Korea Progression




I was delighted a while ago to find that I had been given permission to take part in a department leaders' course in Seoul.  I mean who wouldn't?  Non teachers reading this stuff may not find the sessions on collaboration, importance of feedback, ways of sharing information about SEN children, intervention strategies etc etc a particularly riveting way to spend two days but, for me, working with other international school teachers on matters of shared interest was very useful and a good yardstick in trying to judge how well my school is doing compared to others in the region.

"In the region" is probably pushing it a bit though, given that Seoul is a six hour flight from KL and the school I visited is the furthest flung of the network of schools that my place is connected with.  It is also a very different climate to KL and while I enjoyed hunting out my warm winter clothes the real reason for getting rugged up with four layers, plus hat and gloves as I stepped out of the airport soon became apparent.  At 12 degrees at midday, more than 20 degrees colder than KL it was a bit of a shock.  And then there were the chilly mornings and evenings to cope with.

The timings of the course combined with the times of the flights really worked in my favour.  A 7.30 am departure (meaning a 4.30am taxi) meant at there was some time for exploration on Thursday evening, once I had arrived at the rather pleasant Seoul Palace Hotel.  The taxi driver had unfortunately driven via The Palace Hotel and was most apologetic for the unexpected extra tour of the vast city. 

Seoul Palace is in THAT area of Seoul, you know the place made famous by THAT song.  Satirising the YUPPIE culture of Gangnam I am pleased to report that PSY's observations of the area, being full of up-market cafes, bars and people are probably right.  Having slept rather than eating on the plane I was ravenous when I arrived and set out to find local grub.  I avoided the ubiquitous world known coffee shops and patisseries and settled instead on a noodle shop, selecting a picture of a bowl of noodles with chilli and beef.  The picture looked rather small so I took the precaution of ordering five small vegetable dumplings as a sort of chaser.  The looks were very deceptive as after a few moments of waiting and watching every customer in the place engage with their smart phones at very close quarters a tray of grub arrived.  A bowl of white rice, tray of kimchi, small brown dried vegetable things and some green stuff all accompanied a huge bowl of bubbling and steaming noodles that had both a nourishing as well as herbal infusional effect.  And then came five massive dumplings.  I could hardly move after doing the banquet justice.  I was also rather proud of my use of metallic Korean chopsticks and soup spoon and managed not to spill any soup down me.

The bill came to 13000 Korean Won.  And so here is the metal arithmetic section of this blog.  I am usually pretty good at mental sums but two days earlier, when changing some ringgit at Desa Park City, I stood in a confused state while trying to work out how much cash I might need and what it all meant.  After much calculation it appeared the RM1 was W318 or W1000 was about US$1 which in turn was about RM3.2.  And then just to confuse things £1 was about W1600 or RM5.4.  To make the few days pass without mass financial confusion I decided I had to think dollars, but made sure, at all times, I avoided telling people to have a nice day.

A few delegates, the course organiser and I met for a natter and a beer on Thursday evening.  Slightly confusingly the beer was called 700 and priced at W4000.

Friday's training went well but I am making the reasonable assumption that people are not that interested in tales of teaching and especially not tales of teachers training each other.  Instead I really should mention the global reach of Movember.  I walked the 15 minute stroll to the Seoul school in the company of two other be-stached teachers one also from KL, via Northampton, and the other from Taipei, via London.  On arrival in the school we were taken in a tour of the school where I met another delegate sporting daft facial hair.  Men are clearly taking this facial hair growing thing seriously.  This is the second and final time that I will grow a moustache for all sorts of reasons, the main one being that it looks ridiculous, but I have enjoyed the conversations that have begun "So is that a real or charity 'tasche?"  Please send Movember some cash.

After Friday's educational exertions I decided to go for a run before dinner.  Yes it was cold but the run felt rather good.  Staggering through cold weather instead of tropical heat felt rather nice and the running / cycling track next the Han River was well maintained, populated mainly by walkers and cyclists who were mostly in contact with their smart phones.  

Dinner on Friday evening was at a local Korean barbecue restaurant.  I know that some people get very cross by this sort of food, complaining that when they go for dinner they don't expect to have to pay for the privilege of cooking it themselves.  I rather enjoyed the experience though.  Cooking strips and chunks of beef to just the right level of done-ness and then munching through them with salads, rice and spicey things was all very pleasant.

After the course finished on Saturday I was left with a couple of hours to do some intensive sight-seeing.  Wanting an aerial viewpoint to start with I made for North Seoul Tower, conveniently placed on top of a whopping great hill.  The Seoul underground system is very efficient and cheap at W1150 per ticket (do your own mental arithmetic) and with a connecting bus up to the top said whopping great hill it didn't take too long for me find a good viewing point for the city.  It is huge.  My 15 minutes of research at 4.10am on Thursday morning told me that the city had at least 9.82million people, and despite the winter evening mists, the city seemed to stretch for miles around.  

