Entries this day: Work night

Work

7:32am JST Thursday 22 January 2004

Yesterday at work I had a class with a guy whose tickets expire the next day, so he was taking a man to man lesson to ease the pain of losing the tickets/money. I was like, "what do you want to study? you wanna use the book?" and he goes, "no," and clearly flipped the book upside down and away.

He asked me to help him with his job; he needs to make phone calls to customers, and he didn't have a few set introductory lines. I asked him the parameters and came up with something like this for him:

Hello my name is Bingo; I like to climb on things; can I have a banana?  Eeek eek.

Oh wait, not that. I came up with this:

Hello; this is Akiakiaki from Joe's Computer Shop calling in regards
to a problem with your [fill in the blank].  

Are you familiar with the problem that was reported?

(( Do you know who I can talk to about it? ))

Excellent.  Before we begin, may I have your name?

HI, Jack, what seems to be the problem?

and I wrote it all down nicely for him on a flow chart according to what the customer says, etc. When we practiced it, I deliberately didn't follow the flowchart perfectly, making sure he could use the language without just mindlessly reading it from the page. Like I would say, "hello, this is Joe" to make sure he didn't say "before we begin, may I have your name?" but he said it anyway, and caught himself halfway through.

A different time I stated that I had no idea what the problem was before he asked, "are you familiar with the problem?" to make sure he didn't ask that line. He did ask anyway; he didn't know the meaning of the word 'familiar.' So we worked that bug out of the flowchart.

The next time I went right into the problem so he didn't have to ask the familiar line, but interrupt with asking the cat's name.

The student seemed really happy with the results; I was really pleased to have helped him so meaningfully.

- - - -

A different student's points expired the next day, so she also booked a man to man lesson. She's a cartoonist and just wanted to chat. I gave her the line, "When I get a deadline [for my work], I pretend the deadline is sooner, then I go travel after I finish the project." (or something like that; what I gave her sounded better) She was like, "this is really important for me," meaning "this is really useful for me." I was like, "yay!"

- - - -

Had the opportunity to talk to the student who makes no sense in voice. This is the student who chided me for not having given enough personal talk time last time I taught voice. I put everyone in pairs and paired this student with myself. When I was asked, "what do you understand, think, or consider about my opinion?" I was able to say, "I don't follow most of what you said," and explain to the best of my ability what I heard, but how I didn't understand how they were related topics or how any of them related to what I had asked.

A super high level woman came in and was able to interrupt my conversation with this student, and I gave her the lowdown; and the other student continued the convo for about 5 words, she was like, "I think I'll join the other group," and got up and left.

I did a quick check-in with the other groups in the voice room, who had spontaneously switched from pairs into two larger groups. They said they were doing fine. I wondered if they were specifically happy I had taken the confusing student out of the group.

night

8:06am JST Thursday 22 January 2004

Met janette near KQ station (and saw a student who I think was the high level woman in voice, but couldn't recognize her fo sheezy; she was all bundled up) and told janette a bit about my day and then we decided to get some hot drinks and watch the water fountains at Cinecitta. Lo, the Pink Panther fountain had just started, which is my favorite so we ran the rest of the way to see it. janette didn't agree that it was the best, but she liked it at least as well as "Swing swing swing."

We got hot chocolate and hot tea and a strawberry tart from Starbucks and though janette was actually just joking about it when she asked, we climbed the steps to overlook the fountains from the circular wall two stories up.

Just cuddled and chatted and felt the wall vibrate when KQ line trains would speed by. I discovered that by pounding the handrail along the wall, a Starbucks cup would dance about in its bag in a most entertaining way. Well, entertainingly enough to do it for about a minute.

The next water fountain show came on and janette climbed up onto the wall to watch because on the previous one, she had just held herself up on the handrail, which became most tiring, I'm sure.

We shared all our stories of the day, including her telling me how excruciatingly slow Fred was at getting ready for his international flight to go home. They finally got on the train for a 2 hour ride (assuming they don't get lost) with 3 hours til his flight, and after the train started Fred was like, "but when will we eat?" and janette goes, "let's just get to the airport first" and Fred agreed. They took the Narita express from Tokyo station (smart), and asked the conductor to make sure at what terminal they should terminate their ride (smart) and Fred was whisked to the plane by the ground staff 15 minutes before the flight took off.

I'm glad he made it.

It was suddenly 11pm and we headed home. Once we got to the Nambu line, I was all, "do you want to stand [and leave sooner] or sit [and leave later]?" and janette was all, "stand," and I'm all, "I wanna sit," and we sat. I acknowledged that I had given her a choice but didn't accept her answer.

- - - -

Home. janette chatted with Dan while I did email (including an email from Marta) and then bed bed bed.