Language teaching - My big plan

I can (almost) properly plan my dream now

May 17, 2016 by 0 Comments

My flatmate moves out tomorrow. I can’t believe I just wrote the last sentence. The last four months have taken quite a heavy toll on me – lack of energy has been an almost constant problem – and I’ve got a lot to pack into the next four.

My parents took off this morning. They’re away for ten weeks and will spend time in the UK, Italy and Romania! They’ve got four days each in Timișoara and Sibiu, with a train ride in between. I can’t wait to get FaceTime calls from those places. (For my birthday last month my parents gave me an iPhone 4 which they bought on TradeMe but it’s turned out to be unusable as a phone because it’s locked onto some mystery network. And, not to be ungrateful or anything, the screen is too small for 2016. I can still use FaceTime though as long as I have wi-fi.)

I still haven’t decided which city in Romania I’ll live in, although Timișoara is in the lead. I have decided however to take the train from London to get there, to make the experience as awesome as possible. Taking a train trip across Europe is a dream to me. I still have to figure out the best way to do it, with some help from Seat61.com.

My student pulled out of his English lesson yesterday, two hours before I was due to give it. He said he had to go to a friend’s party. I asked if he would reschedule for later in the week but he gave a firm no to that. That’s the third time he’s missed a lesson, if I include the one scheduled for Easter Monday. I’m not that happy with him. Is he just feigning interest? I think it’s human nature to a degree that you don’t value things you don’t pay for. Dad has always said that about giving paintings as presents. Maybe a small charge of $5 a lesson would be better, with a three-strikes-and-you’re-out-style policy for people who don’t show up without good reason (and parties don’t count). I suppose such a policy goes against the ethos of the organisation. It’s frustrating because I really want to do this. Last Tuesday I rushed into town to go to the resources library to pick up some material for last night’s lesson that didn’t happen. I spoke to a Czech lady who works there. She speaks almost perfect English and knows exactly what sounds students find difficult depending on where they come from. I thought, I wish I could be you.

I used a very famous baseball phrase in the preceding paragraph. The Red Sox are red hot right now. Sizzling. Offensively (and it feels weird to use that word in the American sense) they’ve been just about off the charts and it’s been a real team effort.

I played some bad tennis again on Sunday. I was sluggish, as is the norm of late. Afterwards I chatted to a guy whose exploits at the poker table put me firmly in the shade. I also had a meal – again –  with the gay bloke of about my age (or so I thought) who figured I was gay until I told him otherwise. As usual he only ate half his meal. He’s 41 as it happens, and had stomach cancer in 2008, so that explains his eating habits. He’d been given a 20% chance of survival. His story was inspirational.

New Zealand has been in the international news for the wrong reasons, with soaring property prices pushing both buying and renting beyond the means of many, forcing them to sleep in garages or cars. It makes me feel pretty guilty about being so desperate to be by myself.

Language teaching - Life :)

On the up

May 10, 2016 by 0 Comments

After six days of feeling run down, I’m suddenly feeling really good.

We had our first post-restructure team meeting today. That meant a new team. Prior to the meeting I didn’t even know who was in my team, or why. That’s probably bad. On Friday we visited a water treatment plant, in a beautiful location it must be said, not far from work, and not far from where I used to do some of my day tramps before tennis sort of put paid to them. Even though I was feeling like crap, it was great to get out of the office. We even got to go on a jigger – a small train – that runs alongside a water pipe through a two-mile-long tunnel. That was a lot of fun. Unfortunately most days at work (such as today) aren’t like that. The highlight of today, undoubtedly, was the ten minutes I spent at the language centre at lunchtime – I dashed in there to get some material for my student. The staff were so helpful – they even knew which sounds people from Burma tend to struggle with.

Last night I tried to stop my student from calling me Teacher – endearing as it is – and asked him to call me by my first name instead. It’s commonplace in NZ even for schoolchildren to call their teachers by their first name. My mum has always asked her kids to address her in the traditional “Mrs Smith” way, even in NZ, and asks their parents to do the same. I’m with her on this. Teachers should be respected.

Language teaching - Life :) - Tennis

Tanking

May 9, 2016 by 0 Comments

The last few days I’ve had a cold and almost no energy, but I’ve still shown up to work because that sure beats the alternative.

