Cool things that happened today

…actually, these are cool things that happened yesterday, since finishing at 9pm doesn’t leave much time for reflecting on anything except stroganoff in the pub next door, but still: here is my response to Mike Griffin’s blog challenge.

•  I neutralised an incident with a phone in my teens class without any drama.

• Two teens with serious attention-span issues played a word stress card game for over 30 minutes without getting distracted.

• The teens were fascinated by the schwa, which they’d apparently never heard of before. They started asking about other symbols on the phonemic chart and if we could have a lesson on it next week.

• I realised how many class in-jokes the students have created in the last six weeks that actually relate to lesson content, suggesting a desire to bond with me and each other. (Slightly less cool thing that happened today: felt guilty again about leaving at the end of the month.)

• I also realised how much I’ll miss teaching them. Call me a masochist, but I think teenagers are great. They have strong opinions without being closed to new ideas, they’re optimistic and open to any kind of silliness you set in front of them. Don’t get old, you guys… *sniff*

• The man who totally dominates my adult class is learning to speak less when given subtle cues (and, ahem, occasionally direct instructions) from me.

• Consequently two women who were pretty much silent six weeks ago are speaking more, and using Georgian less, than they were before.

• Sexism has been a recurring theme in this particular class, and the external monologue guy has delighted in winding me up with ‘jokes’ about domestic violence. However, last night he said he thought no marriage could work unless the man and woman were equal partners in it, which I found reassuring, and on a similar note the two women told stories of how much better life is for them than their mothers, and predicted even better things for their daughters. Hurrah!

• I noticed how often I laugh in the staffroom (between endless placement tests and other stresses). I’m always grateful for quirky colleagues – and IH Tbilisi isn’t short of them.

What goes ha ha bonk?

A man laughing his head off.

The Ha Ha Bonk Book was one of my favourites as a kid. I'm pretty sure you could test me on any of the jokes in here and I'd be able to give you the punchline. For example:

What's green and has 10 million legs? (Answer at the end of the post.)

Anyway. I realised two things this week as I wrote a laughing diary in response to Anne Hendler's blog challenge: (1) my sense of humour hasn't changed very much in the last 20 years; and (2) describing something funny without totally killing it is really difficult. Which is why, I suppose, people so often end their anecdotes with, 'Um yeah, you had to be there'. I apologise in advance for all the had-to-be-there stories coming up.

1. I discovered that G keeps a secret collection of emergency sticks of varying lengths and widths in the garden.

2. Naked ping-pong. Funny for all the obvious reasons, and a few more.

Jumping spider by G. His awesome
macro photography blog is here.

3. Jumping spiders are exhibitionists. Point a camera at them and they pose. No, seriously.

4. I don't think Fawlty Towers has aged very well, but this ('Sorry to have kept you' at 02:06) made me chuckle.

5. Friday night beers with friends at Jambu.

6. Context: Sarawakians are rubbish at parking (they generally do it diagonally across two spaces until the car park is full then double/triple park on main roads and roundabouts). Event: no spaces outside the bank. G decides to 'park like a local' and pulls up right by the entrance. I get out, and turn round to see that he can't get out of his door because he's parked against an unseen water pipe. Locals look on in amusement at his rubbish parking. G moves car.

7. In McDonalds an elderly couple put their tray down next to us and go off to get sauce. We speculate about hopping to their table, tucking into their meals and being all Huh? when they come back.

8. Seeing this quote on Twitter:

'It is in the treatment of trifles that a person shows what they are' - Arthur Schopenhauer

I know it's not that kind of trifle, but HA HA HA.

'Do you have any bottled water?'

9. Our local 7-Eleven needs to send its staff on a basic  merchandising course (see left).

10. Monday night beers with friends at Ruai.

11. We gave a two-day teacher training workshop this week. Our district education officer completely failed to send the invitation letters, but managed to send an unsolicited carload of curry puffs 15 minutes after the break had ended and everyone had bought food in the canteen. Tres Sarawak.

12. At the workshop, my colleague Maria was talking about realia: 'So if you're teaching fork, you could bring in a fork. If you're teaching carrot, you could bring in a carrot'. One of my mentees called out, 'If you're teaching elephant...'

13. Workshop participants made a poster of things they could control in their classrooms including flowers, curtains and the shoe rack (see below). I'm laughing again as I'm typing this.

14. On Wednesday we were discussing an article about penguins maybe having co-existed with dinosaurs, and I suddenly remembered that the Crystal Palace dinosaurs existed. If you're ever in London I heartily recommend a visit. They were the first dinosaur statues in the world, 'now considered out of date and to varying degrees inaccurate' (Wikipedia's rather gentle, euphemistic description).

15. An exchange on Twitter with @michaelegriffin and @kevchanwow about toilets. Puerile.

16. Peanut the kitten going mad with a beaded curtain. Peanut the kitten in general.

17. Saying 'Dark Knight Rises Prizes!' lots of times yesterday while waiting to watch the film (it's from a local radio station phone-in).

18. As we were leaving the cinema yesterday, two grown men were riding the escalator down, then up, then down, then up. God knows Kuching can feel a bit short of entertainment options sometimes, but there's a cinema right there that's showing Batman for $3. I'd have bought them tickets myself, but they really seemed to be having a great time.

Grass. It was a mistake about the legs.