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01/02/08 - What started as a week full of confidence has ended in one full of stress, and has left me with a headache that feels like someone has literally hit me over the back of the head. I still don't have a bicycle, and my trust and confidence in Daniel has decreased considerably, and unfortunately it's affected my college work. I was stressed enough on Thursday that I couldn't print out the worksheets I had pre-made for my lesson, so having Daniel in the back of my mind just added to my bad day.

My lesson ended up being not to standard, which I knew would be the case, which is why I phoned Victoria straight after. As usual, she scolded me for not listening to her in asking Daniel, a middle class father trying to excel himself in the church, to help me sort out getting a bicycle. Daniel has been going through some personal issues himself at the moment, but saying he'll get me something I need and leaving me in false anticipation is pretty bad. As long as we're paitent with him, then he won't end up running from the church.

Fortunately the week hasn't ended in total despair. Earlier I met up with Chris from college, and he gave me some papers to help with my lesson plan for Tuesday. He's also suffered from a not to standard lesson, but he says it makes a good opportunity to bounce back, so I should just look at my mistakes and sort myself out, though I think outside distraction was my main problem in my last lesson. My assignment student, Amir, is also trying to boost my confidence, saying that I'm the best teacher and should work at British Council.

Despite all the stresses I'm going through, atleast I still have time to attend church. I even got to go to the Petaling Jaya service after meeting with Chris earlier tonight, though I had planned to take Ranjita to Taman Wahyu, but college is always top priority. Everyone really seems to be taking to Ranjita at the church, and she's making a lot of friends. She's adapted quite quickly to the things that go on in the service, and is even trying to encourage me to be more active in some of the things that go on...

08/02/08 - Gong Xi Fa Cai! I've had such a busy week, and it's turned out quite nicely. Firstly, I finally have a bicycle, and suprisingly I have a laptop too (see Photography site). I went out shopping with Victoria on Saturday, only looking for a bike, so we went in a second hand shop and saw a couple of laptops there, which we were both tempted by. So we managed to get a decent second hand laptop for RM850 (priced RM1000), and with it being second hand, someone carlessly left Heroes Season 2 on there. Great!

I'm happy to have finally got my bicycle, which was only RM200, but I think I got a little too excited over it on Sunday. Having the freedom to explore, I decided to see what other routes I could take home, but the short cut turned out to be a seriously long one. Car drivers here are notorious for ending up at highway toll booths when lost, so imagine me doing that on a bicycle! Fortunately I was helped out by a local Tamil, Jeffrey, who invited me to his house and then helped me home. I'm happy to finally have a bike and laptop, but I shouldn't get too attached, as neither of them will be coming back to the UK...

My college lessons are back to standard, which is good news. Atleast it shows that I need to be kicked to fall down after what happened last week. I went to Ching Mei's house (college friend) for the Chinese New Year celebrations, though we arrived when everyone else was leaving, as Jyothi wanted to get her hair done, and also had Ranjita's hair be given a tidy. It's a shame we missed the lion dance, I still haven't had the chance to properly see one, so this makes it the third straight Chinese New Year in Malaysia where I've done nothing to formally celebrate, which is a shame as it's one of the most exciting holidays of the year, but atleast we've got nine days off college!

After our visit to Klang, we took the KTM train home, and on the way Ranjita ended up wetting herself, so as we were close to my house, Jyothi agreed I should take her to my place to get her cleaned up. So we took a taxi, but Ranjita was upset and wanted her mother, and the taxi driver became quite suspicious, and stopped outside a shopping mall to talk to a security guard. Soon there was a crowd of about ten people round us, and I had to convince everyone I was Ranjita's guardian, showing photos of us on my camera and having to call Jyothi. It was a scary situation, but the taxi driver was being more safe than sorry after the high media case of Sharlinie going missing round the PJ area.

Other than that, I've really enjoyed the time I've spent with Ranjita over the past two days of the holiday, where I've been with her the whole time. I really enjoyed the trip to Serendah today, where we celebrated Simeon's birthday. I seem to enjoy myself more going on outings when I have something to take responsibility over. I've felt left out too many times going on trips where I've had no close relationship with anyone, but having Ranjita around gives me something constantly to do. It's still a lot of hard work looking after her though, now I understand why parents are usually relieved when they get a break from their kids...

