the stupidity of saving money

A month ago I returned to the desert, unsure then, as now, how long I'd be here.  I knew I'd be only miles away from the city I called home for ten years, the last four of those years I had the cushiest job and the easiest one to walk away from.  It won't be easy walking from this one.  Now that I'm AARP eligible. 

I know of a few flats I'd like to check out, yesterday the drain pipe that runs south outside in the kitchen's caged terrace starting leaking bad and I had to duck back into the kitchen and slide the door closed.  Even the bug-eyed gecko who hangs out every morning was spooked by the torrent of water.  And then this morning I opened up the sliding door to the larger terrace off the tv room, looking east, a sublime sunrise, spoiled by refuse covering the enclosure. 

I like this location and everything almost works.  The washing machine doesn't have a rinse or spin.  The oven has three burners that work, that's good.  If I buy any pans I could cook a few things at once.  There are no mirrors in the bathrooms, which I don't mind except when it's time to shave.  I do have this small vanity mirror, cracked, that I use for such an occasion.  I think I'm just lazy and it isn't that bad.  But still, you should look elsewhere.

It feels too early to go anywhere, and perhaps at the end of November I'll have a need to visit a bookstore or two in Dubai.  I almost finished Leon Uris' "Topaz" in one sitting yesterday. Good grief, when a book is good, what is there to do.  Density and speed,  could I ever write anything like that?  Hardly.

So, the days slow down.  I'm saving money.  I have two broken teeth.  I figure I'm gonna need that money then.  When they get infected.  Why wait until they get infected?  Because I can still eat without pain, that's why.

I'm really put out knowing I have to travel 20km to get an exit stamp from a checkpoint and then turn around back to where I live so I can cross the border.  The stupidity of it is saving me money, though that means instant coffee prevails.  Poor cigarettes prevail.  I have gone a month without a beer, though, and that's good, right?  My weight is stable and that means no indigestion.

On Tuesday we will give the 220 whippersnappers their first quiz.  I don't mind being a coordinator so far.  I'd prefer sitting at a desk for a while instead of teaching.  I do have 14 hours a week, visiting the seven classes twicely and showing them how to be a better student, illustrating some basic study skills.  A man somewhere in California once said the secret to finishing the job, studying, was to remain in your seat until you were satisfied.  Stay in your seat until you know your stuff, dude.

I remember an old friend with a photo here.  He has dumped me down the big toilet of regret.  It's my bad, all my bad.  I wish we could talk, but really, if I were he and he were me, I wouldn't call me either.  God bless you anyways, you dumb polak. 

Critical Shrinking

Seven years ago or so I attended a conference on critical thinking.  These were my notes. 

A monk asked Yueh-shan: “What must I think about in zazen?”  Yueh-shan said: “Think non-thinking.”  “How can I think non-thinking?”

Yueh-shan said: “By non-thinking.” Zen Mondo

                                        

I climbed into a plush chair in the last row of the auditorium and the keynote speaker from Scotland looked tiny: 

“A thinking child is a learning child”

I remember thinking when I watched the Three Stooges what would happen if I poked my brother in the eyes with two fingers, or whacked a big toe with a claw hammer, or put my sister’s head in a grip vise, and wondered…would I be here today if there wasn’t a little bit of law and order in the house. 

 It’s a good thing I sat close to the exit. The auditorium’s balcony ceiling sticks so far out ahead of me like a huge maroon tongue with tiny white spotted bacteria.  I saw half the screen that descended from somewhere above the stage and upon which the lady from Scotland showed transparencies on a portable OHP she snapped closed and carried off later.   No IT training over there for this transparent generation of teachers?  And look, about 133 scattered about are rapidly writing down everything she’s saying…ok, I will too.

“Write down five things that you think of when you think of the word thinking”

1. Me’s thinking I drove 160km an hour because I thought it would take two hours to get to Sharjah’s City Hall.  Instead I arrive right on time and wolf down stale pastry and instant coffee with chalk powdered cream to hear someone I didn’t originally plan to see and now …

2. I’d like to know what in God’s name the two local ladies two rows ahead of me are feverishly writing page after page.  I think, therefore, I think. 

      3. What the hell do I think of the word thinking when I think about it?  Does this have a little circular reasoning feel to it, a tinge of yingy yang twang:  think about the word thinking, and think about thinking of things we are thinking of, things you see, to think up, or thoughts we thought of, that is, the word think. I think I need a drink. 

Activity Memory Creative Intelligence Language

Well, I’m a bit slow this weekend morning and before I know it she gave us this piece of intrigue:

“In England thinking skills have been incorporated into the national curriculum”

I’m new to this discourse.  Why is England doing this at all?  Students today aren’t thinking like they used to? The facts state math and reading and writing skills are falling across the board and the thinking skills hypothesis is an admittance that many are not thinking the way they ought to be thinking because…

No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear

Edmund Burke

 

Teaching thinking skills in the Middle East require an arena of freedom to present multiple options in problem solving at the earliest stages.

