Novosjolov vs Pizzo

Well! There are times, I will admit, when watching fencing is a bit like watching two people wave sticks at each other for no apparent reason while running back and forth in a straight line.

Like football (the real football - the one where they can only use their feet), it does seem like not much is happening - although, unlike football, the score line actually changes and it doesn't drag on for over an hour.

Then you see a bout like this:




Now, just a heads-up, the first person to 15 wins. You'll probably miss it because the tape cuts straight after Pizzo hits.  I'm probably not giving anything away by telling you the Italian wins - the score is in the description of the clip.

Did I use the word "tape" while talking about a YouTube clip?  It must be because I never quite reconciled myself to the end of the 80s.

Anyway, there are more interesting bouts out there, this is just one I saw recently.  One in which "my" fencer loses, but Pizzo puts in quite the flying performance.  Heck, he even falls over at one point (and keep an eye out for a flying sword to the head at about the 5 minute mark).

A matter of sole

My new shoes don't squeak on the new floor at work, which is amazing.  I thought it might have something to do with the rubber soles, but then I remembered the shoes I normally wear also have rubber soles.

I have a tendency to buy shoes with rubber soles.  I don't know why, but it's a selling feature for me.  If I have a choice of two different shoes which are both comfortable, I'll take the one with rubber soles.

It's probably a subconscious way to protect myself from lightening strike.  I don't know if it will help with the ball lightening, but hopefully it can keep me safe from any stray lightening that isn't caught by the town's crackle trap (this town does have a crackle trap, right?).

I doubt my rubber soled shoes will be any defence at all against swan attack, but we can't have everything now, can we?

Harry and Harriet

Although I'm not allowed to say things like this about myself (as it could be deemed "negative", and for some reason saying negative things about oneself is simply not permitted), I'm fairly androgynous in appearance.

I feel comfortable saying it because it's true - and has pretty much always been true.  When I was a kid it was true because most kids look like they could be either-or, and it's really only the clothes and haircut that gives it away.  As someone who had short hair, "dressed for action" and hated wearing pink frilly things, I never really looked much like a girl.

Then, when I grew up, I grew "out".  I've got broad shoulders which contribute to an hour-glass figure if I'm not carrying too much extra weight and I wear fitted clothes... but give me a few extra kilos and loose-fitting garments and I look fairly square.  Match that with a square shaped jaw, long arms and a bit of height (I'm 178cm), and I don't exactly look feminine and delicate.

I have a formidable skeleton.  I know saying you are "big-boned" is more or less code for saying "I'm fat and delusional", but I am actually big-boned.  I've gained and lost weight over the years, but even when I got sick and stopped eating properly for three months, I was never slender.  "Feminine" is a word you can rarely apply to me, and "delicate" is really more applicable to my grasp of reality.

There's the kind of androgynous where you could be a girl or a very pretty boy, and there's the kind of androgynous where you could be a boy or a not-very-pretty girl.  Unfortunately I fall into the latter category.  That's just life - someone has to do it, and it may as well be me.

I'm a bit ambivalent about it all, really.  On the one hand, I really, really hate being mistaken for a man.  Especially when I think I'm actually dressed in clothes that are reasonably girlie.  It happens less often now that I've lost some weight and started wearing more fitted tops (along with a good T-Shirt bra, it makes me look like I might actually have boobs), but it still happens from time to time.

On the other hand, I know that all I have to do is put on a baseball cap and a jacket and I suddenly become invisible.  It's very strange, but also very useful.  When I talk about going to places like Sydney or Europe on my own, people who know me get all fretful about me travelling by myself because apparently it's dangerous for a woman to be on her own.  But I don't really have any trouble at all.

I wear a cap and a jacket and I stride with purpose and sit without trying to be lady-like, and no one even gives me a second glance.  There's a kind of invisibility that men just have, and I can slip it on whenever I feel like it.  Then I take off the hat and carry the jacket while asking a question in my "female British tourist #6" voice, and people treat me with the same kind of kindness and helpfulness that they usually reserve for young foreign women.

It's probably cheating to play on it like that, but it works for me.  I've done it for years without really noticing, but a few years ago I realised what I was doing.  Now, when I need to, if I think it suits my purposes, I'll actually play the characters (which I've started thinking of as Harry and Harriet) on purpose.  Harry is really a non-speaking role - I just use him to walk through parks and city centres, and I tend to "walk strong" while I'm playing him, smothering any latent femininity I might have in my bearing*.  Harriet is for getting help and directions, and I've noticed I actually change the way I stand and move when I play her - I act more feminine when I'm playing Harriet than I actually am in real life.

So, I've come to see my androgynous appearance as something quite useful.  I'll never be the girl someone sees across the crowded room and thinks "my, she's pretty", which is a bit disappointing, but I guess I can live with that.  As long as I can look like a girl when I need to, I can deal with the rest.


