Tag: school

Memories Remain – 17th January 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

A bloodied book lies open
On stained sheets
A laptop locked from prying eyes
A still-warm seat
The dank smell of cigarettes
Hangs on the curtains
A tumbler of gin spices the nose
A rusty brown-edged mirror
Reflects the world inside
No moving pictures
Memories remain quiet here
A silent overwhelming
A sharpened pencil
Two elastic bands and a comb
Knocked to the floor
A story happened here
That’s happening no more

If you yearn for power, quickly lay honesty aside, and train yourself in the art of concealing your intentions.

Robert Greene, Daily Laws List

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful to have Amy’s old iPhone to learn how to use. It’s been an interesting exercise to switch from Android.

A grey and miserable morning that reminded me of England so much that my eyes ached and an oppressive, ominous feeling came over me. Lots of students missing from my first class so I just played Hot Seat with them instead of starting my normal lesson. It was fun and enjoyable, perhaps showing the kids that their memories aren’t that great.

I still have a negative feeling about the future, school-related. I get the feeling that I won’t be recontracted and perhaps TLC will try to move me again. I don’t know how that would work out, if I’d be interested to go somewhere else now.

Amy was grumpy with me this weekend too and I’m thinking a little about how much money we will spend this year. We have lots and lots of money (relatively) but she is keeping an iron grip on it whilst also planning her time in Australia. These months will be a test for me and despite looking forward to lots of space, I’m not looking forward to having less time.

What has been your favourite age so far, and why? Would you go back to this age if you could?

From 27 years old on I changed my life dramatically and in different ways. My most exciting age was when I was 30-32, when I had some self-confidence and self-belief for a while. An amazing relationship with a smart young woman inspired me so much but didn’t work out in the end and from then I was up and until around the age of 40, when, perhaps, I became almost completely comfortable with myself (again, with some ups and downs). I think 40-45 may have been my favourite age so far then but I don’t want to discount anything from the future. These next five years could be the best ever?

Would I go back to that age? I don’t think so, I don’t think it was my age that had anything to do with it. It was maturity and circumstance. Going back to that age would not be able to replicate those things.

What Will It Take? – 10th January 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 1 Comment

The spiritual super-humans waiting
To breed out the lesser specimens
To what end these missions
With their hyperintelligent regimens

When the cities submerge under seas
Destroying the parasitic subspecies class
What will it take to live together
Before this disaster shall come to pass?

The things you do often create the things you believe.

Benjamin Franklin

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful to see the weird orange colour of the sunrise before seeing the sun in the morning. Soon the sun will be up again before me.

I tested myself this morning by telling Amy not to get up so I could see how long it took me to do everything when she is not here. It looks like I can do it if I get up at 6.15, though if I want to increase my workout, then will need to be 6 am.

Further tests came at school when I tried to use my new laptop in class and had all sorts of problems. The IT guy came and looked like he fixed the internet cable for me but the projector wouldn’t connect properly. I dashed down to get my old laptop and then that had problems too!

I restarted everything and suddenly my new laptop started working. Started the class late but we got everything done. Everyone was happy.

I came out to House to see a message that no one can leave school again – just like prison!

At least this time, I followed the supposed procedure and signed the book to leave. We are threatened with contract termination if we break these rules. Ho-hum-so-dumb. Anyway, all these things have the potential to wind me up or get me down but I’m feeling ok to deal with it. For now.

Projects – 7th January 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

Put it together, pull it apart
A lesson is a work of art
Things to be responsible for
A world to discover more

Give them a wooden stick
Balanced on a broken brick
Trial and error, many a blunder
A world filled with natural wonder

Put in water, then dry it out
Let’s see what it’s all about
Neurons link, making able
A poem written at this table

People don’t take your power or make you invisible. You do that.

Andrea King Collier

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful for my positive attitude to helping the kids try new things, to grow and develop themselves.

Well, yesterday was excellent with the afternoon club going well despite Kartoon and Nampan’s reservations but I can feel that they are just lazy – it’s not that they aren’t capable.

I went home quite excited and upbeat though a little exhausted. I was expecting to have trouble falling asleep with thinking too much about what to do next with club and classes. However, after about 10 minutes I was out of it until my alarm went off at 6.20.

I joked with Amy that I had such a good day at school that it wouldn’t last and some nonsense would come along to knock me back down again but this morning was great too.

2/11 (grade 8) have been very good recently – I think starting to comprehend the class method, whilst perhaps not understanding all the English.

2/9 were reticent when they saw the work I wanted them to do today but they all settled down to it and I could clearly see them understanding and learning how to do my work. It made me feel very proud and I told them all how great they were doing.

One more class before the weekend – the dreaded 2/10, though even they have been showing signs of maturity lately, too.

