Saturday, I had to man the spotlight for a performance called Cultural Kaleidoscope, part of the celebration for International Week. At one point my boss put me down in his trademark tongue-in-cheek fashion and I just snapped. I didn't say anything, I just wanted to walk out to the basketball courts and think up ways of killing him. Afterwards, I felt miserable and I'm still not sure why because I have had more stressful performances, and my boss has riled on me more severely; I'm still trying to get to the bottom of it.

I took a walk with my mom down to Centrepoint Damansara Utama last night where I raided the discount comic bin of The Mind Shop. I picked up a couple of issues of X-Force. Comics are very shit. You have got a picture of a statuesque girl sitting on top of a building contemplating how miserable her life is. By the way, she's wearing an improbable constume that draws attention to herself. How do superheros stay live when they wear such bright costumes? Why is violence ok as a form of vengeance or when it is visited upon large monsters or government-issued killing machines?

I think I need to get out of this city. I need to get out of myself. But I'm not running myself ragged. I'm not stressed or suffering from burnout. Vinny, being in ISKL is reminding me how much I was glad to leave. I had to wrestle with my self-image and I can see kids going through the exact same thing, the self-hating, the cynicism towards everything. I never knew Generation X was characterised by "irony = cool" but it makes perfect sense.

I'm pretty sure I've grown out of hating myself for the pleasure of it. I'm pretty sure what I consider smart people don't understand.

Passionate teaching is what you make of it. The problem was I had to get a degree to realise the system's shortcomings. Which, as you point out, may not even be shortcomings when you consider the alternatives. What needs to happen is teachers and administrators need to incorporate what teenagers really think about learning, they need to address the stigma. It is like trying to engage the source material without personally responding to it. Or creating a personal relationship with a teacher without a breach of professional distance. I think personal interest works against professional interest. This is obvious. Neither instance is impossible, from my experience, good students retain and critique the information they are given and that is the basic requirement in a teacher-student relationship.

Maybe it creates a mockery out of a place of learning when you distinctly eschew discipline. But discipline benefits from intimidation, that means students are terrified into making the acceptable choices.

Vinny, your assumption is when you are left to your own devices you will never finish a piece of work. I agree with you. Because I am chronically late in submitting anything for assessment if the deadline had been extended by a year, I often feel I still would have started the assignment a week before the due date. I tell myself it is good form to throw together an assignment at the last minute and I scour newspapers and blogs and comic books for information I can use in an essay. But I don't qualify the information deeply enough, I don't leave a clear paper trail. There: I've just identified why my system doesn't work. Does that preclude that people make their living as a freelance writing, designer or performer on the basis they are disciplined enough to realise When They Are Done?

Or course not. Why? Because if they don't get with the program they aren't going to be paid. They need to incorporate discipline into their work habits. A hip hop artists rises to prominence on the basis he tells himself he won't be dealing drugs all his life and end up face-down in the street at 22. He is good at rapping and makes money because he has learnt the music game because he needs to, or else, well there isn't anything else.

My life experience is nowhere close to a ghetto. I work in an International School whose students are the children of the cream of the crop of Malaysia. I sleep a consistent 8 hours or more a night. I get into work around midday. These are not things conducive of discipline.

So we'll see how this year shapes up. If I wrote on this blog every day you would all be alot more sick hearing me rant about the same shit for the nth time.