Dazed & Coffee

Lazy Sunday Afternoon

2009-03-08T00:38:00.000-08:00

This should be a lazy Sunday afternoon, but I just cannot concentrate on anything. I seem to find myself doing something for a few minutes, and then changing to something else. My plan for the day was to write a post on here, once I had finished a short piece of work I need to finish for tomorrow. Plans change though I guess, I am sat in my room, considering all the things I have to do. This next week is planned and I am prepared for every class, writing classes no problems, European culture class prepared, and oral classes prepared the best I can. I really am not enjoying my oral classes this semester, I just cannot get anything out of the students. The textbook is rubbish and I am struggling a lot with it. I am trying my best and I think I can turn the corner, I just worry that I have lost some of the students attention and it is hard to win that back. I am not a shouter and I do not get angry I just need them to at least look like they are listening and to interact more without prompting. That would be great.

I will spend the rest of my day working on a European Culture summary, so far I have covered Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome and Christianity. I feel this kind of fit together and I want to provide a summary sheet of what has been learnt so far. The students in these classes listen, but I am not sure how much they remember. I do not have to do this, but I think I need to do it, and it stops me whiling away the day playing Football Manager anyway.

It also keeps my mind off my girlfriend. She has been away for two and half weeks trying to find a good job, things have changed now and she is coming back in a couple of days. She will stay with me and study for the rest of the semester, then go and try and find a good job with some better qualifications. This all sounds cool to me, but during the last couple of weeks there have been a few days where she has not answered her phone, or returned my messages. I need her to look into my eyes and tell me what she has been doing. I am worried and a little suspicious, I trust her completely. But her ex-boyfriend lives in the same city as she is in at the moment and I am worried about how much contact there has been between them. Once she looks into my eyes in a few days and tells me nothing has happened and she loves me I will be Ok. If she tells me anything else, I do not know what my future holds.

Back to blogging

2009-03-06T05:14:00.000-08:00

So I find myself back here, after a long long time. It's all good I guess, I have been busy living my life but I have made a resolution to try and establish my voice online. It will be a slow process, but I have stuff to say. I have been thinking a lot about my life recently, what do I want to do with it etc. At the moment I find myself in a bout of extreme laziness. I work as an English teacher at a small university in China, and I do lead a very comfortable life. I teach for 16 hours a week, and probably spend about another 20 hours a week preparing for classes, grading homework and the like. I have a great schedule this semester too, I have all my classes on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday morning. This means that by Wednesday lunchtime I am free until the following Monday. I do have the aforementioned preparation to do. I could in theory get all of this done by Friday every week, but I find it difficult to do stuff, when I know I can do it the next day. This means I do very little Thursday and Friday. Sunday I find myself very busy as I have to get everything done.

My love life is incredibly confusing at the moment, I am not really sure what is going on. A couple of weeks ago my girlfriend moved out, not because she was leaving me though. She has graduated now and needs to find a job, so wanted to go to a bigger city to find a job. The rough plan was I would then find a job in the same city for next semester. Now plans have changed she is coming back on Sunday, she wants to study some more and then pass some exams in the summer then she should be able to find a better job. While she has been gone, she has put me through mental hell. I miss her far more than I thought I would, and if anything her leaving has confirmed to me that I do love her, and I do want to spend the rest of my life with her. One thing that has put that in doubt though was a few days ago, I spoke to her on the phone and she told me that her last boyfriend lived in the city she was in. Not something she had told me before she went. He wanted to meet her and what did I think. I want to be a good person, and I want her to know that I trust her, so I said I did not mind. This seemed good enough, but shortly after she hung up she starts sending me text messages. What would I say if she had sex with him, would I leave her? would I want to break up with her? What the hell did she expect me to say? What kind of man would say, "yeah no problem. I don't care if you have sex with him". I went for I would be very unhappy if she had sex with him and we would need to have a serious talk about our relationship. I think she was able to read between the lines that this was my nice way of saying, Hell yeah it would be over. It would be an act of betrayal if she did that and would show that she did not love me. She said she would not meet him, and I think she did not. A small part of me though, thinks she did meet him, and they did have sex. I don't think she would tell me if she did, it's hard to tell if someone is lying to you on the phone. I have not forgotten about it, and when she comes back on Sunday I will be questioning her about it. I have got to handle it correctly, I trust her and I believe in her, but I need to look into her eyes when she tells me.

Apart from this small niggle, I have had a good day. I did manage to do some work. I planned nearly all my classes for next week. I need to type these plans up and download some videos etc from youtube to enhance my classes. A good afternoons work tomorrow and it should all be good. Also I have begun listening to the audio book of The Appeal by John Grisham. It's ok so far, not too bad. Typical Grisham really.

