It's been raining every day for god knows how many days.  I can't keep track of the time anymore it’s just one day after another, crawling ever closer to 2009, the year I can get away.  Now it's the Easter 'holiday' I managed to get encumbered by even more work.  My working day is a sandwich of early mornings and late evenings, with 2 days a week having an extra slice in the middle.  The other day I was in a wooden panelled board-room with my a sharp-suited student discussing the content of his lessons and the books to use, and suddenly I remembered those evenings long long ago and far far away when C used to come over and teach me Chinese, and even though now I'm the teacher and the bug-ridded apartment overlooking a field has been replaced by wooden walls and an expansive table under the gaze of dignified framed paintings separated by reinforced glass over the dark streets of central London, it all felt strangely the same.

Before getting lost in nostalgia, another thing I wanted to mention was a great achievement I've made in my working life.  After being one of those people who foolishly always did my best in my job, whatever it was, for whatever thankless company that usually didn't give a toss about the customers, clients, staff, or anything other than their profits, I finally realised I have achieved detachment.  Perhaps somewhere along the line I learned that you only need to put into the company as much as they put into you.  It’s extremely liberating to be free of the burden of caring about your job.

We had a meeting at the school I work at part time- that of highly strung teachers and low pay- about the teachers' pay.  A couple of months since the last meeting and there were several new teachers present and several old ones long gone.  Everyone had been hoping for a pay rise, but the meeting suggested otherwise, mainly due to the fact that the school has failed a recent inspection which would have allowed it to get accreditation and thus the right to issue certificates worth somewhat more than the paper they're printed on.  The principle that the school shares with several others shoehorned his bald pate and big belly into the tiny staffroom and broke the news.  It seems there may be pay rises, marginal ones, and they will be negotiated on an individual basis.  I suppose this means that many of the other teachers will still not get past the £7 ph mark.  The best part was where he said that the school will start paying teachers' for preparation time.  We waited with bated breath.

The suspense was tangible as he told us that after researching the situation at other schools, we would be getting similar remuneration; for teachers working 6 hour days; 15 mins of paid preparation time per day (i.e. probably less than 2 pounds for most of them), and those who are doing 9 hours per day get a whopping half hour of paid prep time.  Let me just clarify that the hours per day means teaching hours, so those doing 9 hour days are actually doing 3 3-hour classes per day, and the 15 or 30 min breaks (I've no idea how long the between lesson breaks are there as I only do 6 hours a week) between the classes are unpaid, which means working around 10 hour days.  So with the increase, the sorry lot are basically getting paid for photocopying time and not much beside.

I almost laughed when he announced the pathetic increase (which, of course I will not get to partake in as I do a 3 hour day).  To have teachers working 9 hours per day with a pitiful wage (note that the big guy spoke of wages, not salaries), and expecting them to prepare their lessons for free, it suddenly became crystal clear to me that the school don't even expect semi decent lesson or god forbid a lesson plan.  At the same time it was equally clear that I bloody love working there.  It is devoid of pressure.  I give them smiles, mind my manners, never make a complaint (indeed I have little to complain about), and the bosses seem happy with me.  Sometimes I don't fill in the lesson records I'm supposed to, and I never go to the meetings or trainings unless I happen to be there.  When these errors are noticed I just laugh awkwardly, roll my eyes at my own foolishness as I proclaim I forgot, and as everyone knows that I juggle several jobs and studies, they all can understand.  Ha.  I don't need to do much work on lesson planning as I am now a (comparatively) 'experienced' EFL teacher and have about 50 activities and approaches for teaching any text (pity my EFL prescriptive grammar it crap though).  Neither did I need to stress about my lesson observation a few weeks ago.  I did a perfectly satisfactory job, and the students were happy as they seem to like me, I was happy as I like them, and the head who was observing was satisfied.  Some time later I had the observation review with the head who gave some praise and reeled out suggested improvements with all the EFL jargon about intonation drills and concept checking questions and blah blah, and I listened intently and thanked her sincerely for the suggestions.  I got a written up version of the review and an overall score of 3.7 out of 5.  Satisfactory, wouldn't you say?