I played tennis on Saturday morning against the guy I narrowly beat in round one of the club champs. This was part of a round robin singles competition that I wish I hadn’t committed myself to. I lost in three sets, 7-5 3-6 6-2. I led 4-2 and 40-15 in the first set but chucked in six double faults (count ’em!) in that god-awful game, quite a feat when you think about it. I still got within two points of what was a dreadful opening set from both of us. We both improved in the second, and when I won that set I expected to carry some momentum into the third, but not a bit of it. I had nothing left in the tank. My opponent sensed this and hit drop shots to good effect as I tried to defend from behind the baseline. He served well in the second and third sets and his win was well deserved. I was glad to get off the court after a match that took 95 minutes, give or take.

Fatigue has been a huge problem for me ever since my flatmate moved in, and I hope I can get an energy boost when he moves out in eleven days (count ’em!). He has been exhausting. He’s not a bad person by any means, but he needs to learn when to leave people alone. My previous flatmate (in 2014) could certainly be a pain in the butt too, but I felt I was helping him get some stability back into his turbulent life and that made me feel good. He’d made some bad decisions and had got involved with the wrong people, but giving people another chance is part of what makes a good human being. I don’t feel anything similar towards my current tenant.

I gave my English lesson tonight. We worked on the forms of the verb to be (I am, he is, etc.) and the contracted forms (I’m, he’s, etc.). I decided to leave it there rather than go on to the negative forms and I’m glad I did. I’d have only confused him. I got him to talk about his new painting job and we made basic sentences about his colleagues: I’m from Myanmar; He’s from New Zealand; They’re from Vietnam. Getting him to pronounce it’s was a battle; I don’t think the ts combination, which is common at the end of English words, exists in his native tongue (and I wouldn’t know where to start with a word like exists). He said he wanted to practise reading so I’ll get him a simple story book for next week’s lesson.

A Tame Impala song came on the radio tonight. I only recently saw the name written down for the first time. A-ha! A non-wild antelope. All this time I thought it was two people’s names, Tame and Parlour. Jack Tame is the US reporter on One News, and there was a footballer by the name of Ray Parlour, so it seemed plausible to me. Tame Impala are similar to MGMT, and I like them just as much. I should probably see them live some time, and make sure I listen to the whole show.

Life :) - Other sports

It’s not just me

May 3, 2016 by 0 Comments

On Sunday my flatmate invited me to see The Big Lebowski at one of his Meetup groups. I went along purely to see the film – I had no interest in dressing up in a Jeff Lebowski bathrobe or doing anything remotely social. I’m not sure the film quite deserves its cult status but it’s clever in many ways and is certainly worth seeing. But afterwards people discussed the movie (I just wanted to go home) and my flatmate became political and controversial and strident, as he does, and then I realised something. Look at their faces. You’re pissing other people off here. It’s not just me.

I’d come to just about tolerate my flatmate, mainly because he said he’d be out by the end of May. Without that light at the end of the tunnel, it’s likely I’d be in a pretty bad way by now. But at the weekend I thought, shit, I’ve had enough of this. I really want you out of the picture. And what if you decide not to leave?

And that’s exactly the problem. He’s always in the picture, front and centre, commentating on and making his opinions known about just about everything he sees and does, and wanting to involve me in the process. I’m sure I’m not the only one who would find this tiresome.

Then yesterday something happened. Someone in Liberia had offered him a job. He was booking his flights to New York where he’ll spend a month before going to Africa. He commentated on the online booking process for a good half-hour – “no I don’t want to book a luxury hotel”, “why on earth would I want to buy travel insurance from you?” and so on and so forth. His commentary was music to my ears. He leaves the country on 8th June and will move out, I hope, two weeks earlier. Then I can get on with my life again.

Yes, Leicester City really are the Premier League champions. That’s just staggering. The upper reaches of British football are so money-driven, and such a closed shop, that something like this is pure fantasy. But it’s real and I have no idea how. The format of the Premier League makes it extremely hard to fluke. Any of football’s cup competitions are flukeable. A baseball World Series certainly is. Even a grand slam in tennis is flukeable to a degree. But the Premier League? Leicester must actually have been very very good. How they got to be so good with such limited resources is a happy mystery.

Talking of baseball, the Red Sox have won seven of their last eight games including a three-game sweep of the Yankees and have a narrow lead at the top of their division, but there’s an awful long way to go. Gosh I’d love to go back to Fenway some time – that was awesome.

Life :) - Tennis

Let this be over

April 28, 2016 by 0 Comments

My flatmate keeps acting as if he’s here for the long haul, so on Tuesday I asked him about his exit date which he previously said would be late May. He then talked pompously about his connections in Liberia or whatever African country it happens to be, and when I interrupted him to ask how any of that was relevant, he got angry. He did mention a date eventually: 1st June, which is a Wednesday. I don’t believe him. I think he’ll try and stick around for what will be a really long Queen’s Birthday weekend, and beyond. In the meantime, as I remind him of the date, the tension between us will only ramp up.