*except when I feel the need to skip through a park, which does happen from time to time.  Every now and then, quite without warning, Zing! go the strings of my heart.

Mask

What I like about my workplace is the fact that it's always entirely possible that one day you will walk through to door to find someone dressed in full fencing gear while someone else is throwing plastic cutlery at them.

My garb came in the mail today and, despite being told that they could not deliver to a post office box, it was delivered to my post office box.  I did promise people I would show them what it looked like if it turned up at work...

Well, not quite "full" - my socks are coming in a different package, and I don't own "proper" fencing shoes yet.  Eagle-eyed viewers might notice I'm only wearing the mask in this photo.  I actually do have the plastron, glove, pants and jacket, too, but they were back in the box by the time I thought to take a photo.

First impressions:  the proper 1600N Negrini mask is much more comfortable than the cheap Uhlmann one I've been wearing at the club, and I'm quite impressed with the fact that everything actually fits, considering I bought it "off the rack" and "on speck", based solely on a handful of measurements.  And, it is quite light compared to the club gear I've been using.  We'll see how it feels when someone is trying to poke me with a sword...

Vehklemine 2

Okay, as in most things, a little bit of patience can change your mind.  My first impressions of fencing included the following:

• Epee - kind of like a cross between tennis and boxing.  Very vibrant and interesting to watch, even if the linear playing space takes a while to get used to.
• Sabre - more like a cross between cricket and boxing.  People appear to just be whacking stuff with a stick and shouting "Howzat!" at the umpire.
• Foil - I have no idea what that's about. It's like epee, only somehow more vicious and more delicate at the same time (you have a flimsier sword and you have to take turns attacking, but you're only allowed to aim for the chest and head).

My opinion of sabre was pretty low because the descriptions I had read indicated that it would be a lot more interesting to watch than it actually was. Much like cricket. I can't get into cricket. It's probably very unAustralian of me to say that, but I just find it so very boring.

I thought sabre was a bit like this, too, as all of the clips I saw on YouTube seemed to lack anything remotely resembling "interesting things". However, I am now willing to concede that I just didn't give it a proper chance. I usually only watched for the first couple of minutes before crying "this is boring!" and trying to find something more amusing, like lawn bowls.

I decided I should try to watch at least one bout the whole way through, though, and discovered that it actually gets better the longer it goes on. They spend the first three minutes or so whacking each other on the head and shouting "howzat!!" at the umpire, but after that they start doing other things - things like trying to avoid being hit by the other guy. Then it picks up a bit.

After they start using defensive moves, all of the things I read about that seemed interesting started to appear. I guess they spend the first few minutes sussing each other out by all that whacking before bringing in more interesting moves. At least, the girls do. The boys seem to spend a lot longer in the whacking phase.

So, sabre isn't entirely boring. It's not as interesting as epee, but it isn't entirely boring. (I still have no idea what foil is about).

It makes me wonder if cricket might actually be interesting if I can just sit through the first three hours of whatever it is they do.

I remain doubtful.

Write something new

Okay, I'm currently struggling through a literature review on the concept of direct instruction of autonomous learning practices to first year university or college students - particularly from a library and/or learning advisor perspective.

It should be a walk in the park, all things considered, because a) I'm a librarian and I can find stuff, b) there isn't much stuff to find, and c) I'm the kind of verbose git who can spin an entire paragraph out of "there isn't much stuff to find".

Yet, I'm struggling.  I'm having difficulty thinking my way through this thing.  I just can't seem to wrap my head around how I should take what I know, augment it with what I can find and push it into the mould that has been asked for.  And I don't know why I'm struggling so much with the whole, when I can handle the individual parts without too much difficulty.

I think it's partly because I'm resisting the thing (I've reached a point where I really don't want to do it, even though it's the second last thing I have to do before I'm done with this wretched course and it will actually contribute towards a paper I want to write).

I also think it's because I've realised I'm reading the exact same information over and over and over again.  Over the last 20 or 30 years, people have been regurgitating the same stuff.  I've basically come to the conclusion that I'm really only reading the same three articles.

You have:

1) The "introductory literature review", which can be as short as a magazine column or as long as an exceptionally boring journal article, and basically consists of people saying:  "Here is what autonomy/self-directed learning is all about, and here is a summary of what has been written about it over the past 30 years".  These tend to conclude that autonomous/self-directed learners appear to be mildly better off than traditional students, but there needs to be more research.  Nothing new.

2) The "case study", in which a small group of people is given a project to do which involves some portion of self-directed stuff, and some portion of teaching them how to do the self-directed stuff.  They are then compared with the people who didn't do that project.  These always end up making the exact same conclusions:  Students using self-directed methods appear to be mildly better than those who don't, but we can't be conclusive about this due to our small sample sizes.  There is some contemplation about whether the fact that the sample group also self-selected for the study has tainted the results.  Nothing new.

