From a NZ news story today:
The Ross family were fined after son James, 26, cleaned out his car and put the rubbish in a Wellington City Council bin in Shelly Bay Rd.WTF? Also, over-reaction: you're doing it right.
[...]
Incensed that her son had been penalised for doing the right thing, she considered legal action against the council. "I said to my husband that I would go to court. I would have gone to America to see [President] George Bush. I was going to go all the way, too damned right."
There's this sign, located not so far from the hedgehog picture of the last post.
To me, the most obvious interpretation is as a command followed by the reason you should obey. Like, "Drink water—it's healthy".
I pass this painted box most days. I think the hedgehog is meant to be sitting on a flower, but that is totally not what I see. 
This little grammar war has been taking place on the walls of our department corridor this week. There is much speculation about who wrote the typed response—it looks like it must have been a faculty member, but no one is admitting to it. (That could be because of the words "pedantic" and "prick" that other faculty members have been bandying around ever since it went up.)
It's especially rude given that the original sign-writer is also a member of the department, and therefore the anonymous response is by one of her colleagues.
I just can't believed they cared about it this much. Whew!
(I've also been amused at the number of students I've seen taking photos of the sign. Some even admitted they are putting it on Facebook or on their blogs.)
Geekman complained that my recent blog entries have been all mean and bitchy. Have resolved to be a nicer person.
Came up with three possible posts in the last 24 hours, but had to suppress them all due to excessive snark.
Sigh. It's so hard being sweetness and light.
Sucks to be you. Or me. I forget which.
Overheard in the gym changing room today:
"She is SUCH a good teacher. I'm so lucky to be in her course. You know, she's just so kind and loving and really cares about her students as people. And she never hurts people's feelings and takes her time to get to know you."
If that's not a description of 'good teaching', then I don't know what is. Oh, wait, yes I do. How about: "She's such a good teacher. She makes the subject interesting and relevant, and explains things clearly. And she develops exercises and assignments that really help you learn."
Also? I'd like to hear the first description applied to a man:
"He is SUCH a good teacher. I'm so lucky to be in his course. He's just so kind and loving—"
Nope, wouldn't fly, would it?
... the counselor suggested that to give Geekman a "role in the process", he might want to "document our journey".
By taking up scrap-booking.
Today we had our first counselling appointment for the egg donation. The counsellor irritated the hell out of me by behaving like a stereotype. And I hated her skirt. (Yes, I'm superficial. But dude, a bright blue leather miniskirt? You would have to be 16 to make that work.)
If there's one thing that pisses me off in a counsellor, it's cliche-speak. I think that Geekman and I were pretty much in agreement with that, though, as he whispered to me at one point, "If that woman uses the word 'space' one more time, I'm going to make her define it. Using mathematical equations."
Also? Admitting that you don't usually do egg donation cases since you are filling in for a colleague, but that you did some 'research' on the issues yesterday? That's not going a long way towards giving us faith in your competence.
So then there was half an hour of (fairly obvious) questions (about issues that just about everyone I've ever discussed egg donation with has also brought up) posed like she was so proud of herself for thinking of them. And 'how did that make me feel'? It made me feel like I should be patting her on the head and praising her for good thinking.
And by the way, did I mention the skirt?
We just got an email from the university sent to all staff (all 3000+ of us), asking us, in light of a recent robbery on campus, to please let Security know whenever we are going to be working later than 6pm or in the weekends.
I sure hope they've set up some extra phone lines.
Those of you following the bike tyre saga at home will be pleased to hear that THIS time (slow leak in front tyre for the past month; explosive flat two days ago in the back) I finally gave in and bought pre-slime-filled, special un-flattable inner tubes.
One of them even came with special, straight-out-of-the-packet holes! Yup, that's right. Three of 'em. Since I had bought the last two tubes the shop had in my size, I decided to patch the holes instead of returning the tube. Unfortunately, I only spotted two of the holes to start with. Fixed them. Put the tyre on (back wheel, so very frustrating to fix). Pumped it up.
Aaaaaaaaannnnnnd....five minutes later it was totally flat. At which point (okay, actually after another twenty minutes of wrestling the wheel off) I found the third (quite tiny) hole. I was out of patches by then, so I took all my wheels off again (okay, both wheels, but "all" conveys my sense of frustration far better), reorganised the tyres so that the good slime tube was on the back, replaced the front tube with the old, slow-leaking one, and vowed to return to the shop and bite someone in charge until they give me a refund. (Also to do: recover from parenthesis addiction (maybe).)
The thing is, I thought slime was supposed to SEAL small holes.
Universe? What am I doing wrong???
In other, totally unrelated news, this is hilarious.
I'm a member of a teaching development group on campus which recently got a small grant to employ some administrative assistance. We haven't used any of the money yet.
Yesterday at our meeting one of the members brought in a huge new handbook the university had printed. "It's full of really important teaching-related stuff," he said. "Case studies, policies, and all sorts of things." We suggested he tell us a bit about it, but he admitted he hadn't read it.
We sat and looked glumly at the 300+ pages, each reluctant to volunteer to wade through it all.
And then... And THEN! We came up with a solution of such genius that I can hardly bring myself to share it with you, in case it blows your minds. So I'll whisper it very quietly. We are going to use some of the grant money to employ someone to read the handbook FOR US. Do you see where this is going? The university will be paying someone to read its own policies!
I'm sure if we set it up right, we could use it as the basis of some sort of perpetual motion machine.
As one of my many part time jobs, I do Random Website StuffTM. My most recent brief was for another department, who wanted me to create a Google Maps-based application for their website that shows the fieldwork locations of everyone in the department, along with little info bubbles giving the researcher's name and some other details.
So I did this.
Then I released it to a small group of their profs to get some feedback. Here's some snippets from the emails that ensued:
1. "Please remove the titles "Dr, "Professor" and so on before our names. This looks wanky on a website."
[I do so]
2. "Please put "Dr, Professor" and so on before our names. A website is a public face of the university and needs to look official."
[Sorry dude, over-ruled: the guy in #1 was your boss]
3. (From the guy who originally requested I base the map on Google Maps because he likes the way it looks): "Can you make the sea less blue?"
[I'll just ask Google to dump some bleach into the ocean before they snap their next satellite shot, shall I?]
Then yesterday I made the page live and sent an email to the whole department that prominently (i.e. right at the top) included the following:
If you wish me to move the location of your marker on the map, I need you to send me the latitude and longitude of where it should be located. (Small villages in the Pacific are generally not marked on Google Maps, and sometimes I had to guess about the location.)Today I received nine requests to move markers. Guess how many gave latitudes and longitudes? (If you guessed "one", then you're giving them too much credit.)