It’s getting closer to Amy leaving now, though there is still a lot of doubt about whether it will actually happen, due to Covid. Could be a last minute decision.

How has getting older affected your sense of yourself, or your identity?

I have become more comfortable with who I am as I’ve gotten older but I think that has only happened more recently.

Moving to Thailand 4 years ago forced a re-evaluation of my identity, much as it did when I lost my job (my big, expendable income) in 2013. The trying times I have had since then have been things that have tried to force me outside my identity and there was clearly a period for me last year, when I made the call to chat with Jochen, that I knew that I was part of a particular tribe that doesn’t exist where I am, as such. I’m fine with that, in that I don’t need to be close to my tribe, I know that I am still a part of it and can always find my way back, if necessary.

I do not identify with many people around me, though I can recognise them. My instinct is non-adaptive to a degree. I am friendly, kind and understanding but I don’t want to hang out and talk about your mundane shit.

When I was younger, this may have bothered me a little. Sometimes I thought I should do more to fit in, or I would wonder why people don’t like me. I’m comfortable enough with myself not to care what other people think of me. Like it’s said – it’s not my business.

I quite admire the odd eccentrics of yesteryear who maybe sat around philosophising in drawing rooms, with brandies, into the early hours, whilst normal people went about their normal lives. I’m not a part of that but I do romanticise it somewhat.

As I age further, will my identity modify further or will I become a narrow-minded fuddy-duddy? No matter, it’s not for me to say but I try to keep my mind open for all new experiences that may be offered or sought.

Insight – 6th January 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

Somewhere deep down
The solar plexus?
Requires time and space
Do nothing
See the clouds wander
But don’t look
The passing river
Thoughts in motion
You don’t have to do
But do nothing else
Dare to be bored
Remember that

Learn to accept your mediocrity.

Jerry Seinfeld

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful to the happy friendly kids who all want to talk to me at school. They fill me full of joy.

Excellent fun with my class this morning. Most students seem to understand what I expect from them and we are all getting more comfortable with each other.

This afternoon Champ and I start our first class with the TED-Ed students. I think all the grade 11 students will be OK but I’m not sure about my grade 8 students. I hope that they feel inspired enough.

No time to think this morning but whenever I’m away from a pen and paper I have lots of thoughts I would hope to put down and many of them disappear, for a while or maybe forever.

The slight anxiety I had yesterday went in the afternoon as no one mentioned anything to me about not being around in the morning and I even got an apology for the short and indirect notice I received to teach. So, I worried about nothing – or people may be talking bad things about me that I don’t hear and I can’t control that and don’t need to worry about it either.

I’m noticing I’m starting to feel the wind down into the April holiday already, even though I’ve made myself busier than ever. I’d love to keep on teaching these students but also happy to leave it all behind.

Dissolve – 5th January 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

I dissolved myself into nothingness
Reverse engineered my being
Back to the womb, the sperm met egg
A cluster of molecules
Formed by random atoms
I saw my place in the infinite
My space and time, nothing
Dissolved

We’re all born listeners, so try to adapt a child-like listening mode, set aside expectations and really just be there.

Gordon Hempton, On Listening

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful for the chickens that laid these two eggs I’m eating, the farmer that collected them, the drivers that drove them and the shop that sold them.

Having free time in the morning, I clocked in and headed to House to read and relax. As I was talking to Fui, I got a couple of LINE messages that I was supposed to be covering Dylan’s class. An indirect message had been sent at 8.31 that I hadn’t seen – it was now 9.10.

Anyway I rushed back, a little flustered and had a great class with M1/6 (grade 7) – it was actually better that it was rushed. We got down quickly and it was fun.

In my head I’ve been thinking about what to say if anyone asks me why I wasn’t at school but the more I think about it (and thankfully I’ve had time to think about it) I should just say nothing. No need to be defensive or to make excuses.

I’m in Le Paradis right now, not risking going out again! As I was sitting here, 3 grade 8 students came in. They are not in my classes but have been chatting with me whenever they see me. They are upbeat and positive and I like to put in the effort to talk with them. We communicated through our poor second language skills and translation and I could feel tired trying to communicate in a second language, just as my students must feel in my classes sometimes.

It’s worthwhile to connect with them though. Give them a confidence booster and me a little conversation practice.

What has ageing given you? Taken away?

Easy answer: Wisdom/youth.

Ageing has also given me more of an insight into how short our time is. The things I think I will enjoy, because I enjoyed when I was younger, do not always correlate with how I feel now. Is that something that has been taken away?

It’s also given me a better understanding of all the old people in my life, or the people who seemed so far away old. I was just contemplating this morning that it is over 30 years ago that my grandparents passed. And my cousins, Sharon and Ken are around the age my grandparents were when I first went to live with them. These times feel so short, so fast.