Probably more memorable than the tower itself were many fence loads and Christmas tree shapes of padlocks.   Apparently since a TV soap opera couple had come to the tower and placed a padlock there to symbolise their eternal love for each other thousands of others had done it too, and by the evidence of my time there, were continuing to do it.  I felt relieved that David and Ruth Archer had not done a similar thing outside the Pebble Mill recording studio many moons ago, especially now as the writers of The Archers appear so keen to export them to Northumberland.  The other love-token at North Seoul Tower was an installation of two interlocking hearts raised about three feet off the ground, made entirely of, wait for it, cabbages.  A splendid collection of green, purple and white leaves got the visitors flocking to be photographed as near to this fine artistic thing as possible.  Naturally all the photos were taken on the smart phones that tourists and locals alike appeared to be in near constant contact with.

After a hot drink, a lot of walking, a lot of searching and a helpful bloke with a helpful smart phone I managed to find my way to the Cheong-Gye-Chong lantern festival, which was quite a nice ronseal-like tourist event.  Lots of very large lanterns of all shapes and sizes were floating along a waterway in the above named location.  There was the option to queue for up to two hours to join visitors and walk by the side of the waterway and take lots of photos on one's smart phone or walk at street level above and take more aerial shots, again with smart phones.  I took the second option and was treated to views of elaborately lit, full-scale pagodas, warriors, ships, musicians and trees.  It was all rather lovely and well worth the journey there.

With a few hours before my flight back to KL this morning I enjoyed a chilly mooch around the former royal palace and, getting down with the local culture, took lots of photos on my smart phone, but not a Samsung phone, sorry South Korea.  There has clearly been something of a mighty industrial revolution in South Korea.  Strolling around around the tiny part of this country that I have seen in the past few days I have seen countless Hyundai and Kia cars, lorries and buses,while every other machine appears to have Samsung written on it somewhere.  South Korea appears to have gone self-sufficiency crazy.  And fair play to them as the products that they have made are very high quality.  My Kia airport coach was fast, luxurious and smooth while the Hyundai taxis glided from place to place as efficiently as the Korean made underground trains.  I drive my Hyundai to school each day while Lexi departs in her Kia.

The Koreans also appear to be experts in making socks.  I passed many stalls while out and about yesterday the were selling piles and piles of novelty socks.  I hope colleagues and immediate family like the Korean made presents that I have brought back for them.

The Dream of The Parent? And Being a Tourist Attraction.



I am sure that all parents simply want their children to be healthy, happy and legal.  Anything after that is a bonus really.  However I do have one wish that really isn't too much to ask for, I think.  It is this: I would like to have a day at school whereby all Lawrences bring all the correct equipment, kit, hats, names badges, lunch boxes, snack boxes and water bottles with them.  It would also be perfect if they brought all the right stuff home with them too.

I was pretty sure we had done it this morning.  Thanks to a super human effort yesterday afternoon, Sunday, all children appeared to have everything ready.  It got better too as Trixie managed to exit the house with her school wrist band on a lanyard around her neck, an article she usually leaves behind or covers in so many hair ties that it is rendered useless.  Edwin even managed to walk out the house carrying his dance bag, ready for his lesson this evening.  All good.

On arrival at school Rupert announced that he had forgotten his wrist band, which ought to have made getting in to school through the London Underground style barriers tricky.  Thankfully there is a low wall, 30cm high, next next to the barriers allowing easy access for children who have forgotten their wrist bands.  We coped.  I said farewell to the gang and the day began.  I still hoped that there might be no further losses.

At the end of the day I met Edwin after his athletics session and saw him proudly doing the throwing activities wearing his PE t-shirt and school trousers.  It turns out that he had managed to bring Rupert's old PE shorts to school, a full five sizes too small for him.  He had also discovered during the day that he had left his water bottle at home.  I can still dream can't I?

On Saturday afternoon / evening we went along to a Halloween party at, of all places the former palace of the Malaysian King, in central KL.  The place has now been turned into a museum and it was the museum volunteers who arranged the do.  We all dressed in our various outfits to look suitably silly for the season, more of which later.  The evening started with a sort of tour of the palace.  One of the volunteers had put together an activity quiz for the various families to enjoy and learn more about the place.  Overall it was a good tour, but I quickly realized that I have completely the wrong approach to life to take royalty seriously.  The palace was well-decked-out and plush, although there were several areas that made me raise a republican eye brow.  Chandeliers hung form various ceilings, carpets were wall to wall and the many waiting rooms were filled with many opulent chairs (you do have to do a lot of waiting in Malaysia).  The various royals had also enjoyed a range of lighting in one of their rooms that sought to recreate the four seasons of Europe.  However it was question 14 on the sheet that really intrigued me.  It read "What make of washing machine is in the laundry?"  Eventually our party tracked down the Royal Laundry, conveniently on the first floor and close one of the many Royal Bedchambers.  Close examination proved the machine to be a front-loading Ariston, circa 1990.  The other memorable room, pictures of QEII and Nelson Mandela notwithstanding, was the Royal Dentistry room.  Equipped with all the latest dentistry tools, chairs and lights that one might have found in the best practices of the 1980s this did seem a little out of place.  Either successive Royals had shocking gnashers or disturbing ways of welcoming their guests.  It should be noted that QEII appears to have last visited in 1974 and the photos showed with her mouth clamped shut during her visit to the palace.  The mind boggles.

