Fragrance personality

I saw an advertisement on TV and it was about finding out your personality through your fragrance... just send FP to whatever number. I mean, seriously, who would do such a thing? It's a blatant attempt to part you with your hard-earned money. Are people that clueless about themselves that they need someone to tell them who they are from the fragrance about good old-fashioned self-reflection? Oh! wait a minute! I know why... It's too damn hard and no one can tell you if you are on the right track or not... yeah... Why not take the easy way out, right?

I probably sound arrogant and judgemental about it but it's just irks me to no end. The stupidity of the human race! I'll admit it... I take quizzes all the time but then I don't have to pay for it...hahah... and I've done the hard work of self-reflection and I know I'm a long way away from done but the fact that these companies come up with new ways to part people with their money is just highway robbery to me. I've read about people losing RM 8,000 trying to win a RM300 prize money. The daylight robbery I'm refering to is the hidden charges that they put in the fine print. The telco charges, the registration charges, the fees you have to pay to get them to send the questions to you, the fees you pay to answer the questions, the premium fees and God knows what else. It's just not ethical to me.

The telecommunication companies would say that they didn't force people to text and participate but I think there should be a line on highway robbery. I was once sent a text inviting me to participate in such charges and later found out that them sending me that text is costing ME money. It's just not right. I wonder how these people sleep at night.

To those who's looking to know themselves, don't fall for these contests or whatever you want to call it. Just do it the old-fashioned way. It's way better for you then allowing a computer to randomly tell you what you are. They are just going to tell you things that you want to hear, like how likeable you are, how sweet and romantic you are but what about the not so pretty stuff? How you tend to envy people of good things happening to them or how you can't be loyal to people you profess to care even to save your life. I think although knowing the good things about yourself is good as you need good self-esteem to go through life and handle what it throws at you, it is more important to know your weaknesses so that you can work on them and better yourself.

I know it's hard. Just do it. It builds character and nothing is worth more than having good character. Everythings else comes from there.

Peace, Love, Joy...

Life and Times of Joy

I'm doing ok although I feel like lately I've been living through a quite interesting and dare I say, exciting time. I haven't decided if it's good excitement or not-so-good excitement but I'm so sure that it's not boring. Shocking:definitely, confusing:quite so, unnerving: hell yeah... here are some an exerpt of recent events in my life. Judge for yourself.

The night before last I got the shock of my life. I went to the 7-11 store and when I came back to my car, I saw a big guy jerking off not 5 feet from my car. I recognized him from before when I went to the gas station to use the ATM (about 100 yards away). It was late- about 11 pm and dark and no one was really around. My hand really shook as I unlocked the car and got in and locked the doors. It felt like it took forever for me to just get into the car. I backed out of the parking bay and drove off. The whole process must have taken less than ten seconds but those seconds felt endless...

Why do people do things like that? I don't really get it but my guess is that it has nothing to do with sex. It's the intimidation factor that gives these people the rush. They like seeing women reacts with screams or whatever. I don't know what my face must have looked like but I tried my best not to let anything register on my face. Why give him the satisfaction. I was just very afraid as I know that things could easily turn really dangerous. If he wanted to overpower me, he could have easily done so. He was about 5'10" or 6' compared to the my 5' nothing. He didn't look demented or anything. He looked kinda normal actually.

Now that I've thought about it, what I should have done is go back into the store and ask one of the shop assistants to walk me to my car or something like that. It just never crossed my mind to ask help. All that went through my head was, "What do I do, what do I do, what do I do" like a mantra.

When I got back home, at 12.30 I got a call from a student saying that one of my boys was involved in an accident. It turned out that the boy was my boss's son. The boy who called me said that he didn't know what to do and that the boy in question didn't want to call his dad. So in the end the consensus was, "Let's call Ms Joy and let her decide what to do." Nice..

When I arrived at the hospital, there were huddling at a corner and watched me, in my full-blown mother-hen mode, approach warily, fully expecting a tongue-lashing which I was happy to oblige later but at that moment I needed to get the facts. They just watched in awe as I just entered the restricted treatment area. I've long discovered that if you carry yourself like you belong there and it's your God-given right to be there, people tend to think you that you really do have the right. Plus I've had a lot of experience with the emergency rooms after nearly two years as the hostel (not prison) warden.

I finally located him in one of the treatment rooms after hunting for him in the observation ward and the X-Ray department and when he saw me, he braced himself for a scolding. Knowing that he'll get more than I could ever give him from his dad, I kept quiet. Well, relatively quiet anyway.. I couldn't stop myself from scolding him when he told me that he took the motorcycle/scooter thingie and not his car because it's just him alone in the car. Trying to save money on petrol apparently, which inevitably invited the "Are you trying to tell me that your life is cheaper than a tank of gas??!!" response from me. I couldn't help myself. For a smart guy, he sure acted like an idiot!!

