Monthly Archives: June 2017

Either Effective or Cruel

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It’s not important for them to know. It’s only important for me to know. —Patton (film)

I assigned my first year junior high school students their first big conversation, but I didn’t give them many details.

I did, however, give them an example. The example, though, was too short. This means that even if they copy most of the example and change a few names they will still have to come up with a few original lines.

Some of them asked me if they were supposed to copy the conversation. I gave them examples that didn’t. Some just crossed out names on the example and wrote in their own names.

I told them that was a bad idea because they might have to read the example and a few scribbles on a typed conversation were hard to read.

Eventually, some figured out they’d get more points if they wrote something original.

We’ll find on Monday if they did it well or not.

 

Once in a Lifetime Chance

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Today I finally got to use one of the more obscure parts of my university education. At least as much of it as I could remember.

When I was at university, partly because of my background in a fundamentalist Baptist church, I maintained an interest in religion and the history of religion. This led me to a couple classes on religion, history of religion, civil religion, and politics and religion. The only use this ever got me was discussions like this:

Them: I can’t believe they are removing Christ from Christmas by calling it Xmas.
Me: Well, the X is actually a historical abbreviation for Christ.
Them: So f@#king what?

(Irrelevant But Interesting Side Note: in Japanese English textbooks, “Xmas” is offered as an example of a word that begins with “X”. This bothers many foreign teachers, especially if I’m around.)

For reasons I don’t understand, high school English club wanted me to talk about religion in the USA. They asked questions and I tried to answer them (with periodic trips to the internet).

What was fascinating about this was the school where I work is an Xian (er Christian) school–Anglican, to more specific–and students are required to take Bible classes and attend chapel. However, most of the students are not Christians. Therefore the interest in religion is understandably low.

Along the way, I got the chance to talk about my religious beliefs and how they’ve evolved. I also got to explain how I liked Sunday school when I was a kid but hated Sunday church service which was several announcements, one seemingly endless speech, lots of singing, and at least one TURPF.

Somewhere in there we talked about other religions. I’m not sure it was particularly productive, but it was kind of fun, at least for me. The students probably were hoping for Sunday school; I’m afraid they may have gone to church instead.

 

Lost in Transition

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Well, crap.

I wrote some stuff to write about here but the notes are somewhere else. If I were smart I’d write them from memory, but, well. Yeah.

Part of the problem of transitioning from one system to another is confusing notes (see yesterday’s post) and stuff ending up in places you don’t usually have stuff.

The funny part is, I was planning to write about the transition and the new system.

Part of what I’m doing is minimalizing the things I carry at work. Stuff I would normally drag with me after I used it at my desk, got left on my desk when I went to class. Then it got left on my desk when I came home.

The tease, then, is a new bag, an old new pen case and several pens being moved to new homes and new purposes. I’ll get in to more details in a future post–assuming I don’t forget my notes again.

Past Me Sucks

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Any careful consideration of the matter can only reach the conclusion that past me sucks.

More specifically, past me likes writing incoherent notes but only about my second year junior high school students, not about other classes. This leaves present me to think that past me is trolling present me and enjoys seeing present me scratching my head and trying to figure out what the hell I’m supposed to be teaching.

This wouldn’t bother present me that much except that two weeks in a row past me has left notes that didn’t make any sense, and this despite an effort by past present me to figure out what was going on last week. This usually means that present me does an impromptu book check to see what pages students have actually completed.

Today, though, as my students were working, present me figured out what the notes meant. It seems that past me, at some point, decided it was more efficient to record notes by date rather than by lesson plan. This happened because of various holidays and other days off leading to a jumbled mess of lessons that put one class way ahead of the others. In the lesson record this manifested as seemingly random dates that now hopefully make sense.

Now that the confusing mystery has been solved, I hope that future present me appreciates was present me accomplished when he becomes past me.

Reaching the Mark of the Beast

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Today, in my lifestyle change/diet I reached the day that is the mark of the beast: Day 666.

I probably should have celebrated with a huge round of self-indulgence with my motto being “eat what thou wilt” but instead I’ve been in a phase where it’s time to rethink and retool what I’ve been doing.

I dropped a lot of weight and then put a bunch back on, but still remain well below where I started. That said, I’m still above where I’d like to be but seem to have settled into some kind of equilibrium where I bounce on either side of a certain weight.

I’ve partly sabotaged my progress by eating too much too late. She Who Must Be Obeyed has been in an odd late cooking phase for a while and it’s not unusual to have supper well after 9:00 p.m. (I know what you’re thinking and I’ve tried it and it resulted in less than positive reactions.) Moderation needs to be my theme for late night meals. The late meals has also thrown off my sleeping schedule, which hasn’t helped much either.

As for the actual diet, I’ve added in more carbohydrates for lunch, which is something I’d almost completely cut out during the best phases of the plan. I’ve also added in more processed sweets which I’d also mostly cut out.

My evening exercise has been spotty lately as well.

At this point, I’ve dug out the food journals from the time when I lost the most weight and have been comparing them to recent trends. I want to get back on the track I was on in those first few months and then see if I can find equilibrium a lot lower than what I’m at now. I’ve decided on a new weigh-in schedule of Sunday (the official starting day) and Thursday. I remain shocked at how much my weight can very over a few days and see no reason to keep scaring myself and/or building up false hope.

 

Other Kinds of Notebooks and Other Kinds of Stuff

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I set out to do some prewriting about notebooks for this bit of blather, but distracted myself by installing a new operating system on my notebook computer.

That was not my intent, but after a few technical snags trying to install it into a partition, I finally said a few choice swear words, I finally decided to just to do a full install. That took a lot of time, and a few heavy sighs, but i’m pleased that it’s all working now.

