Pets vs. Kids

WARNING: PLEASE DO NOT READ IF THE TITLE OFFENDS YOU.

Every now and then, I would get into a discussion that would go down the path of comparing the pros and cons, as well as similarities between raising a pet and a kid.

It would start with a friend making a remark, “taking care of a dog is easy,” “just wait till you have your own kids” or “you don’t know what it feels like to raise a child.” True, my husband and I don’t have children of our own. It was a choice we made before knowing that I can’t have any.

Anyways, back to the title of pets vs. kids. As my readers, you know that we are trying to bring our dog ‘Whisky’ back to Australia. It hasn’t been easy and the process is still ongoing. When we share the ordeal of relocating our pet, the first comment people would say is “why don’t you just give her away?” That is a choice that we don’t entertain anymore. We did think of that when we moved from China to Jakarta and again from Jakarta to Kuala Lumpur. Every time Whisky had to go for a medical prior to relocating, we always felt empty. There is a part of us that is missing and we didn’t like how not having her in the apartment for a few hours made us feel. We also have stripped all her dog instinct and trained her to develop habits that complement our lifestyle. We have changed ours to make sure that we always have time for her.

Giving her away means asking her to get used to a new set of rules and a new living arrangement. What we have accepted and seen as cute behaviour may be seen as differently by her new owners. We would also be asking the new owners to update us (occasionally) about how she is doing. That is just not fair for everyone involved.

When the comparison of pets and kids come up in a conversation, some people do admit that keeping pets and raising children are kind of similar. Here are some of the things that parents with and without pets have shared.

Pets and kids need routine, positive encouragement, love and care. Both put restrictions on your life, they are messy and a lot of work. You have to teach them (obviously not in the same way or level of complexity). People without pets think they understand pets and people without kids think they understand kids. I am sure there is a lot more similarities between the two, but I will stop here.

Let’s look at the difference. Pets will depend on you for their whole life, though the level of dependency varies from pet to pet. Kids will learn to be independent as they get older. Eventually kids will move out and have a family of their own. Pets will never go through puberty , while kids do. When it comes around, it can be a headache for all. Pets will never pay rent, kids might.

Whether you chose to have a pet or a kid, it all requires commitment, dedication and responsibility. A pet owner might be able to relate to the challenges that parents go through in raising their kids, because there is some crossover, and vice versa. So, if you hear the struggle of a pet owner trying to bring their pet back home, please do not advise them to give heir pet up. Would you give your child up if he or she becomes an inconvenience when you move countries?

Down the rabbit hole

I have had a great week, with tutoring and lunch with a parent from my last school. However, today is not exactly a good day for me.

I was on Facebook and for awhile, I have made an effort not to check on Facebook. It is filled with news about lifting the caps, arrival, quarantine, and sad stories about citizens who are stranded. It is good to keep myself informed about the situation back home, but today it hit the wrong button.

One of the members from Lift the Cap Facebook group posted a video clip of a debate about the cap. I don’t remember who she was questioning, but she asked them to explain why people who hold students and business/investment visa are allowed to enter Australia, possibly taking the place of any Australians who want to come home.

It really saddens me that citizens have to go through a lot of disappointment to return to a country they call home, because they have less to offer the government. There are people who have lost a family member and can’t attend the funeral because they can’t get a seat on a plane to any states in Australia. Some are bouncing from country to country so they don’t overstay their visa.

I feel like this is a discrimination that Australians would never have to face. I grew up being treated differently because I am Asian. The first I can remember was when I was in high school, walking back to my homeroom after an assembly. A year 7 boy, “go back your country, you gook!” I was shocked but let it pass. The next ones were when I waited for a bus at Pacific Fair or walked home from Robina Town Centre. I would get some random drivers shouted “suckie suckie, 5 dollars?” Those never got me down. But now, with what is happening today, I never felt more rejected.

