Si Empat Sekawan

One day we got hit by a serious bout of homefoodsickness. Lina would understand pefectly what i mean. i was just about to write an entry of what aku serbu dulu the moment kita sampai singapore. and no, it's not our parents..hahaha...

ok, so anyway, The Hasbern felt like good old sop bontot that day *oh my god i feel a fit of giggles coming...a personal pun there...*giggles** let's not even think of how un-aesthetic the name is. i felt like good food for money. trust me, in this land where they charge exorbitant prices for cooked food, you come across banyak tempat yang indah khabar dari rasa.

so anywhere kita dah mogok tak nak pergi Latansa lagi sebab dia punya serving punyalah cinonet setotet-let. we went to Bintang Cafe, a really small place which gives you a real warong-makan-in-indonesia feel the moment you step into it. they were playing all these lagu indonesia 70-an which gave me goosebumps cos they remind me so much of listening to radio warna during maghrib, you know, those songs they play before/after azan.. and all those times as a small kid you just listened to whatever your parents listened to on the radio.
so desperate i was to reconnect with what i heard that i called mak and actually hummed the songs for her to identify the title/artistes. and she threw up names like Tetty Kady, Titiek Puspa, Titiek Sandhora, The Mercy (i'm sure you heard of this very poignant song which goes Ayah/dengarkanlah/aku ingin menyanyi/walau airmata di pipiku). fwah...very the nostalgia

yeah, so anyway, Bintang serves such good food. i had mie ayam jamur pangsit (mee ayam with wantan). The Hasbern had his fetish while Ilhan had tahu telur. with teh botol of course.




so anyway, when we got back home, there was a huge parcel at the door. someone was very happy obviously. someone feigned ignorance as to what's inside when someone has already explicitly indicated someone's interest in a particular yellow sports car/robot to anyone who would listen.









dan sesungguhnya dengan ketibaan barang hantaran ni, maka LENGKAPLAH koleksi si mamat. he has Megatron, Optimus Prime and Ramjet speedposted by his favourite Maman Farhan (thanks maman!) and he's got an-almost Bumble Bee from Tok Jamil. he's the happiest 2.5-yr old around, one who sings "Transformers, robots in disguise" in a pseudo robotic voice ad-nauseum macam rekod rosak.



tetapi tekalah sesungguhnya siapa yang pening kepala dengan kehadiran Empat Sekawan ni? ya...tak lain dan tak bukan, makbapak dia. kenapa? sememangnya si Empat Sekawan ni kan suka bertukar-tukar rupa, dan sesungguhnya mekanismenya tak terbuat oleh Si Kecik, maka....

"Ibu/Baba, jadikan dia robot"
"Alahhhh...ibu tak paham lah buat-buat ni semua...."
"Alah ibu tengok paper dia lah, kan ada gambar"
<after several chest-thumping attempts>
*sumpah seranah* "Mak kauuuu...."
"Jangan cakap makkau, tak baik kan!"
<after more silent Mak Kauuusss>
"Eh pening lah kepala aku buat benda ni!"
"Eh mana boleh cakap aku, tak bagus kan."

and all of a sudden he turns into Anthony Robbins.

"Come on ibu, you can do it"
"Alah...pening lah kepala, ilhan tengok paper dia buat sendiri lah"
"Ibu kan tahu, ibu kan boleh buat. You can do it."

and when i finally transformed the yellow sportscar into Bumblebee...

"OK ibu...sekarang jadikan dia car ok?"

aku transform jadi hantu kang baru tahu.

that got me into another round of tears, so Baba painstakingly spent a few hours figuring it out.

bukan tu je, bila naik kereta...

"Ibu, kereta kita boleh transform jadi Transformer tak?

our 17-year old haprak hatchback yang kemek sana sini tu? i don't think so.

