Tag: shyness

Seventeen – 4th December 2023

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

I’m seventeen today
I’ve learned very little so far
Don’t expect so much
This is the way we are

I’m only seventeen
This is no time for babies
The future so uncertain
My life so full of maybes

Yes, I’m seventeen
Full of doubts and bluster
I can do anything
With the energy I can muster

I’m already seventeen
Stop telling me what to do
I can do what I want
I don’t need to listen to you

I’m dead at seventeen
My life already done
Everything a disaster
Will eighteen never come?

I’m still seventeen
Inside an adult insecure
Learning all about life
Always growing more

Today I’m feeling:

Back to normal though I still have some phlegm on my chest but it doesn’t bother me now. I’m feeling good and positive mentally too.

Today I’m grateful for:

The bread shop at Big C that has a black sesame mochi-bread type thing that is a yummy snack and then a little chocolate pastry that I follow up with. It’s a small treat for myself sometimes.

The best thing about today was:

Having a reasonably simple but long (for me) conversation in Thai with Goya about the colours of the day in Thailand and the colours of the shirts we were wearing and our shirts for sports day. It was only as I walked away I realised that we’d been speaking in Thai the whole time and I felt a little bit proud of myself. I’m grateful to Goya for that today.

What was out of your control today and how did you handle it?

I had a simple class in the morning and the kids were trying to catch up on work for their science class, which frustrated me at first.

I took all their work away telling them that there was plenty of time and that if they finished my class they would be free to do the work they wanted. They reluctantly agreed and most of the class completed the work with plenty of time to spare…. except three students who wanted to go to the bathroom and disappeared for about 20 minutes.

It is still a case of herding cats with some of these kids though they are slowly improving.

Something I learned today?

Brodie Grundy has joined the Swans from Collingwood. Amy used to mention how handsome he was whenever she saw him playing but she’s not so keen now he’s looking a bit older.

Review your acts, and then for vile deeds chide yourself, for good be glad. — Discourses 3.10

Once again I offered Earn some advice because she is shy to talk to the boy she likes. I told her that if she doesn’t talk to him she will never know how he feels. And if she does talk to him then she will know and whatever way he feels about is a positive outcome for her.

Really, she is not shy at all, she is just scared of rejection. She agreed. She then wanted to focus on how pretty she was. I told her that that is only one element of who she is and not to get so hung up on it. She appreciated my advice but I’m not sure that she is strong enough to act on it (yet).

Little Nicha is also crushing on a boy in her class but insists that he doesn’t like her. She is also too shy to find out. I talked to him a little today, asking if he liked any girls in the class but he is either too shy to talk about it or hasn’t even thought about it yet. The girls seem ready for ‘romance’ whilst the boys are stuck on football and video games.

I don’t know if I have the best advice for these kids but what I do want to get across to the girls is to be strong and independent.

I joined Baipad, Jan and Apple in the canteen at lunchtime and they also introduced me to their friend Chompoo. I tried to get them all talking about things in English as much as I could instead of looking at their phones.

Quote: “You’re only poor if you give up. The most important thing is that you did something. Most people only talk and dream of getting rich. You’ve done something.” – Robert T. Kiyosaki

I don’t consider myself rich though where I live others might consider me so. I still gauge things in Aussie dollars and in comparison, I’m not rich at all. Comfortable, I suppose. 

I never really expected to be rich and when I dreamt about it I was fully aware it was a dream. I never thought to try and marry rich or even chase money particularly. I was lucky to have a very well-paying job for a few years and whilst saving some I also invested it into philanthropic art with my music label.

So all this time I was busy doing things, doing something. In fact, I even made a T-shirt that just had two words on the front ‘do something’. I had been practising this even before leaving England with my free pamphlet ‘Fuck Around’. 

Whether you like something or not, you have no right to reply if you are doing nothing yourself.

One of the purposes of this trail of words on this blog is to look back at all the something I did.

I got this picture from August because my students were supposed to be working but hid themselves behind some stage props in the classroom and started their own little photo shoot. As the quality of the picture shows I caught them before they got very far. I told them that if they didn’t finish my work today I would send the pictures to their homeroom teacher and, sufficiently threatened, they mostly got on with it. It was an empty threat anyway, I just wanted to see my naughty students having fun. Pictured are Fah and Nicha (holding the guitar).

Am I holding on, am I moving on? – 19th April 1994

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

Eight years now, worked here more days than I care to remember. Started as a wide-eyed innocent boy, fresh from dole queues and eager to please. Here I rode or trod to drove my way to work and not even now do I notice my surroundings. Sometimes I wonder about the people in the building across – our only vision from our cramped tiny office and I only got to see out of the window after some five years.

On bright sunlit days, we’d still need all the lights on – tucked away we were and all the heat would rise and bake us if ever we were upstairs and sometimes I’d be on the top shelf cleaning up touching the asbestos roof as the sun beat mercilessly down on it and I’d be carrying a cooling fan with me, lead dangling all over the place as only one socket in office upstairs.

I remember the place as was all those years ago and now only me and one other remain of those nine who worked there then and soon I’ll be off leaving it all behind (did it take me this long to figure it out?). And work, we worked like crazy. Me young and eager to impress, I worked my coworker out of a job – lazy scuzzball he was (we are now pretty good friends). He spent most of his day lazing away as I’d already done it all, so quick was I and I loved it and they loved it too.

I don’t see that enthusiasm now in my co-workers and wonder if I’m being too hard on them and fuck it, I’ve damn near killed myself doing this and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone; so today I gets to thinking, it’s not work that’s so bad but business and the business of work. The endless emphasis on money and more money and the bloody mad dash for it and then us panting and dying in the race being knocked back by some young bureaucrat says you can’t do that. Bloods boil I’ll say.

Now I’m in a funny position, not to care, to look back and reflect. Someone turns to me and says ‘don’t you think this is bad and wrong?’ And I thinks ‘shit what do I care?’ I stopped myself and took some time and sat upstairs and looked out of the window. Saw the trees on the edge of this squabble of old factories and buildings – reminded me of good things, reminded me of freedom and I saw the freedom I’m about to gain. I looked at the cars across the way, remembered mine and Mark’s motorbikes getting run down by some mad driver who did a bunk from his job next door when the police came; remember all the pretty young girls who worked there too, who so astounding was their beauty to my keen young eyes that I failed to ever utter a word to them. The sunny days are still clear in my mind.