A Game of Survivor

I'M kinda upset. I mean I am upset cuz my brother is depressed over something he's going through right now. I can't do much to help as the system he's in is one that is full of shit and the kind of people who are in it are a bunch of cruel sons of bitches.


Today I was at an event where they celebrated and honoured the works of a great teacher Datuk Seri Selvamany via a biography of the man. It was a long and draggy event where they observed necessarry protocols as the important guest was the Perak Sultan (state of Perak royalty), and perhaps in the process, they might have forgotten about media management, resulting in passively cranky journalists who received not the information that they came for. 


Sitting through the event, I couldn't ignore one thing - how the old boys and girls adore their Sir, and clearly, the respect they have for him is heartfelt and sincere. To still earn that much of admiration and acknowledgment from his students after all these years, Selvamany must have been quite a teacher in his time - more than a teacher perhaps as the title of the biography written by one of his former students goes Selvamany: More Than A Teacher. It was heart-warming to see successful men and women pass 50 flock around their Sir and become a child again, recollecting memories. There were no racial barriers as the multi-racial guests hugged and mingled all noon. 


And then I thought of our teachers today. How many are as dedicated ? Or as learneth ? I've had great teachers like Mrs. Darling Lim who made reading history fun, which transformed our grades magically within weeks after she took over. There was Puan Sheila, my dedicated English teacher who was sweetly  patient with a moody student like me. But there was also a Bahasa Melayu (Malay language) teacher who hardly made it to the class for a good year (and even when she did, she let us do our own thing). I would have flunked Malay without the expensive private tuition classes my parents sent me to. And there was an English teacher whose English was the butt of the class joke. 


Then there's racism and bullying. Back in Uni, there were stories of a common culture where some lecturers let students of his own race preview the question papers before the big exam day. Well, come to think of it, racism aside, it simply deals with values and integrity too. What kind of values are being imparted here ? Why am I not surprised with the dim wits we've been producing batch after batch like bad butter cookies. A fine example is the rotten doctor who never touched or looked at my bee-stung shoulder back. She faced the monitor and punched in my symptoms into the system before entering for my prescriptions! I'm positive I can do a better job Google diagnosing myself. 


My brother's system is like a game of Survivor. It's up to him how he wants to play it. Good like Boston Rob or dirty like Russel Huntz. He could be a natural born survivor like Ozzy Lusth. It's a shame that he has to be in a game to acquire a basic thing like education. Usually games only begin when you step into the working world.