Category Archives: Work

The Slow Chemical Descent Into Madness

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I’ve mentioned before that I teach at an all boys school that is the least religious religious school you can imagine. Besides seeing how boys behave in the absence of girls, I also get to watch their slow descent into teenagerhood. This is not a pretty spectacle.

For the most part, teenagers are the equivalent of bottle of pop (Coke and/or soda to people from various soulless regions) that’s been shaken up and then set out in the hot sun to eventually explode. If it doesn’t explode, the longer it sits in the sun, the more flat and disgusting it becomes. With boys this happens in or around 8th grade (for girls it happens sooner but that’s another post).

At the school where I work, the boys arrive in 7th grade with a lot of positive energy and, for a while at least, are a lot of fun to teach. There was one exception to this rule. Several years ago we had a group of 7th graders we dubbed the “Demon Seed” class for their unusually high levels of noise and disinterest and general obnoxiousness. They were so bad that when we met their elementary school teachers, we held a trial to see who was guilty. The elementary school teachers, probably to save their own skins, assured us that the Demon Seed class were an exception and the next class would be nice. This turned out to be true. Most of the Demon Seed Class, though, stayed bad all the way through high school.

For the record: BAD in this case means annoying wastes of time; not violent and dangerous.Even compared to Japanese public schools, are boys are okay.

Starting in 8th grade the non-Demon Seed lads begin to hit the growth spurt in which their bodies get bigger whilst the switches in their brain cells begin shutting down. As a result, many of them get increasingly lazy. This is compounded in Japan because no one is actually allowed to fail until they start the 10th grade. Until then, education is both mandatory and compulsory. (I’ve proposed that, because the school is private, they kick out the bottom students in each class each year. The response is lots of teeth sucking which a Japanese way of saying “um no”.)

Once boys figure out this scam–especially the boys in the lower level English classes–they pretty much begin tuning out. The process starts with lots of “I don’t understand. I don’t understand” said whilst I’m trying to explain something so that they can understand it. This progresses to them saying “Speak Japanese” instead of listening and me saying “um no” which is Liveleese for “Hell no”.

By 9th grade, the boys are fully grown and their brains fully switched off. The lower level classes, especially if they have weak homeroom teachers, become unteachable. Last year I had a 9th grade class that was so bad I broke it into two sections. The “Play Room” for kids who never brought the textbook and just wanted to talk and the “Study Room” for kids who wanted to learn something. i do have a few tricks and have proven my willingness to stay late into the evening to get students to finish a project, but only  a few students are worth the effort.

In 10th grade, the dynamics change. Boys from outside the system are brought in and those who were cool in junior high suddenly find themselves not as cool. Also, failure is suddenly an option. Not surprisingly, that helps quite a bit.

 

Just One Just One More Just One More Little Bit Won’t Hurt

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I’ve mentioned a few times that we (the teachers at the school where I work) recently moved from our old office to a new office in a new building. During the move I jettisoned 14 years of crap that, at the time I started assembling it, seemed like a good thing to have on hand.

One of the odd things I’ve noticed about being in a new office with a shiny new desk is how uncomfortable and sterile the new desk feels without the dangerous overhang of crap–not all of it mine; they had encyclopedias from 1967–that used to occupy the shelves above the old desk. The new desk doesn’t have that “lived in” look.

(No complaints about the new chairs, though. The new chairs are awesome and I’m happy to sleep, er, live, er WORK in them.)

That said, I’ve been doing my best to keep the new desk organized. This is partly because the new shelves actually sit on the desk and steal a lot space and because the desk itself is smaller. A few scattered pieces of paper quickly make the desk look messy.

In the past, as a form of “cleaning” and “decluttering” I would merely fill up the drawers with the crap–the adult equivalent of pushing everything under the bed before mom comes to check on the room–and call the desk clean. Today, however, I actually spent time cleaning the drawers and tossing scrap paper in the recycling bin rather than telling myself I’d eventually reuse it. (I wouldn’t, of course. I’d inevitably acquire new paper before I could use up the old.)

Part of the problem I have is that one of the full time teachers in the office has a desk that’s so messy that when you first see it you’re convinced his bookshelves must have collapsed onto his desk. His desk looks like the kind of thing you see on the occasional Japanese versions of Hoarders. I’ve always been tempted to send a picture in and see if one of the TV shows would send a pair of comedians (the shows always send young, up-and-coming comedians) to clean the desk.

