This is a local village for local people... are you local???

My brother's having a LICKEL BABBY!!
Just to let the world (or the proportion of it that looks here) know this ground-breaking news... first man ever to pop one out ... no, seriously, congratualtions Ali and Rich - sorry Ali, I didn't mean to trivialise your role in this fantastic news as actual carrier of the baby! can't wait to see the little girl/guy! i'm gonna love her/him, and hug him/her and squeeze her/him for ever and ever and ever! hope for her/his sake he/she takes after her/his mummy..... what should you called an unborn child? 'it' seems so impersonal and makes the baby sound like a thing, is there another pronoun for referring to an unborn child which doesn't involve so many slashes? if not there should be, may i suggest 'shim'?

I've just had 5 non-teaching days, no lessons to plan for a whole week. This decrease in need for functioning brain capactity of course lead to a proportional increase in the amount of alcohol which was consumed and i went out in KL on saturday, which was really cooel, played some very crap pool, danced for 2 minutes, then stopped for a very greasy burger which i wouldn't have fed to my dog if she was starving had i been sober, on the way home. All the way home in the back of the taxi me and helen were fantasizing about what food we'd have if we could eat anything right now (rice gets a bit monotonous after a while). Of course macdonalds was up there, but we decided that the number one all-time fave British meal for the inebriated was chips cheese and mayo with loads of salt and vinegar (well, that's what i decided anyway, i probably railroaded helen into agreeing :
"well, I dunno katy, when I've had a few I sometimes like..."
"WOT?? whash you on aboooot?? 'schipsncheese!! course 'tis! mmmmm, chipsncheese mmmm, 'sogotta be chipsncheese innit? noneothis kebabcrap, chipsncheese!! cheesypeas!! chipsncheese!"
"um, yeah, ok"
(me hanging out the window)
"chips n cheeeeeeeeeeeseeeee!!"
30 minutes that journey home was and apparently that's all we talked about ALL the way home!

it was really strange being out of the 'local' village tho. i've been a bit of a recluse so far, and have developed a rather 'tubbs-esque' lifestyle, i've only been going to 3 places: the appartments i live in, uni, and the 'local' village. Consequently it was sooooo strange seeing western people that i didn't know when i went into Kuala Lumpar. Like, all i've seen so far in malasia are the teachers i work with and non-westerners, people from malasia, saudi, yemen, china, iran ... i wanted to go up and talk to these westerners i saw in KL and say 'hey!! i speak english!! and i look like you!!'. Don't get me wrong, i absolutely love living in a multi-cultural place but i was amazed at how the sight of westerners affected me, like seeing an old comfort blanket or something! and i was walking round dazzled by the purdy shiny lights, cos Puchong Perdana, where i live, ain't the most cosmopolitan place in the world, infact it would qualify for one of the least... can't even get a bag of chips and the town is permeated with the smell of durian, which is a wierd spiky fruit that stinks of mouldy pineapple and poo.

ANYWHOOOO... still nowt major to report, just bin teachin' and that, have also recruited more people onto the pub crawl - i mean cultural trek - up to thailand at the end of august, there's 5 of us at the moment, numbers slowly rising. i'm building up an army of 'newbie' teachers who really want to let their hair down after their first teaching job, so it should be quite a chaotic trip.

oh, and i have another interview in bangkok just before i fly home, so fingers crossed aye? i'm not expecting much to come of it tho, altho maybe now that i've had some experience it'll go marginally better than that horrific episode which passed last time i was in bangkok, and maybe i'll get through it without damaging the building or concussing any children, i swear tho', any sign of any chubby nemeses and grandma shall show no mercy...

Shoota da gun

Well, it's the end of the month, my student's final test is tomorrow and I'm nervous for them, I'm really gonna miss them when they go back to their countries, got a real affection for ALL of them, even the little buggers! We had an EXTREMELY interesting discussion in class the other day, were talking about traditions in different countries, i.e in China you bow as a greeting, in Iran you don't talk much in a restaurant, in Yemen you shout at everyone and eat with your hands in a restaurant, and one of the lads from Yemen was like
" in my country, when someone go away for long time and come back, we shoot guns", i was like
"aye???"
"yes!" the other agreed enthusiastically
"and at weddings! we shoot the gun", I'm like,
'what???'
"into the air teacher! for celebrate!" I was like
'oooooh! ok! isn't that a little... dangerous??? can't you just have a little tipple like everyone else? (apparently not, alcohol is banned in yemen, and iran! imagine that!!) and where do you get the gun from?'
"oh nooooo! not dangerous! everybody in my country have gun".
They then proceeded to tell me they all owned guns, even the quiet one! i was like,
'sultan, tell me you don't have a gun... do you?'
"oh yes teacher, three. The gun from America are better quality but mine are from Russian" ....
"AAAAAAlllrighty then guys! WOW! that's...just..."
I couldn't get my head round it cos guns petrify me, but they all have guns from a young age apparently. My main fear was what if someone tripped on a banana skin during this shooting celebration and killed someone, apaprently this never happens (never has to them anyway, apart from one who apparently shot his mate by accident when he was playing with a gun as a small child). However, i'm still feeling sorry for any Yemenese seagulls flying innocently over a wedding. And then my housemate said apparently a lot of people are injured by the bullets when they fall back down to earth, which i hadn't even considered, but it makes sense, what goes up an' all that.

