Tuesday, July 25, 2017

Childhood Not-so-good Memory

Lately, there have been some cases of students bullying in Jakarta. The first one involved an autism university student, while the second one involved a year 6 female students.

I didn't watch the videos, I only read the news and saw some photos. And also of course, the comments made by my old school friends who mostly are parents now. They all commented how they so want to slap those bullies and wish them to have even worse autism kids in the future as their karma. After reading those comments, what came in my mind was, "Didn't you guys kinda do that too back in primary school?".

Back when we were in primary school, every year probably just before Easter and Christmas, the school would arrange some charity collection from the students. Each of us was given an envelope to put money in, and on the front of the envelope, we were supposed to put our name, date and how much we were giving out. I think the idea was to spare some of our pocket money to give for charity.

My mum was pretty stingy in regards to pocket money when we were small. Unlike other kids who got daily pocket money of Rp. 500 a day, I only got Rp 500 for a week. However, if I brought food every day to school, and if there is anything I need e.g. pens, books, or any school little fees here and there, I just had to ask for it and I would get them. Comics and magazines were the same, I just had to say I wanted to buy Bobo magazine, and mum would either go buy it for me, or give me the money. Exact money.

So, getting real cash was hard for me. I remembered I used to steal some coins off my dad's store desk, so I could buy some snacks at school canteens after my friend told me off for always eating her snacks. Now that I think about it, I've always loved snacks, haven't I?

There was once, my school pick up uncle didn't know I came to school that day, so he left without me. I finished my class around 10 that day. My sisters however were in kindergarten and would finish at 12ish. That uncle would pick them up. So, being a smart kid with absolutely 0 money in her pocket, I thought I could just wait for them to go home.

So, I hung around the school. My teacher then saw me and surprised I was still there, she asked me what was I doing. I told her what happened, and she asked if I had eaten anything. I hadn't. Knowing my mum, she might have packed me some biscuits or bread which I should have eaten early in the morning. My teacher asked if I had any money. Nope. Not a cent. She then gave me Rp 500 so I could buy some food. I still remember, receiving that green paper money with the monkey on it was like receiving a stack of money. I was thinking, "wow... I could buy a lot of snacks with this... " really, it wasn't that much. It's just I've never received that much money for pocket money for a day. My pocket money back then was only Rp 200-300 a WEEK. I bought a Chitato chips packet with that money and got Rp 100 change. It's really only worth $2 now, you can only get a pack of small twisties with that money.

Anyhow, back to topic. Now that you know how hard it was to get cash, I could only ask mum for the collection. In year 3, my pocket money would be at most Rp 500 a week. I used to have to save for weeks to buy small inflatable doll for my sisters' bday from the old man in front of my school and bargained with the him to reduce it from rp 2000 to 1500, even had to keep checking for weeks, hoping it didn't get sold. Another thing was, my mum was stingy in regards to this kind of charity too.. She's quick to help people who need money that we know, but for organisational charities, she really wasn't into it.

So yeah... My mum only gave me Rp 200 a week for this charity. Her idea was, since it ran for 5 week, so we donated Rp 1000 in total. I guess she thought, for a kid Rp 1000 is a lot already.

It was okay, until my friends started looking around everybody's envelopes. Most kids gave Rp 500 a week, then they saw mine was Rp 200 a week. Then they started teasing me. Saying things like I was so stingy. At the beginning it was clearly just teasing, mucking around, but then it went on and on to the point that included pushing and shoving. There were quite a few of them, I could only remember 2 people for sure, 1 was my best friend that year, the other one was the boy I had been friends with since kindergarten.

It wasn't scary, but it was so embarrassing. I knew they were joking to begin with, but it went on and on and got physical. Finally I got so upset and couldn't take it anymore. I cried and ran off to the toilet.

My best friend at the time (who was also involved), yuan, chased me to the toilet. She said sorry and that they were all just joking. I'm pretty sure it was only her who came to find me. Especially since 15 min break was over.

Because of that, the next time we had this kind of collection, I saved my weekly pocket money. When my mum gave me Rp 200 for collection, I asked her if I could give some of my saved pocket money to make it Rp 500. I didn't tell her why, but I think she kinda guessed I was embarrassed. Later on, she started giving me Rp 500 for each week collection.

To those friends from my childhood, that extra Rp 300 was more than half of my weekly allowances, you know! For you it might be easy to spare 100 a day, but it took more than half of my weekly! Damn youuuu! You didn't know the story and just made fun of me! Where's that f*** u emoji???

