June, 2007

teaching — 2 Comments
22
Jun 07

That Nap Was A Killer

I went home yesterday afternoon and has a killer nap. I don’t mean I had a great nap that gets me rested for the rest of the day, but I crashed around 4 in the afternoon and slept until midnight. I haven’t collapsed like this since my final year in graduate school. Back them, I was doing coursework, tutoring, a TA assignment, and an internship at a local community college. Somehow, I managed to to this using public transportation (not a small feat in San Diego). There was one Saturday when I was getting a haircut and I kept falling asleep in my chair. When I walked home, I went to bed in the late afternoon, only to sleep for fourteen hours.

My story now? I have an early class at 7:30 am and I’ve been waking up anytime between 3:00am to 5:00am to get ready. It’s always easy to take care of some work the earlier I wake up. It’s a combination of time management and getting to sleep on time. I’m not truly a morning person yet. I’m still accustomed to being up until midnight, and 2:00am is late for me. However, I’ve got to get used to it. The morning classes won’t go away anytime soon.

I’ll go to back to bed for a couple of hours. I don’t want to say I’ve been up since 12:00am.

Uncategorized — 2 Comments
21
Jun 07

Shrinking Trees, Featherless Birdies, and Bloodsuckers

Just caught Destination Truth tonight. Once again, I got drawn into a Sci-Fi Channel show by a hot guy. Damn, he is photogenic (and I feel like this is an understatement). Manly, goofy, and nerdy – what a nice combination.
There’s already been a few episodes (which I missed), but Josh Gates and company chase the paranormal, sort of like an updated In Search Of. Gates, the photographer turned documentarian adventurer, in this episode flies to New Guinea to chase a featherless bird (more like a pterasaur), and then to Chile to see if he could catch a chupacabra. His dry sense of humor makes some moments fun, especially when the witnesses or guides provide him with reasons to be skeptical. The dreadlocked guide in New Guinea claims the trees in a spot leading to the flying creature’s cave got smaller, while a Chilean bus driver produces a hair of a chupacabra from his wallet, right underneath his driver’s license.

It’s not the type of show to convert the viewer to believing in the paranormal. However, the fun is in the adventure and the search, even if it creates more questions than it answers.

Update:
If you want to see more images of Josh Gates, here is a gallery on the Sci-Fi Channel’s website.

Uncategorized — 4 Comments
19
Jun 07

Idiocy of the Day

Thanks to Chris for highlighting this news gem of the day: Flushed Bra Causes Sewer Collapse. Since I’ve never experienced British plumbing first hand, I’ll take Chris’s friend’s word that it is very delicate. That’s no excuse. The person who flushed their bra and panties down the toilet is an idiot deserving public humiliation. However, living with the secret shame of knowing they caused sewage problems for the rest of County Dunham will have to be punishment enough.

A few years ago, my mother had a Christmas party where one of the guests flushed a tampon down the bathroom toilet and clogged it up for the rest of the night, creating discomfort for everyone else (there was no way she was going to let anyone use the master bedroom’s bathroom). The cause wasn’t known until a day or so later when a contractor friend of hers came over, pulled out the toilet, and found the nasty item. After that, my mother asked the guests who did it, but no one would admit a thing.

In any case, I can’t get over what people think they can send down the sewage main via the commode. I’m surprised the bra and panties got as far as they did, so English toilets must be very high-flush. Could any Britons please enlighten this Yank on the subject?

blogging / communication styles / television — 3 Comments
19
Jun 07

How Not To Conduct Business

I caught an episode of Property Ladder (The Not So Talented Mr. Remodel) where this guy attempts to flip a house on a budget of $20k, only to have it escalate higher and higher and delaying the finish date for open house.

His problem? A great deal of it may be setting unrealistic goals, as the house painter turned house flipper initially had contractors working on the house, but decided to take on the renovations himself. Well, the contractor’s renovations kept revealing more costs, though him taking on the house on his own really didn’t cut any costs.

His bigger problem was that that he kept people around him in the dark, especially his investor. He would keep all the problems (especially the rising costs) from his “silent partner” until it was too late (and got less than he needed when he finally approached him), used credit card advances to keep him and his family afloat without telling them, and he couldn’t even give Kirsten Kemp, the show’s host, any straight answers when she asked him pointed questions about his progress and why he was taking on the project himself. He had the same problem while discussing what he needed from his investor. He may have tried to avoid incriminating himself, but he only made himself look like a moron and a pushover in the process.

It was absolutely painful to watch him try to take on the whole house himself, especially when the sod arrived for the front and back yards. Some of the sod was already brown and dead. Instead of calling the company and insisting on fresher product, he used it and hoped for the best.

Most of the time, these home flip shows demonstrate the ups and downs of trying to rehabilitate a depressed house, but this one was a total downer. This guy sinking lower and lower because of his communication problems and his unrealistic goals and budgeting served as a cautionary tale of how not to go about doing business and life. Hopefully, this guy learned how to communicate after the show (along with staying on task and admitting he needs to get professional help when he needs it).

