robinlawrence’s Space

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There were very few kids in school this week, mainly because most of the years were out at various camps.  The place was like a ghost town.  There is a part of me that is envious of those staff members who went to camp, enjoying whatever outdoor fun and action people got up to, doing battle with leeches, weather and food.  It will doubtless be a mix of tales that return to school next week.

I did manage to get lots done though, including writing schemes of work, locking my keys in the car, writing reports, having another medical, reading more job applications sent to the school, and booking a holiday.   I hasten to add in case anyone boils over with rage at the last comment I did book the holiday out of school time, but with money that was earned during school time.

Yes The Clan Lawrence are off to China next Easter time.  Having battled manfully with the Airasia website and having declined every possible add on that was offered to me I have fixed up for five Lawrences to spend ten days in Beijing and its surroundings.   I had set out budget at RM5000 for flights and got this lot for RM4915.   I did start to wonder what add ons would be offered next.   I declined insurance because we are all covered by medical insurance from our schools.  I declined to pre-buy food because last weekend showed me that the food prices pre-bought and on the plane were the same.   I declined to choose our seats because I was too tight to pay twice for seats and I selected hand luggage only because that will stop us loading up with too much stuff.  I alos declined buying coach tickets to the airport because the saving of RM0.60 per ticket was not worth mentioning, commenting on and was certainly not worth writing about in a blog.   

This afternoon, just at home time, there was Proper Rain.  People who work in certain schools will know that there are two types of rain: rain and official rain.  Official rain is the type that has been sanctioned by the deputy-head in charge of deciding whether it is raining and therefore is a wet break and we don’t really want a thousand children clogging up the corridors during breaktime do we so it isn’t raining unless I say so.  Rain is just rain.  Today I discovered and experienced a third type of rain: Proper Rain.  It came down UK gallons at a time and gosh what a noise it all made.   There was a tiny moment when the fall was briefly measured in US gallons and so I dashed for the Lawrence Tank (Hyundai Trajet) and only got soaked rather than drenched.  The drive home was one lit up by lightning and made all the more exciting by the booming soundtrack of thunder.  It was also made all the faster by the complete lack of motorbike riders.   These normally bonkers individuals who appear to strap on blinkers with their helmets and remove the human self-preservation gland before setting off did show that they have some sense this afternoon and headed for shelter instead of the open or clogged road.

Rebecca Black will soon stop singing for another week so that must mean it is time for bed and the weekend.

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It has been a really good day today.  Lots of laughs, lots of silliness and good people committed to being good educators.

After a swim in the sea I had breakfast and then joined with the other Joint Area Workers, or JAWs for short and headed off for a session of team building activities at Brookside Resort.   I need to pause here to explain a few things before I go on.

I was extremely critical of the team-building day that I went on in my previous school and rightly so.  It was a badly put together day, with badly planned activities that served no purpose and wasted a lot of taxpayers’ money.  The lunch was ok though.   Brookside Resort was nothing like the fictional Brookside of Liverpool and I did not find any suspicious looking patios with body shaped bumps in them nor did I see lesbians kissing for the first time on TV there.

So our small gang of JAWs people arrived at Brookside resort and was greeted by a bizarre spectacle.  The purpose of this meeting / training by the way is both to share good practice and to plan a FORBISEA (Federation of British International Schools in South East Asia) Drama weekend for our KS3 students.  Brookside Resort was, at first glance a mélange of Scandinavian wooden houses / small hotels painted baby pinks and blues with a Disney atmosphere and activity course.  Famed for its team building the Thai leader of the morning took fellow JAWs people through a range of team building activities, in broken English, whereby we balanced nails on nails, walked along on A frames, collected coloured balls while blind-folded and raced along on horizontal railway sleeper things.  Joining us were six students form the local international school who were there to give their viewpoint on the place as a potential setting for a regions wide gathering later in the academic year.  Overall it was good fun and, devoid of pointless scenarios about infected areas and nuclear waste the activities took on a fascination of their own.   There was also a bizarre gift shop attached to the place where I made sure that I bought my colleagues suitably useless and kitsch presents in the form of a Brookside key-ring and a slice of cake made out of nylon fabric, complete with plastic strawberry n the top.  It will be just what they have been looking for for ages.

