In Continuum.

Mrs. Irony

An old man turned ninety-eight
He won the lottery and died the next day
It's a black fly in your Chardonnay
It's a death row pardon two minutes too late
And isn't it ironic, don't you think?

I haven't been playing the guitar for a very long time. In fact, a little more than four years would be an accurate estimate. It is very difficult for me to tell others how I've learned the guitar, but how I managed to pick one up on that fateful afternoon when my sister so conveniently dumped it into my room. I can't teach you how to play the guitar, because I have always considered it to be a rather intuitive instrument. It is possible to learn a couple of chords on the guitar, and play a few tunes to impress a girl that you fancy at school But when it comes right down to the techniques involved, it'd be easier for me to explain to you the nature of quantum physics. The truth is, I cannot tell anybody how to pluck the strings of a guitar, or strum to the tune of a song. So many people, eager to learn their favorite songs, have come to me and asked me the same questions about how you strum in accordance to the tune of a song. It may seem a little boastful to say it, but I literally woke up one morning and knew how to strum to a song. In short, I am a lousy teacher. Not just in guitar, but in every single aspect of education.

I remember there was a female friend of mine from the guitar club, back in the days when school was merely remotely fun. The guitar club was my only refuge on every Wednesday afternoon, and I remember that particular day when I was tasked to teach this other girl how to pluck the strings to a song, because she cannot play the guitar to save her life - or do anything that requires strength, for that matter. There I was, squatted in front of her with the guitar in my laps, tearing my hair off at the same time because the sound of her plucking was softer than a pin drop. I tried to provoke her by telling her to imagine the itch in her back that cannot be reached by your arms, or the ulcer at the top of your mouth that can only be cured if you stop tonguing it, but you can't. I tried to unleash that little ounce of anger inside her, that hidden beast nobody has ever seen before. I figured, if I managed to lure out that beast, I might be able to get a tone from the guitar that might actually sound louder than a whisper. She tried her best and plucked those strings with her fingers. All I heard then was the sound of my brain cells dying, a million at a time.

It's like rain on your wedding day
It's a free ride when you've already paid
It's the good advice that you just didn't take
Who would've thought, it figures

So you see, I won't call myself a good teacher in anything. More often than not, I am probably going to teach you the wrong things, and then pray that nobody finds out about the wrong facts. People usually assumes that people with good grades are naturally the ones who are more capable than the others to teach. However, I feel that Kania is a way better teacher than I am, despite being just a little lower than me in the grades department. I feel that her methods are always infinitely easier for people to understand, when I personally find it difficult to put my thoughts into words. There is just that obstacle between my knowledge and the spoken words that is blocking my train of thoughts, most of the time. Despite those, I still know a good teacher from the bad, especially when I am in the shoes of a student. I know what kind of teachers to look up to, the kind of teachers you are going to thank by the time your semester ends. On the other hand, I also recognizes the kind of teachers that deserve zero respect, whatsoever. Especially the ones that bring race into an argument, it's just tactless in my opinion.

So I have a mental list of the teachers that I like, and the teachers that I don't. The list is not a fixed one, which means that pissing me off would cause you to drop significantly from the top to the rock bottom. This teacher that I am going to talk about used to be second in place, until a tactless comment that she made today turned the tables upside down. As if the recent issues with other lecturers wasn't enough, she had to join in the fun by pissing - not just me - everybody in the lecture theater off by making a rather racist comment about Asians. Which is funny, because she is an Asian herself. Which got me wondering about the question Ahmad asked me some time ago, about racism against your own race. I suppose, if you are an Indian and you hate your own race to the core, so much so that you despise anything and everything related to your own racial roots, you should be considered as being racist, right?

Mr. Play It Safe was afraid to fly
He packed his suitcase and kissed his kids goodbye
He waited his whole damn life to take that flight
And as the plane crashed down he thought
"Well isn't this nice..."
And isn't it ironic, don't you think?

It's an irony, the fact that this Asian spoke such outrageous comments about her own race, which is like a slap in the face by a tennis racket, after a failed attempt to whack the head of your opponent off. Taking a stab at your own race is a stab at yourself, which confused me because she was obviously oblivious to how wrong and ironic her words were. It's like a mother scolding her son," You son of a bitch!". It doesn't make any logical sense at all. There she stood with her arms to her side, upset because her weekend was ruined by the students. She started whining about how her beautiful weekend was ruined by us, and how much time she had to spend just to check through the summaries that we handed up in the past weeks. The complaining was seemingly endless, and I was on the verge of stabbing my Pilot-G2 pen into my ears. The trouble all started when this particular lecturer, decided to be lazy for this semester.

You see, this lecturer has an unique method of teaching, and on the surface it seems to work. Basically, she divides the class into groups of five, and each group would choose a topic from the syllables for us to present to the class, very much like how her lessons would have been conducted. For every chapter, we'd have to write summaries about that chapter, and it is to be handed up before the group that is about to present for the day. Two groups everyday, four groups every week, and the same goes on until the end of the semester. The summaries would be counted, collected, kept and marked by - not her - the students. So what she does in class for the majority of the time, is to sit back and listen to the student talk about every single chapter. She remains where she is, with her glasses carefully perched on her nose and those old droopy eyes staring blankly at the projection screen, brain dead. So much for all the school fees we are paying her, because she teaches by not teaching at all. What a brilliant plan!

