Just went to a parents meeting for Alec’s school. It consisted an assembly of parents from 3 grades of 6 classes at over 40 students each, which totaled to be a guesstimate of some 700 parents showed up; as well as separate meetings after the assembly for the parents and their Form Masters with a couple of teachers for each individual classes. The assembly took about an hour, and the meeting took over 2 hours.
Basically, what it boils down to was one long and tedious period that showed how damn inconsiderate Hong Kongers are.
Just a couple of days ago, Tin and I have discussed how intrusive and annoying a phone call could sometimes be. Yet during such a long period of assembly and then during the meetings, which is ample time for everyone to realize the nuisance, there were phone calls galore the entire time. I am sure there was one person even played the selection of ring tones within the phone at one time for a few minutes. Just why the hell did these people even bother to show up is beyond me.
I was there trying to learn what the aims, goals, and measures the school have for educating my kid this year. These people, while the Principal of the school was saying how important it is for our kids to pay attention to their teachers, kept chatting amongst each other, laughing, and having their phone rings on loud! Let’s face it, forget the chatting and laughing bit, which phone does not have a silent mode with vibration alert these days.
Not knowing how to set the phone to silent mode? Read The Fine Manual!!!
Apparently though, there was someone there who knew how to keep farting silently all night!
Bunch of jerks!
selfishes swimming everywhere in Hong Kong.
Maybe quite a few folks didn’t want to be there. Maybe they were bored. Maybe the assembly took longer than their span of attention. Maybe the common span of attention for most Hongkongers is only double that of Jasper’s, i.e. 4 seconds. Maybe the head teacher was full of shit. Maybe the kid’s got the wrong eye colour/skin colour/hair colour anyway. Maybe they were pissed off by the fact that each class is over 40 in size.
700 people in an assembly, if you have 5% of these folks not fully cooperating, then you would be looking at over 2 interruptions per minute on average during your hour long assembly. Even if there are only 1% of noncooperatives, you are still getting 7 interruptions during the assembly, which is _a lot_. Imagine getting 7 interruptions in a movie. Being an educator himself, the head teacher should have known better about human nature, and _instructed_ everyone to switch off their mobile phones before the assembly started, if what he was about to say was going to be so important. He has been doing it for years, so there is no excuse, and a few minor points against his competency.
Instuction to turn off the cell phone was clearly announced at the beginning of the assembly. The entire duration was a bit long but not not of the just short of 1 hr assembly. Announcement were not of the routine type since there are still constructions of the second half of the new campus to talk about amongst other valuable information.
Even if there were people who came in late and missed the instruction, this is an assembly for Primary 2-4, so chances are it should not have been anyone’s first such assembly; and given cell phones have been so commonly used in HK for over so many years, it should have become a simple common curtecy to have the cell phone at least set to silent mode if not to turned off in such situation by now.
In actual fact, even in the HKJC, the HKGC, and some other private clubs where the use of cell phones, not just the ringing, are strictly prohibited indoors with a penalty to strip the membership, there are still people violating the rule daily.
Let’s face it. Most HKer’s don’t follow instructions, have no common curtecy, self-discipline, nor self respect, and are irresposible and inconsiderate.
One more thing. Phone rings were at about a rate of 1 to 2 per minute. One has to be either, like I said, a jerk, or has to be a complete idiot not to have the phone ring switched off by the 10th minute if not after the first couple of rings.
And I just realized why the Principal did not keep urgeing them to turn of their phones now… she did mention at the end of the assembly that the construction of the new campus is over the budget, and the school now owes several million HKD for the construction…
Oh I suddenly remember a joke: why does a fart smell? for the benefit of the deaf.
Those selfish and inconsiderate parents are less likely to give more than average when it comes the time for parents to chip in the school debt. They’ll probably complain about the school spending too much and not doing enough to cut cost. Talk is cheap.
Kicking a few parents out of the assembly hall would be good to show everybody what the school expects of them and their fine offsprings thou.
True.
I’d like to kick a few butts there myself.
In contrast to these people though, this morning I had a plumber, at his seemingly early sixties, over to take care of some drainage problems in an old building. The tenant was suppose to show him around and he would just fix the problem and give the tenant the invoice for me to send him a check.
I was just in there area when he called me after he had just finished the work. I told him I was just around the corner and will meet him at the premises.
Before the work as well as during and after his explanation of the problem and his work done, he kept thanking me, presumably, for calling him, for giving him the business, for my explaining to him of the problem, for listening to his explanation in person, for taking the invoice/recipt, for paying him on the spot, and for whatever I can’t think of. All that with a smile before and after the payment.
Given the contrast in all respects between those annoying and inconsiderate parents and the plumber, it almost makes me ashamed of being a parent of the school myself.