What is she doing in that place?

Being a teaching staff sometimes brings annoyance to your life because suddenly you have to pay attention to your speech and attitude. No more freedom to act because you are expected to behave properly and accordingly as your profession demands you to do so. Once other people catch you doing something unworthy like reading comics, you will face a serious threat of honor degradation.

And that worries me because I'm a fan of comics. Japanese comics or manga, to be precisely. No, I'm not a maniac who will read any manga there is in a store's book shelf. I only fancy the "serial cantik" kinds of manga. Well, a bit of "Kung Fu Boy", "Dragon Ball", or "Detektif Conan" is okay for me, but no "Crayon Sinchan", please.

Still, you can say I'm a fan because I do make and have collection of manga. I started my collection way back since I was still in senior high, which means like 10 years ago. Phew, quite a long time, huh? Right now I guess I have almost 100 mangas, and the number keeps on growing, especially after I find out that there are kiosks selling mangas at cheaper price. It's like feeding a hungry lion with meat - the supply meets the demand.

However, as I mentioned earlier, I don't have the luxury to linger at those kiosks or manga section in Gramedia for fear of meeting my student(s), or worse, my boss/senior lecturers. I know the fear sounds so unreasonable, yet that is what happens - I'm afraid those people see me in the kiosks/manga section and ask questions like: "What is that teaching staff doing in a manga kiosk? Shouldn't she buy something of more value like reference books?" Whoa!

So far, I haven't been 'caught' making manga transaction (as far as I know) and I hope it stays that way. But I once got caught reading manga in my office. It was a security guard who caught me redhanded. Guess what he said. He said: "I never thought a staff would read books like that." Darn. Had I not been too eager to read the sequel of a manga, I would not have got caught and lost face to a security guard. All I could do then was smiling stupidly and putting away the manga I've been reading.

I was trying to make myself busy doing something else when not long after that, the security guard came back to me and said: "Erm, do you mind if I borrow your comic sometime?"

*Speechless*