I can’t imagine anyone wanting to hire him after the episode aired. I’m surprised some of these people go on reality tv, but they exist to provide train wrecks for the rest of us.

literature — 1 Comment
18
Jun 07

Michael Tolliver Lives – A Tale of the City

I rarely get emotional over a book purchase, but I did on Friday when I bought a copy of Armistead Maupin‘s Michael Tolliver Lives. When I got caught up in fundamentalist BS in my mid twenties, Tales of the City helped me come out a second time (I first came out in my late teens). First, I discovered him by accident in the library and would steal time to read his books. When I was in the process of leaving fundamentalism in the late 1990′s, I caught a re-run of the miniseries on Bravo. I then had to read the books properly and devoured them. I hate to sound maudlin about it, but those books saved my life. I continue to see those books as old friends, even to this day.

Some twenty odd years later is where Michael Tolliver Lives picks up where Sure of You left off. By Significant Others, Michael Tolliver was HIV positive and only thought he had a few years of life left. However, like the title of the new novel suggests, Mouse is alive and well. Having experienced almost every kind of gay relationship imaginable (boyfriends, tricks, bath house encounters, fuck buddies, tricks turned lovers, and domestic partners), a fifty-ish Michael finds a new soulmate in a thirty something man. Mouse has gone from being a landscape shop owner to a gardener, having sold the shop to Brian, now in his mid-sixties. Brian’s daughter’s now a wild sex blogger, and his ex-wife Mary Ann has moved on to become a Stepford wife on the other side of the country, interestingly in the town where the movies were filmed. The octogenarian Mrs. Madrigal is the godmother to a new generation of trannies including Jake, Tolliver’s trusty right hand man in the gardening business.

In the Tales of the City milieu, there’s no time like the present. These older versions of the characters readers (and viewers of the miniseries) have come to love are dealing with the quirks of living in the 21st century, such as cell phones, Googling, and the aftermath of 9/11. This novel also brings closure, as Michael Tolliver must deal with the impending death of not one, but two mother figures. His mother in Florida is dying in a convalescent home and summons him home one last time. He learns a dirty family secret which strangely enough provides a key in healing his relationship with his brother. The timing’s never good, as Anna Madrigal is close to leaving this world as well, bringing the children of Barbary Lane together for one last time.

Missing from The Night Listener and Maybe the Moon was Maupin’s wicked sense of humor, which is present throughout Michael Tolliver Lives. Even when things are bad, I was laughing my ass off about something, especially the interaction between Michael and his young husband.

There is room for Michael and his new husband Ben to tell their stories after this recent installment; however, this Tale of the City brings closure to four decade long story arc. Buy it, read, laugh and cry.

blogging / communication styles / friends — 3 Comments
18
Jun 07

Distractions Behind The Pulpit & Keys Falling Down A Pocket In The Universe

What a weekend it has been.

For the first part of the title: I attended services at St. Paul’s this morning this morning and the guest preacher was John Fanestil. His sermon was about social justice in response to the Gospel reading of the the woman who washed Jesus’s feet with ointment from the alabaster flask, but I was incredibly distracted. I found him very handsome and he was about 6’2″ (another plus). Clergymen aren’t supposed to that good-looking? Or should they?

On Friday, I bought a copy of Armistead Maupin‘s Michael Tolliver Lives. I’ll say more about this in a post after this one. I read this one all weekend and finished it this morning.

Also on Friday, I also went to Sephora in Fashion Valley and bought myself Burberry London as a treat for making it through the first week of the summer course. Well, I do have some other motives for buying the fragrance.

As I was waiting in line to pay for this gift to myself, a friend of mine called me and wanted me to go with him to Top of the Park. This friend of mine can at times have no manners at all and be very pushy, and he was adamant about wanting to go to the Friday night rooftop cocktail party, but I didn’t want to go. I just wanted to go home and read my book before I met another friend of mine at 11pm for some boba. Somehow, my protest that I had nothing to wear didn’t make him back off. Word of advice: never use this excuse with the fashion-challenged unless you can shame them. I compromised and met him for drinks. He’s the type of person who likes to be in crowded places, but I wasn’t quite in the mood as my daytime attire didn’t translate well into evening. I managed to have a good time despite that I really didn’t want to be there, and I barely drove home after a couple of beers. I had to call my other friend to pick me up instead of meeting him at the boba place.

I did have a brief talk with my pushy friend on Saturday morning after he called me the next morning and aggressively invited me to go biking and rollerblading with him. Being Japanese, I don’t like to say “no” at all, and I’ll give a reason or an excuse instead. However, I realized I had to adjust my communication style with him and just hit him over the head with “no.” I told him that’s how I’ll have to deal with him in the future and then he backed off. While I may find my friend’s trait annoying at times, he is a very good friend of mine and I value his insight at times.

