i'm out in the real world, and i don't like it

not one bit

adjustment period

pic from stuffnoonetoldme

last night I went out with my friends and we've spent hours talking and discussing adulthood: jobs, cars, salaries, loans, houses, marriages etc
it finally occurred to me that I will not be earning as much as they do
i've got a friend who coud afford to buy a semi-d with her income
and it hasn't been a year since she started work
the amount that she will be paying for her house and car would me my total income for the month
imagine that

i have a really hard time trying to adjust with that idea
honestly speaking, i have always been blessed with well, good life
amongst my friends,my family are pretty much well off and i'm used to live in luxury
and now ,
well, let's just say that I will lead a much more humble life than theirs

not to say that I'm not grateful with what I have
indeed, Alhamdulillah
i've been blessed with good fortunes so far.
I also have no intention of competing with others
i mean, why should i?
but I'm just not used to the idea that I will be at the bottom of the strata in terms of my monthly earnings
life sure is full of surprises innit?
who would have thought that things would turned out this way

i need some time to adjust to this idea
and i will be needing more time to adjust myself to live more humbly
or
i could just marry a rich guy :P

at times like this,
i always wonder,
do i have ADHD?

hahahaha

focus sha focus!
and tomorrow you shall be free until August! ^^

gunakanlah bahasa kebangsaan kita. marilah amalkan ramai-ramai

as usual, i have an assignment due soon but what better way to procrastinate than by typing something totally unrelated to the assignment!
and this may be my final i-blog-because-i-don't-want-to-do-my-assignment post
writing this down makes it sound so official!
i'm leaving the land of the long white clouds soon!! aaargh!!! T________________T
i will wrote about leaving sometime soon.i hope. *cough cough*

anyhoo
We had a special guest lecturer for our EPSY 320 : Teachers as lifelong learners class today.
She's our new Student Attache from MSD. she's a graduate form otago uni and has been teaching for 23 years.
amongst her advice to us as beginning teachers were to "go against the system" "keep on making lesson plans" and "sentiasa ikhlaskan diri, remember your rewards at the hereafter".
something else that she said of my interest was about being proud of your nationality. well, she said something about being a Malay but she did mentioned something about being a Malaysian.

now, now
what makes you said that you are a Malaysian?
is it because you were born in Malaysia?
because one of your parent is Malay?
what about the non-Malays?
how can you differentiate Malaysian Chinese from Taiwanese or Malaysian Indian from those from Bangalore?
when you are away from your country, how do you identify other Malaysian?

one important distinguish feature is the ability to speak Bahasa.

Ever heard of the phrase/song "Bahasa Jiwa Bangsa?"
How can you claim that Malaysia is your land, that you are a born and bred Malaysian if you can't even speak in Bahasa?
i'm not saying that you should be able to speak perfect bahasa (hey, i'm even contradicting myself here as I'm writing in English)
But at least you could understand bahasa and could speak fluently
It's okay to speak in your dialect etc as long as you used it.

But our mother tongue has been increasingly forgotten
I have to confess that I do have relatives who couldnt speak/ refused to speak in Bahasa
Some of them speak in English because if they speak in Bahasa they will speak in their regional dialect while some of them just refused to speak in Bahasa.
which is sad, really.

Truth to be told, i was never aware of how special it is to have your own language until some of my classmates mentioned it to me.
You see, those who has only one language i.e English are jealous of us
they are jealous of our language
because that's our identity
and that's the language that only we could understand.
it's special.
it's ours.
hence, it is important to keep on using it
so that it wont die (yes, language can die)

treat Bahasa with respect
appreciate the beauty of the language
it doesn't makes you appear less intelligent if you use perfect Bahasa
you will look sillier if U wrItE liKe DiS

intellectual humility

thanks sarah for introducing this guy
May Allah bless you.

faith and beliefs

Salam

hey there!
i know i havent written anything for quite sometime
there are things that i wanted to share but seemed to trivial write on
but i really, really wanted to share what happened tonight to you, my dear readers and also as a good reminder to myself

it's been an eye opening experience

a wake up call

at least, for me.

today we went to palmerston north to bring a friend of us from auckland.

at The Square (where there's a clock tower) we saw a christian preacher talking to no one in particular.

we walked pass him and well, just ignored him.

it was a common sight anyway.
we went ahead, taking some photos at a corner near him, on a tripod

using self timer

as God has destined it, a fierce wind passed by and well, the tripod fell.

alhamdulillah the camera is still ok.

as soon as the tripod fell down, the preacher and his wife came by

they offered to take our photos. we politely declined his offer but he insisted it and so we let him take our photo.

