2008 April Archive at Electric Pig

Archive for April, 2008

Spectacular

Published

on April 30, 2008

. 0 Comments

I finally got round to getting some new specs yesterday. The old ones were only ever really meant to be a cheap temporary solution to my glasses problem after 8 years of my really old ones, and I had got a little sick of looking like a 90s lesbian. The new ones have the (wonderful and appropriate) name of Viceroy and were made by Oliver Peoples, who's alright by me as he was the favoured brand of Patrick Bateman. Can't go far wrong with that. Click to see a gormless photo of me in them...

Lower Case “t”

Published

Electric Pig

on April 25, 2008

in School

. 5 Comments

It's been a bit of a non-entity blog week this week. Eri's been working down in Yokohama every day recently, and if she commutes from her house, it takes about 2 hours each way, so she's been staying at mine where it's only about an hour. The problem is though that she has been working from 9am until 9.30pm so by the time she gets home it's 11 ish and she hasn't eaten, so we don't get to bed until about 12.30, so when I wake up at 6, I've been a little shattered. Basically, it's contributed to me (and, not to be entirely self obsessed, her too) being really tired all the time.

At work at the moment, I have only been teaching the new first year kids. 7 classes and about 35 kids in every class. It's actually quite fun to teach them, as they still have the enthusiasm and innocence of elementary school kids - the system hasn't completely destroyed them yet and, although that process is always a joy to behold, it means that classes can be enjoyable for me, knowing that the kids will try hard and will enjoy all the stoopid games and activities (and indeed plastic vegetables) I can throw at them. It also means that for the 50 minutes when you are teaching them, you can almost forget the exhaustion and total lack of energy that nearly cripples me the rest of the time.

Sadly, this isn't always the case. One of the two first year English teachers has been a second and third year teacher for six years in a row and has been complaining about not being able to teach the first years - generally thought of as the easiest and most rewarding year to teach. The school have given in to her (actually quite reasonable) demands and have given her three of the seven classes. The problem is that she is not an especially good teacher and is determined to teach the students exactly as is prescribed by our (actually-quite-impressively-awful) text book. It's now time for her to teach the alphabet, and amazingly, the textbook seems to have arbitrarily chosen a method to write the alphabet, and has dictated that any other method is wrong. Wrong and EVIL! Here are some examples of things which are officially not allowed in the English-Language-According-To-Mitsumura-Tosho, when writing English (by hand):

The horizontal bar of an upper case A cannot be half way between the top of the letter and the bottom of the letter. It must be nearer the bottom than the top
The middle bar of the upper case E must be less wide than the upper and lower bar.
The lower bar of the upper case F must be less wide than the upper bar.
The only straight line in an upper case G must be the horizontal line in the middle.
The upper case J cannot have a horizontal line at the top.
The two diagonal lines of the upper case K cannot meet in the centre (To do so would be marked incorrect in a test - anywhere in the world). The lower diagonal must start about a third of the way along the upper diagonal.
The upper case M must have vertical lines at the edges. Slightly diagonal lines will be marked as incorrect.
The diagonal line of the upper case R must start at the bottom right edge of the loop. It cannot start at the point where the loop meets the vertical line.
The lower curve of an s (upper or lower case) must be wider than the higher curve.
Lastly, and most amazingly for me: The lower case t is the same height as the lower case.

Having to listen to this nonsense when fully compus menti is bad enough, but having to listen to it for 45 minutes when exhausted and to see confusion of the students (who have all learned the alphabet before at elementary school), without finding the nearest weapon and going postal is almost impossible. Instead one has to tread carefully, not allow anyone to lose face in public (confucianism, confucianism, confucianism), and to find a way to politely tell your colleague that she is an idiot and that she is poisoning the language of Shakespeare, Wordsworth and Rowling in the minds of these young whippersnappers.

It's enough to make you give up and just tell the kids that she is right and that there is not enough logic left in the universe to explain why.

The pictures below illustrate examples of things that were marked as wrong (x) in students' tests. Unbelievable but true. No wonder the kids are confused. Click on the picture to see a "perfect" example:

Things that annoy me: No.2: Facebook Status Updates

Published

Electric Pig

on April 16, 2008

in Annoying

. 2 Comments

I like Facebook. Despite the neoconservative Big Brother aspirations of its pube-faced creator, it's about the only way I get any communication out of certain people back home. It's also a useful way of ~~perving on girls you once knew~~ spending valuable time at work when bored. The status updates part of facebook is one of its best features, and I’ve had numerous actually-pleasant occasions when checking the internet and finding out about a friend’s engagement or marriage or death or whatever. The perfect example of the correct use of the status update can be seen in this (real) example I saw from one friend:

**** is wondering how to tell everyone that **** is pregnant.

Wonderful, and made me incredibly annoyed to know that I would never be able to come up with such a cool way of announcing a pregnancy or indeed anything else.

