Vocal, Call Bell, WhatsApp

Vocal  -  My house is small, ironically my kids can’t hear my calling, I have to raise my voice, yell and even scream to the air.  Moments later, my kids pop their heads out from their door and look at me innocently, "mom, you called me ??"

My entire neighborhoods within 1 km away know my kids names, reason not because of me being sociable.   Sad to say that my decent image has been ruined.

Call Bell - To ‘recollect’ and salvage my image back, I did a lot of findings, and my bingo came after I watched Mr Bean at Room 426, YES !!  The Call Bell.

I placed the call bell near the staircase.  ‘Ding Ding Ding ! ’ my kids hated that sharp ding sound, so they will response to me to prevent further sound pollution.   

WhatsApp  -  in line with the latest technology, I got to thank both Brian Acton and Jan Koum for the great invention of Whatsapp, an additional gadget for me to ultilise beside call bell, I use it for all purposes; notification of meal time, exhibit room messiness with photo attached, change of house rule and many more.

Glad to say that a picture is worth a thousand words.  At times, I will exhibit the dos and don’ts, or before and after. 

As both my teens are now staying at hostel, I created a group chat in Whatsapp, and update them the happenings at home.  I dont have to update them one by one when they are back in different date and time.    

Life make easier with WhatsApp.  Most important, I gain back my decent self.    

Angel or Devil ??

My Litter L goes to school by school van, there are mixture of standard 1, 2 & 3 girl & boy students in the little vehicle. Little friends are small in sizes, but the noise they made are equivalent to 100 twinttee birds sharing in one cage.

They are having great fun during the journey, chat, play and waive to passerby and commuters. Some time, they tend to disagree with each other, and start the name calling, pushing, punching and throwing little things.

Little L will come back sharing on the happening in school and in van, regardless of happy, sad, angry or frustration.

One day, Little L told me that he was sad to have enemy, I come to know that this standard 2 girl, accusing Little L and friends for pulling her hair and poking her eyes. It seems that she was the victim among the boys, cause was unknown.

Her mom was furious about the incident, she went into the van with a camera, she took pictures of all the boys, giving stern warning and threatened to report this issue to the school principal for their misconduct in van. Little L was upset about it, after discussion among themselves, a group of 5 students went to see principal to tell the truth that they are being misquote and unfair judgement. School head take note of the issue and so far, little girl mother has not turn up for the complaint. (maybe she meant to frighten the boys only)

After a few days later, it seems that the quarrel and bad feeling still persisted, again, the little girl’s mother turn up in the van with a rattan stick in hand, scolding and threaten to beat the so call naughty boys who disturb her daughter.

How strange to see such an over protective mother? Did she really find out how her daughter behaves? Was told by van driver that little girl was engaged in fierce tongue fight with the boys as well, she was no loser.

Children are smarter than parent, in front of parent they can be angel, but, behind they are no angel but devil.

To mend the situation, the van operator separated the little angel to be seated in front beside driver. There, solve the entire problem. As usual, boys and girls are happy to play around with the little angel missing the fun, mother of angel have stress-less night with the camera and rattan stick keeping for good use.

The world is in peace again.

Short Hair Policy

Some teens feel that making impression is the priority in life, they go along with trendy hairstyle, fashionable clothes and shoes, they just wish to express themselves and their believe. Unfortunately, the school rules everything above. My teens’ hairstyle always irked me to no end, both have enrolled in different high school with short hair policy.

The schools’ rules are stricter than monk’s temple, to ensure that all hair length unify, spot check is carried out, the horror look hairdressers with comb & scissor appear to perform the immediate ‘rectification’ on the offenders, no free meal and each student shall be charged RM2 for the cut. The dancing scissor goes snip! Snip! Snip ! thus making those affected less pretty & handsome. The smirking smile from the discipline teacher shall bring tears to the students.

Unfortunately, my teen boy adores celebrity hairstyle, pushing the boundaries mimicking “Wu Chun” (picture attached), he takes good care of his hair, he style his hair when needed, assorted range of hair gel, spray, conditioner, mousses and a full line of hair care stuff are seen on his dressing table, to prepare for his look, longer hours are needed. He shall frequently pinching and styling his hair with fingers.

If he is unlucky, he can’t be spared for the cut, at times, I was invited to school to discuss on his trendy hairstyle.

