Posting: More on JPN Briefing

   After spending 3 days at school, I am back. At home. Yes. Yes!

   Anyway, to continue the news on posting, I thought I'd write with more details on the JPN briefin. you people who hope to be posted to Kelantan may want to take note since the procedure and all might just be the same.

   The briefing was held at Dewan Bestari. Pink building. Next to an orange building. Ground floor. We signed our names before going into the hall. They did not ask for any documents. My friends Shima, Ipah and I wore blazers, just in case, but it wasn't really necessary. Parents were allowed to go into the hall, so my Mum sat with other parents at the back of the hall.

   The briefing started off with a long introductory speech from some important person. He spoke of thigs like how important our job was, how lucky we were to be placed in Kelantan since it's  so hard to get in, you get the idea. He also put a lot of emphasis on how ENGLISH teachers were placed in ONLY RURAL AREAS since we were needed there. He mentioned it a few times. In fact, pretty much everybody who spoke in front mentioned this little interesting fact. The first place they filled up with new teachers was the 'jajahan' (district) I was sent to. GUA MUSANG. Yeahhhhhh. Yay for me (coughs).

   The second speaker also spoke about similar things, after which he officiated  the ceremony. We were like, what??? Baru nak rasmi? Bila nak bagitau dapat sekolah mana ni? The secondary school people already knew where they were posted to, since the name of the school was listed beside their name when they registered. W primary school people fidgeted an sat on the edge of our seats, giggling nervously.  Thank goodness nobody went hysterical.

   Finally, they started calling our names. We went to the front, received our placement letters and our fates were sealed. From the 9 TESL girls from my training institute, 2 were placed in Gua Musang (guess who one of them was. I'll give you some sweeties if you get it right), 1 in Jeli and the other 6 in Kuala  Krai.

   After that, they called out the names of the schools and the Heads of each school came out to meet their new family member(s). Two of my friends were posted to the same school! Lucky them. My Head didn't come (okay that sentence makes me wanna crack up), but the PK HEM (Senior Assistant Teacher for Student Affairs) did, and he was (and is) a very, very nice man. He's in his fifties, and is going to  retire in about 3 years, I think. Mr L. Mum came and sat with us, and he kept telling her not to worry, that SKST (my school) was the safest, most comfortable school there is. He said, "Oghe2 situ jughus2 blako." (The people there are nice people). Did I mention that Mr. L is Chinese? And that he speaks using the Kelantanese accent when he speaks in Malay? Yeah.

   There was also a short briefing on Badan Ehsan or Ihsan, but I couldn't hear much because the hall was so noisy, with everybody being excited on getting their new schools. What I did hear was that new teachers should register, because they have some sort of donation(?) for new teachers who are posted to places like Gua Musang and need money and stuff. I'm not sure if I heard  about this correctly. I will try  to find out more and share with  you.

   One more briefing was on the Plan Pembangunan Guru Baru. This was some new programme they came up with in order to get new teachers oriented to their school, as well as to monitor them to make sure we're doing our job. I still don't know much about it, but when I do, I will tell you more about it.

   That's it for now. TTFN!