Occasional Tales

Plan? What plan? I’m a writing genius! I started marking the AS writing this morning, but I’m not putting much effort into it because their writing, which is definitely more sophisticated than that of the PAL students, is typically annoyingly inane. They’ve been taught to write vacuous waffle at New Oriental or English First using words and phrases for every occasion, which sound impressive, but say little or nothing as they waste ink and consume space. Actually, that, in my experience, also suits undergraduates quite well. I know lots of them like writing blah, blah, blah. Anyway, we’re not interested in undergrads today. We gave the little darlings the opportunity to produce a plan, but because they’re ever so good at writing, they don’t need to plan. Some of them have enough focus to be able to maintain a discussion about an idea for a paragraph although the internal mechanics won’t necessarily be that good. Coherence is usually all right (or sufficient; sentences are rarel

Roll out the clichés; we’ll have a cliché of fun. It’s monthly test time. Yawn. Another opportunity for me to see the same errors my little darlings made a month ago. I tried to teach them how to write interesting responses to the writing tasks, but they’ve reverted to type and been dull and boring. Unfortunately, I can’t mark them down for being dull and boring, or regurgitating something half-remembered from Chinese English classes. Yes, once again I’m dishing out good marks for dog turds. They’re also doing the usual thing of mixing up articles and letters. Knowing that they like to do this sort of thing, I’ve tried to make it clear that an article ≠ letter, but I’ve been doing that for years. One nitwit has just written that snake charmers might be entitled to government acid . She probably got overexcited or was busy thinking about the Chemistry exam. Another nitwit talks about the younger generation becoming more interested in working with snacks (common error for

Is the EU just more of the same? I’ve been wondering about the EU over the past couple of days. I’ve long supposed that its creation was to prevent more European wars of the same magnitude as the First and Second, but I’ve also started wondering more recently whether, subconsciously, the EU is just more of the same going back to the days of the Holy Roman Empire. That is, some European country wants to be the predominant power in Europe, starting, I think, with the Germans once the Dark Ages were over and done with. The Spanish had a bit of a go as well, and then the French from the late 18th century before the Germans reformed the band. Then someone thought that diplomacy might be a better idea than fighting horribly destructive wars which had become tainted with unpleasant political ideologies. Either way, it’s all about whether the French or the Germans get to run Europe. The British don’t really want anyone to run Europe, hence we don’t mind the pretence that the French and

Zum Befehl, Herr Oberst! At some time in the past, and more recently, I’ve had the distinct impression that a lot of sonnets can be quite shouty sorts of things. They seem to have a high percentage of imperatives, which the poet employs to berate the object of his desire like some mere servant. Samuel Daniel’s first sonnet to Delia isn’t so bad. He doesn’t start shouting until the third quatrain. In the second sonnet, he’s shouting from the very beginning “Go, wailing verse… Present the image… Witness your father’s grief…” Nag, nag, nag. It’s not just Daniel because I’m sure this is a phenomenon I’ve noticed in passing before. Perhaps the shouty ones were written by schoolboys (although they were probably 16-year-olds at university; same thing back in the 16th and 17th centuries), who aren’t known for their moderation. The next day. I thought I’d use the first sonnet from Michael Drayton’s Idea series as the next sonnet to torment my little darlings. The qualitative d

Nothing much happens. The temperature seems to be beginning to take that late autumn tumble when it goes from being cool to being cold. Our gradual shift to winter seems to be being a little more benign here. Two years ago, we had snow on the 1st of November and winter lasted until late April with rare bouts of pleasantness that were false dawns on each occasion. Last year the shift to winter was less dramatic, but it’s been awhile since one of those years when the weather has been reasonably tolerable to the end of December before the winter freeze in January. It’s been a day of new stuff. New version of Freegate, which I’ll use from home while I can; new version of Firefox, but I’m inclining to Chrome; updates for Windows; and a new version of Font Creator. Thanks to the first of these I was able to watch the Need for Speed: The Run videos on gamespot, which are otherwise blocked. (“I was f_ckin’ rubbish at Hot Pursuit,” admitted Emperor Jintao, “which is why I had those f_cke

Another pointless post. What the hell is wrong with the Greeks? Mind you, what the hell was wrong with Europe pretending that the EU could adopt a single currency all those years ago. I may not be an economist, but even I wondered how the economies of such a disparate group of countries were meant to function successfully together. I’ve also wondered on other occasions about the point of the EU. 66 years ago after World War II, it might’ve made sense after 145 years of the French and the Germans squabbling over who got to be Top Nation in Europe. I don’t believe there was any harm in Western European countries working closely together (which was undoubted spurred by the Cold War), but a united Europe makes less sense than a civilised one where the wars of the past millennia and a half become part of history. Meanwhile, there’s been another spate of stories about hacking and fingers being pointed at the Empire. “We never done it,” the government whines. “We’re opposed to hacking