Author Archives: DELively

Closing in on Crazy Time

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Tomorrow things start getting crazy. Well, thanks to events beyond our control, crazy time started at the school where I work last week.

Tomorrow, though, exams start for high school, and that will be followed, on Friday, by the junior high school third year exams. This wouldn’t be a problem except the junior high school first and second year students all have another four days’ worth of classes.

Keeping track of when to mark and when to go to class gets crazy, especially when one of your classes is doing their best to make you angry. After they succeed, they then try to convince you why they need to leave for snack time rather than stay in class most of their long break. (Guess what I did today…)

There will be a couple clean days where I’ll do nothing but mark (probably) and then we’ll finally have the last two exams. The trouble is those will arrive the same day as I’m passing back my high school exams.

Hopefully, I’ll remember to go to all my classes.

Other People’s Notes and Your Own

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Two of my colleagues have been overseas for personal reasons this past week and they returned to find their desks and teaching plans in shambles. Or maybe everything was okay but the notes the substitutes left were vague despite being reasonably legible.

Part of the problem is we all have our own versions of shorthand that make sense to us, most of the time, but are incoherent to someone else. This is true even when we type things and print them out. Of course, because of this, my colleagues’ problems started when my colleagues left notes for their substitutes who were then forced to interpret the notes and then leave other notes that my colleagues had to interpret creating a written version the of the Rumor Game. Student A says “The train came out of the tunnel into Snow Country.” and after going down the line the last student says “Kill the chicken.”

Unfortunately, this isn’t always the result of group effort.

As my colleagues struggled to figure out what to do, whilst cursing those who’d left the notes, I found myself trying to interpret my own notes so that I could figure out what to do.

There was also a lot of cursing involved.

The main issue is that, depending on the amount of time I have, and my level of concern for the class, my note taking system varies wildly. On some pages they are detailed and coherent, but on others they are little more than random scratches that resemble letters but not entire words.

I finally figured out what to do, but I’m sure I won’t be able to read my notes next week and figure out what it was.

 

Passing On Three

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It just dawned on me that this bit of blather started three years ago today. Unfortunately I have nothing profound to say about that.

Starting it at the end of the school year puts me in an odd time for recollection and reflection. When I started there was a lot of energy and that pushed me through the end of term stress. Now, it’s just another thing I need to do when there are other things I should be doing.

Soon after I started I developed a fairly stringent set of rules about length and the amount of time I could spend writing. Over time those rules have changed to allow shorter posts and shorter writing times which has led to lazy posts.

As always, when I’m writing about work, unless it’s particularly funny or lengthy, you can be confident that I’m being lazy.

Now that I’m not working evenings or Sundays, I have a lot more time to put things off, but have been doing rough drafts of various reviews. I’ve been mostly lazy about the the photography and processing the photos.

Going forward to the plan is to put together some kind of collection of expanded versions of posts I liked and organize them around pens. That has also been stealing a lot of time, which makes me default to “Today at work, things really sucked” posts.

I’ll write more about that in another post, though. Probably. Someday.

 

 

How to Experiment on Your Family

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At long last, tonight was gumbo night. This meant I spent a good portion of the day fretting about what was going to happen.

I was also worried because cooking gumbo also meant I was experimenting on my family.

The first catch in the plan, though, was that She Who Must Be Obeyed decided to make chocolate candy right before I’d planned to start cooking. This pushed the entire process back and hour, but did leave us with chocolate for dessert.

After that I started the long process of cutting, chopping, and doing my best to keep all my fingers. (I have a couple odd skin cuts on my right index finger I don’t know how I got so apparently this was a near fail.) I was mostly worried because 1) I was using a kind of sausage we’d never tried before; 2) no one in the house except me had actually tried my gumbo before; and 3) managing the spice level was important or our oldest and youngest wouldn’t eat it.

The andouille style sausage turned out to be pretty good and the gumbo ended up being reasonably tasty. It wasn’t too spicy, but it passed the Gumbo Sweat Test, which means that by the end of the first bowl the spice hadn’t destroyed our taste buds but had sent us looking for handkerchiefs.

Everyone went for seconds, which is unusual, and we are looking forward to finishing it tomorrow after it’s had a chance to age.

The only problem is, I’ll probably have to do this again. I’m not sure if that means this was a failed experiment or not.

 

 

Running Away From Temptation

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The best was out of my league. The second best had already sold. The third chased me away.

Today was the Tokyo Folding Knife Show which meant I made a short pilgrimage down to Tokyo to check it out. It had been moved to a new space close to Tokyo Station. This made it more convenient than the old place, but also meant it lacked any real character. It was a white box full of tables and knives.

My Canadian friend was helping take care of his newborn and that meant I made only a short visit.

The selection was pretty good, and there were a couple makers I hadn’t seen before.

The first knife I picked up was one thousand dollars. The knife maker actually thanked me for picking it up and then gushed that it had been made by his son. His son had done an excellent job. The color was great and the flipping action was perfect. However, the blade was not something I’d be able to use and there was the “thousand dollars” thing.

The Dew Hara “NOAH”. Looks great, but out of my league and not practical. I do like the YinYan pivot, though.

The only knife I’d have bought without hesitation if it had been available was by Taiwanese knife maker Chen Wei Chun. He’s had a table at the last few knife shows and is a rising star who seems to be popular among the usual crowd at the shows. His Shih Lin folding knife was a work of art with a Damascus steel blade and engraved scales. At just under $300 it was a steal. Fortunately, or unfortunately, his few offerings had sold out soon after the show opened.

