Students,
As January ends and the long cold winter months continue (or hot and sticky and sweat-inducing months as my case may be) I feel it apt to briefly detail my comings and goings in/around the year so far with a mini(ish!) post. You will see I am labeling these as ‘Post-It Note’s’. They should hopefully go some way to satisfy your urges for Teacher’s (pillow) talk in-between usual posts and also satisfy (read: ward-off) potential psycho-stalkers. Because we don’t need anymore of them, do we? Seems I already find myself unwittingly placed in the crosshairs whenever I venture into Lopburi with my irresistible foreign companions… but that’s another matter for another blog. What I’m really saying is come here often dear students for you will find regular stimulation on this page.
· Working 9 to 5 (what a way to make a living.) All’s (s)well with my university teaching as the semester rushes to its end. No sooner had Christmas and New Year been and gone than Chinese New Year and the final exams are almost upon us. I teach six English major subjects at the local university in Reading, Writing, Creative Writing, Speaking, Hotel English, and Human Behaviour and Self-Development (read: psychology.) I enjoy the teaching immensely and the students are excellent at English (two girls are even attempting to teach me Thai!) but there is an odd paradigm when compared with my previous work teaching younger kids. Where with that I was doing conversational English to classes of 40+ five times a day and so leaving exhausted after using A LOT of energy for classroom teaching, at the university I have smaller classes but the lessons must be more involved and carefully structured in order to work. I spend A LOT of time in preparation for each two and a half hour class of the six majors. Then I have to mark homework. The teaching is the easy bit. There was an opportunity on the horizon for next semester beginning June that could have taken me back to my former school. If they decide on an agreeable salary for me I may be back there with the kids and old cronies again. If the money is right. Some might call this selling out; I call it working one’s way up to be the top. And that’s always my preferred position. As ever I will keep you posted.
· Settling down. It is almost official: Brad and I are moving in together along with Natalie. We haven’t named the date yet but house-hunting is beginning this Saturday. My (unofficial) husband and I have been living in sin for a little while now and sinners do need to stick together. Sadly in Thailand we cannot leaf through the housing pages to find the perfect shack to shack up in so we must accompany a Thai teacher around the town in search of our manse… We plan to do this while decorated in white khakis/leather trousers, pink berets, and pullovers draped over the shoulders or tied loosely around the waist. To this end we have also been practicing our flouncing and over-enthusiastic hand gesturing. It has already been decided that ‘The Pleasuredome’ (as Natalie calls it) will require a garden/yard/balcony, a guest room/sauna room/back room, a collection of kitsch dog statues, and adequate security (intercom/moat/razor wire) to deter the increasingly ardent psycho-stalkers that, as mentioned earlier, our group tends to inspire (“I love pig.”)
· The case of the ‘Single White Female.’ Unfortunately I find it my duty to make a public service announcement. The bizarrely aggressive behaviour of several Thai males appears to have rubbed off on one of ‘us.’ Said lady has taken to attempts to hoard to herself any gay men (well, let’s face it any men) that she comes into contact with. ‘Single White Female’ will attack with questions on the whereabouts of her prey and demand to know why they did not first think to call and inform her if they were I dunno, venturing to the loo or some such activity… The slightly shall we say ‘unimpressed’ undercurrent of tone to this note is owing to her perpetrating a quite unforgivable transgression on your innocent Teacher: only marginally worse than ‘cock-teasing’ is ‘cock-blocking.’ Allow me to explain. On a recent visit to her workplace Teacher was struck by an attractive Thai gent of similar persuasion to he. In accordance, flirty banter was exchanged before ‘SWF’ unceremoniously (and quite deliberately) lodged her butt and her breasts in the way so that the pretty gay men would be kept safely as her own. It is in the interests of local health and wellbeing that – like a volatile chemical – ‘SWF’ be handled very carefully and preferably held at a safe distance lest she spontaneously combust (or miraculously mutate and develop a more likeable personality.)
