Remember To Check The Alarm Is Set, Robin.

Written at KLIA having arrived two hours early.


Remember that opening to "Four Weddings and A Funeral?"  Chateau Lawrence was a bit like that for ten minutes this morning.   However, oddly, so far today, the message appears to be "if you want to be very early the forget to set the alarm."  

Lexi announced at 6.50am "It's 6.50am."  Nothing remarkable about that on Sunday morning, one might even ask. Why on earth are we waking at 6.50am on a Sunday morning?  The only small snag was that I planned to wake up, courtesy of my phone alam at 5.30am.  We had to meet Edwin's dance teacher in TTDI at 7.15am, a 15 minute drive away in preparation for his dance competition.  

We sprung into action, dispensed with essential like showering and breakfast, threw things and people into the car and set off, arriving at 7.19am.  Skin of teeth stuff.  Edwin's teacher hadn't arrived, but we were ready and waiting.

Yesterday had been a nutty day getting ourselves ready for Lexi's Sunday rehearsal, my trip to Cambodia and Edwin's competition.  Somehow we managed to squeeze in the following to Saturday ... 

Supermarket shopping
Rupert going to a party
Losing a phone charger
Two hours of dance
Various loads of washing
A haircut
Watching a school play version of Jungle Book
Searching the house for the lost phone charger
Eating
Breathing
Two hours of buying stuff for a school play
Buying a replacement phone charger
Packing stuff
Two loads of washing 
And going to bed too late.

Is it any wonder no-one woke up this morning?

One calming thought was provided to me by a small blue sticker in ,y taxi to to the airport.  Stuck onto an ingenious, ergonomically designed ceiling tissue box holder contraption was a small blue sticker that read "Choose Happiness."  Simple message and one that made me smile despite the frantic start to today. 

Right so here goes.  Start hunting for 50 students to take to Cambodia.

How to Help Teachers Out.

By chance I met a marvellous parent at school today.  She, her two youngest children and I shared a brief lift journey this morning.  Nothing unusual in that.  However the conversation started in that terrible way where she knew who I was but I couldn't remember for the life of me who she was.  In the space of three floors we talked summer holidays, drama and random stuff with me desperately trying to recall who she was.   Recognising that I was floundering and wishing that the lift would go faster she, seemingly casually, dropped in to conversation the name of her eldest child who I teach and the conversation flowed without me having to lose to much face.   I was impressed by such a smooth move and have decided, henceforth, to do the same thing.  


Clearly this is also an appeal to help other teachers out.  I know all 150+ students who I teach each week plus quite a lot more who I have had dealings with too, but I certainly can't remember all their parents as well.  So, parents, please make sure you drop a little nugget of information about your child in to conversation just to give us teachers a fighting chance of knowing who we are talking to.

Why does Question Time get me so annoyed?  I know that it shouldn't, but it does.  Auntie Beeb kindly broadcasts it on the wireless as well as TV so that means that the Lawrence household breakfast early on Friday mornings can be munched to the accompaniment of Mr Dimbleby and assorted public figures and journalists debating matters of state and beyond.  Except that that isn't really what it is, is it?  Today's show, much many others in the past, followed the usual pattern of Party Politician A giving their line on story X followed by Party Politician B saying how ridiculous such a notion was and saying that it should be done differently before Celebrity C said words that announced which  effectively announced which political party they supported leaving the listener liking or loathing that celebrity depending on their viewpoint.  And then The Unidentified Dimbleby interrupted, irritatingly.

When I had the dubious privilege of standing in the last Parliamentary election I had to 'debate' at eight hustings where the three main party representatives said their stuff, largely repeating the same lines to different audiences.   There was little room for debate or come back while the audiences, talking to them afterwards, were at worst already decided as to who they were voting for well-before the evening or at worst coy and said that their vote was "between me and the ballot box" with a knowing smile.  In other words " Not you, mate."  Nothing appeared to change as a result of those hustings and I do wonder whether anything changes from the weekly outings of Question Time.  Yes it gives politicians air-time and gives the illusion that people's views are listened to but does it serve any purpose beyond that?

So why does it annoy me?  It is the predictability of the whole thing.  Surely any fool knows the various parties lines'on most matters and must know that the participants in Question Time practise their answers to questions about the day's news carefully beforehand.  So whatever Dimbleby is dusted down and brought out to host the affair's promise of "lively, topical debate of the day" is in fact well rehearsed recitations with an occasional witty put down.