It's not all guns and shooting tho', most of the students, when asked about their ambition it's to go back to their country, get married and have lots of children!! and they're, like, 20!! my chinese student wants to be a film director, my Bangladeshi student wants to be a graphic designer, but all the yemenese want to get married and have children!! bless 'em. I'm sure if you asked a 20 year old back home what their ambition was, marriage would be a BIG list of 'stuff not to do til i'm way old'.

Harry Who?

So the lesson my boss observed was pure shyte. It was steaming along just fine till she came in, then as soon as she sits down, pen in hand, ready to note all my mistakes for feedback later, i became Nervous McShakey infront of the classroom and really screwed up my instructions. You're supposed to give all the instructions before the exercise ni a clear voice, and not add bits on during the exercise just so they're clear on what they're s'posed to be doing, but i was like, half way through the exercise "oh yeah, the whole point of this speaking exercise is to find a winner by the way... little detail i forgot to mention... sorry guys... as you were" (sea of confused faces look at me, i'm like 'stop looking at me like that and pretend you understand for the love of god, she's watching me and writing stuff down!)

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So i've had my feedback and it went ok, lots of stuff to 'work on' but that's to be expected...

Well, my class is basically full of of omar shariff looky likeys, and honestly, i've never seen the like or length of their eyelashes, Maybelline should sack buffy racoon-face and get some of these lads from Yemen and Saudi in the adverts, sales would go through the roof over night... i get a gust of wind at the front of the classroom every time they blink. But it's so bad in the grammar lessons, like, i think i need to sort out my board presentation, cos sometimes, after having written on the board and explained the difference between passive and active sentences, i look round from the board, and all i see in their eyes is confusion and mild resentment... but the skills class, where you practice the grammar learnt, are excellent. I just had the COOLEST lesson EVER, bit of the old poetry a la WH Auden from 4 weddings and a funeral (didn't mention that the bloke that wrote it was gay, don't imagine that would have gone down too well with the students from countries where women have only just been granted permsission to drive) and then tried to get them to write a poem, which didn't go so well, i asked them to read it out at the end and they refused (fair enough), but some of them had written some really moving stuff and they then demanded to see my poem... i was like,'oh, right!! yes, that would be fair, having asked you to write one, i should have produced one myself ...um, monday, i PROMISE, i'll bring one in' ... so now i have to write a frickin poem and present it infront of the class...

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Well, another fine lesson yesterday, one of the students asked me what acid was:
'um, you know, a liquid chemical that burns'
(blank face)
'um, you know a car battery?'
(yes)
'in there, there's acid... and it burns'
(blank - it burns batteries?)
'no, um, you know that film alien? with the big space alien? her saliva is acid and it burns through everything it touches
(blank)
...honestly! i can't believe some of the stuff these students haven't heard of. I'm well aware that this it because i'm a self-obsessed westerner who thinks my popular culture should be everyone's popular culture, but how can you never have heard of the film with the acid-dribbling alien?
i also mentioned the film Speed when trying to explain the word 'hi-jack' and no-one had heard of it apart from an indonesian student who got the concept straight away, it's amazing! only 3 of the class had heard of harry potter!! imagine that!! it's a WHOLE harry potterless different world out there i can tell ya! And yesterday i was doing a sinead o'connor song, who happens to be a single mum, and one of the bangladeshi students was like "pardon? what this mean?" just couldn't comprehend that a woman could have a child and no husband and still be accepted by society. Han had trouble explaining the word 'soul' yesterday, she was getting all existential and 'hmmm, how can one define a soul, if, indeed, we do have a soul. Well, in Paradise Lost, Milton expounds that...' then one of the other students just said 'it's like a spirit' and all the others were like 'ahhhhh'!' with comprehension.

