Hello blog... and kengkawan and dearest li'l sis...
My hands have healed from the bout of the itchy bumps that made it look like I am some lizard. Now it is still bumpy, the skin has thickened somewhat from the experience, and cracked like some elephant's crazy ass cracked foot pad. And I have no idea what to do about it, because it doesn't just look gross, it feels gross too! I sweat all over my body, but never on the palms of my hands or my feet. So they are pretty well dry and cracked as it is, and now with the bumpy scars, it looks way worse than usual. And using chalk at work is not making it look or feel any better. Maybe I am not drinking enough lately, maybe I need to use the pumice stone on my hands in the shower too instead of just sticking to just pumiceing my feet. I will have a separate pumice stone for the hands lah, if liddat, cuz using the pumice stone of the feet on the hand is gross. Maybe I should be patient and wait for my yearly molting of the skin on the palm of my hands. But God knows when that is gonna happen.
Who cares?
WARNING : Totally gross self-loving blog entry of the century ahead. Vomit-inducing. Only meant for the chronic monologuist owner of the blog. For her own self-motivation purposes. Please refrain yourself from venturing any further.
Now this is the real entry today.
I am broke but I am at the top of the world.
Last week, I got a call from PK HEM SMK L@w@s. Alex asked me if I would consider coming over to their school and give a talk for their Budi Bahasa Budaya Kita programme being organized by the UBK for their year-long programme. I was like... WHAT THE HAY? WHY ME? WADEFAK!!!
Well, of course I didn't say those exact words out loud, but I did freak out on the phone and what I ranted on the phone from the sheer shock of it all was pretty close.
I am gonna be 33 at the end of August and I have never given a talk like the one they are expecting me to give. It was just a prelimenary call to see what if I can do it on that day, so I can always back out if I wanted to.
I have stage fright. A freakin huge stage fright. Give me a theatre script any day, and I will go on a field trip with it. But if you want me to go on stage and be all educational and facts and number and statistics, give me a huge hunking steaming jock strap soup instead!!!
I was planning on chickening out later and ease it out on them on a phone call I was planning to make later last week. I managed to duck out of the whole thing the last time I was invited for a motivational talk in a primary school for UPSR candidates due to the fact that I was needed in another affair more important at school at the same time. It was totally true that time, so I had to send my counselor instead. Even when it actually tickled my heart string, wondering if I could do it, to share my experience with all those little ones and help them see life in a different light and the potential that lies within, the way I share it with the pupils at my school every opportunity that calls for it. I would like to believe that I had to send my counselor instead that time out of sheer necessity and an overlapping schedule... but deep down inside, I can't simply deny the cold truth; I chickened out.
I'll do the chicken dance later.
This time though, I realized I can chicken out of invitations for so long. One day, I will have to be brave and confront my demons. Secretly, in between my usual job at work, I wondered if this is the right time to start confronting them. There is always a first time for everything and I am at an age where I should have had enough experience with kids at school to know how to handle them. Especially loud, rowdy and rude crowd of helplessly lost souls that they have intended to be my target audience for the talk they had planned for me that day, just a week away. But as surely as the sun rises every morning, my fears started creeping in, casting a shadow of doubt so thick, I almost felt suffocated, smothered by fear. Fear of the unknown, the dumbest fear there is out there if I ever knew one. So I decided, I will chicken out. I will weasel my way out of it, just the way I did last time. And the times before that.
And you know what happened?
I forgot to make that phone call. I got so caught up on work that I was only reminded of it last Monday when a text message from the other school's counsellor who is also an acquaintance of mine. It was just two days away now, officially too late to weasel my way out of it, because there is no way they are gonna be able to find anyone to replace me just so they can keep on track with the school's motivational / discipline programme, and even though I am an evil bitch, I can't possibly let them down. Not this close to the date. I am not that selfish.
So I went on a self-motivating mode throughout the rest of Monday and the whole of Tuesday, getting myself all psyched about the prospect and possibility of actually getting to these so-called hardcore students at that school, or actually bombing and getting booed into oblivion.
