Last in Trenslotion

Last Tuesday on my way to work, the whole of Ranau seemed to be full of lorries parked everywhere along the main road. I immediately jumped to the conclusion that it was a strike ( being used to " les routiers " in France!) but later on I discovered that a large chunk of the only road going over to the east coast had been washed away just outside Ranau. There are no side roads or any alternative routes but somehow within 2 days the traffic was allowed to start going through again but looking at this photo I can't imagine how.

 We are having a big debate at school amongst us English teachers as to how to pronounce the phonetic sound  [ae]. I think that it is a, like you were going to open your mouth for the doctor and my Malaysian teachers are insisting that it is eh which to me sounds like [e]. So I hear the pupils chanting " eh fet, bleck, cet set on the met"  and when I point out that they pronounce Sabah as ah and that in Malay it is pronounced as ah they have no answer except to say that their teachers taught them like that and that is the way it is. The vowel sounds have definitely evolved in Malay to give us some interesting words. Bus has become bas, taxi has become teksi, a pedal bin has become paddle bin and so on but the one I love most is the sign I saw the other day for an electronic wishing machine - wouldn't we all want to have one.

  Last week at school there were the district sport's finals at the lovely new Sport's Komplex. It is all taken very seriously and at my base school they were the defending champions of the marching cup which thankfully they did win again but it was all very stressful and extra bits of tinsel and fluff were added at the last minute to win over the judges! I think that the sports are now finished at least until the March break. The next events looming are the Choral Speaking and Action Song competitions in English and they seem to think I might hold the key to their success which of course I don't. Does anyone know what Choral Speaking is?

 Last but in no way least, I have a husband staying with me for a short time which is very nice. Andrew arrived on Saturday morning after a very busy and interesting three weeks in Myanamar. We went on a river cruise on the Klias river to see the proboscis monkeys and the fireflies and a nice meal.We did see quite a few proboscis monkeys much to our surprise as we were a very noisy lot of tourists and I think they must be very used to us. The proboscis monkeys are odd looking and seem to have small human like heads in comparison to their strong bodies. I was able to use my new camera to zoom in but they would insist on moving and not looking at the camera!


The baby proboscis monkeys also have the long noses.