause I went around 2+pm and it was fairly empty. I was also alone, so maybe the uncle took pity of me and served me in ten minutes

2. Sarawak Laksa

Forgot to take picture, but surprisingly this is not one of my favorite dishes although it was undeniably pretty awesome. The best one I had was at Madam Tang’s (Carpenter street). The one at Chong Choon Cafe (Abell Road, have to go before 11am) which Kenny raves about is pretty good but the former is better for me, albeit more expensive.

3. Gong Pia

I love this the most, it’s a snack from Sibu which is basically just toasted sesame bun with marinated meat inside but it tastes soooo heavenly! Definitely a comfort food. This can be found at the Song Kheng Hai food court (stall no. 7 i think, at the back one) located behind Pandungan Road. It’s somewhere behind Bing Coffee.

I ate wayyy too much of this but I couldn’t stop myself T__T Now I can’t get them anywhere at all

4. Tomato Mee

This is really awesome as well. Basically it’s fried mee drenched in tomato sauce but why is it so goddamn good?!??! The best one was at Song Kheng Hai as well, it’s three stalls away from the Gong Pia stall.

5. Belacan Mee

This doesn’t look amazing but it’s quite unique. Soft noodles with belacan sauce and sotong, yums! Found this at Song Kheng Hai as well, can’t remember which stall but since I ate the Gong Pia so often, I’m now BFFs with the cute gong pia guy and he recommended this stall and the tomato mee stall to me. Can go ask him wtf

When you’re at this foodcourt, don’t forget to get this great refreshing drink! It’s sugar cane + coconut, an ingenious mix that drink stalls in KL should adopt. From stall 1.

6. Midin

Midin is my favorite vegetable dish in Kuching! It’s a locally grown type of fern that tastes great with belacan. This is the cold midin salad from Bla Bla Bla, also quite good. Bla Bla Bla is a pretty expensive restaurant but has amazing food with HUGE servings, do give it a try!

7. Kueh Chap

This is something I actually didn’t like but was highly recommended. It’s soup with noodles and pork intestines (which I don’t eat, maybe that’s why). It’s ok lah, prefer bak kut teh

8. Sio Bee

Ok sorry but totally not a fan of this. It’s like meatball/siu mai and can be found at open air market.

Dessert time!

9. White Lady

Absolutely in love with this!! Also probably the reason why I didn’t lose weight despite walking 4-5 km a day wtf

Basically it’s just a mixture of fruits, ice and evaporated milk with a slice of lemon but it’s realllllllly good. Found the best one at open air market.

10.Matterhorn

Probably the weirdest dessert name ever. It’s like ice kacang, but without kacang, syrup, evaporated milk and red bean…. Actually I guess it’s nothing like ice kacang at all except that it also has ice hahahahha I’m so dumb.

It’s a sour dessert, has fruits, cendol, ice, pandan and lemon. Very refreshing and probably not very fattening

Got this from Hui Sing foodcourt, but don’t ask me how to get there. Not walking distance from city center.

11. Umm..cakes?

Got this triple layer chocolate cake from the shop next to Bing at Pandungan, can’t remember the name..Tom’s or something? Anyway it’s pretty orgasmic and quite light, definitely try it!

Strawberry cheese and masam manis kek lapis from that kilang kek lapis across the river. I loved both flavors but couldn’t finish them at all, so don’t buy too much of them!

—

Actually I think that’s all! It’s a pretty comprehensive list if I must say so myself *pats self

I also went to the Orang Utan rehabilitation center (MUST GO!!!!) and Bako National Park for some more outdoorsy fun but I didn’t get to go to the caves My next trip to Sabah and Sarawak will definitely include Mount Kinabalu and the Mulu caves.

I thought to myself that once I finish Teach For Malaysia and if I do want to continue teaching, I will definitely choose to teach in East Malaysia. There’s just this very peculiar charm and something very unique about this place that’s so appealing to me but I don’t really know how to describe it! It seems so different from the rest of Malaysia, but is also essentially very Malaysian.

On that note, Selamat Hari Raya and Happy Merdeka everyone! I’m truly glad to be home for this Merdeka, and hopefully for many more Merdekas to come

This is from their song “Time” :

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way.
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way.

Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain.
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today.
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you.
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.

So you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it’s sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again.
The sun is the same in a relative way but you’re older,
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death.

Every year is getting shorter never seem to find the time.
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over,
Thought I’d something more to say.

Don’t know about you, but the lyrical poignancy left me feeling quite dumbstruck for a few minutes. “Noone told you where to run, you missed the starting gun / So you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it’s sinking”

Anyway, aside from mulling over deep meaningful lyrics, I’ve also been bawling my eyes out watching Grave of the Firelies. It’s a Japanese animation about two orphans during world war II and it’s extremely depressing but very very well made. I highly recommend it (if you’re not on the brink of suicide, cause after watching it you’ll definitely feel like you’re not worthy of living T__T).

I also rewatched a few Miyazaki films recently – Princess Mononoke, Totoro, Castle in the Sky, Kiki. All his movies, despite being cheerful and meaningful, always leave me feeling…nostalgic and blue. It’s weird, I think I’m just a very emotional person deep inside, which is weirder cause I used to be such a cheerful person. Maybe got bad fengshui wtf

Since I’m currently bumming around, I thought I’d spend some time stimulating my brain so I don’t fall into the dark abyss of being unintelligent and un-opinionated, and started watching some video lectures by this Harvard professor. It’s a series of lectures on Philosophy, so if you’ve always been interested in issues like ethics, political philosophy and justice, then this is a great start!

Even if you’re not interested, I still think you should watch it. We should definitely do away with subjects like Moral and Civics in school and start teaching Philosophy, so that we are taught to think for ourselves and to nurture our own moral principles, instead of TELLING people how to be a good person and a good citizen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBdfcR-8hEY&feature=relmfu – Have fun!

That’s it for now, feeling melancholic a bit hard to blog unless I start churning out some boring serious post again..and I think we’ve had enough of that for now.

I know I promised a funny post, but I really can’t think of anything funny to talk about T___T I think I just have to succumb to my fate and accept the reality that I no longer have a sense of humor.

*tries hard to think of one last parting funny sentence
Umm, yo mama so fat that..umm..she, umm.
*fails

Oh wait, I know! I AM FAT AND STUPID! Hahaha when all else fails, self-deprecating humor always works. And remember, as long as there’s one person who laughs at your jokes and even if that one person is you yourself, it means you’re funny. Wise words by Suet Li Liew.

Anyway, I have tons of pictures!!!! Super excited to post them first so the next post can be all about Kuching

Continuation from my UK post:

Pubs are a big thing in England and we ate at a pub almost every night when we were there. Why? Cause they are the cheapest (Under 6 pounds) Here, you can see the usual clientele at a pub – angry and grumpy bald white men wtf

Ah slutty British girls going pub-crawling at 5 pm, what’s there not to love about this place?

Went to the countryside! Isn’t this beautiful?? Reminds me of Lijiang in China and Kundasang in Sabah, both my favorite places in the world.

Cows grazing under the great blue sky. Koki, my japanese friend from Hong Kong, once told me this story that I don’t think I’ll ever forget. Out of the blue, he excitedly told me that if you put your hand into a cow’s mouth, it’ll chew at it and you’ll feel super good WTF. He said you won’t feel the cow’s teeth and you’ll feel this soft melty sensation all over and it feels orgasmic. I couldn’t help laughing the entire time cause it sounds damn stupid, and he was telling me this while putting on this super syok expression on his face  -___-

But in all seriousness, after he told me that, it’s been my lifelong dream to put my hand into a cow’s mouth. I almost did it in Lijiang but I was so worried that the cow will actually gnaw my hand off!!! Doesn’t help that Koki was right there giving me his super syok face that is both tempting and cunning at the same time. What if he was lying to me! Pretend to encourage me but actually want to laugh when I get bitten. Cannot trust Japanese men wtf

HAHAHA I FOUND A PICTURE OF KOKI WITH THAT STUPID FACE!!!

Ok it’s stupider than this, but can you imagine  -____-

Sigh one day..you and me, cow..one day.

Ah so pretty! On the way to my house

My house and uh, strangers walking around

Me posing outside my house

My back garden

With my mom. Thank you thank you, my house IS quite lovely

I can sit here all day

Okay I think that’s all from my UK trip! Today I had too much time on my hands and I found some random pictures I haven’t posted before, so here they are:

Ah my beloved Shanshan and I on one of our last days together.

I miss her so much T____T Can’t believe it’s been almost three months after our graduation!

