friend. father. husband. batchmate.
i think none of my kids inherited the musical side of me. i've always wanted to have a piano in my own home (organ != piano), to be able get my kids to learn how to play (and discover the beauty of music), but you know how it is - time went by, excuses of nanti lah and later lah came next, then covid happened and by then a piano wasn't a priority anymore.
don't get me wrong, i stopped classes when i was in Grade 6, but i wasn't a Beethoven prodigy either. i hated practicing my piano pieces, i got frustrated when the music piece had too many sharps and flats involved, i hated creating my own melodies (it was a theory requirement); most of the time i'd randomly doodle notes onto the score sheet without even bothering to find out if the notes made sense bahahahhahaha. so long as the number of notes per bar corresponded with the meter, aite?
aunty Musalma would be smacking her forehead right about now should she read what i just wrote. oops.
but i still enjoyed playing, assuming the music notes were in front of me (i wish i had Gesty's talent!). and that's why i joined gamelan during my uni years - they didn't have the orchestra back then, so gamelan was the next best thing. my friends used to be amazed at how i was able to play the music without the notes. every note on the instruments were numbered; you just needed to remember which ones to hit. lol
5 - 5 - 2 - 3 - 2 - 3 - 5 (inside joke bersama mama Ju)
anywayyy, my daughter came home with very atrocious marks for her Music paper recently. i was totally horrified when she texted her marks to me. and when i got to hold the paper in my hands, my eyes almost popped out of their sockets; i actually wanted to laugh just looking at the subjective part of her paper - she totally bombed on the scales and triads. since when was music complicated like History?! however, i didn't learn music in malay, mind you (i was on the ABRSM curriculum), so her paper was practically foreign language to me. the whole paper was in Malay! and it seemed that my daughter does not have the gift of 'ting tiong tiang', haha (i used to know people who hentam the answers to their objective papers yet still managed to get a decent score). i can go on and on on how appalled/mystified/baffled/confounded i am at the results of her music paper... but oh well, pasrah je lah.
that's it. i'm going to enroll one of my kids in music class after thisssss.
for reference (because my brain has gone all rustic on music theory), here are some of the notes i have managed to scrape together with regards to the questions in her exam paper.
Piano Scales that need to be remembered:
Relative Minor: take the 6th note from the scale, e.g
Relative Major: take the 3rd note from the scale, e.g
Scale Degree Notes (To See More Sheep Don't Say Lunch)
Formula of the Major scale: T T S T T T S
i could go on about the harmonic and melodic minor scale (which i'm still confused about), but then i'd be crying blood tears at how much i just realized i've forgotten the theory of music. it's been a while since i've rambled on random subjects, and this is one of those posts. so if you managed to read my post until this line, i apologize because think i kinda wasted your time reading all this crap i wrote, haha.
did you know i wanted to learn the violin? i did. i almost purchased a violin back when i was in uni, but i didn't; i don't really remember why. i'm now worried my kids will end up tone deaf like the husband, haha.
why i think the way schools handle KOKURIKULUM - Badan Beruniform, Sukan/Permainan & Kelab/Persatuan suck big time.
in one of the many messaging groups i am in, i came across a parent's inquiry on how do students get sorted into extra-curriculum activities for schools..
"untuk koko badan beruniform & sukan memang pilihan dibuat oleh guru-guru ya? tanpa pilihan minat anak-anak sendiri?
anak saya tak minat langsung dengan catur tapi diletakkan dalam group catur. bila suruh tukar apa yg dia minat, cikgu pesan terima sahaja pilihan yang guru tetapkan.
bagi pendapat saya, sekurang-kurangnya anak murid berhak untuk memilih 3 pilihan yg mereka minat dan selebihnya guru tentukan dalam 3 pilihan tadi.
mudahkan urusan guru, tapi anak-anak terus ditentukan tanpa pilihan anak-anak sendiri."
sad to say, my kids have this problem too. the school gives out a list of all available clubs, badan beruniform and sports but when students don't get into the clubs that they want to join - with the school's excuse that their chosen clubs are full - they're forced to join clubs that are of little interest to them.
first of all, these kids should be allowed to join clubs that they are interested in, isn't that the whole point of joining them in the first place?
i still remember the day my daughter told me that she was supposed to sign up for extra-curriculum. she was interested in joining the cooking club; she used to tell me she wanted to be a chef one day (not to be a wet rag, but i don't think that ambition of hers will last, but at least she had ambition, yes? =D). anyway, on the day they were supposed to choose, she called later to tell me she didn't get to join any of the clubs and badan beruniform that she initially wanted.
just imagine, there were about 150 students in Form 1 who wanted to register for extra-curriculum activities for the first time, so what are the odds that most of them would want to join the same club?
