My morning classes are preceded by a
chorus of "good morning teacher" and
proceeded by claps of hands and bows
with clasped hands touching noses.
Half-way between these two events an
attempt is made at teaching where some
students pay close attention and others
assume they know everything, though
they are in my class due to failing last
semester.
Covering fables has been an interesting
time with them, the girls, amounting to
eighty percent of my students, took
well to these fables, where as the
boys, making up the rest of the
student body which is not as obvious
as one may think as one never knows in
which category to place lady boys,
find fables too soft and too simple.
After teaching sentence structures,
simple sentences and compound
sentences, a simple exercise of writing
your own fables becomes quite
entertaining. Some students not getting
the memo that they no longer required
to do this for homework already had their
fables written, but more on these later.
The Thai students seem to have little
grasp of fables and need to be reminded
frequently of the absolute necessity of
a moral in their story. Upon finally
grasping this point, the girls will either
re write a version of a fable already
covered in a previous class,
or will succeed in making up a rather
sweet story with a pre told moral
stuck on the end. The boys will write
a blood curdling story and will ask me
for a moral to the story which they will
then share round the class.
All in all one should count themselves lucky
if they have a single unique fable. Where
this trend differs somewhat is with one before
mentioned scenario and with the Chinese
students. These students seem to grasp
the idea of fables very easily and in this
simple exercise they all, all three of them,
rewrote in English a Chinese fable, which
was stellar work on their part. The other
exception to the trend is where students
pre wrote their fables. The level of English
of my students is not all that high, but
somehow the majority of pre-written
fables were of excellent English, the best
one being one girl who re wrote a chapter
from the Sherlock Holmes book, which they
have been reading in another class, and
simply handed that in as a fable, baffled
I did not wont to through it back in the
face of the girl who wrote it, as she is
one of the students who does not work
very hard, so I simply asked her what the
moral of this story was, and she wrote
"be satisfied with what you have"
quoted from a previous fable covered
that week.
The plagiarised chapter in
question tells of Sherlock Holmes
asking a man for a cheque for the
payment he had put up for someone
to find the whereabouts of his son
and the identity of his sons kidnapper.
In his shrewd manner Holmes tells lord
whatsymagic the whereabouts of his son
and that the kidnapper was the lord
himself, upon which the Lord leans
down and writes the cheque.
Post bows and claps of hands, lunch
done with I set out in a rather damp
afternoon to open yet another bank
account at a specific branch into which
work will eventually pay my salary. This
damp afternoon had the unfortunate
reaction to turn into a very wet one.
Fortunately the Thais in all their ingenuity
have come up with something to protect
oneself against these frequent tropical
downpours. These take the shape of
a poncho and look like a flimsy rubbish bag
(trash bag) with arms and a hood and have earned
themselves the endearing nickname of
'plastic condoms'.
So off I set wrapped in a see through
light blue plastic bag, which leaves my
legs and feet open to the elements.
It is rather futile for me to pint out
how wet these later parts of my body
got, but what is rather more painful
to bare my mind upon is the fact that
I was wearing my hand made Italian
leather shoes. When the skies decide
that it will open up and make all the
poor beings below it more miserable
by making them a little wet it does
not go about it by half measures. It
rather likes to make sure that everything
and everyone has more then his fair share
of absolute soaking. This tends to cause
great big lakes to form on and around the
roads, and if it isn't bad enough that if a
car would have the affront to pass you
while you are peacefully enjoying your
umpteenth shower of the day on the back
of your motorised bicycle, and sending
a veritable tidal wave onto the entirety
of your person triply making sure that
you are not missing out on this fine
blessing from the sky, you may find
yourself blurred by the water covering
both your helmet and your eye glasses
driving through one of these newly formed
lagoons. This has the unfortunate effect,
felt by anyone driving a manual or even
a semi manual motorised bicycle, to have
two more tsunami sized waves rush up around
the front wheel and utterly immerse in water
both feet, which until then had made a good
stand at keeping dry. There is only so much
hand made Italian leather shoes can put up with.
In these circumstances one tries to keep
a brave face on, back straight, shoulders
back, head held high with an air expressing
how delightful one feels in these conditions.
one eventually triumphs over these perils
and soon enough arrives at some set
destination, bank, home.
On arriving home we hope to find peace
for the mind and rest for the tired and weary
corpse which are the remains of his former
self, but when one is most in need it seldom
seems to happen as we could wish. upon
crossing the threshold of my home I am
greeted by the famished mosquitoes, who have
been eagerly waiting since my departure for
another go at my smooth and delicate flesh.
If this isn't enough cause for concern as I
fight to remove my sodden clothes and
empty the wells of water which have formed
inside from my hand made Italian leather
shoes, I get another disagreeable surprise
in the form of two military types claiming
to be from the police army and wanting
contributions from the peace loving members
of this community to fund medical
apparatus for the wounded soldiers of their
very unpopular war against Muslim separatist
in the southern provinces of Thailand.
Forgetting manners due to the loss of
personal restraint and the awareness of
common courtesy, I decline these chaps
invitation to step into my own house and
manage to curtail their advances,
succeeding in turning them away, though
they assure me that they will be back
once I am more disposed to receive them,
I lock the gates and sit happily in my
fortress ready to thwart whoever else
might dare trespass my solitude.
chorus of "good morning teacher" and
proceeded by claps of hands and bows
with clasped hands touching noses.