Geekman: "I nearly opened a virus today. It was very clever. It pretended to be one of those e-greeting cards, except that the "link" was an attached .exe file."
Me: "Good thing you noticed."
Geekman: "Well, it's not like it would have mattered anyway. I was using Linux. Although... I think the way I've set things up, it would have automatically been opened under Wine. [a sort of virtual Windows system that runs under Linux]"
Me: "So you could have emulated the virus."
Geekman: "Ooh! This could be fun! I could run virtual viruses in my virtual Windows!" (Scurries off to try this out).
Yes, folks, we are living in an XKCD strip.
A friend of mine is moving to Canada for a year for a postdoc. Her tickets route her through the USA where she transfers from international to domestic, but she leaves the USA the same day. Obviously she has a valid one-year visa for Canada. As for the USA transit period, normally, when Australians or NZers travel to the USA for fewer than 90 days, they can go without a visa under the visa waiver program.
As I understand it, 1 day < 90 days.
BUT. It turns out that since her onward tickets are to Canada, she has to apply for a visa for the USA that is valid for the entirety of her stay in Canada.
In other words, in order to work in Canada for a year, she has to have a 1-year visa for the USA.
She finds this out now, three weeks before departure. Chances are, she can't get a 1-year visa for the USA between now and then (although she is having to travel to Sydney next week for an interview at the United States Consulate on the off-chance they might be able to rush it through). Her back-up plan is to reroute her flights so that she no longer passes through the USA.
And the fact that is possible totally negates any reasonable justification for this visa requirement. If you can enter Canada from elsewhere and not be required to have a visa for the USA, then it isn't as though this requirement is doing a great job of border protection, right?
I just don't understand. Does the USA somehow own Canada after all?
Rob and Claudia told me their six-year-old daughter (from his previous marriage) came up to them the other day, all excited.
"Daddy, do you and Claudia still want to have more babies?" she asked.
"Yes, we do..."
"I've found out how to do it! You need to have SEX."
The couple who I am donating eggs to and I had our first joint appointment with the IVF doctor yesterday.
All of these people need better pseudonyms. Geekman suggests calling them Flappy, Flappy and Dr Flappy, but while those are excellent parrot names, people are a little harder. Well, actually, the doctor is easy. She comes across as friendly and competent, but also a little intimidating. So I'm going to go with Dr. Intimidating. As for the couple, (for secret reasons known only to myself, nya ha ha ha!) I'll call them Claudia and Rob.
Anyway, the upshot of the appointment is that all of my tests came out perfect, the examination the doctor did on the spot showed that I was perfect, my answers to her rapid-fire 20-questions game (Do you drink? Do you smoke? Do you take vitamins? Do you floss? (Yes, seriously: apparently it's important)) came out perfect.
A little unnervingly, Dr. Intimidating dictates her patient notes while you are there in the room. ("Donor is in perfect health and clearly highly intelligent." She turns to me and says, "You're scary.")
So apparently I am scary. It turns out this is not just because I am so awesome that I scare people. People who are young, fertile and "itty-bitty" (her descriptor, not mine—I would have described myself as "slim" but hardly "itty-bitty") have higher risk of side-effects from the fertility drugs. But it sounded like she had a sensible plan for taking that into account with regards to dosage and monitoring and so on, so that's cool.
So Dr. Intimidating ran through the stages of the procedure with us, took ten minutes out for a seriously engaged and well-informed discussion about linguistic theory (see: "intimidating") and to ask Rob about his latest physics research, and then charged them $400 for the appointment. I think that might just about cover the latest payments on the white leather lounge suit in her office, but possibly not the hand-painted wallpaper in the foyer.
Actually, I'm kind of surprised by how much of this IVF treatment is covered by the public health system here. I always thought of IVF as costing the parents-to-be tens of thousands of dollars per cycle. (Well, I guess it maybe does in the USA). Here, the actual costs are as follows:
Preliminary tests: $350-ish
IVF clinic fee: $3950
Appointments with doctor: $250 per person for initial consult; $150 thereafter. Usually there are three or four appointments per cycle.
Medication: $4000+
Anaesthesia: $400
Surgeon's fee/other day surgery costs: variable
Total: around $10,000 (+ day surgery fees)
What the couple themselves have to pay:
Preliminary tests: $40-ish
IVF clinic fee: $790
Appointments: $30-ish for initial consult; $15-ish thereafter
Medication: around $400
Anaesthesia: around $80
Surgeon's fee/other day surgery costs: variable
Total: around $1500 (+ day surgery fees)
The rest is covered by the public health cover that all Australians have. Seems like a very good deal!
Anyway, the next step is counselling, which is scheduled for the week after next. "Just to see if any of you are crackers," says Dr. Intimidating.
Meanwhile, I am scary.
My computer terminal window has resorted to hissing at me (apparently in warning):
I think this means I should step away slowly and calmly, so as not to anger it further.
This morning I overheard this part of a conversation and was totally horrified...
"So, you have a dog, right?"
"Yeah, but I keep forgetting to feed it. And then it gets sad and I can't bear to look at it, because I feel so guilty. So I've been avoiding it for a while now."
I was thinking about calling the SPCA until the next sentence:
"Well they only started that application so you'd feel you have to come and check your profile every day. And then see more of their ads."
"Yeah, Facebook's become totally evil. It's no fun anymore."
You know you've been spending too much time formatting manuscripts when upon hearing KLF's Justified and Ancient, your first thought is "No! Left aligned, dammit!"
A colleague of Geekman's, explaining how he "helps" his wife sleep:
"The problem is, there's this dog next door that barks and growls all night. My wife lies awake and gets angrier and angrier listening to it. So I tell her stories to help her out. Like, I tell her to imagine that we're camping, and the dog is guarding the perimeter of the camp, and the reason he's barking and growling is that there are monsters circling the camp trying to get in at us. But the dog is doing a great job of keeping them away. So then, when she hears the dog barking, she knows it's a sign that she's safe and it's okay to sleep."
You have to love Google Maps, since they allow you to share your* stupidity with the whole internet.
Exhibit one: the sensible route that anyone else would have taken
Exhibit two: my 'shortcut'
_______________
* By 'your', of course, I mean 'my'.
Take a look at this sentence from a NZ news story today (the bolding is mine):
Cannibalism lasted for several hundred years until the 1830s although there were a few isolated cases after that, said Professor Moon, a Pakeha history professor at Te Ara Poutama, the Maori Development Unit at the Auckland University of Technology.(Note for non-NZers: "Pakeha" is the general term for a white New Zealander).