Here’s a picture to show you the wonders of makeup! My right eye was so much bigger just with eyeliner alone!

Anyway my hair is crazy long now!

Can even curl it too

And to think that my hair was still boyish short less than 7 months ago.

Last picture!

I’m gonna blow this picture up, print it and put it right in front of me to remind myself that if I don’t stop eating and start exercising, then it’s a slippery slope from here on wtf.

No way I want to go back to being fat again, it was a complete zaman kegelapan dalam hidup suet li T___T *memories of friends singing “suet li suet li sangat gemuk, makan makan jadi lagi gemuk!” to the tune of mat kool mat kool kawanku song come flooding back

Alright that’s all for now! I’m going to try to sleep before 3 am so I don’t fall into that unemployed bum cycle wtf

I’m also going on a crazy food hunt to find the best food in Kuching! Almost every Kuchingite I’ve spoken to tells me that their food is the BEST but frankly I’ve been quite disappointed kolo mee is pretty awesome because it’s such a homely comfort food but everything else is just..meh. Maybe I’ve gone to the wrong places!

Anyway I’m going to leave Kuching for Damai tomorrow so let’s hope I find better food today!

Will definitely post the pictures later, need to do more exploring today. I kept thinking to myself that if I do continue teaching in public schools, I would definitely choose Sarawak or Sabah as my next destination. There’s just this very strong charm about Borneo that appeals to me. Sigh I love my country so much *suddenly get all teary and patriotic wtf

Also, today I’m alone! What’s the best thing to do in Kuching when you’re traveling alone? I have the whole day until Alex returns tonight! Contemplating either venturing into the other side of the river to the Malay kampungs to walk around but I heard it’s a little unsafe? Maybe I’ll just do the museums and souvenir-shopping today. Or find a nice cozy coffee place and read.

Have a great day ahead everyone!

While I gingerly pressed the buttons on the treadmill in the gym (I live in an apartment), I noticed a girl staring at me from afar. She was by the door, curiously sticking her head in to get a small peek at what I was doing. I smiled at her while she walked nervously and stood right next to me. She was one of the cleaners, as I noticed from her uniform. I didn’t know if I should continue running, or ask her if something was wrong, so I said hello kak, sihat?

She was taken aback but asked if she could stand there and watch me, for she has never seen how the machines work before and has never dared to ask. I said sure, but inside I was getting a little annoyed. I mean, how am I going to run when someone’s watching me?? After two minutes, I was already panting and sweating and there she was, still staring wide-eyed at the treadmill and me.

Then there was a man’s voice some distance away and she scurried away immediately, mumbling something about how she’d better get back to work. About fifteen minutes after when I’d moved on to lifting weights instead, she came in again, this time with another cleaner friend in tow. They both smiled widely and stared at me pulling the handlebar down, and gasped when it made a somewhat loud clang when I was done with it. I asked if they wanted to try too, and told them how it works and which muscles I was using. They got excited when they heard me speaking in fluent Malay, and started chatting with me while I moved on to the other machines.

It was a short conversation but I couldn’t believe how fast they’d warmed up to a complete stranger who was merely trying to tell them how to lift weights! The other girl was 17 while the first one was my age, and they were both from Kelantan. They came to KL because they were lousy at school and they thought there wasn’t a point in continuing anyway. “Buang masa je kan kat sekolah, mak bapak kata baik cari kerja”. I told them very cautiously that going to school increases their chances of getting a better job, to which they disagreed politely. “Ramai kawan kite orang habis sekolah pun sama je, buat kerja sapu sampah, cuci tandas semua, asalkan dapat duit lah. Kite bukannya macam orang KL, pandai cakap English, pandai jadi doktor”

Here I was lifting my 20-pound handlebar, listening to these two girls telling me their stories so candidly, and I was left completely dumbfounded. The younger girl had to go back to work, and before she left she said “akak ni baik dan peramah lah, biasanya orang tak layan pun, nanti kite borak lagi ye” which hit me with guilt like a ton of bricks. I usually never speak to the cleaners before, and this was only because I was getting uncomfortable with them staring at me!

Meanwhile the other girl was still accompanying me while I continued running on the treadmill. I had gotten used to her, so I was still chatting with her while I almost died climbing a hill at 6km/h. Sweat was dripping everywhere, I was panting like a dog, my eyesight was blurring up, and there she was saying “cepat sikit! boleh lagi! 5 minit lagi!” T______T what did I do to deserve such kindness and moral encouragement from someone I just met an hour ago?

When I was done, she wiped the machine clean since I had obviously deposited a lot of bodily fluid all over it wtf. I told her I have to go, and she said bye cheerfully and asked me when I would come to the gym again. “Insha’allah esok!” but I never went today cos my legs were too sore and I was busy

I just wanted to jot this down because it was probably one of those AHA! moments for me. Aha! I knew I was doing Teach For Malaysia for the right reason, how can people think that kids in KL are smarter, and that there’s no point to school because they will still work as a cleaner after anyway? Aha! I might have wasted more time talking to them than actually working out, but it was a conversation I will never give up for anything. Aha! being fluent in Malay comes in handy after all

-

I really hate to be overselling Teach For Malaysia, but I wholeheartedly believe in their cause and mission. As someone who comes from a somewhat more privileged background, from a middle-class family that lives in a pretty adequate suburbia that’s within driving distance to everything I ever need, it’s easy to bitch about what the country is lacking and to nitpick on every flaw we have. But I also realize that we have grown so far apart from many of our fellow Malaysians who live in this very same country we’re in. Malaysians who are barely surviving, and here we are complaining while we drive nice cars and have meals in restaurants.

I think this dawned upon me the most when I was google mapping the school that I’m going to teach for the next two years. I’ve been an ardent google map user, but I’ve always only used it to see how I can get to Bangsar, or Damansara. I realized that zooming out of Klang Valley, there really isn’t much and roads become a lot less connected (in fact, only one main road in Gemas). So, when I say the government should do this and that for me, am I thinking about people from these places? They are Malaysians too, but who is speaking out for them? Do we know what they want, or do we even care? Frankly, I have never thought of that before. I’ve been so self-absorbed in this whole pursuit of a better country for ME, for people who are like ME, and it’s so easy to entrap ourselves in this Klang Valley bubble. (sorry I’m digressing a little here)

I’m really interested to know why these two young girls said there wasn’t a point in going to school, was it because they come from families who didn’t think it was possible to be successful? was it because they don’t have someone to look up to? Most importantly, was it because they had teachers who never once told them that despite where they come from, they can achieve success, just like the “smarter people in KL”? (remind self to ask them tomorrow when I go to the gym, which I WILL BE *gung ho)

I have heard first-hand teachers saying that about their students. “There’s no hope for these students, the best thing we can do is keep them out of trouble”. No, there’s no hope for them because no one told them that they can do it. No one has believed in them, or told them that there’s no excuse to not do well because of their origin and socio-economic background.

I have had the privilege to not just go to a university, but a university abroad nonetheless. Many many other Malaysians out there might not even go to a university (in fact, 4 out of 5 working Malaysians are only educated up to SPM level) so education inequity is definitely well and alive. Although I have not seen it in my bubble, I know it’s there so it’s about time I acknowledge it. To be honest, if anything, I feel quite ashamed. Ashamed because I had wanted to leave this call of urgency behind, leave my country behind.

Ok I realize it’s been a long post, and to you it might have been a whole lot of fluff and nonsense but it’s something I believe in so just entertain me lah haha.

On a completely different note, I wonder how I suddenly became this serious person that I am. I was reading my old posts and I used to be so funny T__T. My resolution for the next few months is to get back my sense of humor, and I’ll start by googling for jokes so watch out for a funny post next wtf

Hello! I had a glorious ten-hour sleep so now I have so much excess energy I don’t know what to do with it! Of course, I could go exercise or something since I have gained x amount of weight since..since I was thin (3 years ago wtf), but it’s so hot outside and it’s so cold and nice in my room…I’ll start exercising tomorrow wtf

So! I figured I should just be more hardworking and start posting the pictures up! Although my mom is still nagging for me to unpack, I really feel like blogging now so let me finish this post before that fleeting feeling disappears again.

This is a picture of the entire Teach For Malaysia team! I’m going to blow this up and put it on my wall cos I miss them already (actually no, it’s just cos I look good wtf. I don’t usually look good when I smile so must cherish it!)

I have about 60+ photos of England that I want to post up so might as well do it now when my semangat is so membara-bara!