Teams suitably built and many laughs had the team then headed back to the International School that was hosting the event for an excellent lunch and the first workshop.  The lunch included a brilliant pot of Thai tom-yam soup with shrimp and chicken with cashew nuts.  Excellent.  I like to think that the workshop that followed the lunch was equally excellent, but I ran it so I can’t really be sure. 

We then spent some more time planning the February schools meet-up while enjoying refreshments eaten off institutional pink plastic plated around 30cm by 20cm that had equally pink cups on them for our coffees.  I was sorely tempted to acquire a set to show off and to allow them to become the talking point of many a tea party back at home.  I may yet do that….

Dinner this evening was at a seaside restaurant where, once again it was the thing to do to eat excellent food and natter away merrily.  Before dinner I managed to hire a bike from the hotel for 100 baht to cycle off and explore the area.  It was great to cycle slowly along by the beach and peer into the various houses and shops that were open for all to see and really felt like an authentic South East Asian experience.  It is not the most beautiful part of Thailand but it is by the sea and warm and has great food.  Overall as a family I think we are better suited in KL but as a place to visit it has been very good so far, although it does have much more exciting Tupperware.

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Mr Robin’s Trip to Thailand – First leg  Home to KL airport.

1020 ish….I have decided that I really don’t like airline terrorists.  I guess that there are not really many people who do.  Clearly blowing up aeroplanes is not big or clever.  However it is the little inconveniences that their potential presence causes that leads to irritations.  Sitting here in a café at Kuala Lumpur’s Low Cost Carrier Terminal drinking a high cost cup of coffee my baggage is slightly lighter than it was when  left home this morning.  My can of shaving foam and tube of toothpaste has been unceremoniously chucked in a wheelie bin by zealous security people.  There was about enough left for half a dozen shaves and a good few squeezes of colgate remained too.  However size mattered, not volume.  The fact that I was carrying less then 100ml of both was neither here nor there.  The 250ml container of Sainsbury’s finest foam was considered too much of a rue infringement to be permitted as was the 150ml tube of blue toothpaste.  So my first port of call in Bangkok on arrival will now have to be to source the necessary chemicals to prevent facial hairiness and bad breath in containers under 100ml.

1530 (Thai time)Ekamai (Southern Bus Station in Bangkok)  Well I politely declined the offer of the hosting school to collect me from the airport and whiz me off to Rayong for the training / meeting and festivities and so far I don’t regret it.   Stepping out of Don Muang Airport into the Bangkok heat was a bit of shock.   It was certainly hotter than KL this morning although stepping into Don Muang was also an experience.  Lexi and I had last been through Don Muang eleven year ago when it was a busy international transport hub.   With the opening of the new airport in Bangkok Don Muang was mothballed but kept ticking over as a military airport.  Thanks to emergence of low-cost carriers such as Air Asia it has now been brought back in to use but really does feel a bit ghostly compared to before.    

Getting through immigrations took yonks.  There was nothing particularly difficult about getting through it simply took the various officials a long time to stamp my passport having read and re-read my passport and forms.  While I was waiting in the queue, in a nearby mass, lots people all seemed to be milling around and then occasionally charging around following a uniformed official who called out various random names often with the result of much laughter.  While the pushing a shoving and dashing was good-humoured it did appear to be quite a strange way to handle the systematic entrance into a country.

On clearing customs and entering the main terminal I couldn’t help but notice the Fish Inspection Office.  Naturally  had visions of uniformed officers looking in to tanks and plastic bags saying to passengers, “Yes, Madam/Sir, that is a fish,” and then life moving on.  However fish inspecting is obviously a dying occupation.  The office was deserted.  Picture the scene.  Two passengers arrive from overseas to Don Muang and the suspect that the package in their luggage that is wriggling is a fish, but are not sure.  Where do they go to confirm their suspicions now?