A recurring theme:
December 2007: StyleyGeek gets hired as a writer on a new magazine. She works 20 hours, sends in her copy and bills the company. Oops! The company has done a runner. (StyleyGeek never gets paid.)
February 2008: StyleyGeek gets hired to fill in for someone on teaching leave for the semester. She works for six weeks, then they tell her they were actually supposed to have advertised the position, and could she please apply for the job she is already doing, and then they might be able to process her contract and pay her. (Eventually resolved satisfactorily).
June 2008: StyleyGeek is working as a research assistant. The faculty member she is working for wants to go to a conference overseas during one of the teaching weeks of the following semester. She asks if SG can cover her lectures that week, to be paid out of the same pool of grant money the research assistant money came out of. SG agrees happily, teaches the classes, and is then informed that, oops, that money is earmarked for research assistance. You shouldn't have taught the classes after all. Now we don't know how to pay you. (Still not resolved).
August 2008: The research school likes the website StyleyGeek designed for her department. They ask her to revamp their website and put in lots of cool stuff like she did on the other site. By Monday, please, as they have an important review coming up. StyleyGeek stays up all night creating some working examples of some of the 'cool stuff'. The next morning she emails the IT people to ask for access to the website files. Is informed that only the IT people are allowed access to the files. All requests for website changes must go through them. The 'cool stuff' is too difficult and they won't do it. But the research school people did not have the right to hire her to do it either. So even though this time the money is there and earmarked for the project, SG still might not get paid.
In future, StyleyGeek does not work without payment in advance and written confirmation of her job, preferably from the Vice Chancellor, kthxbai.
Updated to add: I just remembered another one! 2006: I was employed by a government department to work on their website. Except, oops! They had forgotten they were only allowed to hire Australian citizens. Or they hadn't noticed I wasn't one. Or something. Either way, the job evaporated before the ink on the contract was dry.
Geekman claims I maligned him in the previous post, where I wrote:
You can't get theoreticians like Geekman to fix a car, since the first thing they want to do is model it as a sphere, or solve the problem for two dimensions, or for conditions of absolute zero with no gravity.He would like you to know that, although he usually models things for conditions of absolute zero with no gravity, he does it in ONE dimension, and as a parabola. Not a sphere.
We one of the experimentalists* from the physics department fixed our car!
It's almost a pity, because I had just got to the point of feeling smugly superior about "not" having a car anymore. (The "not" is not in unnecessary quotation marks, but rather refers to the sort of not-having that involves owning something that doesn't work.)
There were three separate points in the fixing process where I was totally ready to give up and call the wreckers, but the physicists proved unstoppable:
(1) When we went to get the car out of the garage, and found that as well as the steering lock problem, the battery was flat. I was going to give up then and there, since even if we jump-started it, I wasn't about to drive it for 45 minutes to recharge the battery when the steering could fail at any moment. Geekman convinced me we should do it anyway, though. ("What's the worst that can happen? We die in a horrible accident. Oh well.")
(2) Then after we pried the casing and horn and various electrics off the steering wheel, removing the wheel itself required (yes, I do mean required) beating it hard with a mallet. (Actual warning in the user's manual: "Do not hit the steering wheel with a mallet." That made us feel better about doing so, since we figured they wouldn't have anticipated it if it weren't a reasonable solution.)
(3) When we finally got down to the ignition shaft, it turned out that was done up with screws designed only to be tightened, not loosened. (There was only a ridge for the screwdriver to lock into for turning to the right.) At that point I gave up completely and said, "Well, we tried."
This is apparently an attitude unknown in the physics community. The screw is the wrong shape? We will mutilate it with an electric drill until it is the RIGHT shape!
And they did.
And it was. Eventually. Kind of.
At least, it came off.
And then we removed the thing that we figured must be the steering lock, which was the cause of all the trouble. (Um, anyone know what a steering lock looks like? Is it a small metal block with a couple of springs connecting it to the ignition? I hope so, because that's the bit we took out and threw away.)
And then we put everything back together, hopefully in the right order. We didn't even have any pieces left over! And the car still goes. (Now with no sudden steering failures.)We rock! Experimentalist guy rocks!
__________
* You can't get theoreticians like Geekman to fix a car, since the first thing they want to do is model it as a sphere, or solve the problem for two dimensions, or for conditions of absolute zero with no gravity.
Me: "Oooh! Fresh pasta in the fridge! I love you because you eat pasta with me. And because you don't say, 'Are you sure you want to eat so much pasta? It'll all end up on your hips tomorrow.'"
Geekman: "Well, we aren't eating it until tomorrow. So it would have to be causality-infringing pasta."
Anastasia mentioned dairy price increases in a recent post and it reminded me of a bizarre conversation I had with the out-of-touch in-laws (TOOTILs).
TOOTILs "look after" a single mother from their church. By "look after", I mean they give her a little money towards her rent, and in exchange they get to berate her about her life choices.
So TOOTILs were telling me about the huge recent price hikes in butter, cheese and milk in NZ. "Of course," they said, "it doesn't affect us." (They don't use dairy; only soy products, olive oil, and goat's cheese.) "It's people like [single mother] it's hitting hard. Her children go through litres and litres of milk a day. And cheese! My goodness."
Then, in an exasperated tone, "We've told her. But these people have fixed ideas, you know?"
Quick reality check:
500 grams butter: $3.59 — 500 g olive oil-based spread: $10.39
1 kg cheese: $9.99 — 1 kg goat's feta: $37.35
1 litre cow's milk: $1.99 — 1 litre soy milk: $3.25
(Prices from the NZ Woolworths website)
Warning: total detour from the main point here:
When looking to see what had happened to dairy prices in NZ, I came across this article, which claims that "diary income is driving the [New Zealand] economy." I was quite overcome with a vision of our entire population making it big in the blogging world, and had to go lie down to recover.
I attended a conference today that was so cheap (or disorganised?) that, instead of name badges or even sticky labels, they passed around post-its for people to write their names on and stick to their chests.
"Hi! Mind if I invite over some friends?"
"This is Flappy. He and I go way back."
"I saved his life this one time, when—oops, there he goes again. Grab hold, Flappy!"
"It's okay now. Everything's under control. Hope you weren't too worried."
"Now, about that birdseed... Whenever you're ready. We'll just be waiting here."
One particularly irritating thing about the egg donation I have decided to do* is the amount of contact I have to have with doctors. I am yet to meet a doctor who doesn't have some serious personality flaw that s/he lets out to play during patient-doctor interactions.
I used to go to the university clinic, until the doctors there made me cry one too many times.
