Pornstar Names for Students

This morning I convinced one of my Chinese students to drop his conservative English name of Davidl Apologies to my colleague Dave Davies, but there’s nothing wrong with his old name; he just has more marketing potential with his new name. This is a Business English class after all!

David is now Mr. Happy. Mr. Happy has two classmates named Swallow and Fannie. That was a pre-existing condition, not my doing. But I do have two other gals considering the monikers Microphone and Doublemint.

Looking forward to the role-playing scenarios later this semester!

Blackmail, Chinese University Style

So I get a text message from a clerk flunky early this week, saying they have enough teachers at my university so they won’t be hiring me again this fall. Reminds me of the breaking-up-by-text-phenomenae explored in the film Up in the Air (with George Clooney). Lame, lame, lame. Considering they only have three foreign teachers here, and one of my colleagues has announced he is leaving, I started smelling something rotten after this text message.

Moon’em I thought, and sent out a few letters of interest that night. My prospects are bright away from this place. Only thing is I love it here, and hoped to guide my 2nd-year students through their 3rd-year literature curricula.

Tonight I heard from a 3rd-year student, that the administration is actually asking students to comment on whether I should be retained. So if I could kindly refrain from assigning homework, hint hint, maybe I could stay here.

Now that’s just bollocks. Blackmailing a teacher to not give homework, so that he can return next year only to teach another class where he ought not to ever prescribe homework ever again. No wonder China has never won a Nobel Prize; they are discouraging students from actually learning anything in their universities.

I’m supportive of student-centered learning, but student-directed slacking is for pussy teachers. So, while I will miss guiding my hard-working younger students next year, I will not let the hardly-working older students blackmail me.

Homework is necessary for cognition. The classroom is where guidance and exposure to information take place, but the real intellectual heavy lifting is with reading, re-reading, writing, and thinking that come with homework tasks.

How real is too real?

Geez did I make a mistake today. I thought I’d teach my sophomore students about the differences in risk-taking between Chinese and US American youth. A perfect chance to show them MTV’s Jackass Lost Tape, or so I thought. There was a scene where they were making omelettes by masticating the ingredients first, then upchucking into a mixing bowl before frying to a golden brown. Another scene showed two dudes and one chick competing to see who could drink a gallon-jug of milk the fastest. At least ten girls dashed back-and-forth to the W.C. in just one hour. Half of the audience kept their faces down during the puke-free rad skateboarding scenes.

Three conclusions were derived from this failed classroom lesson: 1) U.S. Americans have nothing to fear from the ChiComs. If they can’t handle blood and puke on television, do you think they can handle armed conflict with us foreign devils?; 2) China is not ready for MTV; and 3) English teaching is sometimes itself a high-risk activity!

D.I.E., D.I.E, D.I.E!!!

From M.R. Hammer’s Solving Problems and Resolving Conflicts Across the Cultural Divide: The Intercultural Conflict Style (ICS) Inventory Workshop (2007):
“Reframing is initiated through conscious application of the D.I.E. . . .move parties down the D.I.E. ladder from evaluation to description.”

One of the intercultural conflict resolution methodologies passed down to communication coaches at one of the world’s largest software companies is memorized by a spooky acronym, D.I.E.:

1. Describe
2. Interpret
3. Evaluate

We’ll look at the particulars later, but think for a moment about what might happen if we coach our students to D.I.E. Is it culturally appropriate to remind our students of death?

Now, read the quote above and think about the framer of this acronym; his recommendation is actually to evaluate, then interpret, then describe the actions of those who you are in conflict with. In other words, the actual sequence is E.I.D., yet the catchy acronym D.I.E. is used to market this particular intercultural conflict resolution strategy.

Personally, I think we’d be a lot better off if our opponents would DIE; it would save us thousands of dollars in fees to intercultural charlatans like Dr. Hammer.

Zhuhai: Land of English Schools From Hell

Zhuhai is a Special Economic Zone in China, behind the old Portuguese city of Macau. We are cooling our heels here while figuring out what to do next.

The bus ride here took us through the south side of the Pearl River Delta, where we saw more agriculture and less empty condo-building. Lots of fish ponds are extant, but Janice says they look uninspected and unregulated. She worked in such environments in her undergrad years at Mindanao State Unversity, where she was a marine sciences major, so I believe she knows what she’s talking about.

After checking in to our hotel, we allowed ourself to be fleeced by a taxi driver just to satisfy a KFC craving (everywhere we go the local fried chicken just doesn’t compare to the Colonel’s!). Then we supplied at the Jesco department store, had an ice cream on the street, and retired to our quarters for a long deserved holiday. Janice practiced her Hanzi (Chinese character writing) to augment her Mandarin language acquisition of the last 3 weeks.