Ku Ke Udara Lagi

tumultuous, the past 2 weeks. finally finished CELTA. finally i had a great grammar lesson - used Legally Blond's courtroom scene to teach reported questions. planned a speaking-skills lesson based on alanis morissette's You Learn for my final teaching practice on the second last day of the course, but didn't manage to carry it out.

because i lost the baby.

i was inconsolable that day, but together with The Hasbern and ilhan, we got over it. biologically it was perhaps for the best, and besides, Allah is All-Knowing and All-Wise. He knows what's best. ada hikmah di sebalik segala apa yang berlaku. alhamdullillah it didn't happen with all the big shebang that i always hear of - no pain, no blood melimpah-limpah. it just went away quietly.

wallahu'alam.

so i missed the last 2 days of course, and Paul assured me that it's perfectly alright. the tutors have been fantastic in their support. alhamdullillah. i have 2 interviews coming up next week. insya Allah, things will go according to His plans.

i've been spending the past few days with my sayangs. took Ilhan to the mall on friday. it was the school hols so they had a The Mermaid road-show for kids. Ilhan was all excited, until the show started. he kept his head done and looked everywhere but the stage. "Apa hal budak ni?" i thought.

"Kenapa ilhan? Kenapa tak nak tengok?"
"Kakak tu tak malu. no shame."

He was referring to the very-toned mermaid who had only red flowing hair and a 2-shells-shaped-bra to cover her boobs apart from the tight tail-costume covering her bottom half. he didn't want to watch anymore so we went off.

!!!!!!! alahai baiknya si ilhan harith ni...ahaks. please stay this way sampai besar ok baby?

Mr (present) Perfect and Mr (past) Simple

I had two 1-hr lessons this week. The first a grammar lesson, on present perfect simple VS past simple. Oh god. The prep had my brains in knots – for days prior to that I was wrecking my brain planning the lesson, sleeping at 2am accompanied by Mr PPS and Mr PS. It didn’t go too well – well, the students got it and all, but course-wise I forgot to do what we’re expected to do - concept-checking, drills etc. plus, I TALK TOO DARN MUCH. that was a Bad Lesson Day, and luckily (tak baik aku) everyone’s had one so far.

The second one rawks! This time it’s a skills-based lesson on listening and speaking, and the theme was the environment and being green. Alhamdullillah I’ve done this theme like every year for every level I’ve taught back home. And I tapped on student’s experiences – I got gunawan (a civil engineering lecturer back home) to share what he knows of the Sidoarjo mudflow environmental disaster with the class. And this time, there was less of me talking – I had to physically put a finger on my lip to stop my big mouth from talking and butting in their discussion. And boy did they talk today. Gunawan was in his elements talking abt indonesia’s (almost futile) efforts to prevent deforestation, Lily shared China’s baby-steps in green practices (“But it’s hard…we have too many people”), and even Keigo ventured beyond his polite nods and smiles by telling us how in japan they really sort out their rubbish into categories. And Marwa rolled her eyes and with a sardonic smile said “In Lebanon we never recycle. And pollution is everywhere.”

I must say it was interesting how for this particular lesson/theme, our arab friends (Saudi and dubai) were for once rather muted. Apparently it’s an alien thing to them, both in terms of vocabulary and practices. They’ve never heard of the word ‘recycle’. Go figure.

In one of our post-mortem discussions, we talked about how should we respond to potentially sensitive situations. In her lesson, Jo asked the students to talk about where their countrymen usually go for holidays. Shekhan from Kurdistan partnered Huong from Vietnam.

Huong: Shekhan says, in Kurdistan, people do not go abroad because their country is having war.

Poor Jo had to make her repeat that a few times due to the mispronounced 'war'.

Shekhan: Huong says that Vietnam people want to go other countries for holidays but cannot because they don't have money.

Whoa..how do you respond to that? We came up with “Well, we’re really happy to have you here with us.” Boleh?

I realize that being a non-native speaker-teacher, my ears seem to be more tuned to thick foreign accents, and making out what the students are trying to say. probably being singaporean/malay/muslim exposes us to more diverse nationalities/cultures/tongues. Hence I could explain to Cynthia why the class did not really warm up and share her enthusiasm when she started off a lesson on accepting/refusing invitations with booze, gig and BYOB party. it might have worked better if she had a class of fellow brazilians.

2 more weeks to go.

meanwhile Baba and Ilhan's bonding time of movies and kitchen-adventures continues...:)