Star Q
For most of us, having a public holiday right smack in the middle of a working week may come as a welcome retreat from all the work piling up at the office. But for this one particular laborer's work never seem to cease, whether it is at the work place or at home!
I am merely writing this article based on my own perspective. For me, 1st of May doesn't really offer any kind of escape from work. I suppose I am one of those people who continue to work even when we are at home.
Morning started with going out to buy breakfast for my family, then to the newspaper stand to buy today's newspaper and then to the market to buy foodstuff for today's lunch and dinner. Once I got home, right after breakfast, I started peeling and slicing the vegetables for our Vegetable Curry, cut and cleaned the chicken for our Chicken in Red Gravy (Ayam Masak Merah) and also the fish to be kept in the fridge for tomorrow's fare.
Then it was a good hour in front of the stove (off and on) frying the chicken pieces, so that my wife could later turn them into the Chicken in Red Gravy. I also took it upon myself to cook the Vegetable Curry which I had been longing for quite some time.
Then it was time to resume doing my work. I took about two hours to prepare a Grammar exercise for my Form 1 students' lesson tomorrow. This consisted of three parts; an example using Adjectives, then about fourteen pictures for the students to describe using Adjectives and lastly sentence completion exercise. Mind you, this is nothing new to me because I have been creating and designing my own English tasks for my students ever since I can remember!
Then it was another hour in front of the computer designing a PBS task for my Form 1 students. As if carrying out the PBS task in class isn't difficult and time consuming enough, a teacher also has to create alternative tasks suitable to their students' proficiency levels. I do not know how many other teachers do what I do, but I find it necessary to do this.
Finally, it was off to the photostat shop to make enough copies of the above tasks for my students; forty five copies per task. Every time I photostat copies for them (I've lost count how many times!) it would cost me at least RM6.00 (and still people ask for justification why we are given the BISP!) And by the time I finish all the 'school work', it was 6.00 o'clock. And that's more than I actually clock in during actual working hours which usually ends at 3.00 (if we're lucky!)
And so the long withstanding melancholy of being a teacher continues on while I wait for the weekend with abated breath.
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