At Ease

Now feeling at ease having reached the end of the working week. I can't honestly say there's any real sense of achievement or fulfilment involved. I'm not sure there ever is. But it's more than enough to avoid disappointment and frustration. A sort of truce with the world. Luckier than most, I suspect.

Still Mildly Ranting

The mild rant apropos the iniquities of IT in Education in which I indulged back in January and expanded upon, rather more intemperately, a few days later never really went away. It never does. Every time I hit a hitch with a screen that doesn't function, a cable that doesn't connect, a connection that suddenly goes slow for no reason I can fathom, a bureaucratic webpage that I have to fill in which doesn't allow me access, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, I get hot under the old collar.

But this is not out of blind stupidity. I don't expect the world to run smoothly for me; in fact, I'm mildly surprised when it does.

No, the thing is that when these silly hitches occur in the classroom I recall the earliest very difficult months of my job, when I was learning painfully - but eventually successfully - how to do it. And that involved figuring out the basics. Like how to get a class of extremely non-compliant kids to get on with what needed to be gotten on with and do some real learning. And that involved ensuring every step of a lesson, especially the tricky stuff at the start, flowed. Which meant that each step needed to work, had to work, non-negotiably. 

And now, when I'm dealing with yet another unpredictable malfunction as a lesson begins, I feel for the long-ago younger version of me who would not have been able to guarantee what was necessary to guarantee to function competently. And eventually excel. And I wonder about all the 'beginning' teachers I encounter, especially those faced with kids of the non-compliant variety, of which there are more than a few even in this sunny Far Place, and how often they have to deal with problems created solely by the stuff that everyone was told would somehow make teaching easier, more efficient, more 'fun', yadda, yadda, yadda.

Kids' Stuff

An excellent 'listing article' (not sure if there's a proper word for the genre) ('listicle'? no, don't think so) published earlier in the month in the Graun has stuck in my mind. 25 books to read before you turn 25 isn't exactly a memorable title, but the list itself is. And has reminded this reader how much he misses books aimed at kids. 

Must say, I think seven is a bit too early for the classic Tom's Midnight Garden, but that's the title that most triggered my longing. Just brilliant. Wish I could teach it again. And again.

Putting It Into Words

I mentioned to a class today that sometimes when I'm struggling with a piece of writing that I can't quite 'get' - especially a tricky poem - I read it out loud and surprisingly often something clicks. I didn't expand further on this, but it occurs to me that I experience something similar if someone asks me to explain something I'm not quite sure of. When I try to articulate my understanding I frequently find myself clarifying what it is I think I understand and, again, ''getting it' in a way I don't think I really did before I started talking. It's all a bit odd.

And here's a further thought. Putting all this in writing can help precipitate what seems an even deeper, or possibly more confident, undertanding.

Of course, there's always the possibility of being wrong and just not knowing it. But that's all part of the fun, I suppose.

The Best Bits

As I hope I made clear yesterday, Randai Macbeth was all good in this spectator's eyes, but I'll have a go at specifying the best bits by way of a clumsy review: 

The bits where the musicians came in suddenly (musically, I mean, and usually loudly) at the completion of a scene/act/segment, ensuring a rapid pace forward; the bits where the super-athletic chorus moved in snappily, crisply, synchronised fashion, creating their own sound effects with clapping & cries; the bit where King Duncan's corpse was carried out, but it wasn't a body, it was just a cleverly folded piece of white cloth that shrouded the unseen late king; the bit where drops/streaks of red stuff streamed repetitively across a screen above the stage action during the aforementioned murder; the bit where Lady M smiled knowingly in melodramatically hypocritical style towards the audience (getting a few laughs, and rightly so) having feigned innocence after the murder as suspicions mount; the bit with the beautifully choregraphed killing of Macbeth by his nemesis Macduff, suggesting something like a genuine slaughter; the bits featuring the manically over-the-top witches, fairly glowing with unsettling intensity; the bit where Banquo's ghost came, looking down the tunnel of the chorus at the king, in a nicely underplayed sequence, wisely eschewing the manifold melodramatic possibilities for once; the bit where the actor playing Macduff performed the set-piece introductory speech, with details of the theatrical traditions involved, and suitable apologies for any short-comings on the part of the performers (at which point I decided I wouldn't mind being cast as Macduff myself & getting the speech); the bit with Macbeth sprawled very dead at the end (but keeping his head) in a neat, unshowy, but striking little tableau.