The Shih LIn folding knife from Chen Wei Chun.

The knife that chased me away,  though, was by Ryo Ito. He’s a maker I hadn’t seen at the shows before and his offerings were an entire table of temptation, mostly because they fell in my “Yeah, I could totally justify that” price range.

My favorite was a nice spear point flipper with a carbon fiber scale on the presentation side and titanium on the clip side. I might have been able to talk him down, but instead I finished a couple circuits of the room before coming back to his table, running a circuit of rationalizations, and then running away.

There are a couple flaws here, but it’s still a nice knife that flips open extremely well.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, he lives just down the tracks from here.

 

 

Long Week Short Post

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I met people I’d met before. I met a person who claimed we’d met before but who I didn’t remember. I met a couple people who seemed pretty cool but who I’ll probably never meet again. I met students I hadn’t seen in a month and told them I’d see them next month.

It was that kind of week.

With two teachers away for family reasons we had a rush of substitutes and the possibility that we’d have to substitute classes ourselves. This meant that two of us found ourselves in the position of helping out a company that’s technically a rival company.

Along the way I made a very rare appeal to the vice principal for help and missed the apology from the student who drew swastikas (actually, he drew the Japanese symbol for temple: 卍 which is backward from the symbol he thought he was drawing.

I’ll get the apology next week, though.

I also managed to finish an exam, but no one had time to look at it because they were busy finishing their own.

Hopefully next week will be easier.

 

Lost in the Gathering Detritus

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At the end of the school year, both my desks typically look like something even a hardcore hoarder would consider excessive and in need of an intervention.

On my desk at school I’ve got student assignments I plan to keep as future examples for future students; student assignments I need to give back to current students; and student assignments that need to be shredded and burned.

I’ve also got stacks of leftover worksheets and folders full of final exam rough drafts.

On my desk at home, I’ve got stacks of notebooks that are currently in use; stacks of notebooks that have been used but need to be photographed and reviewed; and stacks of notebooks, some of which arrived only today, that need to be used to that they can be added to the stack of used notebooks that need to be photographed and reviewed.

Somewhere in the piles are pens that need to be reviewed, pens that need to be sold and bottles of ink that need a new home. There are also random bits of electronics, old batteries, and a cup full of pens.

Eventually, once the school year is over, all this will be cleaned and organized. Well, most of it anyway.

The last stack is a mobile procrastination stack of various forms of work that, in theory, is intended to shame me into finishing the projects. However, they stack too easily and that makes them too easy to move out of the way.

Short Bursts of Denial and Laziness

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I have a test to make, but all the events at the school where I work still have me kind of depressed and have me putting off until next week what could have have been done six days ago.

Mind you, even when I’m not feeling down I’m not always prompt about getting my exams ready for public viewing. The work itself isn’t that hard, especially as the test will be comprehensive (more on the panic and heartbreak that announcement caused in a future post) but I suddenly can’t be bothered to put everything together.

It doesn’t help that Wednesday features two of my worst classes, including one with students who like to draw swastikas and say phrases that sound like “fuck you” and the other with a student who like to lay down on the floor and pretend he’s dead. (More on all that in a future post, too.) Dealing with exceptionally bad classes saps a lot of energy.

That said, some of it is end of year energy. Neither I nor the students can be bothered to care much anymore and we’re already to be done. Until then, though, I have a chance to hand out some extra homework.

The exam will be finished eventually.

Neither There Nor Here

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He’s leaving which means he’s not going which means he’s not doing anything.

At the school where I work we have two kinds of third year junior high school students this time of year. Those that are moving on to the high school have already semi-retired and, other than reviewing for an exam, it’s difficult to motivate them to do anything.

Those who are not moving on to the high school pose different problems. Because they are not beholden to the school where I work (they are taking entrance exams and don’t need much of anything from the school) they have zero motivation to do anything.

For example, in today’s third year junior high school class I have a student who was bad last week and was supposed to hand in homework this week. However, his homeroom teacher informed me yesterday that the student is leaving the school and 1) didn’t have time to do the homework because he was off taking entrance exams and 2) that meant that if I wanted his homework I could go to Helen Hunt for it. So to speak.

My only recourse is to sacrifice some of my time by bringing the student in at lunch. He may be someone else’s problem next school year, but for the next week he’s mine.

Winning and Blacking Out

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I was watching a game streamer stream this evening and was lucky enough to win a prize in his first giveaway. Then, as I was claiming the prize, and before I had a chance to say thank you, the power in our apartment went out.

It seems that a combination of air conditioner and hair dryer caused the circuit breaker to throw a small fit.

After power was restored, I then had to log back in to everything and confirm that I’d received the prize on my account and then thank the streamer who’d given it to me.

Start up, of course, seemed to take a long time and by the time I got back to the site, the streamer was trying to give the prize away again and they were accusing me of being a giveaway sniper who gets what he wants and then runs away. This meant that, on top of everything else, I had to restore my honor (I’m not a giveaway sniper, I’m a shameless giveaway whore) and then I had to break a fellow viewer’s heart.

Luckily, everything got resolved and I was as gracious and apologetic as Japan has taught me to be.

Soon after that, though, the streamer’s stream died as he experienced technical difficulties. I had nothing to do with that, though. At least I’m pretty sure I didn’t.