Like I said in one of my post, I feel like I have suffered from depression. I am glad I have my husband with me during this weird time. He understands that I am in a funk and doesn’t try to push me to get out of it until I am ready. Having a blog is also his suggestion. He believes writing would help me climb out of the rabbit hole and he isn’t wrong. As I share what I am feeling, the frustration, the choking feeling I felt as I held back the tears start to go away. I am feeling a lot lighter.

I don’t know what the purpose of COVID is, but I know it is not good for a lot of people’s mental health. I still believe it is not as terrible as it has been reported. I want things to be better so that we can do what we want, when we want to and at the place we have chosen to be.

Home schooling VS Mainstream schooling

I have been doing online tutoring for the past 2 weeks. I have students on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Most of my students are kids who I have taught in my previous school and some were kids I had in my after school activities.

At first, I wasn’t sure how it would go. Although I have done online teaching during the MCO, I felt pressurised and nervous because first, parents are now paying for it. Second, it is an online one on one class so I am not physically there to make sure my tutoring kid is doing the right thing. Believe me, I have caught students who pretended that they were listening and doing the work I asked them to. Meanwhile, they were checking out YouTube or playing games on their devices.

So starting again brought back all those memories. My first class went well. We had a good laugh, talked about his hometown and why his family decided to leave Malaysia during the MCO. I was shown the view from the apartment and introduced me to the rest of the family. A very nice intro to the lesson. We did 2 hours on Maths and English. The rest of my classes went well too, though one was a bit on the challenging side. The kid was nervous and it took some time for her to warm up. Overall, I was happy because they have started regular classes after their first lesson.

Husband asked if I enjoyed my first week back to teaching because he is also doing online English lessons for very young kids. He was a lot more assured after hearing my feedback and shared that he does miss teaching but not the fluff that comes with it.

Now that I have experienced different styles of teaching in different settings, I have the chance to really reflect on my experiences and what I have seen from the kids. This has led me to think that home schooling is perhaps better than mainstream schooling. Not saying that online tutoring or classes are the same as home schooling, but they are quite similar.

Both offer students the opportunity to learn at their own pace. They have more freedom to decide the flow of the class and can take as much or as little time they need before moving onto the next topic. Students can go deep into topics they are interested in and there is less chance of them being left behind. The “teacher” can look at the curriculum and decide whether a lesson is useful or not. For example, identifying the property of 3D shapes (faces, edges, vertices). When do we ever use these in our adult life? Unless you are an architect, programmer or software developer, do we really need to know trigonometry? In home schooling, “teacher” can immediately identify what areas the kid needs extra help with and plan future lessons to fill that gap. There are tons of resources and support groups out there to give you ideas and guidance on home schooling.

On the flip side, home schooling your kid means that you are spending a lot of time together. You would have to enroll your kid in after school activities for socialisation. Either mum or dad would have to stay at home to make this happen, OR get a tutor to come. I am not sure how the last one would look like, but I don’t think it would be economical.

Regardless, if you could afford it, I do believe that home schooling is better than today’s mainstream. There are more and more parents who have decided to do home schooling, especially during the pandemic. They have seen good changes in their kid’s academic performance and confidence. One of the parents who home schools her kid said that she would not send her kid back to mainstream school unless it is necessary.

Behind the scenes of the teaching industry

After working for schools in different countries, I met a lot of people who sometimes idolise their previous management. This could be their curriculum coordinator, principal or even year level coordinator.

The education industry has challenges like any other industry. There are a lot of secrets that people are not aware of, unless you are a teacher or in education. One of the biggest secrets in the education industry is the lack of ability or interest that teachers have in education. Having said that, there is a lot good, dedicated international school teachers. But for every dedicated teacher, you would have a handful who are there for the perks.