It's like rain on your wedding day
It's a free ride when you've already paid
It's the good advice that you just didn't take
Who would've thought... it figures

Over the weekend, she took the effort of going through our summaries, as was appalled to find that some students actually lifted the passages off the internet. We understand that plagiarism is a serious offense, and that it is possible for a lecturer to fail you for a module, if they find out that you copied your material from somewhere without citations. I understood her concerns about this issue, and also understood how it must have been a pain in the ass to mark the papers of those individuals. However, what followed the whining about her ruined weekend was probably the boldest, most controversial statement ever made in any classrooms that I have been in. I do not remember the exact words that she said, but the following is a rough transcript of what she said that pissed half the world off in the lecture theater, while the other just sat in their mouth, wide-mouthed.

Mrs. Irony," I have checked through your summaries over the weekend, and I must say that I am greatly disappointed. I found out that a lot of students actually lifted whole paragraphs from Wikipedia and pasted it into the summary. Plagiarizing is a very serious offense, and do remember that you are in an American institution, not a Chinese institution. Plagiarizing, cheating, lying, piracy and stuff like that, are the things that only happens for Chinese. No offense."
Student #1," Madam, I don't think it is appropriate to bring race into this issue..."
Mrs. Irony," Yes, but this is merely my opinion. That's what I think, you can disagree. No offense."
Student #1," Isn't it a form of stereotyping, to say that all Chinese are like that?"
Mrs. Irony," I AM stereotyping!"
Me," What the FUCK!"
Mrs. Irony," Some of you might have taken offense in that statement, I apologize for that. Perhaps not Chinese, but Hong Kong Chinese..."
Student #2," Isn't that the same?"
Mrs. Irony," OK, not Hong Kong Chinese, but Asians."
Me," Isn't that worse?"

So everybody sat where they were, with their mouth opened, awe struck by the lecturer's ignorance and stupidity. There she was, telling us not to take offense when her words were clearly offensive. It's like telling your wife that she is fat and ugly, and looks like she could use a little liposuction and Botox shot right after she carried YOUR son for nine months," But no offense honey, no offense." Saying 'No offense' after an obviously offensive statement doesn't make you right, but more wrong instead. Throughout the conversation, I found it more amusing than offensive that she did not actually realized that she was actually insulting her own race and her own intelligence as well. It was amusing the way she corrected herself from the mistake, by including ALL ASIANS this time around. Initially, she merely pissed off the Chinese population of the lecture group. The moment she corrected herself, she included all the Indians, all the Arabs, all the Malaysians, all the Japanese, all the Koreans, and all the other races of people you can find in the largest continent on our planet Earth: Asians.

Well life has a funny way of sneaking up on you
When you think everything's okay and everything's going right
And life has a funny way of helping you out when
You think everything's gone wrong and everything blows up
In your face

She crossed the line, and we were all pissed off. I started answering every question of us with," I don't know, I'm just an useless and inadequate Asian Chinese." She has this ridiculous rule of not allowing us to sit with anybody we know during the Mid terms coming up this Thursday, and Naz started to wonder if it has got anything to do with our tendencies to cheat, since we are all Asians. She has probably been living in Hawaii for too long, spent too much time there making out with her mentor under the office table, or rolling about in the sands in nothing but an ukulele. She probably didn't see herself as an Asian as well, or forgot of the fact that she had a microphone attached to her collar. Every word was heard loud and clear, and there were a lot of unhappy students in the lecturer hall this morning.

The tension was further elevated when the grades that she gave us for our APA reference homework and group presentation results were not exactly desirable. I've come to terms with the fact that I cannot score an A for this module simply because I am an useless and inadequate Asian Chinese. I started beating myself on the arm, in hopes that the bruises that I make would make myself look more like an African. That seems the only way to get myself out of the vicious cycle of being an Asian Chinese. Of course, my sons and daughters, and their sons and daughters, and the sons and daughters after that, are still going to be Asian Chinese. What an accursed breed we are, how pathetic we are! We have people in our race criticizing about ourselves, pointing fingers and saying that we are cheaters, liars, and people who have no integrity in school.

I don't suppose a teacher that brings racial issues into any arguments can be considered as being good. Like I said before, I cannot say that I am a good teacher, but that's because I find it difficult for me to translate thoughts into words. But at least I do not look down, or degrade other races - and certainly not my own. There is an irony in her words that she simply cannot see, something amiss in that brain of hers that needs a lot of fixing. In the mean time, I guess we are stuck with her, and the fact that I am an useless and inadequate Asian Chinese. Along with the few billion Asian Chinese out there right now, we are so fucked.

A traffic jam when you're already late
A no-smoking sign on your cigarette break
It's like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife
It's meeting the man of my dreams
And then meeting his beautiful wife
And isn't it ironic...don't you think
A little too ironic...and, yeah, I really do think...