I almost died from the self-induced anxiety and sheer anticipation. Let me remind you, I HAVE A F*CKING D*MNED FIRST DEGREE STAGE FRIGHT time one thousand. And I don't even know what the hell that means. All I know is that I am just gonna go up there and be in the spotlight and just die from the whole experience.
By Tuesday evening, I was already just a huge lump of nerves in my bed whether I really needed to come up with some PowerPoint slideshow. I was all jittery and nervous, biting my nails even though I never was a nail biter. I was THAT nervous. I am not even playin'.
I ended up falling asleep at 2.30 in the morning and not have a slideshow to go with my talk. Great. Just great! Now they are just gonna say you are a sloppy lazy ass dumb b*tch who is gonna preach all morning.
I dragged myself out of bed when the alarm went off. In truth, I had been awake since 5 am and had not been able to get back to sleep since then. Took a shower. I brushed my whole body with the body brush and sloughed off all the dead skin cells all over my body. Only my scalp was spared because I worried if I might lose all my hair later if I do that there.
I put make up on. Got dressed in my new favourite, the kurung I had tailored for last year's Raya which was totally moss green satin with light green/gold lace trims on the wrist, and slipped on my black, pointy-toed three-inch stiletto with blingy heels I got in Alamanda last time I went home to Serdang. I was a vision of lush greenery. Well, at least they know I take good care of myself and not a totally sloppy lazy assed b*tch.
The whole ensemble took care of that. I hope.
And I sprayed on some of my Happy, to make me happy.
After a last look in the full-length mirror, I grabbed my keys and my stuff and left home. After I made a flask of hot coffee+tongkat ali. Ye, aku minum tongkat ali. Every work day mornings. Ko apa pedulik? So far, aku belum jadi jantan lagi. But it had done wonders for my bad back. Alhamdulillah.
At the school, I was sweating bullets. There goes my foundation laden face. Damnit, damnit, damnit. I salvaged whatever was left with a few dabs of tissue paper followed by blotting paper. I was fine.
Went to the venue, I was greeted by that acquaintance of mine. The rest, my friends, as they say, is history.
My history at least.
I was clear, concise, captivating and entertaining.
They began as a rowdy, noisy, rambunctious and rude bunch of hyperactive kids and we ended learning so much from each other, calming down and being more at peace with the world ten minutes before the recess bell went off. Most of them had that look in their eyes that tells you "Gosh, I never knew I had that in me" kind of look. Or I bored them to death.
No. It was a success. And I am tooting my own horn. Shamelessly doing so, mind you. Not because I was so damned good but because I managed to just show up and actually go through with it and getting praises from that acquaintance of mine. After the talk was over, and the kids were gone and the mess was cleaned up, we sat down for a while and talked some more. One of the sweetest compliments I have ever heard in my whole life as a teacher was a simple "No wonder you students love you, Y".
Do they? I wondered whether that was true, because all I had done was share with them the horrors of my life and so that they never have to through them themselves. If they do love me, then that is the bonus. But I didn't let that get to my head, because my head was still abuzz from the excitement of having completed a mammoth task of confronting my demons and finally have a true blue, motivational talk badge under my ten-year old teaching belt. Finally.
If ever I got around to preparing that ever essential presentation tool of PP slide show, it would have been totally wasted because the erratic but energetic volleying of questions and answers between us that followed after the ice-breaking activity, just took everything I had, and it was worth it.
How I knew it was a success? Because the acquaintance is now planning on organizing another talk for her fellow teachers for stress management and how to handle problematic kids and still keep your sunshiny self and sanity intact. And it will be given by me.
I said why? I can't do that. Come on Y, these kids knew about you even before you came here she chided me. Do they? Gosh... I never knew. Well, actually I have suspected that because I heard my name yelled out loud every time I pass by the school right in front of the bus stop, because I always have to slow down when I get there every morning because it is congested by parents dropping their kids off to school. And I roll down the window in the mornings because I love the fresh morning breeze instead of the artificially cooled recycled air of the car. You can ignore it the first few times, you can't keep ignoring after another dozen times.