When I first entered the education industry, I had nothing to compare my experience with. Everything was new and I often accepted what I thought was an odd statement or behaviour as normal. After awhile, I started thinking that maybe I should have said something if I wasn’t okay with it. And I did. It was during my third year at an international school in Indonesia. We had a new curriculum coordinator who is very experienced in IB and knows how to speak to very young students. Trust me, the last one can be considered a rare find. I have worked with teachers who speak to children in the same way as they speak to their adult peers. They don’t lower their register or explain things in child friendly language. I have also worked with teachers who speak to their adult peers exactly the same way they speak to their young students. Being told during a teacher meeting that we all need to be ‘little risk takers’ is less than inspiring. it does however provide discussion material for the after meeting drinks

Anyway, back to the new IB coordinator. We had our first year level meeting to talk about the Central Idea (topic or theme) and how we were going to unpack it. My year level partner and I shared what we had done previously. We answered questions about how we wanted the lessons to look like that year. The coordinator listened to what was shared, and maintained eye contact mostly with my year level partner even when she wasn’t sharing. Normally I would let it slide, but not this time. I wanted the coordinator to acknowledge my presence in the room and look at me when I was speaking. It paid off and we had a good relationship afterwards. From time to time, I do wonder what would have happened if I had just accepted the situation.

Me standing up for what I think is right does happen occasionally but more often than not, I choose to keep quiet. I don’t want to be known as the teacher who challenges the management and seen as the trouble maker. I need a good reference for when I apply for my next job.

Now that I am in between jobs, I often look back and wonder if I should have responded to what was said and done and if I had, how would I have done it? What would the outcome be? I am also curious about how others would have reacted if they saw or heard what I have. Anyways, here are some examples of odd statements or behaviour I have heard and seen during my time as a teacher,

• “If you are not sure how to solve a problem or what to do next, I would say, It’s voice, choice and ownership.” This is another way of saying do whatever you want.
• The school chose to adopt the Common Core because it is easier for teachers to understand. This decision was made without asking the teacher and no training was given for teachers to understand the curriculum.
• “I don’t need to be in my classroom. I am giving my teaching assistant a real practice in teaching.”
• “Are you okay that I ended your parent meeting for you? We have a year level meeting now.”
• “I give all my low students to my teaching assistant.”
• “Mr K, Jane can’t spell, I think she is EAL.”
• “John can’t understand classroom instructions. Can you help him understand the concept of government?”
• Running off to the CEO because a homeroom teacher decided to move her student from a low ability group to a middle ability group.
• “You are on your own if you ran into trouble during lockdown,” said the CEO.
• Not giving student B a report card. The parents have submitted the withdrawal request. Her last day is a month before the end of the school year.
• “Oh, don’t bother with him. He is a lost cause,” said Mr B. (The student was standing next to him.)
• Halfway through the semester, the CEO said, “Make sure students whose parents have not paid the school fee in full don’t enter the school. If they do, call the police.”
• “If you don’t pay the school fee in full, I won’t let your daughter go home.” (Yes, this actually happen.)
• “I didn’t know he is a parent of one of our students until I slept with him.”
• “Children can play with plastic bottles, it is part of the Reggio learning.” The plastic bottles in questions were used to store cleaning chemicals and they haven’t been rinsed before children started playing with it.
• “Chef, can we have some more sandwiches please? Some of my students are still hungry.” Chef said, “sorry we don’t have any left until next week.”
• “I don’t need to know grammatical terms. I just Google it when the time comes.”
• “Parents enroll their children here because the way I run the school. Not because of the teachers.”
• “They can subatize groups of items up to 5 (recognise a sum without counting them individually) and read random numbers to 20 in Mandarin, so they must know how do that in English too.”
• “Can you show me what you have written for this semester’s report card?” (copied report card comments, changed names and gender, submitted as his/her own work). This is a teacher copying someone else’s report.
• “Let’s change our curriculum to IPC. It is easier than IB.” (Note: IPC and IB teach through inquiry. The difference between both is in the licensing.)

You would think that what was written above were made up. No, they are not. If you have any teacher friends, you should ask them if they have ever experienced anything like this.

What a let down

Today, the article on Tom Hanks visiting Australia for his movie, avoiding the mandatory 14 days quarantine gained attention again in one of the Aussie expat Facebook group. It really annoys the living day lights out of me. This is the actor who had Corona virus already and has been given permission to enter Australia despite the international arrival cap that prevented many of us from returning to the land we call home.