Then I picked a random doctor out of the phone book, and turned up to find that he made me fill out a form that included such information as "marital status" and "religion". His receptionist, one of my students, told me she has to hide her feminist studies homework from him because he gives her such a hard time about it. Needless to say, I wasn't about to go to him for the egg-donation-related tests I have to have.
So I went back to the university clinic, hoping I had just been unlucky in the past.
When I made the appointment, I handed over the list of tests the IVF clinic had given us for me to have done, and specifically asked (1) if there was further information they would need, and (2) if I could have an appointment long enough to do them all.
These are actual things the doctor said to me during my visit:
"What, you want a pap smear AS WELL? You'd better realise you are going to be charged for an extra long visit today."
"This list of tests says, 'cystic fibrosis'. Do you want the Delta F test or the 33 mutagens? [...] How can you not know? If you come in here wanting medical tests, you need to find out which ones you need."
"How do I do a chromosome test?" (Um, I thought YOU were the doctor. Don't you have ways of finding this sort of thing out?)
"This is all going to cost you. I hope you're well off." And when I explained that my friend is covering the costs. "Hrmph. Then I hope your 'friend' doesn't mind that you don't know which test it is you need. If we do the wrong one she'll be paying for useless results. In fact, why don't you phone the clinic now and ask which cystic fibrosis test I should do?"
"Sorry," I said, "I don't have a mobile phone."
"Why not?"
"Um. Well. I never seem to need one."
"You need one NOW, don't you?"
Yeah. Because the doctor's phone, sitting right there on her desk, must have been mysteriously out of action.
And then she took six different blood samples for the tests, which, as a phone call from the pathology lab told me later, were taken in the wrong type of tube, and so can I please go across to the other side of the city to have them redone at the hospital, please?
The next installment in this exciting adventure is Thursday, when I have an ultrasound scheduled. My instructions are to drink a liter of water an hour beforehand, and not to pee until after the appointment. I can't wait.
_______________
* I was planning a post on the reasons for my decision, but really, it's kind of boring, so suffice it to say that I looked thoroughly at all the literature I could find on the topic, including medical journals, and it seems to me that (a) the risk of known side effects is acceptably low and (b) the unproven risks, which may be of more concern (e.g. increased risk of cancer later down the track) have less evidence supporting them than e.g. the dangers of storing food in plastic, or using mobile phones, or various other modern conveniences which I'm not about to give up. I was pretty comfortable with the non-medical side of things already, and added to that it's not often you get a chance to change someone else's life so much for the better, or to "try before you buy" with something like having kids. So I feel pretty certain that I've made the right choice.
Look what the wonderful Jana sent me for graduation!
Now I need a plausible cover story in case anybody asks about the inscription...
The last of our visitors has left. For the past two weeks we have had a constant stream of relatives staying. First my mother, then my parents-in-law, and yesterday and today my father and his new wife. When they finally went, Geekman and I did a little Happy Dance of Freedom (TM) and now our lives can return to normal.
A particular highlight of the past week has been my father-in-law's complete obliviousness to everything going on around him. He has a very stereotypical Swedish name, so for the purposes of this post, I'll refer to him as Lars.
Special mention goes to the following moments:
We are walking through a mall, trying to find a particular type of sieve that my mother-in-law wants and can't find in NZ. After 20 minutes of this, Lars remarks in a puzzled tone, "This looks a little bit like a mall."
All week my mother-in-law has been longing to go to a walk-in aviary that we took her to last time she visited. We decide (within Lars's hearing) to go on Saturday. Saturday comes. We exclaim that the weather is nice, so we can definitely go to the aviary. We get in the car, Lars asks for directions, and we tell him to drive until he sees a sign saying, "[Generic Village Name] Aviary". We turn off at the aviary. Park. Walk across the road, and Lars points and exclaims, "Look! It's an aviary! Shall we go look in there?"
We are in the car and Lars is driving (it's a rental that they hired while they are here, since ours is still dead). Geekman says, "You'll need to turn left soon, so move into the left lane."
"Ja ha," says Lars. Doesn't change lanes.
"The left lane," repeats Geekman. "Change lanes."
"Ja ha."
"Before these lights! You are going to turn left at the lights."
"Oh! LEFT!" says Lars, and turns into the right-hand lane.
It must be nice on Planet Lars this time of year.
But now we are free, and there's going to be a sleeping, healthy eating, and plenty of computer games in our future.
In other news, I am apparently teaching a course to one student this semester. Two-and-a-half hours contact time a week. One-on-one. This struck me as a spectacularly good deal, both for me and the student. In fact, I was so dazzled by the fact that they are paying me around half of last semester's pay in order to teach 1/140th of the class size, that it wasn't until now that it struck me that I don't know HOW to teach a course one-on-one. At least, I don't know how to fill up 2.5 hours a week. He has readings and homework and interactive online exercises. And he presumably will have some questions. But I doubt he has 2.5 hours worth of questions. And did I mention this is one-on-one? One-on-one??? There's nowhere to hide! I don't even know how to start adapting the materials I usually use for this class for one student. I usually have two hours of lecture, and one hour of the students doing exercises or discussions in groups while I wander round and see how they are going. None of that is going to work AT ALL.
Any suggestions?
Dear visitors (including, but not limited to my in-laws),
The Aboriginal Tent Embassy is not a tourist attraction; it's a political protest. While I don't suppose they object to people dropping by to express support, you don't get to whine about them not looking the way you had expected, not having the views you think they should have, or not being "able" (or perhaps willing?) to give you a potted history of the region.
Yours a little bit horrifiedly,
StyleyGeek.
Between the start of my PhD and graduation:
We moved from Denmark to Australia
Then moved three more times
We bought our first car
My parents split up twice, then divorced
My closest relative apart from my parents had her husband threaten her with a gun
She moved into a women's shelter
He killed himself
My father tried to kill himself
My grandmother died
My mother got cancer
My father got remarried (like, four days ago) and I gained two teenage step-sisters.
I decided to donate eggs to an infertile friend (yes, I've said yes!)
I read the Iliad in the original Greek
I took up bell ringing
and rock climbing
My bench press decreased by 5 kg
My mad programming skillz increased 10-fold
and people started paying me money to do computer stuff.
I visited the USA for the first time,
presented at an international conference for the first time
and at too many local conferences to count
I tutored for the first time
I taught and convened my own course for the first time
and then again
with 140 students
In total, I taught around 350 students
three of whom also graduated today
(one, despite my best efforts)
I submitted a major grant proposal (which I haven't heard back about yet)
I was offered (and declined) an academic job
and, y'know, apparently I wrote a dissertation.