- the Cooking Club apparently had limited spots available, so of course my daughter didn't get to join. she tried for English next, but that one was full too. finally decided to join BM just because that club wasn't full yet;
- Tunas Puteri / Puteri Islam was filling up fast too, but they prioritized students that already bought the uniform, as well as former members, so she was pushed aside and had to settle for TKRS;
- Badminton was the only one she chose and managed to get in. haha.
just so you know, these days she's slowly starting to lose interest in the kitchen, which is a bit saddening to me. i wonder if she did happen to get into the club she wanted, she'd still offer to help me out in the kitchen once in a while. i may just never find out. drama kan. haha.
she sends her younger sister to help me instead. CHIS.
i haven't even begin to elaborate on student favoritism. and let's not start on situations where the student was one of the earliest to sign up for her preferred club, but was transferred into another club instead because there weren't enough people in the other clubs (they supposedly had to even out the quota). ironically, a friend of hers signed up much later but managed to get into the club, so where's the fairness in that?
and why do you even limit the number of students in one club anyway? nak jaga quota la konon. it's a free country, what's wrong with letting them belong in a club they enjoy and actually want to be in, apa susah? imagine you have a judo club with only 3 members. takkan la you nak force students into the club just for the sake of evening out the quota? well okay, statistically 2 or 3 students might get smitten by judo, but what about the others? then what? be stuck in a club they're not interested in until they graduate? kids can try something and not like it the same way adults do.
the excuse "kita nak beri pendedahan semua jenis sukan kepada murid-murid" defeats the purpose of allowing the students to choose in the first place. you might as well just decide for them who gets into what, am i right? tak payah bagi harapan palsu kat students if you won't even let them join the clubs of their liking.
another daughter of mine was put into chess club (i have no idea how she winded up in that club haha) but until today she has no idea how to play chess T___T. tu pun satu. isn't the club supposed to teach her how? i'm sorry, but why again do we have clubs and persatuan if she has no idea what she's doing in the club in the first place? pendedahan, what?
you can't force hobbies / interests onto kids. you can introduce them to, sure. but that's not the reason schools have all these curriculum in the first place, yes? you join clubs to gain knowledge, skills and experience in regards to the club of choice. and it's also the best way to expand your circle of friends. these school clubs are supposed to be fun and exciting for the students, BUT when they get thrown into random clubs to 'even out the clubs' member count (which is such a lame excuse, mind you), you're just simply forcing a kid to do something they have very little interest in and suck all the fun out of it. and that's just sad.
i don't think i'm the only parent that feels this way, but nothing much can be done about the system anyway. now that everyone's stuck at home and everything is conducted online, i can't fathom why they don't just let students join anything they want to. i'd want to leave school with happy memories, and extra-curriculum is an important aspect to make that happen, trust me.
image source: Google |
the solar system : i've never really bothered to know much about this subject mainly because i didn't have to take Science for UPSR. back then subject was called 'Alam dan Manusia'; that's how old i am. the closest thing i knew about planets back then was when my classes were named after planets. i was a Musytarian since Standard One until Four (or was it Three? i forgot already), then i got bumped into Zuhal for the remaining years.
yup, that's all i know. hahaha. until recently when my kids need to learn about planets in school. during my days Pluto was still considered a part of the solar system (and also shares a name with Mickey Mouse's loyal pet dog), until it got downgraded into a dwarf planet in 2006. it still feels weird to know that there's only eight planets in the solar system; my mindset still has it set to nine. haha.
and i learnt all my subjects in school in Malay (ami-laa-se liur, bahahhahahahha), so for the life of me i keep forgetting their translated names correctly. i mean like how on earth did Jupiter get translated into Musytari???
so i got to learn that my daughter has a formula to remember the names of the planets in order:
"My Very Educated Mommy Just Served Us Noodles".
LOL LOL.