So I don't give a sod about the pay increase, or lack thereof.  God forbid if they gave me a decent wage I might feel obliged to be more than miss average.  Still, I think it wasn't a very wise move on their part.  The school has a really high turnover of teachers, and the teachers seem generally dissatisfied with, well, just about everything there.  If only the belly could have just said that they'd done some research and decided to reward the teachers for their hard work by paying them slightly more than average for preparation time, that may have calmed the angry mob.  I'm sure they could afford to squeeze out a few more pennies, and it would have been much more effective than the hollow over-praise he gave to the teachers for their teaching abilities.

All the above was a rather lengthy digression from the main point of today's post.  Following the title, I wanted to write about something that happened earlier in the week when I went to the bank.  I was just depositing a cheque, when the assistant looked over the screen and asked me if I was employed.  Thinking that I was about to get another ear-bending about the account I am technically 10 years too old to have for tax reasons, usually followed by the description of some lengthy procedure that must be embarked on in order to change the account type, I muttered that I was working, then quickly added I was working part time, hoping to deflect his attention from the potential tax fraud the account would allow me to commit.  I had 17p in there that is potentially escaping tax, according to the last lecture.  However, the assistant seemed satisfied. 

"And can we do anything else for you today Miss Whatwhat...a loan perhaps?"

"No thanks" I spluttered, wondering what had happened to the 'global credit crunch' that I keep reading about in low quality free newspapers.

"A credit card perhaps?"

"Hmm..that might be nice" I said, remembering how I was denied one before going to China after the bank saw though my story that I was currently working freelance (to explain the abrupt termination of salary going into the kitty), and deemed the £4000 p.a. that I was due to be on in China not enough to be credit-worthy.

After agreeing to that, I was whisked into a private room by a 12 year old bank manger with acne, who, after taking all of 10 seconds to change the account type of the offending kiddy bank account, told me I would be getting a 'very generous' limit of £2700 on the credit card, with a 'very good' 13% (or something) interest rate.  Christ alive, what are these people thinking?  I don't even own £2,700, why the hell would they let me borrow that much, and why the hell would I want to buy something and then pay more interest on it.  All my sale-rack scouring and buy-one-get-one freeing would be rather unjustified if I had to pay more money on what I'd already bought.  If I pass the credit check (which I suspect I might not) I'm going to only use the little plastic wretch if I really have to.  I have developed a rather irrational fear of debt recently, viewing it as the shackles that could bind me to this miserable rainy island.

However, it really shows how I have come up in the world since those sorry JSA days.  I'm now worthy of loads and credit cards, and even courtesy from the staff at the bank.  I am being welcomed into the warm embrace of debt culture.  Thanks, dear bank, but that’s one club I don't want to be a member of.

Apologies for not writing for so long but I now have a life barely worth recording.  The best I can say about it is that it passes the time.  The start of the week occupied by being jam packed with lectures (and working in the evening), and the latter part of the week having to work in the afternoons (as well as the evening).  Then Saturday, after having worked in the morning, I crash.  I feel terrible, ill even, but I don't know whether my ailment is caused by exhaustion or sheer monotony.  It would be nice to think I could now live the high life but what I do earn barely keeps me breaking even in this overpriced hellhole, and the tax man is going to be wringing me out when the time comes.  How annoying that the salaries we earn (only pride is preventing me from using the more apt term 'wages') are shown before tax so, yet our rent is a figure that is unbending.  If only the rent was 115 per week minus 22% tax, then the figure would be more manageable.

Let me change the subject.  I am doing little more than articulating what probably plagues the minds of millions in my sorry situation.  Boring.

