Schooling at Chinese Primary School in Sabah.

If you know Chinese or even better be excelled in it, you are in advantage of getting employed and of course to demand for higher pay as it is a specialised skill. 

I am lucky to get my daughter enrolled into a Chinese Primary School (SJKC) as parents, despite not having any basic in Chinese, are fighting for places to get their children to learn the language. 

My daughter's class has about 40 students cramped in the room. 

I remember when I was younger, there were quite limited number of non-Chinese students in the SJKC as parents probably think it would be more convenient to send their kids to school which use their mother-tongue language. 

The then syllabus, especially Chinese, was quite simple and basic for non-Chinese to follow. 

Fast forward 20 years, Primary 1 students would require to remember many words, the strokes counting, the pinyin (sound) etc. Some who could not cope and could not get help will probably stress out and worse, lose interests in going to school.

Curiosity and love of learning. 

Besides having Chinese-speaking family background, my kid had a good preparation for it during her kindergarten school the years before. 

Initially, she was struggling in the kiddie's as every Chinese word is so complicated and the subject had actually pulled her overall academic performance. But, because of young kid's ability to absorb new things well, she pulled through. 

Now, daughter is keen to give us quiz about Chinese and other subjects as she really enjoys schooling. 

Schooling period.

During weekdays, I have to wake up at 5am to prepare breakfast while daughter is at 545am. 

Although she is only 7, but the school makes all kids to learn from 7am until 3pm on Mondays and Tuesdays. The rest of the days is until 1pm. 

Due to my working schedule, we arrange a commute van to shuttle her from Primary School to her previous kindergarten as transit before we pick her up around 5pm. 

Daughter would continue to have tuition at the Kindergarten (there are primary school teachers giving tuition there), so, she could not have afternoon nap like she used to have before. 

After school routine 

Everything will be in rush after we pick her up. A quick shower, dinner and hoping to have her sleep the latest by 830pm, so that sleeping hours will be more than 8 hours. 

There are limited time on weekdays for daughter and I to interact. 

But during weekends, both of us wake up around 8am and allow ourselves to be lazy and do things that we wanted to do. 

Basically, we put "fun activities" on weekends to compensate the tight schedule during weekdays. 

Routine to last for another 10 years

Everyday I am thinking of the fact that its another 10 years that I have to sustain such routine. 

We can do it.