Paying a marvellous visit to our ex-students in New Zealand

Madam Chia Wai Fong, Madam Sharipah Al-Baitey and me had a wonderful memories of visiting our ex Dec students who are now pursuing their studies doing TESOL (Teaching English for students of other language)in Wellington and Auckland, New Zealand. For Pah and me, we stayed there for only a brief 6 days. (10 June -18 June 2013). What a wonderful country full with scenic views.

Tribute to my love ones.....

Tribute to our missing loves….. Oh God! Please take care of them, if they are still alive, don’t let them suffer.. My husband & I love them so much…. It was rather mystic that one followed by another one of our beloved ones suddenly disappeared from home - and couldn’t be traced, we had searched and asked around our neighbourhood , giving vivid description of our missing cats but nobody had seen them. No sign of death whatsoever. It was very sad indeed not to have them around anymore – so suddenly. They were at home during the night, before we went to bed but weren’t at home any more the next morning. The first one to disappear was Arthur, about 2 ½ month old. He was Combi’s son. Combi gave birth at home, in a place we prepared for her in our store, but few days after giving birth, Combi took her three kitten away – to a hideout - our the roof! Two and a half month later, she brought home only one kitten – Arthur. It was in December 2011, at that time, we had just found and bought home Merlin, who was about Arthur’s age. So they played together. Even though Arthur always gave me headaches, finding ways to stop his bad habit of not ‘throwing’ his waste in the toilet like other cats at home, I still missed him and searched for him the day he didn’t come back home Then Murai was missing, Murai, a young male about 8-month-old cat. A very cute – slight orange coloured fur, playful, energetic and loving cat. He was named Murai because of his frequent ‘meow’ – very ‘talkative’ indeed. I miss him so much especially when I come home from work because it was him who always ‘greeted’ and jumped to the driver’s seat when I opened the gate. He really loved playing and scratching the car – and every time I had to carry him out because he wouldn’t want to be out of the car once he had got in. Murai was with us at a very young age – perhaps 2 ½ month old. My husband saw him sleeping on my neighbor’s car tire just before the car was about to move. My husband shouted out loudly to stop the car. Alhamdullilah, Murai survived. From then on, Murai became one of our beloved pets. Next to vanish was ‘Kembang’, we called him that because his fur was a bit fluffy especially his tail. He came to our house, when he was about 8 month-old, with a very terrible and horrifying look – with face and body covered with skin disease, in Malay, we call it ‘kurap’. Thanks to my kind–hearted husband, who, without any undesirable feelings, applied used cooking oil daily on those ‘kurap’ and turned kembang into a very beautiful cat. Kembang was a good, well behaved cat. We also lost ‘Parsi’, our dear Persian cat who came to our house with her baby kitten, whom we named Bobby. She was the nicest cat we have ever had, in term of the look -the wonderful fur. We beg she belongs to someone but unfortunately, there was nobody looking for a missing cat. It was very fortunate for us to have her. During her stay, she gave birth to 3 lovely Persian kittens but they died 3 days after they were born. To overcome her sadness, she breast fed Ying Luck’s babies. At first, Ying Luck didn’t seem to mind but later on, when her babies were more close to Parsi, Ying Luck began to dislike and chased Parsi away from her babies. Perhaps, that was the reason why Parsi left home, without even thinking of her 2 month-old Bobby. Just last week, another new additional kitten came for only three days and two nights and disappeared. He was Jimmy, a cute little kitten, no idea from where he came but he was so calm and brave in facing those cats at home, he seemed to like Bobby, as he always went to sleep next to Bobby. To bad to have him around so short a time. Our wishes to all our beloved cats......Take care ... and feel free to come back home..we love you all so much.

