On Top of the World

I’ve finally finished TAFE! Thank God for that. Four years of studying 2 nights a week - it’ll be so great to have my weeknights back! Tonight we had an assessment (on the last night, can you believe it!), followed by a supper sort of thing. It was ok, but it was nice to get out of there. This year was such a drag, and I’m so glad to finally be finished. Now I commence the process of forgetting everything I learned over the last four years. I might still volunteer in the ETD (Education and Training for the Deaf) program next year, so that’ll give me a bit of practice, but it depends on how it fits in with work.

On the way to work a couple of days ago, I saw an ad at a bus stop for Lemon Mint Tic Tacs. I thought they sounded interesting, and wanted to give them a try. I was happy to discover that the shop near my work had them.

The verdict? They started off well, with a nice lemony flavour. But at the very end, you know - when you chew the last little bit because it’s too small to suck - it tasted like the smell of Toilet Duck. So I won’t be getting them again. I wanted to like them but oh well. I’ll just have to stick to orange.

Let’s see, what’s been happening… I’ve moved offices, but I can’t remember whether I did that since I last posted or if it was before then. I think it was after. So I’ve slowly become used to the new building, and not being able to see M during the day. It’s a bit weird really - it’s as if we’re a “normal” couple working separate jobs! But we go to and from work together so there’s still that companionship.

I’ve started my final year of tafe. There’s also an interpreters’ course being held this year but that would add an extra two nights of study, plus a lot of out-of-class work, to the two nights I’m already doing, and I didn’t want that. I may do the course if they offer it later on, and I’m accepted, but I couldn’t take studying 4 weeknights out of 5. I don’t need the stress!

Finally, there’s a rather good chance that we’ll be going to the UK in November. There’s a conference on in London and, similar to the one M went to in New York last year, this will be partially paid for by work. So we’re working out where else we want to go. We’ll only be gone for two weeks, same as last time, so we’ll probably go to Wales and Scotland after being in London for a while. We haven’t worked out exactly where we’re going or how long we’re staying in each place, but it’s so nice to have something to look forward to. This time we’re both going to go business class - his ticket will be paid for by work, and we’re going to use frequent flyer points for mine.

The only hassle was actually finding flights that offered business class seats for award points. The direct flights were all taken, but I managed to find two separate flights going through Tokyo. The flights through Tokyo are 12 hours apart, so, knowing absolutely nothing about the city, I don’t know whether that’s enough time to go into the city and have a bit of a look around. We thought that maybe we could spend a night there and then go to London the next day, but that may not work out with points. But it’s so much fun planning holidays! Well, until you realise that all the hotels you want are booked and you’re stuck with whatever you can get.

I just got back from the 21st birthday party for a girl I go to tafe with. There were two other people from my class there, and a couple of people I know from DeafSA, so it allayed my fears of not knowing anyone. And the birthday girl made all the right noises about the bracelet I got her, so either she really did like it, or she’s a great actress. Either way, she asked me to put it on her and she wore it all night so I was pleased.

The only less-than-ideal part was when the speeches occurred. Because there were 2 Deaf people there, an interpreter was required. I nominated another classmate to do the honours, which she did for a while, but then I was summoned to do my turn. I guess the most diplomatic way I can put my performance is that it’s a good thing I decided not to do the interpreting course next year. I sucked. I think some bits were ok, but having everyone in the room staring at me made me freeze up. I just hope they understood some of what I said. When I sat down, one of the guys I interpreted for said that I was nervous. Well, duh! My first ever interpreting stint and I was crap.

But despite this, I did have a really good time. There was even some Scottish dancing! The first couple of dances were with party guests, and the teacher gave instructions for the steps and then it was done to music, and the last one was a dance that some of the people from the dance school do.

Oh, and there was also a Cookie Monster piñata filled with lollies! I didn’t have a go at hitting it but in the end, poor CM was reduced to a head hanging from the ceiling while everyone gorged on the smarties, Mars bars and Freddos that had been inside him. The photo I took with my mobile phone does not do him justice at all.

So it was a night of firsts, with interpreting, dancing and piñata-ing!

I’m ready to burst. We went out for dinner tonight for the Festival of Food, which is where you pay $20 each for a 4-course meal. It was quite nice, although my steak was definitely not the medium I’d requested, but more like well-done. Still, yummy and now I’m ready for a nap.

*****

In the last couple of months I have developed an obsession with Boston Legal. I left work early today because I read on the BL site that I visit that there was going to be a live webcast of “An Evening with Boston Legal” which was held in Los Angeles. It was due to start at 3pm my time, so I left work at around 2:00 to ensure I had plenty of time to get home and ready.

