February 4th, 2016

10:18 am on the morning of the 8th

In case you were worried, no, I'm not dead, I just couldn't post any new blog posts for a while (and it's likely this won't reach anyone until the 13th...) for a couple of reasons, high up on the list is that it's Spring Festival, Chinese New Year! I woke up to the sound of fireworks today... a couple of times. I kept rolling over and going back to sleep. But, right, let me tell you about what happened on the 3rd (I took some decent notes).

I arrived at Web early and so I listened to Stella give a presentation on "lies"- I was then going to attempt to make my English Corner material look nice, try and do a slide show type of thing, make it all professional, but instead Stella invited me to lunch with her and I was all, eh, sure, it'll be fine. I asked her if she included in her lesson a "lie of omission" and the answer was no, so I got to explain what that was.

We were joined for lunch by Eilsa and guy who I forget what his name is- I picked up some relatively fancy crab thing for 16 yuan. We talked about chopsticks and tried to work on that word for combo that Eilsa keeps telling me, but I keep messing up in actual usage.

My first class was an intermediate level private class with three students- a 16 year old kid named Richard (who I would not have guessed was 16, more like 20), a friendly, big guy, Sylvia, a nurse, and a 19 year old university student, Vivian. They had to have personal profiles on themselves ready for today (Richard didn't do his homework, no biggie), then they had to interview each other, and the other student presents on their partner. I joined in and gave a presentation on Sylvia who, in short, wants to become a nurse in the U.S.

My English Corner today was on "Groundhog's Day"... I guess it's supposed to be "Groundhog Day" but do YOU say it that way? I told the class that wikipedia said it without the 's' but I always say it with the 's'- I try to give them an accurate picture of how words are supposed to be used and how they're actually used.

With that in mind, I talked about the words "holiday", "tradition", and "superstition"- I put definitions on the board for the latter two, but everyone there knew holiday, I knew that, so I didn't bother to get a definition for that one. I also talked about "omen" though that one came up organically through the presentation, so I didn't have a prepared definition for that one.

I talked about the history of Groundhog's Day, what it means when he sees his shadow versus not seeing it (I wasn't clear on it myself before looking it up before the class- it's good to be prepared), I shared a story about the Winnipeg groundhog dying a day or so before the big event, and then had the class go over the comment section I'd copied off the site, basically all about how it was a big conspiracy by the weather network people and to watch out for poisoned carrots (a carrot was the last thing the sad groundhog was eating before she... was murdered?! Perhaps!) And of course, the advantage of doing the class on the third, I could tell the class the results of this years prognostication... at the moment I'm less than a hundred percent what the result was, but about a 50/50 chance, I think he did NOT see his shadow, heralding an early spring. 

I was actually all excited about telling them, yes, it's the third HERE but over in America it's still... and then I looked at the clock and realized that it had been February 3rd over there for an hour or so by this point. Whoops.

But with something like 15-20 minutes left in the class I told them that nobody actually cares about Groundhog's Day- but they DO care about the Bill Murray movie, so I showed a clip of depressed Murray giving a report about Groundhog's Day being pointless and winter will last forever and then I showed the more enlightened Murray giving his heartwarming report at the end of his time loop, then explained the usage of "Groundhog Day" to mean being stuck in a repetitive loop of all your days being the same, chiefly used by the military during their tours of duty.

A highly successful English Corner. Thanks, Bill.

With two hours between classes, I grabbed food with Steve, picking up some big noodle bowls on my card (I tried to just pay for both our meals but Steve insisted on giving me money- he didn't have the full amount on him, so I managed to talk him out of paying me back the last few yuan later. Small victories.). We talked about Doctor Who for a bit until Steve stopped me so he could just watch it himself, and back at Web I showed him two Epic Rap Battles of History- Batman versus Sherlock Holmes and Steven Spielberg versus Alfred Hitchcock. He enjoyed them even though, of course, they aren't that accessible outside of English. Even IN English you need to know about movie directors and Batman and Sherlock Holmes. Which isn't that rare in the circles I travel in, sure, but not everyone will get it.

I quickly made some photocopies before my last classes, which were...

