Chaipatsu- Every Picture Tells a Story
On this tour of duty, a lot of guys and gals have dyed their hair to various shades of brown--the gamut from ginger to auburn. So the old exercise wherein the students describe their appearance has taken on a bit of a twist from the usual "brack hair, brack eyes" routine.
Mind you, I don't need to do that sort of description crap anymore...hey..I teach at a university! We talk about fiscal policies and negotiation techniques... which means Hiroyuki is passed out in the back, Megumi studies her split ends, Yoko admires her keitai cell phone, and the rest just await your dear teacher to dance around like some sort of wind-up toy.
They just fired some hapless older gent from Georgia for no apparent reason. I only talked to him once, and that was about the only other time he was in Japan--he shipped through Okinawa en route to Da Nang to fight the Vietnamese in that war.
The Russia under Stalin motto seems to be ringing true. I am sure if he could, the president would actually behead his victims, or feed them to the lions for sport. What is most vexing is what informs his educational policy? From colleagues who have been here for a long time (8 years), they tell me he doesn't actually read anything, he acts on compulsion based on some sort of information that comes from God knows where, and none of it is pedagogically of any soundness.
Part of the blame might be the sycophantic core of pedants who form his counsel. Hmm. I am reminded of the Roman senate in the age of Caligula or Nero... as wonderfully portrayed by Charles Laughton or Peter Ustinov in Spartacus or maybe even Stewart Grainger in Salome... you know... the "yes" men who just save their own asses at the expense of others.
The poor hapless dean, who is recently flaking away (literally...flakes of scalp and skin falling onto his navy blue blazer in largish chunks, and his face red and scabby) is just one step ahead of having his own head chopped off.
As for me? Well, my well appointed office (MAC G4, 26" monitor, mahogany paneling, a conference room with a large mahogany table and four chairs, my desk in an "L" shape with one of those executive, punched-leather chairs you recall from the Rock Hudson/Tony Randall movies showing the high life of Manhattan's Madison Avenue advertising execs...you know...martinis at five, a nosh at Delmonico's, a little side table later on at the Village Vanguard to see the last set of Earl "Fatha" Hines' two-handed melodies, then after hours at Jilly's joshing around with Frank and Dean, and of course in the wee small hours of the morning bedding some Ziegfeld girl or a Doris Day bumpkin...) is away from everyone else, way up the hill in the graduate faculty office building.
Ahh...the luxury of being an associate professor! Sort of reeks of the British officer's club, without the pomp and circumstance.
So far I've made enough noise to keep people at bay. They did grant me my request for an all-expenses paid trip to the JALT national conference, and permission (permission!) to leave the country for holidays in Thailand for Christmas. So far, so good.
Acrimony will set in should I be granted rights (rights!) to carry out some research, which is to see is if teaching to the TOEIC English proficiency test actually increases TOEIC scores. I'll wager it doesn't, but let's play the cards and see how they fall. That is the state of the union. Stalin has shaken it up a bit, but the waves have yet to make an impact on your true Gaga.
Gaga | 10:36 PM
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