IT'S A PANDAN LIFE ...!

It is easy to be brave from a safe distance. ~Aesop Tomorrow I'll take the road less traveled And see if it leads to your heart.

Love can consign us to hell or to paradise, but it always takes us somewhere. ~ Paul Coelho After reading Ben Okri’s In Arcadia , I kept on thinking about the writer’s vision of Arcadia. It’s true that the place did exist (as history has proven), and people from all walks of life since antiquity have discussed, imagined, explored, debated, and interpreted this entity called ‘Arcadia’ but ideally, it can only exist in one’s heart. All six characters in this novel have different ideas of what is Arcadia and in the end, the only similarity between these conflicting notions is, Arcadia is just an imaginary idyllic paradise. On earth. You either see it or you don’t. You either feel it or you don’t. Hmm. Nice paradoxes. The minute I finished reading this novel, I began to question: “What is my Arcadia?” I don’t think my definition of Arcadia is any different from Jute’s definition (Jute is one of the characters). Jute thinks that her work is Arcadia. To have work to do, work that you like ...

If you can read this, thank a teacher. ~ Anonymous Now that the new semester has started, I can’t help but think about those notes that my kids will surely leave on my door. As it is, I’ve already got two. If I were to keep every single note I received throughout the 13 years I have been here, I would have bundles and bundles of them and there would be no way that these bundles would not be obstructing the already limited space in my office. There are actually many reasons why kids leave notes. I've identified four. 1. To ask for class schedule and venue and which group they’re supposed to sign up for. I got lots and lots of these in the past when I taught those English proficiency courses. A common content would be: Puan, saya pelajar dari Fakulti XXX, ingin tahu bila dan dimanakah kelas XXX akan diadakan. Yeah, right. When everything is already in the time table book that has been given to you and the schedule is already pasted on my notice board. At one time, after about 10 or...

Oblivious – Not aware of something especially what is happening around you. Ignorant – Not having enough knowledge, understanding or information about something. I don’t know which word best describes me where my neighbourhood is concerned. I am well aware of the developments that have taken place and are taking place in this neighbourhood. Compared to when I first moved in 7 years ago, Bandar Seri Putra has evolved into an almost complete township. It now has, among others, a post office, a police station, a 7E, and rows and rows of all kinds of shops and schools. A government-funded medical centre is also being built. The primary school, which is located very, very near to my house, is now complete and will be open in no time. The sekolah agama is also complete, waiting to be open. The secondary school is probably gonna be complete next year. The developer has also demarcated the site for a mosque. Amen. I am therefore not oblivious where developments in BSP is concerned. Nor am I i...

Driving is a spectacular form of amnesia. Everything is to be discovered, everything to be obliterated. ~ Jean Baudrillard In this strange car We're driving slow I want to get out of this driving seat And take the passenger's Will you let me? When we reach there We won' t be able to run Or walk Or stand still We'll lose our footings But we won't fall We'll fly high.

The living are just the dead on holiday. ~ Anonymous Note: This entry is my attempt to resume writing again after a long hiatus. The long semester break is going to end soon. How time flies. One would think that this 2 ½ month break is LONG and we teachers would be shaking legs in the office or at home but it wasn’t the case where I was concerned. I WORKED throughout the break. The only time I really, really, really didn’t work was when I went for a 10D8N vacay in the States. That was it. You can check my leave record: the only leave I took was for the States trip. The break started at the end of April. For the first two weeks I was busy with marking papers, keying in the marks and going to schools to evaluate those trainee teachers under my supervision. Other than these, I would be in the office, mostly working on writing articles. All in all I worked on one journal article, which I had to revise a few times, and two conference articles. These took up a lot of my time and were very t...

Wit is cultured insolence. ~ Aristotle I think I’ve become a Facebook addict. Well, maybe not a full-blown one but a considerably-adddicted one. The reason I’m saying this is because I log in to FB as often as I check my work email. Embarassing, but true. FB is fun due to so many reasons, of course, but to me, the reason it is fun is I get to stay connected with my friends, keep up with their antics, and, like a blog, I could actually express how I feel without going through the hassle of writing long-winded paragraphs. It doesn’t matter whether I get a response or not, the fact that I’m able to actually express what I feel is already therapeutic. Lately, I find myself logging in to FB (as usual) and doing all (well, maybe not all, but most of) those quizzes that have been uploaded. Yup, reality-checks and what not can actually be fun (depending on what you mean by fun). Engaging in soliloquy, laughing out loud, cursing the smart alecs who came up with the wisecracking quizzes can be ...