Or maybe I shouldn't mix muesli and politics?  

I did enjoy an ice-blended mint bomb though.   I had a meeting with a colleague from Music to debate, a genuine debate, ideas and thoughts for the next school show.  Some of the best ideas come about when off school grounds in the neighbouring coffee shop and so there we sat, she with her tea and me quaffing a mint bomb.  The ideas flowed.

I also enjoyed some prop free sword fighting today.  Great to see kids smashing, parrying, jumping, stabbing and dying dramatically.

And finally a pat on the back to the performers and directors of "Art."  I quite like Yasmina Reza's play about three men and a controversial piece of art.  The version I saw this evening was performed in traverse at a local language school.  OK it had quite a few things that the play purist in me didn't like but hats off to the director who decided to perform the play in a very intimate studio space and to an audience of 20.  Good on them for being ambitious.





Mastering The Tail and Anchor Method and The Lucky Draw.

Thanks to six hours in the company of some entertaining doctors I am now first aid trained.  Yes if I see someone who has collapsed on the floor, fallen from a great height or cut a digit off I can now wade in and probably make them feel a great deal worse.  There were several other staff who had left booking their place on the course to the last minute, hoping that matters at school might be moderately less frantic and frenetic only to have those hopes dashed.  While it may not seem like the best way to spend one's Saturday the doctors made the course quite hands on and encouraged us to get physical with the bandaging and CPR.  Having practised on 'Choking Charlie', an armless mannequin who was sporting a 1980s retro badminton shirt I am now pretty good at giving someone a quick slap on the back or a Heimlich or two.  Although I should add a cautionary note to this.  Charlie only appeared to have swallowed a ball of foam with attached string.  


I am also something of a authority on the tail and anchor method: a new way of bandaging that appears to remove the need to stab your victim in their tender bits with a safety pin while trying to secure a bandage.  To be a highly successful bandager though one must always carry a yoghurt pot, or the like, wherever one travels, in case of eye injuries.  Thanks to mastering the tail and anchor method I am now able to strap a yoghurt pot, sans yoghurt of course, over a sitting teacher's face in a simulation eye injury situation.  Never too old to learn indeed.

I suppose that I was in a positive mood really for this Saturday course as Lexi and I had been successful in a 'Lucky Draw' organised by her school.  A few weeks ago she had announced that her place had arranged a do for staff and that food and beer was provided.  Working on the wise premise that when people offer free food and beer it is best to say 'Yes' and ask questions later we both agreed to attend.  The theme for the evening was black and red, something that Lexi assured me was not being followed by anyone.  And so with Lexi wearing purple and me in my best blue and white flower pattern shirt and green jeans we stepped in, one a half hours late, to a room full of people dressed up to the nines in black and red.  Someone recognized our difficulty and directed us to the most suitable table for people wearing our badly selected garb, the table occupied by the school principal, head teacher, school owners and their consorts.  We did time it perfectly for the arrival of dinner though.

The evening then kicked in to gear with the commencement of The Lucky Draw.  One particular bloke had been carefully volunteered to host the luck fest and shortly after course number one of many he approached the microphone and the drawing began.  Numbers were pulled out and moderately
cross looking people trudged forward to collect their RM150 vouchers for Starbucks or Aeon supermarket.  Others looked even less pleased when they were handed massage vouchers to the value of RM210.20.  Quite what the extra 20 sen was for I don't know.  Slightly disappointed at not winning the free coffee I consoled myself with some more stilted conversation with people at the VIP table.  Our host returned to the microphone one food course later and declared that The Lucky Draw was starting again as previously we had only drawn 15 tickets.  There were, he announced, another 85 prizes!

He trudged on.  The value of the vouchers went up to RM200, then RM250 and eventually up to RM400 and still there was no luck heading the Lawrence way.  Feeling pleased that we did not win the enormous grill oven set or yet more massages our genial host declared that there were only 16 prizes remaining.  Crumbs.  Lexi and I were down to the last 16.  Our host tested our staying power by drawing our attention to the star prizes: an iPhone 5; whopping great TV and in third place an electronic slimmer's machine.  More supermarket vouchers were won along with some curious pieces of gadgetry that looked like an orange tortoise with wires on.  And then number 008 was drawn out.  It was Lexi's ticket.  We were very relieved not to have won the electronic slimmer's machine but Lord Luck had awarded us something far more useless instead.  We won the ninth prize: an"OSIM U-Relax."  It took a lot of detailed examination of the enormous box to try to work out exactly what we had won however a careful reading of a helpful explanatory paragraph soon clarified matters.  Our prize was a luxury massage appliance that apparently fits into most chairs.  Light and portable it will allow us to enjoy a massage in most chairs at our convenience.  Baffled and confused we left the evening struggling under the size and weight of this light and portable device.

