Michelle's New Place to Vent

Wednesday, May 11, 2005

Students comments

There are some stuff at work that needs updating. For example, we're still using chalkboard rather than the nice dry erase board. A student made a comment that they're paying so much money every month, they should have better facilities there.
Another example is that there's only 1 teacher manual for one of my classes in level 6 and it looks pretty torn up. So the student commented that they pay so much money every month that the school should provide more and better manuals that doesn't tear.
However, at work, they provide free coffee for the students, and each room has a Mac, so there are also many nice things at work. But i guess people don't stop complaining huh?

Well, each student pay $250~$280 monthly, i have around 50 something students every month, that's approx. $13,500, but I get $1800~$2000. that's 14%....

Saturday, May 07, 2005

Some stuff to vent

they finally started the fingerprint scanning system at my work place to sign in and out.
I mean it's more efficient than having to write but there are lots of draw backs.
If we forget to sign out, then it cancels the sign in time, which means we never showed up.
Also, if you are already in the door, you'd still be considered late even if you were waiting for the person in front of you to sign in.
And it feels like Big Brother is watching....
We have to go in at least 15 mins early, or we'd be considered tardy, which counts against our bonus. but to avoid after school/work traffic, I sometimes go in at least 30 mins early.
We DO get a bonus however, for being early, but it's many of the other factors add together.
So the bonus would justify the extra hours of coming to work early.
But if we already know that we lost our bonus, then the extra time before and after class is unpaid. Who wants to work extra hours unpaid?
I personally don't think this is very effective....
And really, the biggest bonus is getting students to re-enroll, which would justify the many extra hours we put in to give extra help to students. When we don't get this bonus (I have yet to get it) it means all the extra hours, could be 10 or 20 or more, is unpaid.... sigh.
And supposedly the extra help hours should encourage the students to re-enroll but to me, it feels more like luck... if they students have enough money to pay or if they'll have time.

Well, anyway, next topic to vent about:
Mayor voting in Irving.
I was driving down MacArthur, the street outside my apartment, to work today, and I saw that there were a bunch of ads (those that you stick in the ground), and when I say a bunch.. it's at least 1/2 a mile of them placed about a couple inches apart. I mean you can see the same sign a couple hundred times in the same block.... isn't that just ridiculous and just a tad over redundant???
Guess what those signs are for??? VOTE FOR CITY COUNCIL and VOTE FOR MAYOR!
How can a person running for city office allow this kind of scenary disturbance? I mean when I glance over, I could see more of those square signs than green grass!! How many times do you need to see "Vote for John Doe" to know that he's running for mayor??? UGH

how would you feel if your whole city is covered with this:

it's just so ugly!

Friday, May 06, 2005

Chindogu, Unuseless Japanese Inventions

Here are some pictures of "Unuseless Japanese Inventions", which I think are pretty useless..

Ghosts in the machineApril 23, 2005
DOES the rattling of chains keep you awake at night? Do the wraiths of long-dead relatives join you for family gatherings? If so, a Japanese gadget company has designed the very thing for you: the world's first portable ghost radar.The pocket-sized device promises to alert its owner to the presence of eight different types of spectre, from "lost souls" to "evil spirits".
Using a variety of carefully calibrated sensors - one of which claims to detect human fear - the machine informs users whether the ghost is malevolent or benign. The ghost radar hits Japanese stores next week, just in time for the Japanese ghost-spotting season, and no summer campfire gathering will be complete without it.
"Ghosts are something deeply ingrained in Japanese culture," says the device's inventor Kenji Koshida. "People talk about them all the time - especially engineers and other people you'd expect to live in the world of logic. I believe in them."
The Times

I suppose this is to keep your hair from falling on your face while you eat, but what a pain!!

or would you prefer this:

Eh... to keep your eyes open? OUCH!

Taking a bath without getting wet??? Now Allen would like that

Boyfriend arm pillow??

Scratch more precisly!

Let your cat clean the floor for you!

Need to dry your clothes?

Subway chin rest......

or subway hat?

Never get wet!

