lang si

At my work place, from office to my class.

I waited for the elevator’s door to open (I wanted to go down) and when it did, it was full of Chinese students.

I just said: “It’s okay…” It was going up anyway…

Just when the doors were about to meet…one of the male student, whilst looking straight at me, said, in Mandarin la of course: “Neeh…this is the lecturer lor that they say is very lang si one…”

-__-

inhale…

exhale…

wait aaa…I might teach you next sem…

yeerrr

I do not often reveal that I know how to read, write, and speak Mandarin. Therefore, telling my students this extra bit of information about me is not a priority too.

I often have to control my facial expression every time my students complained about their assignments, gossiped about me, their group members and so on…

Most of the time, it was only after a few weeks into the lecture that my students would know. Most of the time, it was unintentional.

Student, in Mandarin.

“yeerrr…so troublesome…assignment like this also want us to do…”

Teacher, in English.

“it’s okay if you do not want to do it…I do not mind not marking it too.”

Student – small eye became big.

Teacher – smile smile and dismissed the class.

don't pry pry

I had this wild idea of incorporating facebook into my teaching…and so I did.

I was so excited to introduce this method of assessment via facebook to my students and decided to introduce it in my next lecture.

I went to my class and was horrified to find another lecturer using the room that I was supposed to be lectured in.

He explained to me that his original lecture room’s computer was broken so he had to illegally bring his student into mine.

I had to reason with the lecturer that I could not let him use my classroom for I need to use the computer too and he instructed his entire class to another lecture room.

As his students was leaving the lecture room…the last few Chinese female students saw me opening the facebook homepage.

…and they said, in full Mandarin: 

“yeerrr you see you see…she asks us to leave just so she can open her fb and play fb…so selfish ler…”

others added: “people like this also got…trouble other people only…huh…”

I stood up, straightened my cotton baju kurung, turned to them and said, in full Mandarin also ha…

"Sorry ya, the facebook account that I am opening right now is an account for student to access because I have instructed them to do something for their coursework here inside this facebook account so I do not deliberately chase you all out just so I can access the facebook account for my own personal entertainment. Please do not misunderstand ok.”

No blood on their face.

“…oh…ok ok…” nodding their head incessantly.

Don’t pry pry with me you know…