What do I want with this blog? Sure it would be nice for millions of people to read it and adore my sharp wit and writing acumen – good for the ego – but that’s not likely to happen.
I actually started writing this thing to practice my writing itself. I hear from readers every now and then – thanks, Wouter; thanks, Mom. – and that’s great, but I would be writing this even if not a single soul knew of its existence. It’s a kind of stretching of the fingers before writing the next five-hundred or so words of my stories. Which are also not that great, I think, but that’s where the passion is.
All this is a round-about way of apologizing for the unwieldy way I post on my blog. For anybody who’s interested; I’ve uploaded some fifteen posts today, all from the last couple of weeks.
If I've turned anybody off by not posting this month, I apologize. However, I did not stop writing. It was because of our internet connection. In our new apartment we work with the university network, which gets real slow in the daytime. In fact, it will usually not allow me to get on this website during that time.
That is why I write my blogs in Microsoft Word and wait for days where the connection is unexpectedly good to upload them in bulk.
Friday, 18 September 2009
Friday, September 18
For the last couple of months Bella and I’ve been digging into three TV-shows for our evening viewing: Hill Street Blues, ER and Deadwood.
Deadwood is by far our favorite, but ER is awesome, too. I like to write and even for a beginner like me, the craft in writing of both shows is astonishing.
ER should be familiar to many people. The show portrays the happenings in the emergency room of a hospital in some big eastern US city. It finished a couple of years ago, but we’re watching the first season right now which played in the early nineties.
The series is very smart in balancing drama, hospital procedure and long-term developments. In every episode you’ll see some tension arising from one-time patients or something like that, but there will also be a slow continuing development of storylines involving the hospital staff. All this means that you’ll never really get bored and there will always be something in an episode to keep you interested.
Deadwood is a western about a frontier town named, surprisingly, Deadwood. What will strike you about this series is the intimate knowledge of the setting (Deadwood is a real town and most of the stories in the show are based on real developments in that town during the 1870’s) and the unbelievable dialogue. The characters of this show talking and cursing is a kind of Shakespearean poetry.
Deadwood is by far our favorite, but ER is awesome, too. I like to write and even for a beginner like me, the craft in writing of both shows is astonishing.
ER should be familiar to many people. The show portrays the happenings in the emergency room of a hospital in some big eastern US city. It finished a couple of years ago, but we’re watching the first season right now which played in the early nineties.
The series is very smart in balancing drama, hospital procedure and long-term developments. In every episode you’ll see some tension arising from one-time patients or something like that, but there will also be a slow continuing development of storylines involving the hospital staff. All this means that you’ll never really get bored and there will always be something in an episode to keep you interested.
Deadwood is a western about a frontier town named, surprisingly, Deadwood. What will strike you about this series is the intimate knowledge of the setting (Deadwood is a real town and most of the stories in the show are based on real developments in that town during the 1870’s) and the unbelievable dialogue. The characters of this show talking and cursing is a kind of Shakespearean poetry.
Thursday, September 17
We have our first class of the semester to teach tonight. It’s a so-called ‘English Corner” and it’s supposed to be a fun two hours where students can just get together with teachers and practice their English in a relaxed setting.
Which means it’s hard to prepare for.
Thank God it’s Bella and I together who have to teach this thing, but what are we going to do? We don’t know where it will be, how many people will be there and what kind of material we have to work with. And it’s going to be two hours long, so if we run out of stuff to do, it’s going to be a long night.
Anyway, we printed out some trivia questions and questionnaires. We figure that no matter how many people will attend, we can always divide them into groups and do games.
Which means it’s hard to prepare for.
Thank God it’s Bella and I together who have to teach this thing, but what are we going to do? We don’t know where it will be, how many people will be there and what kind of material we have to work with. And it’s going to be two hours long, so if we run out of stuff to do, it’s going to be a long night.
Anyway, we printed out some trivia questions and questionnaires. We figure that no matter how many people will attend, we can always divide them into groups and do games.
Wednesday, September 16
I remember the start of the school year when I was a kid and it was grim. A whole vacation of doing as little as possible ended by going back to the daily grind of listening to disillusioned teachers talking about things that interested neither them nor their students.
Yes, that is exaggerated and overblown, but the contrast with the start of the Chinese school year is still striking. For the past week here we’ve had activities for students, party music blaring over the campus speakers and of course the Teacher Day dinners. I already wrote about that last bit in an earlier blog, but today I even got three hundred yuan in back pay for the two hours I spent stuffing my face.
Yes, that is exaggerated and overblown, but the contrast with the start of the Chinese school year is still striking. For the past week here we’ve had activities for students, party music blaring over the campus speakers and of course the Teacher Day dinners. I already wrote about that last bit in an earlier blog, but today I even got three hundred yuan in back pay for the two hours I spent stuffing my face.
Tuesday, September 15
Flu season has started and I can feel the germs bubbling up inside of me.
It always starts the same way. There will be a couple of days of bad weather – like the rainy ones we had yesterday and the day before – and then suddenly a beautiful, sunny day, but with a hidden cold to it. Which we are having today. I woke up feeling like crap and my joints and muscles have started to hurt.
I’d love to go for some of my mom’s soup. Soup in China is very different from Dutch soup. It’s much more watery and for some reason always seems to have to include egg.
My mom in contrast fills the stuff up with meat. She also used to buy bones from the butcher and use them to make stock. I don’t think she does that anymore now that she has to watch her cholesterol level, but I sure miss those days. My Mom knows that, too, and when Bella and I went to the Netherlands she made soup for us several times.
It always starts the same way. There will be a couple of days of bad weather – like the rainy ones we had yesterday and the day before – and then suddenly a beautiful, sunny day, but with a hidden cold to it. Which we are having today. I woke up feeling like crap and my joints and muscles have started to hurt.
I’d love to go for some of my mom’s soup. Soup in China is very different from Dutch soup. It’s much more watery and for some reason always seems to have to include egg.
My mom in contrast fills the stuff up with meat. She also used to buy bones from the butcher and use them to make stock. I don’t think she does that anymore now that she has to watch her cholesterol level, but I sure miss those days. My Mom knows that, too, and when Bella and I went to the Netherlands she made soup for us several times.
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