After the tour and piles of good food we decided to cap the evening off with an after dark visit to the KLCC water fountains, something that the children had not seen before.  Very soon after taking up our positions for enjoying the lights and water we detected mummerings going on around us.  And then came the first polite request, "Can I take your photo please?"  Because we were dressed to appear as a purple witch with her three off-spring of a mini-dracula, glowing skeleton and fire-coloured demoness, accompanied by a bloke in a four-coloured suit, yellow wig, sunglasses and clown nose we probably stood out somewhat.  Very soon we were being photographed left, right and centre and were starting to rival the fountains as an attraction.  During a brief lull in the proceedings we excused ourselves and went off hunting for drinks only to be stopped in the nearby supermarket for more photos.  All pleasantly silly, really.

Cool Results From Loads of Bureaucracy.




The Drama Department at my school have a new fridge.  To people who live and work in the real, big, scary world, the one outside of education, that does not involve vast amounts of bureaucracy and paperwork this may not seem to be big news, but here it is "Hold the front page" stuff.

When Lawrences returned to KL after our summer holidays I entered the office and was greeted with that noxious smell that can only be made by an aged fridge that has stopped working for good.  That was on 27th August.  Two months and two days later a new fridge was delivered.  But it so nearly didn't happen.  I have written at length ad nauseum about the various stages that I have had to go through to get said cool machine but on Monday this week it really felt as if no progress had been made in those two months.  I spoke to my colleague in purchasing who gloomily informed me that there had been yet another delay in the whole sorry tale.  The supplier, apparently a company expert in supplying fridges, had originally promised a Toshiba fridge, but now, after ages, had said that they could not provide such a fridge, instead they could only supply a Sharp.  Naturally I didn't care what sort, colour, name, political persuasion or gender the fridge was just so long as it did what it needed to do without smelling.  A green and orange striped fridge name Doreen would have been fine.  However the brand change, despite the fact that it was the same price, was a problem for the Central Purchasing Department, a distant office that sometimes appears to exist simply to make the buying of stuff more complicated than it needs to be.  Approval had to be sough by my school's purchasing people from the precious souls at CPD before we could progress further.  I resigned myself to another few weeks of delays and stalling.  I was shocked when, on Wednesday, I got a call from my purchasing colleague to say that the fridge had been delivered into one of the Drama studios.  Installing it was quite something, after all the delays.  The two hours that it had to sit still for before switch-on seems to fly by given the length of time, numbers of staff, phones calls, emails, signatures (including several from the head teacher), that had had to happen.  Interestingly two hours is probably the length of time that it would have taken had I borrowed the school minibus, driven to a fridge shop, bought a fridge, loaded it into the minibus, driven back and carried it in the office, something that my purchasing colleague had told me, in no uncertain terms could not be allowed to happen.  It was clearly far better to waste countless people's time in order to save, possibly, a few ringgit on the purchase price.

There have also been two personal bureaucratic challenges that I have had to tackle this week as well.  Firstly the end of the Lawrence Clan car loan.  At the end of September we paid the last RM919 of the loan to buy our charabanc.  Great news.  The bank who had agree to loan us the money, Public Bank, kept the ownership documents as a sort of security, and agreed to return them to us once we had discharged our obligations to them.  It had taken quite a while to work out the process of how to pay the loan as at no point had Public Bank explained the repayments process to me, instead preferring to send a letter two years ago saying we were late with our payments.  I did eventually manage to sort that out and then paid the money diligently each month.  I visited Public Bank at Solaris this week and entered a curious mixture of  the old and new.  I had to take a numbered ticket to see the next available official (old) and was given a number depending on which department I had asked to see (new).  I looked around the bank and saw 13 staff, piles of paper and several large ledgers bearing titles such 'Cheque Registration Log.'  It felt like a half had taken a giant leap back to the days of Mr Banks's bank in Mary Poppins while the other half was battling towards the future.  To add to the strange goings on each customer in the bank dutifully ignored the big sign on the door stating that mobile phones should not be used while in the bank.  My number didn't come up (old) so I then simply approached a customer services bloke and he dealt with me (new and unexpected really.). He also didn't ask for my passport (new), or my name (curious), instead just wanting only the car number (my mind went blank.). Luckily the number is on the key fob.  After some investigations, a month after the final loan payment it turns out that there were late payment charges that needed paying, RM11.40, or about £2.00.  I coughed up and asked for the documents.  It wasn't that simple.  The documents were at another KL branch and would have to be delivered to Solaris.  It would take two weeks and the branch will phone me when they arrive in.  I have made a note to visit the branch again in one month as I am certain  that the bank will not call.