My friend called me again later in the evening and he was itching to go out. However, I had the novel to keep me company on Saturday evening and I told him that. He suggested going out to Urban Mo’s, but I already had my fill of restaurant food for the past few days. He was bored and restless. I asked him if he could just read a book, and he didn’t want to do that (he normally is an avid reader). As a joke, I suggested he wank. He wasn’t into that suggestion either. He met someone at Top of the Park and was waffling about calling him. Where is the pushiness when he needs it. I told him to make the call.

I did join pushy friend and a friend to the service on Sunday morning where I was distracted by the clergyman. Afterwards, we went out to Brians‘ after lunch.

After parting ways with my friend, I went out for an afternoon of errands. Sometime after I got home, I lost my keys. I don’t know how this happened, but my keys are gone. I turned everything upside down, but I still couldn’t find them. One nagging suspicion is that I left them at the car wash or at Target, but there is no good explanation of how I could have driven home and lost my keys. I don’t remember re-attaching the car key to the rest of the keys, so anything is possible. The house keys are easily duplicated and my brother had a back up copy of my car key, so not all is lost. I just hate that the keys seem to have fallen through a pocket in the universe.

blogging / teaching — No Comments
15
Jun 07

Teaching Lessons Learned In Classics

How long is a few days in blog years?

I haven’t done a post since Monday morning, where I might have sown the seeds of college and university staff making iPod socks.

Then I got caught up in school and doing things at the last minute this week as I started teaching the summer course at the community college. I think it will be the last time when I write a syllabus and a gradebook and all the good things at the eleventh hour. That privilege belongs to college students.

I am all caught up. My new habit: get papers graded on time. There’s nothing students resent more than a disorganized instructor. They don’t know what to expect in class, they get their papers back late, and they don’t know where they stand. And, if the teacher is a harsh grader, then they despise him or her even more.

When I was in college, I took a Classics course with a stuffy, condescending professor who could have easily been portrayed by Bob Balaban (the music teacher in Waiting For Guffman comes to mind). He was often disorganized, and the exams and the papers often came back late. One day, he discovered no one read one of those ancient Greek poems in the syllabus through trying to conduct a discussion. He was incapable of it, but I have to commend him for deviating from his lectures. I remembered his travelogue stories more than anything he had to say about Greco-Roman history, literature, or art. Getting back to the anecdote, his prissy ass was outraged no one came prepared for class and he abruptly stormed out of classroom.

The moral of the story? Perhaps there’s a few. Show your students respect and be on task, especially if you are to demand respect from them and expect them to be on top of their assignments. Having an advanced degree does not get you respect by default. This guy was a professor with a PhD and I didn’t give a damn. He was never on task, but heaven help anyone who turned in a paper late. I still don’t respect him even though I took that class over 10 years ago.

Week 1 of the Summer Course is over. 5 to go. Stay tuned.

Uncategorized — 3 Comments
11
Jun 07

Use for Ex-Roomate’s Socks

I certainly wouldn’t wear an ex-roomate’s socks. However, I would cut the foot off and sew up the end to make a sheath for my iPod. I’ve done it with my old socks and I always get, “You should sell them.” Well, that’s a great idea except my handicrafts are more a reaction to what’s out on the market: I can stitch and I’m too cheap to buy an iPod sock.

technology — No Comments
10
Jun 07

It Must Be Nice

Just read about this in the New York Post: Getting a $142K payraise is unreal, but the State of New York found it in their infinite wisdom to give this incredible payhike to a SUNY professor who may someday make it possible to create nanites. He goes from making $525K to $666K* per year. I wish California’s State Controller was this generous.

*the number should be rounded off to $700K, but $666K sounds Satanic as a professor’s salary and it’s fitting. I’m all for teachers getting well paid, but someone (or a group of people) in SUNY or the State of New York will get paycuts because of this.

English language / photography / teaching — No Comments
9
Jun 07

It Was A Fun Class

Friday was the last regular day I had at the language school. My summer class at the community college conflicted with this class, so I couldn’t continue teaching it on a regular basis. However, I will be back from time to time filling in for one teacher or another.
Here I am going over an exercise in using the present perfect. This term is so misleading because it often refers to the past, especially in a general way. Can you use the present perfect? Have you ever learned it in school? Take the quiz.

Here are my students, left to right: Miwa (Japan), Jonas (Switzerland), Arthur (France), Christof (Switzerland), Lou (Japan), Fabianna (Italy), and Julius (South Korea).

Julius took this picture of me with the class and photographed me diagramming sentences a few posts ago.

I wrote my message to the class here. I’ll miss them for sure. I’ve had two groups since I’ve been teaching at the school this month, and this one was a lot of fun. As you can see in the upper right corner of this photo and the first one, I drew flags for the countries each student came from. I drew two for myself: American to represent my citizenship and Japanese for my heritage.

Until next time. I’m sure I’ll see them in passing the next time I’m at the language school and I’ll say hello.

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