SPM Desperado

In another five months' time, two of my students will be sitting for their SPM examinations.  I am teaching them Modern Mathematics, Additional Mathematics, General Science and Principles of Accounts.  Normally, students who at this juncture are still having zero preparedness for the examination subjects will find difficulty engaging a tutor to coach them.  Most tutors do not like their reputation to be at a stake. 
I am stupid to take up this challenge, some say. The reason why some of my friends say I am stupid is that these students are going to take up a lot of my time.  I am aware of this because this is not the first time I have very weak students.
I just like doing something no one else like to do. More hours, no extra charge. So what? Call me stupid if you like.
If you have a situation like this, just strategise. I told myself that.  I will go straight into tackling the past year questions.  These students had been in their own world too long.  They had not felt the urgency of preparing for their examinations.  Some children are like that.  They are extremely dreamy and some people may mistaken that for laziness.  I try not to think negatively about them.  If I do not have any love for them, I cannot possibly be willing to sacrifice my time for them.  I must learn not to think too much in terms of dollars and cents. 
True enough, they were startled at how little they know or how little they can produce when I gave them the past examination paper to do.  Now, they feel the urgency.  Now, I can see them pulling up their socks.  See, they are not totally helpless.  How gratifying to see them happy at their own efforts! The end of the road is still far away.  Don't give up girls!  I believe you can, just keep going.

Gone Astray

I remember once when I was about five or six, I fell into a high fever.  It was a day after I went 'missing'for a short while.  My mum thought it was the traumatic experience the night before that had caused it.However, I had not thought that the experience was as bad as my mum felt.
The incident happened one evening when I tagged along with my grandma, my youngest uncle and his newly wedded wife for a show at a local cinema. I was indeed happy because it was a one  in a million opportunity. Eventhough my father loved us very much, he had never brought us for any cinema shows, not even the roadside temple stage performances.  I had never asked why but I did understand he was always very busy with his work. 
I was enthralled by the big screen and because we sat quite close to the screen, in the seats of one of the front rows, I remembered I felt strange with the whole picture so near. I was completely taken in by the story so much so when the show ended I felt rather disorientated. As the show was ending, everyone seemed to get up so fast and in such a hurry to go out.  I was quite mad at being shoved out the row as the people who were sitting at the other end wanted to go out.  I had wanted to watch the cartoon that was still being run but was told to move on out.  I turned my body towards the exit and slowly made my way towards it.  There were some people who were extremely ruthless and they did not botther to give way.  Soon I was pushed out of the doorway into the open area outside. I turned around to see my grandma but to my surprise, she was not behind me! All the time while I was squeezing in the crowd, I had thought she was right behind me.  I thought she was moving out of the row to give way to the people at the other end.
I started to panick but told myself not to show it.  I waited and waited for my grandma, or my youngest uncle or my aunt to appear, but minutes which seemed like years passed by without any sight of them. I nearly cried but I fought  back my tears. Then,  the crowd started thinning and  there was still no sign of them. Incidentally, they were searching for me in the cinema.  They were a little slow in coming out because they decided to stay for a while to watch the cartoon, not realising that I had moved away.
While my grandma, uncle and aunt who were also in panic, went looking for me frantically, I decided to run home myself.  Every person that came out of the cinema seemed so frightening that I wanted to run home to my mum as quickly as possible.  I had the whole journey back figured out in my head.  The cinema was only about a mile away from my house.  I had walked there before with my mum to visit one of her friends who lived somewhere closeby.  I ran and ran.  At first no one gave notice to me which was good because all I had to do was run towards my house.  I ran along the main road which was quite bright because there were a few cars on the road.  At certain spots it was quite dark and those were the places where I had to double up my speed.  Then there was one place which was near a big drain where I had spotted an iguana the last time I passed by and at this spot, I trebled my speed.  I was afraid that the iguana would come and lick me with its heinous looking long tongue. 
I was almost reaching my house.  My legs were already aching.  A young man on a bicycle rode near me and wanted to say something to me.  I was scared but I ran on , not looking at him .  I wanted to appear brave and after some time, he went away when I pretended to shout for my mum.  He must had thought my mum was nearby.  I could see the road leading to my house ahead of me.  How happy I was!  I turned into the road and could see the kitchen door was opened and the kitchen light was lit.  I could not run anymore.  I stopped to walk.  Suddenly a huge black dog appeared from nowhere and it barked at me so loudly that it made jumped and I yelled.  I started to cry and that must had attracted my mum's attention for I could see her coming out of the kitchen soon enough.  She must had been very surprised to see me.  'Why are you alone? Where's everybody?'
After that, my mum must had washed me up and put me to bed.  I had no memory what happened when the rest came back without me but I remembered very well, I fell ill the next day.  My mum had to give me some Chinese medicine for my nerves and because she was a Toaist, she went to offer some scacrifices in the form of joss sticks and some fruits to some spirits somewhere along the road which I took on my fateful journey back that late night.