He’s always there, and I can always feel that he’s there. That’s why I don’t look forward to weekends, even normal-length ones. I prefer being at work where I don’t get hassled as much. The highlights of the week for me have been sitting on a bench at lunchtime, overlooking the sea, while trying to follow baseball on my phone. A year ago I never imagined I’d be doing that. We’ve had beautiful autumn weather all week.

I’m still going to marimba lessons. These are very enjoyable, if not quite as much as fun as during the first term when the resonators were always attached. Last night I found out the name of the seed-filled gourd that is used as an instrument in marimba music. It’s a hosho, which is a Zimbabwean word that sounds Japanese. Until last night I thought our teacher was saying “listen to the whole show” which I took to mean “pay attention to everybody’s parts, not just your own”, but all this time she’s been saying “listen to the hosho“.

They’ve started up a round robin singles competition at the tennis club. On Monday I got thrashed 6-0 6-2 in 45 minutes by probably the best player in the competition. It was just what I expected; I’m a shadow of the player I was six months ago, and he took me apart, accelerating through the ball on both sides and hitting inches from the junction of baseline and sideline with alarming regularity. I also averaged about two double faults per game. OK, the sun didn’t help me at one end, but in October I might have served two double faults in an average match. I got on the board early in the second set, much to my relief, but once that set started running away from me I thought, please, just let this be over. That’s just what I’m thinking about my flatting situation.

Language learning - Life :) - My big plan

Romanian commentary 8 (it’s happening!)

April 24, 2016 by 0 Comments

The timing of all these long weekends has been bloody terrible. I wish I could have saved the days up until my flatmate moves out. He should be out before the next three-day weekend, Queen’s Birthday, but I’ve a horrible feeling he’ll try to extend his time with me. That will be the last long weekend before I go away on 27th September. Yes, I’ve now booked my flight (a one-way ticket, how exciting is that?) so it’s happening! I plan to spend a few days in the UK before heading to Romania.

Yesterday I met up in town with the Romanian lady who my cousin knows through work. This was awkward, first because I didn’t know what time she wanted to meet so I had to hang around for hours, and also because she had somebody with her. Still, we got a chat a fair bit. She was very nice but she gave such a glowing description of Romania, especially the part of Transylvania that she hails from, that I didn’t know what to believe. She even spoke longingly of her childhood under the Ceaușescu regime.

I did get to speak some Romanian. She tried to get me to improve my pronunciation of the â or î vowel, which I mentioned before on this blog as being difficult because we don’t have even a near equivalent in English. It’s especially difficult when followed by i such as in pâine and câine, or in words that also contain the ă vowel such as sâmbătă, săptămână and smântână. I’d better make sure I try smântână. I was also struggling with rău, său and tău.

Another major sticking point for me was possessive pronouns. I wanted to say “my brother’s cell phone” which is celularul fratelui meu. Needless to say, that isn’t what I said. When you want to talk about an item that belongs to someone, you have to articulate it, i.e. say “the phone” rather than just “phone”. In this instance you do that by tacking ul on the end of celular. As for “brother”, which is frate, you need to articulate that and change it to the genitive case, because something belongs to my brother, and that gives you fratelui. Without the case change it would just be fratele, obviously. You finish with the masculine singular version of “my”, which is meu. Simple, right? If it was my sister’s cell phone instead, it would be celularul sorei mele. The last word, mele, is the feminine plural version of “my”, even though I’m only talking about one sister, because you always use the plural when dealing with feminine nouns in the genitive case. I mean, c’mon, everyone knows that. So, yeah. All this articulation and case changing on the fly, when you’re also trying to process what someone has just said to you, is a feat of mental gymnastics, and I wonder if I’ll ever be able to master it.

She compared my attempt to learn Romanian with her experience of learning English. She said she was struck by how much “fill” English speakers use in speech compared to Romanians, and how she struggle to distinguish the fill from the content. I can believe that. I use “I mean”, “y’know”, “like”, “basically” and “I reckon” and numerous other fillers all the time. And they serve a really important purpose. Contrast “Don’t park here!” with “Y’know, it’s probably best if you don’t park here, yeah, [points] somewhere over there would be just fine.” In English, not using those fillers gives one’s speech a sharp, icy quality. A few times my flatmate has said things to me in a way that comes across as rather twattish, and it was only yesterday that I figured out why. He uses very few fillers; he’s a “Don’t park here!” kind of guy. He spends a lot of time during the day editing Wikipedia articles about armies and battalions, and it’s as if he doesn’t switch off from that mode when he’s talking. And he talks a lot. He also makes jokes, that I don’t think are nearly as funny as he thinks they are. So I find interacting with him more exhausting than with the average person, and believe me, I find average tiring enough.