Yay me!
...and now I'm in trouble with the higher-ups (Head of School - not a member of our department) for this. Because HE doesn't think we should have been passing everyone. And he's the one who had to sign off on my "amended" results.
I actually agree with him, but can't exactly explain that without making it sound like I'm siding against the senior staff who told me to pass these students. I simply told him I changed the marks on the advice of certain senior colleagues, told him who they were, and to speak to them about it for more information.
And now I'm really really worried they are going to throw me under the metaphorical bus. ("What? She's passing the students who earned a fail? We never told her to do that! No! Not us!")
On the positive side, I got my student evaluations back, and one in particular made me smile. Under "Good aspects of this class" the student wrote, "StyleyGeek is excellent! She is the best teacher I've ever had!" Under "Suggested improvements", they wrote, "Raise her salary!"
Hah, if only they knew.
You know you have been spending too much time online when, walking down the (real) street in the (real) world, you see a building with distorted-looking lines on it and think, "Huh: photoshopped."
I just turned down an academic job.
I decided a while ago that I would rather be jobless than do the long-distance marriage thing. We did long distance for 4 years and it was horrible. I never want to do it again.
So the obvious solution was to just not apply for any jobs that meant moving away, right? It's not like I'd have to turn down jobs if I wasn't applying for them. Academic jobs aren't exactly going begging.
And then one did.
I got pulled aside at morning tea yesterday by two academics who I admire greatly (and who I didn't even know knew my name), from a university about 1000km (500 miles) from my city: "Have we got a deal for you!"
They had just had a faculty member suddenly leave. Two weeks before semester starts. The deal they were offering me was: 6 month contract, full time, level B (i.e. one promotion/salary level higher than the usual straight-out-of-grad-school position). They will have to advertise for the permanent replacement, but I think the suggestion was there that if I did a good job in the next six months, I could apply for the advertised position and would have a reasonable chance of success.
When I brought up the husband thing, they offered to provide guest lecturer replacements for two weeks during the semester, so I could have an extra two weeks back home as well as the two week mid-semester break. And they said half the course online, so I could be present only part of the week and commute.
So, commuting. The first problem is there are no direct flights between my city and this new one. So it would be a minimum two-step process. I estimate the quickest door-to-door trip would take around five hours. The second problem is that return flights are around $500. I couldn't do that every week, and keep two households, without it eating up most of my salary. If I came back once a fortnight, that and the extra rent/bills would take up at least $10,000 of my $35,000/6 months salary. Taxes would take another $8,000 or so, so I'd essentially be working for $17,000/6 months. So, not great, but not bad compared to my other prospects. (I estimate I'll probably earn around $3000 in the next 6 months.)
But there are other problems too:
So I've been taking this short summer-school-type course on parsers and realisers (software for analysing sentences syntactically, or generating them based on a set of syntactic rules). We spent the last couple of days on theory, and today for the first time got let loose to play with some parsers.
Because the university paid me for five hours of exam marking, and it took 40...
...and because I "irresponsibly" took some of the weekend "off" to attend a conference where I was presenting a paper...
...and because the final grades deadline was three working days after my class's final exam...
...I was faced with a choice of meeting the grades deadline but not getting the fails cross-marked in time, or canceling my trip to the next conference, submitting grades late, and waiting until a colleague had time to cross-mark the (three) fails.
I chose the former.
Two days after the grades deadline, the colleague, in front of a bunch of other senior academics, told me to "just pass" the fails. She admitted she hadn't read the exams yet, but that we really couldn't afford to fail anyone this year, as we need the student numbers. The other academics agreed with her. They all told me to resubmit new (passing) exam marks.
I tried to do so (against my better judgment), but by then the students had been notified of their results. Technically this delay is my fault, since it is against university policy to submit final grades without getting all fails cross-marked.
I now have three emails in my inbox, from the three failing students, wanting to know if there is "anything" they can do to pass (and reminding me, for which they get minus points, of how much they paid to take the class).
And the thing is, there is something they can do. If they were to lodge a grade appeal, which by university policy I should now tell them they can do, the appeal goes to my colleague who told me to pass them. She will (a) be highly pissed off I didn't do so, and (b) pass them.
So do I do that? Or just tell them there was a "mistake" and their passing grades will come out soon as an amendment (and then lodge that amendment)? Or remind them that they failed every piece of internal assessment, AND the exam, AND didn't attend half the classes or do the homework (like, EVER), and ask them if they really think they deserve reconsideration (and hope they don't call my bluff)?
Help!
If you are the Vice Chancellor, and choose for your opening address to a conference the topic of "Why linguistics is very important", do not expect to be taken seriously when you have just disbanded your university's linguistics department.
Dude. Get a clue.
I'm just poking my head briefly out of my hole to complain about conferences with sucky internet access.
And to say that if I owned a cafe, I would call it "Bite Me".
So I thought I'd show you the collection of things I keep on my office windowsill: some dying cacti, a blue sparkly thing on a string, and... a greedy cockatoo.
He's pretty good about waiting his turn until the rosellas have finished their meal.
But then it's all, "DUDE! It's ME! Look! I'm here!"
...and, "Do you think maybe some more of that birdseed could find its way to the OUTSIDE of the window? Kthx bai."
Not the smartest way to start a phone call to your former lecturer:
"Hi, I'm not sure if you remember me, but I'm Joe Bloggs? I took your class last year? I'm the one who plagiarised the essay?"
Not the smartest request to make of her:
"So, I was wanting to appeal against that, but I'm not sure if there's some sort of statute of limitations. Could you find out for me, please? And can you find out what the process of appeal would involve and who I need to contact and when? It's really urgent, so please get back to me by the end of today."
And it's not the smartest time to do it, when she's right in the middle of marking 130 final exams and about to leave for a two week conference.
How can it possibly be urgent when you've waited 10 months before even asking about an appeal? Good thing we DO have a deadline for appeals, and, guess what? It's 30 days after they get their result. (Hah.)
(PS: I am planning to write a post about why I said that people in Tonga are strange, but I just haven't got to it yet.)
Sometimes when reading linguistics papers, you come across these awesome example sentences that leave you wondering how on earth THAT came up in a fieldwork session.
Today's stunner:
Ke hang hèng keká i li.
‘He made accusations concerning his coconuts.’
(Except for Mikael.)
So here's the summary of Geekman's and my discussions of the scenarios in this post:
The half-empty wine: I think that it sends a message. That message is: I don't want to waste a new bottle of wine on you/your party. Which seems kind of rude. But although we didn't take a half-full bottle to yesterday's party, we did poll everyone there (physicists) and they did all say that it would have been totally acceptable. On the other hand, as JustMe pointed out, they are clearly all smoking crack instead of doing their experiments.