Hayden is 25. It’s strange to see him in a grown-up body. My picture of him is still as a two-year-old.

As many have often thought, age brings confidence and wisdom to talk with the opposite sex but now we’re too old to take advantage of this knowledge with the members of the opposite sex as we would like. Not without being creepy anyway.

Here Come The Good Times – 4th January 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 1 Comment

Shuffling through the bodegas
Listening to all the chatter
Words of many are mundane
Though convinced they really matter

Seeking that perfect sandwich
Waiting in endless lines
Everyone is saying it now
Here come the good times

Lots of people suffer so much that perhaps they would have died of sorrow if they couldn’t dream something nice in between all the sadnesses.

Ceclia, Through a Glass Darkly by Jostein Gaarder
Analysis of the lyrics to A Good Day by Smart Went Crazy

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful that all the kids are back at school today. Hopefully until the end of the semester.

Two full-on classes as a welcome back this morning. As I was teaching in the second, I looked at the students, they were not really concentrating and full of beans but I only wanted them to do some writing, so once they had finished, it was difficult for them to maintain any concentration. Rather than try to push them to remain quiet, I walked with a few of them one-to-one instead and found that they could understand the work well enough.

Now I’m in the cafe and reading about the idea of longsight. I have to remember this when in class. Think about longsight for those kids and the bigger picture. I can only push them so far before they explode.

Dylan tested positive with an ATK yesterday and is at hospital getting a PCR test this morning. Covid creeps ever closer.

What is surprising about being your age, or different from what you expected, based on what you were told?

I don’t think anyone ever told me what to expect. I grew up in my teenage years around my mother and her parents and to my young self I could never imagine being their age and likewise I could never imagine them being my age.

I had gone to Australia and was away from my mother as she went from middle to old age, so I was only ever exposed to that on infrequent visits.

I am perhaps surprised at myself for not feeling old, not feeling what old people looked like. My mother had told me she felt like this too – even as she was in old age. She cursed her fading body but was proud to have kept her marbles.

So it’s surprising to me that I seem to be finding time to improve my fitness, perhaps a little too late but it makes me feel better anyway. I thought that I would keep on drinking my nights away but now don’t find the pleasure anymore. This may be typical for many older people but for me it was unexpected. I’m grateful I’m not so bloody-minded to keep pushing my liver to extremes like I was 18 or 30 again.

Mica Friction – 30th December 2021

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

A bowling ball
Heading toward the pins
A 7-10 split
Let’s see who wins
Internal asymmetrical block
Influencing spins
Dry board mica friction
Analysed, winner grins

We got some blowback afterwards, but so what? We won.

Brad Blakeman, Republican operative

28 Sep 2022 – Most quotes I find are affirmations of a sort, but this one is a reminder of how corrupt people can be, doing anything to win.

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful for the cat massage Kim gave me this morning when I went to see her in her room. Then we rubbed noses and cuddled until she got distracted and ran off.

A busy time coming up and my head is full of things. Good things though. Not feeling stressed about anything except for maybe overloading myself with too much. Nothing serious though – I just have so much I want to do in a day and it doesn’t really matter if I don’t get to do them.

I went to Central to look for a diary but couldn’t find anything suitable, so opeted to get another notebooks that I didn’t really need but felt compelled to buy after having made the effort to go there.

The omicron covid variant is dirsupting Amy’s thoughts about travelling and may change her plans. I think if she doesn’t go in January then she won’t be able to go until after my next visa is completed. I think she’ll make a decision in the next couple of weeks, carefully watching the numbers and decisions Australia makes about travel.

I’m about to rush back to school for a quick meeting with some selected grade 8 students to do some extra work on producing TED-Ed presentations in the future. Let’s see how it goes. I will go sit in the school cafe later and write some more. Right now – let’s see if I can spit outa poem for today!

Back again. Met with the students. It is painfully obvious the difference between those in M2/9 and those in M2/10 and M2/11. Those in M2/9 have confidence and feel that they can do things. The others – not so much but I really hope they don’t quit out of fear of failure. It’s a great opportunity for them to learn and grow, work with new students and make new friends.

I know sometimes, when I was that age, I would just give up. I know how they must feel. I also know that I would have benefited by changing my mindset and giving it a go. I’ll try my best to keep encouraging them.

I had hoped that Champ would be here to help reassure them and kicking myself a little by not explaining things clearly enough. Hindsight. That’s why I sent out a message of encouragement with a Thai translation. I hope I can keep up the momentum I’m feeling and don’t get dragged down by the setbacks.

What is difficult about being your age?

I’m half-jokingly thinking to myself that it sucks that I have the confidence (and lack of caring about the outcome) to talk to anyone now. Especially to pretty girls. Why I couldn’t do it when I was younger is annoying to think about! But it’s not really a difficulty of my current age.