Half-way between these two events an
attempt is made at teaching where some
students pay close attention and others
assume they know everything, though
they are in my class due to failing last
semester.
Covering fables has been an interesting
time with them, the girls, amounting to
eighty percent of my students, took
well to these fables, where as the
boys, making up the rest of the
student body which is not as obvious
as one may think as one never knows in
which category to place lady boys,
find fables too soft and too simple.
After teaching sentence structures,
simple sentences and compound
sentences, a simple exercise of writing
your own fables becomes quite
entertaining. Some students not getting
the memo that they no longer required
to do this for homework already had their
fables written, but more on these later.
The Thai students seem to have little
grasp of fables and need to be reminded
frequently of the absolute necessity of
a moral in their story. Upon finally
grasping this point, the girls will either
re write a version of a fable already
covered in a previous class,
or will succeed in making up a rather
sweet story with a pre told moral
stuck on the end. The boys will write
a blood curdling story and will ask me
for a moral to the story which they will
then share round the class.
All in all one should count themselves lucky
if they have a single unique fable. Where
this trend differs somewhat is with one before
mentioned scenario and with the Chinese
students. These students seem to grasp
the idea of fables very easily and in this
simple exercise they all, all three of them,
rewrote in English a Chinese fable, which
was stellar work on their part. The other
exception to the trend is where students
pre wrote their fables. The level of English
of my students is not all that high, but
somehow the majority of pre-written
fables were of excellent English, the best
one being one girl who re wrote a chapter
from the Sherlock Holmes book, which they
have been reading in another class, and
simply handed that in as a fable, baffled
I did not wont to through it back in the
face of the girl who wrote it, as she is
one of the students who does not work
very hard, so I simply asked her what the
moral of this story was, and she wrote
"be satisfied with what you have"
quoted from a previous fable covered
that week.
The plagiarised chapter in
question tells of Sherlock Holmes
asking a man for a cheque for the
payment he had put up for someone
to find the whereabouts of his son
and the identity of his sons kidnapper.
In his shrewd manner Holmes tells lord
whatsymagic the whereabouts of his son
and that the kidnapper was the lord
himself, upon which the Lord leans
down and writes the cheque.
Post bows and claps of hands, lunch
done with I set out in a rather damp
afternoon to open yet another bank
account at a specific branch into which
work will eventually pay my salary. This
damp afternoon had the unfortunate
reaction to turn into a very wet one.
Fortunately the Thais in all their ingenuity
have come up with something to protect
oneself against these frequent tropical
downpours. These take the shape of
a poncho and look like a flimsy rubbish bag
(trash bag) with arms and a hood and have earned
themselves the endearing nickname of
'plastic condoms'.
So off I set wrapped in a see through
light blue plastic bag, which leaves my
legs and feet open to the elements.
It is rather futile for me to pint out
how wet these later parts of my body
got, but what is rather more painful
to bare my mind upon is the fact that
I was wearing my hand made Italian
leather shoes. When the skies decide
that it will open up and make all the
poor beings below it more miserable
by making them a little wet it does
not go about it by half measures. It
rather likes to make sure that everything
and everyone has more then his fair share
of absolute soaking. This tends to cause
great big lakes to form on and around the
roads, and if it isn't bad enough that if a
car would have the affront to pass you
while you are peacefully enjoying your
umpteenth shower of the day on the back
of your motorised bicycle, and sending
a veritable tidal wave onto the entirety
of your person triply making sure that
you are not missing out on this fine
blessing from the sky, you may find
yourself blurred by the water covering
both your helmet and your eye glasses
driving through one of these newly formed
lagoons. This has the unfortunate effect,
felt by anyone driving a manual or even
a semi manual motorised bicycle, to have
two more tsunami sized waves rush up around
the front wheel and utterly immerse in water
both feet, which until then had made a good
stand at keeping dry. There is only so much
hand made Italian leather shoes can put up with.
In these circumstances one tries to keep
a brave face on, back straight, shoulders
back, head held high with an air expressing
how delightful one feels in these conditions.
one eventually triumphs over these perils
and soon enough arrives at some set
destination, bank, home.
On arriving home we hope to find peace
for the mind and rest for the tired and weary
corpse which are the remains of his former
self, but when one is most in need it seldom
seems to happen as we could wish. upon
crossing the threshold of my home I am
greeted by the famished mosquitoes, who have
been eagerly waiting since my departure for
another go at my smooth and delicate flesh.
If this isn't enough cause for concern as I
fight to remove my sodden clothes and
empty the wells of water which have formed
inside from my hand made Italian leather
shoes, I get another disagreeable surprise
in the form of two military types claiming
to be from the police army and wanting
contributions from the peace loving members
of this community to fund medical
apparatus for the wounded soldiers of their
very unpopular war against Muslim separatist
in the southern provinces of Thailand.
Forgetting manners due to the loss of
personal restraint and the awareness of
common courtesy, I decline these chaps
invitation to step into my own house and
manage to curtail their advances,
succeeding in turning them away, though
they assure me that they will be back
once I am more disposed to receive them,
I lock the gates and sit happily in my
fortress ready to thwart whoever else
might dare trespass my solitude.
RRB 11 XI 2010
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