As I write preparations for Lexi's school play are going very well.  She was struggling for star prizes for her raffle, until now.

Lots of Malaysian Experiences

As the title suggests it has been a week of KL / Malaysian experiences.  I am in the process of arranging an out of school performance venue for a sixth form devised play, all being well sometime in October.  There are several good venues in and around KL and so after looking at them I choose the one I liked the most and made a provisional booking.  So far so good.  Clearly I wanted my colleagues' input on the decision so arranged for a Drama Dept outing on Friday to visit the venue.  To make sure nothing could go wrong I spoke to the centre manager on Tuesday.  She assured me that she would be at the venue on Friday, at 1215, and that the venue would be empty for us to explore.  It won't take a genius to work out that precisely the opposite occurred.  On arrival I asked to see her: she wasn't there.  I asked to see the venue: the was a conference taking place, so it was not possible to see the place.  Great.  The lesson I learned?  Never try to be too organised.  Fortunately the delegates took a well-deserved lunch break and so we three Drama people sneaked in and explored.  Phew.


Next 'experience' happened last night.  Edwin is going off for a week's camp in the first week of July and so needs to get various pieces of equipment.  Currently The Boy Lawrence spends most of life in the world of Harry Potter so the last place he wanted to be was a shopping centre playing hunt the trousers and trainers.  Our first port of call was Factory Outlet Stores - a cheap and cheerful place for children's clothes.  Two blokes were standing on the shop floor sporting badges reading 'I will smile and be helpful,' so I approached and asked one of them about trousers in Edwin's size.  The badge wearer looked at me, grunted and turned back to grunting at the other bloke who appeared to be clueless as to our request.  Thank goodness the bloke was smiling and being cheerful.  I dread to think what he would have done if he had not been wearing his helpful badge.  Despite the staff we did manage to buy His Lordship some trousers.

Next shop was Aeon to look for suitable footwear.  This time the staff to customer ratio was stacked even further against us.  After much searching we found the children's shoes area where we counted five staff standing around trying to look busy.  Two of the staff looked busy by mock wrestling each other while the others stared vacantly into the middle distance, carefully avoiding us weird foreigners.  Eventually we settled on a pair of feet coverings that would be suitable and asked one of the five for the correct size.  He sauntered off in to the depths of the shop.  A full minutes later and with no shoe clutching bloke in sight we considered leaving.  We asked the others of his whereabouts and they were as clueless as we were.  Just as we were about to leave a short Muslim lady returned clutching the correct sized shoes.  They fitted well, it we were all concerned as to exactly what had happened to original server?  The lady wrote the price on a piece of paper and we when to the till.

Arriving at the till we had 'The Paying Experience.'  Four staff were standing at a deserted Pay Here counter.  Two people per till, naturally.  The division of labour went something like this:  Person one to hold the item, read the paper with the price on.  Person two to scan the item, despite the price being on a bit of paper, and ask for our loyalty card.  Person two to take our 33 ringgit and then give the money to person one, who then put the only in till.  My only surprise was that person one did not give the receipt to person two to give to us.  Did we really need seven staff to sell us a pair of children's shoes?

Expat Living?

My browse along the Lawrence bookshelf this evening drew my attention to a glossy pamphlet entitled The Expat Welcome 2012.  Intrigued  I sat in the smallest room studying this fine looking guide leafing through helpful pages offering advice on all things Malaysian for the arrivees of 2012.  I could read in details about how to bring my pet to Kuala Lumpur, learn about where to live, brush up on banking or even read about Immigration Services.  Apparently, I read, processing an application for a work permit is "sometimes quite lengthy and involved."   The writers are not wrong.


