Doing My Head In ...In a Dozen Different Ways....

The timing of things is aways interesting….for example…why did it have to happen that I decided to learn a foreign language at almost the same time that I was asked to be on the JDE team?

Talk about having your head done in in a dozen different ways…and that is just JDE!

Then…my first attempt at learning my chosen language was at traditional classes.... professionally run. Within a few weeks…things were going pretty well…I started dating my teacher!

I have to say that this was not a really clever move….although it seemed like a really great idea at the time....but I will not even attempt to expand on that story…….just now….except to ask…have you ever sat in any class at all…knowing that within about two hours…you and the teacher up the front of the class…would be lathed up in a hot tub …a glass of wine in hand…doing unspeakable things to each other??? Not a good learning environment!

That tragic relationship over….I had to move school…but at the new school....I got the same teaching methods….but I didn’t date the teacher…..it was okay and a bit of fun….although it was not as much fun as the hot tub… It was hard going…but trying to learn a language outside of the country it is spoken always is very difficult…and I knew that….as did the rest of my class.

Class members came and went….some stayed…some were better than others…some more serious that others…some went off to Italy…others just kept up the classes….the bottom line…..at completion of level 5….which took about 18 months….all of us had learnt a lot of words…memorised dozens of verb conjugations….. learned about past and present tense.... and could pretty much say nothing of any use at all ….and certainly none of us could construct our own sentences with any confidence.

Then …for me at least …came the learning revolution. I stumbled upon a teaching method that was totally revolutionary. It didn’t teach vocabulary much at all…but relied on English vocabulary and just taught structure and concentrated on verbs and their use…verbs being the backbone of any language….this seems to make a lot of sense if you actually want to speak and understand it.

After a few weeks of this…and remember…I was building on what I had already learnt outside the hot tub…secondo me…adesso posso farmi capire in italiano. (I thought that now I can make myself understood in Italian)

Months down the track…I am doing pretty well when I find myself on a train with a couple of dozen Italian tourists….out in Australia for the Pope thing. So…I start talking to them…I was reasonably confident…but soon found myself struggling to answer the most basic of questions….at least I understood the questions…and was able to answer most of them…but it made me realise just how far away from fluency I really am…and just when I thought I was making some real progress.

Then!!!! ….if you have read the library thing…you will know that I have a new set of lesson…lesson One….I could not understand a single word! I know it is a pretty advanced course…but please….start me off easily!

Then I read in the course notes that they expect that you have to spend about 10 hours per lesson! Does this learning a language process never stop? I suppose not…I am still learning English after all these years….

So…here I go….diving into another set of courses…but if I can learn something from this one ....then I think I can really say that I have advanced.

It might be easier…and I might learn a lot more…to just to go to Italy and speak to people…because I know that is what I really need…to use the language…but …since I now have this amazing TV…that is not likely to happen any time soon. Cosa ci posso fare?

What I thought would take about 3 or 4 years…is on track at least…after about 2 ½ years..I can at least hold a basic conversation and I have come to know that my spelling and knowledge of correct grammar is somewhat better than friends I know who learned to speak the language because of their parents…so it has not been a total waste of time…I also now see English in a different light.

And to think...in about 2 weeks…the French course starts!!!

Oh la-de-da….I’m off to the Library!

Several years ago I coined the phrase…”Library Goer”. I used this term to describe a certain group of people that I perceived had no other description.

The typical “Library Goer” is generally a non working woman….often a mother who appears exceptionally organized. Their cars are always clean and maintained in perfect working order…they are always well dressed and presented…as are their children…and they usually have a Mary Poppins bag equipped with anything you could ever want to handle any situation while away from the home.

I actually dated a “Library Goer” for a short time. It didn’t go too well. We were exceptionally incompatible in many ways despite our very similar socioeconomic backgrounds. She was an ex MLC girl with quite well to do parents…she wouldn’t say “shit” for sixpence … and I am fairly certain that she had never farted once in her whole entire life.