They came in doubting me, and they left with sweet smiles and polite gestures of thank yous. And they were supposed to be the school's cigarette smelling thugs.
The saddest thing for these kids is the fact that going through puberty has left them all mixed up and forgetting why they were in school in the first place.
I hope I have imparted some kind of insight of their true potential; underneath all those layers of hard exterior, there is still a seedling of hope just wating to be watered with self-awareness and the hunger to be more of who they already are.
Dare I say it?
Have I finally found my true calling?
*GASP!*
And the fact that I found out later at home that I had applied my make up exactly the way the latest trend in Hollywood on E! just made it even better. The cherry on top. Flawless skin, nude shadow for the eyelids, thick and lush lashes with a hint of eyeliner on the roots of the top lash, and glossy barely-there pinkish hued lipstick.
I don't claim to be a master of make up art, but you can't really go wrong with M@C, right?
I was back at school later this morning just in time to have another pseudo-business brunch, discussing stuff with my boss at the school canteen, met with a parent over an absenteeism letter for his son, update SMM data on my desk top, mingle with the office staff, and go to my Form 4Sc class for EST, just in time to edit all of their first draft sof the Natural Disasters essay. Which was promptly followed by a disciplinary board meeting over a case that occured that morning while I was away, and later on, attend the support staff meeting until 4pm.
Who says teaching is a thankless job? It's all worth it.
For those of you who have demons who keep holding you down whenever you are ready to take that flight into the heavens, to spread your wings and soar... learn from me, it's never too late to confront them finally put them to rest.
Haters, go away. Go piss on some other person's blog.
p/s : I got two pens ( one from the school, one from the Baitul Mal guy who missed me when he visited the school that morning for his yearly visits) a school pennant, and RM50 for my efforts today. I love all of them, they make me wanna click my heels, jump on a horse and go Yippee Kay Yay, as I ride off into the sunset.
My hands have healed from the bout of the itchy bumps that made it look like I am some lizard. Now it is still bumpy, the skin has thickened somewhat from the experience, and cracked like some elephant's crazy ass cracked foot pad. And I have no idea what to do about it, because it doesn't just look gross, it feels gross too! I sweat all over my body, but never on the palms of my hands or my feet. So they are pretty well dry and cracked as it is, and now with the bumpy scars, it looks way worse than usual. And using chalk at work is not making it look or feel any better. Maybe I am not drinking enough lately, maybe I need to use the pumice stone on my hands in the shower too instead of just sticking to just pumiceing my feet. I will have a separate pumice stone for the hands lah, if liddat, cuz using the pumice stone of the feet on the hand is gross. Maybe I should be patient and wait for my yearly molting of the skin on the palm of my hands. But God knows when that is gonna happen.
Who cares?
WARNING : Totally gross self-loving blog entry of the century ahead. Vomit-inducing. Only meant for the chronic monologuist owner of the blog. For her own self-motivation purposes. Please refrain yourself from venturing any further.
Now this is the real entry today.
I am broke but I am at the top of the world.
Last week, I got a call from PK HEM SMK L@w@s. Alex asked me if I would consider coming over to their school and give a talk for their Budi Bahasa Budaya Kita programme being organized by the UBK for their year-long programme. I was like... WHAT THE HAY? WHY ME? WADEFAK!!!
Well, of course I didn't say those exact words out loud, but I did freak out on the phone and what I ranted on the phone from the sheer shock of it all was pretty close.
I am gonna be 33 at the end of August and I have never given a talk like the one they are expecting me to give. It was just a prelimenary call to see what if I can do it on that day, so I can always back out if I wanted to.
I have stage fright. A freakin huge stage fright. Give me a theatre script any day, and I will go on a field trip with it. But if you want me to go on stage and be all educational and facts and number and statistics, give me a huge hunking steaming jock strap soup instead!!!