It was quite good - it was just a panel of the cast members as well as the show’s writers and directors, moderated by Camryn Manheim who asked the panel various questions. It only went for an hour, but I think it was worth leaving work for. And hey, it’s Friday, so given the option of staying at work or going home… well, it wasn’t a difficult decision.

I found out a couple of weeks ago that James Spader is going to be on The View on November 21, which is when I’ll be in NYC. I went to the website to see about getting tickets but it said they’d already given all of them out for the next whatever months, so I’m going to try to get standby tickets. M is already aware of this and has been informed that he can do his own thing if he doesn’t want to come I would ordinarily have no interest whatsoever in going to see The View - way too much oestrogen for me - but I’m sure I could manage it if I actually got tickets to this one.

*****

Another year of tafe is nearly over. At the bridging course last night there was a guest speaker, who came to talk about the interpreting course being held next year. If you pass all the prerequisites of the course, you are awarded NAATI accreditation as a para-professional interpreter, which means you can get work as an interpreter (NAATI is the National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreters and accreditation from them is essential if you want to be an interpreter in any language in Australia). She succeeded in completely scaring the crap out of me and virtually everyone in the class, so I don’t think I’ll do it. I still have one more year of my current Auslan certificate, which is 2 nights a week, and the interpreting course is another 7 hours on top of that. So if I did both, I’d be studying a total of 13 hours over 4 nights a week, and I don’t think I’d be able to cope with that in addition to working full-time.

And, unlike the tafe course I’m doing at the moment which is has virtually no work outside class hours, the interpreting course does have quite a lot of extra work involved, and as much as I don’t want to fall behind my other classmates who would be doing the course, I think it would be too much for me.

I felt a bit depressed, realising that I wouldn’t be able to do it, but I guess when it really comes down to it, I’m not studying Auslan with the goal of becoming an interpreter - it was just to learn a new language and hopefully become good enough to be able to communicate most things I wanted to communicate. Of course, fluency would be fantastic, and it’s something I would love to have, but I have a job already and it’s not as though I’m trying to start a career. There’s no rush for me to do every course available to me just because it is being offered.

But the main reason I won’t be doing it is that I don’t think I’m good enough. The guest speaker said that it’s not a language acquisition course, and you’re expected to be fluent or near-fluent in both languages when you start, which I’m definitely not - it’s why I’m learning the language after all! I don’t really have any confidence in my abilities, and I think that taking the year to finish off my certificate and hopefully gain some more confidence will be good, as well as the much lighter workload. And if the course is offered again (apparently they haven’t had an Auslan component in the course for 5 years because they didn’t have the numbers), I might do it then.

I’ve been making a bit more of an effort to go to the fortnightly Auslan workshops, which is where we get together with other Auslan students and practise our signing. Last week’s workshop was held at DeafSA, and since it was a Friday, quite a few Deaf people were there having some drinks and just generally hanging out.

The guy who runs the workshops likes the night to be a bit educational, so he passes around some handouts with some stuff for us to practise. This time it was a list of sentences in English, which we then had to change into Auslan. We were going through the sentences, and then we got to one which was something like “I went to the doctor for a sperm test because my wife was having difficulties getting pregnant.”

We hadn’t come across the sign for “sperm” before, so the guy showed us what it was. So 35 of us were sitting around a table, all signing “sperm sperm sperm sperm”. I’m sure that would have been a lovely sight for the people who were trying to enjoy their drinks.

*****

After having a 5-month break from our driving trips, we thought it would be a good time to start up again. And since today was an absolutely perfect day, we thought we’d go to Ardrossan again. The photos are here.

I starting writing a post about losing motivation for the courses I’m doing, but I could see that it was going to rapidly develop into a ‘poor me’ whinge, so I got rid of it. In a nutshell, here is what I was going to say:

1. I’m enjoying my holidays too much and I can’t be bothered going back.
2. Of course, I will go back because I’ve paid for the courses, and I want to stick it out to prove to myself that I can actually become really good at something rather than just average.
<rest of the points deleted due to first sentence above>

I did start to write the rest of the points but really, it’s not important and I should just get over it.

Aaaaaahhhhh! That’s better! Over it.

So… work is going well. Fortunately for my skill set, a change of project meant a change of language, and it’s a good thing because I can’t reasonably expect to be able to use C++ forever and not learn anything else. I’ve been learning Java for the last month or so, and I’m happy with the progress I’ve made in the short time I’ve been using it. For some reason I was convinced that I couldn’t learn Java, because my last two attempts didn’t result in any knowledge being gained. It was as if my brain rebelled and so I thought I was too old to learn new things and I should just stick to that with which I am familiar. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that my brain isn’t yet too full of trivia for some useful knowledge to make its way inside.

