I m down with the flu and I have mc for 2 days. Yay! The prelim exams are going on and for the first time yesterday and today - it ran without me in school. That shows the marks of a good system which I set in place. So I feel quite proud of that.
On another note not very happy in school. Especially where discipline is concerned. Its not very consistent. We had a case recently of a student who punched a teacher and the teacher was sacked immediately - the teacher had been giving prob before and was given a warning letter before. As for the student - they are still deciding as the parents appealed and threatened to go to the press. In the investigation that happened we found out the boy had joined hands with a another group of boys and was bullying another student like throwing up on his bag and so on. And the school is still sitting on the case even after a boy was punched by these guys. And today the boy has to be in the same class with them. Hope it goes well today and they removed the boy.
Yesterday I confiscated two handphones from my class students as the other students claimed they sent porno messages. Then when i checked their phones i found they had been exchanging messages in the morning during chinese class. So I asked them to get their parents to get their phones. The boys kow-towed to me and pleaded not to take their phones - both had warnings before. But I could feel that the class felt that I was being too harsh. It is yet a part of the local culture here - a lot of pple dont see that when they do something wrong there should be consequences. They feel sorry for the pple being punished and ask that they be forgiven. And this attitude prevails on all levels of society and thts why a lot of pple dont learn their lessons.

Well i am fated. Last year I had Alex and this year I have another student K who got into trouble. He first loses his own phone. He stole two handphones from other students. What does he do with the first one? - He decides to show off to the other kid that it is a new phone and that he didnt tell his mum as she would thrash him. So when he was found out some kids said he only said he stole the phone so his mum wouldnt find out about the lost phone. I had to get the truth out so got his good friend to sit with me and question him. The good friend was so sure K was right. So he was really shocked K mentioned that he had kept back the stolen phone and taken another one. When K found out when he got home that myself and the P were looking for him, he threw the phone into the neighbour's garden. The phone started ringing n the neighbour's maid picked up the phone and thats how he got found out. He really is a good boy in my class. I just had given him the additional responsibility of collecting english files and he does it diligently. In fact other than for his big mouth - he behaves well in my class. So what to do ? I have given him another chance but its difficult. Hopefully he doesn't steal phones again.

Went for a colleague's wedding just now - she's from Sumatra and it was a traditional wedding. They had a traditional dance as the couple came into the reception and then a prayer followed by music. What I remember from the event was that my colleage had remembered that I was vegetarian and had taken the trouble to order seperate food for me. While I was looking for food, this lady came up and said " Oh are you Dian's friend who is vegetarian? and pointed me to the veg section. There wasn't much food there but what touched me was that despite being busy and being stressed with wedding preparations - my friend had asked someone to go after me and tell me about the food - no one has ever done that before at a function. Usually people just ignore that I am vegetarian or joke that there is grass outside. Being used to all this it came as a pleasant surprise that someone had thought of me on the busiest day of their lives.