On day two we slept in late, walked along the waterfront and then back to the Jusco department store for a McDonald’s lunch and to find some gifts for Ashley, my step-daughter in the Philippines. Had fun browsing in another upstairs stall in a computer mart for my slightly older godson (Lawrence, aka Little Lulu) in Texas. With my limited Chinese, I asked the proprietor something like “have no clothes kind of DVD you have not have?” Dang if we didn’t find a secret cardboard box with the most hardcore pirated skin flicks on earth. Little Lulu’d better hope our Filipino cousins don’t steal them first!

I’m reflecting on the role of social interaction in language acquisition, and how some of my informal techniques at the last summer school may have helped some kids out. They at least know more than the average KFC worker, who says “good morning” to foreigners no matter what time of day. If I return to primary education in China, I’d like to do some research in this area.

August 6, 2007

Bickle’s Adventure Begins: Exiled by Homeland Insecurity

Some folks choose the expatriate life. I was forced into this choice. United States immigration policy prohibits me from bringing my foreign wife home.  Seems there is an economic means test that us spouses have to pass before we can bring our families to our native America. Meanwhile, any Mexican who can sneak through the fence is likely to gain amnesty someday, despite their economic means. I hope and pray that we still have a great country to come home to; at this point the Republicans in charge have adopted liberal policies that are sending us into hell in a handbasket. My prediction is that the USA will become a mentally ill liberal fascist state, and that my promise to bring my wife to the greatest country in the world will no longer be possible to keep. As this blog begins, I’m scared of what will come, but rising to the occasion. Never let your government keep your family apart!

The journey begins with a long-ass trip to Butuan, in Agusan del Sur, from the biggest little city in the world, Reno, Nevada. This entailed a week of packing, filling 5 dumpsters with so much shit that the Reno garbageman has put out a contract on me, and losing some precious things like my late father’s gold wedding ring. Hint: don’t wear rings while shuffling packing boxes to and from Public Storage. After a long and excruciating journey, which almost meant an overnight delay in Lost Wages airport, I made it through Philippines immigration with only a one-way ticket. That means I’m truly stamped out of my homeland, whacked out from travel, and excited to reunite with my lovely wife.

Unbelievably, I am on an airplane right now. It’s been a hectic week, but the adventure has finally begun.

This adventure has a primary goal, to bring my Philippines wife to my home country of the United States. secondary goals are to gain overseas teaching experience, to see some of the world together, to bring perspective back to U.S. American classrooms, and to make a baby or two.

Now I’m starting the longest leg of the journey from Reno, Nevada, my home for the last 4 years, to the Mindanao barangay where my wife grew up. Vancouver to Manila is about 13 hours in the air, yet this particular flight is surprisingly comfortable considering it’s only Fiesta Class (economy) on Philippine Airlines. I’m at the end of a 4-seat row, and guy named Gary from Knoxville sits the other end. In short, we each have two seats to spread out in. In this case, high fuel prices are a godsend.

Well, my late dinner is here, after a day (a week, really) of hiblood. I hope to write more later, whether I share the details of the past week or just focus on The Now and The Future. The latter is more likely, as the hi-blood needs to drop.

By 2am of this flight, time shifts. Saturday never comes when you jump across the International Date Line. Time shift is one of the perks of Asian travel, and a perk that I enjoy.

A few catnaps and I’m less weary. This week has been rough: dropping heavy things on my feet repeatedly, aggravating my torn rotator cuff, pissing off the garbage man by filling 7 dumpsters, listening to my Turkish neighbor talk incessantly, calming my worried mom who questions incessantly, losing my late father’s wedding ring by sweating so much packing box picked it off, and abandoning so many possessions that were dear to me.  At least when we return, we’ll have less to move.

So now my earphones play English and Pilipino love songs, while i drink black coffee and review my notes/texts on Bisayan Cebuano, the poorly-documented mother-tongue of my wife’s family. Since I’m not laying over in the capitol, there is no need to review Pilipino notes this trip. I’m focused on acquiring Bisayan, by immersion into their culture.

After the barangay, we’ll live in Cebu City for a few weeks, primarily to take care of.dental and medical checkups, then we’re off to the northern Borneo cities of Kota Kinabalu and Kuching. We hope there is such a thing as a beach in Singapore for our anniversary of 6/28. Wife wants to see Bangkok, so the month of June will end in Thailand. I’ll be hunting or teaching jobs as we go, and we’ll both be assessing each country to see if it’s worth expatriating too.

To paraphrase an old hobbit, “We’re off on an adventure.”

May 25, 2007