Normal service will be resumed;

In two weeks when I get back, including the ending part of my Christmas Tale. Whoops, sorry about that.

Anyway, Merry Christmas everyone and have a great new year!

Non-fiction

Before I go to Cambodia, I have decided to weave (and indeed spin) you a tale of Yuletide merriness. It may involve Roger. It may not. Read on dear viewer, read on…

A log fire burns brightly in the half, the occasional spark rocketing through the thick air to land on the perilously flammable horse-hair rug nearby. The gentle tinkle of sleigh bells drifts through the windows, themselves adorned with snow ready to drop. The air, tinged with the scent of elderberries and chestnuts, plays through the room in wafts almost visible to the naked eye. The sound of excited children occasionally filters through the atmosphere, bringing a slight smile to the elderly relative sitting comatose in an armchair so soft it almost swallows him.

All of a sudden the sealed door bursts open and a father like figure appears. He complains loudly about the Christmas tree lights being wonky and proceeds to the uprooted shrub of a centre piece and jiggles the said lights until they either fall off, short circuit, or fall off and then short circuit. The elderly relative sleeps through all this, having saturated himself with brandy several hours before. A motherly type appears, takes one look at the shouting father figure, screams that she has a headache and takes to the stairs. A silhouette not dissimilar to that which a younger brother might cast appears and grunts that he is going out and taking the car. The father figure screams a rebuttal but is ignored.

Meanwhile, a figure strides purposefully down the stair, a gleam in his eye and a fiver in his pocket. Ignoring the arguing brother, he uplifts the carkeys and heads for the door. He must be quick, twill be but a moment until his deception is uncovered. Heaving open the ivory portal to the outside world, he hauls himself into the freezing maelstrom that lies beyond and heads for his stately chariot. With the work of a moment he is inside; the engine rumbles and begins its night’s work. A quick press of a pedal and he is at the gate, awaiting his turn on the road.

Suddenly from behind, a cacophony of anguish. The younger brother, arms aflail and voice raised, is charging forthwith towards the escaping vehicle. A panic chills the heart of our hero even further as he desperately searches for his opportunity to fly. Alas, dear reader, none has come and in the distance lies an unending column of headlights and speed. Is this the end already? Will the unruly brother triumph in this battle of wills?

...

Oooh, I’m a tease.

Home

Again, starting to miss home a bit. A lot actually, both home and Leeds. Like I said before, Christmas doesn’t feel the same out here. So yeah, I’ll probably be going home next Christmas. A bit like Chris Rea, the cheeky bugger.

Cambodia

Planning this trip has been a nightmare. And it’s not like I’ve done any of the actual organising. Just getting the associated vaccines, equipment etc has taken me ages and cost me a small fortune.

I’ve now finally got them done, sort of. Anyway, it cost me 20000yen (about £100) for one injection and some malaria medication, although hopefully I’ll be able to recoup some of that from my medical insurance. I’ve now found out of course that I need a hiking backpack. I should really have thought of this as for most of the trip we’re going to be mobile. Hopefully one of the JETs in Yatsushiro has one, I don’t fancy spending another £100 on a backpack I’ll rarely, if ever, use. Looks like January might have to be quite cheap…

It just keeps getting colder. It’s absolutely freezing for the majority of the day now. Luckily all my class and staffrooms are heated but even moving between them is a chore it’s so cold. Of course, the worst is still at my house. I now have my little electric heater on almost constantly so am dreading getting the electric bill. However, that’s a rather short range solution (I usually shove it under my desk so at least my legs are warm) so I’ll be busting out the big kerosene heater tonight. I don’t trust theses things as everyone says you should leave the window open while they’re on to disperse the fumes. But, won’t that sort of defeat the point in the first place? I’ll stick mine on anyway and if you don’t see anymore blogs for a while you can assume the worst.

The hot water bottle I got sent from home works too, but I seem to have burnt my hand on it last night. Well, I woke up with what I assume to be a burn on my hand. It hurts too, but it’s better than being so cold you can’t feel anything.

Anyway, here's something we can all enjoy.



First person to guess which body Tim has chosen to inhabit wins the internet.

Annoyed.

For the first time this job has really started to piss me off.

It’s exam season at the moment and I have been in the process of making various tests for about 2 weeks now. I was told I may have to do this so I wasn’t really all that bothered by it. A bit of extra work sure, but I wasn’t planning lessons anyway due to the study periods everyone has.

I got pissed off yesterday when I faxed over my draft of the listening test script I’d done to my second school. A few hours later I get an ominous telephone call asking me to come over (I was at my first school all day) and “discuss” it.

When I got there me and the three JTEs sat around a table and I was handed a copy of my computer printed script. Well, what was left of it, which was basically the title and the space for the student to put his name. There was so much red marker on the damn thing it looked like a referee had misplaced all of his red cards in one place, and that place was on top of my work.

Honestly, they had changed everything. From sweeping changes of the format to tiny little nitpicks changing individual words (“Take a right” to “Turn right”). For the next ten minutes, although they tried to hide it, we went through what I had done wrong and why it was wrong. The students don’t know this word; this is too complicated; this isn’t complicated enough.

Why, I was asking myself through all this, did they ask me to do the test at all if they had such a specific result in mind? Everything on that paper was somehow erroneous. And what was all this about the students “not knowing” certain words…it’s a test! A listening test no less where the students have to sift the correct answers from a stream of information, most of which is irrelevant to the questions. I didn’t know half the words in my French listening tests but I still got good marks. What’s the point in a test where the students know everything?

It wasn’t just that though, it was the little things. In one telephone conversation I’d put in a throwaway comment, another red herring that the students would have to dismiss. “How embarrassing!” it went. They spend a good few minutes deciding whether the students could understand “embarrassing”. It doesn’t matter if they can! There were no questions that addressed the emotion of being “embarrassed”, it was simply a line to give the script a bit of realism as well as being, as I’ve said, a red herring. But no, they couldn’t understand that and we spend a good long time umming and erring over it.

And the True or False questions. We had done True or False in my introductory lesson. I know this because I was there. You know, asking True or False questions. However, even though it was eventually decided the students could understand “embarrassing” as they did it 6 months ago, the True or False answers, which we did 2 months ago were scrapped, replaced by other multiple choice questions. What? Surely these were the easiest questions? You have a 50/50 chance of getting the damn things right. No, they had to go. Why? It was never explained to me. Maybe the word “True” sounds like a Japanese swear word or something, because it certainly wasn’t because of the difficulty.

I came away fuming with silent rage that the test I had worked a whole night on had been replaced with one that the other teachers obviously had in their minds from the start. Why ask me to do a test, with no further instructions than “It must have a maximum of 40 points to award”, if you already have one you want to give?

I’m hoping this sort of thing doesn’t happen too often. I’m new to this teaching game and they seem to expect me to know the ropes like a seasoned professor. Most of the time this job is OK, not enjoyable per se and certainly lacking in job satisfaction, but OK nevertheless. I sincerely hope this sort of thing isn’t going to appear until next test time, when I have no doubt it will happen all over again…