St. Anger

If my 8 months experience of teaching had taught me something, its that classroom is a battlefield, anger is the weapon, and victory and respect are earned through fear.

Now, I do not get angry easily. Perhaps even unhealthily so. I’m just not the type to shout at people. Heck, I can’t even talk smack properly. Being at school, my patience had been tested to its very limits time and again. If I were to have a limit break gauge, I’d say it’s been filled up more times this year than the last 22 years combined!

A few weeks ago the worst I could do was just vent my anger through verbal means. Last week, I smacked a in the back kid for fooling around in class and today, I pulled a kid’s ear for not listening to me in class, pretty hard too. Lately, I’ve been getting angry pretty more and more often, and I started to realize; you get angry one too many times and anger becomes you.

I hate getting angry… It drains the energy out of me. It makes me feel bad about myself..

But, I have been able to control the class much better these days. The kids are paying attention in class like they’ve never been before. So, I’m completely torn now. Should I put a cap on my limit gauge and go back to the likeable teacher who everyone ignores and eventually forgets, or do I let the rage consume me and be a teacher everyone fears but will be remembered for the rest of their life, in a good or bad way.

And then there’s that other option : be done with teaching and start a video game retail empire!! Mwahahahahahaha *coughs*



*Title inspired by Metallica's St. Anger, from their Some Kind of Monster album. Wicked

Lucky number 7?

It's my first pay day for me today (technically, yesterday) since the last 4 months I've been employed. Somehow, the amount was a little less that what I had expected. my pay should have been RM2300 so i should have gotten over 8k. Ithought that my school clerk had totally messed things up for me (he very often does).

After some conversation with fellow teacher and good friend The Seng (bukan nama sebenar), it made total sense, since I'm only getting just over half of my full pay for January. What is neat is that the amount of pay I received + whatever balance I had in the bank resulted to an unsangkarable amount of RM7777...and a few cents which totally blew it! I even thought twice on withdrawing money! Though, I did anyways.

On another note, my dear fiancee just turned 24 within the last 24 hours, but I can't even wish her properly. Shucks.. Anyways, if you are reading this : Congrats, you're now officially older than me, and I still love you all the same =)

Najibu's hot tips to naming children

Children! The future generation! The keepers of tomorrow!

To keep things short, I'll just say that they are important. That is why we have a huge responsibility to shape our children well. The very first responsibility to these little critters angels is to choose a name that is not only good, but also good for them, as well as other. Didn't catch my drift? Here are some hot tips for you...

1. Keep the names to a single word! If your name is Muhammad Kamaruzzaman, you might not want to name your daughter something like Nurul Jannatul Wahidah. First of all, you'll only stall the line at the registration office. Most importantly thought, nobody will ever call her Nurul Jannatul Wahidah, except when her teacher is checking attendance for the first time. So, why waste people's ink and time on names that nobody will ever call. Besides, you could used Nurul, Jannatul, and Wahidah on 3 different daughters, so why waste all three on 1.

2. The less syllables there are, the better! Lets face it, the more syllables there are in a name, the less likely you are to call the kid with his/her full name. For instance, many will just call Khatijah, Ijah, or even simply Jah. By doing so, the name you gave the kid loses meaning. I found the traditional chinese names to be particularly interesting in this regard. Take the name Seng, for example. There is just no way you could ever call him anything but Seng so the meaning remains unchanged forever.

3. Avoid using stylized spellings if possible! Using 'y' or 'ie' to make an 'i' sound in a non-English name is confusing. I mean, if you ask me how Hayaty is pronunced, I'd say it's Hayatai. But the worse crime is using 'ie' instead of just 'i', like Razief for example. That's not Razif, that 'Raziyef' for crying out loud. Someone, somewhere, like me (or even the child him/herself) could get confused! So lets stick to the common spelling folks.

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For more hot tips on naming children, be sure to get your copy of Najibu's Guide to Naming Children. It should be available in all major retailers some time in the distant future. Pre-order now and get a second copy for free upon release date.