Small whinge

According to the rules of the world I live in I need a little piece of paper that says I know that probably the best way to create a comfortable and encouraging learning environment is NOT to pick out students at random with as little notice as possible to answer taxing and pointless questions to which they have no answer before laughing at their answers and inviting their classmates to join me. Unfortunately said little piece of paper costs $2,400 and will consume four weeks of my life during which I will be unable to work to start earning back the ridiculous amount I just shelled out for the privlege of being let in on the prized teaching methods that characterise popular (even if slightly misguided) theories on second langauge learning in 2007. God forbid I should go out there and just start teaching people with my own methodology created from the broad reading and research I have done covering a whole range of theories and methodologies. I must be five kinds of naive to have thought that a teacher would have a say in what, and how, they teach in their own classroom. But even though it's ridiculous and even though it makes my entire (increasingly expensive) education redundant I'll probably do that stupid course and spend the $2400 because when the person who is in charge of deciding who works as an ESL teacher in their college tells you that your university education is "useless" because it teaches you to teach drawing on myriad of methodologies when she just wants someone to teach "the way we do here", what else can you do? Perhaps it is just the narrow-mindedness and exam focused tuition of private English colleges but it would appear that there is a dichotomy between what it is possible to do in the ESL teaching world and what the Applied Linguistics faculty seem to think is happening out there. Which begs the question - what am I wasting my money on?

Punnet of strawberries. $1.

$1.

It's a good day.

Plug

For some reason - probably wishful thinking - I thought it was going to be warm today. So here I am at work in my skirt and short sleeved top shivering in the air conditioning and knowing that it's only going to be colder outside. So to warm myself up I've been doing research on Cambodia. Seems like I can do my dive license over there for way cheap, the only problem being that it's quite time consuming and I'm not sure I want to spend 2 of the few days I will have there waterlogged - what if I hate it! Yeh, this post is turning into a bit of a journal entry so I'm changing the subject.

Last night I finally got around to visiting the little Thai restaurant on Goodwood Rd that my housemate recommended to me yonks ago. It was really fabulous! Small and tucked away and just comfy inside - it has a nice 'ammmmbi-ance' as my friend and I were fond of saying afterwards with ridiculously posh English accents. And it was yum. And it was cheap. $28 for two people including starters. Of course we were vego so the meals were cheaper, but even the meat dishes were cheap as. After the meal, and this was the clincher for me, they served complimentary after dinner mints! Never in my life have I seen such a thing. I have heard of after-dinner mints of course, seen them in the chocolate shelves at the supermarket, but I have never had one given to me at a restaurant and I assumed it was one of those services of the past, like pulling your chair out for you, bringing water to the table without being asked, taking your order at the table rather than making you line up like you're in a school cafeteria... Yeah, that's such bullshit, all those cafes on Rundle St where you pay through the nose and don't get any service, you have to do everything yourself, even carry your own drinks to the table!

Anyway, a big 5 star rating for the Manee Siem Thai Restaurant on Goodwood Rd. (they do takeaway!)

Hump Day

Never mind that the opposition only had four players - we won our grand final on Monday night too! Yes, I am now in possession of two inordinately green ribboned 'gold' medals. Yay. Had a couple of beers afterwards to celebrate and then headed home to catch up on some uni readings. And how lovely was the weather yesterday! Too bad I was stuck inside all day :( I did go for a walk in the evening and it was still quite lovely. Overnight there must have been quite a gale blowing though because this morning one of my tomato plants was keeled right over trying to touch the ground. Maybe he was just stretching? I'm afraid that one of the plants has carked it. For some reason he refuses to grow like the others and has a whole bunch of yellow crunchy leaves. But I guess when it's your first time growing something you gotta expect a high mortality rate - I should be glad they aren't all dead!

This morning I skipped out of my stint at the English college and did some errands instead. I found out that I can't really afford to go to Goa over Xmas. BOO. But I can afford to go to Cambodia! So that's where I'm going. I think. Nothing's final until the plane ticket's paid for. For some reason I thought that Cambodia was land-locked - it isn't and apparently has gorgeous beaches. I really enjoyed Vietnam and I think this'll be similar. Better practice my Lara Croft impersonations before I go. Actually if I can get my dive license before I go it will be heaps cheap to do some of that action over there...

These things just snowball don't they!

Solid gold

Last night on my way home from uni I spotted a chest of drawers out on the street with "give away" written on them. Yes please. I raced home and enlisted my houstemate to help me drag it back and up the stairs into my bedroom. So now I am finally no longer living out of my suitcase! It's in pretty good nick - not smelly or anything! See, that's why I didn't buy anything - because sooner or later someone on my street would have had to do a spring clean and dispose of exactly what I needed. As we were picking it up some bloke across the street called out "Hey, I wanted that!". Too slow matey. Haha!