My Stories: The 1960s with Grandma

My Stories: The 1960s with Grandma: The afternoon sun was glaringly hot outside the zinc roofed wooden house.  Even the hens and cockerels knew better to go under the shade of...

The 1960s with Grandma

The afternoon sun was glaringly hot outside the zinc roofed wooden house.  Even the hens and cockerels knew better to go under the shade of the tall coconut trees behind "Ayah's" house.  My grandma and I used to go there to look for chicken eggs because "Ayah"  never bothered to pick them up.  Ever since his wife died, he was mainly confined to his house and was rarely seen outside except when he had to go out somewhere in his car.  He was known to be childless. "Ayah" was the middle-aged Indian landlord from whom my father rented a piece of land to build two  semi-detached houses made of bricks and wood.  He was a retired estate manager whose ancestors came to Malaya a decade or two before my grandpa.  His parents sent him to an English school where he was educated up to Form 5.  At that time, there were not many people who were able to get an English education and even if they did go to school, there were not many who could complete Form 5. "Ayah" was considered to be very educated and knowledgeable by everybody in the neighbourhood. He always had a manservant with him when he made his rounds to check if the residents kept their premises clean; no clogged drains or improper waste disposal.
"Ayah" was rich; he owned a car which I never saw him drive.  It was usually Ahmad, a very friendly young Malay man who chauffered him around.  Ahmad communicated with my grandma using a special sign language.  I used to wonder how they ever managed to understand each other.  My grandma who had lived in China since birth had stepped on Malayan soil for less than ten years.  Due to her age which was about early sixties, she found it hard to learn the Malay language.  Sometimes I would imitate them as they gestured to one another much to the annoyance of my grandma who would shoo me away like I was a persistent housefly.
As for my dad, his Malay vocabulary was very limited and he had me roaring with laughter in later years when I had learnt enough of the language in school to know his mistakes.  Despite all these differences in races and languages, my family, "Ayah" and Ahmad got on really well.  My father even had a photograph taken with the two men at a local studio.  It seemed to be a trend then to have photos taken with good friends at the studio in town, all for the sake of remembrance.  I had one taken with my friends too.  I could not remember how we had decided to do that though.  None of us had plans to leave town.  What had prompted us to have that photo taken?  Nonetheless it has now become one of my most precious possessions.
Grandma had a very funny habit.  She would not want to sleep on a cotton mattress.  Back then, there was not any rubber foam mattress yet. She preferred to sleep on her hard bed, on top of which she had spread open a straw mat.  I had tried lying down on it but I could not continue doing so for more than half an hour.  My body was already aching due to the pressure on the hard wooden planks of the bed.  "Don't you feel any pain sleeping on that, Grandma?"
"No, it's fine for me."
"How very strange!"  My grandma explained that my young body had not got used to the hardness yet.  Once I get accustomed to it, I would find it  much better than sleeping on the soft mattress.  I could not believe it.  Grandma was such a strange lady to me.  The way she combed her long hair, sitting on a stool at the back of the house caught my attention and she must had had wondered too why this granddaughter of hers had so many questions to ask. "Why Grandma , why do you comb your hair here? Why don't you do it in front of the mirror? You can't see yourself."
Every time the  daily 'sessions' I spent with my grandma were brief, about ten minutes or less because she would in no time shoo me away again.  My mother would reprimand me for disturbing the patriach and would now and then remind me not to jump on the wooden bed.  I actually liked her wooden bed, but not for sleeping.  I liked to use it as a stage for imitating the Chinese opera performances which I had the chance to see when my mother went to the Chinese temple nearby. I liked to pretend that I was one of the opera performers doing my act.  My brother would come in and tease me.  He would say that I acted stupid, making me really very mad at him for teasing me.  I would run after him, hoping to catch hold of him and give him a smack for mocking at me.  Usually I would fail to catch up with him and I would hurl at him a string of animals' names.