I was planning on chickening out later and ease it out on them on a phone call I was planning to make later last week. I managed to duck out of the whole thing the last time I was invited for a motivational talk in a primary school for UPSR candidates due to the fact that I was needed in another affair more important at school at the same time. It was totally true that time, so I had to send my counselor instead. Even when it actually tickled my heart string, wondering if I could do it, to share my experience with all those little ones and help them see life in a different light and the potential that lies within, the way I share it with the pupils at my school every opportunity that calls for it. I would like to believe that I had to send my counselor instead that time out of sheer necessity and an overlapping schedule... but deep down inside, I can't simply deny the cold truth; I chickened out.
I'll do the chicken dance later.
This time though, I realized I can chicken out of invitations for so long. One day, I will have to be brave and confront my demons. Secretly, in between my usual job at work, I wondered if this is the right time to start confronting them. There is always a first time for everything and I am at an age where I should have had enough experience with kids at school to know how to handle them. Especially loud, rowdy and rude crowd of helplessly lost souls that they have intended to be my target audience for the talk they had planned for me that day, just a week away. But as surely as the sun rises every morning, my fears started creeping in, casting a shadow of doubt so thick, I almost felt suffocated, smothered by fear. Fear of the unknown, the dumbest fear there is out there if I ever knew one. So I decided, I will chicken out. I will weasel my way out of it, just the way I did last time. And the times before that.
And you know what happened?
I forgot to make that phone call. I got so caught up on work that I was only reminded of it last Monday when a text message from the other school's counsellor who is also an acquaintance of mine. It was just two days away now, officially too late to weasel my way out of it, because there is no way they are gonna be able to find anyone to replace me just so they can keep on track with the school's motivational / discipline programme, and even though I am an evil bitch, I can't possibly let them down. Not this close to the date. I am not that selfish.
So I went on a self-motivating mode throughout the rest of Monday and the whole of Tuesday, getting myself all psyched about the prospect and possibility of actually getting to these so-called hardcore students at that school, or actually bombing and getting booed into oblivion.
I almost died from the self-induced anxiety and sheer anticipation. Let me remind you, I HAVE A F*CKING D*MNED FIRST DEGREE STAGE FRIGHT time one thousand. And I don't even know what the hell that means. All I know is that I am just gonna go up there and be in the spotlight and just die from the whole experience.
By Tuesday evening, I was already just a huge lump of nerves in my bed whether I really needed to come up with some PowerPoint slideshow. I was all jittery and nervous, biting my nails even though I never was a nail biter. I was THAT nervous. I am not even playin'.
I ended up falling asleep at 2.30 in the morning and not have a slideshow to go with my talk. Great. Just great! Now they are just gonna say you are a sloppy lazy ass dumb b*tch who is gonna preach all morning.
I dragged myself out of bed when the alarm went off. In truth, I had been awake since 5 am and had not been able to get back to sleep since then. Took a shower. I brushed my whole body with the body brush and sloughed off all the dead skin cells all over my body. Only my scalp was spared because I worried if I might lose all my hair later if I do that there.
I put make up on. Got dressed in my new favourite, the kurung I had tailored for last year's Raya which was totally moss green satin with light green/gold lace trims on the wrist, and slipped on my black, pointy-toed three-inch stiletto with blingy heels I got in Alamanda last time I went home to Serdang. I was a vision of lush greenery. Well, at least they know I take good care of myself and not a totally sloppy lazy assed b*tch.
The whole ensemble took care of that. I hope.
And I sprayed on some of my Happy, to make me happy.
After a last look in the full-length mirror, I grabbed my keys and my stuff and left home. After I made a flask of hot coffee+tongkat ali. Ye, aku minum tongkat ali. Every work day mornings. Ko apa pedulik? So far, aku belum jadi jantan lagi. But it had done wonders for my bad back. Alhamdulillah.
At the school, I was sweating bullets. There goes my foundation laden face. Damnit, damnit, damnit. I salvaged whatever was left with a few dabs of tissue paper followed by blotting paper. I was fine.
