Category Archives: Japan

Have Yourself a Merry Homework Christmas

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If there had been chocolate waiting for me, perhaps what happened might not have happened. Well, actually, it would have happened, but at least I’ve some chocolate right now.

Today was the last class before the new year’s holiday for my evening class. Because they won’t have class until 2017, I gave them a few homework assignments: write a speech; do some grammar homework; speed read a couple short essays; write 150 words of personal journal each day.

The more I wrote, the less happy they became. When I said “Merry Christmas” and gestured the writing on the board, they insisted on pointing out that what I was doing was not, in fact, that merry.

It doesn’t matter to me though. As I pointed out, it’s 2016 now, but their homework isn’t due until 2017. That gives them an entire year to finish it.

Now I’m on vacation. Sort of. (More on that in a future post.)

Technical Difficulties Meet Worn and Done

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Technologically, it was one of those days that remind me why I prefer analog tools such as fountain pens and paper.

First, Scrivener and I formed a new working agreement: if it stops f@#king with me, I won’t uninstall it.

I worked on a novel yesterday only 1) to find that I was actually editing a version that was in Scrivener’s trashcan and 2)  to discover today that everything I’d worked on yesterday was gone.

Much swearing ensued.

After a few minutes of using a hammer to “hit any key to continue” and playing with lighters and kerosene for a more permanent solution, I figured out the problem was that because I was using the program on two computers, Scrivener was confused. Once that was figured out, I went back to my laptop to open Scrivener and it wouldn’t open. Instead it gave me an error message.

Much more swearing ensued.

Then I reopened it on my desktop and it worked.

Much “Huh? What? Really?” ensued.

Then I tried again on my laptop and it opened without me having to change anything. That’s how I know Scrivener is f@#king with me.

After all that was resolved, and yesterday’s work was moved from the trashcan, I started up my printer to print the current draft and my printer announced that it had put itself on a death watch. It told me that parts of it were approaching the end of their working lives.

Much more swearing (and yen counting) ensued.

This means I’ll have to find a way around that alert or will have to finally break down and buy a new printer. As I’ve had the current one for 10 years, and it doesn’t like working with Windows 10, it’s probably something to consider.

Speech Acting Theory

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One of the problems with the way the school where I work conducts its annual speech contest is you pretty much always know who’s going to win. That was especially true today, as the guy6 destined to win performed the speech that sent him to a national speech contest.

I served as head judge for the third year junior high school division of the speech contest. This involves standing up and smiling to random golf claps and then shaking hands and giving a short speech. (More on that in a minute.) My job is also stay awake during 28 speeches.

The speeches went well and the speech chairmen, who put the “chair” back in “chairmen” by almost never standing up, kept the pace up by calling the next speaker before the current speaker had reached his chair after leaving the stage.

A couple students choked, including one who swore under his breath and then panicked after everyone went “Ooooh” when the mic picked up his muttering. One of my students started out well and then panicked when he skipped a couple lines.

The winner had practiced his enough that he didn’t need his paper. He also has some acting training and has the presence, and the hair cut, to stand there looking pretty cool. The only battle, therefore, was for first loser. So to speak.

After all the speeches finished, there was very little time for the awards ceremony, the obligatory photo, and my comments. This was okay as my comments are usually ridiculously short anyway.

After my comments, everyone ran away to make room for the first year junior high division. I probably ran away faster than everyone else.

 

 

Sunday Delivery and Economic Policy

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Because I haven’t transferred money to my US account since 2011, and because the company that used to handle the transfers has been bought out, I suddenly found myself having to reapply to transfer money to the USA.

This, however, was complicated by US law. I won’t go into details but the basic idea behind the law is “don’t trust Americans or we will hurt you because they are all tax-evading bastards”. Because of this, even Swiss banks have been playing ball, so to speak, and I had to fill out a fairly hefty application and copy two forms of ID. Then I had to answer any unanswered questions via phone calls and then wait long enough that I was worried I’d been rejected.