A lot of Australian expats are struggling to go home. This week, I read an article on how DFAT employees in Canberra are accused of booking 2 to 3 tickets (paid in full) for overseas DFAT workers. You can read the full article here. It might not be true, but no one is denying it and it makes the current government looks like they are as competent as my Year 3 students. No wait, my Year 3 students can do what is expected of them.

When the Prime Minister issued advice, recommending Aussie expats to come home, it also stated that the national carrier (Qantas) will maintain its operation on both international and domestic routes. Not the case! Australians overseas have to rely on Emirates, Qatar, China Airlines, Malaysia Airlines, Singapore Air and Cathay Pacific to take them home.

A lot disappointment is also directed towards the Australian consular abroad. I emailed them to ask for assistance regarding my expired work visa and they sent me links that provided me with little information regarding my situation. In hindsight, they probably have very little knowledge of what to do despite their ongoing discussions about changes that affect foreigners in Malaysia.

If one day, the government released a statement saying “we got through Covid-19 together” or “humanity helped us overcome the hardship caused by the pandemic” I call bullshit on that. From where I am sitting right now, the government has done very little to help Aussie expats. If anything, they have done really well in dividing the nation. Those who believes that Aussie expats should stay out of Australia and those who want them to come home.

Not all of us are living the life of Tom Hanks. I was going to come home and retire from living abroad. Sadly, that is not going to happen anytime soon. My husband and I can’t continue to survive on what savings we have while hoping that the ticket we have bought is the one that will take us home. I have accepted that reality and it is a downer.

I am not looking forward to my next call with my parents. They were so excited that we are finally going to start living in Australia. But, we need to do what we need to do to survive. For us, this is it. Taking another job offer until the day we can come home without worrying whether or not we made the cap.

Differentiation

In the following blog post, the names of individuals have been changed.

If you have read some of my posts, you would know that I still keep in touch with colleagues from my previous school. The students that I taught are now in Year 4 and luckily, the Teaching Assistant (TA) also went to Year 4 with them. Every now and then, she would message me to ask for advice or vent about how her week went.

Before I go into a full story telling mode, let me give you a background of the class. It has 20 students age 8 to 9 years old. 80% of the population is EAL (English as Additional Language) speakers with a couple of students with a learning support. To meet the standard of practices set by the Ministry of Education, the class is split into 2 groups where the homeroom teacher (Ms Anne) takes half and the TA (Ms Tina) takes the other half.

This week, Ms Tina sent me messages about one of the lessons. The class had to read a very long article about food. She said it is about 45 pages long and she gave each student about 2 to 3 pages to read. Her group struggled to understand the text and spent most of the class time asking how to read the unfamiliar words and their meaning. At the end of the lesson, Ms Tina gave some feedback about how the lesson went. Ms Anne replied, “Why? It was easy. I gave them an easy reading to do.”

When Ms Tina showed me some of the pages of the article they had to read, I immediately went into a teacher mode. After reading the pages she sent me, I did a Google search and found that this article came from BBC, titled The hidden significance of what we eat.

I don’t often work with native English speaking student so I don’t know what their English language ability is like, but I don’t think this article is suitable for the class I described. Here are my reasons:
1. The text is inappropriate in content and lexile level (difficulty).
2. Talking about meal-kit delivery service and different diet is pointless.
3. The higher level of vocabulary is of such a level that it is useless even if the students can work out the meaning.
4. There is no attempt from the homeroom teacher to make it age/level appropriate. Or known as differentiation.
5. The group found it difficult to understand, even if the homeroom teacher had tried to explain it, they would never have a sound understanding of the content.

I know that Ms Anne has never taught lower primary students and that she is not used to the practice of teaching without a textbook. In my opinion, regardless of your teaching experience, it is her responsibility to find out what level her students are at linguistically and create a lesson that would be suitable for them without it being too easy or too challenging.

Yes, the article is easy enough for me to understand and offer my own opinion, but that is because I can relate to the content. I grew up eating flatbread, I have experienced eating culture from different countries and been exposed to different diet as well as food from different continents. You can say that children who have lived in different countries are more culturally aware than those who haven’t. But it all depends on how much exposure they get from the local environment. You could have an Australian kid who grew up in China but never had any Chinese food because he or she always had home cooked meals. Anything is possible these days.

