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Showing posts from May, 2013

F**ck Bali

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Six days on the supposedly paradisiacal island of Bali and I'm a nervous twitching wreck.  This is not entirely Bali's fault, but it hasn't exactly helped either.  We didn't get off to a good start when we arrived on an evening flight from Singapore to find Air Asia had left everyone's baggage at Changi.  In the confusion I forget to take my debit card out of the ATM I was drawing cash from, which I didn't discover until two days later. Fast forward to a hideously overpriced beach restaurant where we were presented with the first bill I've ever had that came to over a million.  One and a half million Indonesian rupiah to be exact, admittedly this is only about £100, but that's still a lot for a dodgy lobster and some fish.  Out came the credit card, which didn't work, followed by my debit card, not my proper one but my previous one which I'd stupidly forgotten to destroy and now thought was my current card.  Obviously this didn't work eith...

Goodbye Teacher!

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It's just been one long social whirl this week as I host a series of farewell soirees for my English students. For the teenagers it's been Sprite, sandwiches and games based around Taylor Swift lyrics and I actually got some of my big, tough, thirteen year olds singing.  Yesterday, I was sad to say goodbye to my ten year olds.  I had got more sandwich stuff in, but I needn't have bothered as they trotted in happily with plastic carriers bags full of cake, curry, chicken frankfurters and other goodies.  Most of them also brought gifts.  I have been inundated with presents, including diaries, pens, key rings and even a powder compact from Shanghai, from this lot since we started in May last year.  During our last lesson we sang songs, had a treasure hunt around the ground floor of the house, ate all the food and played games.  After a final game of "killer shark" ("hangman" without the capital punishment overtones) I stood outside in the warm night a...

The Government Always Gets In?

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"It doesn't matter who you vote for, the government always gets in."  I don't know where I picked up that bit of wisdom from, a toilet door possibly, but it lodged in my mind because of its obvious truth.  Even when the "opposition" win they soon become the "government", taking to the trappings of power like ducks to water.  Not that in Malaysia the "opposition" has ever got a chance to savour the taste of victory. I stayed up until midnight on 5th May to watch the election results trickle in and went to bed when the outcome was certain - a win for Barisan Nasional, the ruling coalition.  Over the following days the implications of the "victory" became more clear.  Far from being triumphal, the leading BN politicians have been grim faced, aware that in the last two general elections their hold on power has been steadily loosened.  In 2008 they lost their traditional two thirds parliamentary majority.  This time the oppositio...