I think the thing I like best about London is every other building is just so pretty and historical looking! Just being in a place like that makes you feel quite cultured, like you’re in a place that has a lot of history although you don’t necessarily know the history behind it wtf

Tower Bridge! which is sadly always mistaken for London Bridge. London Bridge is actually just a normal looking bridge hahaha

This is Camden Market! Don’t know why it’s famous, nothing much to do there but see shops selling super gothic clothes

This is some crispy chicken thingy sold by a Malaysian guy. He knew we were Malaysians right when he saw us and started shouting to us in hokkien and malay, whoa we must be emitting powerful Malaysian aura

Don’t know why half the pictures on my camera are of food and of me eating, once a glutton always a glutton wtf

A shop selling super vintage toys!!!

I would totally wear everything in this shop! But they’re all super pricey, like 60 pounds for a top CRAZY

With my sis and her boyfriend, Peter, at a crepe stall. He looks like a thug but he cooks very well and is a gentleman

I may have left Moho, but Moho never left me wtf

Harrods! Where you can never afford anything inside, even if you sell your limbs and kidneys. and ovaries.

After three days in London, we went to Leeds where my sister lives! This is the view from her apartment, so awesome T_T

We went to Yorkshire the next day! The building at the far end is just a castle..no big deal..they have castles everywhere..

My mom and I. I’m wearing a million layers cos it’s freaking cold despite it being summer T_T

Yes, trying to be artsy wtf

Aww, English houses!

a nostalgic looking carousel

No idea what this is but just wanted to show you how grey the sky is. Peter said: 90% of tourist pictures of England turn out like this, so don’t worry it’s not just you.

I like York, it looks exactly like how I would expect an old English town north of London to look like..

with narrow alleyways

and crooked looking shophouses

and vintage sweet shops

with small doors cos people back then were a lot smaller haha

and kinky donuts wtf

we had fish and chips next by the cathedral, since you know we’re in a very English place and all so might as well go all out and eat the most English food

Had afternoon tea after at Betty’s! I love scones with clotted cream <3

While I was posing for this picture, my mom said “you better don’t smile, you look better when you don’t smile” so this is me with an angry face wtf

Younger sister was tiptoeing, she has an obsession with being taller than me in all pictures

With a macaroon. Told you my pics are all of food T_T

Okay I still have tons of pictures but I’ll post them next time! Today I’m in a very emo phase for no reason at all (is this what happens when you’re in your early 20s? You keep getting blue and keep thinking about life all the time wtf). I think I need more friends to hang out with so I won’t have time to feel this way. I think I need to party more, the last time I danced was…ok I don’t even remember T___T I think it was..6 months ago?

Maybe that’s why I’m feeling like this, I haven’t had fun in forever! All I’ve been doing is reading on my kindle and playing sudoku on my phone omg I’m such a loser. My mom told me the other day: “I think you read too much, that’s why you’re fat. Stop reading, it’s bad for you.” WTF. hahaha..ha..ha. But I guess it’s quite true, so I’m gonna go swim now. or run. or dance. or play basketball. or just cry my sorrows away wtf

And my sister is now a graduate too! very proud of her *sniff

Although her favorite phrase ever is “yeah I’ll never be as good, I’m a lousy kid who has the middle child syndrome”, she’s really a lot more mature now and I’m so glad that she’s extremely happy too! She’s going to be looking for a job in Leeds and would probably stay there for some time though

That concludes my trip here in the UK, will be heading home tomorrow. I’ve only been away from home for about 9 days and yet it somehow feels like forever! When I get back, I have to figure out what I want to do for the next 3 months before my training starts.

I’m going to be volunteering at a school but my mom is not happy that I’ll be unemployed without income, so looks like I’ll have to work part time somewhere too. Know any job that gives you quick income legally? wtf

i woke up with a smile on my face and told myself that that’s exactly what i would say on my first day in my classroom. except that the kids in my classroom would probably walk out even before i write hormat-menghormati on the board.

To all my readers who are still faithfully clicking on my blog link every few days hoping for updates, I thank you for your devotion. I hereby promise for the millionth time that I will update every few days. PROMISE ok if not you can come ta my si fat.

Let’s see what I’ve been up to…so many things I don’t even know where to begin actually! In terms of work, it’s been quite crazy lately. If you don’t remember, I’m currently interning with Teach For Malaysia to help them with recruitment for their first cohort. Personally, I’ll be joining as well next year to be a teacher in a high-need and challenging school.

I’ve probably talked about it a million times now, but if you’re new to my blog or have been missing out, Teach For Malaysia is basically a 2-year leadership development program that aims to end education inequity by placing 50 of Malaysia’s top talents in underperforming schools for two years. In that two years, these Fellows are expected to not only significantly raise academic achievement of children who have long been neglected and have always been told that they’re never good enough, Fellows also have to work closely with corporate sectors to run community projects.

It’s an amazing platform for anyone – those who have just graduated and are looking for something meaningful, fulfilling and challenging, and those who have been working for a while and are looking for a fresh new challenge. We’re also looking for experienced teachers to be part of our training team, so if you know a reallllllly good and dedicated teacher, DO LET ME KNOW!

I’m so excited to start teaching actually!! I just visited a school last week and I got really scared at first because the teachers there kept warning us that it will be incredibly hard to teach in high-need schools, what more really making significant changes. But I later thought to myself, of course it’s going to be hard! If it was easy and if the job only entails going into a classroom of children who are all super eager to learn and to be inspired, then who am I kidding! What’s the point of me being there then?

It’s extremely daunting but exciting to note that next year, we’re really starting a social movement. Because education is a business of multipliers and ripple effects, we will definitely be changing more lives than we can imagine. Maybe we will inspire all the students in our classrooms, or maybe we will only change ONE life, but can you imagine the impact it’ll have on that student’s family, and his future family, and their future families?

Who knows, maybe we will really achieve that systemic change we’re aiming for. After that two years, I’m sure all 50 of us will go on to do great things in the education sector, leveraging on our hands-on experiences in these challenging classrooms. And then the next year, another 50, and another 50. Who knows what all of us will be later on – teachers, principals, policy makers, lawmakers, ministers or even prime minister! The possibilities are endless! And I haven’t even started talking about the possibilities for these children whose lives are changed because they’re finally given equal access to excellent education.

*suddenly get all teary

The hardest part for me right now is to remain positive about things despite the looming cobbled path ahead. I’m sure I will face not only resistance from these children, but also from teachers in these schools as well. But I’ve already signed up for this so just have to pretend sand got in my eyes everytime a kid bullies me to tears T___T

Also have to stock up on my baju kurung. Who got leftover baju kurungs that they don’t want, sila donate to a good cause. I wore baju kurung to my school visit and immediately all the teachers knew I was going to be a teacher too. Wah confirm it’s gonna be my uniform from now on!

Crazy amount of people waiting for the train the other day. After a while, commuting to and from work with the KTM doesn’t seem that bad anymore. How privileged I’ve been, complaining about the train when people are sooo accustomed to it. I usually read my Kindle in the train, but sometimes I rather people-watch and study the demographic of the other commuters. I’m extremely humbled by all of you, and as a kind gesture of humility, I will remember to spray perfume before I go to work (but not too much).

This is my colleague, Fareeza, who’s about the funniest person I know. She was so proud of her reverse parking until we came out and saw that it was completely senget -______- this is her going “aiya ok what”

I spent last weekend (before Bersih weekend) at Genting with my high school friends. It was incredibly fun cause we spent the whole day at the theme park!!! ^_^ I’ve never played bumper cars before so I kept driving the car round and round the outer area, completely avoiding the massive orgy of collisions in the center area, cos it just feels so liberating to drive the car! I don’t know why!! People who were watching us must have thought I have never driven a car before, so jakun and weird that I’m not bumping my car with the rest but I was happily driving around them on my own wtf

My most favorite ride ever!!!! I’ve completely forgotten how it feels like to be on this thing, and was pleasantly surprised that it feels so goddamn good!!! I love thrill rides, I would love to go ten more times but the queue was painfully long

We took tons of purikura pictures after that ^_^ So fun I love you guys!!

Very sad cos mom strictly prohibited me from joining the rally >=(

Jiameei and I got new nail colors! I love my purple ones but really wanted to get yellow too!

Alex sent me a bouquet of roses last week. I guess it’s quite romantic…………if only I didn’t have to take the train with it! Somemore it was exceptionally packed that day and everyone was staring cock at me for taking up so much space. Doesn’t help that the leaves kept tickling their faces hahaha wtf

Ok the end of this week’s updates. I WILL BLOG MORE AFTER THIS PROMISE! I give you full permission to ta my si fat (beat my backside) if I don’t blog in more than one week.

