Entries this day: AM Work train

AM

10:04am JST Saturday 3 July 2004

Morning came early today as I'm at Jen's uncle's work learning how to do stuff around here. It was fun to chat with Jen on the way here. Really cool operation going on here at the office.

I'm to take over for next weekend while Jen is kickin' it in OZ. I may have the option to take the job permanently, in which case I would reduce my hours at Gaba because I can make more here in 7.5 hours than at Gaba in 10.5 hours.

Longer train ride, but it's overall a better deal for me.

Work

8:54pm JST Saturday 3 July 2004

Work was okay today. My percentage of exciting students was well below 50%. Maybe 2.5 out of 7. I had one really good lesson where Kazumi was trying to learn the difference between bored and boring. I had her do different things and tell me what she was doing. "I am opening the door. I am closing the door. I am dropping beans." (there are beans in bowls as decoration near my cube. I put them to good use.)

Then I was like, "okay, what is the door?" "The door is opened, the door is closed, the beans are dropped." Not perfect grammar, but it got the point across. Then I switched to allow her to be passive. The computer was on screen saver mode. "Okay, what is the computer doing?" (hint: nothing). And I got her to give me, "the computer is boring." and then "The computer is boring so I am bored."

She dropped more beans for good measure, feeling the words tumble about in her brain, looking for concepts. This, for me, is teaching at its finest.

- - - -

After work, Tetsuya (manager) confirmed that I couldn't work next weekend. I'll be at Jen's uncles. "Yep; I can't work; sorry." but not reallllly sorry.

train

8:44pm JST Saturday 3 July 2004

RAN from Toyoko line to Nambu line. just missed the train by like 8 seconds.

Damn.

'sides that, I had just missed the previous Toyoko train by like 10 seconds, which has just piled up as lots of time spent waiting in the stations.

It was fun to run through the station, though. I ran down the steps faster than a dude ran down the escalator. And then I ran up the next steps faster than the next dude ran up them. Zing!