Tag: grammar

Two Whispers – 23rd January 2024

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 4 Comments

Where the light turned to dust
Silence remains
When two became none

Where the light became air
Extinguished flames
Await the rising sun

Where the light turns to the sky
Who prays
And in their solitude sit?

Where the light falls west
Who stays
To watch the candles lit?

Submitted to #WDYS

Today I’m feeling:

Good and positive again. I can feel that I have a better attitude and more energy in the days that I exercise in the morning and that I should also force myself to do this on weekends and holidays as I often just fall into laziness then.

Today I’m grateful for:

The little female (age indefinable) petrol pump assistant who double-checked what I wanted and then, after filling the car,  gave me two bottles of water. She tried to explain about the water but I didn’t understand. I just assumed that they were free!

The best thing about today was:

Taking time with a couple of my troublesome students this afternoon and helping them get a better idea of a grammar point. I felt relief and joy when they started getting the answers right by themselves. I even managed to get a smile out of one of them.

What was out of your control today and how did you handle it?

My first class today with grade 8s was a little wearisome. Some days it feels like they just insist on not learning. I stayed relatively calm but inside I feel a little tired and deflated from it.

Something I learned today?

The single most expensive item for the British in the American Civil War was rum.

Review your acts, and then for vile deeds chide yourself, for good be glad. — Discourses 3.10

We went to the temple again for some follow-up Buddhist things for Grandmum. I did as was directed though wasn’t sure about any of what was happening. In the end, we served monks food and everyone (except me) at lunch too.

25 THINGS ABOUT LIFE I WISH I HAD KNOWN 10 YEARS AGO
3. Spend Time with People You Love. That’s your family and best friends. If you don’t have a family, create one. Most people in life are only visitors. Family is for life.

My tribe is my family these days. I’m not particularly close to anyone except for Amy and I’m fine with that. If I ever need to make new relationships they will come naturally from within my tribe. 

The internet definitely has made things easier to stay in contact with my tribe, who are scattered all around the world.

Whilst the ease of communication keeps us together, our tribe survives apart.

Break Down The Wall – 22nd October 2023

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 15 Comments

Disappointment with humanity
And the reality we conceed
To American dreams of freedom
From which we’ll never be freed

Misinformed and kept indebted
To slave away for all we need
Uneducated and ignorant
Of other points of view or creed

But the towers of empire crumble
As revolutions rise from seed
And the writing is on the wall
But only for those who read

23rd Aug 2024 – Submitted to Poets and Storytellers United – break free

Today I’m feeling:

(Early) Anxious and wound up. I went to sleep easily but woke up cold because of the intense aircon that I couldn’t figure out how to temper. Both Amy and I feel like we have colds and that could quite easily be true after being on a plane and then into the crazy humidity here. My shoulders are stiff from not moving much on this hard bed and I’m awake well before I’d like to be.

(Late) Calm and contemplative after a 2-hour massage, good food and even a reasonable enough temperature to do the short walk back to the hotel from the shopping centre. Back home tomorrow. Happy.

Today I’m grateful for:

Nong Fai for picking us up at the airport last night when we were dog-tired after a long day.

The funny taxi driver who picked us up from the train station this afternoon and then the Auntie who massaged me into pain for two hours at the hotel. Bless them all for their small parts in my story.

The best thing about today was:

Finding new work pants at Monotone and then some cheap soaps at Bath and Body Works after a train and MRT ride into the city. No rush today, everything will be ok.

Also sending a couple of boxes of things back home via a courier service so that our bags will make the weight limit for our final flight. Only 430 baht. Bargain (so long as it arrives!)

What was out of your control today and how did you handle it?

I got caught out yet again with my visa, this time not having a re-entry permit so now I just have a 30-day visa on arrival until I go to immigration again on Tuesday.

I have a visa to stay and I can leave any time but I’m not allowed to leave without permission and not allowed back in with the visa! Frustrating.

Something I learned today?

I found the Monotone stores in BKK again today and was advised to use LINE to contact them in future rather than use Shopee as there are fake stores on there! Weird to think that people would imitate this rather small independent brand.

I took this picture because I like the message for my kids and am curious if any of them will tell me that it is grammatically incorrect. 

Big Time – 16th February 2023

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 3 Comments

Asleep on the grass forever
Amongst the trees, staring at the sky
Nothing within vision
The clouds keep drifting by

Oblivious to the tears
Or the dramas yet to come
No more sadness or joy
At the sight of the rising sun

A dot on the map
A blip on the radar, gone
A marker in the road
That we’re all travelling on

2nd Sep 2024 – Submitted to Ragtag Daily Prompt – blip

Today I’m feeling:

Happy, then shocked, then numb.

Today I’m grateful for:

Being able to spend another day on this earth. This week’s events bring life into a sharper focus.

The best thing about today was:

Working with 1/6 in the morning following up on the work they struggled with yesterday. My plan went well and slowly, slowly, most students got a better understanding of this minor grammar point I was teaching.

It made me happy to see the kid’s own pleasure at getting it and also made me realise I need to slow up on certain points and work out better ways to present them.

What was out of your control today and how did you handle it?

After my first class going well I was ready to grab a coffee but as I was going to the stairs I saw a bunch of primary students coming down from the floor above so I stood and high-fived them as they went past. More and more came and some students who knew me were happy to see me, particularly Nana who always comes and gives me a big hug.

As they kept coming Gun from 2/7 came running around the corner and said ‘Teacher, you know about Big? He’s gone, he’s dead!’ and off he went running down the stairs past all the primary kids.