Allen wants this:

Eh... need eyedrops?

Allergy season coming, this could be useful

Hey, why dirty a knife??

walk across the street? then you need this:

And there are more! i need to get those books! you can find them on Amazon...

here is a link of some more : http://www.jimloy.com/books/chindogu.htm

Jerk?

I was teaching the word Jerk today in class.
when I introduced the word, I asked them, "Anybody knows what is 'Jerk'?"
a student said "'Jerk' Bush?" (pronounciation error)

Sunday, May 01, 2005

The coolest animal

Mimic Octopus. It can take the form of supposedly any living creature

mimicing the flounder:

mimicing the eel :

It can also mimic a lion fish:

here's a video clip:

http://www.big-boys.com/articles/octopus1.html

Strange Animals:

Ok ok, I promis I'll post something cuter next time

A New World??

Ok so it's been really weird. It seems like I have fallen into the Stone Age, where people around me are all pretty much computer illiterate. No offense, but coming from a computer educated background, I haven't met many people who doesn't check emails multiple times a day.... Needless to say, I'm around people who don't even own computers now.

Life is quite boring without computers really, but it could be more boring when people around you don't even talk "computer". Here I am talking about things online, and I get strange, blank, clueless stares from people. Who else can I talk about gaming with?? ARG! This means there is no motivation to game anymore!

So now I often find myself watching TV as a game replacement, which is not very good cuz TV can rot your brains.. so I need to find something more productive...... like ... exercise? guitar?

here's the list of the things I have procrastinated:
Play guitar
Learn Japanese, Spanish
Take GRE
Grad school
Exercise
Outdoor activities
Play with Snowy

And why am I watching TV?? sigh, with this work schedule, I don't have a "buddy" to do all these with, a "buddy" who is also motivated... (this part excludes Allen)
hey, I'll just motivate myself... it's time for a late night snack... chao!

Saturday, April 30, 2005

Guitar

I picked up the Guitar yesterday. Man I gotta say, I want my calluses back...
they are still reddish swollen today..

Man, I need to be motivated to be a great guitar player, of course country songs only.

Lazy students...

Would you ever be too lazy to say the "P" in pepsi????

yes it happened today. I got a student who's so lazy, he doesn't wanna say the "P" in pepsi....
can I say ridiculous?? we spent 5 mins arguing why he should say the "P" in pepsi but he still thinks that people can understand him...

Monday, April 25, 2005

Learning Chinese

so, one of my students ask me to teach him Chinese and in return he'll teach me Spanish. Heck why not! he's cute anyway.
no no that's not it, he's teaching me Spanish for free and I love teaching Chinese anyway.

So, I was trying to review my Chinese and started surfing, I found interesting stuff.

This is the Taiwanese way of "spelling" out words: http://www.liwin.com/zhuyin/
Although I learned the Taiwanese way first, I didn't find it particularly effective. I prefer the Hanyu Pinyin, the Chinese way from China, which was what I learned in Singapore.

Strangly found out a lot of things I didn't know before, like how do you "spell" Grandpa in chinese?? In the Taiwanese BO PO MO, you have to do Ge Wu Eng (because "Ong" doesn't exist in Taiwanese BO PO MO), which becomes Gueng rather than Gong, but they still say gong for some reason. It just doesn't make sense......
but in Hanyu Pinyin, there's Eng and Also Ong, therefore Dream is Meng, and Grandpa is Gong.
don't know if it makes sense to you. But anyway, trust me, Hanyu Pinyin is definitly more effective, and that's what i'm using to teach Chinese....

so if you are interested, here are some information:

25 out of 26 English alphabet letters are used in Pinyin. Letter 'v' is not used, while letter ' ü ' is added to represent the vowel sound of 'yu'.

Pinyin includes consonants and vowel letters.

1. Consonant letters

There are 20 consonant letters use in Mandarin (three consonants are represented by combinations of two letters - 'zh', 'ch' and 'sh'), they are:

b, p, m, f, d, t, n, l, g, k, h, j, q, x, z, c, s, zh, ch, sh, r, y, w

2. Vowel letters

There are 6 vowel letters used in Mandarin:

a, o, e, i, u, ü

3. Syllables

Syllables are composed by consonants, vowels and tone.