Much later, nearly midnight, and at Purimas Hotel, Ban Chang, not near to Rayong.  I say not that near to Rayong because it isn’t.   As I prefer to travel following the ever hopeful, slightly happy go lucky method there are bound to be a few hitches.  Arriving in Rayong and finding that I was thirty kilometres off course was a bit of a hitch.  Also arriving to find that there were no taxis around was also a bit of hitch.   I tried to confuse matters more by asking a lady in the bus station where the taxis were using my Aesan / Lao language and I succeeded.  Buoyed by this lack of success I tried to speak to a possible taxi driver looking chap who at least understood a bit more of what I was saying and he pointed me in the direction of two motorbike taxi drivers and their mate.  They confirmed to me that the place I was trying to head to was 30km away, in fact not that near Rayong at all and then a great thing happened.  A chap came along and said “can I help you?”  Between him and a phone call to the organizer of this great event we all managed to piece together that I was miles away from my target hotel and that a motorbike taxi was out of the question.  That’s where the previously mentioned mate came into his own.   He suddenly appeared to have access to a car and for 500 baht, about 10GBP, was able to deliver me to my destination.  Admittedly the drive through an industrial estate and petro-chemicals site did concern me a little but he was good to his word and we found it.  Pump action handshakes all round and I was there.

And here’s one more thought….The minibus driver from Bangkok to Rayong drove at amazing speed and extremely close to the rear of any vehicle that got in his way.  That is all par for the course in Thailand.  Why then did he take ages when filing up the fuel tank just outside of Bangkok?  There seems to be something very strange in the way that drivers travel at break neck speed and then dawdle when not behind the wheel.  Maybe they should move marginally faster and drive slightly slower?  Or is that too radical an idea? 

It was a very exciting afternoon at Chateau Lawrence today.  A lorry bearing our pallet of stuff various arrived!   Twenty-four boxes, two pictures and a TV were unloaded, signed for, copy of passport provided and the chaps were on their way.  It had taken a mammoth session of administration and phone calls to get it sorted out but customs were clearly cleared and here our stuff is, including the tickling stick thrown to us by the great Ken Dodd at the end of his Wolverhampton Christmas Show.  However I am left with a nagging problem.   Who the Hell Is Chrisilia Douglas?  On every box that arrived there was a sticky label with the words “Chrisilia Douglas, Cape Town, South Africa” printed on them.   Who is this phantom shipper?   Anyone got any ideas?

Names and their meanings / usages do make for great cross-cultural humour.  I was recommended that when I need a check-up with a reputable dentist that there is really only one chap to go: Dr Ow of Bangsar.  I was also pleased to learn about the trips co-ordinator at a nearby school named Mr Goh.  But no-where near as pleased as I have been to make the acquaintance of lots of fellow Robins, and a few Robyns.   There seems to be quite a glut of these finely titled children in my various classes and I have made a big point of congratulating them.

This week I have read two Bryony Lavery plays.  My colleagues and I have agreed to read the same play each fortnight and then talk about it at our weekly meetings.  The most recently chosen play was “Wedding Story”, you know the sort of thing, husband and wife coping with alzheimer’s, long lost son returns and a lesbian affair.  All good drama stuff.  I also read “Frozen.”  Serial killer, missing girl and psychologist with added anxious mother.  Sounds glum, but a good read and lots of possible monologues for the GCSE and A level students.

Feeling a little bit older today, despite still choosing to be 23, as another one of my former pupils had a baby.  Great news and welcome to world, Ava Mae, but things don’t half move on fast.

We have enrolled the children at William and Luisa’s dance school in Sri Petaling.  Lexi spent ages looking at lots of possible schools on the internet and chose the one the furthest away because it looked the most fun.  The first week was a bit of a false start as the regular teacher was away and her stand-in seemed to concentrate only on one step.  Last Sunday Luisa was back and she really made the class fun for all those involved.  Various little Lawrence’s clearly enjoyed the jive.   It was, once again a reminder to me that there is always a massive difference between the work and results of a teacher and a really good teacher.  On that note back to lesson planning.

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 I took part in a one day Performance Management training session this week.  Fellow teachers will doubtless have views on PM, depending how well or otherwise it is done on their schools, but my initial thoughts about having one day to learn all about PM were not particularly positive.  My experience of PM at my previous school were that it was done to you for 15 minutes every year and that targets set were sent back to you if management didn’t like them.  No-one seemed particularly bothered if you did not achieve the targets, nor were they hanging out the celebratory bunting if you did.  So Tuesday’s training session arrived and there was a lot of talk from a very enthusiastic trainer.  Candice was certainly passionate about PM and did manage to convert me away from my previous skepticism about a poorly conducted process to the possibilities that can occur when the system is done well.   There are always cross-cultural gems of questions that crop up during training days here and Tuesday’s little diamond was one that had the British teachers in the group smirking.  Candice, an Australian, asked “I am not familiar with OFSTED.  What is the purpose of their role and observations?”  That really did silence the crowd.  The best retort that came back was “It is a way of making sure that middle class parents are kept happy.” 