The only thing that really sticks out is the obvious one of aching body parts. Constant sore neck, tender shoulder blades, sore wrists, and painful left foot. As I never really exercised much when I was younger, my muscles have all learned bad habits that may be difficult to reverse now. As with my initial thoughts, perhaps all I’m really feeling is regret – something that I consciously try to avoid or not consider.

At whatever age we are, we probably all want to be 5 years old again, without many a care in the world. So perhaps that is what is difficult – the inability to be a 5-year-old. Seeing things with a greater sense of wonder. It seems to require a greater effort to achieve that as you age.

I am a serious person these days. I’m happy like that. I can’t not care about things, so sometimes that is a little difficult to accept.

To-Do List Of Yesterday – 28th December 2021

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 1 Comment

You’re never going to get to the end
But the end will find its way to you
No matter how hard you try to cross the list
Find satisfaction in whatever you do

I wish I’d thought more about how it is to live.

Cecelia, Through A Glass Darkly by Jostein Gaarder

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful to Dylan for giving Amy and me some homemade Baileys for Christmas. It reminded me to give him the shirts that no longer fit me in return.

Yesterday, Champ told me that students will be in school full-time again next week. This made me revise my plans for my classes and last night I posted a short video asking my students to ask me anything and in this morning’s class, I got the students to make and send a video question, which was a welcome break for them and they enjoyed messing around with video filters.

It also, unsurprisingly to me, highlighted a lot of the students’ deficiencies when it comes to thinking and speaking! But that’s ok, I think I will incorporate more work like this to be included on the school’s English Program page.

I’m also looking forward to having the students back here full-time again, as switching between at-school and at-home study week by week is challenging for me and even more so for the kids. I don’t know how long they will keep kids in school, though. If another wave of Covid comes, which it surely will, everything may change again.

I don’t want to wish time away but I am looking forward to a proper holiday, proper as in not working – no plans to go anywhere, without thinking about school.

This afternoon, I will drop by Bruno’s and go for a quick hike somewhere close by. Need to work off some of the pizza and beer weight I put on this week. Doing 30 sit-ups twice a day now. Need to be careful with my back, though; my abs are still not strong enough.

The Week That Was – 18th March 1979

The White Torch – 22nd December 2021

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 11 Comments

Like a ray of moonlight through the window
Sweet words fall like dew drops from petals
Connected by vapour pulled through the air
The briefest touch sends hearts spinning

Pure eyes emanating light, lit large
Her grace flows forth like a stanza
This tree in blossom fights against her sorrows
A brief affection, two bodies made into one

A love cleansed by tears remains pure
A single thought makes it so
The flowers hidden in darkness
Cannot hide that held in our hearts

The universe trembles to this sweet music
This delicious dance felt for the first time
Love and fear fills the heart with joy
The obstacles of doubt surmounted
– Every minute now, a year of love

Mangled from the titular chapter of The Broken Wings by Khalil Gibran and inspired by the attached picture of an old student of mine. I read this chapter and saw the picture on the same day and combined, they both took me back to enjoy that soft sick feeling in the stomach and chest of teenage love.

3rd Mar 2024 – Submitted to Weekly Prompts Colour Challenge
16th Aug 2024 – Submitted to dVerse OLN

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful that from today the daylight hours will get longer again. I say this as I saw the sun appear above the mountain this morning filling the sky with its orange light.

I’m anxious and overthinking again at the moment. I need to overcome this feeling somehow. Yesterday I talked with Champ and I could feel he understood my frustrations with school but it became obvious that if anything happens down the line, such as more complaints from the parents, then he will not support me. Not necessarily by choice but just to protect himself. This is kinda disappointing really but I guess it shows me where I stand.

I think I’ll make some changes with some small things in my life again to give me back more of a feeling of control again. I feel not strong enough to support my own beliefs, not arrogant enough to feel superior, not flexible enough to bend to the will of others.

The nail that sticks up gets hammered down.

There’s something to be said for thoughtless manual labour. Weak. Time feels like it’s running away but it’s not real – why am I insisting on making it real? Is this my midlife crisis? Gotta self-talk my way out of it.

A Good Witch – 16th December 2021

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

What power does a good witch wield
And how can it be so?
The power to limit jackassery
Using that golden word – No!

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful for the coffee shop next to school where I can go and work quietly when I don’t have the car to go off elsewhere.

Quick one today. I gotta pee and I gotta go buy some bits and pieces.

Reasonable classes today and I enjoyed the students a lot. A little bit of effort from them will bring them a reward. A happy teacher will make a happy student.

I started the final 30-day abs workout. Already, it’s hard! But I’m gonna do it.

This pen is running out. That’s two pens in two days. Something else to buy.