I flicked a few more pages and had a glance at the helpful sections on Motoring and Transport in Malaysia.  The sections began with these words, "One of the most enjoyable things about living in Malaysia is getting behind the wheel and heading out on the open roads which take you through vibrant cities...."  I agree with KL being a vibrant city but the writers have got a bit of explaining to do with the rest of the statement.  Driving in KL rarely affords you an open road thanks to the current popularity of traffic jams.  Getting behind the wheel is also fraught with annoyances and danger.  Many Malaysian drivers appear to follow the words of Expat 2012 quite literally by getting behind the wheel of their Proton, BMW, or rusting 1970s Datsun, strapping on their blinkers, disabling their indicators and  heading off, tunnel vision-like towards their destination, oblivious of the thousands of other vehicles on the road.   Expat 2012 goes on to say "Driving in Malaysia is a wonderful experience ... ". On a daily basis I witness motorists enjoying the wonderful experience of veering from left to right and back again, without indicating of course, while staring intently into the distance or chattering on their ubiquitous mobile phones.  Other wonderful experiences include overtaking cars stopped at red lights to go round them, pushing into gaps that don't exist and undertaking at high speed.  I regularly express my wonder at the experience of driving by using phrases like "What is that idiot doing?", "Get off your pissing phone and look where you are going!", and "You can't do ... (Sharp intake of breath) ... Oh my god!"  And then there are the motorbike riders to contend with, all of whom ride like slalom skiers, scoring extra points each time they pass the front of my car with less than one metre clearance.

The magazine did offer some interesting advice though.  In the Meeting People section it suggested that I should "Participate in (unfamiliar) activities."  Initially somewhat alarmed I soon took this to mean that I should accept Lexi's suggestion and go to the pilates class at Desa Park City club this evening.  And, much like driving in Malaysia is reported to be, it was a wonderful experience.  The class of thirty sweating, steaming bodies were instructed to move and stretch themselves in ways that I would not have thought possible or that were in any way good for you by a cheery and incredibly flexible instructor.  Understanding about one word in ten of his Malaysian English (it's Manglish,  lah!) I thanked my lucky stars that there were mirrors in which to copy the movements and motions of other more experienced strainers and grunters.

Lexi had heard about the class a few weeks ago and has been several times already.  I suppose it was good that she had not waited to receive a letter about the class.  Despite Expat 2012 announcing that Pos Malaysia is "efficient and easily accessible" it took around four weeks for my AA Malaysia (the motoring people) card to be sent from one part of KL to me and at school I am still waiting for a text book posted by  The Royal Shakespeare Company on 25th March.  Someone in Pos Malaysia clearly knows all about accessibility, delivering, as our postie did, a card from a relative that had been opened, checked for money, glued up again and then delivered.  

But then Expat 2012 would doubtless say that I am in stage three of culture shock.   On page 104 it tells me that I will soon realize that it is "up to me to change to be comfortable in my new environment."  This is soon followed by, they say, "the acceptance phase.". I this I will sharpen my elbows and simply push through crowds getting on and off trains, eat everything, and be far more tolerant.

Right here goes then.  How do I disable indicators on a car and drive with my eyes closed?



Robin Changes His Opinions About Fathers' Day?

Phew it has been busy today.  And it has been Fathers' Day too.


Getting up around seven am I was greeted by Rupert clutching a marvellous Fathers' Day present made at his year three Art Attack Club.  Carefully hidden in the fridge since Tuesday he had made a brown card present box complete with colourful  bow tie on top and chocolate bar inside.  I gave Rupert a grateful Fathers' Day cuddle before heading off for a morning stagger, otherwise known as a run, round the Desa Park City Lake.  Even at 7.30am on Sunday there were plenty of people out doing likewise, enjoying a Sunday morning stagger before the heat of the day.

Back home, steaming well, I enjoyed a dip in the swimming pool and then a healthy  Fathers' Day breakfast of apples, yoghurt and yesterday's flapjack.  Next appointment of the day was a Fathers' Day look round a soon to be vacant house just metres away from where we currently live.  There are a couple of possibilities for us to rent to rent a four bedroomed place.  The key thing of course is to get the right price.  Despite there being lots of building work taking place at Desa Park City some landlords seem intent on asking for silly prices for their houses and flats often asking for eye-watering increases on their current prices.  We would all like to have an extra bedroom, but don't want to pay through the nose for it.  The house we saw would certainly be very good for us so we have made an offer to the landlord and now just have to wait for their reply.