and a casual conversation followed by.

u know "where are you ladies from? what are you doing here etc etc etc"

and suddenly he asked us "what do you think of jesus christ?"

which is relatively easy to answer
and then followed by a range of questions on jesus, Muhammad, Quran, the validity of the Quran, the historical inconsistencies he found in the Quran etc etc

challenging questions.

he wasn't provoking us or anything

we had a calm dialogue regarding our faith.

my point is not his questions.

my point is how he presented and based his arguments on.

he came fully prepared.

with evidences. with proves.
some "archeological artefacts" or something.

which i have no idea of.

my point is that

it was embarrassing not to be able to rebut his "facts" coz we have no knowledge of it.
it was really embarrassing when at the beginning i have to say "i'm not in the position to say this blablabla coz i'm not exactly sure myself"

and what strikes me the most is when he asked whether i read the Quran?

i said i do. but deep inside, i know, that i just read on the surface.
without knowing the whole content by heart.

unlike this preacher, who memorized the bible and also studied the Quran.

picture this:

there i was

proudly parading my hijab, a symbol of my faith

but when being asked to discuss about this faith,

i was speechless.

what kind of message am i sending exactly?

what kind of muslim am i?

am i a good muslim?

what do i really know about my beloved faith?

why couldnt i answered all the questions on my religion?

if do read the Quran, why can't i presented evidences from the Quran?

the common excuse is that we dont know.

that we dont have enough knowledge on that.

that we didn't learned those kind of stuff.

that we are not ustaz or ustazah.

but how long do we have to remain ignorant?

have we done anything to change that?

why aren't we searching the knowledge ourselves?

(btw, the preacher had a master in bible studies)

it's humiliating to discover that i know all the trivial facts on celebrities

who dated who,

who appeared in which movie and so on

but i have little idea on sirah

and the lives and histories of our prophets

there's so many things that i have heard before but unsure of

the thing is

we always take things for granted

and take things on the surface

so we know the names of the 25 prophets

but do we know their whole stories?

so we pray 5 times a day
do we know the meaning of each prayers?

so we read the quran and read the translations
do we really understand the meaning of the translations? have we ever asked or seek information from those who are more knowledgeable?

praying, reciting quran etc without in depth understanding, without really thinking, are somewhat absurd, no?

what the preacher said tonight does not make my faith waiver at all

i was not moved at all. alhamdulillah.

but it does make me reflect on myself, as a muslim.

what kind of muslim am i? what do i really know about my faith?

why am i not seeking any knowledge to strengthen my faith.

knowledge in general.

thank you mr preacher.

i don't believe in the religion that you've preached.

but i do agree with you that we have to seek knowledge
and challenge ourselves.

don't believe and accept everything blindly.

reflection of the future

so it's already april
we have more or less 11 weeks to go before leaving this wonderful place

the question, am i prepared to go back and teach?
frankly, the answer is no.

I don't think I've done enough practices/fieldwork that help to build my self confidence.
urgh

yesterday, i taught a whole bunch of esol students
it was ok
it wan't fantastic or remarkable or life changing or anything like that
i must say that it went well
i may need to have more practical time management but overall it was ok

however
i noticed that the lessons were kind of successful due to the well planned activities(chewah.yakin tu)
but not because of my teaching

the thing is
i don't think i'm great at teaching
idon't know howto explain things clearly
i may have the knowledge but i don't think i have the ability to transmit the knowledge CLEARLY
coz let's face it,
i'm terrible during teacher-centred practices
i suck at explaining
i suck at giving instructions
i suck at summarizing the whole lessons
in short, i suck whenever i was the centre of attention
whenever i was the only person talking in the class

i wasn't nervous or anything
ok. i lied. i was nervous
but i have realized that i suck at explaining aeons ago

sheesh(and i want to be a teacher? a teacher who doesn't know how to teach?)

on the other hand
it's really good that we've been encouraged to use more learner-centred approaches
coz they help to minimize my teaching time
the only downside is having to plan interesting and relevant activities as much as you could
so yeah,
i'm definitely going to use that jigsaw thingy, that reciprocal reading thingy and blablabla
coz i find myself better when attending small groups rather than the whole class.

and that's just one aspect of the profession that i need to be worried about

there's a whole lot more but let's not worry bout that for now.

i'm really thankful for having a wonderful Associate Teacher this time

she's so carefree and nice

eventhough i don't think i did a wonderful job

she's very supportive and give really good feedbacks

she even offered us to be one of her teacher aides which would be a wonderful opportunity for us to practice and developing our skills

oh well, looking forward to another lesson next week!

hopefully it'll get better somehow ^^