Anyway, going back to the article Ms Anne asked the class to read. I always wonder … why do children dislike Maths, reading or writing. I believe what she is doing could potentially make this class dislike reading. If they spent most of their class time figuring out how to read unfamiliar words and trying to understand the meaning of the words, the brain would get tired and will never be able to comprehend the actual message within the text. And the next time they are presented with a similar text, they may not respond to it positively.

Ms Anne can still get her students to read the text, but perhaps rewriting it to meet her students’ reading level would be the way to go. This way, her and Ms Tina won’t have to spend most of their teaching time teaching the class how to read the words they don’t know and explain the meaning. They could invite the class to share what they think about the article.

I had a friend how said, “teaching is easy. You just stand in front of the class and entertain the students.” If she were still my friend, I would share this with her and ask what she thinks of this. Would she have changed her opinion on teaching?

When will it get better

Today we received an email from Cathay to let us know that our flight from HongKong to Brisbane has been cancelled. Went to manage booking on their website and I found that our flight from KL to HongKong is still going… Not sure how or if we will be able to get refunded for the whole segment, not just the HongKong to Brisbane. *heavy sigh*

The dog’s flight for 11 September is also cancelled…. so third time is not a charm in this case. Malaysia Airlines are not flying much these days so our pet relocator has booked a flight with Royal Brunei for 2 October. Our hopes are securely grounded until she is in the cargo area waiting to be loaded onto the plane.

In the meantime, my future employer is trying to get me a new work visa. They have asked me to go to their Subang campus to pick up my work contract. I might go on Thursday, as it will give me a chance to see what their school looks like. We have also decided to do some tutoring for our old students who are currently suffering at the hands of egotistical teachers. Mine is starting tomorrow while hubby’s on Saturday. I guess this would somehow take our mind of flights and cancellation.

Working out over the MCO

Exercise has always been in the background of my life. When I was a kid, I used to swim, play badminton, tag, hide and seek, ride a bike and did TaeKwonDo. I continued to do TaeKwonDo until I was in my early 30s. But I have never been that motivated to exercise regularly.

During our second last year in Beijing, hubby got me a 10 pass for a yoga class at Yoga Yard. I enjoyed my classes, I think it was due to the trainer I had. I kept going back, sometimes more than once a week. Although I enjoyed it, it took a lot of effort to motivate myself to go to these classes. After a year of weekend classes at Yoga Yard, we decided that we would move to another country. The pollution became too much and out of the blue, my husband got offered a job in Indonesia.

I had about a year break from any form of exercise. We had to move to Indonesia, adjust to a new language, food and culture. My husband suggested that I do yoga again since I seemed to enjoy it more than any other sports. I agreed and I met a great teacher who pushed me to my limits during our private classes. I loved it but it didn’t last for long. After a year and a half, I decided to take a break as again, we were moving to yet another country.

Not long after we moved to Malaysia, I went into depression. I might write about it on another post. I wasn’t motivated to do anything beyond the one hour walk I did to and from work. Hubby tried to motivate me to do any exercise but I was having none of it, until I saw how much weight I had put on.

I started doing yoga again, first I did 5 sets of Surya Namaskara A (sun salutation A) followed by 3 sets of Surya Namaskara B. I loved it! I was amazed at how much I had lost but also at how much my body remembered. The old habits came back though… I exercised on and off, and later became more off than on. Until the MCO … I had nothing to do. I didn’t feel wiped after work and decided to use my extra free time and energy to exercise. I did it every day, for 30 to 40 minutes. Sometimes I did it through memory, sometimes with the help of a YouTube video when I couldn’t remember the next pose. I found it easy to stick to this new routine because hubby exercises regularly. I like having a buddy to exercise with, even if we both do different exercises.

To this day, I will only go if he goes. I would take a rest day when he has one. I feel lucky that he loves exercising and is always motivating me to do it too. It makes me feel a lot better, less tired and happier.

