DIFFERENT TYPE OF TUTORIAL

I taught two different lessons today. In the morning, Ustaz Zul came for his blogging tutorial which lasted about an hour an a half. After school I taught Sharveen some Chinese characters. Many people are mistaken that I am not able to read or write Chinese since I was educated in a convent. But I also attended POL (Pupil's Own Language) classes while I was in primary school and also a Mandarin class at the YMCA after my Form 5. At the same time, my dad and Aunt May taught me Classical Chinese in the Cantonese dialect at home. I can understand and speak Mandarin but with a very heavy Cantonese accent. Similarly my spoken Cantonese is tinged with traces of English pronunciation as my parents taught me to speak in English when I first learned to talk.

For your information, the Chinese Classical books that I studied contained Confucian Philosophy and al lot of Chinese etiquette. Therefore, I am very particular about how people address me. As I am very much older than most of the teachers in the school, it would be rather rude for anybody to call me Cheah Li Na. The proper way to address me is Miss Cheah. I have told this to many of the teachers and staff and have informed them that if they do that I will just walk away and ignore them since they do not know how to show any respect to me. I hope I have made this very clear. I am sure this applies to Indian and Malay families as well. Try calling your aunts and uncles by their name and the words that come out from their mouths will be something which means "what bad manners" or "kurang ajar".