So, even though the brief demo I gave today was met with some uncalled for comments, followed by “but that looks great” (you’re meant to say the good stuff FIRST, and then the constructive criticism!), I think I’ve done ok for a novice.

I will close with a question and an observation…

Question: Why is it that when cats yawn, they invariably lick their lips once or twice afterwards? Or is it just my cats? Sometimes it’s one lick, sometimes a couple but there’s always something.

Observation: I only realised relatively recently that the animated laughing faces in Haloscan actually stop laughing and become a normal smiley face, and then start laughing again. Have they always been like that?

Tafe has finished for this semester, so I am now officially on holidays. Well, I’m not really because I still have to go to work, but it will be nice to come home every night rather than go out to classes 3 working days out of 5. The only downside is that I really have to do that assignment that’s due on the first day back next term, that I’ve been putting off for 5 months. Eh, that can wait another week and 6 days. I’m just glad that I get a two-week break from the people I want to slap. I’ll try to start next term refreshed and tolerant.

Now that I’ve stopped giving him his tablets, I think Jack loves me again. He hates the food that I’m giving him, though, because he’s meant to be eating that and only that and he’s understandably quite sick of it. I’d be sick of eating the same thing day in, day out for 6 weeks straight too. So tonight I gave him some normal food (naughty me!) and he wolfed it down. Poor boy.

M’s taking the day off tomorrow to go down to his house and put all the crap in the skip that was meant to be delivered yesterday. The tenant told us that he’d arranged with the council for it to be picked up, but of course that was rubbish (hee hee).

Oh, in other groundbreaking news that I should have shared before now but don’t think I have: we have a new electric blanket. My side was still working, but M’s stopped so it was time for a new one (what a wuss). We upgraded and got a fleecy one, so it’s all nice and squashy. It’s quite bizarre lying in bed and feeling the sponginess underneath. Mmmm. The only bummer is that it doesn’t get nearly as warm as our other one did. That might be a good thing from a safety perspective, but I no longer get into a super-toasty bed when I’m freezing.

Jack has decided that he’s had enough of those tablets. It was quite difficult to get him to take it tonight, and my hands are getting somewhat scratched, so I think I have to come up with a new strategy. If he decides that after every week he’s going to be difficult, there’s three new strategies I have to come up with before the tablets are finished. And he’s sick of the food now and doesn’t want to eat it any more. I keep trying to get him to eat because if he takes the tablet on an empty stomach, it can upset it and make him sick. It’s all a bit depressing, and I can’t wait until the month is over so I can go back to being relaxed and enjoy my cats rather than worrying about how much I’m traumatising him by making him take drugs he doesn’t want, and how much of the skin on my hands will still be there after it’s all done.

*****

You may have noticed that the first word in my post looks like a link. I’ve installed a new plugin where you can make a list of words or phrases that you use often (but that people might not be familiar with), and the plugin pops up a tooltip with a bit of information when you hover your mouse over it. Since I’ve been talking about my cats lately, I thought that that was a perfect use for it, so I’ve put a picture of him in it. I’ve also made one for Frisky. So now I can just mention them without wondering whether I should explain every time who they are, because the tooltips are there.

*****

It was another good lesson at tafe tonight. I mentioned that last week’s class was spent watching people doing their assessments. Today saw the rest of the class doing theirs. To follow on from the wine and cheese from last week, someone showed us how to make cocktails. She made a Mad Cow and Japanese Slipper, and gave us all a little sample of each. I really enjoyed the Japanese Slipper, and think I should get some Cointreau so I can make one (I’ve already got the Midori!). Yummy.

I’m in the process of trying to upgrade my version of WordPress, so if you read this and then can’t get to my blog later, that’s why. Hopefully it will go all right but we’ll see. It will be nice to have an RSS feed that actually works, just for completeness. It hasn’t worked for ages because I didn’t do a proper upgrade last time and have still got leftovers from an old version hanging around. So this time I’m starting from scratch, which I’m hoping will be the easiest way to go about it, rather than wading through all my files, trying to work out what I should keep and what I need to get rid of.

Tafe was good today - we had an assessment, and since I did mine last week it was a relaxing class spent watching other people do theirs. The topic of the assessment was showing the class how to do something that they probably didn’t know how to do, and we had to bring appropriate props for our demonstration. For mine, I made a paper boat (extremely boring but it was all I could think of). I bought some paper and gave everyone a sheet, so they all made a boat as I attempted to sign the instructions. It went well, with most people not having any difficulties, and it was kind of cool after I was done, looking around and seeing all these little boats sitting there.