After that it was time for the next Fathers' Day treat.  After much planning and plotting between Edwin, Rupert and Trixie the three of them insisted that we all walk over to The Waterfront together.  Lexi and I took our seats at the local coffee shop and then the three sprogs set about buying a Fathers' Day mug of coffee for me as well as a chocolate cake and five cake forks.  The coffee tasted great.  Led by Rupert the children quickly set about making sure that the cake was safe for human consumption needing multiple forkfuls to be certain.  The small forkful that I ate was delicious.  To work off all this enjoyment we had a Fathers' Day play at the park.

Next it was off for a Fathers' Day trip to Batu Caves.  This mission was essentially to work out the dates for Edwin's birthday adventure investigating the possibility of an explore around The Dark Caves and then tea.  My Fathers' Day lunch was a 'Banana Leaf Set'' at a very good cafe near to the giant Buddha.  All Malaysian based people will be happy with that simple meal description but I may need to elaborate for others.  A 'Banana Leaf Set' is, obviously, served on a banana leaf and consists of rice, various vegetable curries, popodoms and exciting sauces.  This particular restaurant did a great line in daal and coconut chutney.

On the way home I had Fathers' Day filling up the car with petrol session as well as a Fathers' Day shopping session before the final appointment of the day, a Fathers' Day trip to a colleague's leaving do.  Held a Desa Park City Club it was a very pleasant afternoon with nice people.

But that wasn't all.  On the way back from the do I had a quick Fathers' Day kick around followed by a Fathers' Day cool off in the aircon of home and a Fathers' Day glass of squash.

All in all a very pleasant Fathers's Day.

Lawrences in Langkawi

Last week it was the Term Three half term holiday for the children and I.  Sadly it was not the half term holiday for Lexi so it fell to me to take three little Lawrences and I only holiday.  Our destination was Langkawi, and in particular the main island out of the 99 that we could have chosen from.  Our six days went something like this ... 

Sunday
Arrive Langkawi in the afternoon.  Flying on Air Malaysia we could have taken up to 30 kegs each, but just took small bags instead.  All of us, except Trixie, enjoyed our in flight packet of peanuts on the 50 minute flight
Hire Perodua Kancil car at RM60 per day - a tiny four door affair that boasted a 660cc engine and a mere 172000km on the speedo.
Check in at Green Village Resort, room C4.  Move to room C1, as it is bigger than booked room.  Why do hotels make their rooms look larger than they actually are?  Have they taken lessons from Marks and Spencer mirror designers?
Look at other posher places, but decide to stay at Green Village Resort.

Monday.

Beach at Pantai Cenang.  We met up with two primary school colleagues and spent the morning gossiping, digging in the sand and getting sunburnt.
After lunch a grip to Crocodile Adventure which was not really an adventure place.  There were lots of fairly bored looking crocodiles.  we left wondering why they were selling crocodile meat there?  Was it adventure or farm?
Evening Dinner at Oasis on the beach.  All the children took the non-fish and chips challenge while I had the Fish curry set.  Excellent.

Tuesday

After breakfast, provided by the hotel, we hurtled off to the Langkawi Cable car.  It was extremely busy, but spectacular.  The queuing system was hilarious though.  Queue to buy tickets.  Be given a boarding time, ours was 1200.  Arrive in a different queue at 1200.  Some bloke with a megaphone speaks unintelligible words into it at 1215 and people start pushing forward.  We show our tickets and go through a turnstile.  We then wait in another queue until 1330 and get on the cable car.
Mid afternoon beach sesh at Tanjung Rhu, very nice.
Dinner at Scarborough Fish and Chips, chunky chips and great dory fish.

Wednesday

Lazing at Green Village.
Tried to have lunch at English Tea Room,  but closed for a week.
Afternoon at Underwater World, quite impressive really.  Lots of penguins.  I wonder why?
Duty Free place for cheap vodka and, bizarrely, Pyrex dishes.
Tea at Oasis.  Vegetable curry set.  Just as good as the fish curry set.

Thursday

Morning trip to Langkawi Wildlife park, the hi-point of which for the children was feeding rabbits in Bunny World.  It felt too much like a Father Ted episode for my liking.
Swim in the pool below Durian Perangin Waterfall.  
Tea at Oasis.  Lamb Shank, just as 
Good as the other two meals.

Friday

Breakfast and check out of Green Village Resort.
A quick walk through a very posh beachside resort where we felt duty bound to swim in the attached sea and test out the pools and children's slides.  It was research.
Return car to Langkawi Airport.
Stand behind a family who had decided to take their entire 30kg per person luggage with them.