One good source for entertainment these days is the school I work in on a mercifully part time basis.  The people who work there are generally nice.  A couple of studenty types, many non-native speakers teaching English and a couple of those ELT cretins that give the EFL profession that it may or may not deserve.  So, an ok bunch, but I'm helluva glad I don't have to go there every day, they are mostly strung out to snapping point.  Don't like the books, don't like the rooms, don't like like where the staff room is don't like this don't like that.  I quite like the fact that there is a staff room as my other work involves me lurking around outside on street corners if I arrive early.  The school has free instant coffee too.  The other day when I went in, there was an intense discussion in the staffroom. One of the staff wants to quit (they probably all do) due to the low pay rate.  Frankly I don't blame them as what they get is little above minimum wage with no pay for preparation time.  Somehow I manged to get on a higher pay rate than all, including one who has been in ELT for 10 years.  Though to have been in this business for so long is weird in itself, and to be working in such a school with that level of experience is simply bleak.  I think he may have moved onto better things now though as I haven't seen him for a while.

Anyhow, back to the  heated discussion.  I noticed there was an new presence, a typical odd boy of the type that epitomises EFL.  With less than a month in that school he was already vocalizing his opinion, and his opinion is that everyone doing this kind of job should be getting at least 20 quid an hour.  The mind boggles.  Has he not looked around and seen that most jobs actually involve somewhat more than the ability to speak English and a piece of paper obtained following a 5 week training course?

Don't get me wrong, I do actually give a sod about helping the students learn English, but I don't kid myself this is a real serious profession.  It's not rocket science.  Ironic that here I am, neck deep in EFL when I came here to escape it.  Thankfully my private students make it seem more worthwhile.

But before I wind up this dull muttering, let me just add that I had a brief conversation with Mr20 p.h. about student loans.  He thinks the whole loan-debt-mounting interest thing is ok because all you have to do is earn below the payback rate for your whole working life and you'll eventually get the slate wiped clean.  He's almost my age and is quite happily planning to spend his life scraping around like this.  Admittedly I will probably the one who ends up never earning enough to pay it back, but at least I aspire to have some decent income one day, and hopefully not as an EFL teacher.

Technically I could be in bed now, no work tomorrow or formidable assignments to hand in next week.  As of 12 o'clock this afternoon I started my weekly 1.5 holiday that my jobs afford me. 

Maybe I had already wailed about the horrendous assignment I had to do.  5000 words following a course that consisted basically of the teacher reading stuff out of 1 grammar book to us. Over the Xmas holiday I read several books and spend a lot of time mulling over whether I would a. fail the module (thus probably my MA) or b. give into the temptation to drop out.  But I surmounted the exponential learning curve and wrote the bastard, all 5000 words of it, and the result...will probably not get me failed.  That's enough.

How times have changed since the misery of the job centre, now employment barely gives me time to breathe.  Unfortunately most of the time is spent going to various jobs by foot bus or tube, preparing for work- whether it be lesson preparation of a quick memorization marathon of medical words from Chinese wikipedia, and getting tangled in these annoying things like 'meetings' and faxing invoices and various other unpaid work-related trials.  Work part-time/freelance and all these dull obligations are unpaid and threefold.  People tell me it's great that I'm not 'stuck in an office', but a bit of paper shuffling and pen pushing sounds like pure bliss compared to all this running around.

Thursday and Friday were good ones.  Work 12 - 5.30 in one job with but a 15 minute break in there, then speed across the city for another 6-8pm stint.  Doesn't sound so bad but it felt it, especially with mornings spent doing all the preparations for work and handing stuff in at uni and not time to eat.  On Friday I manged to squeeze out time to buy some food at about 11.50am but had no time to eat it until 8.30pm on the bus.  Sunday Sunday, the only day I can wear my normal cheapo clothes all day, oh sweet  joy.

During the week I was so busy that it got to the point that I had not one pair of undies left that had been worn for less that 2 days.  I had to schedule everything non urgent for the evenings after work and basic hygiene barely got a look in.  Yesterday after finishing my belated lunch on the bus I had to face the task of 'dumping' one of my 'boyfriend's.  That's not the kind of thing one wants to go through after the week I'd had, but I had to do it.  Poor kid didn't take it too well but he was fairly reasonable about it.  It was so heartbreaking, and more so as he has completely the wrong end of the stick about me.  He likes my creative side (what creative side!?!) and the fact that I just abandoned my life and went to China (what life was that?!?).  Furthermore, in an attempt to try and prove that the age difference doesn't matter, he seemed to embark on a tit-for-tat 'who's got the most life experience' contest with me.  Not really the best proof of your maturity level.  But I don't want to criticise him, he's a very lovely young man.  Young.