It's just funny seeing them who are now parents making comments about bullying. I'm pretty sure they did some during their childhood though not to that extent. Good thing they turn out to be good, but you know.

When you are unlucky, then you are unlucky for the day. On next lesson after I came back from the toilet, my teacher - a killer one- started telling us to do some exercise from our textbook. I was still thinking about the previous incident and tried to distract my self.

Those days, she's been asking us to do exercises on a blank test paper, instead of exercise book. Those blank test paper had school logo etc and a book of that was quite expensive! You use 1 side on average and then that's it! What a waste of paper and money.

So, when I heard about doing exercise, in my mind was, "Ughhh she's going to ask to do it on test paper again. What a waste!". And I sighed. It wasn't loud, but she was just like a desk away from me. She flipped.

She scolded me for sighing. Saying that lately she's heard me sighing a couple of times already. "Do you not like having me as your teacher?? If you don't like it, you don't need to attend my class!". I tried to explain, but she didn't let me, and kicked me out to stand outside -_-"

See? Udah jatuh, tertimpa tangga. Naseb...

Tuesday, July 11, 2017

Sometimes I Just Don't Get My Parents

Readers beware! This is kinda gross and involves πŸ’©. Please stop now if you can't deal with it.

Last Sunday at home, my siblings and I were discussing about our upcoming holiday plan upstairs. Our house's sound proofing is pretty bad, so we could hear our parents talking downstairs pretty clearly...

Mum: "Eh? You want to poo too?? "
Dad: "Yeah.. "
Mum: "I was just about to say I wanted to poo... Can you hold it? "
Dad: "Not really"
Mum: *half heartedly* "Umm... Okay... You can go first then... "
My sister: "Why did she let him go first?? It would be very stink if he goes first!"
Me: *shouting from upstairs* "Mummmmmmm!! There are 3 toilets in this house!!!! " πŸ˜“πŸ˜“πŸ˜“

About a minute after...
*dad went into the toilet*
Mum: *running after him* "Hubbyyyyy... Waitt... I need to go now!! "
Dad: "Can't. I'm already halfway".

3 of us upstairs: πŸ˜πŸ˜ΆπŸ˜“

Saturday, July 1, 2017

Superexcited Didn't Want to Lose

Helloooo everybodyyyyy (though from my knowledge there is only 1 person who reads this blog xD). Long time no see! Yeah, I haven't got anything interesting lately at work with superexcited *touch wood*. Even though, I'm kinda glad there is nothing interesting happening, that means life at work is peaceful. Last year in the office was such a drama, I was always anxious and even now, if I see the higher up people go into Lao-er's office, I feel some weight on my chest, worry abour what's happening this time. So touch wood all is good from now on.

Even though, he did make a scene about a week ago :l we were in our usual long meeting (those meetings... *sigh* if you calculate, they actually costs 40hours work/pay per meeting! But you-know-who likes to have them, to have people sit and just listen to him, so yeah... Last week's one probably cost more like 50 hours), Taylor Swift was doing a presentation about how our participants day to day at work is like, how their staff perform their work every day. So, keep in mind that it's about how our participants work.

Then we came across a screen where it showed a snippet of our website reporting page for that client. There was a table with 2 columns. 1 column was titled KPIs, the other was target. You-know-who then interrupted Taylor Swift who was in the middle of her presentation and said, "That table, why is it called KPIs and not Key Performance Indicators? There is enough space in there for it". Everybody was 😢😢😢

He then continued, "Also, this table is not consistent. The first column is left aligned while the second one is center aligned".

😢😢😢 really? You want to ask that question in the middle of How Participants Perform Their Work Everyday Presentation?

Prick answered him, saying that this is just a snippet of the whole table. That there are more columns on the right hand side and they are all center aligned because of blah blah blah, and they do look alright.

Of course superexcited didn't accept it and continued saying that it wasn't professional, it looked amateurish, blah blah blah.

Since it was my site, I then responded to him. I said, "I get what you mean superexcited, however, it is not the whole table. There are 3 months results and also how they are performing quarterly on the right side. The first column being left aligned while the rest are centered actually works, and clearly differentiates which one is target and which ones are results".

Don't know why, the second I finished my sentences, I knew that whatever people say, superexcited won't accept.

I was right. He looked pissed off and said, "So tell me, all you people who work on this website. Is there anything AT ALL that you guys can add value to this table??? "

πŸ˜‘

He's clearly annoyed that no one supported him 😐

In my mind I said, "Of course. But not that" πŸ˜†

Prick then said, "Yeah yeah, definitely".

Superexcited: "OK, moving on!"

Err.... You were then one who didn't want to let it go πŸ˜’