Almost Famous

I noticed the other day that one of the shops in town was advertising a boxed set of the complete Famous Five books, so I mentioned that to a friend who has kids about the right age to enjoy them.

She confessed that she never got into the Famous Five, and then I had to struggle to remember if I'd ever actually read any of the books myself.

I'm sure I did.  I must have.

I have vague recollections of having "I've read some of these books and I know who the characters are" conversations with friends in school.

I just can't remember which books I've read.  There was one with gypsies in it...

The phrase "smuggler's cove" is floating around in my brain, somewhere, but the actual book is called "Five go to Smuggler's Top", and quite frankly, I've just read a synopsis of the plot and I can't say it's ringing any bells.

Where the books particularly forgettable?  Is that why I can't remember anything about them?

Well, there was a dog called Timmy and a girl called George.  And gypsies.

For years I thought The Black Bog Mystery (a book I read and enjoyed when I was the right age to be reading Famous Five books) was part of that series.  But, of course, it clearly wasn't because a) it doesn't have the word "five" in the title, and b) I've just looked it up and it wasn't even written by Enid Blyton.

Lane Mitchell wrote it.  It was quite good, if I recall correctly.  There were twins and mysterious houses and bogs.  Everyone loves a good bog.  I can't remember what the actual mystery was.  I *think* it had something to do with people hiding things in the bog...  I read quite a number of Trixie Beldon, Nancy Drew and other such books at the time and I can't rightly say which plot belonged to which books.

So, somewhere along the lines the only Famous Five book I could actually remember enjoying wasn't actually a Famous Five book at all - just some other kids' mystery novel of dubious memorability.

I always meant to get around the reading the Famous Five.  Maybe I should see if I can get them in German or Estonian - that might make them a bit more interesting.

Assignment woes

This sucks.  It totally sucks.  It sucks big time.  It’s one of the suckiest things I’ve experienced this year.  Not quite as sucky as some of the suckiest things I experienced last year, but it still totally sucks.

There’s nothing quite like having something you’re usually good at used to highlight just how crap you truly are.

I’ve been given two writing tasks for my German assignment.  One is to write a “travel blog” about a place in a German speaking country.  Easily enough done (if not easy to do well).  I have plenty to say about the place of my choice.  The actual mechanics of saying it are a challenge, but that’s why we have assignments, right?  Heck, I’m already over the word limit on that one (but I’ve decided I don’t care).

The second task is to write typical classroom assignment twaddle.  The question is:  “In education a person should be viewed holistically, one should not just focus on results”.  It’s twaddle.  It’s one of those silly twaddly things that just try to get you to prove you can write a reasoned argument in a proper paragraph structure.  It barely means anything.

This is just the sort of thing I can do with my eyes closed in English.  I can churn out twaddle like the best of them.  The trouble is that I make up for the lack of meaningful things to say by falling back onto rhetoric.  I use metaphors, similes, carefully crafted redundancies, the occasional hyperbole and the odd synecdoche.  All of these are very idiomatic and language specific.  A perfectly legitimate synecdoche in English is complete nonsense in another language.  I can crank out the meaningless twaddle, but I can’t translate it.

And, when I try to pare down to sentences that are simple and straightforward and can be translated across, I realise I have nothing to say.  Try as hard as I might, every time I feel like I’ve got the wind of inspiration and can burst into something vaguely resembling eloquence, I realise I’ve come up with a sentence like the one I’ve just written.  “Try as hard as I might”?  Idiom.  “Wind of inspiration”?  Metaphor.  “Burst into something vaguely resembling eloquence”?  I just don’t know how to translate that - or even if I should.

I “write up” for frippy little tasks like these.  I can churn out three sentences to encapsulate one flimsy idea.  But to translate into another language I have to pare back.  I can’t write up and pare back at the same time.  It’s doing my head in.

And, in the back of my mind, a simple truth keeps raising its ugly head:  “It’s only because you don’t know enough.  If you a) knew what you were talking about, and b) paid attention to the things you should have learnt, there wouldn’t be a problem.”

There's nothing like trying to do an assignment in another language to give you a new appreciation for what NESB students go through in English speaking universities.

It turns out everything we expect from them is kind of unreasonable and cruel.  All lecturers and teachers should try walking a mile in their shoes before attempting to mark them.

I think there's something wrong with me...

So, today I found myself running a Google search for Masters' degrees in Educational Design, and when I saw one particular university was offering a Graduate Certificate that was only four subjects, I wondered whether the certificate would be enough for me or if I should do the Masters because it would give me the chance to do a research project.

I am currently completely swamped by the two degrees I'm doing at the moment, and I'm already lining up the next one - and it's not even a PhD.  Just a few months ago I swore my next degree would score me a "Doctor".

That postgrad cert looks good, though.  I can do two subjects on educational designy stuff and two subjects from any other course - and I've just discovered they have a linguistics subject that looks specifically at syllabus and materials design.  My current linguistics degree doesn't do that...

Semi-final 1, 2014

Here in Australia, we get our Eurovision experience distilled into one sequin-filled weekend.  So I've only just seen the first semi-final, even though Europeans would have seen it earlier in the week.