What’s interesting about this teacher’s desk, is his old desk in the old office was just as messy, albeit a bit more precariously balanced. He moved the clutter to the new office. (I kind of wish I’d taken a picture to see if he’s put it all back in the same place, which would likely mean he has a system.

With that as a comparison just across the room, it’s easy to say, “well, at least my desk doesn’t look that bad”. It’s a bit like hanging out with fat people to make yourself look thinner. Then you tell yourself you’re actually thin and think “oh, this one little thing won’t hurt. Nor this one neither. Nor this one.” and pretty soon people are hanging out next to you. Or are sending comedians to clean up your desk.

Party On The Clock, Dude

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In yesterday’s post I mentioned that Japanese parties, or enkai, can be rather formal (translation: boring) and that they are pretty much the same no matter who throws them (translation: always boring). Today I thought I’d explain that in more detail.

The Japanese like to drink and they are capable of throwing interesting parties, before that happens, though, there is an enkai which is pretty much the bastard offspring of a long business meeting and cocktail hour. Enkais are typically two hours long and happen strictly on schedule. There’s no such thing as being fashionably late. If the enkai is scheduled to start at 7:00 p.m. and you show up at 7:10 p.m. you will have missed the opening speech and the opening toast. There will be an empty space on the floor where you are supposed to be and you will be at least two glasses of beer and an appetizer behind your neighbors.

At this point a Westerner begins to encounter a level of culture shock. No only are you hunched up on straw mats behind a little floor table but you don’t actually own your own beer. Instead, in the spirit of collegiality, everyone pours beer for everyone else. To pour your own beer is considered greedy and impatient. In fact, you may not even have a bottle nearby (especially if you were 10 minutes late). Getting beer involves getting someone to notice that your little glass is empty and hoping they will crawl across the mat to you and pour you a glass.

There is also a tradition of waiting until you’ve taken a bite of the most delicious food on your plates (Japanese serve each dish on a separate plate) and then ambushing you with a bottle of beer. You are then expected to down your current beer, ruining the taste of the food, and then present your glass for more beer.

At a certain point in the enkai, about 75 minutes in, people start crawling around with bottles as an excuse to chat with the people they’re not sitting near. With five minutes left, everyone returns to their tables and the closing speech is given. At the two hour mark, the enkai and what is typically unmerciful boredom is over. (Note: New Year’s Parties are longer and usually more fun but that is another post.)

It’s at this point that the fun actually begins. You can either extricate yourself from the proceedings and go home or follow the proceedings to the first of the many after parties. Granted, at this point karaoke is usually involved–and in Japan karaoke is actually a martial art–but whiskey is also involved.

However, be warned, in Japan “drinking whiskey” is actually a form of rehydration. They give you a highball glass full of ice, put about a cap’s worth of whiskey in it and then top it off with water. I remember being horrified the first time this happened and I requested a glass of straight whiskey to accompany the watery ruin. I then had the odd experience of chasing straight whiskey with whiskey and water.

For the Japanese, though, this watery drink has a kind of placebo effect and they start singing, usually pretty well. And then they look at me and I’m like, um, no, not enough whiskey yet because there’s not enough whiskey in this town to make me go up there and sing. Now, at this point, some people go “Oh, DL lighten up. Live a little. Everyone’s having fun. Sing. Sing a song. Sing out loud. Sing out strong.” To which I usually respond “Go fuck yourself.” (Remind me again: Why don’t I get invited to parties?)

Granted, there was that time I sang “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” with my then boss and there was that other time I sang “California Dreamin'” but the first involved the New Year and the second involved She Who Must Be Obeyed and, oddly, England. (But those are future posts.)

After the Karaoke, the hardcore partiers either go to another karaoke bar or to a “snack” which has little to do with food and a lot to do with well-dressed women pushing expensive drinks at you. Or, those of us who’ve been there and done that and got a concussion because of it, go for a bowl of ramen soup and then go home.