Went to the venue, I was greeted by that acquaintance of mine. The rest, my friends, as they say, is history.
My history at least.
I was clear, concise, captivating and entertaining.
They began as a rowdy, noisy, rambunctious and rude bunch of hyperactive kids and we ended learning so much from each other, calming down and being more at peace with the world ten minutes before the recess bell went off. Most of them had that look in their eyes that tells you "Gosh, I never knew I had that in me" kind of look. Or I bored them to death.
No. It was a success. And I am tooting my own horn. Shamelessly doing so, mind you. Not because I was so damned good but because I managed to just show up and actually go through with it and getting praises from that acquaintance of mine. After the talk was over, and the kids were gone and the mess was cleaned up, we sat down for a while and talked some more. One of the sweetest compliments I have ever heard in my whole life as a teacher was a simple "No wonder you students love you, Y".
Do they? I wondered whether that was true, because all I had done was share with them the horrors of my life and so that they never have to through them themselves. If they do love me, then that is the bonus. But I didn't let that get to my head, because my head was still abuzz from the excitement of having completed a mammoth task of confronting my demons and finally have a true blue, motivational talk badge under my ten-year old teaching belt. Finally.
If ever I got around to preparing that ever essential presentation tool of PP slide show, it would have been totally wasted because the erratic but energetic volleying of questions and answers between us that followed after the ice-breaking activity, just took everything I had, and it was worth it.
How I knew it was a success? Because the acquaintance is now planning on organizing another talk for her fellow teachers for stress management and how to handle problematic kids and still keep your sunshiny self and sanity intact. And it will be given by me.
I said why? I can't do that. Come on Y, these kids knew about you even before you came here she chided me. Do they? Gosh... I never knew. Well, actually I have suspected that because I heard my name yelled out loud every time I pass by the school right in front of the bus stop, because I always have to slow down when I get there every morning because it is congested by parents dropping their kids off to school. And I roll down the window in the mornings because I love the fresh morning breeze instead of the artificially cooled recycled air of the car. You can ignore it the first few times, you can't keep ignoring after another dozen times.
They came in doubting me, and they left with sweet smiles and polite gestures of thank yous. And they were supposed to be the school's cigarette smelling thugs.
The saddest thing for these kids is the fact that going through puberty has left them all mixed up and forgetting why they were in school in the first place.
I hope I have imparted some kind of insight of their true potential; underneath all those layers of hard exterior, there is still a seedling of hope just wating to be watered with self-awareness and the hunger to be more of who they already are.
Dare I say it?
Have I finally found my true calling?
*GASP!*
And the fact that I found out later at home that I had applied my make up exactly the way the latest trend in Hollywood on E! just made it even better. The cherry on top. Flawless skin, nude shadow for the eyelids, thick and lush lashes with a hint of eyeliner on the roots of the top lash, and glossy barely-there pinkish hued lipstick.
I don't claim to be a master of make up art, but you can't really go wrong with M@C, right?
I was back at school later this morning just in time to have another pseudo-business brunch, discussing stuff with my boss at the school canteen, met with a parent over an absenteeism letter for his son, update SMM data on my desk top, mingle with the office staff, and go to my Form 4Sc class for EST, just in time to edit all of their first draft sof the Natural Disasters essay. Which was promptly followed by a disciplinary board meeting over a case that occured that morning while I was away, and later on, attend the support staff meeting until 4pm.
Who says teaching is a thankless job? It's all worth it.
For those of you who have demons who keep holding you down whenever you are ready to take that flight into the heavens, to spread your wings and soar... learn from me, it's never too late to confront them finally put them to rest.
Haters, go away. Go piss on some other person's blog.
p/s : I got two pens ( one from the school, one from the Baitul Mal guy who missed me when he visited the school that morning for his yearly visits) a school pennant, and RM50 for my efforts today. I love all of them, they make me wanna click my heels, jump on a horse and go Yippee Kay Yay, as I ride off into the sunset.
2 comments:
Kudos!
*sheepish grin*
thank ewe...
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