She would be begin to feel the effects of alcohol after her first sip….and so in true ladylike fashion….wanting to stay totally in control…a half a glass of wine would last her the whole night. She was…what I would describe as a “Library Goer”.

Needless to say…I have never considered myself as a “Library Goer”. In fact…I have very rarely even set foot in a library. Although… my many years experience as a salesman did teach me that libraries do have a very useful purpose…..their toilets are spotless and rarely used by the public…if they are used by the public…they are generally used by “Library Goers”…who probably leave them cleaner than they found them…spray antiseptic and air fresher…use their own especially soft toilet paper…and polished the floor on the way out. Libraries and council offices are where the best, cleanest and most well equipped public toilets that can be found anywhere.

The common thread here is that they are both are run by local governments who have no issue at all with getting to sleep at night after a day hard at work feathering their own nests with the funds generated by council rates extorted from innocent rate payers who receive little or no benefit themselves from the hard earned cash they are forced to hand over annually.

In fact…some of the council office toilets I have seen rate among the best…and most plushly appointed I have ever seen. One.... even had an electric toilet seat cover installer that with the push of a button…would install a fresh plastic cover over the toilet seat….and this is no joke!

Anyway…the only reason I had gone to a library in many years…was to use the toilet. I doubt that I could even spell the word library….let alone tell you what went on inside one.

And while I am on the subject of spelling…do you know why library is spelt is such a weird way? ….well…neither do I really ….but the Italian word for “book” is “libro”…. And given that a lot of Italian words are derived from Latin… and lots on English words are derived from Latin….Italian or French…I figure that this is how the word evolved. The French work for book incidentally … is “livre”.

Anyway…yesterday…I was passing a local library and decided that I would go in and see what I might be able to find in the language section that might assist my further development in speaking foreign languages very badly.

To my surprise…they had language courses worth hundreds of dollars…complete with CDs and all …. So I went to the counter and asked a very serious looking woman how much it cost to borrow books…she said to my surprise that it was free!

So I signed up and immediately and took home an advanced Italian course that I know to be worth about $200.00 or more….what’s more… I can keep it for a month…and then extend it for another month online….but better…. I can burn the discs and have it forever!

And all this time I thought rate payers only got their street swept once a month for their rates….. I figure a local councilor must have wrangled a junket to Italy at some point and wanted to learn to speak the language…ordered the library to buy the thing .... and it has been sitting there gathering dust ever since.

So…good for me…I now have a library card…do you believe it…and I am now officially a “Library Goer”! I just wonder if this will effect my life in strange ways….will I become super organized …stop swearing and become a teetotaler....and start wanting to have sex with the lights out???? I doubt it some how.

Life’s Pretty Straight…….

I don’t know what is going on…I don’t know who is doing it or why…and I don’t know if I get the joke.

Yesterday… had an altercation with a vending machine…the stupid thing kept taking my money…so I kept beating it up as any well adjusted male would do. Eventually…I won the fight…got my money back and didn’t end up buying anything from the arrogant thing.

Today…I had packets of Twisties mysteriously appearing on my desk.

Now I know I was anthropomorphizing by swearing at and beating up the machine…and for holding a grudge and assuming that it had something against me….but do you think that this is the mechanical menaces method of retaliation? I doubt it. I wasn’t even trying to buy Twisties…and the machine would have know that!

No…I think that there are far more sinister forces at work here…someone is trying to do my head in …and I think they have succeeded.

So….I have to look at who this would be. In doing so…firstly…I look for motivation. I ask myself…”who would benefit most?” And when I say benefit….I mean …who would gain the most pleasure and shear delight and obtain the most laughs from seeing me have my head done in like this?

When I think about it all like that…I reach the sad conclusion that it would be a pretty big club. I actually work with people who’s sole source of pleasure in their work is gained through making other peoples lives hell.