Peel it Blanch it Dice it Fry it Skin it Eat it

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Back when I lived in Niigata, before I’d met She Who Must Be Obeyed, I was invited to a parent teacher party with the Parent Teachers Association of Isobe Junior High School, which was my smallest school. I was sitting next to the school’s cute secretary, whose name I don’t remember and whose interest in me ranked somewhere between “I’d rather have a root canal on all my teeth without anesthetic” and “I’d rather be set on fire”. She was polite, though, as I struggled through what little Japanese I knew. It is difficult, even if a woman’s interested, to impress her when you’re basically babbling like a child. (This is something I really wished I’d learned in high school and definitely before I got to graduate school.)

Japanese parties, called enkai, are heavily formalized and pretty much all the same, but that’s another post. The food is also usually the same. In this case, we had a tasty deep-fried fish that had been cooked long enough you could eat the bones. I devoured everything and set the heads on the plate (yes, almost all fish in Japan is served with heads; some is even still moving). About halfway through the meal (which, by definition is the party’s one hour mark) the cute secretary whose name I don’t remember pointed to my plate and said “don’t you like to eat the fish heads?” to which I replied, more or less, “um, am I supposed to like them?” I then found a rare moment of situational awareness and realized that mine was the only plate with heads staring forlornly at me. Being a male attempting to impress a female, I quickly at the fish heads, eyes and all. It was actually pretty tasty but she was unimpressed.

All this is a long introduction to the some of the odd differences between the way Japanese eat things and the way I do. I’ve mentioned before how She Who Must Be Obeyed thinks it so strange that I like raw broccoli and raw cauliflower that she can’t actually bring herself to leave it raw. However, I also remember one time, after I’d met She Who Must Be Obeyed, when we were eating somewhere with my adult class and someone started handing out grapes. I immediately attacked the grapes and made short work of them. However, every single other person in the room was peeling their grapes before eating them and they thought it strange that I would eat the skins. I, of course, was worried that I’d somehow poisoned myself, but nothing bad happened.

I thought , at first, it was because they were large grapes, but every Japanese I know will also peel small grapes. Since I’m already finished by the time they finish their first grape, there’s not much else for me to do but watch. They also carefully peel baked potatoes and apples which I find an unnecessary step for eating either.

Interestingly, the one food the Japanese don’t peel is eggplant. This time every year, Mother and Father of She Who Must Be Obeyed send us lots of round eggplant. It quickly gets sliced up and pan fried and dipped in soy sauce and ginger. It gets stuffed with ground pork and deep fried. It gets served in soup. It gets served with meat sauce and pasta. It gets pickled. It never, however, gets peeled. (It also rarely gets salted and sweated.) This shocked me the first time because I still remember the care my friend Steve put into peeling an eggplant before making moussaka many hundreds of years ago.

Now I realize, he may have been wasting his time.

The Voice You Hear May Be Your Own

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There are very few things more traumatizing in life than hearing your recorded voice for the first time. The only thing worse is seeing yourself on television for the first time (more on that later as there are complicating factors).

The first time I remember hearing my voice was, I believe, in the third grade. I don’t remember why my voice had been recorded but the squeaky nasal thing that came out of the cassette player still gives me the creeps. Although hearing your own voice is traumatizing in general, I think it’s especially bad for young boys as we suddenly realize that we sound like our mothers and not our fathers.

My squeaky nasal thing lasted well into university and I remember one instance where I was on the phone with the university or some business and the voice on the other end kept calling me “miss”. When I finally said and spelled out my name there was a quick “oh” followed by a moment of silence and then I became “sir”.

Somewhere along the way I started to take acting classes and part of that involved vocal training. My teacher, Melissa Riggs, told me to read the “tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” soliloquy from Macbeth with the deepest most exaggerated “Shakespearean” accent I could muster. I thought I sounded ridiculous but everyone else thought I sounded good (please note: this meant my voice sounded good not that I wasn’t ridiculous or that I’m not an idiot telling a tale full of sound and fury).

Over the years I think I’ve managed to work my voice into something respectable. It helps that I live overseas and teach English, a combination, as I’ve said before, that typically steals accents. Also, since we write and record our own listening tests, I get to hear my voice over loudspeakers quite frequently. (In fact, I did that very thing just today which inspired this post.)

The other traumatizing thing is seeing yourself on television for the first time. This is different than seeing yourself in a video–although that’s pretty bad–because lots of strangers are seeing you on TV.

