I was at a Chinese New year tea just the other day, with members of the Johor Bahru Speakers' Club. Topics of conversation took a natural swerve to what we are doing now, how we keep ourselves occupied, and so on. After hearing what I do daily, the very nice Doctor next to me asked, "How do you find the time to do all that?" and she literally shouted to the ladies at the next table, "She has a blog!"
I asked myself the same question, sometimes.
Do not think I am unique, because there are abundance of similar ladies out there, many many, much busier than me. I guess what made folks wonder at me is why I left a plush, comfy job to plunge into a strange and maddening one. But I'm enjoying myself, at nobody's expense.
Last week a lady approached me for proposals for English courses and programmes. I had left that `world' for almost two years now after a consultancy company I partnered with a friend, collapsed. It thrilled me a little bit to think I may again face a class of hopefuls. As I wrote and planned the course outlines, the adrenalin flowed again. And I remembered a language course that I had taught about 9 years ago...
The group was from the SUK (State Secretariate), some held positions of importance, and guess who was in the class? My own husband. He was then the Private Secretary to the Chief Minister of Johor but had to undergo the 3-month English course. The incident I remembered so well and which amused me greatly was when I did an ice-breaker. The question had been: If you were parts of a house, which part would you be? And why? So the lovely men were a roof (`To protect my family, madam' ) or the steps (`People cannot go into the house if there are no steps, madam') but my spouse chose the kitchen. Why, sir? I asked. "Because my wife is there all the time to cook." and without batting an eyelid, I commented, "Your wife must be a very good cook.." and some of the more junior officers looked at us with wonder at the third person references.
Our evening oral presentation was a bomb. It was a debate and the topic was so stupid but the seriousness with which the officers participated was amazing. Two groups had to agree or disagree that `Cows should wear bras.' They actually asked university students what would happen to the milk if cows' teats are covered! But I loved most the proposition team who said that yes, all cows in this country MUST do so because it is good for the tourism industry. Imagine, they said, tourists in buses looking out of the windows at cows on our fields, all wearing brassieres of all shapes, sizes, and colours. It is also good for the clothing industry as more jobs are created to manufacture the pieces of underclothing with not two, but five cups! Naturally, they won the debate not only hands down, but the judges were also down on the floor, rolling about crying with laughter.
Yes, I guess I DO miss the classroom, after all.
Oh, and I recall an assignment I gave to the B.Ed. students in the teachers' training college. It was after we did a poem about the hawk and they did not know what `down' meant, which part of the feather it was. So, for their mid-semester holiday, I assigned them to get a LIVE chicken, get it killed/slaughtered, immerse it in hot water, and clean the feathers. No cheating. Every step had to be photographed and compiled in a scrapbook. The result? The kids had so much fun! Many of them experienced for the first time a chicken with feathers on it, and not one that came clean from a supermarket. They googled for names of different types of feather. And one girl even wrote a foreword that said she was not going to eat a chicken ever again.
Yes, I miss teaching.
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