A salon class with Steve, lunch guy whose name I forget from this morning, a maybe shy girl with these brilliant black eyes named Rae, Rain, Daisy (my third class with Daisy at this point, this is the woman that speaks really fast and it makes her sound judgemental, but she's actually just nervous I think, she seems to in fact have weaker English than her confident voice would suggest) and (I guess I have to refer to him as) adult Richard- giving opinions on various topics. I shared that I strongly agreed with the "multinational global corporations are the cause of the worlds problems" and went on explaining- most of the class were either neutral or disagreed with that one. Daisy and Richard agreed that "women will never be equal to men in the workplace", Daisy citing physical strength- I suggested that the kind of physical jobs she's thinking of won't necessarily be here forever, assuming our future robot workforce doesn't murder us all in our sleep. And I tried to give Richard the benefit of the doubt in that he could be saying that he thinks the reality is that the world will remain unfair into the future, as opposed to saying that he personally thinks women should not be equal to men in the workplace. I shouldn't have said anything, I was just digging him in deeper by staying on the topic.

In case I get comments on these posts, let me pre-emptively say that adult Richard is a sweetheart who'd give you the shirt off his back (not that I've asked), so please don't think ill of him. You can save your ire for me, we all know I'll say something a little off for my audience soon enough.

Next was a private class with Kid Richard, a sweet woman I've mentioned before (maybe without actually writing her name) Abby, and a third person whose name I forget. They had to come up with physical characteristics and personality traits- I don't know where she got this, but Abby heard something about describing a desirable woman as a tomato... I suggested we make it 'peach' instead, and, after getting dilligent on the board I asked for the opposite- Abby gave me couch potato. I guess she had some kind of rhyming thing that day? I added 'lazy' and got an "ah" from everyone. I made some good call back jokes about women as tomatoes and peaches and couch potatoes for Abby's benefit. I think I successfully put her at ease- she participates more than anyone else, but I also feel like she gets embarrassed easily, so I obviously wanted to avoid that and keep her as involved in the class as she was!

They came up with a short and stunning guy who was smart, a good driver, and a horrible person, all set in a disaster movie. I actually liked that combo a lot, like a darker John McClain? Maybe?

I had a private class with just Lily, she had homework prepared about hunger in Africa- we were discussing societal problems, so in China she suggested a lack of trust, sex disparity, and some third thing (I forget- and I'm the one that figured out how to phrase it on the board- I definitely came up with the previous two succinct phrasings), mostly we just had a nice conversation sparked by talking about improved climate in Toronto over the past years. On the sex disparity topic I brought up the term "forgotten women" about unmarried women past 27 in China and she got a sour face about the term. In retrospect that was probably a bad result, but it was honestly a pretty funny expression. But she got her revenge, for some reason that I didn't make note of she said that I got a bit red in the face, and she suggested I'm shy. So there you go. It was my last class, so we stayed a bit longer than scheduled.

I left Web with with Lily and Haven/Heaven(? nice guy who gives out flyers for Web) and other flyer girl- Lily reported that flyer girl thought I was handsome (which seems to be the only word they have for describing men, either handsome or ugly I think... not that I could do much better at the moment it seems) and they had a good time giggling after that. Flyer girl walked on ahead until she stopped to chat with a security guard at the escalator. We three walked past her and hit the bottom floor before Lily realized she didn't know where Flyer girl was. I was surprised she didn't see her (then again, she needs glasses in class and doesn't wear them outside, so that may explain things) and reported she was up two floors with the security guard- at the end of the work night all the escalators go down, so we couldn't really go back for her. We waited until Flyer girl caught up to us before leaving the building. Lily split off almost immediately to catch a bus, and then we were joined by Vicky and Leo- Vicky almost immediately splits off herself, then a block later the Flyer duo leave, then Leo immediately after that.

I ran into Iman on the way home and he asks for my phone number. I explain that I don't have one yet, but that I should have one Friday, and so I'll drop by his place around 10pm with a number. He says that's good, because this place is boring.

At my apartment I watch a video from the Nostalgia Critic about current public service issues on youtube hurting the monetization of content creators on youtube as well as other issues, then spend the evening reading the "100 jokes that shaped modern comedy" which took about an hour and fifty minutes, which bodes well for having material for two days worth of english corners even if there are a couple of dicey ones I may have to avoid. Well, material quantity it was good, but right away I knew the material was to diverse to cover coherently, I was essentially going to be blowing threw a ton of potential topics at a uselessly fast pace. In otherwords, the more diverse, di-verse (the worse) it gets.

11:46 am, that's it for this day. I'll try and do some more post catch up later, I've got plenty of time to do that, and otherwise I want to get outside and see what is open this week.