di mana-mana pun sama

check out this report from yesterday's The West Australian:

New study shows half of young chalkies want out

31st January 2007, 6:45 WST

Almost
half of new teachers in WA plan to leave the profession within five
years because of heavy workloads and badly behaved students, according
to a new survey. 

An Australian Education Union study of 1299
teachers across Australia who had been teaching for between one and
three years found a quarter of them did not see themselves teaching in
five years.
  
Forty-three per cent of the 81 teachers
surveyed in WA planned to quit within five years, blaming behaviour
management, workload, class sizes and poor pay.
  
Nationwide, 40 per cent had changed professions to become teachers yet believed they would quit within 10 years.
  
About 80 per cent said they were not adequately trained to deal with parents or colleagues.
  
Nearly
39 per cent said they had no instruction or experience in classroom
behavioural management, while in WA and across Australia almost 70 per
cent of teachers had no training to deal with indigenous students.
  
AEU
president Pat Byrne said the growing level of discontent within the
education system would only compound the national teacher shortage. 

the story's the same here, i guess. the first 2 paragraphs just about sum up the situation in sg too. yours truly truly enjoyed the first 3.5 years and then by the fifth year she got burnt out.

enjoying the break now :)

anyway, back to the papers. it can be disconcerting reading the Letters section of the papers sometimes. it's of course, not la-la and sterile like the ST's Forum page. so whenever there's some issue on islamic radicalism you get letters pouring in - some level-headed ones speaking up against the branding and stereotyping, some reeking of insularity and jingoism (along the lines of 'Finally Islam has shown its true colours to the people of our great nation'). it makes me wonder; in my daily dealings here, how many people i come into contact with belong to the first group, and how many belong to the second.

ilhan and i went over to the Morley family centre and checked out the playgroup facility. the play area's huge, much bigger than the Noranda one, plus it's next to The Galleria (the major shopping centre) and the markets and everything. so i asked and called the lady in-charge, and Ilhan will be starting his playgroup sessions next week.

the ultimate in homesickness: when Ilhan asked "Ana mana?" and "Surya mana?"

for the uninitiated, these 2 are characters (Ana being Tamara Blezinsky, Baba's favourite too. bapak dgn anak sama) in the long-running (and long-viewer-suffering) indonesian sinetron Hikmah which played on Suria for last year. and of which Ilhan can't help watching memandangkan the trailers run every 10 minutes. and of course, nenek and ibu got hooked on it towards the end, despite hair-pulling exasperation over "eeeee....bodohnya si Ana ni....kenapalah dia biarkan orang bully dia macam tuuuuu!!!"

ya...so...Ilhan even memorises the Hikmah theme song, which he asks me to sing over and over again with him. so we know he's truly homesick when he's done asking about family and starts asking about hikmah characters. he gets his dose of Hikmah over Youtube now. :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVh8b9SXbDk