Ironically, I have an obedient teen girl, she ensures that her hair length mustn’t touches her collar, she will get rid of the extra length no matter how, or even DIY. She is doing it beyond the set requirement and hair looks awfully short for a girl.

My girl uses the traditional toothed device called comb, and it makes thing simpler and easier, she is more economical minus all the hair care products and uses less shampoo for her hair length. She is care less on outlook, she doesn’t mind walking around with messy Albert Einstein look, she just smirks and fingers combs after we sounded her.

I always puzzled and confused with my teens’ behavior, they are of opposite characteristic, I have to neutralise them by asking boy to keep shorter hair and persuading my girl to extend that few millimetre length.

Lost & Found

My hair stand up went I found things missing from my home, my blood pressure shoot up causing my hair curl and burnt when my kids said, “I don’t know, I never use.” I feel like juicing them and drink, or stuff them back into my stomach where their hometown was.

Obviously all these items do not have wings that make flying possible, neither do my kids have the ability to ‘David Copperfield’ it.

Giving up the idea of confronting the kids debating who took it, I ended up replacing all the missing items, storing them in highly confidential places where the kids shall have no clue to find the location. Can you imagine that I am turning my dressing table into tool table keeping screw drivers, test pen, measurement tape, meter, cellophane tapes, scissors, screwdriver, Uhu glue, etc. I ever think of getting a big safe box to keep things, especially scissors & nail clippers.

There was that ONE day, the sun rises from the North, the lightning strike on my head, which brought me the courage to do room cleaning for my kids, the scene wrecked by typhoon Ketsana and Tsunami, I am like the rescuer salvaging the property from the rubbles. My eyes blink blink, as I discovered my long lost nail clippers, my camera, my card reader, scissors, screwdriver, face cleanser, canister and more more... I am more joyful than slimming 5 kgs weight.

My kids earned themselves long winded nagging for at least 3 weeks.

In the mind of kid

My little Lu complaint that he only see white wall whenever he wakes in the morning. (I kind of feeling guilty, as I leave to work before he open his eyes)

With a piece of paper and a pen, he said he is going to put up something nice on the wall.

On the next morning, I found the piece of paper sticking on the wall

It merely had these 4 big words - "Play Yo-Yo Now"

Girl who lost her way

My daughter W was in cross road after getting her SPM (Form 5) result, she doesn’t know what she wants to study to be in line with her future career.

The effort had been made from my side by providing vast info and full support, with the hope to help her gained a clearer picture of what suit her on what she want. She attended numerous talks, spending hours with the lecturers finding out, seek advised from school councillor, exchange view with teachers & headmaster, and finally all my unfortunate friends and relatives were forced to chip in and help.

Since young, W had limited access to TV program, allowing her to watch Disney, Animal planet & Discovery channel, she loved the show of late Steve Irwin – “The Crocodile Hunter", where she developed the passion on animals, then, her ambition was to become Veterinarian.

During her long break waiting for SPM result, she was free to watch any program to kill her 100 days boredom, she landed up watching soap drama related to the legend of Lawyer, she changed her mind to pick Law for study.

With all her intended ambitions made me busy during the 100 days, for her choice of Veterinarian, I had brought her to pet shops, shown her the reality of work, able to tolerate the stink odour, the messiness, the dirt and the not so discipline pets.

Follow by Magistrate court to witness court procedures, she adored seeing lawyers dressed up smartly in black, but, when the session began, she had instant disappointment on the lawyer presentation, soft and monotonous tone, where was the excitement and thrill as shown in the TV ??

I witnessed some ‘katak’ (frog) teenagers jumping around, jump from science to art stream, from A-level to form 6, from medicine to fashion, from accounts to chef. I am kind of worry she will get the deadly virus of katak.

Finally, she picked sixth form to continue her study, allowing her another 2 more years to firm up her ambition. During which, I will help her to explore further on her liking in Psychology, Physiotherapy, Ecologist & more, I presume ?

Extra Classes to Excel

There are plenty of tuition centers near my area to cater for primary & secondary student, almost 95% of the student attended at least 2 or more classes per week. Those do well in academy without tuition are classified as eccentric, extraordinary or genius.

Traffic jam and air pollution are normal scene near tuition centre. Teachers’ supplementary income rise from 4-digits to 5-digits, high tech gadget such as notebook, overhead projector, wireless microphone are used to cater big classes of more than 100 students.