A Memorable Experience Presenting at an International Conference

Wow! For the very first time, after many years of attending the MELTA Conference( Malaysian English Language Teacher Association)as mere participant, this time round,in Kuching, Sarawak, I was one of the Presenters! It was a collaborative effort of Umi kalsom, Siti Rohayu and myself in producing a research paper on "Tertiary Students' Perception of English Camp". Only Ayu and me presented the paper. We are proud that finally we made it as presenter in MELTA under MARA full sponsorship and now we are aiming to do another research and to present it oversea. InsyaAllah, God willing we will do it nextyear. In Kuching, we stayed at Four Points Sheraton, a good, 4 star hotel with the state-of-the-art facilities focussing almost everything on 4 points ( the triangles and squares)which in a way makes the hotel so unique. Besides that the staff were very helpful and friendly. They smile at you all the time! In fact everyone was friendly at Kuching. I met a young chinese girl by the name of Kairi Takemitsu who didnt mind to use the smart phone to snap my photo with Dr. Jonathan Newton from Victoria University, New Zealand, who was also one of the presenter. We didnt really have time to see much of Kuching because the two-day Melta Conference started at 8.30 am and ended at 6.00 pm. Only on the last day,as we took a 7.00 pm flight back to KL, from 10.00 am to 3.00pm, we toured Kuching - we went to few museums, walked by the river side and not forgetting the Sintok market where we bought the famous 'Kerubok masin'.

A Public Speaker I was....

4th April 2012 is a day to remember. My collegue, Siti Ayu and I were invited to give a talk to UNITEN students in Muadzam. That was the first time in my life I spoke in front of a strong crowd of about 200 people in a huge, grand auditorium. It's a wow! What an experience I had. The topic was on 'Effective Presentation Skills' - I did the first part for about 40 minutes and Ayu continued for another half an hour. We rehearsed few times in our college prior to the talk. We rehearsed in front of our collegues and they commented and gave feedback on our performance. I did have a stage fright at first but as soon as I started, it was gone and I enjoyed presenting my points. I must say that I was quite satisfied with my performance upon concluding my part and I saw the same satisfied face on Ayu's but the my happy feeling gone altogether when immediately after we had finished, Ayu told me "kak jam, tadi kak jam repeat benda banyak kali, budak-budak semua bosan" These were her words which still vividly clear in my mind. Words which made me feel like a total failure for few days after that. I told another collegue about me being a terrible speaker as what Ayu said, when he asked me about my presentation at UNITEN. He eventually really made me happy when he said repeatation is good and should be done in presentation - it will not make the students bored but on the contrary, make them understand better. Even Steve Jobs repeated things many times. He wondered why Ayu said such blunt, bias and jugdemental remarks to me. How did she know that the students were bored? Was her presentation that perfect? I began thinking what he said. First, I looked back at Steve Jobs presentation which I have the full version of his speech. True enough, even in his first few minutes of his speech (the one that we used in our introduction), he had repeated his points. Then I searched in Public Speaking book ( ispeak by Paul Nelson, Scott Titworth and Judy Pearson-McGraw Hill 2010). Confirmed on page 191 & 192, they stressed the importance of repeatition in Public speaking as "it has striking effects... ...". Now I wonder why Ayu said those harsh words to me.. I started to reflect back. Frankly, I saw 3 things that I dont think are good and proper in her presentation which are quite embarassing for me to say here. I will remember those three things as something which I will not do if I were to present in the future. I guess I'm not going to talk about it because I didnt want to spoilt her good feeling about herself.Unless of course if she ask me (which apparently she didnt) I also saw students going out of the auditorium (bored?) during my presentation and during Ayu's as well (bored also?). Worst still I saw few lecturers who seated in the first row going out of the auditorium during Ayu's presentation! But happy to recall that, throughout our 1 hour presentation, only a handful of them gone out of the auditorium without coming back, majority of them stayed glued to their seats, jotted down something attentively and there were few students who met us after the presentation asking for our powerpoints slides giving the reasons that they failed to jot all our points. I can conclude that I learnt something from this wonderful experience - dont look down upon others because we are neither perfect!

My ‘not so wonderful’ English Class

Reflection on today’s class


I am quite frustrated with my DDC students. I was hoping that they would study and memorise the basic grammar rules that I gave them ( because there are just 6 rules, not 20 or 50!) but sad to say only a handful of them did- most of them didn’t. It was obvious when they couldn’t answer the questions that I asked, meaning that they didn’t study –it seems like they don’t see the importance of those basic rules that can help them to speak and write grammatically correct English. They really made me sad. ..I feel like a failure ….