And as I walked home in along the dark streets thinking about the tasks I had to do before bed and the next morning's work, I saw a pub and wondered why, like the other ones I'd passed a few hours earlier, it seemed so busy in an era when pub patronage is sad to be on the decline.  Then I realised it was Friday night.

So while I'm at it, I'll tell you about the work I had on Wednesday morning.  It all started on Monday night, shortly after I'd finished work a lecturer, he of reading from a book at us all term fame, called me and told me there was someone who needed an interpreter, and a couple of calls later it was arranged.  The following morning I was whizzing towards zone 6, real uncharted territory.  I arrived early, which is another drawback of having lots of jobs, all the hanging around before work starts time is multiplied.  In fact, if you have a real workplace you can actually go and sit in your office or staff room rather than spending at least a cumulative hour each week lurking around corners and doorways sheltering from the rain and the rush of commuters heading homewards as you head workwards.  This time it was to my advantage though as I had enough time to visit a couple of shops and even score a bargain in the first sale I've had time to enter this season.

Then I spent a couple of hours in the citizens' advice bureau interpreting for a woman who was injured while at her exploitative job and was trying to get the most compensation possible for it.  It was quite sweet the way the tiny, well-wrapped lady clung to my arm afterwards as she led me to McDonalds, provided me with chicken wings then told me that she couldn't pay me anything until her case was settled, not even the 7 quid travelcard I needed to get there and back.  I'd actually expected that.  My years in China taught me that getting money in these situations is like climbing trees to catch fish, as the idiom goes.  However this kind of job isn't one I do for the money.  I just couldn't sit comfortably in my room knowing I could stepping out of my tiny job-uni-job-uni-job-job-job world and into someone else's life for a few hours.

The good news is that 3 out of 4 of my various official part time jobs are reliable in terms of pay.  A question mark still hangs over the 4th (and most regular).  I fear the invoice-style of remuneration.  Speaking of remuneration, I got a notification of payment for last month's interpreting.  17 whole pounds, coincidentally just after I got a letter demanding 17 pounds for NI contributions.  In the door and out the window.

I used to be rich you know.  Huh. 

This is very confusing.

While in China I didn't use my brain tremendously, read virtually no news and spared little thought to the world outside my province.  I led a simple life.  I was very happy.

Yet last night while witnessing a very lively discussion between 2 flatmates about American drug-patenting policies in Africa, the political situations in their respective Central-Asian countries, Iranian society and suchlike I suddenly felt the crushing weight of my grinning ignorance.  No wonder I don't like making conversation much, it's not because conversation is dull, rather it's because I can't relate to most things and have nothing to talk about except me me me China China China blah blah blah.  I'm effectively boring myself.

Evidently my happy little bubble was a fragile and temporary delusion. The membraneous walls have come crashing down.

Perhaps it was wrong to cast myself into the theoretic world of Noun Phrases and Lexicons rather than the real world of law, economics, history, anthropology etc. yet it was a decision made in blissful ignorance but also a path that lead me to the realisation that my brain is rather on the vacuous side, and maybe that isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Less blog, more Financial Times from now on. 

A couple of months ago someone tied a special piece of ribbon round my wrist and told me to make 3 wishes then wait for the ribbon to fall off, at which time the wishes would come true.  I think it comes from a Brazillian tradition, could well be wrong.

Sounds like a good idea, no?  So I thought until I found myself in a monkey-paw situation which is somewhat overdoing the wish fulfilment.  I should really have just wished for hard cash, but I wished for a job.  Now I have 5.  Five jobs, bit of deja vu there.  Unfortunately none have reasonable hours so I'm still scraping a meager existence.

So ask for a job, you get 5.  Guess what else I wished for? A boyfriend.  I'll probably get lynched by feminists for putting it in my top 3 wishes, but it seemed a good idea at the time.  I think I'm going to have to get stronger deoderant* because my pheromone production must be on overdrive with all the unexpected attention.