Catching up 2 or 3 tuition lessons after school is a norm, kids are picked up from school and send from one to another tuition class, to save time, eating & changing clothes in the car are made possible.

Competition is rife, tuition centers are all ways out to lull and recruiting more students, advertisement banners of all sizes and colors are in race along the road, flyers are distributed much often to add weight in selling together with newspaper. To maintain good reputation, some centers prefer to pick top performance students, gradually sift out or disqualify the non performance student.

I happened to bump into a reputable tuition center for secondary school. To amaze me that the responsible principal actually acted like a discipline teacher with a long cane in her hand, auditing classes from time to time. She will hop into noisy class, exercises her cane by smacking on the table to wake up or frighten the student, punishing the chatter box by separating their sitting position, confiscating handphone if found any, lastly wind up with 10 mins long winded preaching causing the student to yawn.

Hmmm..... student at the age of 13 ~ 17 yrs is old enough, wondering the appearing of cane will do any help to deter wrong doing? I believe lots of parent welcomes this act, to ensure that their kids are under close supervision. How the student feel being treated like small kid ? I ended up in deep deep puzzle & pondering. Readers, appreciate if you could share your view for enlightenment.

Teacher Veejay & His Student

My 6 years old little L was promoted to become teacher Veejay by my Indon helper (my son liked the name Veejay), she was very grateful that my son taught her English & Mandarin, she used a brown exercise book to pen down words and learn how to pronounce it.

Teacher Veejay arranged tuition for her on weekdays and rest on weekend. Sometimes, teacher Veejay got angry as she was absent minded and failed her spelling, she would get 10 times ear squad or 10 times correction as punishment.

On one beautiful fine day, my helper over joy and told me that there was this Malay guy proposed marriage to her. Thunder, lightning & rain showered onto my head, my face was sure longer than Prince Charles, she had breached her promised by befriended to stranger. Being high in EQ I kept the fear inside me, just cautious her to beware of naughty man who seeks for free sex.

A few days later, my helper again confessed to me that she was in love with a Ban-ga-lai (Bangladeshi) , he was very handsome, he would ride his black steel horse (bicycle) round our house during weekend. She was thankful to teacher Veejay as he had bridged both of them together by translating the English letter.

To me I consider lucky that she was frank to let me know the happening, and I had taken drastic action to stop further development. As for Teacher Veejay, he will be putting up in day care from next month onwards, as for mending the house, another mature maid was engaged.

My son V was not well, taking the advantage of company benefit, we went to company panel doctor. Am forcing V to bring all of his text books so that he can have revision in the queue, but to my surprised that only one patient was ahead of me. Two of the clinic assistants were swapping flies while another was doing nails filing.

Where are all the pretend to sick employees? I miss them walking pass my seat, looking fatigue, painful, distress, or worst case limping, groaning pain, shortness of breath, shaky, unsteady, stiff gait, toe walking & etc.

The name calling bring me back, enter and found the young locum doctor, I just told him V was having sore throat, coughing & flu. The doctor placed a thermometer on V’s forehead with his hair underneath. The doctor started scribbling on the card, and in the meantime he murmured ironically, ‘take less oiling food & drink plenty of water. ‘, then with the word OK he signaled us to go out.

The whole process took less than 2 minutes. Super fast and that was the reason why I miss all the ‘good’ show.

During my young days, we used to play pretend game, I love to play the role of doctor, I will ask my patient to stick out tongue to check on the throat, use stethoscope to listen the heart & lung, and use a handkerchief to wrap round patient arm and pretend to check their blood pressure.

What happen to nowadays’ doctor ? Has the procedure been void??

Mon, I want Rocket

Was caught in the jam on the way to tuition, my 6 yr old son was wondering why there are so many rocket flags flying along the road.

Well, am taking this opportunity to start my long winded way of ‘education’ on the 12th Election, this little chap listen with enthusiastic.

‘Mom, I want to vote Rocket’, insisted by him, ‘and I also want you to vote Rocket, and later we can go inside there to see the Rocket, can we ??’

DAP… you have got your branding right by drawing the young voters …. Clap.. clap.. clap..

It is good that you did not die at 42

Am playing the CD of Teresa Teng during the trip to Kumon tuition, I told Louis that Teresa Teng is one of my favourite singer, it was pity that she passed away at the age of 42.

After a short silent, Louis said with a smile, ‘mom, it is good that you did not die at 42’.

This little 5 years old son could have sense the fear of dying ….