A Nice Stay

I was pleasantly surprised with the weekend stay in JB. The hotel - a Double Tree - certainly maintained their standard when it came to rooms and food. The breakfast spread in had there on the couple of mornings were better than expected.

From my window

And the main surprise I had was the staffing. They were all Malaysian as far as I could tell, from the receptionist, waiters, room service and parking operator. Close to Singapore where most of the skilled workers in this sector would have gone to, it was refreshing to see this.

The meeting was within the same hotel block and my lecture was only a lift-ride away. The room was also comfortable although it was mainly for work, and I had quiet night on the couple of evenings there. Combination of need for rest and laziness sorted that one out.

Cookie Reflection

A few days had passed since the UPSR results came out. Idlan didn't want me to go into anything specific but suffice to say that he did fine.

He had settled well at his new school and the UPSR results did not carry much weight for his immediate future plans. We won't be applying to any other schools and most of my friends who had children at a similar age with Idlan must be feeling the pressure now. The results would determine which school they would enrolled for their secondary years.

On reflection, I was glad that Idlan wasn't put through the pressure of tuitions like most of his classmate had to go through. We had tutors coming to our house but they were mainly to help him with his concentration and exam techniques. He did most of the revising himself, but he got bored easily. The tutors came and helped him think out of the box and relate the subjects to real life situation. He enjoyed that.

We also had a BM tutor coming over because frankly his Bahasa Melayu was pretty weak. We always made sure that his weekends were free and he had time for his video games and other things.

Yes, we had a lot of pressure from others for not taking him through extra lessons but I always believe that going to school was not just about passing exams. At the beginning of the year, I gave him the choice of either to sit the UPSR or just go straight into I-GCSE. He decided for the former because most of his friends were taking the exams as well. His school had been putting too much emphasis on exams and I was never comfortable with that notion.

So, the deal was to change school as soon as he was done with the UPSR. Within a few days of completing UPSR, Idlan was gone. He went into Year 8 in another school across town.

When the exam results came out, we were more excited about it than Idlan himself. We always believed that exams are to gauge knowledge, not memory. We were happy that there were plenty of KBAT (higher level thinking questions) rather than the standard ones. Idlan felt that the result should be OK, and it was.

His new school is something completely different to Sri Utama, his previous one. There were more emphasis on character development and extracurricular activities. He was doing experiments rather than reading about them. When he had arts class, everything was provided down to the crayons and papers. He was really enjoying his class - despite having to get on the bus at 6.30 in the morning.

Last Thursday for instance - the day the UPSR results came out - he didn't want to follow us to Sri Utama to pick up his results because he had a class event. The class was having a poetry day with a "slam poet" coming all the way from England.

With his UPSR done, it looked like we would be taking a sabbatical from the National Curriculum. I hope that one day, the emphasis would come back to character-building, leadership and extracurricular activities. We were building a human being, not a machine ...

It's a JB Weekend

I was finally there. Arrived early evening on the Friday and I went straight to the shower and had some food since I have yet to finalise my slides. Had to do some tweaking before bed.

Rather than joining a dinner symposium, I decided to have my meal in the room and just had a quiet night.

The room was comfortable and I must say I overslept this morning, waking up later than I planned. I spent the morning sorting out my slide decks and enjoying the sun and the free wifi. I joined the faculty for lunch before doing my session, and planned to venture out to have a look outside before leaving early tomorrow morning.

That was my Boss Dr Ng Soo Chin giving his talk. The podium sign has yet to be changed.There were dinner planned out but I decided against joining, preferring to stay in instead. It was not common for me to have a quiet night, and as such I decided to enjoy it.

I also got to meet a few of my ex-nurses at the meeting and it was great to catch up with them.

Preparing a Lecture

Back when I was with the University, there was rarely a week which I wasn't preparing for talks. Almost every other weekend would be spent attending conferences.

Those were the days when there were plenty of talks and conferences organises by the Pharmaceuticals. They were cutting down on the numbers now and conferences were few and far between.

I was invited to attend and participate in one in Johor Bharu this coming weekend. Unfortunately I could only come late and return early Sunday since I would be on call on Monday. So, back to preparing for the lecture. But luckily it was on a subject I was familiar with.

Trump Wins

This was going to be one for the history books. A candidate who is touted to be the most unfit by the mainstream media and the elite had won the presidency of the most powerful nation in the World by a huge margin. Something which was not even on the cards 24 hours before …..

The moment I saw the cringe n the faces of the CNN - Clinton News Network - anchors, I knew something was not going according to plans. I just couldn’t wait to listen to the No Agenda podcast tomorrow for the host to dissect how embarrassed the media would be as they had put all their eggs in Hillary’s basket.

Imagine the those who had been badmouthing Trump on TV - Fareed Zakaria came to mind - would go on now. Surely the right thing to do would be to bury himself in the ground ….

But life would go on. The US First Lady would look more dynamite than our own Rosmah. Economy would tank in the first few weeks but a la Brexit it would recover once all the scaremongering was over. Lessons to be learned here that the elites had shot themselves in the foot, as they are mighty and resourceful, it would not end with Hillary’s defeat. They would fund a way to get back at Trump as this was one hell of an embarrassment …. Barack’s Presidential Pardon for Hillary anyone?

On a personal note, I would always remember how I learned about the news. I was still doing my Wednesday afternoon clinic when Trump got his 270 votes. I would never forget it.