OK, I exaggerate, but I'm getting interest from rather unpredictable quarters.  I even got a date when I went somewhere to ask for a job a couple of weeks ago.  That one fell through though as he didn't call.  I'd say boo hoo hoo, except he was blatantly about 21.  How do these little men not realise that I'm pushing 30?  Is it that I fall into 'mother figure' category in their eyes?  Mock I may but I seem to have accidentally acquired a 'boyfriend' who is of a rather too tender age (24).  I notice that there seems to be a trend for people to just designate themselves as my significant other.  Obviously their assumptions are not entirely without some modicum of basis, but presumptuous nonetheless.  What's worse is that he really is a very outstanding young man, really intelligent, sweet, kind, considerate and bloody reminds me of myself when I was about 17!! Jesus.  In order to clarify, I mean his interests and way of thinking remind me of my younger self, not his personality assets- I was a right brat back then.  Yet if I disentangle myself now I will inevitably unleash the mighty axe of karma onto my head.

Why oh why can't I just reciprocate his feelings?  I suppose the obvious answer is that he is a kid in my eyes.  I thought maybe I should tell him that I want to get married and have kids in the near future, but knowing my luck he'd be into the idea.  Perhaps I could just lock him in an attic for a few years until he matures a bit, 'Return to Oz' style.  It occurs to me that I may just fear the situation because I am a thorough commitment-phobe (perhaps the 5 jobs thing is a bit of a giveaway), and as soon as I see what should be a good prospect I turn tail.

Bad as that is, it wouldn't be me without added complications.  Got a date this weekend with someone else (of more appropriate age), someone who I will be unable to avoid for the rest of the year if any brown substances hit fans.  Shouldn't do it, but I like him.  Strike me down now, just strike me down. 

*actually I tend not to use any.  Gross, huh?  Heh heh.  I don't want to get armpit cancer. 

Initially my main concern was that I would never grasp minimalist syntax, now I begin to worry that the pursuit of understanding it will come at a high price. I really don't think that forcing your brain to accept A = B because B = A is good for your mental health, and as I progress further through "Minimalist Syntax: Exploring the structure of English" I am seeing evidence of the dear author Andrew Radford cracking under the stain of the neurological boot camp.

Apart from the countless examples featuring a fictional agency called the FBA (federal bureau of assassinations) and the exploits of their agents, I found this beauty on p229:

'Lord Lancelot Humpalot is someone [whose ego is bigger than his l ibido]'

as part of an example about the differences between different relative pronouns, of all things.

Just now, I got to a part about about argument structure of the sentence 'the police have arrested the suspect':

' Such a description...fails to account for the for the fact that the police are the individuals who perform the act (and hence get to verbally and physically abuse the suspect), and that the suspect is the person who suffers the consequence of the act (e.g. being manhandled, handcuffed, thrown in the back of a windowless vehicle and beaten up).'

Well well, had a bit of a bad experience with the boys in blue did we Radford? See, I bet you all thought that linguists were hunched up bespectacled dweebs who spend all hours in the library conjuring up sentences that teeter on the edge of feasibility in the effort to back up their hair-brained hypotheses. Oh no, linguists live on the edge, they go out and get wrongfully arrested and have dealing with men in black style FBA agents.

What's more I learned in a translation theory lecture that back in the day translators would get burned at the stake for heresy over a couple of words (namely du tout as in there is pas du tout in the afterlife-insert sharp intake of breath) incautiously added in a translation of the bible.

I also learned that adjectives in Chinese are verbs.

I bet your week wasn't HALF as exciting as mine.

The above sentence is definitive proof that minimalist syntax is worth studying, and fully worth the cost of the textbook just for that one sentence.

Much as I would like to write more about my interesting week tormenting my feet by wearing 'nice' footwear for numerous job interviews, and quitting the job centre after judging human dignity and sanity come at a higher price than 57 quid a week, and actually finally working and having my eyes opened and opinions put into flux I can't as I am:

a. trying to master a niggly bit of syntax

b. somewhat drunk. Just a tad.

So there.