OH YEAH, I’m a very happening person this week!

1. Dominic gave me two tickets to watch Dreamgirls by Broadway Academy this Wed!!! SUPER HAPPY!!! Will definitely talk about it later

2. Going to Urbanscapes too! Who else is going? See you there

3. Going to talk to Taylor’s students this Sat about Teach For Malaysia! If you’re from Taylor’s and would like to know about the program, come for the info session this Sat 10am-12pm! Not sure where wtf go ask your office

Ok the end babai

p.s: for some reason, comments don’t show after you’ve submitted them. will fix it soon.

Why does time pass by so fast? I thought I was just born yesterday but now I’m 22 years old already wtf. I thought I just blogged yesterday but I realized it was actually one week ago and now I have to blog again ;___; Can someone invent that auto blogging thing already!

Sigh how can I be like this! blogging is supposed to be a hobby, not a chore. I think I know why I’m like this, it’s because I barely have time to do anything these days so whenever I have even one tiny minute of free time, I usually whip out my Kindle to read the 500+ books that are waiting to be read. (by the way, Kindle rocks, and my Kindle is white with peach leather cover and it’s so awesome everytime I take it out my cool-o-meter is increased by 100 times. Actually more like my nerd-o-meter T_T)

Anyway, today I feel rambly and now that I have time to sneak one short post, I’m gonna be an efficient blogger! And like all efficient bloggers, I actually have pictures to post! Pictures of me and not some random calf picture I stole from the net!!! I’m so excited can you not tell wtf. But unlike all efficient bloggers, these pictures are taken with my phone and not some DSLR/cun camera so pardon the bad quality.

From a million years ago, went with Ginny and Nat to this awesome Korean restaurant and ate this SUPER yummy…thingamajig. Don’t know what it’s called already but it’s like maggi goreng tambah all kinds of vege drowned in spicy sauce.

I was very very skeptical about this whole bubble tea rage in Malaysia now but then I tried this in Gong Cha and tried more in Chatime and now I’m hooked. I swear they put some sort of jampi in the tea to get people going this ballistic about plain ol’ bubble tea.

Went with Alex to this seafood place in Ampang cos I was craving for chili crab. I didn’t know any good seafood places so I googled “best seafood restaurant Malaysia” and this restaurant’s website said “we are the best seafood restaurant in Malaysia!” and I turned to him and said eh eh we must go to this one! They are the BEST! Stupid so easy to con me one T_T

Ok faster recommend me good seafood places!

Went to Ikea with my family and saw that they’ve stocked up on the dogs! The last time I went they only had one dog left (the big one, which I bought, and I sometimes think my dog is alive. On a few occasions, I remember clearly that I folded his tongue in (you can fold his tongue and snap his mouth shut one) and the next morning his tongue was out!!! I swear he’s alive, like in Toy Story *big wet eyes* so now I talk to my dog everyday cause I know he can understand me wtf)

So anywayyyy, they even have the small dogs now! I don’t know if I should buy one so he can accompany my big dog but now I’m a poor unemployed person so can’t afford to waste money on soft toys.

This is my life everyday now. KTM sucks cos they are never on time and they come very infrequently but oh well, my life could be worse.

I usually take the ladies’ coach so I don’t need to face gross perverty men who’d stare at me rudely but they’re usually super packed until cannot breathe kind. Sometimes it gets so packed that I basically have no space in between me and like 5 other people so I don’t have to hold the pole and I still won’t fall! Fulamak.

Today I thought to myself that gross men > being sandwiched to death so I took the non ladies’ coach and was surprised to find that men are actually not that disgusting after all wtf

Woke up yesterday and was shocked to see how long my hair is now, I’m finally a woman again and not some prepubescent chinese school boy T___T

I was given less than a day notice that I was going to be interviewed on BFM live, how nerve wrecking! It was an interview with Dzameer about Teach For Malaysia and they thought it’d be great to interview someone who’ll be doing it as well. It was quite scary at first when I thought of how judgmental I usually am when I’m listening to people’s interviews on radio and I thought of all these people who’ll be in their cars stuck in the jam listening to my croaky voice. But Caroline and Ezra were so friendly and nice that the entire thing was actually quite fun!

Here’s the podcast if you want to listen to it, but I warn you first ah I was talking very fast.

Finally here’s an emo picture of me Ginny took for Vanity Dreams

Ok that’s all for today, I have 10831 more calls to make to people who are applying to Teach For Malaysia. Have a good weekend everyone!

I’m sick of coming to my blog only to realize that I haven’t written a new post in more than a week. For some reason I kinda expected a blogpost to miraculously appear out of nowhere wtf. I wish someone would invent an auto blogging mechanism and embed it in my head so while waiting for the train or while taking a dump or while staring into space, I could just go “ok start recording. Today I feel a little blabla…blabla…blabla..end. Post” and tada it’ll be typed and posted on sweatlee.com

HAHA omg that’s such a good idea! Can do the same for emails and texts and basically everything in life. So the tagline for the product would be “Control everything in your life, from the confines of your mind”

Tsk tsk, such reliance on technology scares me. (wtf so contradictory)

Anywayyyy I’ve been busy with work lately. Have been working from 9 am-8 pm everyday, and they were telling me that when my fellowship starts end of the year, I’ll have to work even harder than this. Whaaaat! I immediately went “but what about my life?? I won’t have a life anymore!” and Dzameer, one of the cofounders, said, “Yeah you probably won’t for 2 years, but think about the many children’s lives and the impact you’ll make”. Grr I hate him for putting things into perspective for me

So yeah, the end of today’s short post. In the meantime, here’s a picture of a baby calf I stole from somewhere while googling image for “baby calf”

Moo, I’m so cute look at the heart shaped sign on my head!

Anyway I’ve been back for good (still feels weird) for almost two weeks now and I’ve been doing nothing but bumming. After less than a week of bumming, I couldn’t take it anymore and went to look for something to do – anything! a job, an internship, volunteer work, whatever to make me feel more useful. So now I’m going to volunteer my services to Teach for Malaysia and will be their dutiful intern for a month!

I have to start work next week…..and working hours are somewhere between 9am-8pm if I’m lucky…..and I’m kinda regretting it…….why torture myself when I could chillax and lepak at home goyang kaki everyday! But I know how much help they need, and I DO have time and energy so why not.

one of those days where I had all the time in the world so I took 12481 shots of myself in the same pose wtf

I actually have so much to blog about but I can’t remember what I wanted to say anymore ;___; I promise I’ll blog more frequently now, maybe even once in 2/3 days like before *gasp* so I don’t forget the things I want to say.

For today! I have photos from my graduation! These are nicer pictures since they’re taken with a camera and not my phone. What an abomination, a blogger taking pictures with her phone tsk tsk.

with my parents

spot me!

shanshan and I with our complete graduation regalia! It feels amazing to graduate alongside your best friend

FML my sunflower is dead wtf

with fellow Malaysians, Gim, Stef and Emily! (shanshan is our honorary Malaysian cos thanks to me, she speaks in malaysian accent (even stronger than mine) and remembers all the malaysian food (tosai, nasi lemak, roti, banana leaf rice, chilli pan mee))

with Chuck, my accounting professor! I love him cos he’s super eccentric and sarcastic, the kind of professors I usually like. He also gave me 99% in that class and when he saw me he said “good job! you Asian”. I asked if he even remembers my name and he said “it’ll come to me one day” wtf

Can you believe he’s 70+ years old and he baked brownies for us in EVERY class???? He also only wore suit to class so I asked him once if he bakes in his suit and he said “no, silly! I slip on an apron” hahaha

I think we took a total of 1000 over pictures that day cos our parents kept asking us to pose with EVERYthing -___-

“GOT FLOWERS! TAKE PICTURES!” *snap snap 20 times in same pose

“SQUIRRELS! STAND IN FRONT OF THEM” *snap snap

“WHITE PEOPLE!! TAKE WITH THEM” *snap snap

and everytime we stopped to talk to friends, we have 4 paparazzi taking pictures of us from all angles! hahaha and our friends would say “err i hope they’re your parents right”

Shanshan was grumbling about having to take so many pictures but hello! when will you get to have photographers following you everywhere and taking pics of you! Gotta love ‘em proud parents

In front of the chapel!

with my parents.

yes I changed my shoes wtf. I bought this pair for graduation but didn’t wear them earlier cos I was scared I’d trip when receiving my degree on stage hahaha

with the college sign and my dead sunflower. I don’t know why I kept holding on to it T_T

more pictures taken by the proud parents. Shanshan’s dad had 3 cameras and he used all 3 cameras everytime cos he said each camera produces different pictures, damn cute! But also very tiring for us to hold the poses  T_T

Anyway that’s the end of it! Everything went by so fast during graduation and I didn’t even have time to really say goodbye to shanshan. The last thing I remember was me helping her pack and bossing her around and nagging her as usual while she panics like a kid as usual (we have a funny relationship), and then we hugged and we kept saying we won’t cry and I left hurriedly cos I felt like I was choking in tears and then…gone.