So now i'm planning a lesson for this avvie, just got to think of a way to explain 'bone marrow transplant'... oh good lord, i can see it now:
'so, we have them green vegetables inside our skeletons, you know, the ones that grandads grow in the garden and enter in 'largest marrow' cometitions? well anyway, sometimes when someone's ill these things need moving to another human being, comprendez?'...

Monkey Class from Hell

Bloody hell, 2 weeks?? time flies when you're a real life teacher i can tell ya!

i've settled into the new flat after having a massive clean-up cos there were 2 blokes living here for a couple of months and it was, accordingly, rank. it's now marginally better, only a few remnant beer cans and dominoes pizza boxes (drunk and eaten by me so that's ok). the bloke i'm living with, ben, the scots landlord, turned out to be a bigger drinker than me... only to be expected i s'pose given his origin and occupation, not to stereotype or owt, however, i have managed to tame it down a bit now i'm a teacher and all. We live in a massive condo with all the students aswell, so it doesn't do to wander round pissed really:
'orite Ahmed? how's it going? fancy a beer? go on, jusht a lickel one...what d'ya mean it's against your religion? what kinda sick religion is that man??"
... no, i don't think so.

my first lesson was ok, i'm working 2pm til 7pm shift, but going in at 8am every day so am a bit knackered but it's worth it if you plan the lesson rather than randomly going through the book cos they get bored, and man do they let you know if they're bored! my class is all lads, 18 - 29 from iran, yemen, saudi arabia, and china and they're really cool, tho it's hard getting them to stop talking arabic sometimes (apart from the chinese one). i thought this was just cos i was new, but another excellent teacher (she got an A on the celta and has taught for 2 years) taught my class the other day and afterwards she was like 'fuck! that's, like, the monkey class from hell, good luck!' which made me feel better!

because they're nearly all from arabic countries the male students aren't used to seeing a lot of womanly flesh apparently (in yemen the men run along the street trying to get a glimpse of ankle or wrist cos you can only see the womans eyes everything else is covered, they've only just changed the law to allow women to drive apparently!) so i now dress like my grandma every day - no not my grandma, she dresses with style - i dress like an old bag lady who shops in primark and oxfam, which is bloody awful! feel like a right old biddie! but i don't want them thinking i'm a western slut cos i've got me arms out do i??

i'm being observd by the big boss lady on monday so that's SHIT, and i was observed on friday by a new teacher for the love of god, i was like 'don't you want to observe someone good?'. I was just starting to enjoy the lessons and get into it and now it's like the celta all over again, but after that - if it goes ok - i should be left to get on with it.

went to a party in one of the other teacher's flat last saturday so got to know them all which was good, they're from all over, oz, nz, south africa, singapore, and a lot from england. i also, like, got invited to like, a gay club this friday by Will, a like, gay malasian teacher with, like, the strongest like, Amercian, accent, like EVER! but all i was fit for by then was collapsing infront of the a DVD. Talking of which i was sat watching 'curb your enthusiasm' last nite, bens gone to the cinema, and there's a knock at the door. i open it and there's 2 BIG black ladies stood there menacingly, and the biggest one is like (in a dead posh english accent) "hello, i used to live here, i left last december and i used to share with steve, you know steve?" "no, i just got here", "oh, well anyway, i left my 200 ringott DVD player here because i couldn't carry it, and now i need to take it, i'm leaving in the morning for thailand" glancing over my shoulder at the DVD player. i was like, fuck! what do i do? what if she's trying it on? and now she's seen it so i can't pretend it's not here. but seeing my hesitation she told me what make it was, so i let her in and watched as she unplugged one of my greatest sources of pleasure here (ben has the biggest and best DVD collection ever) and walked out the flat with it!!

so i'm panicking that maybe i've just been politely robbed, so i text ben:
'ben, was that your DVD player? cos some lady just came and took it, she said it was hers...sorry if it's yours!'
So when he gets back he's like, 'whathefuck?? why didn't you just LIE and say it was yours? why didn't you hide it?' i was like, 'but they were big and scarey and she knew the make!'. Turns out it was hers, she's an ex-teacher, but now there's no TV!! i don't count malasian TV cos it's shyte, apart from girly tuesdays with trinny and suzannah and queer eye.

So now i'm off to clean up the beer cans and pizza crumbs cos a new girl's moving in tonight, we know nothing about her at all... i'm praying for a person who likes beer and cleaning up after other people, fingers crossed aye?

PS HAPPY BURFDAY BRUV AND SIS AND MA.
(that'll do as a card sub won't it??)