The other bureaucratic challenge I face this week is getting my work permit transferred into my new passport.  The HR department have assured me that this process will only take two weeks (I have visions of my passport strapped to the back of tortoise one and the car ownership documents strapped to tortoise number two and seven officials all on their mobile phones seeking permission from their bosses to start the race).  One of the many complications to be faced here is that my new passport has a different number to the old one, as it is the document that carries the number, not the person.  That is fine by me, but given that so many people in Malaysia have my passport number and require it carry out the most basic of tasks for service provision I could be in for an interesting time in the future.

Some pleasantly surprising news this week came through another piece of unusual bureaucracy.  The colleague who organizes training administration came to see me on Monday asking what time I would like my flights booking.  No-one has ever asked me that before, so I was a little confused.  What flights?  A while ago I had applied to go on a on leadership course, thinking that I could contribute a few things to the event as well as pick up some new ideas too.  I had deliberately not got my hopes up, thinking that if it got approved then great, but if not then so be it.  During a recent conversation with the deputy head I came away thinking that it would be highly unlikely that I would allowed to go and thought no more of it.  Until, of course, the flights question.  I was over the moon!  It is not every day that I get the opportunity to go to South Korea.  

Running Matters

Last weekend I got a last minute offer that I had to say yes to.  Earlier in the year I had applied for the KL half marathon only to find out that all the 5000 places had been filled.  Drat.  I had left enough time to complete enough training as well, so I thought.  One week before the actual event the Lawrence Clan thought that it would be a good idea to attend the KL Junior Hash House Run in the jungle, an event that we had been to previously and really quite enjoyed.  At that event two significant things happened: I managed to leave my trainers and socks on the door step at home as well as meet a family that had a potential spare ticket for the KL race.  The results of those events?  I staggered three and a bit kilometers through jungle part in flip-flops, part sliding out of flip-flops and mostly in bare feet.  The second result was receiving a text two days before the KL run asking if I wanted a ticket for the half marathon or 10km event?  I got the message just after finishing playing football, which I was playing just after my feet had recovered from my bare-footed jungle exploits.  I thought short and hard and opted for sensible-ness and said yes to the 10km offer.  The race was on Sunday.


Early on Saturday morning I had agreed to accompany Trixie to her own battle with the jungle and elements in the International Schools Cross Country event, under nine girls category (her not me).  We rose at 5.00am, scoffed energy giving weetabix and set off for the 0620 departure from school.  And big credit to The Girl Lawrence who came 22nd out of field of fifty-ish seven, eight and nine year olds.  She did admit afterwards that she would have come a few places higher had she not stopped to help one of her team-mates up who had slipped over in the mud.  I was not sure what to be more proud of her effort or her thoughtfulness.  Someone else who was very proud was the ice-cream bloke who happened to up at just the right time to sell loads of ice-creams to the the several hundred sweating runners and families.

Back home and back to another early start on Sunday, this time a more leisurely 0530 get- up, breakfast and departure so that I could get an early train in central KL for the 0745 start of the 10km leisure category.  There were thousands waiting at the starting line and I felt quite daunted.  All I wanted to do was to run the whole thing and not disgrace myself.  But the field did warrant closer examination.  Most people were wearing the sponsor's free running vest, one that I had decided I did not want to wear as it didn't flatter me, and quite a few people were wearing shorts.  However there were an awful lot of people who looked like the only preparation that they had done was have several good meals and then pick up bottles of water.  There were two starts (at 0645 and 0715) before my allotted time so I was quite pleased to be setting off, when we did, surprisingly for a Malaysian event, bang on time.  The competitors were set off by a red-haired early morning DJ / holiday rep type whose every third encouraging word was "awesome."  I was delighted to finally get going.

The first stretch, along Jalan Tunku Abdel Rahman was at walking pace due to the thousands and I was getting a bit jittery wanting to run.  However the field had other ideas. It very soon became clear that people were there for a walk around the city centre and free t-shirt rather than any athletic challenge.  My challenge soon became not just to run all the way but to test out my in-motion-hip-swerves as I dodged round gossiping strollers.  Very soon my cohort had caught up the walkers from earlier races which made the whole thing feel like the self-propelled equivalent of a KL traffic jam.  Walkers went in seemingly random directions, with no advanced signaling or indication of changes of pace.

I did complete the event, in one hour and nine minutes, six minutes under my rather generous target, although had I run it in a straight line and had I not stopped briefly to top up the Klang River, I might have knocked a couple of minutes off.  Some highs and lows of the event?  The four piece band at 6.5km plus the high-fiver at 7 km really helped.  The hill from km7 to km 8.5 certainly did not help.

Overall I really did enjoy it and despite finishing dripping wet and very hot I am keen to have another go and maybe even try the longer distance.  More training and new trainers are a must though.



In Which Robin Feels Out Of His Depth


Today I discovered, once again, that I am a Drama Teacher and should have no aspirations or pretensions to teach any other subject.   It was Sports Day at my school and, don't get me wrong in any way, Sports Day is a day that is much enjoyed by many and is a vital part of the balanced curriculum.  However this year it helped remind me that I am much more comfortable in the creative surroundings and goings on of Drama studios than sports stadia.