Good lunch to go with this day as well as some very local-looking snacks with the morning tea break.  Chicken sausages wrapped in some sort of carbohydrate material and then covered with various coloured bread crumbs, cut to appear like the Petronas Towers.  Curious looking and curious tasting.

As well as learning how to performance manage this week I also learned the gentle art of doing it things the right way.  Our shipping has arrived in country, but it will seemingly take an age to clear customs and then get delivered to our house, which is not in the middle of the street.  The receiving agents required vast amounts of paper and they can then arrange customs clearance, but they cannot deliver the goods to us.  That has to be arranged by someone else.  I sense a saga here.  Thankfully two very nice colleagues have helped out with the language barrier and made things happen a bit more smoothly,  I think.

Pay day was on Friday.  Whoopie.  Which made me start looking at holiday destinations for next Easter.  Our flights budget allows us to consider any of the following destinations: Perth, Vientiane, Hanoi, Katmandu, Seoul, Phnom Penh or Beijing.  Decisions.  Decisions.  But then we could always stay here.

Lexi and I enjoyed meal at Restaurant The Hot Chocolate last night.  Food was great.  Freshly made pizzas and pasta dishes.  Sadly the children’s fussy glands kicked in their enjoyment of the food was limited which limited our enjoyment.  Grrrr.

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I feel a bit like George Peppard from The A Team and, if I was a smoker, would probably want to smoke a cigar at this juncture.  But only part of that imaginary cigar because I am moderately pleased to announce that a plan has partly come together.  Today saw the delivery and acceptance of our vehicle from the much-mentioned Mr Desmond.  Lawrences are now the owners of a 2002 Hyundai Trajet, petrol automatic.  I know that this does not sound particularly glamorous and sounds even less glamorous when you add in the RM 30000, around 6000 pounds, price tag but it is a smooth machine and will, hopefully transport the Lawrence Clan on many adventures. 

One of the first places that it might need to transport me to is a doctor to prescribe a cure for that very Malaysian affliction: signer’s cramp.  As we approached the end game of the purchasing saga I was visited, yesterday, by a fine bloke from The Public Bank who brought with him the loan agreement: a tome of documents that required my signature or initials in fifteen different places.  Duly dispatched Mr D collected a cheque for around RM 10000 from me that evening and we were another step closer to ownership.

Today Mr Desmond phoned me again in a slightly agitated state, to announce that my bank, HSBC, were refusing to cash my cheque without me being present.  Rushing out of school I met the great man at the bank and, after the customary photocopying of my passport, probably to add to the several thousand copies that HSBC already have the cheque was cashed, Desmond paid and the car was almost ours.  Desmond, true to his word, delivered the fine vehicle to Chateau Lawrence, KL Branch, in the company of two other Chinese Malaysian guys who appeared to work for him. 

However ownership of vehicles in Malaysia is not a straightforward business.  Within touching distance of the two sets of keys Desmond pulled out a fresh mound of documents for me to sign.  Page after page I signed, including yet another copy of my passport, until I reached the last one and, of course, signed.  Done.  Cigars at the ready.  But one last matter to be attend to.  One of Desmond’s chaps pulled out an ink pad and pointed to a special box on the last document…the place for my thumb print.  What ever next?  I need to remind myself that I have only bought a car.  I have not adopted a small child, purchased a house or become leader of a democratic state, I have bought a car.  Thank goodness fellow Brits laughed the whole ID cards issue out while certain very daft politicians were championing them.  And so, with the added bonus of a full tank of fuel, the vehicle became a Lawrence vehicle.  I have the ink stain to prove it.  The only thing that both HSBC and Public Bank appear to have missed in their efforts to try to gain as many copies of my passport as possible is that no-one has mentioned how we are to pay back the 24 month loan.  Such a trifling matter does not appear to be of any great importance to such splendid institutions as banks.

The second plan that came together this week was the arrival of THE INTERNET to Chateau L.  Three excellent guys from Telecom Malaysia installed lots of boxes and cables and the internet, along with a collection of TV channels, appears to be working.  Again more copies of my visage as approved by Her Majesty’s Government have found their way to an institution and again no mention has been made of the need or process by which we should pay TM for their services.