(Note: there are other ways to send money to a US account but they involve a trip to the post office, hefty amounts of paperwork each time, fees, and, on occasion, substantial profane language.)

Yesterday, though, I received notice that I had a registered letter waiting for me at the post office and She Who Must Be Obeyed called and arranged delivery today. The postal worker arrived at the very end of the requested time period–I didn’t complain because Sunday Delivery–and then he spent a full three minutes filling out paperwork. What shocked me was that 1) HE filled out the paperwork and 2) that he accepted a non-photo ID as proof of who I was.

I now have an account and a way to transfer money. That means I’ll have to actually attempt all that tomorrow. That’s when the real swearing will probably begin.

The Dilemma of the Ages

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I don’t like it. She either didn’t remember or did it on purpose. Either way I ate it and didn’t say anything.

There are only two foods in Japan, arguably in the world, I don’t like: Sweet omelets which are an everyday abomination served along side sushi, and Oshiruko, a kind of soup made from sweetened red beans and rice cakes. Oshiruko is a Japanese new year’s tradition but it reminds me of manju that’s been eaten and then puked up. (Note: I’m not sure why I don’t like it, but I think it’s because, at first glance, it looks like baked beans. It is not baked beans, though, and I guess my brain can’t handle that.) I’m also not a huge fan of mochi, the rice cakes served in the manju vomit. These are rectangular bits of chewy rice paste that Japanese consider to be a form of food.

Tonight, for reasons I don’t understand, She Who Must Be Obeyed served oshiruko  and mochi for supper. This wouldn’t bother me except it was the main dish. The side dish was a vegetable and sausage stir fry. This left me with a dilemma: do I order pizza and risk the wrath of SWMBO or do I eat it and say it was delicious and then cook something else.

I opted for the latter, sort of, as that is my husbandly duty (In sickness and in health; for better and for crappy food. It’s there; look it up.) I didn’t cook, but I did supplement with some cheese and a banana.

That got some attention, though, which may or may not be a good thing.

This Bluff is Not a Bluff

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It started with an excuse, then some panic. Then another student smirked when I told he just failed the term. I’m not sure what he’s thinking, but he seems to have been having a term long teenage moment so perhaps he’s not thinking at all.

Either way, I suspect I’ll have a rather lonely make-up test day unless he realizes I’m not bluffing.

My last class of the term started with a student admitting he was stupid because he’d forgot the pictures he needed for his final project. He thought he’d be able to do the speaking part without the pictures. I told him that was impossible and gave him and his partner some paper and instructions to draw some pictures. In the end they did their presentation and will pass, albeit with a lower score than they could have earned.

A second group did their presentations, but one member hadn’t done the two previous speeches. I told him a bad speech was better than no speech and he grunted a response.

Several minutes later I saw him playing with his phone and told him to come up and do his speeches. (In my world “playing with your phone” equals “I’ve finished my assignment and have nothing else to do”.) He had nothing ready and dismissed me with a smile. I told him he’d just failed with the lowest possible score (alas, I can’t give zeroes) and he smirked as if he thought I was joking.

On Friday he’ll discover I wasn’t joking. Then, next year in early January I’ll be waiting for him at the make-up exam. I doubt I’ll see him though. I may end up just standing in the room by myself.

Not the first time, won’t be the last.

Moment After Moment

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Our oldest, being finished with exams (sort of, maybe, long story), went to an event honoring the release of one of her favorite singer’s new singles. While she was there she managed to anger She Who Must Be Obeyed. I, of course, didn’t make things better, but it did get me thinking.

First, our oldest changed clothes and went to the concert but left the parts of her school uniform scattered around the living room. In fact, it was so messy that it’s fair to say that even Project Blue Book would have sent agents to investigate her alien abduction.

While she was away, she texted to inform us that she had lost her Kanji textbook, which meant she couldn’t study for an exam she has tomorrow. She didn’t know where she’d lost it but had a couple possible locations.