Oh, brief interruption while I try to upgrade WP. Back soon I hope.

Update: I’m back and it worked! I’ll try to get a more interesting theme shortly, but fortunately everything went as smoothly as could be hoped. Starting from scratch is good, but of course it means I have to set everything up. But now that I’m consistent, future upgrades will be a lot easier (that’s the plan anyway). Oh, if you are subsribed to my RSS feed, it’s now working but you may have to unsubscribe and then resubscribe to get the latest posts (that’s what I had to do when I was testing it).

So, back to what I was saying about tafe. One woman brought everything required to make cottage cheese, and got a couple of ‘volunteers’ to help her out. She even brought crackers and wine, and since I hadn’t had any dinner other than the cracker, I felt a little tipsy after a few sips of wine. I wasn’t the only one, though, because the teacher said she hadn’t had any dinner either and was becoming slightly affected. We only had a tiny bit of wine though, so the effects wore off pretty quickly. But it was the best assessment I’ve been to for a long time.

I started back at tafe at the beginning of February. I finished my Certificate II in Auslan last year, so now I’m on to Certificate III (for some reason there’s no Certificate I here). At the end of last year I was really pleased to be finished, and I seriously considered not going back. I really enjoyed the first year, but the second seemed such a drag, and I wasn’t sure that I wanted to continue. I honestly didn’t enjoy it much at all, although there was the odd occasion that I would find some motivation.

Deep down I knew that I would end up going back, only because I thought I’d regret it if I didn’t. So I enrolled in January, and when the first day of class came, I was dreading it so much that I started feeling ill. I don’t know exactly why I was filled with such dread. Well, that’s not exactly true. I know that some of the reason was because I knew that virtually noone from my class last year was continuing (there were two classes - morning and night, and I was in the night class), and so I wouldn’t know anyone there, but they would all know each other. I’m very shy, and I didn’t relish the idea of walking into a sea of strangers. Reason No 1: I’m a wuss.

I was also dreading it because of the lack of enjoyment I’d had last year. I was expecting this year to be more of the same, because we’d been told at the end of last year that we’d be having our 2nd year teacher one night a week, and the teacher I’d had in the first year on the other. If we’d been going to have the second year teacher both nights, I don’t think I would have gone back. Reason No 2: Last year sucked (more about that later).

So I went to class, and as it turned out, we didn’t have our second year teacher, but someone who I’d never had before. She was great, and seeing my 1st year teacher on the other night was great too, but I still couldn’t muster any enthusiasm. I felt like an outsider as everyone knew each other so well. I thought long and hard about withdrawing, wondering if I’d be able to get a full refund on my fees. I nearly rang tafe to enquire, but I decided against it because I thought I hadn’t given it a fair chance.

Three weeks on and I’m really glad I stayed; I’ve had a complete turnaround in opinion. I’m getting to know my classmates and I think that this year’s class is just so much better than last year’s. The overall skill level is much higher, and because of that I think that this might be the year I see some real improvement in my skills. I improved a lot in first year, but that was expected because before I started I knew virtually nothing other than vocabulary - nothing about grammar or syntax.

I don’t think I improved last year at all, partly because there were a couple of people in the class who worked at the tafe and who should have been in first year, but had been put in second year because the 1st year class was so big. Neither of them new any Auslan at all, so a lot of time was spent explaining things to them, and the teacher had to use very basic Auslan when teaching us, so we didn’t really get the chance to improve our read-back skills. Of course, this is entirely tafe’s fault for stuffing up the class sizes, and I felt sorry for them that they were stuck in a class in which they felt so out of their depth, but it still meant that the rest of the class was held back, so it really wasn’t a 2nd year level class at all.

As for the other reason, I am sure that it is because of the teacher. I think she’s more suited to a lecturing position, where you spit out the facts for the duration of the class, then go home. She didn’t seem to show much interest in making sure that her students understood the material, and while she would explain something if asked, she didn’t like explaining again if you still didn’t understand. Hence my lack of enjoyment of that class.

The teacher on Mondays uses more natural-looking Auslan (ie not really obviously dumbed down so we can understand it) than I’ve had from past teachers, which also makes me think I’ll improve this year. I don’t always understand everything she says, but I don’t think that matters because it means I’ll get better faster. After all, if everything is always pitched at your current level, how are you going to improve?

So I’m feeling very motivated at the moment, and am so glad that I didn’t withdraw. Another reason I didn’t withdraw is because I’ve always given up on things without giving myself the chance to become really good at them, so I’m determined not to do that this time.