Jarod Yong

Check it out. Somebody totally cetak rompak-ed a few of my FB pictures & used it in his FB profile. A friend of mine noticed this FB picture from the friend list of a friend of hers. This was an old picture of me back in 2008. There's also my latest FB picture where I'm all wrapped up I could be Keanu Reaves. Honestly, I don't feel offended at all. This is really flattering really. I've seen people who use pictures of celebrities/cartoon/professional photos of made-up girls but I had never in my wildest dreams imagined that someone would use MY photos. lol. They're not even that good! The first photo was a photo of me pretending to pay attention to a lecture when I was actually sound asleep a few seconds before the photo was taken. lol. The biker picture was taken by my mom before my maiden long distance voyage on my bike. Way to go, mom! I would send him a message to thank him personally but, unfortunately, he has blocked me. So, FB being the ...

When I'm heartbroken, I get more like this than teary or emotional. lol When you read the title, you're probably thinking some colleague stabbed my back. Or, maybe an administrator shut down one of my programmes. Maybe the students played a prank on me. Or, maybe a parent came at me with a parang & blew sumpits at me. Honestly, character attacks, criticism, backstabbing comes with the territory. I am the nail that sticks out. Some people will feel like hammering me down. Some people will support me & learn from my experiences. Either way, I've learned not to let it bother me & instead focus on what I want to achieve. Achieving it, in itself, is a good enough reward to me. I don't need no appreciation. I ain't no kindergarten kid. Also, let me say that I am not perfect. I do make mistakes & I do cut corners to get the job done because honestly there is just too much to do! I really salute the person who can be a perfect teacher & do ev...

This is how most people view teaching. And oh, how the envy goes both ways. As with other professions, teaching has its own set of challenges; namely a posting in the interiors, overbearing leaders, unbelievable targets, Emmy award-esque classroom performances, classroom control, marking, clerical chores, office politics, subordination, workload taichi, etc. It also has it's perks, long holidays & an above market rate salary. But, there are times I have been so drained & alone that I wonder if it was worth it. I have, many times during the past few years, seriously wondered why I'm still working at the level I am now. It is just so tempting & easy to join the "backbenchers". I'm glad that I didn't. Today, I want to share about how I survived as a teacher. I believe the same principles can be applied to other professions & many aspects of life. I know that there are many people out there struggling with the teaching profession. We have ...

Serving at a school in the middle of a jungle where the internet is shared between 40+ teachers & 30+ staff, one can only expect ninja turtle slow speeds. School's paying for a 1Mbps VSAT connection from TMnet but most of the time it feels like a 28k dail-up connection. During working hours, we can forget about using the mega traffic-jammed internet. The internet many of you enjoy with seamless Youtube steaming & snap-speed FB picture loading is a wet dream of sorts. The only time we can experience that kind of speeds is in the middle of the night (when everybody is asleep) or during the weekends (when everybody is not in school). The rest of the time, we'll have to hit the refresh button every 5 minutes. The internet is a luxury here. So you can imagine how frustrated I was last night when I was rudely disowned by Facebook. I didn't go online all day as I was giving extra classes to a class of low proficiency students during the afternoon & evening. Afte...