The nail scissors: can I just say, EWWW. Actually, this one seems to polarise people. I think some people (including me) must classify nail scissors in the same "personal hygiene" category as toothbrushes. No way are you borrowing mine! I would even be happier if I didn't share a pair of nail scissors with Geekman. Other people seem to see them as akin to any generic tool - hammer, pair of normal scissors, etc - and have no problem with the idea of lending them. I think hairbrushes are similar in that people vary hugely with regard to how comfortable they are lending them to others. Interestingly, for some people I've polled, a scenario where the nail is bleeding makes asking to borrow scissors more acceptable (emergency), while for others (including me) this renders it way worse (EW, BLOOD).
Helping yourself to someone else's food: I would only do this if I were totally desperate and there's no chance they would know (e.g. an apple from a full fruit bowl, or a sandwich using things they have lots of). And even then, I feel that it's not really appropriate. But on the other hand (as Geekman also points out), if people were staying with me, I'd hate to think they were hungry and desperate, so I'd be happy for them to help themselves to MY food. So I think this is more borderline for me than the first two scenarios.
Cutting a cake before being invited: in the real-life scenario that triggered our discussion, this was actually part of the previous question. We were staying with acquaintances that Geekman had only just met, and when I gave in to his need to raid their fridge in the night, I still totally drew the line at him cutting himself a piece of cake. But even in a scenario where the cake has been produced at afternoon tea or something, I still feel it's rude to dig in until invited, or until the host has cut it. This is kind of irrational - I admit - but it's an instinct I have all the same.
Male colleagues commenting on a woman's outfit: I wondered if I was being super-sensitive with this one. It bothers me personally that one older male colleague (who used to be HOD, so kind of also my boss) comments on my clothes most days. Either, "Nice skirt," or "You're dressed up today - are you teaching?" or "Jeans and a t-shirt? Must be a non-teaching day," or "New shoes?" I know he doesn't mean anything by it, but it bothers me to think that he keeps track of what I wear, or really notices it at all. And I hate the fact that now when I get dressed in the morning, the thought of what he'll say about any particular item of clothing crosses my mind, and sometimes even influences whether I'll wear it.
The connection with Geekman was that he recently wore to work a jersey/jumper/pullover that he hadn't worn in years and so many people commented on it (just saying, "New jumper?") that he felt uncomfortable wearing it again. So I pointed out that he now had an idea of what it was like to be a woman, except that you get this ALL THE TIME. So we were wondering if I overreact, or if other women feel this way too. Your answers were very interesting and it seemed to me that they patterned with the results I got from real-life people. (Women in my department and some non-university acquaintances hate it; women in physics and chemistry claim not to notice or care). I get the impression that maybe it's in male-dominated departments that the women don't seem to care about this so much. I wonder if that's because anyone who hasn't learned to ignore all that sort of bullshit would have gone postal or dropped out long before they get to grad student/faculty status? In more evenly balanced or female-dominated workplaces, you don't have to develop that sort of immunity, because you can just (mostly) avoid the men who think they get to have an opinion on how you dress or behave.
I just ordered something from the USA, checked my credit card, and the amount charged (in Australian dollars) was pretty much the same amount that the website had quoted (in US dollars). I figured my credit card had screwed something up, so checked the exchange rate and OH MY GOD.
MUST BUY EVERYTHING IN THE USA! NOW!
I have this weird hangover from my early days of experience with American currency back in the early 90s, that I think of US $1 as being equivalent to NZ $2. And I think of the Australian and NZ dollar as almost the same. So even though I know things have changed, when I buy something online from the USA, I first double the price, and if that doesn't sound too insane, I consider it properly. But by "properly", I mean I was still stuck in last year's exchange rate of adding on about a third of the price again.
But this 1-1 exchange rate? It sets my heart a-fluttering.
Amazon.com, here I come!
I have so many questions. So. Many. Questions. Which means it's time to enlist the wisdom of the internet.
First, one for the gardeners. It's the end of June. That's roughly equivalent to the end of December for Northern Hemisphere types, I guess. It's definitely winter. We've had a few frosts. We use the heating most nights. You have to wear a coat and scarf outside. The ski season is about to start. I have a tomato plant in a pot on the balcony that I gave up on around two months ago when winter was starting. We pretty much stopped watering it. But it's still producing flowers and tomatoes. And they are still ripening. I guess my only question here is WTF? And, when will this madness stop???
Secondly, I am going to a conference next weekend, and a colleague whose mother lives in that city has said her mother is happy for me to stay with her as well. I have never met the mother before. I will be staying two nights, and will hardly be there except to sleep. What is a nice little gift I can give as a thank you? My usual standbys are chocolates or a bottle of local wine, but my colleague says her mother is on a diet and doesn't drink.
Finally, Geekman and I often disagree on what is socially appropriate. Last night at a party, he polled all his friends, who he claimed agreed with him. So since I have no friends, I'm going to poll the WHOLE INTERNET and see if you all agree with me. (If you don't, you are henceforth banned from this blog.) Of the following list of things we have disagreed on the acceptability of lately, which do you think are okay, and which do you consider inappropriate?
It's a country full of strange people but pretty fish, with a severe shortage of food that isn't bananas, crappy weather and water you really REALLY shouldn't drink (oops), but the piglets are very cute.
It's just for a week.
Geekman and I are going here:
To hang out on this:
There's no internet (or um, hot water, electricity, or other trivial luxuries). But to make up for that, apparently there's plenty of civil insurrection and dengue fever for everyone.
Hurrah!
Dear Student,
Turning up to your (early) exam with a box of chocolates for the lecturer, and then complimenting her on her outfit is just a little too obvious.
I appreciate your effort, but you need to work on subtlety.
I'll enjoy the chocolates, though.
Love and low grades,
StyleyGeek.
The Head of School rolled over and extended my contract. It might have had something to do with the phone call I had with our union rep with my door open (the HoS's office is directly above mine in the building and sound carries REALLY well). Or it might have had something to do with my supervisor giving him a good verbal kicking. (Mysteriously she came wandering by five minutes after I received the email, asking, "Have you heard from [HoS] yet?")
Either way, I have an extra 10 days of contract, which covers the time during which students will be consulting me before the final exam, the exam itself, and the marking period.
The email from HoS went something like this:
Dear StyleyGeek,
Flatter flatter flatter.
Save face as much as possible.
Aggressive assertion of authority.
Insinuations about my work ethic.