Goodbyes are painful, and it’s worse when people make empty promises to each other. “I’m sure I’ll see you again” “I’ll come visit!” but I kept telling them “no, you won’t.” Let’s face it, we live on completely different sides of the world, and I rather face reality and bid a proper farewell than keep my hopes up.

Goodbyes are painful because it takes years to build a strong friendship, and no matter how much you say you’ll keep in touch, things will be very different when you are not physically close to each other. It takes years for a friendship to transcend superficiality and for two people to really know each other more than they know themselves. With Shanshan, I’d often say something and she’d know what I said actually didn’t reflect how I felt, and she was right 9 out of 10 times. Our friendship was painfully honest and incredibly real, and I’m afraid I wouldn’t find something like this once I get out of school anymore.

But..the world awaits. And so I bade farewell to my home for 4 years and my best friend who till this day is the prettiest girl I have ever met inside and outside, and pray that all our late night talks on our big dreams and hopes will come true.

Apart from being a fine game, Tetris is also a perfect mirror of the human condition. For a while the game is entertaining, and we seem to have mastered it and are having fun. Then, something goes wrong — a rash mistake, or an unfulfilled wish, and we’re fighting to repair the damage, but we’ve been thrown off-balance, and everything is piling up. Blocks that were once orderly and harmonious are jumbled and filled with holes, and our cup is on the verge of running over. There’s always a point at which we stop planning for the future, and realize that we don’t have one — all we can do is cling to the present and concentrate, focus our minds on what it’s like to be alive, to play the game, before it’s all over.

You were waiting for a four-by-one block that never came.

Sometimes we resist to the bitter end, moving blocks left and right without thought or care, just to hang on, and sometimes we accept the inevitable and pull the blocks down to us, smiling inwardly at the great joke. The rest is silence.

I found a great analysis of Tetris and just thought I’d share it here since it’s too long to post on Twitter wtf.

By the way, I’m home!!!! For good. Forever. It feels so foreign and weird…I still feel like I’m on my usual summer holiday, and still feel like a college student. I guess it’ll take a while for it to sink in.

My parents were here for my graduation and they really were my personal photographers the entire time. Shanshan’s parents had THREE cameras with them and they would use ALL the cameras everytime. So I have about a million pictures to vet through before I can post them up!

But what I have so far:

Aileen and I before the Laurel Parade

My white dress from H&M and the beautiful yellow scarf given by our alumnae!

My best friend Shanshan and I. I don’t want to think about not seeing her for a while and that it’s the end of us being in college together, because if I do I know I will not be able to stop crying. I was very lucky to have someone like her throughout my 4 years in college cos she’s one of the very few people who completely understands me and is extremely supportive of me T___T

Laurel Parade, one of our oldest and most beloved traditions. Graduating seniors will all wear white and will carry the Laurel chain (the chain of green grass thingy), signifying a link that brings all of us together, and we’ll carry it to our founder’s grave.

And then we’ll gather and sing Bread and Roses, a song that supports international women suffrage and appeals for gender equality and women’s rights.

I cried while we were singing that song, it was so beautiful T___T then I looked around and saw everyone crying too T__T Now I really don’t regret going to a women’s college that takes activism so seriously.

Men in kilts performing before the parade

probably my absolute favorite part of the parade! the school spirit is so strong because hundreds of alumnae actually came back for reunion! this is the class of 1961, which means they’re all around 70+ years old!

there was also someone from the class of 1931, she was 102 years old!

the feeling of having so many people cheer you on during the parade was indescribable. Especially when you see the look of pride and recognition on their faces, it was amazing.

The night before graduation, we have another ceremony called the Baccalaureate. It was basically a more personal event where we had our Dean wrapping up our college life. She said soooo many quotable quotes that night, and everyone was tearing quite badly too. She talked about uncertainties, and fear, and anxiety upon completing college and finally going out in the real world. It was so…relatable and so real which makes it scarier.

Graduation!!!!

We were all given a sunflower each

Our president insisted on hugging ALL of us when we received our degree. She also congratulated each and everyone of us when she hugged us, damn nice!!!

I’m happy to announce that I received my degree without falling on stage because I chickened out and didn’t wear high heels wtf. Everything is in Latin, I only recognized my name here hahah

Treated myself to a huge ice cream hoho

The next day, I packed all my 4 years in college in 4 suitcases and left my second home.

As the bus gained momentum and drove past my college, I got quite emotional for the first time upon graduation. This picture describes my feelings perfectly. In a blur, scared, excited, unsure, sad, very sad, glad, hopeful. I don’t know what’s in store for me after leaving a place that has changed me tremendously, a place that I was only beginning to really love and be comfortable in.

Thank you Mount Holyoke for making me the woman that I am today.

Thank you for teaching me how to think critically for myself, for nurturing the principles in me that I never knew existed, for being patient and kind when I didn’t quite get the point of a liberal arts education at first, for never giving up when I doubted you.

But most importantly, thank you for showing me that education is never a means to an end, that the pursuit of knowledge is lifelong.

We don’t go to school because we need practical knowledge to help us in our jobs, we go to school to gain knowledge that will help us make sense of the world and our place and roles to play. The past weekend was a culmination of this realization. One of my favorite professors, in his final lecture to us, told us this:

“Look at the person on your left, and the person on your right. In a hundred years, they will both be dead. We spend our lives worrying about things that are in the present, things that are transitory and are insignificant in the greater scheme of things. Spend your life thinking about things that are eternal, not temporary. Spend your life thinking about things that will matter 100 years from today, things that mattered 100 years ago and will continue to be important.

Your education has not ended, in fact it starts right after your graduation. Think about the everlasting effect of your existence, read the great books, read because it matters. Your education starts when you start learning about stuff because it matters and the only questions that matter are why are you here? what’s the purpose of your life?”

This is only an excerpt of some of the most inspiring speeches I’ve heard. Someone else talked about the roles that women should play in the society and urged us to be the women who pave ways for changes and the women who play critical roles locally and globally.

Our commencement speaker talked about the importance of the liberal arts education and how it’s getting underrated these days in pursuit of more material gains and knowledge. She spoke about the role of the humanities and art in democracy and in a more holistic society and I couldn’t have agreed more.

I was never a big fan of the humanities and art, and sometimes question my decision to be in a liberal arts college. Why am I not learning more practical skills? skills that can be applied in my jobs in the future? It wasn’t until I realized at the end that that’s not what education is all about, at least not to me. I can go on about this for maybe another 10 pages or so, but I just got home and I need to eat all the Malaysian food that my stomach can take!!!

The end from the college student Suet. It’s time to be a big girl now.

“Go forth, make a difference, be the change you want to see, change the world”

The past few days have been incredible for all the seniors who are graduating. We attended the final lecture where amazing professors gave their final parting advices to us. Most of them were really inspiring and emotional and I never thought I’d say this but I kinda want to stay longer so I can attend more lectures like these.

I’ve also been exploring this area more with my parents and have fallen in love again with this place. Why do we always love something so much more when we know we are losing it soon? I regret not taking the time beyond the walls of my room, the classroom and the library on the last few months I was here, but alas there was only so much I could do. This place is beautifully breathtaking, and I’ve come to appreciate it so much more now.

Today was a jam-packed day and I was out from nearly 7 am to 1 am, don’t think I can feel my legs now T___T I will definitely blog about everything in greater detail later with pictures, but I just need to jot this down while it’s still raw.

Our dean asked us this in our Baccalaureate ceremony: “Do you still remember the person you were when you first came here?”

To be honest, I do remember that person, but that person is so far from who I’ve grown to become in the last four years. I talk about my abhorrence for this place, for its seclusion, for its lack of testosterones, but I have only recently stopped to really reflect on what this place has taught me in return. I will one day talk about this more, but coming to an empowering all-women liberal arts college has opened up an entire new world to me.