Now, Gun is a bad boy and likes it, so I was a little bit dubious though I thought something like telling a lie like that was even below him. The last of the primary kids came down and I started behind them. On the way up were Aum and Sunwa and when they saw me they just burst into tears and hugged me. I took them up to the classroom and soon other students followed all looking sad, shocked and teary.

Gun appeared again and wanted to show me his phone. I knew what was coming and sure enough, he showed me a picture of Big, who had been hit by a car on his motorbike, his body lying at a weird angle on the side of the road. I told Gun to stop showing this and not to share it but unfortunately, pictures like this are normal here and even on the front pages of newspapers and websites. I don’t even know where Gun got the pictures from.

More kids came, some only then finding out the news and it was a very sombre atmosphere. I hung around and comforted some or just sat quietly watching everyone. I could see one or two of the boys who were Big’s closest friends were particularly distraught.

Eventually, David came and I left for my own class with 1/7 and some of them already had seen RIP pictures shared on Facebook. I took the class slowly and the kids were good today as I promised they could go early if they listened and finished the work. I talked more with a few students outside and came home.

I wasn’t particularly close to Big as he often didn’t come to my class or would skulk in late without me even noticing him but he still occupied a small space in my brain that will no longer be filled.

I feel sad that someone so young is lost like that and sad at the grief of his friends and I feel in some way his co-students are sad because they know that it could just as easily be them. Big is not sad, but we all are.

Something I learned today?

I watched a wingsuit video today of people jumping from a plane over the Maldives. Looking at the islands below it seems to me that the generic photo used to advertise the sea houses over sparkling clear blue water is right next to the airport. You could just get off the plane and walk across the runway and into one of these houses. I would guess the airport is not that busy but it also shows that the idyllic picture is not quite what it seems if you could see the full 360-degree view!

23rd Feb 2023 – Looking at a map it seems like almost every island of the Maldives has an airport so I guess wherever you might be there would be the occasional rumble of planes going by.

What song takes me back to a specific memory?

Impossible! Too many songs, too many memories. This question is suitable for a casual music listener. I’m transported to so many different parts of my life depending on what I’m listening to.

I took this picture because Tigger loves our house so much. He can lie anywhere and feel good. I do have to double-check sometimes to make sure he’s still breathing!

I got buckets full of time, I got nothing but time – 26th May 2018

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

“Time is such a deceiver.”

So, it’s been a while.  Who knows where the time goes? That was the original tagline but I got sucked in by the Leaving Trains instead.  In fact, there’s any number of songs that could be quoted for this post because… it’s been a while!

After the mad rush of Songkran, sobriety took hold out of necessity.  It wasn’t that I wouldn’t like to have had a drink it’s just that there wasn’t time.

I was secreted off to a rural location on the outskirts of Chiang Mai for a month of intense training in the arts of teaching English (CELTA – look it up).  Of course, being entirely ignorant of the subject, beyond speaking it for the past 49 years or so, I arrived early to get a little refresher on the witchery that is English grammar.  It was not nearly enough preparation.

I had been put to sleep many a time whilst opening a grammar book or watching videos on the subject.  Luckily we had a teacher who was a female version of my old pal back in Southampton, Rob Callen.  She was precise and accurate and even modelled some of the lessons that we would end up learning in the coming weeks, without realising it of course.

So, I said we.  I was joined by Tom, a recently retired American looking to support himself a little beyond what the pension there pays so he could spend six months living in his new house in Portugal.  Tom was also from an IT background so we bonded quickly enough around the bullshit that that involves.  We were both concerned about our abilities to be able to complete the course, knowing how intense we heard it would be.  Along with us was Victoria, from London, whose grammar knowledge shone in comparison.  Mid-30s, deciding on her future possibilities, whilst travelling to vacations and friends’ weddings around the world, she was a bright and bubbly counter to the two old blokes.

And so it was for the first 3 or 4 nights as we did a couple of days of grammar refreshing, in which I was mostly bewildered but also provoked.  English grammar does seem like the kind of thing I could get deep into and become the ‘grammar nazi’ amongst my friends.  Though considering we are about to learn how to teach English as a second language in a foreign country though, my relaxed attitude is more inclined to take precedence.

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Location, location…..

Our facility is structured like a resort hotel.   There are teaching rooms, a reception and a restaurant.  More importantly, our personal rooms are cleaned daily, there’s a laundry service and outside my balcony, there is a 50-metre swimming pool.  Oh yeah, there’s aircon too.  For some reason, the keycard in my room didn’t work properly so the aircon stayed on even when I wasn’t there.  What a blessing.

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With no pressure and performance ratings around the grammar refresher – we studied, we learned, we swam and we ate.  It was the calm before the storm.  Our little world was about to be shattered when all the other students would arrive.

And talking of storms.  One arrived about five minutes after I made it to my room on that first day.  There was a lot of damage to the surrounding gardens and it took the internet out for a while too.  Both storms and internet outages would become regular occurrences during my time there.

I guess the grammar refresher paid off a little as I can recognise myself switching in and out of different tenses as I write this but they seem to make more sense to me as I write them.

Anyway, the quiet was broken as other students started arriving, as well as our teachers too.  And this is where things sometimes got confusing as we were students, and we would be teachers so we had students as well.  On top of all the learning our brains were being jammed with, it was sometimes confusing to be calling home and talking about teachers (teaching us), teachers (us), teachers studying (many people on the course were already teachers), students (us) and students (who we were teaching)!

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Confused? You will be!  In the next episode of….. (Prizes for knowing where this quote comes from*)

* there are no prizes.