Every year without fail the 6th grade primary school students will suddenly stop cooperating and downward spiral into work avoidance and general bad behavior. Usually this happens sometime in the second trimester, this year my dream team of 6th graders who have been my favorite for years, who I dared to hope might go all the way without doing the whole “frankenstein’s monster” thing at long last yesterday decided to fall at the final hurdle and turn into tosspieces.
Really it isn’t so bad, I only have to deal with them twice more, once will not even be English centered as I tend to just play some school yard games like “British Bulldogs” or something on the final day rather than teach them something they have no intention of remembering, but that still leaves one lesson of futile instruction yelling and man handling to get through the day ahead. It really doesn’t help that I no longer teach with the homeroom teacher who’s authority is the closest thing to absolute, instead I teach with a newly hired assistant teacher. She’s a lovely lady, but if you can think back to your school days and think how much respect you had for the assistant then you’ll understand how little she is able to help with crowd control.
I complain, but it’s nothing I can’t stomach for the remaining few weeks – it is just one of the downsides of the job (thankfully outnumbered by the upsides).
Happy news:
I bought Little Big Planet the other day after trading in Oblivion after only a few weeks (Oblivion seems like a game I’d love to play but frankly with it being entirely in Japanese it’s a little more tiring than it is fun to read through pages and pages of quest entries and spell effects etc.) and it’s one of the most charming games I’ve played in a long time. Truthfully the single player is only mediocre with some nice touches, but the multiplayer is hilarious, I love the odd mix between competition and cooperation and there are some spectacular mini-games and player made levels to boot. Plus for the more creative person, collecting parts for your sackboy and decorations for your box is highly entertaining. I have to say it’s refreshing not to be killing or beating the bejesus out of someone or something for a change.
Filed under: money
Well,
Since graduating university 3 and a half years back I have paid not a penny to the students loan company, previously this was due to salary not meeting the demand, more recently because I hadn’t filled out an income assesment form. Either way I will soon be paying it back, the question is how to do it. Thanks to the quite frankly collosal collapse of the vlaue of the pound I could theoretically pay back my entire ownings in one swift blow – making me debt free but currently a man of limited means. Or, I could pay back a wodge of it and maintain some limited funds, but risk losing the benefit of a devalued pound in the future. Of course, the third option is “catch me if can” and simply dodge all the bullets by continually living in Japan. Although then I’d feel like a massive wanker for taking advantage of a system that was rather kind to me. Lets not beat around the bush, I WOULD be a massive wanker. So I won’t do it.
Lets dispel any myths: there is no “live in another country for X years and it gets wiped” clause. If one has not payed his/her loans back after 25 years they become wiped, regardless of country, but that’s the only clause. Let’s be clear, it’s not worth being financially destitute for 25 years to avoid paying off a loan.
The flipside of the coin is that the interest on the loan is only the rate of inflation. So therefore there is really little incentive to pay the mother off as comparatively speaking the loan will in fact get no bigger. However, the crumbling UK economy is the real linchpin in the whole process.
To put it in perspective:
I came to Japan in 2006 and bought yen through my bank at a rate of 208 yen to the pound, today I can transfer money to the UK at a rate of 134 yen to the pound, that’s a 36% decrease, effectively meaning if I pay off my loan right this very moment, then my loan is cheaper by a monstrous 36%. Currently I’m leaning towards just erasing my debts and seeing my savings reduced to a rather pitiful amount.
Your thoughts? Should I do the decent thing?
Filed under: Daily life
In keeping with my anticipated failure of the JLPT, I backed it up with an unaticipated failure of the fifth translation assignment on my course scoring 68% where 70% is required for a pass. This doesn’t mean I failed the whole thing of course, in fact, I’m pretty certain I’ve passed the whole thing comfortably as an average of 70% over the whole course is all I need and I am safely above that. I knew I’d been getting lazy and just doing the tests in a short period of time without researching the answers, but still, a slap in the face none the less.
I’ll tell you one thing I did pass though. My urine test. In your face diabetes, you are not invited to my pizza party.
I failed the Japanese 1-kyuu test it appears. This in itself is not surprising, what IS surprising is that I failed it by only 4% scoring 66% overall, an extra 17 points would have sealed the deal for me.
This is one of the few times I’ve failed an exam of something and actually been rather pleased with the outcome. As expected I gave myself a massive boost in the listening weighing in at 80%. Unexpectedly I also weighed in impressively to the grammar and reading section with 66% but only achieved 51% in the vocabulary section.
Possibly the most ironic thing is that I actually scored higher on the 1kyuu this year than I did on the noticably easier 2kyuu last year. Last year I scraped by with 60.25% where a pass grade of 60 is required. This year I took 66 where 70 is needed. How does that work?
I need to pass this next time though because as James so wisely put it: “I’m sick of paying 6,000 yen plus travel expenses to take this shit.”
Filed under: Uncategorized
Remember this?
Genuinely hilarious.