All in all a great week.  But don't take my word for it.  Why not visit?




Jargon Fatigue, Melaka and Epic

Let me make one thing very clear ... there are some really exciting developments happening and being developed at my school.  Lots of people who are fascinated by how children learn working together to challenge and stretch their students and themselves is exciting.  And with this aim in mind there has been some really thought provoking INSET over the past five days.  There has also been plenty of opportunities for teachers to work on the details of developing the already exciting curriculum further.  The only small downside to this process to date is that it has, at times, been steeped in jargon.


I quite liked being reminded in today's training that everyone should follow 'post-it note etiquette.'  The post-it note is a great thing and should be used with politeness.  I could just about accept that my process development required some 'internal voracity.'   However I missed the point when asked to make sure that I was completing an 'iterative process,' consider who had the 'locus of responsibility' and 'reorder the variables that are summarised on the matrix to tease out the route.'  Seeking inspiration and translation I found myself looking at one of the whiteboards only to find a note that made reference to those all important 'granular indices.'  

My beef was not with the trainers, the training, the development or the work.  All the developments will be really good when complete.  My problem was with the trainers' overuse of jargon.  I remember fondly my Drama lecturer who led my PGCE Drama course many years ago.  He told his attentive, aspiring would-be Drama teachers that the best writing is the simplest writing and, following that gem, I have always tried to instill that into my students verbal and written work.   There is a place for academic language and debate, but not for overuse of jargon that leaves people struggling to find the meaning behind the message.  I suppose I should brought that up when modeling a scaffolding questioning technique that had sought a resolution focused solution.

While in Melaka this weekend, on a family jaunt, I was briefly confronted by some hair-based jargon.  Seeking relief from the sun all Lawrences  found our way into a shopping mall and even managed to order some drinks from the vast and daunting range of possibilities from a Chatime menu.  Having drunk our refreshments we made a loo stop and noticed a hairdresser in action.  It was not the hairdresser's awful hairdo that took my eye but their price list.  The place offered some very confusing sounding treatments.  If I had been so minded I could have chosen between a digital or Japanese perm.  I could also have selected bonding and relaxing and all of these were offered at seemingly bargain prices.  Maybe I should have gone for a combination?  Who could possibly have doubted that I would have looked amazing with Japanese digitally permed hair that was so relaxed that it didn't appear to be bonded in anyway?  It was only the fact that the hairdresser looked a bit scary that stopped me from asking what the difference between digital and Japanese perming was.  Is it similar to the whole cricket and French cricket thing?

Melaka was a pretty good place to visit for the weekend.  Ok, so I made a small error in getting us there.  I programmed the exact address  of our guesthouse into the Sat-Nav and we set off.  The only small snag was that there were plenty of streets of the same name and so we were delivered approximately 20 miles off course.  Applying a bit of common sense we did get to the place in the end.  

On Saturday we became fully fledged tourists for the day and explored the replica of The Flor de la Mar, the elevating spinning tower, the maritime museum, various parks and the fort.  Then after a rest had a good look at Jonker Street in the evening.  On Sunday we explored some more, got confused by hair, had a good meal at The Dutch Harbour Cafeand then spent five hours in traffic  driving the 80 or so miles home.

Lexi is on her half term holiday this week so as another family treat we went to see 'Epic' at the cinema on Monday, around tea time.  The children seemed to enjoy it and Lexi coped well under the circumstances.  I, however, left half way through as I really couldn't take any more.  It was a terrible creation.  Mini people flying around on starlings and canaries trying to make sure that a Michelle O'Bama character could select the creature who would save the forest before the day was out while at the same time a daughter came to live with her strange scientist father and then a round yellow thing burst into song. Lexi assured me that it all got sorted out in the end, but the yellow thing singing was cue for me exit the cinema and do some food shopping instead.  The Great Gatsby, on the other hand, that Lexi  and I watched last week was excellent.

Exam Invigilation and I Am Not David Gould

That elated feeling of sending off the iGCSE and A Level coursework has vaporized for another year and I now find myself into the thick of the exam season.  The Drama iGCSE exam was on Monday and the year tens are also taking their end of year exams too.  Currently they are scribbling away furiously in a Geography exam.  And how do I know this?  I am invigilating it.  Having read the exam paper and answered the question on the tributaries of the River Lee as well as browsed the stuff that I brought with me to I am now forced to reflect on the art of invigilation.  