Oddly, although I’m not particularly photogenic, I am somewhat telegenic (some day I will prove that in one of these posts) as I’m not required to hold a smile. I can just relax and talk.

Unfortunately, several hundred years ago, give or take, when I worked in Kansas City, Kansas for the summer as part of a Peace Corps-style project, I was interviewed for local television.

Now, as a warning to you, when you’re on television for the first time, the better you think you sound, the worse you actually are. I thought I said something profound in a profound manner and that viewers would be moved to tears. However, when I finally saw the segment, my nasal voice was back. Also, because I was taller than the cameraman, the camera angle put me in a “talking down my nose” position that looked snobbish.  To top it off, everything I said sounded trite and superficial. (The memory still gives me a case of the third grade creeps.)

I’ve therefore done my best to avoid TV cameras since then and let other people make the official statements. It’s for the best.

This is the End Before the Begin Again

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I’ve got absolutely nothing worth writing about tonight, so let’s talk about work.

Today was the last day of teaching for Term 1 and I now have a day to relax before exam hell begins. I will, of course, spend the day in the most productive manner possible.

Well, not really. I’ll just loaf.

As I’ve written before, it was a strange term. We have a new building and three new teachers and although everyone settled in quickly, it still felt strange. Then there was the self-inflicted pain caused by having the students make two minute videos. That in itself would have been fine if it were actually the students making the videos and not us. That said, I managed to film my last two students today when they turned up, without any prompting by me, to do their video. They, of course, cheated by gluing their script to the back of their product poster and they lost points for being lazy. (They just sat down and read as if they were news anchors.) But, it’s all finished.

Exams themselves are kind of goofy. We stand around during the exams waiting to answer any questions that might arise and to quickly correct, by writing on the blackboards, any mistakes suddenly discovered in the exams. After the exam, we wait for the proctors to bring the actual exam papers and we then sort them by class and start marking.

Well, actually, that’s what’s supposed to happen. I usually have to have at least one day of denial in which I spend a lot of time parsing time and convincing myself that days actually do have 25 or 26 hours and that three days are actually five. This means I have plenty of time to goof around and play games and I feel no guilt doing do. This period of denial is followed by late night marathon marking sessions fueled by coffee and chocolate.

I first enter the “ah heck, this ain’t so bad phase” in which I make actual progress. Eventually, though, “ah heck, this ain’t so bad phase” smashes into the first wall in the form of “Will this madness never end?” phase in which it seems, no matter how long you mark, as if there’s always the same number of tests left to mark. “Will this madness never end?” smashes into the wall called “My God, my god, why has Thou forsaken me?” phase in which even one test causes physical pain to get through.

Eventually, I get through all the exams and pass them back to the students and all is well, at least until the end of summer and the cycle starts again.

 

That’s About Enough of That For an Eternity

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Thanks to a Facebook post from a writer I follow, I’ve had a medley of Counting Crows “‘Round Here” and “Mr. Jones” running through my head since last week. This isn’t good; it’s actually kind of bad and it has me thinking about songs I used to find entertaining and then heard one time too many and now hope I never hear again.

Counting Crows were already popular when I got back from Albania and headed off to Mississippi for an odd, misguided couple of years. I therefore heard, on TV and on the radio and at friend’s houses, a constant run of the two songs I mentioned above. They were catchy and kind of cool at first, and the lead singer had great hair, and then all of a sudden they weren’t cool and I blocked them out of my memory. It’s no joke that I hadn’t thought of them for years until last week.

I’ve mentioned before that I have a moody relationship with music and part of that involves suddenly reaching super-saturation of a song. I used to like Rush’s “Tom Sawyer” then I heard it one time too many. Anything by the Cranberries can, as far as I’m concerned, replace the ET game cartridges in the landfill New Mexico. “Stairway to Heaven” can join it and it can lie next to “Stray Cat Strut,” “Goody Two Shoes,” “Mony Mony,” “I Love A Rainy Night”, “Flowers on the Wall” and “Bohemian Rhapsody” (Damn you Mike Myers and your damned Wayne’s World AMC Pacer scene.)