And my over-all impression is:

Meh.

I know music videos of all the songs are available well in advance of the competition, but I like to experience it "live" first, so I usually only look at the Estonian video and maybe one other before the Big Weekend.

This year's entry for Estonia struck me as being, well, nothing special.  They were okay, I just didn't particularly think they would wow the audiences enough to get through to the final - and I was right.

What I didn't know was that they would be sitting amongst a whole bunch of forgettable songs.  I honestly think that the Estonian number was probably stronger than some of the others that got through.

The Netherlands was good - I really enjoyed that one and I'm glad it got in.  Sweden wasn't bad and Aremenia had an okay song (although the singer was off-key for part of it).  I was happy to see San Marino get through this year (and I thought they had one of the better songs on the night).

The real shame was Portugal.  Their song was a) good and b) one of the only songs not in English.  For some reason the songs in English are usually just a little bit boring.  But they didn't make the cut.

In the end, though, I found myself unsuccessfully trying to remember any of the tunes an hour after the show.  All I could get was Estonia's "Amazing".  That could have been because the song actually had one of the strongest hooks in the field, or it could have been because it was the only one I'd heard twice.

In the five years I've been watching Eurovision, I think Baku has had the best set of songs.  Copenhagen is proving to be a bit boring, really.

Fortunately we have Austria tonight.  That should liven things up a bit.

Oh, white can be beautiful, but mostly it's not...

I love fencing.  I really do.  It's the most awesome sport in the world and I'm so happy I get the chance to do it.  Sure, I'll probably be crap at it for the rest of my life, and then at some point my knees will give way or I'll move somewhere without a fencing club and spend the rest of my life playing lawn bowls as my sport thingy...

But right now I fence, and fencing is awesome.

Every now and then I look at my mask lying around in the spare room and think:  "hell, yeah, baby!  I totally fence!"  But that could just be because I'm a dork.  And fencing is awesome.

However, as much as I love the sport, ever since I took it up there have been a number of things I'd love to change about it.  I'm not the boss of fencing, I'm just a lowly nobody who's never even won a medal at a competition.  But if I had a bit of money and could afford to use it to try to push my own agenda, there are somethings I'd like to try.

One of them is the colour of fencing clothes.  Or, rather, the lack of it.

As per tradition, fencing uniforms are white (like cricket, tennis, and any other sport that was the domain of rich men with servants to do the laundry).  Okay, fine, that does look a bit cool.  I'm perfectly okay with there being a thing that says you should compete in the traditional white kit.

However, there happens to be two levels of fencing clothes.  The 350N level is good enough to stop you from dying and it's fairly common in normal week-by-week club fencing.  The 800N level is more swordproof and is the required level for any official competitions.

So, yes, you have to wear white for competition.  Well, hurrah.  Since the 350N clothes can’t be worn for competitions anyway, why do they have to be locked into the traditional colour scheme?

Or, for that matter, style?  Why can’t we shake things up at the training level and have – oh, I don’t know – pants?

There are a lot of clothes involved in the traditional fencing attire, and I’m not convinced we need all of them.  A better design would cut down on a lot of the guff.

In addition to the mask and shoes (which are non-negotiable givens) my usual outfit for a weekly training night consists of everything I would wear at a competition:

• A pair of knee-length socks (which are always awkward to get on and off, and can’t possibly project my shins against sword wounds)
• A pair of breeches
• A pair of exercise shorts under the breeches (because the breeches on their own just feel weird, and because I change between breeches and real pants for activities before and after fencing and can’t be bothered finding a changing room)
• A T-shirt
• A plastron (a half-shirt of thick material worn under the jacket to provide extra protection under your sword arm)
• A chest protector
• A jacket

Now, Leon Paul sells 350N track pants (black) which could theoretically replace the socks and breeches and eliminate the need for the shorts.  They also sell “club jackets” – which combine the jacket and the plastron into one garment, which is padded to reduce bruising and ROYAL BLUE!

Their website indicates the blue colour will deter theft and encourage people to buy their own kit.

Meanwhile, I’m thinking:  “Wait, there’s something that cuts down on the amount of clothes I have to wear/wash, gives more protection against bruises and is a pretty colour – and I’m *not* supposed to want it?”

I could reduce the amount of clothes I have to deal with *and* have an outfit that came in colour…  This sounds like a good thing to me.

I could go from everything listed above to the following list without endangering myself at all (and possibly providing even better protection):

• Pants
• T-Shirt
• Chest protector
• Jacket.

Clearly, they are actually capable of making 350N clothes in colours other than white and in styles other than the bib-and-breeches combo.  So why don’t they?

I can’t believe no one has found a market for this yet.  If you could buy jackets in a variety of colours and styles for normal club fencing days, why wouldn’t you get more than one?  Imagine what would happen if you came up with a way to print designs on the fabric…

I know a bunch of people who never bothered buying a 350N outfit because they may as well just have an 800N suite to cover everything (I bought the cheaper stuff while I was waiting to see if I'd stick it through).  I think there are probably a lot of people who would probably buy a second jacket if that jacket looked cool.

Imagine a fencing kit that looked like Captain America's uniform, or something...