Unfortunately part three of the uber-plan for this week did not come about.  Our shipping.  According to Vanguard Logistics of KL our stuff has arrived and we now need to make arrangements for it to be delivered.  Naturally it is not straightforward.  A forwarding agent needs to be appointed, conveniently Vanguard Logistics are not a forwarding agency.  Certain monies need to be paid, “No sorry Mr Robin we can not take paymentwith your credit card.  NO sorry we can not accept cash-on-delivery.”  How the hell do we pay?  Loads more documents are required, including, you’ve guessed it, a copy of my passport along with copies of a shipping document that the company must already have.  The race is on between Santa and our shipping.  Who will arrive first?

Thankfully the teaching has gone well this week.  Lots of interesting lessons and lots of interesting and interested students.  Good on them.  Today saw me collecting in essays written by my year eleven class, a splendid group of young people.   I had this rather quaint notion of paper with word-processed responses on, and some students did not disappoint.  One student went hi-tech and emailed me her work as an attachment.  Great.  Others went the whole hog and sent their work to me as a google doc that I can then comment on, share back with them.  My IT usage has taken a great leap forward despite my IT knowledge struggling to keep up.  Thanks loads to those marvelous people who have helped me get things right, technology-wise, this week. And thanks to those great students who have enrolled and auditioned for Peter Pan.  Currently the cast is 64, in number not in age. 

I turned 23 again this week.

Still trying to track them down!

Happy Malaysia Day everyone.  And the really happy way to celebrate Malaysia Day is to make sure that everyone has a day off.  Because Malaysia Day fell on Sunday 16^th this year the pay-back holiday was Monday 17^th which meant a day off and a long weekend at the beach for various Lawrences.

We gratefully accepted the offer of the use of a friend’s apartment at the coast and set off in the Proton Saga.  I like to think that Proton named its mainstay, signature vehicle because of its longevity: it goes on and on, just like any good saga.  With only 40,000 km on the clock it is only really only its warm-up cycle.  

Traffic was busy most of the way until we turned off the main north-south drag and then the ever cheery sat-nav took us to the coast road.  It had no idea where Coco Bay Beach Resort was but we were hopeful and peeled our various sets of eyes looking for bounty bar paradise.   While Coco Bay Beach Resort did not live up to my mental billing, we did eventually find the crumbling block that was to be our pad for two nights, negotiate our way past the mobs of swifts and associated bird crap on door bars and then dodge the leaks from the apartment above.  The apartment itself was very pleasant and arriving late as we did was just right to sleep in.  I dread to think what the people in the apartment above were doing that created so much noise and so many drips.

On Sunday morning the clan drove to a nearby beach and experienced our first immersion into tropical waters.  While the beach did not have the classiness of Cromer it also did not have the chill of Cromer’s sea.  In short it was just like bathing in a warm salty bath.  However the one faux-pas that we all made was our beach attire.  Malaysians on the beach wear the same when on the beach and in the water.  In effect it is a strictly clothes on swimming style.  It is a style that I really did not like when doing life-saving classes at school.  Classmates and I were forced to swim length after length of St Augustine’s Pool dressed in pyjamas in preparation for that sure to happen day when one might be out for a pleasant stroll, dressed only in one’s pyjamas and see a fellow human struggling in open water and in need of rescuing by a brave soul in their night attire.   Sadly I have never had the need to remove my non-existent pyjamas, knot the legs and make them into an impromptu float to save a soul from drowning.  From that period of time onwards I have never willingly swum in my clothes and I did not feel the urge to on Sunday either.   But I did stick out like a sore thumb.  White skinned and hairy-backed I was unique.  However I was not as much of a tourist attraction as Trixie.  Small blond girl, with regulation pig tails jumping happily over waves attracted much attention and photographs from a number of fellow swimmers and waders. 