Sometimes an entire group is ruined because the group does the unforgivable and that which has been seen can never be unseen. I used to like Styx, and even forgave them “Mr. Roboto,” until they did the abomination “Music Time” and now I can’t listen to any Styx song without hearing “Hey everybody it’s music time!” in my head. (Look it up, I refuse to link to it.)

The song, however, that provides the soundtrack when I peer down past the gates of Hell is one I wasn’t even a big fan of, but got to hear again and again and again as part of my job.

As part of the English experience, many Japanese English textbooks include lyrics from English songs and the official CD contains the music. Usually the song is “Let it Be” or “Hello, Goodbye” (which both should also be buried somewhere) but In this case, the song was by Stevie Wonder, was from The Woman in Red soundtrack, and was about a man merely telephoning a woman to express his amorous feelings. (I cannot be more specific without losing what’s left of my soul.)

I was invited to a class to walk the students through the lyrics and then help them sing it about five times. This went over so well, according my soulless teaching partner anyway, that she decided to do the song in every class that week. To give you the Devil’s math: 9 classes X (two times explaining the lyrics + five times singing it two the music) = hearing a song way too many times to possibly retain sanity. I can’t even think about the song without having to hum “MMMBop” to kill the ear worm.

Believe it or not, it could be worse. I know one teacher who was a big fan of “Cartoon Heroes” by Aqua. This is madness.

Don’t Give a Blue Moon in June

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At the school where I work, the worst month of the year is June. It’s the month that when you reach it you go “Wow, I can’t believe it’s already June” and invoke cliches about time moving faster when you’re having fun and/or aging. A week later, though, you’re going “Man, I can’t believe it’s still June.”

There are a lot of reasons for this. The first is that June comes at the end of the Spring/Summer term, which starts in April. Although it’s not the longest term (autumn term is) it’s the only one where the weather is getting hotter as the Season in Which it Rains and Rainy Season slowly turn into Hell.

It’s also the one that my evolutionary clock, conditioned by decades of finishing school at the end of May/beginning of June rebels against. Evolution is telling me to go fishing and loaf (mostly it’s telling me to loaf) but I have promises to keep and miles to go before I loaf. The end of June marks the beginning of July exams, meaning we will soon be rotting our brains with bad writing and pondering if the phrase “My Mother is a Tractor” is worth more points than “He is like a soccer.”

Making matters worse is that, for reasons no one fully understands, June is one of the few months of the school year with no national holiday. Once June starts, you pretty much have to work as if you actually had a job. Even one day off in a long month gives you a chance to recharge (especially if it gives you a three day weekend.)

With a few exceptions, Japanese holidays tend to correspond to the birthdays of a handful of emperors. Greenery Day (April 29th), for example, used to be a wink wink nudge nudge acknowledgment of the Emperor Showa and his love of greenery and attacking Pearl Harbor (he’s known as Emperor Hirohito outside of Japan). Recently, the law was changed to allow more blatant celebration of emperors and Greenery Day was moved and April 29th became Showa Day.

My suggestion, therefore, is that June 18th become a holiday as it is the birthday of Emperor Ogimachi who presided over the end of the Warring States Era and, more or less, the start of the Tokugawa Shogunate, which is the era people think about when they think about Samurai. Ogimachi’s reign saw the stabilization of the royal family’s finances and influence and an increase in their power. It could be called Peace Day to mark the end of the Warring States Era.

Quite frankly, he could have eaten children and conditioned his skin with fat rendered from babies and I wouldn’t care; all that matters is the June birthday. I’m selfish that way.

Tex Mex From Tubes and Speaking Nicely

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I’ve mentioned before that after I left Albania I was looking for a job with the least amount of responsibility possible. I therefore took a job at Taco Tico, a regional Tex Mex fast food restaurant.

Unfortunately, because I was older and allegedly wiser, I was put on a fast track to shift manager. When I started, my uniform was a polo style shirt and a baseball cap and my job was to not muck up orders on the cash register, not mess up giving out change, clean stuff, and speak nicely to people. The people included fellow employees and customers. It turns out that neither was necessarily easy to speak nicely to.

