I Can't Believe It's Not Reality!
Last weekend Sarah and I escaped once again to the Perhentian Islands and soaked up some sunburn in the presence of some fellow ETAs and a lot more restless youth types with little need for clothing or sobriety. The moto of one of the boat companies on our island was "It's not reality, it's paradise." While the whole quote might apply to the Perhentians, the first part is definitely appropriate for the experience in Malaysia on the whole. It's not reality. The problems come when you make the mistake of thinking that it is. Let me give you an example of this unreality of mine:
I've been meaning to tell you that Sarah and I got a car a week and a half ago. It's a maroon Honda with 500,000 kilometers on it and I love it. But as you may or may not know, there are a few things that you're generally supposed to avoid doing while owning a car. At the top of such a list of things it would be fair to put "lose your keys" and "hit something with the car." Not wanting either of these bad things hanging over my head, I wisely decided to knock both of them out my first day with the car.
First I locked my keys in the computer room at school. I didn't realize this had happened until I tried to drive away in the evening and realized that turning my empty fingers in front of the key hole was strangely ineffective. Luckily, Acik, my "fixer" was still on campus and was able to let me retrace my steps and unlock every room that I had been in that day. Since I've gotten that out of the way, I'll never have to lose my keys again. Solved.
Next, we drove down to KT to meet up with the ETAs there and hunker down for the night, as we had an early flight to KL the next morning on our way to Phuket. Minutes after arriving at their apartment complex, I (wisely) managed to reverse our of a parking spot and into a parked car with the kind of satisfying crunch that can only come with a moment you wished you could take back. Luckily the owner of the car was understanding enough and was (eventually) satisfied with me paying the cost of the minor paint repairs, 290 Ringgit ($90). So now I'll never have to hit anything with my car again. Done.
One could get upset about losing one's keys and paying one's hard-earned Ringgit to fix one's mistakes, but then one would be missing the point. It's not reality. It's some kind of crazy dream world where I get paid in colorful (and presumably fake) money for doing a job that I'd be ill-qualified to do, if they actually expected me to teach for any significant amount of time. As it stands I work 7 hours a week and get paid 2000 Ringgit a month. Even if the money is fake, that's still pretty impressive. Plus everything's close by so Sarah and I get to take our fun bucks and take our impossibly old Honda with a steering wheel on the right and drive on the left until we get to a place that will take our fake money and give us food and shelter for it. If this is reality then I'm a real teacher. And in case you were thinking that might be true, let me just add that the best girls in my last class came up with the sentence "I created two clowns to destroy Ezra's house," while the best (Muslim) boys wrote "I found a pig. I killed and ate it."
I'm pretty sure if I were a real teacher I wouldn't have commended them both on their excellent sentences. Moreover, if this were reality I would not be given rooms filled with impressionable youths who love me and want to destroy my house with clowns.
Reality? Hah. This is something else entirely. If Reality is butter then I'm covered head to toe in Crisco, and I'm not fooled one bit.
I've been meaning to tell you that Sarah and I got a car a week and a half ago. It's a maroon Honda with 500,000 kilometers on it and I love it. But as you may or may not know, there are a few things that you're generally supposed to avoid doing while owning a car. At the top of such a list of things it would be fair to put "lose your keys" and "hit something with the car." Not wanting either of these bad things hanging over my head, I wisely decided to knock both of them out my first day with the car.
First I locked my keys in the computer room at school. I didn't realize this had happened until I tried to drive away in the evening and realized that turning my empty fingers in front of the key hole was strangely ineffective. Luckily, Acik, my "fixer" was still on campus and was able to let me retrace my steps and unlock every room that I had been in that day. Since I've gotten that out of the way, I'll never have to lose my keys again. Solved.
Next, we drove down to KT to meet up with the ETAs there and hunker down for the night, as we had an early flight to KL the next morning on our way to Phuket. Minutes after arriving at their apartment complex, I (wisely) managed to reverse our of a parking spot and into a parked car with the kind of satisfying crunch that can only come with a moment you wished you could take back. Luckily the owner of the car was understanding enough and was (eventually) satisfied with me paying the cost of the minor paint repairs, 290 Ringgit ($90). So now I'll never have to hit anything with my car again. Done.
One could get upset about losing one's keys and paying one's hard-earned Ringgit to fix one's mistakes, but then one would be missing the point. It's not reality. It's some kind of crazy dream world where I get paid in colorful (and presumably fake) money for doing a job that I'd be ill-qualified to do, if they actually expected me to teach for any significant amount of time. As it stands I work 7 hours a week and get paid 2000 Ringgit a month. Even if the money is fake, that's still pretty impressive. Plus everything's close by so Sarah and I get to take our fun bucks and take our impossibly old Honda with a steering wheel on the right and drive on the left until we get to a place that will take our fake money and give us food and shelter for it. If this is reality then I'm a real teacher. And in case you were thinking that might be true, let me just add that the best girls in my last class came up with the sentence "I created two clowns to destroy Ezra's house," while the best (Muslim) boys wrote "I found a pig. I killed and ate it."
I'm pretty sure if I were a real teacher I wouldn't have commended them both on their excellent sentences. Moreover, if this were reality I would not be given rooms filled with impressionable youths who love me and want to destroy my house with clowns.
Reality? Hah. This is something else entirely. If Reality is butter then I'm covered head to toe in Crisco, and I'm not fooled one bit.
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