Best,
HoS.
"Sometimes sentences can be ambiguous. For instance, in Chinese, the sentence "The fire burned up all of them" is ambiguous. Even though we use this sentence all the time in our daily talk in China, it is still ambiguous."
(This one probably only funny if you are a linguist.) "Semantic roles include things like 'agent' 'experiencer' 'instrument' 'source' 'location' and 'victim'."
And the "what were you thinking?" award goes to: "The sentence 'The man hit the robber with a long nose' is well-formed nonsense, since no human has a long nose, even if he is a robber."
"The thing about those head scarves is that you can never know if the person you're dealing with is Muslim or a ninja."
Tonight a bunch of us from the department went for drinks to celebrate the last teaching day of the semester. At 10pm we left the pub and—
—every single one of us went back to the department to do some more work.
At 4:15
Dear Researchers,
Could anyone who is interested in the Pinnnacle Program please email us ASAP.
Regards,
Admin.
Dear Researchers,
Apologies for the spelling mistake in the previous email: we spelt Pinnacle with three ns their.
Regards,
Admin.
An infertile friend has asked me whether I would consider donating some eggs to her.
Because obviously important life decisions should only be taken in consultation with the entire internet, I have to ask: what would you do?
Considerations:
This awesome blogger sent me a present!
It arrived yesterday, was thoroughly inspected, and pronounced acceptable.
(They are salt and pepper shakers, in case you can't tell.)
Thank you, ITPF!
Very soon, I will have accrued eight days of leave entitlement. I plan to take it the week after next. I just tried to apply for this, but my current accrued leave stands at 20.93 hours, and eight days' worth is 21 hours.
So I have to wait. Until I have accrued another 4 minutes of leave.
So the university, in its wisdom, seems to have decided not to extend my contract to actually cover the period during which my students prepare for and sit the final exam, nor for the following period, during which I supposedly mark 140 exams and submit the grades. This despite the fact that I have in writing, in an email from our department administrator, the following sentence: "I have spoken with [Head of Department] about your contract, and if your exam does end up being scheduled after the 20th, we can extend the contract with ease".
So I'm pretty much certain I'm going to refuse to mark the damn things. Unfortunately (for me), some of the permanent staff have volunteered to do so instead. Other responses I am considering.
(1) Setting up an auto-response to student emails that arrive between when my contract ends and the exam, saying, "I am unable to respond to your email, as I am no longer an employee of the university. If you have any questions about your exam, please contact [Head of Department]."
(2) Putting a notice on my office door saying the same thing.
(3) Having a serious chat with my union.
(4) Demanding that the department honour what is essentially an informal contract to pay me for the exam period (see email above).
(5) Refusing to submit final grades, as I am no longer a university employee at that point.
(6) Sucking it up, being a good girl, and not jeopardising my chances of future employment by being difficult about things like actually getting paid for work I do.
In related news, remember that I didn't get paid at all until 8 weeks after I started this job, due to contract fuck-ups. And although I am being paid for 17.5 hours a week, I worked 40+ each of the past two, which are the only weeks I have actually counted the hours I've put into this course.
So, which of 1-6 do you consider to be justified? And (an entirely different question), which should I actually do?
(For background, the first post on this is here.)
Today we discovered that the word for "husband" and the word for "pork" in the language we are working on are the same, except for the tone. That tone we can't hear, remember? This led to us saying, "I am eating your husband" every time we tried to talk about something more normal.
Of course, in reality it wouldn't be a problem, since our speaker's village is in nothing-but-sago territory, and they are more likely to be eating people's husbands than pork.
Those people in the group with experience of sago-eating areas managed to find plenty of excuses later in the session when our speaker invited us to go visit her village.
"But it is a good village!" she said. "It is a very decent village. We are very proper people." And then, in what she must have imagined to be a deal-clincher, "It is easy to get to. There is an international airport in the city near us. And from there, the village is only one day's walk through the bush."
Then she looked us up and down appraisingly. "Maybe two days."
(Nine! Days! To go!)
There's a flood of forms in my inbox from students requesting an earlier final exam. (But I booked tickets to go on holiday! How dare the exam interfere with my trip! How was I supposed to know there would be a final exam?)
The department is buzzing with the weird sense of camaraderie that results from too many late night marking sessions and dealing with weird student requests.
Every email I send gets pretty much the same reply, "Can you wait two weeks for me to deal with this?"
I'm no longer having the "forgot to go to class" nightmares, but have moved onto the "created an un-answerable exam" set instead.
I burst into tears any time anyone asks me to do anything. (Actually, that's mostly just today, and probably only because I was up all night re-creating the lecture notes and handouts that my computer destroyed yesterday at 11pm).
A research-only job is starting to really appeal.
And, worst of all, my blog posts have become both whiny and infrequent.
(While I was writing this post, I was interrupted three times by students wanting to know if I had marked their assignments yet. The ones they handed in five days ago. The ones that are taking me 30 minutes each to mark. (0.5 hours x 75 assignments = a number bigger than 5 days.) Now if I HAD marked them, and was willing to give them back/release the marks, do they really think I'd be deliberately withholding the grade, only to give in when they knock on my door and hassle me?)
So it looks like the department screwed up my contract again, and as well as having to wait eight weeks at the start of semester before I got paid, I'm likely to have to wait as long again to get paid for the final few weeks of teaching. But you know? Apparently, I should be GRATEFUL. Because this puts that last bit of my earnings into the next financial year and it will be tax free.*
(And the most shameful thing? When they pointed this out to me, I WAS grateful.)
_____________
* Tax this year is a particularly sore point with me, since my only earnings in 2007 were in the second half of the year, and my only earnings in 2008 are likely to be in the first half. So although I actually earned only around $10,000 a year for each of 2007 and 2008, I'll be taxed as though I earned twice that.
... of course I have new (unrelated) fun links to share with you.
Currently making me laugh out loud.
Our mechanic says he can fix everything (plus some*) for $225. This is approximately a tenth of what I was expecting. How is this possible? He also said we need repairs to the driveshaft, but it's not urgent, not dangerous, and if he were us, he'd wait another year or so.
Good thing Geekman was the one who took the car in, because I would have been overcome with an inappropriate display of joy.
Coincidentally, I have a nice bottle of wine in the cupboard and a free evening with which to celebrate. Oh wait, no: I have a stack of 70 assignments in my bag and an evening with which to get caught up on marking.
Boo.
___________
* Some being the pre-existing slow leak in one of the tyres.
I changed doctors recently - partly because the university clinic now charges me money since I'm no longer a student, but also partly because the random doctor they gave me last time turned out to be someone I knew socially (without realising they were a doctor) and that was a little bit odd.