Hunt for the Wilderpeople was simply brilliant. To call it a classic Kiwi film doesn’t praise it enough. It made me laugh, it made me emotional, it made me feel good inside.  I loved the scenery, I loved all the main characters, even the CYFS lady who I loved to hate. I really hope this film makes a splash internationally as it surely deserves to.

Language teaching - Life :) - Tennis

Just another year

April 20, 2016 by 0 Comments

Today is my 36th birthday. I brought some cake and biscuits to work, but other than that it’s just another day, although it is a reminder that yet another year has flown by and I need to do something with my life.

Some numbers geekery: 36 is both a square and a triangular number. You can arrange 36 snooker balls in a square with six on each side, or in a triangle (which is more what one does with snooker balls) with eight on each side.

36 square triangular

What’s more, the current year is a triangular number too. If you happen to have 2016 snooker balls lying around, you could arrange them in a nice pretty triangle with 63 balls on each side.triangular-number-2016

I gave my third English lesson on Monday. It went well, far better than last week’s one where I think I overwhelmed and confused my poor student. This time we talked about the world of work and didn’t stray much from that (apart from the bit where he tried to tell me that, unlike in Myanmar, there isn’t much farming in New Zealand). Half-way through the session I thought to myself, this is great. I’m helping someone, he’s appreciative of my help, and we’re both clearly enjoying this.

I made myself the underdog in my first-round singles match in the club champs, but it was a toss-up really. My opponent is undoubtedly more technically proficient than me, but his approach to the game is more casual than mine even if he plays more than I do. I won four games in a row to go 5-2 in front in the first-to-nine match, and felt I might win comfortably, but in the following game I seemed to forget how to serve. Three double faults cost me dear as I was broken in the first of five consecutive deuce games; I lost four of them and we were all square at 6-6 (the game I won was thanks in part to a stone-dead net-cord that left my opponent seething). Six-all became seven-all and it was down to the wire, but I then played my best two games of the match, winning them both to love, for a 9-7 win. I played well to reach the second round but once I got there nothing went right. I was flat-footed, my first-serve percentage was low, my unforced error rate ballooned, I lost control of my forehand, and before long I’d lost the match, 9-1. It wasn’t a match I expected to win, but I didn’t think I’d go down in a heap like that. Oh well. That’s how it goes sometimes, but the reality is that I’m not playing nearly as well, or enjoying the game nearly as much, as at the start of the season.

The doubles, both the men’s and the mixed, went as well or as badly as I thought it might. My most enjoyable match was a men’s match that we lost 9-4. My partner has only been playing tennis for a matter of months and played remarkably well, considering. He has a Filipino partner. His small daughter, Luz, was sitting courtside. He pronounced the name “luzz” to rhyme with “buzz”, and looked at me blankly when I said that it means light in Spanish. I can see that both the “lose” and “loose” pronunciations could be problematic in English, but I still prefer either to “luzz” which doesn’t do justice to such a beautiful name. Talking of parents pronouncing their kids’ names in unusual ways, I recently met a woman who had a two-year-old daughter called Arya. “Everyone keeps saying it wrong. It’s not ‘aria’, it’s ‘aah-ya’, as in ‘aah-ya going to the party?'” Well I’m sorry, if you give your daughter an unusual name that people haven’t seen before, they’re going to say it how they see it, and in this case that’s “aria”. Poor Arya.

Tomorrow I’ll be seeing Hunt for the Wilderpeople, which I’m expecting to be at least ten times better than Batman and bloody Superman.

Life :) - Tennis

Club champs preview

April 15, 2016 by 0 Comments

We’ve got the tennis club champs this weekend. Tomorrow is the singles, and in the first round I’ve been drawn against the gay bloke I endured Batman vs Superman with. We’ve never played each other but he knows my game well. My fairly unorthodox game, combined with being left-handed, gives me an advantage in interclub (against people who don’t know me) that I won’t have tomorrow. I haven’t been hitting the ball well of late, and I’d say I’m the underdog in spite of my run of interclub wins. Last year I made the semi-finals of the singles. In round one my opponent didn’t show up until it was almost too late but made a good go of eating into my huge lead. I got there in the end. My next opponent was seeded third and in a different league to me but in the midst of a very protracted ninth game after I’d clawed his lead back to two, he said he was getting the aura from a migraine and pulled out. In the semis I was outclassed and lost 9-1. The format, just like this year, was the first to nine games, with a best-of-three-set final.