Not Easy to Forget the Hurt but Easier to Forgive

While it is easier to forgive another person's wrongdoing to you, it is not easy to forget the hurting that one had gone through.  Most of the time the wrong doer did not know what she or he was saying or doing due to Satanic jealousy or utmost self righteousness. I often find the main fault of individuals among my midst was jealousy and a little less was self righteousness.
The holier than thou attitude was becoming more of a way of thinking compared to the God pleasing humility. Perhaps it is self confidence gone too far.
Regular church goers are known to carry about this kind of attitude and I wonder what their minds were focussed on when the preachers were giving their sermons.  Hadn't we been told not to be self righteous? Isn't that a sin too?  Right after the morning service, I could hear people talking like they did not open their ears throughout the sermons. ' I learnt this and that when I was in Sunday school. I was taught to do this the right way. You hadn't learnt the right way. You are doing wrong.'  I heard this when one church member was telling another church member how she should go about witnessing to non-Christians. Then, in another crowd, 'I am a Catholic, you know.  What are you? We do it like this and like that.  Unlike yours, you know.  We don't do it anyhow, you know.'  The trouble with some people is that they dwell in disunity rather than unity.  They believe in one God and yet want to remain different.  For the sake of individualism?  I wonder if God likes to see His children disunited? I know my earthly father never liked his children to be that way.
I used to have a girl friend who was extremely jealous of my slimness, ample bosom and good height.  I felt so wrong to possess the physique that I was endowed with when she would pass hurting remarks about how I dressed to purposely expose certain parts of my body  to attract the males' attention.  I was totally innocent of it because I used to wear hand-me-down clothes. They were my sister's  and she was a working adult when I was only a teenager at school.  The clothes had lower necklines and some were quite thin. During those days there were few off the hanger clothes  for teenagers and because I had not a mother, nobody really cared that much how I looked.  I was told not to complain too much and to feel grateful for what was given to me.  I really had not much of a choice; there were already very few clothes in my wardrobe and I had been wearing the same clothes week in and week out. When my friend criticised me about the clothes I wore,  I was extremely hurt.  I was me,  conservative in thinking and  never was the type to try to flirt with another person's boyfriend.  I believed in myself and would not let anybody put me down. My style of dressing had not done justice to my real personality.  I had to take all the hurt quietly and at times, I was angry at my sister for handing down to me all her clothes which did not fit me very well.
Later, I learnt that I must really guard my mouth and not speak words to hurt people.  Most importantly, I have to nail the sin of jealousy and self righteousness on the cross. When a woman is jealous, she is most tempted to backstab, which is really very bad. We all are tempted to sin.  Pray that God will help me have a tight rein on my tongue, so that whatever words that come out of my mouth, they will be a good testimony to His grace.

My Stories: A Day Without Christ

My Stories: A Day Without Christ: The other day I let myself loose, meaning I went back to my old self of  being grouchy, resentful, hateful, revengeful and bitter.  It was...

A Day Without Christ

The other day I let myself loose, meaning I went back to my old self of  being grouchy, resentful, hateful, revengeful and bitter.  It was so easy to fall into Satan's temptations.  Completely effortless. 
I began the morning by uttering a negative remark, spoiling everybody's mood for that day.
I refused to feel bad about it.  I stuck to the thought that I was being very right about what I had to say.
The afternoon went past terribly as if the morning outcry of unhappiness had some sort of a domino effect on events that followed later. Just after everybody had left the house , I was set to go and do my usual errands.  I was about to reverse my car out of my car porch when my neighbour who lives directly opposite did the same. For a moment, I did not see her car reversing for my mind was focussed on the front . I had thought the coast was clear and I need not worry about the back so much.  That was because when I opened my gate earlier, I did not see anybody outside her house. Fortunately, I slammed on the brakes just in time to avoid crashing on the rear side of her car.  I was extremely mad at her for it was not the first time that lady was in my way.  A few days ago, she had parked her car in front of my house making it impossible for me to drive my car back to the porch,  I had to wait for her to come out of her house in her sweet time to have her park her car properly, that was to park it in her own porch.  I was actually very provoked that day into blowing my top off but  I had myself under very good control.  However it was a different matter this particular day.  Satan wanted me to show her how much I had tolerated her nonsense, so I hit on my car horn so hard that it sounded very loudly.  I could see her sulking and I even gave her my most unfriendly stare.  Yes, I thought, don't you think you deserve this?  You have been asking for this kind of treatment, right?  I am giving it to you today. I am very good at doing this , you know, but I had long put 'it' in cold storage, all for the love of my Lord Jesus.  Not because I am scared of offending you but because I fear  God more.  Still, God doesn't think I am doing right.
The next bad thing that followed was I had to stop my lesson halfway and had to leave my student in the house while I went off to pick up my son from the train station.  God gave me another trial.  Somehow, I misunderstood my son's message and thought that he would soon be on his way when in actual fact , he was not.  He had just left the school premises and  had not got on board the train yet.  I wasted my time waiting at the pick up point for 45 minutes and my student was very unhappy as she expected me to be back 15 minutes later. I got into a rage again.  When I saw my son's tired face and having to bear the brunt of my frustrations, suddenly I was awakened and  I realised how selfish I had become.  How ugly one can get if one does not give the day to Christ?  I realised that I did not read His Word or say a word of prayer that morning.  I must have been bogged down by my recent busyness that I was not giving Him sufficient attention. I have behaved like a wild hungry beast.  Forgive me Lord!

1 Timothy 2:2-3...for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness.  This is good, and pleases God our Saviour, who wants all men to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth.

 Pray that I may have the peace in my heart always , and let God's love shine through me.