However, recently, it seems like whenever I have turned to Facebook, I have been greeted with numerous updates from one (in particular) of my contacts that always go something like this (and these are actual examples):

****is on a tiny island 50 miles of the coast of Fiji. Hammock outside, my own beach...this is the life!!!!

Or like this frequently repeated gem:

****is getting back on that jet plane...

So, number one. Firstly, and most obviously, the fact that I was not on an island in the Pacific when I read this, but was sitting, damp, in a freezing cold school, hands bleeding from trying to stop rabid children from biting each other, yet strangely bored to the point of repeating poking myself in the eyes for something to do, after rushing through typhoon rains to get the chance to do all this on time, made me moderately furious. Secondly, (and possibly, no, certainly more annoyingly), if I was on a tiny island 50 miles off the coast of Fiji with hammock and my own beach, the last thing on my mind would be to pick up my mobile phone (which I certainly would never have brought to a tiny island in the first place), and tell fucking Facebook all about it.

After taking out my annoyance on some innocents for an hour or two, I calmed down and realised I should feel a little sorry for the person involved. If the best thing he can come up with to entertain himself on a Pacific island is to connect to Facebook and mobblog about it, then he deserves all the breaks he (annoyingly) seems to be getting. That, or he needs to be humanely put-down for failing to come up with anything better to do.

Maybe it’s only me, but I just find the language in the second example plain offensive. I have actually been finding it hard not to write out my own Facebook message response along the lines of:

Olly hopes that jet plane falls out of the fucking sky as wonderfully apt punishment for calling it that jet plane.

I mean, who actually says that? I'm getting back on that jet plane. He probably snorts an ovine grunt of pleasure after saying it too, like a over confident swaggering prick that’s never been told to shut the fuck up. He might as well just tattoo C.*.*.T on his forehead and be done with it. I think that when writing this, he probably sees himself as a cross between Rick at the end of Casablanca, and the slightly-disturbing-in-an-incest-sort-of-way Star Wars poster with Leia clinging to Luke's leg; he's got to get back on that jet plane. Perhaps I am taking it a little too seriously, but the whole nature of Facebook status updates is to announce personal news to people, (possibly why mine normally involve buying video games or being annoyed), and if possible, things that people would want to hear, so to use phrases like “that jet plane” and “I got smashed”, (and various other updates all about a job that involves rugby of all things – a sport that for some reason my mind inextricably links to a: Pedophilia, b: French-revolution era bourgeoisie and c: lager) really goes against the whole idea of the status message and leaves no option but for “friendship” deletion. That, or the realization that maybe I don’t like facebook so much after all...

Nb. Actually, while writing this, I thought I better check my own facebook status update history to make sure that I was living up to my usual levels of hypocrisy, and of the 16 updates that are still stored, about 3 could be accused of this same crime – as long as you consider “Olly is in Beijing” to be as bad as “****is on a tiny island blah blah blah”, which I don’t - But my apologies to anyone I have made as annoyed as I have been – please feel free to unfriendify me. Also I have no idea of the intentions of the person who wrote these status updates...they could have been done in an "ironic" style...but I doubt it.

My Macbook Pro & Me (Part 2)

Published

Electric Pig

on April 15, 2008

in Mac and Uncategorized

. 7 Comments

Well, my Macbook Pro stopped being able to burn dual layer DVDs again. This is the third time that the disk drive has broken since last June when I first bought it, and the fourth time something has needed fixing. I was really worried when I rang up Applecare that they were going to be unwilling to fix it again and would claim that whatever the problem was, it was something that I had done and therefore not their responsibility.