So I will graduate tomorrow and I’m happy to announce that I’m graduating with a Magna Cum Laude! It’s a Latin honor and it means “with great honor”, awarded to the top 10% of the class I’m really nervous but excited at the same time, and I really just hope I won’t trip on the stage T___T I have decided that for the sake of placating my fear of falling, I shall sacrifice looking tall and will wear flats.

Ok I have to sleep, big day tomorrow!!!!11 if you want to keep up to date with my life and see pictures, go to my twitter! I update pretty frequently.

Follow me!

I received my Teach for Malaysia welcome packet the other day and immediately read everything cover to cover. There will be a two month-training before the real teaching begins, and the training will be from 6am to 10pm everyday. (I CAN’T EVEN WAKE UP BEFORE 12PM THESE DAYS) but still, I’m glad that we will have somewhat adequate training since I’m definitely not prepared to teach just yet.

Anyway,  I felt overwhelmed immediately after reading it, because I suddenly felt all that immense expectations on me and all the responsibilities that I will have to bear. There are so many stakeholders here, the students in my classroom, the teachers in that school, the parents, the community, the people who believe/don’t believe in TFM (since we’re the first cohort, how successful it is really depends on us), and ultimately my parents who don’t think this is a good idea. Can I really do this? What if I take on this unprecedented path and ‘sacrifice’ my two years only to realize that it’s too difficult for me?

After really taking some time to think about this, and after talking to Dzameer the cofounder and Chaitra, another fellow in Teach for India, I realized how silly it is for me to even doubt myself and doubt the entire cause. If this wasn’t hard or challenging, why would I even want to do it in the first place? I know I wanted something bigger than a desk job after I graduate, and this is the perfect opportunity to do something about what I strongly believe in, this is my chance to make a difference, and I sit and moan about all the what ifs??

Anyway those are all just preliminary introduction to what I really want to blog about. I don’t know why I’m writing a crazy long post when I have exam the next day, but I just need to talk about it T___T

So yes I’m 99% sure I’m doing it for sure, which brings me to the next issue. What exactly do I do with my blog after this? It’s such a big leap, from being a student who has the freedom to talk about everything she wants and however she wants to being a teacher who isn’t only going to be a role model to teenagers but will have to uphold a certain degree of moral responsibility.

I’ve been puzzling about it for a while and I’m quite unsure how things will turn out. Because of how public my blog is, there will definitely be a lot of things I can’t talk about anymore. What if my students find my blog and all these pictures of me being vain and think of me differently, and perhaps even lose respect for me? What will the other teachers, or the parents, or just ANYone think?

I will definitely not shut down my blog because I think it’s a great avenue for me to talk about my life changing experience being a teacher in a low-income school dealing with a million and one obstacles and challenges, but I definitely can’t blog the way I’ve been blogging for years anymore.

To be honest, that is extremely scary for me. It means I have to be an adult now, I have to censor so many things that is essentially who I am, and will that mean my blog will really not be a true representation of who I am anymore?

Is it even okay for me to put pictures of me kissing a bunny next time? wtf. is it even okay to say wtf?

I know this is a long post, but I really appreciate everyone reading this and giving their opinions on it. I’ve been blogging for 7 years now and this feeling is so foreign to me, the feeling of having to completely switch the contents of my blog. Granted, I do realize my blog has seen major revamps recently and it’s definitely A LOT more serious now than before. Will I lose my readers? Will I lose my secondary income derived from blog advertisements and advertorials? (I probably can’t even do those anymore)

I’m graduating in fifteen days, and I’m extremely excited and scared at the same time.  A part of me wants to do so much, change the world! make a difference! be proactive! but another part of me just wishes my life can go on as usual, be comfortable in my comfort zone, not have responsibilities, not worrying.

I already said it, but I’m going to tell you right now if anything, I actually feel very very scared and unsure about a lot of things. I’d love to be all confident and tell everyone I know exactly what I’m doing and to show that I’m strong enough to weather whatever obstacles thrown my way, but I guess it’s cause this road is so unconventional, so foreign, that I can’t deny that I’m actually nervous about it.

Can I even write honest posts like this next time?

Haih so fan maybe should just make my blog private lah (anticlimatic conclusion after writing this long post for an hour wtf)

read about food until damn sien already

I was stupid enough to decide that I should write on something challenging since it’s my LAST RESEARCH PAPER EVER so instead of being normal like everyone else who’s writing on the differences between Chinese and Italian food, I wrote about the relationship between politics and food. In particular, I wrote about the role that food plays in politics, both as a symbol of power and as a political tool. Thanks to my overambitious decision, I ended up spending THIRTY freaking hours on this supposedly “short” ten page paper. Just kill me lah.

Ok I know no one wants to hear me ramble about uninteresting school work, but bear with me since I’m getting quite sentimental about the end of my college chapter *sniff.

9 post it notes before I get to go home! Tomorrow I’ll be taking down 3 T___T (must remember to play some kinda ceremonious drum rolls when i tear them down)

The other day at this super crowded party some drunk girl with incredibly high heels stepped on me and I swear I could feel that heel digging into my flesh. It’s healing now T_T

Got an award! I don’t want cert gimme moolah wtf

It was Pangy Day the other day, aka best day of the year cause it celebrates the end of the semester and the glorious warmth and sun after 5 long painful months of winter.

Me and the other Malaysians! Sin Seanne, Emily, Jerusha and Dina.

sorry arm too short and tercut off emily haha

it’s A BUNNEH!!!! WHITE FLUFFY SUPER CUTE BUNNEHHHH! The Biology department is leaving cute furry bunnies for anyone who wants to play with them to de-stress ^_^

We went canoeing in the upper lake next! Sigh I will miss how beautiful my campus is. This lake is extraordinarily beautiful in Fall, when the leaves turn red and orange and yellow.

emily is very happy!

while i’m taking my rowing job very seriously wtf

i like the length of my hair now!

i will miss my pretty library T___T although it’s been a place of nothing but sheer misery for me the past few years

So I went on a crazy feather earrings shopping spree the other day cause I was feeling down about something  *guilty. But they all cost about $4 each so it’s not that bad!

These ones are longer than my hair haha! Also very heavy. I think I’ll use the feathers to tickle people if they make me mad >=(

Also quite obsessed with dove/sparrows now because I’ve decided against getting my sparrow tattoo so here I am buying anything sparrow-like I see wtf

And here’s another pair!

Haha kena tipu, actually it’s the same pair as the first one. (my hair looks awesome so must commemorate before it grows out further into that ugly neither here nor there length ok)

and here’s a very rare picture of me smiling with teeth

sorry ah I so vain, but I’m no longer going to be a college student after this May, and since I’m going to be a teacher I can’t post vain pictures of myself all over the net anymore so I’m going to suffocate you all with them now wtf

Oh ya speaking of which, I got accepted into Teach for Malaysia! After a very intensive, challenging and laborious application process consisting of 5 stages of interviews and mock lessons and assessments and tests, I’m extremely thankful that they’ve chosen me to be in their first cohort!

I’m not sure if I’m accepting it for sure yet though. Gotta convince my parents that it’s not JUST a teaching job (mom told me this the other day: you went all the way to the US to study and you are coming back to teach, what a waste!) (issue 1: why come back, stay in US. overseas= good, home= bad; issue 2: be a teacher??? what atrocity!) tsk tsk, teaching should really be perceived as a more noble profession than this. After all, who are all of us today without a good teacher or two?

Random set of pictures on one cold lonely night after going crazy working on my accounting exam.

This is me being sad, and me being angry (with a bottle of gatorade). I just realized that my sad and angry faces are almost the same..

It was 4.30am (look at the clock) and I was bored, don’t judge.

Actually let’s play a guessing game, guess what my expressions mean before you read the text and if you guess right you get +100 points for being stupid enough to entertain me wtf

This is me with fake pitiful “please help me do this *blink blink*” face and me with real pitiful “HELP ME or i’ll dieeee” with tears and smudged mascara face wtf

Sorry the pictures are so tiny, I don’t know why they got resized and I can’t be bothered to fix them.

GUESS!