3) The "pilot study", in which an entire class or cohort has a subject converted into a self-directed thing-or-other and a survey is done to see how well they all coped with it.  These tend to end up making the following conclusions:  students don't really know about this whole autonomy thing, and while some of them really appreciate it others would much rather have an actual curriculum - oh, and self-directed students appear to be mildly better than non-self-directed students, but we can't be conclusive due to the lack of a proper control group (and/or a small sample size).  Nothing new.

Really, people, I think the verdict is in.  After over thirty years of this guff I think we can safely say that autonomous learners are mildly better off than non-autonomous learners.  Yes?  Can we do that?  And can we now move on to looking at, I don't know, which methods of teaching autonomous learning skills to students give you the most bang for you buck?

Would that be too much to ask?

Maybe not that photo

I can't help but feel that the people who selected the photo to go on the cover of this book could have chosen a different one.  Maybe one from a different angle.

Fostering Autonomy in Language Learning

I just don't think they went with their best option, myself.

Praxis

An article by Cooke, which looked like it would have promising things about teaching students to learn autonomously from a library perspective, tuned out to be about how adult learners are usually already autonomous and librarians need to understand androgogy in order to best teach them.

I was exited to find it, as I like the word androgogy and thought it might actually be talking about the thing I'm trying to research, but as it turned out it wasn't about teaching autonomous learning skills after all.  Bummer.

On the other hand, it did use the word "praxis" in regards to reflective learning:  "praxis ... is a process of learning and reflecting on what was learned by repetition, revising or recreation" (Cooke, 2010, p.222).

I like it.  It fits neatly with my "before, during and after" approach to teaching autonomous learning skills.  I must find a way to use it in a guide or something...

It's kind of what I do here, from time to time, with posts like this - recreating the information in order to make it more memorable for me.  It probably bores the sox of everyone else, but that's the price we have to pay.

Not your mother

Real life conversations are great, aren't they?  Why, just last night I found myself having this one:

"As my mother always said, 'do what you do do well,'"
"That wasn't your mother - that was an animatronic kangaroo in Dreamworld..."

Eurovision initial washdown 2012

So, I've decided to turn something I half did last year into a tradition, and take a moment to share the Eurovision songs I thought had real "legs". That is, the songs I think could actually be heard outside of the realm of Eurovision tragics and might still be remembered in a year.

Firstly, my "winner" - the song I think was actually the most 'leggie' song from the finals:



Gaitana's "Be My Guest", from the Ukraine. Man, every time I hear this song I feel like sitting up a bit straighter. It's just a fun, upbeat, happy dance number with a good hook. It's good stuff.

The other songs from the final that I thought were strong enough to become radio hits post-Eurovision were "Should've Known Better" by Denmark's Soluna Samay, "Euphoria" (which actually won) by Sweden's Loreen and "Standing Still" by Germany's Roman Lobb.

I also particularly liked the songs by France, Italy and Spain, but in terms of "this might still pop into my head in a year's time, and I won't be annoyed by it being there", those were my top picks.

Sadly, Jedward's "Waterline" will probably also pop into my head on a regular basis, even though I thought it was a bit weak.  Was it just me, or did Jedward seem a little odd this year?  Last year it was like they were hyped up on some sort of substance, this year it seemed more like they were going through the motions.  One of them looked like he had resigned to being a hyperactive git for a living, the other one looked like someone was standing behind him with a gun muttering "I said, dance!" in a menacing voice.

I loved the Estonian song, "Kuula", by Ott Lepland, but as it is in Estonian I think it isn't likely to get much airplay outside of Finno-Ugric speaking countries.

As for the songs that didn't make it out of the semi-finals? There's always a couple I thought were better than some of the songs that did make it through, but this time around the only one I really missed was "You and Me" by the Netherlands' Joan Franka. It was a daft song, but I liked the music. Latvia's "Beautiful Song" by Anmary would have been better if it was less about winning Eurovision - a different spin on the song would have done it a world of favours, I think.

So, there you have it. While I think the winning song had some legs, my personal favourite for this year was "Be My Guest" from the Ukraine.  Will it still be my "winner" by the time the next Eurovision contest rolls around?  Who knows?

Joosten

Kathryn Joosten died this week.

As a friend of mine pointed out, it's kind of hard to know what to feel about that.  On the one hand, she was one of my favourite "hey, it's that actress!" actresses, and it always made me happy to see her in something.

On the other hand, her characters had a habit of dying off.  She's died so often on TV that it's like she's been preparing us for this moment for some time...

Nya-ha!

Well! Blow me down if they didn't have a höcher question in the exam!  There I was, just writing a blogpost to help me get things straight in my own mind, and low and behold they asked for it.

They also asked for Genitive prepositions, which was unfortunate.  I got während (during) mixed up with wegen (on account of) and put it in the wrong field - and then, of course, I couldn't remember what the word for "during" was because I'd already used während in the wrong place...

Learning a language is great, but it also kind of sucks.