I called them up and as expected the guy sounded a little sceptical. He said that he would have to go off and speak to the technical staff and to his shift boss and would call me back. I wasn't holding out much hope, and was bracing myself to launch into a massive argument, demanding my consumer rights. He called back and indeed told me that Apple were not going to be able to repair the computer again, but instead were actually willing to replace it with a brand new, updated Macbook Pro, from their new line! I couldn't actually believe it, and listened in amazement as he reeled off the stats of the machine they would be giving me. I kind of felt a little guilty at first, but then again, if a computer breaks down 4 times in less than a year, it does suggest something is seriously wrong and any decent company probably should be willing to make a repair in those circumstances. The computer arrived late last week and since then I have been busy installing all the programmes I had on my old one and realising that some don't work now as the new versions of the Macbooks all come with Leopard.

I am still not sure about Leopard. I am not sure if it's a result of the new processors or the ram increase or Leopard or a combination of them all, but it's very, very quick, even compared to my last Macbook Pro. Of the new features, the multi-touch trackpad is really nice, and pretty useful. I can imagine some of these functions will become part of my basic workflow as the two-finger scrolling has done. Stacks seems pretty pointless - even a little annoying - I may have to get rid of the downloads stack quite soon. I haven't got enough disk space to use Time Machine, and probably wouldn't anyway. The empty trash button in the trash can is very nice, and I like the new hover functions in the dock. The transparent menu bar is alright, but seems a little pointless. The other changes seem a quite good, mainly ironing out little problems with Tiger and cleaning up the interface. I think it's probably something that will grow on me, the more I use it.

On the whole, I have to say I am pretty pleased with the way Apple have treated me - and it's not often that you get a chance to say that about a customer service department.

A Message to Martin

Published

Electric Pig

on April 12, 2008

in Website

. 1 Comment

Dear Martin,

As you didn't seem to put a real email address in the comment form, I don't have any other way of replying to you. Thats why you haven't had any reply from me until now. If you did put a real email address, the comment form must have had a problem, as there was no email address when I tried to reply to you. I have updated and rechecked the comment form plugin and it's working now.

Anyway, in answer to your question, please feel free to use the photo for your project. If you want a higher resolution copy, let me know and I would be happy to send one to you. Either way, it would be great to have a look at the finished version when you are done.

Hope that answers your questions,

Yours,

Olly

Flickr Favourites - March

Published

Electric Pig

on April 9, 2008

in Photography and Uncategorized

. 2 Comments

Here are my Flickr favourites from March. Of these, I think I like Untitled by Billy Gomez (bottom right) and Sound of the City by Sanoi (far right, third from bottom), the most. I have also finally had enough time to work out how to do individual images, so just click on any of the pics above to go to that shot's Flickr page.

Presumption

Published

Electric Pig

on April 8, 2008

in Annoying and School

. 1 Comment

It's blowing a gale today. Rain, loud enough to wake me up at about 3 has let up a little, but is still whipping across the playground outside. The win is enough to break an umbrella...with ease. There's no school lunch yet this term, as the first years are yet to start school (that joyous occasion will come tomorrow), so the teachers were going to order in a bento (lunchbox) lunch. I was working on my computer at the time, making stickers for another teacher and listened to the conversation in my section of the staffroom as the horribly sanctimonious head of year took all the teacher's orders. There was a break and I was yet to be asked for mine. Then I heard the head of year ask one of the Japanese English teachers:

"Does Olly want a Bento today?"

To which the teacher replied:

"No, he always goes to the 7-11 to get sandwiches".

Now, as annoying it is for this teacher to decide for me, it is way more annoying for this prick of a year-head to ask someone else what I want to do for lunch. I sit 3 chairs away from him for Christ sake, and he managed to ask teachers a lot further away than that. It's not even as if it is especially difficult Japanese to answer that "I would like a chicken nugget set" or "No thank you, I will go to 7-11". I know, I should have piped up and said:

"Whoah, hold the fuck up you sanctimonious nonse - despite being foreign and therefore not really human an'all, I still don't particularly want to trek 10 minutes in this end-of-the-world-storm and get soaked to the skin to go to 7-11 and get some of their rancid sandwiches. Hows about asking me whether I want a bento, and not asking someone else who has no idea what I might or might not want to eat. And, while I'm at it Mr English Teacher, even though I am a non-Yamato dirty foreigner, don't presume to make my culinary decisions for me, you cheeky gobshite."

But I didn't.

Instead, I trekked 10 minutes in this end-of-the-world-storm and got soaked to the skin to go to 7-11 and get some of their rancid sandwiches, and then sat at my desk dripping ostentatiously and eating my sandwiches with slightly too much tutting and shooting vicious looks at all the other teachers eating their piping hot bentos and paying no attention to me whatsoever.

A devastating response I feel.