This is me with a real interested face, and me with a fake you’re so funny and interesting hur hur hur face

Actually I was damn in character hor! Angie said she could feel the sincerity in my genuinely interested face hahahaha

REAL HAHAHHAHA OMFG YOU DAMN FUNNY MAN *slaps thighs whole restaurant pause and look at me face

Why I look like shit when I’m genuinely laughing wtf. If you know me personally you see me with this face 80% of the time cos I always laugh at my own jokes *sad/angry

Bored out of my mind with a tinge of evil thinking-of-ways-to-take-over-the-world face

omg i’m graduating face

omg i gained 5 pounds face (true story)

omg i don’t have a job face

omg why am i showing this to everyone face

trying to devise a way to dig my nose discreetly while everyone is not looking face

(what? no one does this but me?? wtf)

ok fine this is such a boring game I don’t know who came up with this silly idea in the first place *stares at Angie for thinking it was fun wtf

That’s all back to work everyone. Back to trying to not panic while I find a way to manage both senioritis and the looming amount of work. Two weeks to finals, one month to graduation, one month and 3 days to saying bye bye to this place forever T________T

Suddenly feel a bit sad but who am I kidding! I’ve been waiting for this day since forever, can’t wait to be a contributing member of the society (ha..ha right..) and not just eat shit sleep repeat cycle everyday.

But like any other fairytales with similar storyline, she was trapped in the hut by a wicked stepmother.

There was nothing she could do. She was beautiful, but there was no one to see it. She was intelligent, but all she could do was spin imaginative ideas and create an ideal world in her head. She sang wonderfully, but only the animals would know that. She was perfect, but her perfection was trapped in the four walls of her mind and the physical space she was confined to.

And so that was how it was. There was never a prince to rescue her of her miseries, no children accidentally discovering her hut in the deep end of the woods, no miracles, no fairy godmothers.

And she lived happily ever after.

MF is an event that I’m very passionate about, mainly because I really believe in all the core values and principles. The premises are simple, create a platform for Malaysians in the states (and globally now) to actively discuss anything and everything related to Malaysia, and through discussions, try to encourage everyone to go out and make a difference in Malaysia or from abroad.

After four years of attending MF, and after four years of being abroad, it really makes me question my identity and role as a Malaysian. I was coerced to be on the panel to speak on my aspirations for myself and for my country (which I think I did very poorly, super unprepared T_T) so I thought I’d just share it with everyone here!

Before I came to college, I too shared similar ideals with many others who wish to be accomplished overseas. I imagined myself to be more of the ambitious, business-suit-wearing financial analyst/investment banker kind of person, making lots of moolah for the sake of helping my family and providing myself with material wealth. I knew even before I came here that I was going to major in Economics, and tailored my first year to finish my major as soon as possible.

Now, a month before graduation, I just dropped my Econ major, and I’m planning to go home to teach in high-need schools (if I get accepted to TFM, that is)

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that chasing for material wealth is wrong at all. After all, we all want to pay our family back for what we’ve owed them, and we all want to live comfortably. It’s just that in these four years, I’ve changed my ideals and aspirations so much that I think I want to talk about how it’s totally okay to not conform to the usual stereotypical way of being accomplished and successful.

Being in a liberal arts college has really taught me to look at things very differently, and to challenge my former very rigid perceptions of how things work. Perhaps it has also made me very idealistic, but if idealism is the only way we can change things these days then I’m going to hold on and protect this part of me with all my life.

Someone asked me at the forum: “Why do you still want to go back when there are so many fundamental barriers, so many constitutionalized discrimination, so many political hindrance?”

I think that’s where people are quite mistaken when I tell them I want to help the country. There are lots of obstacles yes, but we don’t have to change the entire country overnight. There are many many small things you can do, small changes that will benefit whatever community you’re in. I think people are too quick to say “Aiya cannot one lah, you see all the corrupt politicians blabla” just so they have an excuse and something to blame, just so they don’t feel bad about not being proactive.

Actually coming to the states made me realize that no matter where we are, we will always have a million and one things to criticize. I used to look at America as the great country of democracy and proponent of free speech, and yet I see so many disgruntled Americans arguing about how bad things are. Granted, there are so many other pros of being in a developed nation, but my point is there is always something you don’t like – what’s more important is if you are going to do anything about it.

Going back to MF, I think one of the many small changes you can make is to first change the mindset of people around you. Instead of complaining about things and saying “aiya that’s how things are, cannot change already one”, try to encourage people you’re with to provide constructive criticisms. Talk about what you can do as an active citizen, go out and look for ways you can change the system, starting from the bottom.

I was so inspired by the other speakers at MF who talked about youth activism, and how they decided that it’s time they do something about the injustice and inequality they see in their everyday life. Be it buying books for orang asli kids, or building a platform for activism in their community, or writing about how to challenge youth to be more proactive. And then I was inspired even further by all these other people who’re also going back home and who want to do so many things given the limited resources they have.

I think this is what is lacking back home – a platform for active discussions. I was once the uninspired, apathetic student who didn’t think changes are possible because I didn’t actively reach out of my comfort zone, until I came to MF and met all these amazing individuals. One of our panel speakers, Johnson, put it quite aptly, “It’s not apathy that’s plaguing us, it’s thinking that we’re alone in this”.

There needs to be a paradigm shift, and not just one of those loosely used “anjakan paradigmas” we end our karangan with when we talk about gejala-gejala sosial. Start with talking about it, end the mindset that nothing can be done without even being involved in the action ourselves, then find other likeminded people who share similar ideals because there are more of them out there that you think.  And if we fail, at least we failed knowing that we’ve tried our best.

Hopefully one day we will all do great things and make our home a better place to live in, and ask the people who will then come back home where have they been all along.

—-

p.s: my liberal arts education has also prepared me to see both sides of the coin, so i know exactly what the counterargument might be. “you don’t know how hard things are because you haven’t been back for long and haven’t worked here” – i know it’s hard trust me, i hear friends and family talk about this all too often. my point is we should try challenging and pushing perceived boundaries first, before admitting defeat due to complacency.

“i know we should all be proactive and change the world, but basic necessities should come first, we need to have enough money to feed ourselves etc etc” – i think the point i’m trying to make is not we should all be patriotic and go back home despite having better opportunities elsewhere. there are so many ways we can be proactive, we don’t have to all quit our jobs and be superheroes. eg: supporting a cause in many ways, engaging in constructive discussions, not succumbing to the mob mentality or jumping on the bandwagon all too quick when it comes to criticizing the country.

actually i can talk forever about this lah. i just want the country to be a better place and wish everyone would believe that we all have a role to play in this too, be it small or big.

So it went like this.

I was in my grandmother’s very old house, and there was this section where there was a huge altar with statues of different gods with scary faces and all these boards with ancestors’ names etc. I think this part is enough to convince you how scary this dream is gonna be haha

So ALL my extended family members were there, all 30+ of us, and we were just chillin’ and talking and being normal. Then I decided to take pictures, so I went around taking pictures. It got really dark then, and I gathered everyone so we can take one big group picture. I fumbled with the flash to make sure it’s turned on (SEE i remember all the details, making it way scarier T_T) and I took a test shot when everyone was still talking.

Then I looked up.

And everyone was gone. Everyone just freaking disappeared!!!!

I was so scared cause it was really dark all over, and so I sat on the sofa shivering and I had my dog with me and he was shivering too. I started shouting for the gods to return my family members back, and my dog started chewing on my arm cause he was scared wtf.

Anyway I decided to look through the pictures I have taken to see if I can find clues on what the hell just happened. First few pictures were fine and everyone was happily talking, and then gradually the pictures started changing OMG RETELLING THIS IS SCARING THE SHIT OUT OF ME I’M ALONE IN MY ROOM

Everyone started getting more and more translucent for some reason, like they’re becoming ghouls? spirits?

And the last picture….the last picture….I can still remember it T_____T

The last picture is of my grandmother being almost 90% translucent and she was flying at me and her face was kinda scared, and like she’s also trying to tell me something.

Then I went on a statue-destroying rampage and started throwing the altars around wtf. There was a mysterious statue of Bruce Lee too, of which I flung out of the house angrily while shouting “Give me my family back!!!”

The end, dog was still chewing on my arm while I was being all king kong with the statues.

Actually now that I retell it, I don’t know why I woke up shivering and breaking out in cold sweat because I kinda seem pretty kickass awesome in the dream.

One girl (and a dog who likes to chew on arm when scared), 30 missing family members, tons of scary gods – coming your way this summer. directed by m. night shyamalan.

Good news is I’ve progressed to stage 4 of the Teach For Malaysia interview! YES, there are FOUR stages, and stage 4 is seriously harder than I’d prepared for. We have to attend a day-long assessment, and will have four more “obstacles” to go through. I’m already swamped with school work and the running of Malaysia Forum as it is, so preparing for this will take up whatever remaining energy I have left T___T

It’s 4am now and I shouldn’t be awake but it’s one of those rare times that I actually feel like blogging so bear with this super long post!