Several of my colleagues had interviews today for the new roles that have been created by the restructure. They were understandably stressed even though they would almost certainly keep their jobs whatever happened. I’m glad I didn’t have to go through that – my care factor would have been through the floor.

Language teaching - Life :)

What’s eating me?

April 12, 2016 by 0 Comments

First, I saw this piece about autism in the Guardian last Friday. A wonderfully written piece that moved me to tears.

My cousin put me in contact with a Romanian lady; last night I got the chance to talk with her. We chatted for over an hour on the phone, almost entirely in English. She did most of the talking. Food and gypsies were her hot-button topics. I can’t wait to try Romanian food. I’m always thinking about food at the moment.

I bumped into my other Wellington-based cousin at the market on Saturday morning, the cousin that I have so much in common with, you just wouldn’t believe. We’re less than a month apart in age, we go to the same market, we even support the same baseball team. He was sporting a Boston Red Sox cap that he said he picked up in Rebel Sport. Guess where I got mine, I happily said. He gave me the news that he’d just become a father for the second time – another daughter to go with their two-year-old.

My flatmate’s phone calls to Liberia added up to $82. I was worried they might have been more. I’m sure they would have been more if I hadn’t overheard him spell out his very common name and asked him about that. For all my previous flatmate’s faults, he’d always pay me promptly, thanks in no small part to his dad. Things are a bit harder with this guy even if I do get the money eventually.

With this bloke, food shopping is extremely stressful because he wants to spend almost bugger all on it. Every week I make a ridiculously small list. He vets the list, queries items that he doesn’t think should be on it, and puts asterisks next to the things that he doesn’t eat, lest I charge him for them. I go to Pak ‘n’ Save and come out through the 15-items-or-less lane with less shopping than I did when I lived alone. The first time I did the shopping after he moved in, I just, well, did the shopping. He didn’t like that one bit, and pulled everything out of the cupboard complaining that I’d already got three jars of this or four packets of that, jars and packets that I’d bought with my own money. Now the cupboard is virtually empty. I’m eating a lot more pies at lunchtime than before. I used to struggle to eat the BBQ pork fried noodles I sometimes get from the takeaway next to McDonalds on Adelaide Road. Now I wolf it down.

I wasn’t too happy with my English lesson tonight. I made the classic mistake of trying to pack too much in, too much vocab especially. I’m still learning.

Language teaching

Cooking with gas

April 5, 2016 by 0 Comments

I gave my first proper English lesson last night. This is so satisfying, dammit. I can see myself doing this for a while.

Last night I brought along maps of the world, Burma, New Zealand and the UK. On the map of New Zealand I pointed out the North and South Islands. My student said “what?” and seemed to be pointing at the stretch of water between the two islands. “That’s called Cook Strait.” He looked blank. I wrote down the name. Still blank. I then circled Mount Cook and wrote the name again in large letters. “See that word Cook again? See how it’s the same word? It’s also the same word as what you do when you make dinner. See?” He was well beyond blank at this point. What the hell’s he going on about now? He’s just lurched from travel to food. What’s next? Motoring?

It’s fair to say I didn’t make a great start, but before long we were, um, cooking with gas. He told me about his region on the west coast of Burma called Rakhine, the farmers who work in the rice fields and the fishing boats. Sometimes he was hard to understand: his farmer came out as pama. It seems that both Burmese and his local dialect lack the fricatives f and v. We talked about dates and birthdays: he had no problem with numbers. I encouraged him to say the th sound (his native language has that) in words like fourth and tenth; I wasn’t going to let him get away with saying four and ten. I also tried to emphasise the importance of saying the s on the end of plurals like shoes. Apart from that we really just had a chat, and I think we all enjoyed that. His wife’s English is a little better than his and at times she would step in and interpret for him. At the end I showed him some pictures giving him suggestions for topics to talk about next time, and asked him to pick two. He picked sport (he likes football in particular) and the doctor.

This living situation is still hard – I feel constant pressure – but the relatively short timeframe and the things I enjoy such as marimba, and now the English teaching, are keeping me going.