It is a massive logistical undertaking getting the whole of the secondary school off the site, onto coaches, into and out of the University Sports Stadium and then back again, and that is even before you consider all the running, jumping, throwing and cheering that has to take place too.

For a third year in a row I was assigned to the high jump section of the proceedings which was either due to my experience, expertise or the simplicity of using copy and paste from last year's arrangements.  And there is a lot to this high jump thing.  Leapers are not permitted to lift off on two feet, they can't exit back under the bar if they clear it and they have to complete all of their five possible leaps in quick succession.  As the competition progressed various athletes flew into, around, under, onto and even over the wobbly bar, that in all truth, had seen better days, assigned as I was to the B event.  The organizers had learned an important lesson from the past: Never give any important sporty thing to a Drama teacher to do.  There were several things that appeared to prevent a completely smooth running of the event that I found myself involved in.  The bar seemed to be fraying at each end which made balancing the thing on its two perches was tricky.  The were three crash mats that the jumpers aimed to land on, which might sound like good forward planning to prevent injuries but the mats were not fixed together which meant that they slipped somewhat and competitors often found themselves sinking into the gaps between the mats and struggling to get out gracefully.  And then there were the bar lifters who sometimes got the height right when raising the bar and sometimes even got both sides up to the same height.  On the occasions when they didn't the slanted bar provided either a tempting opportunity for jumpers to take the low level leap of faith while also giving one enthusiastic colleague plenty of tape measure action.    In the end all the students seeking to raise their level of attainment left with their heads held high, and as they leapt over with differing degrees of success, their feet held higher.  Knowing absolutely nothing about how to do the event I was not able to offer any advice about technique or routes to success.

Away from the competitive world of reality and sporting prowess students from my place returned to school and many of them headed straight into a Grease dance and singing rehearsal, welcoming make-believe with as open sets of arms as they had Sports Day. After a strong cup of coffee I, once again, felt in my element.  Although I am not choreographing the show I do know exactly what I want it to look like and how to make sure each performer is really doing their stuff properly.  While I couldn't explain how to do a Frosby Flop as compared to Fylingdales Flyer I certainly can come up with a range of strategies to get dancers to stop looking at their feet and help bring a bit of the spectacular to the show.   In short it was a relief to be back doing something that I can do rather than rely on a bit of enthusiasm and hope.  The PE teacher in charge of the high jump had asked teachers who were assisting her in her duties who had done high jump in the past.  She looked relieved and visibly relaxed when I and two others put up our hands confidently.  By the end of the event she seemed relieved that it was time to say farewell to an IT expert, a brace of Maths teachers, language teachers and a Drama man.

Sports Day comes but once a year and that is marvellous for many reasons.

Farting Around



It is a well known fact that nothing can disrupt a lesson like a fart can.  Weather wind tries to cause problems for teachers and learners alike, snow brings its blanket of problems, even fire drills (often timed by pure coincidence for when deputy head have their least favourite class of the week) try to disrupt but fail abysmally when compared to a well brewed and perfectly timed fart.

It hadn't happened in my years in Malaysia to date, but finally did on Friday afternoon.  Firstly some context.  Children at my school are well behaved and want to do well.  They also thank teachers for their lessons and generally approach everything with a "let's give this a go" attitude.  

And so to the lesson in question.  All was going well from the start time of 1.10pm.  The class had become familiar with one of my favourite sections of Romeo and Juliet, the bit where Lady and Lord C break the good news to their little Jules that she is going to get married on Thursday to the handsome Paris.  The lesson was all set up to look at what makes children argue with their parents and having dramatized moments from their day to day lives in argument form the children were applying their newly analysed child/parent heated debate skills to the Capulet Family.  Stanislavski watched on from cloud nine, pleased with what he saw. 

Just as we were playing with the idea of the walls have ears, at around 2.03pm (17 minutes to go) a sound, like the sound of someone desperately trying to hold a fart in but failing ever so slightly, occurred.  Immediately, as there always is when these things happen, there was a fraction of a pause as the world of drama analysed what had just happened.  Various children held their breath, for various of reasons.  And then the moment passed and I and all bar one of the class carried on.  

D was the child who did not carry on, but, credit to him, he did try.  He looked away as best he could, refocused on the wall and then made sure that he was looking at me, and definitely not his mate M, as all of the class and I moved on from the fart and started to think what the walls that have ears might say in response to the major ding dong that was going on between the Capulets.  But try as he might D just could not do it.  His shoulders started going up and down, his clenched tight shut mouth battled to let out an enormous laugh, and small tears started to flow out of both his eyes.  Gradually the class's collected concentration, along with mine, found itself drawn to the thousand agonies that poor D was suffering.  Recognizing a dead horse when I saw one and deciding that flogging the thing would do no good I tried to put the lad out of his misery by saying in a light and cheery voice, "Oh dear everyone, D has farted, poor lad," and learned immediately that children in Malaysia find it very funny when their teacher utters the word "Fart."  Chaotic and riotous laughter ensued and almost covered the heated, but good-natured, debate between D and his mate M as to who exactly was responsible for the fart.  Others chipped in with a viewpoint on the matter and we almost had a full scale debate, a bit like the Capulet family.  