Tv Appearance

2008-11-07T00:30:00.000-08:00

Two posts in a day, must be some kind of record for me. I thought I should write this post separately rather than just tag it on to the end of my last post. I was filmed for local television last week, which was fun. I am an Englishman who teaches English at a university in a small city in China. In an effort to make my life easier I attend classes every week to learn to speak Chinese. It is a difficult language to master, but the more I do it the easier it does get. The local Tv station heard about our Chinese classes and wanted to come to record them. I am not sure how they heard about them. I am sure it must have been my school calling them up to tell them. Free publicity for the university is surely a good think. I had no problem with them coming, I thought the whole thing was quite amusing. I did feel a little sorry for the poor girl who was teaching us, as she was very embarrassed.

It was a two hour class, and the cameras stayed for the first hour. I was happy they had left in the second hour, as I began to make many stupid mistakes. I confused how to say the United Kingdom with how to say China. The show has not been broadcast yet as far as I know. I asked to be told when it would be on, because I would like to watch myself. I am beginning to get to grips with speaking Chinese I think. Its so difficult to learn, because it is just so different to English

Oh Well

2008-11-07T00:23:00.000-08:00

It would seem to be clear now that I am incapable of writing something everyday or even every other day. I try my best but I am a busy man. Its no great excuse but I do enjoy writing even though I am quite sure no one reads what I write. I guess that is probably the case for most people who write blogs, so why do they do it. I think it must be some sort of therapy for people. I am certainly beginning to come around to this idea. To write a blog everyday would be a great thing, but I think you need to have something to write about. I do not lead a life which is anywhere near interesting enough to write something everyday. I do have fantasies sometimes about how this blog will become wildly popular and thousands of people will visit it everyday. That could happen one day I suppose, but I will have to write something interesting and somehow attract people to the blog. Why come here and the read my ramblings instead of someone else's. There are a lot of people with far more interesting things to say than me. I will try to write more often as I do enjoy it and I want to do it. I think I can write good and interesting material.

Generation Kill

2008-10-19T09:14:00.000-07:00

I know I restarted the blog on friday and I made all these bold claims about writing a new blog everyday and i know on what was only day two failed. Well I have decent excuses of sorts I guess. My girlfriend was online all day yesterday, she is under a lot of pressure at the moment. Its a long and boring story but she is very stressed out at the moment and I did not want to get in her way.

Instead of wasting most of my day online or actually doing some of the work I need to get done. I watched a dvd, I had started watching Generation Kill a few weeks ago, but due to a lot of different pressures. I did not have the time to watch the last three episodes. I finished it yesterday and oh my god it was amazing. One of the best Tv shows I have seen for a long time. It is set during the Iraq war and it was created by the two driving forces behind The Wire. In my humblest of opinions I would consider The Wire to be the greatest Tv show ever made. I do not want to get into writing about The Wire here, but everybody in the world should watch the five seasons of the wire.

Generation Kill is incredibly well written and in some places it reminded me of the movie Jarhead in that it shows how little actually happens during a war. You do not see a great deal of combat, but you see a lot of the US soldiers trying to keep awake after thirty six hours without sleep . The character are incredibly well written whether they be likeable ones or not, the inclusion of a Rolling Stone reporter following the soldiers around is a nice touch. You see the inane pop songs some members of the squad enjoying singing just to try and keep their spirits up. The difference in some of the soldiers personalities is quite shocking, you get the guys who were obviously just jocks in school and they just want to kill. Then there is the ones who truly believe they are making a difference, through to those soldiers who believed in what their government was telling them but now they are actually in Iraq they are beginning to realise how little truth there is in what they they are doing. Generation Kill is essential viewing for anyone who enjoys a well crafted drama with characters who are believable and has something interesting to say. It is essential viewing.

A brand new start

2008-10-17T07:13:00.000-07:00

From now on I am determined to do this blog right, a new day, a new dawn and all that crap. I have started this blog before, but I just went on a purge deleted the crap I wrote all summer and now I am determined to write something, something well better.

I do not want to write about myself and what happens in my life, I think it is not important and far from interesting. I lead a busy life, I spend far too much time online playing poker, listening to podcasts and reading other blogs. I watch a lot of Dvds and listen to any new music that I can find. I have a lot of interests and a lot of opinions on most things. I would consider myself to have an open mind and I am at heart a good guy. I think I have a good nature and I try my best to help people. I bitch and I moan about work colleagues and I gossip. I will write a post everyday that is my resolution.

For now thats all, I am listening to Zane Lowe from Thursday 16th October. He just played a great new song by Coldplay featuring Jay Z. I don't know what it is called but it was cool.