Much was made in the media a few years ago of the games that teachers play while invigilating.  invigilating is a really dull part of the teacher's lot and they have traditionally found ways to pass the hours silently while trying not to let their minds decaying to dust.  Seated in a classroom with 25 students, their desks and associated paraphernalia I am not able to move around and play the "spot the most ostentatious pencil case" game and being by myself a few rounds of "invigilators checkers" would seem a little pointless.  Also, due to the smoothness of the finish on the walls I can't calculate the number of bricks needed for an unexpected rebuild of the room in case it was demolished by a sudden act of extreme weathering, hydraulic under-cutting or simply questioned to crumbling thanks to over enthusiastic social surveying.  Well this is a Geography exam after all.  Oh well I will just have to content myself with calculating the average number of sniffs per minute of the writers, currently seven, and trying to work out why one particular lad can't stop fidgeting.

As stated in the title I am not David Gould.  David Gould is a thoroughly delightful chap who looks nothing like me.  I speak from knowledge on this matter as I have the pleasure of examining my face at close quarters in my shaving mirror each morning.  However a small cadre of elderly Chinese classroom assistants in the Primary school, all of whom seem to share the same hairdresser and wardrobe mistress, appear incapable of telling the famous Mr Gould and I apart.  The giveaway for me is that Mr G wears glasses and I don't.  Yes, ok, we both choose to have similar hairstyles, that classic male look, and both seem to have a liking for purple based shirts and are both of similar height, but beyond that there is no similarity whatsoever.  Just to prove that point Mr Gould and I were both passing the Primary staff room this morning so he and I approached the cadre and presented ourselves for inspection to try to show that there is a clear and obvious difference.  I am a little concerned though.  What if, because the cadre all look very similar, I have approached the wrong group and simply spread more confusion?

The main sniffer has now developed an annoying cough.

Rupert's Party - But How to Describe It?

Despite not really approving of children's birthday parties that are not traditional children's birthday parties we put together a non-traditional party for Rupert this weekend.  Rupert invited ten chums, including his forced chums of Edwin and Trixie, to Get Crafty on Sunday morning.  As the name suggests it was an arts and crafts place, not a place for training pick-pocketing urchins and ne'er-do-wells as had been suggested.  Get Crafty was very well organised in that the shop had around fifty different cardboard models that children could make from the collections of pre-cut shapes and then paint the chosen object with whatever collections of colours they wished.  Ever the enthusiast for gender-stereotyping Rupert chose a bi-plane for the boys to make and a rocking horse for the girls.  

So at 10.00am sharp we were there, family in tow, ready to begin getting crafty.  All the equipment was ready.  The only thing missing were the guests who eventually started arriving from 10.15am, which translates as 10.00am sharp, Malaysian Standard Time.  (The final guest arrived at 10.45am). Anyway the painting, sticking and assembling fest went very well.  All crafts-people set to their tasks with gusto, nothing got broken and no-one cried.  Included in the RM 50 per head was a group photo for all those at the party, a party bag of snacks and the hand-crafted object, plus the two hours making time.  We rounded off the event with a meal for all the guests plus Lexi and I at Chili's.  

The bi-planes and rocking horses were clearly a hit with children.  One guest described hers as "awesomely cool."  How ever has an 8 year old child educated in Malaysia, from Australian, Jordanian and Dutch lineage managed to come up with a phrases such as "awesomely cool?"  The spread of Americanisms has truly gone global.  Is it about time I did the math or should I simply wake up and smell the coffee?

But this great event was only the third party of the weekend.  On Friday evening Trixie went to a fellow six year old's gathering that involved lots of swimming and the party's hosts insisting on me drinking beer and eating great Lebanese food.  My kind of party really.  I felt a little over-dressed in that I had come straight from school and  was therefore the only guest sporting work shirt and trousers.  I did take my tie off though.  I know how to relax.   

On Saturday Lexi went in to school for a training sort-of day and so I was on taking kids to dance duty.  Then it was off to yet another party.  This time it was Rupert.  Lexi and I delivered him to a friend's house for fun and merriment.  Edwin had gone to the cinema with friends and so that left Lexi and I with just one child.  We drove onto to KLCC and at long last found the fountains there that children can play in rather than the huge great ones that people wow at.  Trixie was impressed. 

Back to work for an easy day today.

I am growing more and more frustrated with the average Malaysian driver's inability to use their indicators.   I feel a rant coming on.