It turned out that he fell off the bike that he borrowed from a friend at 8 pm, sat for a test until 10 pm and has been waiting for more than two hours for treatment. End of the rope, didn't know what to do, call Ms Joy. All that with a broken shoulder.. right shoulder.. I don't know how he managed to write anything in the test.

So it was 1.30 in the morning before I drove him home and I was thinking to myself, how do I make this easier. It turned out, you can't really make it easier. Waking people in the middle of the night is not fun especially when you are telling them that their firstborn was involved in an accident and has broken bones. Not fun at all.

I had to repeat myself three times before it sank in that I was in front of his house with his battered son in tow. I stayed to explain what happened and reminded my boy to take his medications before bed, after which I took myself off so that his dad can yell at him in private. I got in at 2.30 and couldn't sleep from all the adrenaline pumping through my system. What a night... a flasher/public masturbator (kinda sounds like public prosecutor) and a rescue all in the space of 3 hours.

My boys, even at 21-22, are still boys, in my eyes. I don't know why or how but somehow they look to me for answers and I have no choice but to be a responsible adult for them or at least appear to be and try to give them the answers as best as I can. I always ask myself, when did I turn into an adult, when at times I feel like I'm as clueless as they are? I don't mind that they called me because I feel that it's a sign of their trust in me which is really sweet, I think. And you know I'm a sucker for sweet gestures from people:) The world greatest sap, remember?

"I'm Off ToThe School"

I just found out that I haven’t lost my edge in linguistics in terms of English Syntax. That’s comforting actually. On one of my YM contacts' status, it read, “I’m off to the school”. So very helpfully of course, I IM-ed her saying that it’s actually “I’m off to school” as “to school” is actually functioning as an adverbial phrase in the sentence even though it seems like a noun. So it should rightly read "I'm off to school." How very helpful is that :) Helpful but irritating, I know. I'm a a born teacher, I guess. A full-blown nosey irritating teacher.

I’m the kind of person whom you don’t like to be around when you go to Malaysian supermarkets. As a teacher, I have a whiteboard marker in my handbag at all times since I couldn’t be bothered to have to remember bringing my marker pen every time I go to class. Since Malaysian supermarkets or malls would have all the signs in English and since they would just write whatever comes to mind as long as it sounds vaguely English, I would be the person who would covertly take out her trusty marker pen and correct the placards. At least the ones that I can reach anyway.

I haven’t been consciously thinking of all the basics that I’ve learned during my varsity days like semantics, pragmatics and syntax in my daily teaching duties but they are what they are: my basics. They formed me and strengthened my foundations. They have been so ingrained that they have become second nature to me and for that, kudos to my teachers for a job well done. My adequate background frees me up so that I can concentrate on the job at hand. It gives me the confidence to do my job without having to second guess myself every two seconds which is important because let’s face it, my mother tongue is not English. English is my second language.

What constitutes a second language anyway? That’s the debate that has lasted for generations. Does it have to be a language that you learned which is other than the language spoken at home? What if the language spoken at home is “English” but the broken version? For example, when your child misbehaves, you’d say, “Stop or mama beat” when the mother really means to say, “If you don’t stop that, I’ll spank you.” Does that mean that your first language is English simply because you use English words regardless of syntax?

What is my situation then, when I am equally comfortable expressing myself in both languages but I can only learn things formally/academically in English because the medium of instruction of all my post-secondary education has been English? What if I can talk about my feelings better in English rather than in Malay for cultural reasons because in we don’t talk about feelings in Malay without sounding like “drama swasta” (Malaysian version of the soap opera)?

In the former, I find that my vocabulary is very schoolgirlish because I never learn my own language after secondary school and for that I find myself grappling when I have to express nuances. To me, it feels like trying to do brain surgery with the kitchen knife. On the other hand, the latter is because I was brought up in a traditional conservative Malay household where we never talk about feelings. My mom is the strong silent type and I have the feeling like if she talks about her feelings, she would feel vulnerable and she doesn’t like that. As the results, she never talks about feelings. What does that make me? That leaves me with no real vocabulary in context to talk about feelings because I seriously have never heard it in real life or real conversation. Simply put, I just don’t know how and the only instances when I hear feelings being talked about, it would be in Malay drama which doesn’t really light my fire.

So I end up using English to express my feelings and to learn among other things. Where does that leave me in terms of first and second language? Whatever it is, I am still grateful that I have both languages.