The consonant that begins a syllable is initial (listen to the pronunciation in mp3 format online at http://www.learn-chinese-language-online.com/chinese-pinyin-initials.html) , they can be:

b, p, m, f, d, t, n, l, g, k, h, j, q, x, z, c, s, zh, ch, sh, r, y, w

The rest parts after the initial are finals. Final ( listen to the pronunciation in mp3 format online at http://www.learn-chinese-language-online.com/chinese-pinyin-finals.html ) can be a single vowel, a combination of vowels, or combination of vowels and nasals 'n' or 'ng':

There are 6 simple finals which are single vowels, they are : a, o, e, i, u, ü .

The others are compound finals, they are:

ai, ao, ou, ei, ia, ie, iao, iou, ua, uo, uai, uei, üe,
an, ang, ong, en, eng, in, ing, ian, iang, iong, uen, ueng, uan, uang, ün, üan

The combination of 21 initials and 33 finals in Mandarin romanization (there are five more finals, but they share the same symbols as other finals) form about 420 different sounds.

A word consists of initial + final + tone. In some cases, the initial can be omitted.

Although most of the sounds are generally close to how they are used and pronounced in English, some don't follow English letters exactly and are pronounced differently.

Pay extra attention to the differences and listen closely to each Chinese sound, it takes practices to pronounce correctly.

So it's pretty interesting huh? You should try listening to the sounds on the link above.
Also, here's a chart of all the sounds you can emit in Chinese, and I tell you, the list is looooong!! http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/easia/pinyin.html

Anyway, Chinese is pretty facinating...

Friday, April 22, 2005

Simple Egg Drop Soup

So have you ever tried making egg drop soup and the egg turned out all broken up and your soup instead of having pieces of smooth egg became "eggy soup"??

Well, I have. So I learned how to make really good egg drop soup

Ingredients
Eggs. I usually use 1 per person
Canned Sweet Corn
Green onion
Chicken Broth
White pepper
Salt
Corn Starch

It's really easy.
First, boil some water and add chicken broth to the water to add flavor. This is the secret to really good chicken broth.

Next, beat the eggs. Chop up green onions. Prepare a medium bowl of Corn Starch mixed w/ water.

When the water/broth comes to a boil, dump in the corn. Taste it and see if it's salty enough. If not, add salt.

Now, remove it from the heat, stir in the corn starch until the soup thickens.

Put the soup back on the heat, bring to boil, then turn off the heat and remove the soup from the stove.

Oh, you probably want to ask me about the eggs. Yes, you add the eggs now, after you've removed it from the heat, so that the eggs can be smooth.

There, you're done. Add white pepper and green onions before serving.

I promise it's good.

Friday, April 15, 2005

World Problems

I was in one of the classrooms for higher levels (level 10) today at work. I saw on the wall a huge piece of butcher paper with the world map drawn on, and post-its on it.
Each of the post-it was labeling a country, about 20 or so labeled and my first impression was like "oh they're learning about the names of the countries"
but after examining it, under the names of the countries, there were words like "polygamy", "Children eating", "Sex slaves".

I assumed that those are the topics they talk about in class to get the students participate in talking over Moral issues around the world.
China was the only country that has the "fetus consumption" label and United States is the only country with the "Abortion" label. I really don't think US is the only country with that problem though. Anyway, but to my surprise, US also has "Sex Slaves", specifically Asian sex slaves...
interesting huh?

Thursday, April 14, 2005

So I do apologize

I've been caught up with the Chinese soap opera my mom brought over for me... It's about one of the most famous emperor in Chinese history, in the Qin Dynasty, Kang Xi (Kang Shi). There were a lot of real facts, not just all stories, and it was very interesting. So I'm reading up more on the history online:
http://www.travelchinaguide.com/intro/history/
It's so cool! But strangly, I really like Chinese history, reading it for over 15 mins still puts me to sleep.