Having all had a good laugh the class and I managed to bring the lesson to a sort of close having learned the following important lessons: if only Lord Capulet had have farted after threatening Juliet then perhaps tragedy might have been averted.   She and Romeo could have had a long and happy life together.  Sadly the Capulet family had not shared a school dinner that day.

Beware ... Small Dragon On The Lose.

 


Despite my best efforts I am not really sporty.  I have made a concerted effort to become much fitter (physically, that is) and do my best to dash around the football field in a manner that does not result in too much ridicule from my patient colleagues.  However I am not sporty.  I did once play for the under 14 B cricket team at school, opening the batting and scoring one run before being given out LBW, which, to this day, I contend was a controversial ruling.  But I have never hit the sporting highs of being chosen to represent any team: school, university, pub or otherwise.  Lexi's sporting CV is a little more glorious than mine, admittedly not hard to achieve that.  She won the year nine school fun run and has even been heard to tell tales of county running, but don't ask for too many details about the position she came in in during her race outing.  

Therefore it is something of a shock to both parents that Trixie, aged seven, has shown signs of being, possibly, wait for it, sporty.  With no preparation she managed to come 7th out of 80 in her school cross-country run and has been selected, a process that never happened to me, to be sporty for her school.  I can remember having to run to school before but never for the school.  This selection has brought about a number additional high points for young Trixie.  She has been requested to go to some training sessions to ready herself for the up-coming cross-country run, the timing of which, 0715 on a Sunday morning, has caused both excitement and consternation for various members of the Lawrence Clan.  She has also accompanied me on a few staggers (my attempts at running based exercise) and her times have been getting better and better. Probably the best sporty thing to happen to The Girl Lawrence so far though took place on Thursday.  Fresh from the excitement and social high-light that was Brownies she came bursting through the front door, grinning from ear to ear, and announced proudly that she had something in her bag to show everyone.  We dutifully closed our sets of eyes and looked away.  When we were told to look again we we're greeted with the sight of a small girl wearing her Dragon's Team Athletic Vest!!!  Selected to represent a school team she had been given a team vest, which coming on the same day as Brownies, made her feel that life just could not get any better.  No matter that the vest was at least one size too big and that she has done all of her running in her school trainers she was a picture of joy and happiness.  Good on her.  The race that she is being readied for is on Saturday 11th October, and this being the tropics, it is kicking off at 0745, meaning a departure from school at 0620.  Listen out for distant, if a little sleepy, encouraging shouts of "Go on Trixie!"

Other things that Lawrence offspring have been proud of this week include Edwin managing to persuade members of his form group to vote for him to become his class representative on the school council and Rupert being given his song leader's badge, happenings that the boys are just as proud of as Trixie.

I wasn't too proud of the one and three quarter hour journey from home to central Kuala Lumpur this week for one of Edwin's dance rehearsals.  We departed from school in tropical rain, it is the rainy season after all and got soaked getting to the car, but did notice that there were next to no cars on the road.  Quite a pleasant change for KL really.  After calling in to home to pick up the lad's dance bag, that he had carefully forgotten at morning we raced back into the car, getting drenched again, only for the rain to start easing off.  This might appear like good news, but it was far from it.  The ceasing of rain was the signal for everyone who owned a car, bus, lorry or motorbike to start it and clamber in or on it and drive for all they were worth to the centre of the city. Consequently there were monster traffic jams.  We arrived for Edwin's rehearsal one hour late, ravenously hungry and in very bad moods.  Dinner of tandoori chicken and garlic naan went some way to helping.

Just before heading out this morning Lexi told me what Trixie had told her last night. "Mummy, I am good at running because you were good at running when you were a little girl."  Lexi hasn't yet told Trixie where she came when she ran in a county race.

How Many People Does It Take To Replace A Fridge?

I suppose the other question to answer here has to be how many signatures are needed in order to expedite the process of fridge replacement.  Today, thanks to my smiling persistence the great fridge replacement saga of Drama land has taken a giant leap forward.

 

Let me set the scene … When us Drama teachers returned to the Drama nerve centre after our various summer breaks all three of us immediately asked “What is that smell?”  (Please note politeness ensured that we had all checked each other had not stepped in something nor had we taken to using curiously smelling after-shaves or perfumes.)  No the smell was chemically and nasty and got much worse whenever the aged fridge was opened.  Even Drama teachers have a bit of common sense and so I set about reporting to the various school authorities that the fridge was bost. 

 

First on the scene was the school head caretaker who agreed that it smelled terrible and asked the cleaner to do her stuff and clean it out.  Result?  The office smelt a great deal worse, the fridge door had been left open after all while the cleaning was attempted.  Not surprisingly the pong in the office worsened when the fridge was switched on and so was swiftly switched off again.  “It is broken,” we drama people exclaimed.