 

1.  Circle True or False

 

Thinking skills are innate in each of us.  It is the environment that nurtures, destroys or completely rewires thinking skills.  We learn because we want to.  We don’t learn when we don’t want to, or we don’t learn when we can’t or won’t.  And when do we want to learn and when do we not want to learn and when can’t we learn?  Can we ever not learn?  Well, that kind of depends now, doesn’t it, on a lot of changing variables, and what we’re defining these days as “what is learning?” and this color is kind of irritating to read after a while.

 

2.  Circle True or False

 

If it weren’t Thursday morning and a holiday to boot, I wouldn’t have been the most casually dressed attendee in the big hall.  It’s a good thing I’m still in the back.  I think I’ll take my Tevas off. 

“The Spanish school children know immense pieces of information.  But what is all that knowledge if they don’t use it?”

 

If children have the information and aren’t using it, it isn’t therefore a question of attaining the skills to think, which one needs to simply activate the information they aren’t using.  How many teenagers thirty years ago in the United States never used their thinking skills but today are educated and hold respectable jobs and live respectable lives, relatively speaking.  The woman’s observations seem like a back-handed compliment if there ever was one.  What the Scot has she got with her neighbors?  What are the kids doing in Spain with all their information, betting on football?

The OHP’s are absurdly small, even at 15 font, and I’m 1200 yards away from the basketball court size stage, so I wonder if she knows people far away can’t see her visuals. Wouldn’t a lap top have been easier?  While I wondered and pondered, an American woman suddenly appeared and squeezed by me. I laughed in a barely audible loss of wind because I looked out ahead and there was fifty-seven yards of empty chairs since the two local ladies left. I can’t see the screen back here.  I crouched down like I was looking up for a foul ball:  “it says Bloom’s thoughts of cognitive education, and it spans the transparency like the Dead Sea Scrolls in six font.  Didn’t you read Mr. Bloom in Grad school?” Is the world becoming cognitive free?

“Please look at the following:

Dog--Duck--Frog

 

The odd one out?  Why?”

All can swim

All breathe

I’ve eaten all of them and yes, enjoyed each one

I’ve never owned a dog, duck or frog.

 

I’m getting to think this lady is some kind of European-animal racist.  She harps on the misplaced Spanish and has something out for three...ok.  The odd one out.  Oh, a dog has fur. Ok, and a duck has a bill, and a frog has, what, an STD? 

 

“A simple activity generates the wheels in a child’s head.”

I get it, that’s great.  I’ll have to try it with my own occasionally creatively minded collection using VTL words with six and seven syllables.

 

“Brain friendly activities

Brain unfriendly activities

Alternate the focus so you are brain-friendly”

 

Well, I’m all for brain friendly activities, but if a young mind out there in the classroom is here for reasons that aren’t hers or his in the first place and if all motivation and persuasion hasn’t convinced them that a second language is for the better of the nation and for personal growth, we’re gonna have an unproductive activity regardless of all the bells and whistles I use to wake them up.

“We can train our ways to think differently.  Experiencing the world and interpreting it require we are open to change.”

And I’m open to experiencing a different world and resisting the unnecessary conformative in a society that lets change change.  The history of critical thinking in this country is in its infancy.  For the first time in many families education is making a significant play for the future of the people.   A culture of critical thinking hasn't existed because there never has been never a need for one in the classroom.  All testing and development of a new curriculum for today’s students must consider the earlier it is implemented the better chance the nation will see the next generation ready to enter the university and become active members of their society. 

 

holiday over hurrah

My nine day holiday ended, mercifully, and back to work I am.  While it is relatively quiet, storm clouds hover around the academic horizon.  Will the copy center one day open again?  Will I be completely prepared to teach study skills without handouts, without the use of overhead projection systems, without a textbook.  I don't know.

I have to say the more interesting parts of life are recorded in my journal.  Transferring the scribbles to here is not something I look forward to doing, if that is, I ever do it.  But if I had to summarize what I did, which wasn't much, I could be brief, leaving out the theological discussions that raged in my head and landed on paper. 

I read the eight magazines I brought with me.  I'm disappointed I read them so fast, but hey, it's too hot to walk around outside. 

I watched a lot of television, movies I've seen ad nauseum over and over, but I watch them because they were interesting the first and second time.  Which movies?  Ah...A Mel Gibson movie, an Adam Sandler flick, on it goes. 

After sunset I left my oversized grotto for walks, usually to a supermarket.  I did walk all the way to the other border crossing, past the new Al-Massa Hotel, which like the one in Al-Ain, is dry.  Nothing interesting in the two hour walk, this city is a collection of auto repair shops and barbers and that's it.  There isn't even an Indian restaurant here.  Yawn!

