Its getting harder all the time...

The underwater scenes were taken by a friend I met in Bali. Roland was from Switzerland and was a diver who spent most of his time underwater taking great pictures. We met over breakfast one morning and after getting to know eachother he offered me two discs wotrh of these unique underwater scenes which I like to use when my stories gets too depressing and morbid for consumption.

"I used to be an angry young man...been hinding me head in the sand.." but things are getting harder, a little harde all the time..." unfortunately eversince the pandora box was opened to humanity. Knowledge is at our fingertips for those who have excess to a PC and the Internet; tap and ye shall be informed about almost evertything and anything under the sun from here to Cancun from there to Lhasa. I was living in San Francisco when cyberspace was a buzz word and i even wrote an essay on it on my son's PC which i forgot about untill he reminded me years later of the writng which was saved in the computer. It was then that I adopted the word "humind", which started off as typo error and later as a shortened version of human mind, and now it is my email adress. I started writing after being left to babysit my son's PC back then in 1990-91 while he was attending the San Jose State University which is about sixty miles from San Francisco...
"A master can tell you what he expects of you. A teacher, though, awakens your own expectation." ~Chinese Proverb
Today I had my two Art History classes together at the Muzium Gallery Tuanku fauziah and almost all the students turned up to my pleasant surprise and that made up about seventy students running all over the place. They seemed to have a good time half paying attention to my talks an the half busy doing everything else that teenagers do these days. The gallery is having a show of its permanent collection including some of the more welknown artists such as Dato' Syed Ahmad Jamal, and Latif Mohidin nie artist's works altogehter. The exhibition is entitled "Pioneers of Malaysian Modern Art. It is a good selection of Malay and Chinese artist who has contributed in one way or another towards the Malaysian contemporary art scene.

This kids seemed to have fun and amidst all the chaos of some seventy five kids running around a muzium i managed to get them to focus alittle on what they were there to do. One of the things they were suppose to pay atttention to was the Islamic Art exhibits as it would be nex on their topic of Art History. I am now beginning to find out the tedious and monotonous side of teaching and that is marking the papers. It is most depressing if not aggravating to coreect papers that all read the same word for word that has very little or nothing to do whatsoever with the original question.. How can i not have great respect for my late wife who taught ESL most of her career as a teacher; teachers should be given a twenty one gun salute at their burial ceremony and students should be made pal bearers at their teachers' funeral.
"Teaching kids to count is fine, but teaching them what counts is best. " ~ Bob Talbert
But I can also see where teachers can loose their interest and enthusiasm in teaching in the course of their career especially when they get students who are there just to fullfill their parents wish and occupy thier time. Those that have no respect for others in the class and are there simply to entertain their immaturity while in transition to becoming an adult. Those that slide by each and every way they can from doing their assignments, copying others and the internet, plagiarising without even care to note if the palgiarism fits what the answers ask for. These are the future of our nation and I have but only a handful compared to the average school teacher! God bless them all! Now I am beginning to understand what being a teacher is all about and i know that this is only the tip of the essys to be marked and commented upon. Now i cna see why my late wife used to sit by herself through most of the night or locked in her office when she is not in her classes pouring her heart out over half heartedly written answers by students who expect miracles to happen at the end of their semster.
It is not that i blame the kids for that is what most of them are and mine is still home sleeping out the days and staying up the nights staring intently at the lap- top either playing video games or watching something on you-tube. This is what the next form of illness is going to be that will hit out at the next generation... the Lap -top zombies. Their eyes will go first as most hide in the dark so as not to disturb those asleep around them and next their eardrums as they turn full blast on the earphones knowing that only them can hear rhe racket they are enjoying. It is the ultimate escape! This is a side effect that cyberspace has taken for those who have excess to PCs and lap tops. It is only hope that most know the difference between use and abuse, that their minds can as easily be corrupted as it can be enlightened by merely stumbling on to a wrong web - site. Th virus comes in many forms and the worse are those that destroys the innocence and purity of an uninformed, immature mind surfing the ocean of infinite information on the Internet or lost in Cyberspace.