 

But no.  The fridge had to be officially declared as broken.  That meant an official from the facilities department had to come back and look at the uncool chiller and declare it officially broken, something they appeared to be able to do over the phone or by email.  Several days went by and nothing appeared to be happening.  Eventually the facilities people did agree that the machine was dead, without the need for an inspection visit, and so I assumed that all would progress smoothly.  I have been in Malaysia a while now and so knew that this would probably not be the case, but the optimist in me still hoped anyway.

 

More days went by and more nothing happened.  Eventually I approached the person who gets things done.  Every workplace has people like that.  In a world of dithering and silliness these wonderful people simply make things happen, despite the best efforts of other stop them.   This particular colleague simply asked for a photo of the fridge so that she could get a replacement model.  Phew.  Easy.  Done?

 

No.

 

A week has gone by since I sent that photo to the person who gets things done and things had not got done.  The smell peeked in its nastiness this afternoon so I decided to brave the confusion that is the administration department and seek out answers.  What exactly was happening? 

 

First I approached the chief of ordering stuff to ask if she had ordered a new fridge.  “Ah, Robin, it is not as simple as that.  The disposal form is with the accounts department and I am waiting for them to approve disposal,” she said.  A moment of rifling through a huge pile of paper on her desk and she found the disposal form and gave me a “those dratted people in accounts” facial grimace.  As luck would have those dratted people in accounts are only situated around four metres away from the chief of ordering stuff and so I offered to accompany the chief of ordering stuff on a visit to the accounts department.  And what a jolly time was had by all.  The disposal form, already with several signatures on, including the school’s principal’s autograph, was studied by the famous accounts department, and an official from the department was dispatched, with me to go on a field trip to look at the offending and stinking fridge.  We had polite conversation in the lift on the way down and up and agreed that there was a fridge in the Drama office and it did smell.  “Good.  Can we get rid of it now I asked?”

 

No.

 

The lowly accounts official had to get another signature on the disposal form before the fridge could be got rid of.  And that signature was a tricky one indeed.  The chief of the accounts department had to sign the disposal form.  This was not a signature to be got lightly though.  This fine officer had also to be assured that the fridge was not working.  Having been satisfied that the paperwork was in order they had to make sure that the fridge could not be repaired.  Had I checked with the facilities people?  Yes.  Was the fridge not working?  Yes.  Had I done the bleeding obvious?  Yes.  (I may have only heard that question in my mind.)  Before the last autograph could be applied the mighty official had to speak to the facilities chief, a bloke who can never be found anywhere, doesn’t answer emails and certainly can’t be spoken to on the phone, to do the last checks.  The accounts person managed to speak to the facilities chief’s sidekick and explained that the fridge did not work (unlike the disposal system which was clearly working extremely well) could they do something about it.  The sidekick assured the accounts person that they would look into the matter in due course.  Satisfied with this the accounts guru signed the form and beautiful rainbows appeared in the sky and small birds began to sing sweetly.  When might the fridge be moved, I enquired?   Soon, was the answer.

 

On the way back to Drama land I saw one of the facilities fellers, a nice guy who I have made tea for in the past.  He and I lifted the bloody fridge out of the now stinking office and dumped it in the corridor.  He has promised to get rid of it.

 

We also have an unused sound system and TV to get rid of too, but I haven’t got the stomach for the fight as yet.

 

Last word goes to the chief of ordering stuff though.  I asked this fine person how long it would take for a new fridge to arrive.  “These matters can’t happen overnight, Robin,” was her reply.

A Chance Money Saving Tip?

For a brief time yesterday I became a money saving expert but before I rebrand myself as Martin Lewis, John Lewis or that Dom bloke off the telly read on.

 

Thanks to Malaysia Day on Tuesday Edwin’s piano lesson was postponed so the marvellous people at Menuetto Music of Desa Park City rearranged his lesson for Friday evening at 7.00pm.  So after playing football, badly as usual, I hobbled over to The Waterfront with the lad in good time for his lesson.  To fill in the 30 minutes I decided that it was high time I took my flowing locks in for a bit of a restyle and snip.  Edwin dashed on ahead and I stopped briefly to natter with a colleague who was enjoying the evening heat.  We swapped niceties and discussed my fine number of hairs etc and soon got round the idea of the price of hairdos.  She was shocked at the RM50 that I was preparing to pay and so pointed me in the direction of another barber who cut her husband and son’s Barnets.   Dismissing it as a next time thing I wished her a good evening and went on to the hairdressers, where the stylist (yes, hard to believe the idea of me visiting a stylist, I know) told me that they were experiencing a bit of a rush and so I would need to wait 20 minutes.  That gave me some vital thinking time during which I followed that dreadful Americanism and “Did the Math.”