Lexi’s desire to fit in with the fashion, understandable seeing as she would have been the only woman on the beach in a swimming costume had she gone in to the water forced me to add t-shit buying to the list of lunchtime chores that Rupert and I set of to do at lunchtime.  Clearly we bought lunch and also bought  Lexi the ghastliest garment available, a Mr Happy, with red tongue sticking out the side of his mouth and with the words “I LOVE PORT DICKSON” was what we found and duly bought.  Lunch was not a huge success.  The children all disliked their hotdogs as they had lots of brown sauce on them, the hot dogs not the children.  Edwin managed to unwrap his with his customary vigour and complete lack of delicacy and so his rolled smoothly onto the sand.  However sun drenched we did the leave the beach in relatively high spirits. 

After washing the beach off under the shower we cooled off at the apartment before setting out for tea, a rather nice Thai style meal which we had to order in broken Thai as the waitress spoke no English and we spoke no Malay.  Quite how come she was a Thai speaker we could not establish but the fish, vegetables, omelette and rice were all delicious.

Next to the restaurant was a curious looking warehouse-like, blue and white striped tent named Baden-Baden.  Scouting reference?  Malay-German twinning?  We had to explore.  It turned out to be neither.  Instead it was effectively a clothes market where pretty much everything was priced at RM5 per item.  Yes there were some fetching bargain blouses that Lexi bought  but my attention was grabbed by the huge range of t-shirts.  These were not just any t-shirts.  This was a place where people came to buy the really oddly designed and sign-written numbers that amuse the native English speaker.  Still chuckling from seeing a lady wearing a fitted pink number on the beach which bore a large red heart and the words “Love Child” I set about looking at the many offerings that were available and I was not disappointed.   A swift sift through the hangers and my eyes were taken by an orange number that had the following delightful phrase “Pimps Smoke Chronic.”  Marvellous.   I have no idea what the phrase means taken as a whole nor do I have any clue why such a phrase has been lovingly printed on an orange t-shirt.  All I know is that I now own it.  Please let me know if you have occasion when you might find use for it and you can gladly borrow it.

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Buying children’s school uniform is a hassling process, especially when you are new to the school and the country.  Thankfully some measures have been put into place to ease the hassled parent and even more hassled teacher-parent.  The school has its own shop where it sells pretty much everything that each current and new student needs.  School polo shirts, official school hats, PE tops and shorts, exercise and studying books and even pencils and rubbers.  OK it does get busy in the shop but the people who work there are efficient and know their stuff.  Great.  Easy.  Super.  Except that…

Observant people will have noticed that the shop sells pretty much everything that is needed.  The main items of uniform that it does not stock are uniform shorts, trousers, skirts or culottes.  These items have to be tailored by a visiting local company.  A small alarm bell began to tinkle ominously when I first discovered this news.  Measuring up two thousand pairs of legs and waists and then making several pairs of bottoms per measured lower half is not an operation to be undertaken lightly, nor is it likely to be one that achieves 100% success rate.  Anyway here’s what is meant to happen:

1.     Parent with child / children in tow arrives on week one for children to be measured and pay for garments.

2.     After queuing child is measured and numbers are written down on an order pad.

3.     Two weeks later garments are returned to school, collected and then worn by student.

Easy as pie.

Here’s what has happened so far to us.  Steps one and two went well, although there were many other parents with their many other children all around at the time when I showed up for measuring with my tribe.  Three more added to a crowd simply made a slightly larger crowd but it was still a crowd and it was still a challenge to get steps one and two done.  Last Friday, two weeks after the order was placed, I collected the finely tailored garments and took them home.  Edwin’s fitted perfectly.  That unfortunately is where the good news finishes.  Rupert and Trixie’s garments both failed the jump test.  The what test?   Many parents will be fully conversant with the jump test to check on the fitting of clothes.  If, after three jumps the trousers / skirts are still roughly in place then they are a satisfactory fit.  Both Rupert’s and Trixie’s garments failed on jump one and ended up round their ankles.  How can someone who took very exacting measures to achieve exact measurements end up getting them so very wrong?

Being a teacher I did not remove three Lawrence’s from their lessons to try on their freshly tailored garments because I did not want to disrupt their learning. Nor did it seem necessary as they were apparently going to receive bespoke bottom covers. 

And so to the solution?  Tomorrow, Friday, I will need to give up some of my non-contact time to remove children from their lessons to visit the alleged tailor between 1030 and 1230 and get the supposedly crafted shorts and culottes refitted, re-measured and re-made.   Doubtless it will take another week for the repairs to be effected without any guarantee of these repairs being successful.