My - Mercury / Utarid
Very - Venus / Zuhrah (the hottest planet)
Educated - Earth / Bumi
Mommy - Mars / Marikh
Just - Jupiter / Musytari (the biggest planet)
Served - Saturn / Zuhal (planet with the most rings)
Us - Uranus / Uranus
Noodles - Neptune / Neptun
Potatoes - Pluto
pretty cool huh. my Standard One kid has already memorized it. but for a very educated Mother, why does she serve noodles? i'd have chosen Nutella. or Nachos. or Nuggets, my kids absolutely love those hahahhahaha
now moving on to... rocks!
ok now this one i seriously don't even remember learning about it, unless you have a genuine interest in the subject. kids these days have it easy, everything you can just Google. our version of Google was to ask our Mom or Dad, or take a trip to the local library, assuming they have books related to whatever it is you are looking up on. and then head to the foodcourt to eat mee ayam because you're hungry. and then find a public phone afterwards to call your mom to pick you up, because you haven't figured out how the bus system works.
anyway, i googled those rock terms, just because one of my daughter's questions in her Science paper asked about the rock sequence as it enters the earth's atmosphere. and the terms all sound so similar to each other, it's like Molly Bolly Jolly, so who comes first? haha.
but first let's define the terms.
Asteroid
a small rocky body orbiting the sun. large numbers of these are found between orbits of Mars and Jupiter <- this i also did not know. another one of the questions asked in my daughter's paper. she can consider a career as an astronomer after this.
Meteoroid
a small rocky or metallic body in outer space. meteoroids are significantly smaller than asteroids, and ranges in size.
Meteor
when meteoroids enter the Earth's atmosphere (or that of another planet) at high speed and burn up, the fireballs or shooting stars are called Meteors.
Meteorite
when a meteoroid survives a trip through the atmosphere and hits the ground, it's called a Meteorite.
i'm guessing this is what you call those solid rocks that people see on displays in museums, no?
here's a very good video to differentiate everything:
ok i'm done rambling about this subject. my kids have learnt the existence of this blog so they find it amusing to read my ramblings, especially when most of my older posts are about them. LOL
today's my anniversary, and here i am wiriting about planets and finishing up my pending test documents yg never ending T_T.
remember the birthday prank i played on my deskmate earlier this year? well my friends decided to continue the tradition even though we're in lockdown and stuck working from home.
their initial plan was to sabotage my car, or something like that. but nah, that ain't happening, office tutup. lucky for me, too bad for them.
BUTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT
they got creative and decided to send the surprise to my house instead. no one is safeeeeeee
birthday surprise - the kids were the happiest to see thissss |
thanks guys! |
you know that mco joke where they say now's a good time to go kutip hutang, coz confirm everyone will be at home? yeah well... that's how it was more or less.
funny thing was, they had to send the surprise one day before my actual birthday, only because the courier service is closed on Sunday hahahha. so i received alot of early birthday wishes this year. i seriously did not expect this. i was just told to make sure i was around on Saturday. and in my total surprise (i was stunned i tell you, STUNNEDDDDD), i did not realize the mascot was a cat, and not a mouse.
cat or mouse? |
bongok tak. kene bahan lagiii *smacks forehead* i'm just glad they didn't catch me in my pajamas, hahahahhahah.
never mind. next year can balas dendam. january is comingggggggggggg hahahahhahaha
btw, the cake they sent me sedap gila. here's the number in case anyone's interested in ordering:
love desserts - 0126191548 |
on Sunday (my actual birthday), i had brunch with v at VCR. v's a pro at cafe hopping, so her recommendations doesn't disappoint. i found out that doughnuts and ice cream go perfectly together.
bersama geng masuk hutan |
this is v's. she forever eats clean =P |
i ordered... thisssssss |
am i 18 or am i 18? |
donuts + ice cream = yum yum |
v also had the bright idea to order from kak od her infamous salmon asam pedas and kek batik. so of cos i pun nak la menumpang sekali, heeee~~~~ huwaaaaaaaa i miss random makan-makans in the office. now to figure out how to pass all that to v. why la you live so far away from me?
asam pedas kak od!!! |
ended the day with Sushi King with the family and berry pavlova from Alexis. the husband had already bought an early birthday gift for me about a week ago. my old device died on me, and as much as i'd like to revive it, it's time to move on and move to greener pastures =P.
mini family celebration |
also, a good friend of mine decided to surprise me with this slice of cake. thanks babe! love u mucho =D #plantfriend
my first norwex purchase |
Ikea hand towel on the left, nay kitchen cloth on the right |
kitchen cloth (the navy is gorgeous irl!), counter cloth, Enviro |
mojos! the kids love them too |
see all the oil it collected? |
no more shopping outings to mv with this crazy bunch |
no more Ted Boy for tea time, across the office |
no more reason to drive out to BS after this |
no more lunch sessions with my ice cream buddy |