 

Consequently yesterday afternoon Rupert and I followed my colleague’s directions to Damansara Perdana and found the barber who she claimed her men swear by.  We parked in a nearby place which also offered car cleaning, inside and out for RM20, so decided to have the Trajet transformed from grubby specimen into gleaming Rolls Royce while a barber attempted something similar on Rupert and I

 

The barber was eating his lunch as we stepped into his air-conditioned booth under a staircase and so he asked us to come back after he had finished.  That gave Rupert and I time to seek out drinks, namely an iced lemon tea for the boy and a ubiquitous teh tarik for me.  On return the barber did his stuff with the flair of a master craftsman and left us both looking much less hairy and pleasingly not much lighter about the wallet.

 

We returned to collect our now shining charabanc and drove back to Chateau Lawrence.  In addition to being a money saving experience the events of the afternoon also afforded Rupert Lawrence an opportunity to practice his fledgling maths skills.  He assured me that RM20 for the car cleaning, RM18 for our haircuts, RM2 for the tip to the barber, RM2 for his iced lemon tea, RM1.40 for my teh tarik and RM1.50 for the car parking all came to RM44.90, leaving a pleasing amount change from the planned RM50 for one haircut that I had almost purchased the day before.

 

Shopping around, plus local knowledge is clearly the way forward. especially as we are in the process of trying to sort out accommodation for our Christmas and New Year holiday in Sydney.  (Does anyone have any relatives or friends that we could borrow, please?)   The flight prices were too good to turn down so I booked and paid for them yonks ago, but finding sensible priced accommodation is not proving quite so easy.  Lexi managed to book places for us in a YHA for the first five nights and we have then found a reasonable priced campervan to hire for the second section of our tour.  The most tricky part of the accommodation search is the last three nights, over the new year period.  Every reasonably priced place has a minimum booking period of between five and fourteen nights.  We need three.  Alternatively we are being told by various websites that we can have posh hotels from between 600 to 3000 pounds for those nights. 

 

It is a good job that Rupert and I saved RM5.10 yesterday.  That pound might yet come in very useful.

23 Again


It's been that marvellous day when I declare to the world, well anyone who might listen, that I am 23 (my stage-age) once again. 18th September is as good a day to have been born on as any so why not celebrate the day on which you were born, despite dramatic greats like Harold Pinter believing that celebrating birthdays was a very strange thing indeed.  Rupert has taken the celebrating of my birthday very seriously though and has made me chuckle several times today.


A very sleepy Rupert managed a "Happy Birthday Daddy" at 6.00am this morning before the daily weetabix fest and journey to school.  Shortly after my 7.00am arrival in Drama Land my marvellous colleagues greeted with me wine and chocolate brownies, the latter we munched through along with blowing out flaming candles at break time.  (The wine awaits for another occasion.)   The deputy head who is in charge of cover decided that the best way to mark my birthday was to give me a special present, an AM registration cover, and to show how generous she was she also added in a Positive Education Cover (what used to be known as Personal and Social Education) too for good measure.  As I set about blundering through the concept of mindfulness, the theme for the lesson, the class's teacher ambled in and, knowing it was my birthday, took over.  A really great pressie indeed.


My year nine class helped celebrate my birthday in a marvellously violent way by tackling stage combat with great enthusiasm.  Energetic slaps, punches, jabs and hair pulls flew all lesson and were made more dramatic by the suitably exaggerated grunts and growls.  Good fun was had by all.


After planning my Grease rehearsal the Drama Gang and I had lunch together.  We normally gather on a Friday lunchtime and talk all-things-Drama over bowls of excellent Japanese food, but decided to move it one day earlier this week to cater for my birthday and one of the Gang's dentist appointment tomorrow.  A sort of win-win.


The biggest battle of the day was with the rights owners of Grease.  My school WILL be paying the necessary performance rights and costs for obtaining official copies of the text and music,  but it not that easy.  I applied to Grease's New York office to gain the approval to do the play, and now have it.  But I have been told that I need to apply to Australia to get the texts and music, but could also apply to New York too.  New York email stuff out, Australia send out paper copies, but Australia is cheaper, but then New York is quicker, possibly.  It feels a bit slapdash, leaving me in Kuala Lumpur confused.  The rehearsal went well though and paperwork has a habit of getting done and sorted put eventually, especially when money needs to change hands.


Just before the rehearsal Rupert dashed up to Dramaland to wish me happy Birthday again, very nice, despite the fact that I was sitting on the Dramaland loo at the time.  It is the first time that I have had anyone knock on the door while I was 'attending to essential matters,' but a sixth sense told me that it really could only be Rupert who would have thought that disturbing a moment's peace to wish me complements of the birthday variety was the right thing to do.  All very sweet, I suppose.  All Lawrence Sprogs and I departed for home at 4.30pm, just a 9.5 hour day today.


After a pressie session, thanks loads, we departed for my birthday tea at Al Safa Restaurant for plates of grub.  My tandoori chicken, garlic naan and chilli pineapple salad was all great.  And then dinner was finished with coffee and cake at Desa Park City Waterfront, followed by a really good skype natter with the unofficial leader of Walsall.


All in a pretty good birthday.  Thanks everyone.  Same again tomorrow?