(Note: If I’d known she had an exam tomorrow she wouldn’t have gone. That said, I do not understand why both she and She Who Must Be Obeyed refer to the exam as a “mini-exam” that seems both important and not important.)

The revelation of the lost book led to much anger/ranting from SWMBO, whose anger is a lot like a string of firecrackers: once it starts it doesn’t stop until it’s finished and trying to stop it frequently leads to injury.  I contributed by commenting that there was little we could do about it at that moment as we were in a different state and that we should save our anger until our oldest arrived home/I finished what I was working on. (Note: this, as near as I can tell, did not endear me to SWMBO.)

I met our oldest at the station to escort her home as she arrived well after dark (and there’s a creepy guy along the way who’s spoken to her in the past…another long story), she explained that her book had been buried in her backpack the entire time.

This made me mad as it proved she hadn’t actually studied, which is why the book was buried where she couldn’t find it. But then it got me thinking.

Our oldest had clearly had a Teenage Moment. This is like a Senior Moment, but happens to teenagers.

I shudder to think how many Teenage Moments I had when I was a teenager. Then again, it’s fair to say that everything that happened to me from age 12 to age 33 counted as a teenage moment.

 

Finishing and Crashing

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I had six test pass-back classes today but only about one class worth of things to do. I used the extra time to finish exams.

At the school where I work, for reasons I don’t understand, we are expected to keep students a full 50 minutes on the days we give them back their exams. The trouble is, the best we can hope for is 20-25 minutes of test-related activity and the rest is, more or less, babysitting.

Some teachers show movies, others give assignments, but I’m more prone to allow free time with the admonitions “No fighting. No kissing. No sports.” If the class is in the homeroom and/or the students remember my instructions to always bring something to do in case they finish an assignment early,

When I did this in my early classes, I was able to finish marking the long writing sections on my second year high school (11th grade) exams and tally the marks.

In my third year junior high school classes (9th grade) I was kept busy marking long writing sections. (Note: on some exams, I don’t mark mistakes. Instead I read, give a score, and then mark the section if a student questions his final mark.)

Luckily all that happened after I finished marking my exams. If it hadn’t, I’d probably still be marking exams rather than writing this.

 

 

That Long Last Stretch is Oh So Long

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Been busy today, which means I got nothing but work to talk about. In fact, today involved three different jobs in various forms.

I was able to close out two of the jobs by sending edited paragraphs and posting final marks. I was also able to complete the class marks for my junior high school classes.

All that seems like an accomplishment, and in many ways it is, but that was the easy stuff and it leaves me with the final section of my final class’ worth of exams and over three days to finish them. The problem is, the way my brain works, those few thousand words (in theory 120 words X 28 exams) somehow manage to stretch out for the entire allotted time.

I like to think that something like that won’t happen this time, but I’m already thinking of ways to waste time. None of them productive, just ways to waste time.

Taking a Break by Working

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It says a lot that the way I took a break from marking exams was by marking paragraphs.

As an experiment, I’ve agreed to do some online marking that allows me to work from home. The problem is, the online marking works a much different schedule than my day job.

The other problem is, that if I put off doing either the exams or the online marking, I end up sitting at my desk marking questionable writing.

Today, I had a good burst of energy, which means I carefully balanced my carbs-to-coffee ratio, and managed to finish exams I picked up just yesterday. Luckily, I have two lower level classes, which means I have reduced class sizes and that made finishing a little bit easier.

However, after I finished the fronts (our tests have short answer on the front and essay/long writing on the back) I decided to mark some paragraphs as part of my part-time job.

For this job, students submit paragraphs via an oddly counter-intuitive email system and I spend a couple hours marking their mistakes before sending the file back to them for revision.

The main advantage is that the online work is typed, not handwritten, which makes it physically easier to read. Sometimes students use hard lead that is hard to read on cheap copy paper.;

I have more paragraphs to finish tomorrow. I’ll probably save them until I need a break.