Throwback Australia

I came across an interesting post about life as an Australian expat. I can relate to what she has experienced and would like to add a few of my own.

I have lived in several Asian countries and I do find it challenging to make friends on my own.

One interesting challenge I have faced living as an Aussie expat is to tone down my slang and accent. When I lived in South Korea, I met another foreigner who lived one floor above me. I went into a verbal diarrhea sharing my first experiences. I did notice that she was not responding much. I attributed that to jet lag or tiredness from work. After we have been friends for a few months, she told me that she found me difficult to understand. The accent and vocabulary (chewies, sunnies, pissed, and many more)…. they were all so foreign to her. After she told me that, everything seemed clear to me. My coworkers nodded their head with confused looks because they couldn’t understand my accent. They asked me to speak with an American accent not because they like Americans more. Since that day, I learnt to tone the accent down and use less slang when speaking to other people.

Any friends or acquaintances I have were made through a friend. I have never gone out on my own to forge any relationships. It doesn’t mean that I have lived a lonely life abroad. I am quite happy to go and do things alone, such as eating out, movies and sight seeing. I sometimes find that when doing this with other people, I feel that I had to be more considerate as I have to remember to consider what others would like to do.

Now that I am married, my life as an expat hasn’t changed much. I am quite content doing things just with my husband. As he is the more outgoing one, I normally just go along with whatever he has planned. If I don’t feel like socialising, I am quite happy to just stay at home. At first, my husband would try to get me to come out. He felt guilty when I insisted that I would be fine at home and he should go out with his friends. He would text me to make sure I was okay. After awhile, he knew that I am a homebody. Instead of convincing me to come out, he would say, “Let me know if you changed your mind.”

Talking about going home during holidays, I always get a different reaction from the residents. Sometimes I get the “Are you for real?” kind of look or questions such as “Are you a local?” or “How is your holiday so far?” The answer I gave them often met with a disbelief. I blame my time overseas for this. However, I had not the life that I had, I would be wondering about what it would feel like to live overseas, meet brilliant people and visit wonderful places you often see on travel brochures.

I think living overseas has the potential to make your life richer. It certainly has made me feel thankful for who I am and appreciate what we have. After living in 3 different countries and going through a lockdown with my husband, it has made our relationship even stronger. Would we continue living or lives as expats? No, we are ready to come home. Sadly, we don’t know when that would be. Considering where we are today, I hope we will be able to make the move sooner than later.

If you would like to read the article that prompted me to write this one, you can head to BRB Busy Living Life!

Third’s time a charm

Whisky is scheduled to fly on the 11th. This would be her third attempt at relocating to Australia. The agent is not as hopeful as they were the second time around. I don’t blame them, as airlines these days are allowed to cancel their flights without reason. Still, we are crossing our fingers that this time, Whisky will be able to board the flight and start her journey to Australia. She will be flying with Malaysia Airlines instead of Royal Brunei.

Whisky is a picky eater, even though we have exposed her to a variety of food since she was a pup. She used to like bananas, carrots, broccoli and peas. As she got older, she started to eat only dog food. She would push the healthier items off her bowl. We are alternating her diet between raw food and home cooked meals. She eats better, but won’t touch canned food since.

I joined a Facebook group about pets travelling back to Australia. I found out that you could ask your vet to write a letter about your pet’s eating habit so you could send your own to the quarantine centre in Melbourne. This is a good surprise since my pet relocator agent told me that you won’t be able to make such request and that we need to start training our dog to eat a certain brand of dry food (kibbles).

So this is how you can do it. You order your preferred dog food from online pet shops and have it delivered to the Mickleham quarantine centre. The rest is a bit hazy because from the post I read, she didn’t address the package to the quarantine centre, instead to Canberra. If you are interested and would like to find out more, you can email them at PEQservices@agriculture.gov.au

Would I be doing this? Maybe…. After being away from us for 45 days (and likely to be more), she would have adjusted to her new diet. I don’t think I would unless I get news that she is not eating well during her time in Brunei.