· Out and about. In the aforementioned Human Behaviour and Self-Development (read: psychology) class this week our topic was ‘Sexuality.’ I had been delaying coverage of this particular topic for some time and had even brought forward the class on ‘Christianity’ as avoidance (!). However it could be avoided no longer. So as to initiate a less academic and more personal discussion, I thought it best to ‘out’ myself to the ten girls of the class and then they could get answers on any gay-related questions they had ‘from the horse’s mouth’ so to speak. This ‘outing’ was my first in some time and I think was largely successful, though it must be said that exclamations of “A lie wa?” (English: “What the f*ck?”) were heard from most of the girls for some minutes after my announcement. Among the (invited) questions they asked me were “Teacher, because of God are you going to Hell?”, “Have you ever sexed a ladyboy?”, and “What is a gay king and queen?” This latter question, which I suspect was posed to make me squirm (more) I found could only be answered by pointing the index finger of my right hand, forming a ‘hole’ shape with the thumb and forefinger of my left, and stabbing the ‘king’ into the hole of the ‘queen’. Sometimes I think that for a youth that enjoys so much sex, young Thais seem not to know all that much. For example who didn’t know that Ricky Martin was gay??!! Next week I will be accompanying a group including that same class of students on a field trip to a town in Northern Thailand. I can’t seem to pronounce the name of this town to the Thais approval, much less write it, but I would guess it’s spelling to be something like Loei. Thankfully I have been granted a single hotel room separate from the two gay teachers who seemed so oddly eager to bunk with me, and perhaps the trip will allow my students to properly carry-out the homework from their ‘Sexuality’ class: find Teacher a boyfriend. Kidding… (Half kidding.)
· Hello? Is anybody there? Friends are like bats. Sometimes you see them flying at you and can choose whether to continue and deal with them or duck for cover and hide. Sometimes you only notice them when they smack right into you, attach themselves with their sticky wings, and then have to be forcibly extricated from your person. They also have a tendency to only come out at night, hang upside down, and occasionally, turn nasty and try to suck blood from your jugular. In most cases though they are still around but you don’t hear from them for ages until an outbreak seems to occur and you can’t even go to 7/11 without being plagued by them. Students, the point is that one’s faithful friends appear to have gone into hiding somewhere and it is time to raise my voice to a few notables in order that their sensory hearing might pick me up and get back to me:
As January ends and the long cold winter months continue (or hot and sticky and sweat-inducing months as my case may be) I feel it apt to briefly detail my comings and goings in/around the year so far with a mini(ish!) post. You will see I am labeling these as ‘Post-It Note’s’. They should hopefully go some way to satisfy your urges for Teacher’s (pillow) talk in-between usual posts and also satisfy (read: ward-off) potential psycho-stalkers. Because we don’t need anymore of them, do we? Seems I already find myself unwittingly placed in the crosshairs whenever I venture into Lopburi with my irresistible foreign companions… but that’s another matter for another blog. What I’m really saying is come here often dear students for you will find regular stimulation on this page.
· Working 9 to 5 (what a way to make a living.) All’s (s)well with my university teaching as the semester rushes to its end. No sooner had Christmas and New Year been and gone than Chinese New Year and the final exams are almost upon us. I teach six English major subjects at the local university in Reading, Writing, Creative Writing, Speaking, Hotel English, and Human Behaviour and Self-Development (read: psychology.) I enjoy the teaching immensely and the students are excellent at English (two girls are even attempting to teach me Thai!) but there is an odd paradigm when compared with my previous work teaching younger kids. Where with that I was doing conversational English to classes of 40+ five times a day and so leaving exhausted after using A LOT of energy for classroom teaching, at the university I have smaller classes but the lessons must be more involved and carefully structured in order to work. I spend A LOT of time in preparation for each two and a half hour class of the six majors. Then I have to mark homework. The teaching is the easy bit. There was an opportunity on the horizon for next semester beginning June that could have taken me back to my former school. If they decide on an agreeable salary for me I may be back there with the kids and old cronies again. If the money is right. Some might call this selling out; I call it working one’s way up to be the top. And that’s always my preferred position. As ever I will keep you posted.
· Settling down. It is almost official: Brad and I are moving in together along with Natalie. We haven’t named the date yet but house-hunting is beginning this Saturday. My (unofficial) husband and I have been living in sin for a little while now and sinners do need to stick together. Sadly in Thailand we cannot leaf through the housing pages to find the perfect shack to shack up in so we must accompany a Thai teacher around the town in search of our manse… We plan to do this while decorated in white khakis/leather trousers, pink berets, and pullovers draped over the shoulders or tied loosely around the waist. To this end we have also been practicing our flouncing and over-enthusiastic hand gesturing. It has already been decided that ‘The Pleasuredome’ (as Natalie calls it) will require a garden/yard/balcony, a guest room/sauna room/back room, a collection of kitsch dog statues, and adequate security (intercom/moat/razor wire) to deter the increasingly ardent psycho-stalkers that, as mentioned earlier, our group tends to inspire (“I love pig.”)