No, I cannot be emotional on this – I’ve got to do something , I’ve got to come up with some new interesting approaches to cultivate their interest in English and make them aware that English is important to them in their profession later on - where they can go ‘far’ in their career if they are good in English. Yes, I really got to think of something…I shouldn’t put all the blame on the students , I should find my blunder as well. I think I’ll seek advice from my colleagues – perhaps my roommate, Ayu or Kamaziz can help me. I also think that I need to go the library or bookstore and get myself a book on how to teach grammar – the effective and interesting way. Yes, I’ll do that.

Today’s Vocab

1. Albeit means although (when you want to introduce a fact or comment which contras with something that you have just said)
• It continues to publish, albeit irregularly, two journals.
2. Succinctly means expressing fact or ideas clearly in a few words (concisely)
• Keep your answers as succinct as possible.
• Speaking clearly, succinctly and persuasively is crucial to many jobs including sales jobs.

My opinion on the word ‘love’


For me, love has something to do with reciprocity whereby if we love someone, we will be loved back. Love is very subjective – it’s not just between human beings but we also love our environment – our world – try imagine what would happen if we don’t love our environment - we would live in a filthy, unhealthy and harmful place. Love can be also towards animals – there are so many pet lovers nowadays. Love is everywhere. We start off with loving our own parents, our siblings and relatives then as we grow older our love will be towards our friends then towards our spouse and it’ll keep on increasing and increasing in numbers. But we need to bear in mind one thing – this love towards other humans is just temporary… it’ll fade away or die . Only our love to the Almighty Allah will last forever. Think about it… what have we done in showing Allah that we love him? As He is the greatest lover to those who love him.

My Magnificent English Class

What I learnt in class ...



Today, when I told my DDC sem 1 students that they need to create a blog for this English course, I vividly remember the look on their face. Some looked very excited, very thrilled – well, I thought perhaps they already had a blog before and felt eager to continue with what they have or maybe perhaps these are the challenger lovers –who dare to try something new, something that they have never tried before- I just love this type of look on my students’ face.
Yet, There is another look which sort of worries me a bit – the anxiety look which the face sort of saying inside them “Wow! What’s this? Can I do it... it looks like something big... to start with –my English is not good to understand the instruction on how to create a blog ..wow, I feel like quitting the course”.
I’m glad that I didn’t get the uninterested and ‘bored to death’ look from both classes. Thank God. From my experience, dealing with uninterested students was difficult and traumatic.
The students asked questions on what to write, I could see that they were still puzzled , even though I have told and written on the board on journal writing , I also used the word ‘dairy’ which they are more familiar with. Ok here I learnt one thing – I need to be more specific next time, I should write it down (instead of just saying it verbally), perhaps on transparency, the specific things or sub topics that the students should include in their journal writing so that they will be on the right track. I shouldn’t confuse them and make them feel unhappy for not knowing what to write. I guess better still, I do one example in my own blog of what I want them to write in their blog. Yeah, I think the students will be clearer this way and save me from getting angry seeing the students’ work /blog not being done the way I want it.

Vocabularies of today
1.Accelerate means
(i)to increase speed
•She accelerated and passed the bus in front.
(ii)to cause something to occur faster or happen earlier
•Fertilizers accelerate the growth of plants

2.Absurd means unreasonable, foolish, ridiculous.
• What an absurd suggestion!
• Don’t be absurd!

My Opinion on current issue – Coupling
I’m against coupling among students because it is wrong in our religion. Islam forbids one from going out with an opposite gender because it will bring about more harm than good – the Satan or devil will be there where the couples are, whispering to them to do things that they are not supposed to do.
Nowadays, if you read the daily newspaper or watch the news bulletin on TV, there are so many news on new born babies being dumped by the parent. Why didn’t the parent love the baby ? You and I knew the answer. They were unfortunate, unwanted babies born out of wedlock. So to prevent this thing from happening, and not to regret over spill milk, don’t get involved in coupling.