OK. Now I was the first to criticise Resident Evil 4 and I almost heretically disputed the flocks of awards it seemed to garner despite it’s apocalyptically bad story and now characteristic bad acting. “You’re going DOWN Salzaar!”. Despite my personal reservations about the game I am happy to admit that the new style of gameplay was a welcome change of pace, instead of shooting a peasent in the vague bottom, middle or top areas, one could relieve a spaniard of his knife weilding hand should they so want to, before saying “Dance for me boy!” and unloading into his feet. It was undeniably fun.
Resident Evil (or Biohazard) is a series that I believe to have gotten worse proportionally with time. The first outing was spectacular and despite the lack of eye sex from the chunky polyogonal mish-mash it was frankly a terrifying and involving experience. Ignoring the “Directors Cut”, Resident Evil 2 was also relatively enjoyable, albeit short, but this was made up for with the oppurtunity to go through the game as both Clare and Leon, and to get the full story you really did have to do it. Resident Evil 3 was where everything seemed to go wrong. It just wasn’t scary, the main antagonist was a gigantic pervert in a raincoat and being as the whole thing was just an odd extenssion of RE2 it felt like one had already played through it once. There were some neat tie-ins with RE2 but other than that it was an entirely forgettable game that was mercilessly lampooned by the far superior Silent Hill after Konami had decided to get in on the action (ironically a series with an even steeper decline than that of RE, but that’s another story).
Between RE3 and the afore mentioned RE4 was RE: Code Veronica, which was frankly abomniable. The control system was something of an archaic monstrosity and somehow it fielded two of the most irritating protagonists in the history of protagonistism. The game was made EVEN MORE irritating by the fact that once reaching the half way point the player was forced into the body of comeback kid Chris Redfield, who then chased the fleeing pair through almost exactly the same levels they’d passed through (leaving it largely devoid of ammo and supplies in the process).
At this point I’ll choose to ignore the Gamecube remake of RE, it was good, but it barely counts as an entire game.
Now, RE5. The demo has been on the PS3 store for a few days and has already come under cartoonish levels of criticism for the fact that one cannot walk and shoot at the same time. Having played the demo close to exhaustively yesterday, I have to say that I honestly feel that the lack of movement and firing is one of the games’ greatest assets.
It would have been easy for the developers to make this into yet another FPS, a genre so oversaturated it really is terrifically difficult to get excited about even allegedly groundbreaking releases suck as Killzone 2. The game seems far more ambitious than previous efforts, the new co-operation with a partner element to the game adds in extra food for thought to the player, who must already think several moves ahead as the old “run and gun” technique isn’t an option. Clever use of cover, timing, set pieces such as explosive barrels and the enemies abilities are essential to survival. In fact in one of the two demo levels made available one of the best options for killing off enemies with an extreme lack of ammo is to coax in the axe wielding executioner who seems very unconcerned for his buddies well being as we waves his axe about haphazardly. Probably the most terrifying element of the game is the lack of awareness brought on by the general lack of mobility the controls allow for, with no strafing and a tight camera angle a rabid villager can sneak up upon you unawares and relieve you of your excess body parts with the greatest of ease. After a few minutes of playing I was swinging the camera about with the right analog stick with the frenzy of a paranoid schizophrenic in search of would be assailants.
Admittedly the demo gives limited access to the game as a whole, but so far I’m forced to say, it’s the first Resident Evil game in the better part of a decade that I’m looking forward to. Nadgers to all those who are crying about the control system.
Filed under: movies
It’s what I’m being.
It seems your luck is in Joel Schumacher as I am hereby proactively awarding the title of “new worst movie ever” to the hollywood adaptation of Dragonball.
I give the floor to anyone who would seek to argue with this, but I very much doubt there will be any challengers.
I never thought that Batman and Robin would be topped. But this is a real doozy.
Filed under: Uncategorized
Twitter. Is it really as stupid as it seems?
I went and got myself an account, and so far the answer is yes. It really does seem that stupid, even the promotional video which I figured might shed some light on precisely why I should use it failed to do so. As far as I can tell its primary use is to update people on things that aren’t important enough to blog or mail anyone about. Anyway, it seems to be popular these days so I’ll give it a prod and see if it moves. I will give it 7 days to see if it takes, anyone who has a twitter account then feel free to add me, maybe that will make it more interesting.
Also, after at least 2 minutes of wrestling with it I can’t figure out how to insert it into myblog, so its already losing points.
Filed under: hilarity
Frankly, I think this is the single best instance of foul language ingenuity I have ever seen the meteoroligcal services suffer.
Have that people of Nottingham
Whoever perpetrated this act, you’re a hero.
Filed under: stunning revelations
I think perhaps rather than being punished for this, Michael Phelps should be given an extra gold medal for astounding achievement considering his hobbies. I personally find it hard…nay..impossible to imagine a situation in which a stoner could win Olympic Gold in a swimming contest.
Apparently Phelps isn’t familiar with “The News of the World” either. If he had been then he would have known that he could simply have denied the allegations as no one would have believed them anyway.