However, as I approached the end of the install, She Who Must Be Obeyed decided it was time to Summer-ize our apartment, which is what we’d reserved the day to do before SWMBO started doing something else.

Summer-izing involves swapping the heater for the fans and hiding away the winter blankets. This requires clearing out the space in front of the variety room variety closet, removing stuff, putting stuff back, and swapping out dehumidifiers. Then everything has to be put back.

Unfortunately, we didn’t have any extra dehumidifiers and SWMBO had to run get some. This left the variety room looking like something out of a TV show about hoarders. Eventually we got everything swapped and restored, and even threw away an old suitcase that hadn’t held up well under long term storage.

The house is summer-ized now. Which of course means that tonight is unseasonably cold.

Working on the Weekend

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Last week I did school work on Sunday; this week I did it on Saturday. I clearly don’t understand what weekends are for.

Part of the problem is at the school where I work we are forced to use Japanese language laptop computers. This isn’t that big of a problem except the keyboards are different, making it slightly more difficult to type and the word processing programs are loaded up with clip art, making it more difficult to make decent looking worksheets.

As such, I’ve been doing some of the work at home where I can play with my own toys.

Eventually, when I have my days of house arrest, I’ll revise it and use it to fill an actual “work” day.

In the past I’d have done all this on my own laptop at the school where I work, but our personal computers are still banned from the system.

Next week, I shouldn’t have much work to do. The trouble is, though, if I work on weekends now, it frees up time during the summer. I think I’d rather have more time off then, even if I’m still technically under house arrest.

Odd Weeks are Ending

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June is here, sort of.

I’ve written before about the horrors of June at the school where I work and the thing you have to understand is that June is not a month, it’s a state of being.

The bad thing about June is that it’s nonstop. The good thing about June is that it’s stable and predictable.

For example, this week we taught two days, then had two days with no classes. This meant that today felt like Monday even though it was Friday. This makes it hard to focus and/or take the day seriously.

Now I have a regular weekend before a series of nonstop days that will eventually drag me down and break my spirit, at least if I’m being optimistic.

Somewhere in there, I have to write an exam. Of course, a time of existential crisis and burnout is, perhaps, not the best time to write and exam. On the other hand, the exams are usually a lot of fun.

Double Feature With Popcorn Meals

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Today I got the chance to see a double feature which is something I don’t think I’ve done since the Jimmy Carter administration.

I was able to do this thanks to a day with no classes falling on the first day of the month. Most Japanese theater chains offer discounts on the first of every month. Prices drop from around $18 to around $11. Since both Logan and Guardians of the Galaxy, Part 2 were showing at convenient times, I decided to see both back to back.

(Note: Since I am technically under house arrest on days off according to the rules of the company I work for then, officially, I was doing research on local entertainment facilities and will write about them in the future. Really.)

For complicated reasons I’ll mention in a minute, I had to choose a theater chain I’d never been to before. This had me worried about the popcorn. As I’ve mentioned in the past, part of my critique of a movie includes the quality of the popcorn served by the theater.

The morning started with Logan which, although it is a great movie, is not a particularly good breakfast movie. That said, the only actual flaw with the movie was the popcorn. I don’t blame this on the theater though as I chose poorly. My Hokkaido butter and soy sauce choice turned out to be some kind of dry spice and not something buttery. Luckily, this didn’t ruin the movie for me. Also, since this served as my breakfast, I was hungry enough to finish it all.

The only other flaw was people.  When I chose my seat via the chain’s website, I chose the exact center of the theater, which put me far away from the nearest person. However, five minutes before the movie started, in a large theater with only a dozen people in it, a guy sat down in the seat immediately to my left. Right as the lights went down for the trailers, a second guy sat in the seat immediately to my right. My space was suddenly reduced and the popcorn wasn’t that good.

Luckily, the theater has terrific seats with adequate space and armrests so that it was still comfortable if a bit unnerving. Also, the movie was terrific and I barely noticed the company.

For the second half of the double feature, I chose regular salted popcorn as my lunch. (Note: this theater chain’s biggest weakness is they don’t have an actual butter-like substance dispenser.) This turned out to be a good choice, though, as the popcorn was good.

No one sat next to me, which surprised me, as it was a much smaller theater. However, it’s been hard to find subtitled versions of Guardians of the Galaxy, Part 2–my usual theater didn’t offer any at all–which tells me there must not be much demand for English with Japanese subtitles. As such, there were only a few of us in the theater.

Luckily, it was another terrific movie. In fact, these were the best major studio movies I’ve seen in a long time.  Unlike the original Guardians of the Galaxy, which I liked despite a weak third act, I may actually remember events from Part 2.

Tomorrow, though, it’s back to regularly scheduled work.

Productively Lazy and Sluggish

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I didn’t do much today, but I did get a lot done. More specifically I didn’t move much.

Although I spent most of the day at the computer, I was working on things that involved pens and paper but didn’t involve the actual computer. Instead the computer provided background noise and images for me whilst I worked on other things.

At one point I had my laptop set up on my desk in front of my regular computer so that I could work on a computer but not disturb old episodes of MythBusters. (Note: it is interesting to see the early seasons before they became popular. They had trouble getting stuff to use in their mythbusting. Then, they had an episode where they got the FBI to close off a highway and blow up a truck and you could tell they’d arrived.)

Somewhere in there, stuff got done, although there were a few odd computer issues. They weren’t that bad, though, so not much swearing was involved. Just a lot of angry sighing.

Tomorrow is another exam day and part of that will be spent watching movies as I attempt a double feature of sorts.