I’m dyin’ here. The heat is so overpowering it has unmanned me. I don’t know where the hell it came from, either. One day I was sitting comfortably at my desk, eating my yoghurt and enjoying a nice cross breeze, and the next day I was stuck to that same desk. Quite literally. I had to peel my hands off of my cheap plastic seat and wipe pooled sweat out from under my eyeballs. It all happened in one day. Suddenly I was dreaming about how nice it was when I froze my balls off all winter. Then I realized that the winter weather was just as terrible. And then I got really angry and wanted to hit something, and I would have too, if I wasn’t so sure that the second I stood up I would pass out.

Oh, and they’ve finally decided it was Ok to turn on the air-conditioner at work. That’s nice of them. How thoughtful. Never mind that I’ve lost four pounds of water-weight over the past two weeks. I was wondering when everyone would realize that having the windows open doesn’t do a damn thing on days when there’s no wind! All that happens in that case is that a huge fat fly inevitably comes in and hits Brad on the back of the head and scares the bejesus out of him while he’s watching Entourage at his desk. There is a set date at Koho for when we are allowed to turn on the AC. In this country, temperature has very little bearing on decisions of personal comfort; the calendar dictates everything. Hot-as-a-whore-in-Church in the staff room? Sorry Guy, wait until June 30th, that’s the date to turn on the AC. Cold as a witches tit? Not so fast there Ace, it’s not time to turn on the heat yet.

It’s the same with school uniforms. The decision to change over from “Winter Uniform” to “Summer Uniform” and vice versa has nothing to do with whether or not the kids are comfortable in said uniform style, it’s all about the changeover date. No matter how hot it is in October, you still wear the Jacket. Sorry Sally! Power through it! If you pass out during morning assembly, somebody will probably carry you out, so don’t worry.

As far as classes go, I’m just going through the motions. Somebody had the brilliant idea of requiring kids to go to class after the exam for two weeks. As if I didn’t already have a class full of kids without any motivation to begin with, now I have to come up with two weeks of completely worthless filler, and try to keep them from meowing at me at the same time (Recently, my 1A kids have taken to meowing at me during class. They think it is absolutely hilarious). You can only play so many games of hangman before the kids start throwing things at each other. I am about at that point right now.

In other news, every single kid in every single class I teach has passed. You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t break out the champagne. I have five kids who didn’t even bother to show up for the exam, but who will be given a second shot to take it anyway. At their leisure, I’m sure.

“So they can just take it again? Just like that?” I asked my JTE.
“Yes, a makeup exam,” she said.
“And what if they don’t show up then? Do we give it a third time?”
“No no,” she said, laughing. And for a second I thought I might have stumbled upon the absolute end game, the point when a kid has to fail. But no.

“Then we give them supplementary lessons,” she said.


I see. So if the kids don’t give a fuck, it’s the teachers who end up paying for it.

No wonder everyone gets passed through.