Customers, especially, have this unreasonable expectation that things should be served promptly and that everything should be clean. However, you should not attempt to make things clean whilst any customers are present. I had a guy tell me he didn’t appreciate me slinging dirty water and a mop around the restaurant whilst he was eating, even though I’d been instructed to go out and clean up the ruins of the lunch rush. Oddly, I managed to say something along the lines of “Sorry, sir. I’ll do that later.” instead of pointing out that he was unreasonable git eating ground meat from a plastic tube that looked like a giant frozen turd and had been delivered by a truck driver which meant that some dirty water on the floor was probably the least of his worries.

I was made shift manager without having to take a test, much to the anger of a few employees who’d been trying to get promoted for quite a while. Basically the store manager was using the test–which involved memorizing the exact grams and ounces of each ingredient in each dish–to filter out the employees who worked hard but he didn’t think were particularly bright. As a result of my promotion, I got more money, a short sleeve button down Oxford shirt, a clip on tie and responsibility over money and napkins. Oh, and more resentment from fellow employees–especially when I told one he had to stop ringing up an extra 50 cents worth of sour cream and other toppings on orders in order to run up the bill on obnoxious customers in the drive-thru.

My only “Really? Are you serious? Really?” moment came when I had to teach one kid, whose dad was making him work to pay for the insurance and gasoline on his awesome car (an early 1970’s something or other muscle car), how to wash dishes and use both a broom and a push broom. (I remain shocked that anyone would not know how to do any of those, but he was a fast learner and a good employee.)

I also got a lot more scrutiny from my boss, who seemed intent on the idea of me eventually moving into proper management. I, of course, said, “No, damn you. I’m going to get a Ph.D. in literature. That’s where the real future is.” (That actually turned out to be a better decision than it sounds as that boss was eventually fired for messing about with the menu too much. More on why I don’t have a Ph.D. some other day.)

All in all, I was glad I worked fast food at least once. In fact, I believe every person should work fast food and/or retail jobs at least once in their lives. It teaches you a lot about people and yourself, It also teaches you to avoid ever working fast food again.

The Fine Art of Loafing and Leaving Well Enough Alone

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Today I was so lazy I actually offended myself. I did a little writing, a little reading and studied a little but mostly I did a lot of loafing. Occasionally I stared at the list of things I’d hoped to accomplish today and basically went “Isn’t it pretty to think so?” and went back to loafing.

This is partly because Friday was one of my more hectic days at work. It was a testament to what happens when you make the mistake of trying to change things that worked well in the past and have been running more-or-less smoothly. It was also a testament to the dread that the changes will fall apart and everyone, including you, will blame you.

Several years ago we (the foreign English teaching staff at the school) got tired of the available textbooks for our second year (11th grade) high school classes and instead decided to make our own materials. Our original plan was to collaborate on materials but the pressures of work (we are each in charge of the curriculum for a grade) kept the rest of us busy and the materials more or less became the vision of whichever teacher happened to be in charge of the grade at the time. This kept a supply of fresh material but also required that we either recycle past materials or go absolutely nuts and make something new.

This year, since I’m in charge and we have three new teachers, I decided to go absolutely nuts (shut up–you know who you are–shut up). I jettisoned an entire term’s worth of my old material and moved second term to first term. This doesn’t seem particularly crazy except we decided to have the students make a two minute commercial for a new invention as their final project. That itself would be fine except we also decided to film the commercials and show them in class on the last day.

This means we’ve basically been experimenting on our students. We’ve been like “Here, take this green pill and the little pink one. Now fly.” (Something like that.) Friday was, after a couple delays to give the students more writing time, the first day of filming. I spent the morning running around securing cameras,; realizing we had three cameras but only two tripods; scratching my head and going “what have I done?“; securing rooms and threatening my own students with failure if they didn’t hurry up; and memorize their scripts. It’s no exaggeration that I was more nervous than the students because if something went wrong, it would effect all four of us and not just me.

Luckily, in my class, I was able to film several commercials over the first two periods of class. Third period I had a break but was still on too much adrenaline to relax completely. Other teachers also managed to film some commercials and the results have been pretty good. By lunch time I was finally able to relax. Unfortunately, I haven’t actually stopped relaxing.

Of course, there’s a still a lot that can go wrong. I have to edit all those together and deliver the edited files to my colleagues. Oh, and I need to make a completely new curriculum for next term. I’ll get right on that, some day. But first I have to loaf.