Need to stop there. Take it from me, it was top rate stuff. I loved every minute. (And I just completely forgot to reference the great songs interspersing the action!!) 

An Afternoon To Remember

It was Noi who noticed that, as part of the Pesta Raya season celebrated in and around the Esplanade, a play entitled Randai Macbeth was to be performed over this weekend. She sort of half-shyly asked if we might go along some three weeks back, and I'm very glad indeed she did. We caught today's matinee (and sadly final performance) this afternoon and I have to tell you, it ranks up there as one of the best things I've ever had the pleasure of seeing in any theatre anywhere.

Put simply - in fact, overly simply - it's a Malay version of the Scottish Play. So when it was first broached that we might attend I did have a reservation - but this was not that we'd be watching something performed in Bahasa Melayu. To be honest, this was something of a pull factor as I knew immediately that the novelty of the language would help me off-set the weariness I feel whenever viewing the play is suggested. I think I said it before in this very Far Place: I've taught the play so often that I'm suffering from such a degree of the fatigue of familiarity that it's the one Shakespeare play I'd refuse to teach again. As it is, I had to force myself to watch the brilliant movie version starring (I use the word advisedly) the mighty Mr Denzel Washington. The fact that I watched it twice is sort of mitigated by my having to break up both viewings into smaller, highly appreciated, chunks.

Anyway this is drifting from the central point about today's experience. The show was fabulous in almost every respect, and I feel the need to tell the world this. But there were so many good things about it that I'm a bit overwhelmed at the moment - and looking forward to my dinner, which is a bit of a distraction from writing too much about the show now. So here's my solution: inspired by my overuse of the word bit in the previous sentence I intend to recall all the best bits, of which there were an abundance, ahead of tomorrow's post and list as many as possible when I put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard, or whatever.

Digging Deep

Left the gym just now nursing a deep & abiding thirst, a sign I'd been pushing it a bit, effort wise. Except I hadn't really, it was just that my body had been heavy & out of sorts prior to setting out and it's been a heavily hot day and I'm just that little bit frazzled on account of a week of work that stretched these elderly sinews. And now, with several glasses of chilled water down my gullet and time to recover I still feel like I could down a gallon of juice and nod off for three and a half days without stirring.

All signs I must be doing something right, I suppose.

Concluding

Approaching the end of Syawal, so only one night left for the twinkling lights to serve their tour of duty. And we've been concluding visiting family & friends by having a good time this evening at Nahar & Yati's. A wide range of comestibles (of course) have left us happily thinking of spending tomorrow at home with a simple sandwich to round off the month. It's all highly satisfactory, I must say with a happy, if irritating, complacency.

In A Great Moment

I'm all for living in the moment, zen-mindfulness style, but lousy at actually doing so. Easily distracted, as they say, or used to say, in school reports. Not sure if anyone in teaching is allowed to be that honest now. But generally I try, if given the space, to launch a quick review of great moments of the day. It's sometimes quite surprising how many one can salvage even from a pretty rotten span of hours.

So today involved a fair amount of running about like a maniac. But more than the usual number of distinctly bright spots. And here's the winner, by a short head:

I chanced upon a sensational five and a half minutes of the latest incarnation of Cardiacs live in Manchester of all places. And promptly lost myself, having a minor out-of-body experience in SAC (also, of all places.) If someone had told me they could play Fiery Gun Hand note perfect on stage - making it look effortless - I would have questioned their sanity. But no longer.

And it doesn't stop there. Just after I finished (ready to buzz off to a lesson) I realised that the entire concert!!!!!! is up there on YouTube waiting for me to blow my mind to. Well, that's my entertainment for the weekend fixed!

Re-charging

Another long one! (Day, that is.) But quite a bit of fun here & there.

And now run-down. Like my phone, which is plugged in and re-charging in what looks like a passively, easy, relaxed kind of way. I, in contrast, need to eat & drink the various bits & pieces cunningly provided by The Missus. 

I think I know who gets the better deal between me and my phone. And it's not the phone! Hah!