The system appears to have been designed to use the maximum amount of time possible and to cause maximum inconvenience to parents who undertake that quaint pastime called work.  Could there not be a system whereby parents could visit a central place that is open throughout the day and stocks a range of sizes of said garments.  Perhaps this place could be called a, er, shop?  And it would appear that such a shop already exists at the school.   And so is it conceivable that this said school shop might be a very convenient place to act as a, er, retailer of ALL school uniform items?   There is a tremendous amount of common sense flying round at my school and it really is a breath of fresh air to breath and thrive on this clear educational thinking.  However tailoring school shorts etc is not common sense.

Very sweetly Trixie has attempted to bring a solution to her problem pants.  She has almost effected a like for like swap.  She has given one of her pairs of culottes to a girl in year one who has culottes that are too small for her.  Conveniently she has forgotten the girl’s name although is sure that she, the girl, has a pink armband and sometimes her Dad brings her to school.   I am currently somewhere between wanting to cuddle and kill Trixie.  Thank goodness for non-uniform day tomorrow.

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After my first, almost full, week at school I thought that it would be just thing to take part in my school’s seemingly traditional way to end the working week: a mass game of football.  Sweating, heaving bulks of men who lumber around the extremely large pitch trying to look like they know what they are doing accompanied by a gang of blokes who really can play the beautiful game.  I am happy to say, with certainty,  that I fit into the former category.   It has been many years since I have played on a full size pitch and boy oh boy it is a very large pitch!  I always enjoyed the Saturday indoor football at Coseley with a gang of players who ages and skill levels were as broad as each other.   And there were two immediate differences I noticed between Coseley and my school’s pitch in Kuala Lumpur: walls and heat.  I used to sweat buckets playing in Coseley, but even when it got to eight a side indoors and in the height of Summer there was very little humidity.  But the construction that really aided middle of age bracket and lower end of the skills set players like me were the walls.  How good was it on the very few occasions I managed to get round an opponent by playing the soft yellow ball off the wall and then accelerating (please be generous to me here) past them.  There were no such helpful walls on Friday’s pitch.  Still it was good fun and if my dodgy ankle holds up I may well risk another outing next Friday.

Saturday saw Lawrences finding the nearest LRT station, Kepong, and exploring the KL Sentral area.  With an added monorail journey we found our way to MATIC, the Malaysian Tourist Information Centre, to pick up hints and ideas about where we really need to visit.  MATIC is a very pleasant single story, colonial-type collection of buildings that give a feeling of calm just out of the main centre.  Next we walked on towards KLCC and The Petronas Towers.  Petronas Towers really are massive and they seem even more massive every time Edwin reminds me of their exact meterage.  Walking through the shopping centre and out the other side to KLCC I was impressed by the water fountains.  It is a pleasant gathering place, with some shading from trees as well as many vantage points to enjoy the various watery displays.  There really is something soothing about water fountains.  Wolverhampton was much derided at Full Council meetings and by the local media for the installation of water features in Queen’s Square but it did attract people to the centre and it was calming.  Whether it was right to spend public money on those features is another debate but the twenty minutes that we sat down for at KLCC watching the displays were relaxing ones.

We all enjoyed a colleague’s birthday barbecue in Mont Kiara and particularly enjoyed the pork sausages.  Yes PORK sausages.  Feeling slightly like an outcast I bought our contribution from the “Non Halal” section of JustCo supermarket and then paid for them at the only available checkout, staffed by a muslim lady.  She dutifully read to the written price for the sausages but did not scan or touch them.  Curious.  They tasted great.  I discussion with another colleague I was told, in no uncertain terms, “Don’t do guilt.”  That advice has served me well in the past and it is advice I intend to follow further.

Following the meat theme after getting home from the barbecue I ventured off to Tesco of Kepong to stock up on the essentials….and what a bargain I found.  Best cuts of steak and beef hacked down to 10% of its normal price.  Ok it was out of date that day but when faced with GBP 33.52 worth of fresh, best cuts for GBP 4.66 it would be rude not to clear the shelf.  It tasted great in a hotpot with jacket potatoes for lunch.  Children opted for the ever popular pasta and cheese, cheese priced at GBP 5 for 250 grams.  A luxury food.

Back to work again tomorrow and I have a curious feeling.  I am actually looking forward to it.