riot girl – 1994ever

It’s taken me more than a year and a half to recover!

When I returned from the CELTA training course I found my brain had changed. I seem to flip between data driven thinking and artistic thinking and often cannot find a good balance. The training was very linear and intensive (as it should be) and on reflection now, some 18 months later, was easier to complete than I imagined beforehand and during. The pressure to achieve was very high but that pressure mostly came from within. Now, I realise that I can turn my hand to anything if I wish to.

Of course, the circumstances since the training have mostly helped me arrive at this conclusion. First I started doing some free teaching with students from the local university. This gave me a little self confidence though I was often shocked at the students poor language levels, in the language they are studying for their degrees, whatever the subject. I can suggest to myself that I could probably easily complete a degree at the university here purely based on the fact I can use the language fully. Anyway, that’s by the by for now as I’m not really considering that as an option at the moment.

After a few months kicking around and enjoying much free time I ended up working with Grade 5 students at a nearby provincial school. I have a million stories from there, many which I would like to forget. I soon discovered the crazy dysfunction in the education system here. If it’s obvious to me, an unqualified teacher starting their first job then the system must be pretty poor.

I don’t intend to tarnish the education system as a whole as that would be unfair. The circumstances I was in influenced a lot of my impressions and I try to understand that what I saw was not indicative of other places. It was, however, the belief of many others teaching here that things are not much better elsewhere in the country. There are a million reasons for this and books could be filled trying to explain. The main down side for me was that I felt that I was unable to do a good job and provide useful learning for the students a lot of the time. I hate doing a bad job – especially when eventually someone else is going to suffer for it. So that was the other down side – watching willing students deal with the inadequacies of the system which lead to inconsistency in almost everything. Frustrating beyond belief.

Beyond that though I have found myself with a passion and love for the students that has made me incredibly happy. It’s a job that I really love to invest my time in and to go to work to do it. I’ll talk more about this in future.

Just a short one this time as I push myself to get back into this.

“Every heartbeat, every movement, every moment, every sigh.”

Gratitude Journal

I am so grateful and happy to go to school on Friday, which was hard as I had been sick this week and had a bad experience on Monday. The kids also drove me crazy and made me quite angry but I survived and talked to Kru Noon about strategies to get them to listen more. I will take her advice and try this next week!

The Chiang Rai Alternative Hour #15

Music from Hamster Theatre, Super Thief, Infidel-Castro!, Arm, Kultur Shock, Captain Beefheart, Fugazi, Bogshed, Brainiac, Neon Rose, By The End of Tonight, Rafter, Huggy Bear, Jimmy Two Hands, Zu/Mats Gustafsson, Secret Hate and The Ex.

Cat #: 009TZM

On a hot crazy night, tenzenmen brought together Baseball (Melbourne), ni‐hao! (Japan), Sabot (Czech Republic) and The Thaw (Sydney) and crammed them into the confines of Bar Open in Melbourne. Here’s what happened! 112 minutes of some of the most exciting music from around the world.

14th May 2021 – I found these pictures and text at the Thaw’s original blogspot.

ohayo!

we’re gonna be touring with ni-hao! (from japan!) around sydney and melbs! weeela.

ch-check it out:

tuesday feb 14th + empire hotel, sydney
(ni-hao! / the thaw / rose turtle ertler ++ scooter show)

wednesday feb 15th + mandarin club, sydney
(ni-hao! / the thaw / vincent over the sink / le paper dolls)

thursday feb 16th + baropen, melbourne
(ni-hao! / baseball / sabot / the thaw)

friday feb 17th + public office, melbourne
(ni-hao! / grey daturas / the thaw / dad they broke me / eddie current suppression ring)

saturday feb 18th + pony, melbourne
(ni-hao! / witch hats / twitch of the death nerve / bad cop bad cop)
(2am: the thaw)
phew! come and danc your legs silly

14th May 2021 – I have no idea how I managed to organise all this! There’s also radio appearances and photoshoots in that time too. It seems crazy now, I guess I knew quite a few people and they must’ve helped me a lot. I think I must’ve enjoyed doing it so much that I didn’t realise how much work it was – I certainly don’t have any memory of it being difficult.

we made it back from melb in one piece (barely!).

the whole week was a blast – ni hao are aweome, fun, exciting and amazing musicians. we played with loads of rad bands and managed to avoid the killer trams on the streets of melb town.

anyone at the bar open show will be pleased to know that it was recorded and the entire thing will be put on dvd for sale sometime in the near future. it was a great night of diverse music; us, baseball, sabot and nihao!

also, for those down in melb who missed out at the show (damn lazy fuckers!) we’ve got some cds in missing link for purchase at a measly $6. almost as cheap as those ‘potato cakes’ you have down there. [or u can send us an email and we’ll send one out to ya, s.w.a.k!]

so big ups to twitch of the death nerve, dad they broke me, grey daturas, bad cop bad cop, witch hats and everyone else we played with. hope to see a few of you up north sometime soon. we luv u melbourne!!!!!!!!!! we miss all the awesome people we met down there and hopefully we can come back soooooooon!!!!!!!!