Why I haven't been blogging, not that anyone cares

My passion for blogging has not waned. I am just tired. Tired from the 11- to 12-hour working day almost every day. The only day that is not so long is the day I take an MC for.

Every single day, we have some after-school activities for teachers, until 6.30pm or 7.30pm.

I really feel tired. When I get home, I still have kids who need my attention. It is my elder kid's examination period, I too, like many other parents who are worried about their kids' academic achievements, want to coach her in her studies. I am not like the colleagues who can dunk themselves in bed the moment they reach home after a long day in school.

Most of the time, when I get home, the only thing I want to do is to plonk myself in front of the TV and let the box feed me. Sometimes I get so tired I don't want to say a word. I once watched a documentary about a China youth who had ventured out from his hometown in the rural area to study in the city. He mentioned a time when his family members used so much of their physical strength in one day that at the end of the day, they sat on the ground, and could not spit a word at all simply because they were too exhausted. The only way they communicated was through their tired eyes.

I didn't understand how someone could be so tired that you can't utter even a word. But now I do.

The new boss advocates 'equitable workload'. I too agree that those who get higher salary should do more work, but I do not agree that the only way to do so is to stretch their working hours and make them stay in school longer than those who are not paid as much. If that is the way to go, then the ministers ought to be working more than 24 hours every day!

I have always felt that I am efficient and fast. I send in my students' remarks for the report book for the Second Boss' vetting before most of my colleagues have completed typing them. I did not use to have backlogs in marking until these two years when I have to stay in school for more than 10 hours so often, so that when I get home, I refuse to do more work.

But longer working hours do not suit me. They may suit people who like to be seen as 'busy' and 'have alot of work to do', but to me, that's being 'slow' and 'inefficient'. Long hours frustrate me. I hate taking 30 minutes just to submit a sum of money to the office. I hate having to wait for 'another 10 minutes' just so that I could print worksheets for students. I like to do things fast and quick, so inefficiency exasperates me more than an average person.

But teaching nowadays seems to be about long hours. They seem to have forgotten that Asia is known for its efficiency. They also forgot that teaching is manual work - we stand for hours to teach in a classroom, with no fan directed at the person doing the teaching. We get all sticky and hot after 1.30pm, so that would contribute to the fatigue, but we don't go home and get a bath, we have to soldier on and have meetings that have little to do with classroom teaching.

So that explains why I have not been blogging.