But there is more going on here that simply trying to make my life difficult..this is psychological torture that could only be the brainchild of a very sick individual. Someone who wants to deliver a message to me in a way that only they could. This would have to be a scheming, vindictive spiteful and sadistic person…and therefore…most likely a woman!

I am not paranoid….you know…I am not….promise…I don’t have to be now…because ever since I started wearing aluminum underwear…the aliens …mostly ….have no idea where I am …it all seems to work pretty well…the foil also went on the roof of the house …and now…..I am convinced that even the government listening devices are sufficiently interfered with…. so as not to pose a major impact on my life…even my therapist says I am doing well…..and I am not at all paranoid! I want to make that totally clear.

Anyway…whoever it is that is doing this to me….I have a message for you.

I think I know who you are…what is more important…I think I know why you are doing this to me….If I am right…then maybe you should keep doing it? Or maybe not? Who knows? And for you ….I have given some clues in this post… I have actually described who is doing this and why in this post…you may have to read it backwards…or translate it into an obscure Siberian dialect to unlock the code…..but it is all there!

And anyway…I like Twisties…so keep sending them…because…you know…life is pretty straight without a Twistie!

Surprised Looks and Nodding Heads

It is always interesting to know what amuses people. I am quite easily amused as you can see…and it seems that a lot of other people are like that too.

At work, we recently had what I what I consider the pleasure, of working with two guys from India. Luckily…they both had a great sense of humor and we were able to develop what I consider great friendships with them both which continue to this day even though one of them now has returned to India and the other I see infrequently.

So…when we were told that we were about to work with some more of these beautifully gentle, good natured and very funny people…we could not help but have a small laugh at the traits and cultural differences that had been such a source of jokes (mostly at their expense…but in a good way) that we had shared together.

If you have ever worked with our friends from the sub continent…you will have noticed that they tend to have a few things that we… “westerners”… think of as pretty funny.

Firstly…be prepared for the surprised looks…they come think and fast. A surprised look is basically the answer to almost any question you might choose to ask. “How are you today?”…answer…a surprised look….”What are you having for lunch?”…answer… a surprised look…”would you like sugar in you overly hot cup of coffee?”… answer..a surprised look….”Can you calculate the ratio of the gravitational pull created by the orbit of the moon in comparison with that of the other terrestrial planets and the nett effect on tidal movement during the equinox?”….answer..a surprised look.

I am told…although by wildly unreliable sources…that most educational institutions in India actually hold a course named “Surprised Looks 101” and that it is compulsory for anyone who intends pursuing any type of career in the IT industry.

I am also advised that there is a degree called… “Master of Clickery majoring in Surprised looks” I know it seems improbable…but somehow…after working with all these guys..I tend to believe it.

We had anticipated that we might get a lot of these surprised looks from our new arrivals…and so far …we have not been disappointed.

The other very obvious thing that we tend to notice is that to nod in the negative in most Indian dialects…in fact means “yes”. This tends to lead to quite a bit of confusion. Not just for us…but for them as well…you see…half way through a “No’ nod…that really means yes to them….the nodder… begins to realise that the noddee…(person observing the nod) will perceive the “yes’ nod as meaning a “no” nod …and will do a mid nod change of direction. This gives the casual observer the impression that the nodder is not actually nodding at all…but rather making very unnatural neck movements…….and giving every indication that the nodder has absolutely no idea whatsoever the content of any converstion he might find himself engaged in.

Just imagine Peter Sellers saying…”Goodness gracious me”…and you will get the exact idea of what I am talking about.

Sit three of these guys down next to each other…talk to them…ask them some questions….and I defy anyone to not be bombarded by childhood memories of stuffing balls into clowns mouths at Luna Park!

My god…to think..in this time of Global Warming and Carbon Footprints….with the energy exerted by a billion Indians nodding their collective heads…If we could only harness that energy and use it for goodness…instead of confusion…I am sure that we could power a smallish community for months on end!