· The case of the ‘Single White Female.’ Unfortunately I find it my duty to make a public service announcement. The bizarrely aggressive behaviour of several Thai males appears to have rubbed off on one of ‘us.’ Said lady has taken to attempts to hoard to herself any gay men (well, let’s face it any men) that she comes into contact with. ‘Single White Female’ will attack with questions on the whereabouts of her prey and demand to know why they did not first think to call and inform her if they were I dunno, venturing to the loo or some such activity… The slightly shall we say ‘unimpressed’ undercurrent of tone to this note is owing to her perpetrating a quite unforgivable transgression on your innocent Teacher: only marginally worse than ‘cock-teasing’ is ‘cock-blocking.’ Allow me to explain. On a recent visit to her workplace Teacher was struck by an attractive Thai gent of similar persuasion to he. In accordance, flirty banter was exchanged before ‘SWF’ unceremoniously (and quite deliberately) lodged her butt and her breasts in the way so that the pretty gay men would be kept safely as her own. It is in the interests of local health and wellbeing that – like a volatile chemical – ‘SWF’ be handled very carefully and preferably held at a safe distance lest she spontaneously combust (or miraculously mutate and develop a more likeable personality.)
· Out and about. In the aforementioned Human Behaviour and Self-Development (read: psychology) class this week our topic was ‘Sexuality.’ I had been delaying coverage of this particular topic for some time and had even brought forward the class on ‘Christianity’ as avoidance (!). However it could be avoided no longer. So as to initiate a less academic and more personal discussion, I thought it best to ‘out’ myself to the ten girls of the class and then they could get answers on any gay-related questions they had ‘from the horse’s mouth’ so to speak. This ‘outing’ was my first in some time and I think was largely successful, though it must be said that exclamations of “A lie wa?” (English: “What the f*ck?”) were heard from most of the girls for some minutes after my announcement. Among the (invited) questions they asked me were “Teacher, because of God are you going to Hell?”, “Have you ever sexed a ladyboy?”, and “What is a gay king and queen?” This latter question, which I suspect was posed to make me squirm (more) I found could only be answered by pointing the index finger of my right hand, forming a ‘hole’ shape with the thumb and forefinger of my left, and stabbing the ‘king’ into the hole of the ‘queen’. Sometimes I think that for a youth that enjoys so much sex, young Thais seem not to know all that much. For example who didn’t know that Ricky Martin was gay??!! Next week I will be accompanying a group including that same class of students on a field trip to a town in Northern Thailand. I can’t seem to pronounce the name of this town to the Thais approval, much less write it, but I would guess it’s spelling to be something like Loei. Thankfully I have been granted a single hotel room separate from the two gay teachers who seemed so oddly eager to bunk with me, and perhaps the trip will allow my students to properly carry-out the homework from their ‘Sexuality’ class: find Teacher a boyfriend. Kidding… (Half kidding.)
· Hello? Is anybody there? Friends are like bats. Sometimes you see them flying at you and can choose whether to continue and deal with them or duck for cover and hide. Sometimes you only notice them when they smack right into you, attach themselves with their sticky wings, and then have to be forcibly extricated from your person. They also have a tendency to only come out at night, hang upside down, and occasionally, turn nasty and try to suck blood from your jugular. In most cases though they are still around but you don’t hear from them for ages until an outbreak seems to occur and you can’t even go to 7/11 without being plagued by them. Students, the point is that one’s faithful friends appear to have gone into hiding somewhere and it is time to raise my voice to a few notables in order that their sensory hearing might pick me up and get back to me:
Steve – Thank you for your e-mail but tell me more about your theatre world in the ‘burgh.
Rosie – I miss your Grace Adler stylings and long for another night in Soho partying with Matt’s sticky dildo.
Zoé – Sorry I was basically asleep when you called. Nevertheless I find the Supernatural date tremendously exciting and demand to be the first person called on your return from LA.
Ria – I hope you are enjoying London. I hear it's pretty Welsh?
Tamsin – I hope you are not having any ‘mental episode’s’ without your teaching partner at your side. And what are you ‘expecting’?
Comments? Questions? Class you may be excused.
Homework: Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket... Supoib.
x Teacher
Rosie – I miss your Grace Adler stylings and long for another night in Soho partying with Matt’s sticky dildo.
Zoé – Sorry I was basically asleep when you called. Nevertheless I find the Supernatural date tremendously exciting and demand to be the first person called on your return from LA.
Ria – I hope you are enjoying London. I hear it's pretty Welsh?
Tamsin – I hope you are not having any ‘mental episode’s’ without your teaching partner at your side. And what are you ‘expecting’?
Comments? Questions? Class you may be excused.
Homework: Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket... Supoib.
x Teacher