Speaking of Malaysia Forum, I wish I’d remembered to do this sooner but if you’re a Malaysian studying in the states, you do NOT want to miss out this event! For more info: www.malaysiaforum.org/nmf/

So I went to Puerto Rico for Spring Break two weeks ago and never got around to posting the millions of pictures taken so here they are! I loved the entire island so much, from the beautiful beaches to the amazing food and friendly people, it’s what I had imagined my last spring break to be <3

Possibly my favorite place ever, this hilly vast piece of land right next to the sea where people flock to to fly kites.

where children’s past times include rolling down the hill without a care in the world

where it’s right next to the magnificent Spanish fort

where the sun seems a lot more tolerable

and people a lot happier

hard to see why this is NOT my favorite place in puerto rico!

look how far my kite was!

flying my kite, LIKE A BOSS

sunset

absolutely love love love this picture Alex took

(most of the pictures are taken by him anyway)

me with my trusty map and a cup of passionfruit ice cream. don’t you love these quaint streets and alleys? probably one of the most romantic towns i’ve been to

snuck into a very old antique/vintage store selling the most random things possible. the boss was sitting outside chatting with his friends, clearly not very concern with his customers. 1960s playboy magazines were strewn across the piles of vintage magazines, broken toy collectibles in one shelf and dainty china plates in another, rows and rows of records and worn books that have probably survived many owners and generations. a sleepy shop in a sleepy town, unperturbed by the waves of touristy capitalism. i’m in love.

MOFONGO! which is actually pretty overrated everyone told me i had to eat this traditional dish of mashed plantains, but we only found it truly good in this really hole-in-the-wall place called Yurta. isn’t it always the case?

but this was so damned good i can cry in my sleep just thinking about it *tear

shanshan and i at another fort

sorry these pictures are totally not in sequence at all, not like it’ll matter if they were!

stop being so beautiful T____T the place i mean WTF hahaha totally just saw how that can be misconstrued wtf

with yijin and shanshan

how much my hair has grown! barely 7 months ago it was as short as an incredibly overworked chinese school boy’s hair

at this wonderful place that sells exact replicas of doors in the town

this how restaurants should be!

free rum at the Bacardi factory!

old-school coffee machine at a local diner/bakery called la bombanera, also known as my second home. coffee here is to die for, and the toasted bun with butter is just wayyy out of the world!

pirates of the carribean

can’t think of a caption

sorry for the half-hearted post, it’s almost 5am now and i’m typing with my eyes closed. serioculy i am so don’t correct me for my typos ok this is sheer dedication at work it’s not always that i sacrifice precious sleep to show the world what i’ve been up to

WHOAAA i really typed the previous paragraph with my eyes closed and i only have one typo!!! i guess if i can’t get this teach for malaysia job and any other job, i’m just gonna get someone to hire me as a umm.. typist who types with her eyes closed wtf. maybe some bosses have a strange preference for someone like that wtf ok goodnight. clearly losing my sanity.

want

to

move

on

with

my

life

I’m running in circles, chasing my imaginary tail, chasing and chasing, but never grabbing it. I came close to it once, and I was so pleased with finally being able to feel the concreteness in my grasp that I accidentally let it slip away again.

I got an email the other day from a reader, and the moment I read it I felt depressed again. She said she loves my blog, and loves me, and thinks I’m a huge inspiration to her. She said she envies me, envies my passion for life, envies my strength and my persistence. It was all too flattering and I wanted to reply with my usual “thanks for reading my blog!” but I just couldn’t do it, because I was ashamed of myself.

Ashamed that the person on the receiving end of such adulation is just a girl in her torn oversized tee with unkempt hair, without motivation nor passion for anything in her life these days, mulling about counting the days to when she can finally escape from this bubble she has been in for the past 4 years.

Ashamed that whatever zest and excitement that once overfilled her every being have now evaporated into thin air, leaving her grasping in desperation to whatever that’s holding her to her reality these days.

Ashamed that the so called inspiration she is to people is this person who doesn’t even have the motivation and will to learn anymore, this bane of the society who forsakes her opportunity for knowledge to settle for many hours of dwelling in her miseries.

I don’t know what I’m going on and on about.

I took a happiness test a month ago, and I scored every question with a I’M VERY HAPPY, VERY MOTIVATED AND VERY SATISFIED WITH MY LIFE. Funny how the tables have turned in such a short time.

I’m not unhappy, i’m not depressed, i’m just.

That’s the thing, I don’t know what I am right now. I’m in a limbo of feelings, neither here nor there, floating in this weird realm of nothingness.

——–

ok fine. I might have exaggerated a little about how I’m feeling. I’m perfectly fine, and this is just an on and off feeling I’ve been experiencing.

Actually…. maybe just for the past few days WTF.

but it’s still is a big hindrance to my ultimate plan of saving the world.

too many pictures,
too little time

two lovers spending the whole afternoon trying to fly a flawed kite,
the perfect entertainment on a lazy Sunday afternoon

sheer tops and long flowy dresses,
big shades and lots of sunscreen

new shoes,

new shoes.

i think i left a little bit of my heart,
right here on this balcony

have a great, err, mid march everyone!!!

So when that happens, I guess I have to resort to the lazy kinda blogging where I just post random pictures I have from my camera/ Photo Booth ;__;

This is a small part of my Symbolic Logic homework. It’s DAMN freaking hard!!!! Sometimes I kinda regret taking this class but I wanted to try something completely crazy and different before I graduate, and I’ve always wanted to take a Philosophy class and I was hoping this class will teach me how to reason logically wtf

It’s a combination of Computer Science+ Philosophy+ Math *faints

My hair is so long now!! And to think that 6 months ago it was still the boycut kinda short. I didn’t bring my hair straightener back with me so I have to suffer the wrath of having shoulder length hair

(btw, this is EXACTLY how big my room is, from that door till the rack of clothes.)

Bought new pair of shorts for $9 ^_^

I had over an hour to do my makeup the other day for Korea Night so I did a makeup video! But now too lazy/busy to edit the video and post it *stabs self

Trying too hard to be feminine with this hair wtf

I’m procrastinating having to complete my application for Teach For Malaysia and now the deadline is looming closer and I have no time to finish it *HORROR*

Truth is I just don’t know what to write about. We have to write a few essays and the application is actually way harder than I’d thought. Don’t know what Teach For Malaysia is? It’s a non-profit organization modeled after Teach For America aiming to end education inequity. Basically what they do is recruit people who are passionate about making a change in the education landscape in Malaysia. TFM fellows will then serve for two years in high need schools all over the country and this challenging and meaningful experience will hopefully transform both the schools and the fellows themselves.

To be honest, I’m not 100% sure if this is the right thing to do. Teach for America is extremely prestigious, and they only recruit the most promising and bright individuals. Teaching in challenging schools have proven to be very beneficial to these fellows who usually go on to be exceptional leaders in their fields.

Teach for Malaysia, on the other hand, is still at its infancy. It was hard enough for me to convince my parents that I want to go back home after I graduate instead of looking for a higher paying job in the states, imagine having to tell them I want to go back to TEACH. and earn probably next to nothing. “But someone’s gotta do it!” I’d argue. “Well that someone doesn’t have to be you!” they’d retort.

I don’t know, I’m still pretty confused about a lot of things. I know I’m incredibly idealistic and I know my idealism will die down eventually once I enter the big scary world of corporate firms and the neverending cycle of materialistic culture of the working world. So I feel like I have to do something like this before I get swollen whole by the real world. Wait, what am I talking about? Teaching in high need schools IS the real world, and it’s probably more real than people would imagine it to be.

Favorite quote by Wendy Kopp, the founder of Teach for America:

We don’t need to wait to eliminate poverty to ensure all children have access to the kinds of education that will ultimately give them a way out of poverty.

IF we make the most of it, the students who overcome poverty to realize their full potential will grow up to become the most inspiring leaders the world has ever known, leaders who have the strength and character that come from succeeding in the face of extraordinary challenges and have the kind of education that will allow them to solve the other problems we face as a society.

We can enable children in urban and rural school to make history. The question is simply, whether we will.

I’m sorry this post has taken a more serious tone than I’d intended it to be, but the more I sit and think about what I want to do after I graduate, the more I know for sure what I do NOT want to do. I don’t want to be caught in the rat race, well not just yet at least, and I need to know I’m going back home for a reason.

Now, I just need to write a kickass application essay so I can fulfill that reason! and kickass essay will have to wait until tomorrow cause I’m dead tired now after finishing my incredibly tedious accounting exam T__T