What I'm up to, roughly as it happens.

back in the 2010s, defaced index.html pages were the best places to find new awesome beats. here is a playlist where i put some of the greatest songs and music i discovered during that wonderful era.

been looping dizzy dross's new album 'aflam' since it first got released and i am really into some songs. here is a breakdown below.

LAMARA: this is a romantic song that tells the story of a messy breakup and the aftermath of having to deal with what comes after.

BEKHER: upbeat, energetic, good vibes. puts me in a very good mood almost every time. i like the fast pace and the high BPM.

DEPART: this one is pretty melancholic. talks about how sometimes life is full of hardships that you just cant escape and all you can/should do is face them. listening to this evokes a feeling of helplessness in the face of a great catastrophe. think of a man standing in front of a huge tsunami wave as its about to crash him face first.

the other songs have not been registred with me yet. dont know if i would like them later or not. will update if that happens.

"why do you wear the uniform? it's not necessary." this is the question i keep hearing every time i meet with a fellow teacher or admin staff inside the high school where i work. and i always give one of the following answers: 1. to show professionalism, 2. so that i can separate my classroom persona from my personal persona, 3. so that i don't have to pretend to wear it when the supervisor eventually comes in for a class visit.

and i am mostly honest in my answers. but the true reason why i started wearing it to begin with was like a defence mechanism to protect myself from the hardships of being a teacher. you see, i realized pretty early (as a student) that being a teacher is a pretty taxing job mentally and emotionally. and so when it was inevitable that i become a teacher, i decided to find ways to help me cope mentally and emotionally. one way i thought of back then, when i first started teaching, was to put on a persona for class and make sure that i separate it from my own persona outside of the class. this way i can leave the troubles and headaches of teaching inside the classroom instead of having to take them home with me. and in order to achieve this separation, i thought it would be a good idea to trick my mind by always putting on the uniform in class and never teaching without it; this way it would serve as a physical cue for my mind to detach the two personas and keep them separate. fast forward six years later, i now understand that it is truly impossible to separate the two personas. in fact, they meet more often than i would like.

lost my pixel 4a today.

after so many weird incidents this school year, i am rethingking my entire philosophy as a teacher. i used to believe that i should offer my help to students whenever they are in need and no matter what the problem is (regular life problems or study problems). now, i am starting to feel limited and unabale to help (especially with the kind of probelms i keep hearing). i am just too weak and too short-handed at the moment. i have zero ressources and zero eneergy to go search and look for the solution. anyways, i am just rambling here.

the eyes, chiko, in exams, just like in love… they never lie. in a test, if you want to catch who is cheating with his phone, look at the students' eyes.

some students' problems are too big to even acknowledge. what power does a simple english teacher have? what influence? it feels frustrating sometimes. the system is failing so many students and i feel like nothing can be done about it.

sometimes one small event right before the begining of a class - a student asking for his place back from another, a sudden unfiltred laugh from a class corner, or even a tasteless question - can affect my mood tremendously and make me shift from being extremly egger to start the lesson to being completly burned out and frustrated.