(Be sure to read the previous post on the Thaipusam festival, as well)
Dear Readers,
Much too much time has passed since our last post. Nearly a
moon’s turn. We’ve both been busy (as in the above picture), yes, but this is no excuse. Blogs have a
certain tragedy to them: they get started and there are hopeful ambitions for
them, but eventually such blogs become websites untouched for years by new posts
or comments, gathering dust. I fight against such modern-day technological tragedy!
Megan and I thought we’d share a day in the life of our
recent new setup here in Kuala Lumpur; what is the day to day like here, you
may ask? Well, let me tell you.
Megan and I work on the same campus, but different schools.
Hers is called ‘Sunway International School’ (SIS for short); mine is called
CIMP (Canadian International Matriculation Program). Her school teaches grades
7 through 11; mine just grade 12. Specifically, Megan teaches Grade 7 core,
which is Math, History/Geography, Art, and English; I simply teach Grade 12
English General (College level for you new schoolers). The students speak English
just as kids would back home in Canada; our students come from Malaysia,
Bangladesh, Iran, Oman, Indonesia, Mongolia, etc.
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Megan's class.  |
Now, I just teach one
class three times a day. Megan
teaches all of her subjects roughly each day. It is easier for me to lesson
plan of course, but I definitely have to design engaging lesson plans, not just
for my students, but also, and more importantly, for myself: I don’t want to
bore myself with my own lesson, especially after teaching the same lesson three
times a day. Also, after teaching the same class three times a day, you find
yourself repeating the same humourous and witty comments; the first class, it
is natural; but by class three, you are aware of the construct, of what is
coming up.
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| Mark's class. |
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| Mark's students hard at work. |
3 other teachers teach grade 7 at SIS with Megan, so they
have come up with a simple and elegant solution to their planning problem: each
one designs lesson plans for one subject. Then each week, they give the others
the lessons plans for that week. Megan’s subject to plan is Art. Of course, I
help her out when she needs it.
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| SIS Library |
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SIS Office Door... Beware |
Megan starts teaching at 8am, which means she wants to be at
school for 7, thus she needs to be up at 5:30 or so. Yikes. I don’t start
teaching until 10:40am, but I still like to get into school for 8 to lesson
plan for the future and get set up for my day. Back in CLLC days long past,
Megan and I would wake up at the same time and walk to work together; sadly,
this isn’t the case now. I miss it. I also miss sleeping in to 7! Since Megan
wakes up at 5:30, it is difficult for me to stay sleeping soundly when someone
else is up and about.
Funny story aside: The apartments here in Malaysia are
designed with one main door, then a landing where you keep your shoes, then a
gate with two locks on it. For the main door, you can lock and unlock it like
any normal door in Canada, but the gate requires a key to lock and unlock it. You
basically lock yourself into your apartment at night, which would be terrible
if ever there is a fire, since you must have your keys to unlock the gate to
get out.
Now, Megan left for work one day, gave me a kiss, grabbed
the keys, locked the gates and headed out. I got ready to leave around 8 and
discovered to my baffled dismay, that I could not find my keys! I checked
everywhere and came to the quick, logical conclusion that Megan had left her
keys in her bag the night before and this morning had grabbed mine. She locked
the gate with my keys and unknowingly took both sets with her.
What a pickle of a situation. I could not get out of my own
apartment! I could climb out and over the balcony like Spiderman, but we live
on the fourth floor. I tried picking the locks on the gate with a spoon and
fork to no avail. I was trapped; a prisoner inside my own home! I frantically
called Megan, but being a good teacher, she didn’t bring her cell phone to
class. How wonderful! I could see myself calling my boss and explaining that I
was locked inside my apartment and could they find a supply teacher or
something? Great first impression. My solution: I called one of the teachers at
SIS named Perry, who thank god wasn’t teaching at that time, told him to go to
Megan’s class and put her on the phone. He did and she probably thought someone
had died. Nope, just my keys! Do you have them? Oh… yes… they’re here in my bag
with my keys. Great! I have a class to teach today! Megan couldn’t come, so she
gave another teacher some taxi money and my keys and told him the situation.
About 20 minutes later, I saw Dan strolling down the hallway of my building as
I stood at the gate like some convict about to be released into freedom!
Anywho, it was a funny situation, laughing even when I was stressing out.
Aside over.