The new doctor I went to (who I picked at random from a list of doctors that bulk bill Medicare) turns out to have one of my students working as his receptionist.
I went to a party hosted by someone in my department recently, and her housemate had invited a friend, who happened to be the twin sister of someone who works with Geekman. At the same party was an American guy who used to read this blog, and has since moved to Australia.
Another party I attended a couple of weeks ago was for a friend who is not and never has been at the university or connected with it. A guy at that party who I had never met before sat in the corner and picked his nose aggressively all night. The next day we went to the house of one of Geekman's colleagues for lunch and the nose-picker was there as well.
At the same lunch was someone who looked kind of familiar, and turned out to have been a colleague of Stellar_Muddle's (who sometimes comments here).
We went to a "games night" run by a colleague of Geekman's a few weeks back, and someone else she had invited was someone I know from the university rock climbing club.
Possible explanations that have occurred to me include the following:
Waiting at the Motor Registry to get new license plates, I overheard the woman next to me explaining good behaviour to her toddler.
"You have to sit on your bottom, not climb all over the seats."
"No. Sit on your bottom. Otherwise you'll have to have a time out."
"Sit. On. Your. Bottom. You see that man over there behind the counter? He'll come over and tell you off and put you in time out."
"See the lady sitting there?" (Points at me.) "SHE is sitting on HER bottom. She's afraid of the man behind the counter and doesn't want him to be angry at her and put her in time out."
And on top of all this, when I went back today to fetch my bike from the library, where I had left it with its flat tyre, I found some fucker had destroyed the back wheel.
Last night some arsehole broke into our car, ruined the front passenger side lock, stole the gearstick and the license plates, and did something nasty to the steering. Fortunately there weren't any valuables in it, although they ate the emergency chocolate stash in the glove box.
Why did they want the gearstick, for god's sake?
And my bike got another flat tyre. Gah.
This "marital rating scale" from 1939 is amazing in all sorts of ways.
Some surprising excerpts:
The man gets points for "consulting wife about business affairs", turning over the "whole paycheck" to her, and helping with housework and childcare. He gets 20 points for making sure his wife has an orgasm whenever they have sex. He gets "demerits" for not getting dressed on Sundays, and for "writing on the tablecloth with a pencil." (Is pen better? And was this really a common problem?)
The woman gets demerits for wearing red nail polish, "wearing pajamas while cooking", failing to wash the top of the milk bottle before opening it, walking around the house in stockinged feet, and "taking dope".
She gets points for being able to "carry on an interesting conversation" (good little wifey), "keeping snacks in the refrigerator for late night eating", and being "jolly and gay".
Then there's the complaints that I've still heard people making today:
When you start feeling the need to discuss your prostate problems at departmental meetings, it's time to retire.
If someone sends you a sensitive email about someone in your professional circles having a terminal illness, and if that email mentions that the news is top secret, you probably shouldn't print it out and leave it lying on the departmental printer all day.
If there is a men's cabin and a women's cabin at a workshop/retreat, how come the couple plus (male) three-month-old baby automatically go in the women's cabin?
If a young childless/free woman mentions that she was kept awake by a crying baby, the response, "Oh well, that's good practice for later!" is just SO not appropriate. Especially if you are one of the older male academics who got to have the baby-free cabin and a good night's sleep.
Geekman once asked my mother why she cared so much about whether and when we had children. After searching a bit for an answer she finally came up with, "Because it's normal. It's what normal people do. I want you to be normal."
It's nice to know that my mother has such high ambitions for us. I think I'm probably a disappointment: normality not being high on my priority list.
Speaking of my mother, she sent me a really spectacularly sweet email on Sunday. Admittedly it started off by reminding me it was Mother's Day and I hadn't sent her anything (but damn, since she's now forgotten my birthday two years running, I thought I'd get a free pass). But then the email went into reminiscences of how excited she was when I was born and when they first brought me home and what a lovely baby I was. I feel vaguely guilty for how suspicious I am about what could possibly have motivated this.
Here is a picture of a totally unrelated garden shed:
I've been participating in a fieldwork methods course this semester, which is like fieldwork in that you get to work on a previously undescribed language, but unlike fieldwork in that you don't have to sleep in a mud hut, politely accept raw pigs' testicles for dinner, or forgo showers for the duration.
We were all told to buy a hardback notebook to keep our records in. I followed instructions, but then found myself incapable of sullying its pristine pages with my messy and incomplete analysis. Instead I have been using it to keep notes on why I should never ever indulge in research that requires fieldwork.
Some highlights:
Day One:
We meet our speaker. She explains that her language is a tone language and it has five tones. She can only give us examples of three. We spend several hours trying to hear and produce the right tones. She laughs at us a lot, because instead of saying, "My stomach is sore", we generally produce "My vagina is itchy".
Eventually we start to be able to hear the tone differences with more than chance frequency and decide that they can be characterised as "high-falling", "non-high", and "long". We can definitely hear a length distinction, anyway.
Day Two:
We spend hours hunched over spectrograms that definitively prove there is no length distinction in our examples.
Day Three:
We find a new way to categorize the tones that seems to work! We are certain we can now hear the difference between "vagina" and "stomach".
Our speaker walks in on us playing back the recordings. It turns out she can't tell which one she was saying either.
Day Four:
We give up on tones and move on to verb paradigms. We have one verb paradigm for this language already, entrusted to us by an ancient linguist who took some notes once when stuck in the wilds of Papua New Guinea due to visa problems.* The verb is "to swim". We decide to elicit this from our speaker for comparison purposes.
Our speaker insists her language has no word for swimming.
Day Five:
The hours of intense elicitation sessions pay off. I discover a phoneme! I am so excited I can speak of nothing else for hours.
Day Six:
Our speaker, unprompted, teaches us to say, "I am eating the white man. I am chewing on his skin." We all shift uncomfortably in our seats and make a note of the nearest exit.
When you ask an IT person how they did something clever, and they reply, "Nerd magic."
Sunny weather on cold days.
Students who do part of the assignment that they didn't have to (a question only for the upper level students in the course), and they reply, "But it was so much fun! I couldn't stop!" (And they got the answer right.)
The autumn colours on the trees. I kind of missed the best time for photos and now they are going dingy, but they were lovely while they lasted.
Class evaluations surveys that are full of nice comments.
A parrot that paces up and down outside the window like it wants feeding, but when you open the window to put out some seed, bypass the food and hop into the room instead. I guess it wanted warmth and company rather than food, for once.
Geekman. Just because.