15/02/08 - It's back to my normal schedule after a nine day break, thanks to the long Chinese New Year holidays. Last week I said I was dissapointed to not have seen a traditional lion dance on my third straight CNY in Malaysia. Well I made up for the poor history this past week by seeing three of them, which was very complimenting. But now it's time to get back into the college routine; hopefully it should be less stressful now we only have four lessons each left to teach, though the classes will be longer, but the days off from teaching is such a stress relief.

I now have internet for my laptop, so I now have everything that I need here (along with the laptop itself and the bike), it's just a shame it took over two months for me to get any of it, and I'll only have it for another three or four more months, then it's a case of selling it all before I leave. Victoria and I agreed she'll buy the laptop off me once I go, and she'll probably buy the bicycle too, as it's not a bad bike for just RM200, and the internet can be sold back to the shop once the card is finished with.

After four and a half years, the Taman Wahyu church has changed it's Sunday Evening Service to the earlier time of 5:00pm, giving it an earlier ending time of around 7:30pm to 8:00pm. I'm suprised it took so long for them to put the service at a more sensible time, as it's hard for some families who have to get up at 5:00am the next morning to send their kids to morning school. It also makes it easier for me to go back home to PJ after the service, because as I found on Tuesday, the bus service seems to be completly dead going into KL after 9:00pm...

22/02/08 - As this website reaches three years as a dot-com, I've now reached the half way point of my course. I was happy to hear on Tuesday that I'm currently to standard overall, after my progress report with Jacques. I did my first lesson with the Elementary students this week, and with the dwindling numbers the other group had left whilst teaching there, I was expecting less than ten students to turn up. We ended up with seventeen.

I did handle the situation quite well, despite students having to share worksheets between three or four (I wasn't going to waste paper on worksheets if I knew there'd only be a few), but it was lack of detail in my lesson plan that brought me down a bit this time. Unfortunately, I have quite a difficult lesson next week (a skills lesson involving discussion, which can be hard to teach to elementary), but Rubina did a similar structured lesson this week (and did it very well), so I've been told to look at her lesson plan over the weekend.

Ranjita, who I haven't had chance to spend much time with lately, was ill when I saw her today. She had high body temperature and was feeling generally unwell. Jyothi told me she's not eating or drinking properly, as in having the right things enough of the time, which is an ironic resemblance to me. She doesn't like to eat rice much, and seems to only want to eat fried chicken (ie. KFC). I did want to take her to church today (Friday services being a Healing Service), but Jyothi wanted her to the temple. But Jyothi does seem to approve of me taking her to church, as she bought Ranjita a tiny cross to go on her necklace the other week...

29/02/08 - It's been one heck of a busy week for me this week. Not only did I have two days of college, but I also had two days of touring round Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. We had a special guest at the Taman Wahyu Sunday Service this past week, Francis Mawby, who attends Ian and Wendy's church in Australia. He was touring round South East Asia for a couple of weeks and was referred to Pastor Paul for his time in Malaysia. I went sightseeing with Francis round KL on Monday, with Reuben and Karthik being our tour guides, visiting various tourist spots, including my second visit to KL Butterfly Park, then having dinner at Victoria's.

On Wednesday, I went to Singapore with Francis, as he needed to be there for his flight home, and I needed to renew my visa, so atleast I had someone to go with on the train journey there. We didn't do much in Singapore, but as I was only there for six hours there wasn't alot I could do (if I'd gone a week later, I could have gone on the new 'Singapore Flyer' Big Wheel). We just went round Orchard Road and had some bangers and mash; despite that being my first taste of pork for three months, the meal was not worth S$20. But despite Francis being almost four times my age, he seemed to endure the long train journey there better than I did.

I arrived back from Singapore at 6am, overslept, and turned up for college late, but there was no input session so it didn't matter anyway. My lesson on Tuesday went well; I only have two more lessons left to teach, but I have five assignments to get finished before the end of next month, so it's not like I have any rest. The main principal for me studying in Malaysia was because I'd have a better social life to accomodate and keep me motivated, but I'm finding I'm spending almost as much time at home with the laptop here as I do with the PC in the UK...