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| Megan's desk. |
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| Mark's desk. |
Megan’s school is brand new, so her classrooms are all
clean, efficient looking, including her office. My building feels like an old
college or university, with my office being an exact replica of the offices
found within the Canadian government: colourless cubicles, mind-numbing air
conditioning, headache-inducing lighting and age-old carpets. We have windows
with blinds, but the windows are covered by a wall on the outside, so no light
comes in, which begs the question, why put blinds on the windows? Hmmm…
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| Megan's office. |
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| Mark's office. |
Our school is about a 15 minute walk to work. To save time,
another teacher showed us a short cut. This short cut is a strange one since it
takes us through the parking garage and the emergency room of the hospital
located next to our apartment. The hospital is air-conditioned, but my first
sights of the day are sick, injured and elderly people needing medical
attention! Well, at least it’s air conditioned.
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| Walk to Work 1: Our Apartment Guardhouse |
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Walk to Work 2: Sidewalk to Hospital
Air conditioning is both a blessing and a curse. It’s great
to feel that wall of cold air after coming in from the heat: our offices and
classrooms all have AC. Nevertheless, it makes you nauseated to walk back into
the wall of heat after leaving the AC-blessed room. There must be a middle
ground here somewhere. Sometimes it takes my body quite some time to get warmed
up from the numbing freeze of the AC. What a jerk I am, you may think or shout.
Canada is in the middle of a terrible winter and here is this jerk complaining
of the temperature in Malaysia. Serves me right.
I’m done work at 4, but Megan usually busies herself with
after school sports since she finishes before me: badminton, basketball,
soccer. We’re usually both back at home by 5 where we regularly make supper. Megan
usually cooks, but last week, I wowed her with a dish of Pad Thai.
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Other tidbits: It is difficult to stay caught up with films
here. The theatres don’t play all the movies we get in Canada, and when they
do, they only stay for 2 weeks. Twice we’ve been in the mood to see a movie,
only to discover that it’s no longer playing even though it came out two weeks
previous. I will see you yet ‘Life of Pi’ and ‘Les Miserables,’ if it’s the
last thing I do! As a result, we have turned to, gulp, buying illegal movies off
the street from nefarious characters. We ended up seeing ‘The Impossible’ and ‘Django
Unchained’ this way. The subtitles are bunk, since they simply sound like the words being spoken, but
are not the actual words spoken. So, we just watch them without subtitles, even
though we’re using the speakers on the laptop, which causes many ‘what did they
just say?’ comments. I may add that I absolutely loved Django Unchained; fave
film of the year so far.
Tidbits continued: Megan wanted to add a potted lemon/lime
tree to our apartment, so we ended buying one from the local shopping mall,
which is the 9th largest shopping mall in the world… apparently. More
on that later. I can’t very well let Megan carry a 30 pound lemon tree home, so
I bear-hugged this sucker against my chest and walked 15 minutes back to our
apartment. Of course, as I walked, the mud was pouring out the bottom of the
pot all over my shirt and shorts; I thought my arms would snap, but in the end,
we got it home and it now decorates our balcony in the hopes that we will
create lemon ice tea and mixed drinks with it.
More tidbits: That mall I mentioned earlier is crazy. One of
our teachers here, an old timer named Eric, hangs out at Bubba Gump’s there
every afternoon. ‘How’s the food?’ I ask him. ‘Oh, I don’t eat there,” he
replies. Just smokes and drinks. Also, he’s never watched Forrest Gump, just
sees it on all the televisions there, where it’s played on rotation all day with
no sound. Anywho, that mall is crazy. A boy band called The London Boys plays at
the skating rink there every day; I will boo them one day, don’t you worry.
They are three British mimbos that croon out these modern day classics; all the
mall-goers must think since they are white and are singing in public that they
must be famous. My barbaric boo that I will shout from the third floor of the
mall will put an end to that.
Last tidbit: Our apartment. It has three bedrooms, two
bathrooms, a kitchen, living room and dining room with tiled floors everywhere (see
previous post for pictures). One night, we came home later to discover what
looked like brussel sprouts all over the floor. The thing is, we don’t have
anything that looks like brussel sprouts in our apartment. Something must have
brought it in through an open window. Whatever it was, it’s gone now, but the
mystery continues. Did a monkey, bird, or anything else, come in our open
window, eat brussel sprout-like thingies on our dining room floor, make a mess,
then scamper off? We’ll be more vigil about keeping our windows closed when we
are gone.
Upcoming posts: 1) Our trip to Singapore 2) A festival where
people put hooks into their skin and drag big things and 3) More tidbits.