And I started reading "The Word" by Irving Wallace.  It came out 41 years ago and it is frighteningly good.  What would be the biggest story ever?  What one story does the press wish it could cover?
In the book, the Second Coming would be the biggest story ever, yet we know, don't we, that it doesn't work that way.  It will happen in a blink of an eye.  Pat Robertson won't be there, CNN or BBC won't be on hand.  It'll just happen.  And that'll be it.

Wallace says Jesus's followers all expected him to return in their lifetime.  Funny to think 2000 years have passed since, and who expects anything to happen now?  Is it the translation or a faith with expected hope, that something would actually happen in our lifetime?  St.  Francis didn't expect it to happen when he was alive.  Mother Teresa didn't expect it to happen in her lifetime.  Ask an evangelical though, and they think it's going to happen in their lifetime, but generation after passing generation proves them wrong.

The saints knew nothing was going to happen and it is a waste of time to think of such matters.  And yet, I do.  Lord have mercy of my scrawny neck.  I'd like a beer but it sure is going to be difficult getting one around here.  Imagine no beer in this town.  Don't think too hard, it's true.  I wonder if the Saudis own the place.  yawn

 

An Eid that doesn't impede

Tomorrow begins a nine day break.  The second Eid, Eid-AlAdha, is upon us, and I'll have so much free time we'll be climbing the pockmarked and scruffy walls.  I look forward to coming in to the office, it's the start of eight and a half hours of doing something that doesn't include watching television.  What's wrong with writing lesson plans, surfing the internet with poor visuals, going to lunch in the college restaurant at noon, all meals 1RO, (about $2.60) and then returning to the empty flat by 4:30pm?  Should I be in despair?  Should I be depressed?  No internet for nine days? 

On this last day of my first full week teachers have nowhere to make copies for their lessons.  I have nowhere to go to make copies for my study skills lessons.  If the OHPs' work in the seven classrooms I should survive, but if they don't and I haven't been able to make copies to give to 215 students well, should I be in despair?  Should I be depressed?  Should I buy a lap top? 

A laptop may take priority over a car.  At least then I can continue thinking about the jobs that face us at this new, very new university.  In our meeting yesterday I learned there is no testing committee and no curriculum committee.  We'll be putting together quizzes and mid-terms in piecemeal and hoping they look and deliver in a professional way.  It's hard to gauge who if any will give a hoot, except the students. 

I am trying to get motivated to make a border crossing during the nine day ceasefire, though it will take some effort.  I must hire a taxi have him drive me to the Jizi checkpoint, 20km east of Buraimi, along the Sohar road, to get an exit stamp and then return to the border, where I live three kms away from.  When I return to Buraimi I will have to return to the Jizi checkpoint to get another stamp.  Why are they doing this?  Who the blank knows, it's lazy politics, is what it is.  For whatever reasons they have they're not legitimate and soon change for the better or worse because of someone's penchant for the absurd. 

If I don't go I will simply stay put.  Every day will be the same, would you like me to tell you of such an itinerary?  I will wake up around six am, eat breakfast, read and watch tv until it is time to eat lunch and then I will continue reading, going outside for any length of time in the afternoon isn't too cool right now, maybe I'll take a nap, and then around 7pm I'll go out for dinner.  During school I eat my lunch on campus and dinner is at home, for two weeks ramen noodles and a couple of pitas filled with cheese, tomatoes and cucumbers drenched with hot sauce, suffices.  So a different place to eat will be something to do.  Maybe I'll write about it here. 

Tonight the plan is walk one km to the oldest hotel in the city for a beer, if that is, they still have a bar to serve it.  I'll be bummed if they don't.  Imagine taking a 4 hour bus to Muscat for a beer, or the four hour bus and an hour flight to Dubai, for a beer.  Such absurdities aren't that absurd if you consider you have all the time in the world at your fingers. 

In the mornings I read a Padre Pio prayer and it's all about asking for something, by the grace of God, I need this and that.  I don't know what to ask for, except for the grace to be a good teacher.  Asking for companionship, for love, for riches, we're so fraught with guilt, expecting anything that could make me happy is selfish, all I can ask is to be a better teacher.  How can I survive here for five years?  Getting old like this isn't too fulfilling when all I have to speak to is God and God remains silent.  Aren't those of us who talk like this really in the end too crazy for this world?  By what means do you go on?  I'd like to know. 

coordinate this

I step out of the kitchen, into the caged terrace, and have a smoke.  I make a cup of tea, it is 110 degrees in the sun and it is Sunday.  I have been here for nine days and on the third day I was asked to be a coordinator.  Eight months ago when I interviewed for this post I imagined taking a leadership role.  Here it is.  Today I ran around looking for the 'copy center' to make 1290 copies for the eight teachers in my level.  I found the young Bangladeshi man looking at the toner like a man who pulls out a screen of bees.  He told me to come back tomorrow.

The newest supermarket opened a few months ago.  I paid a taxi 700 baisa to get out there, three miles out of town, on the road to Sohar, in the middle of nowhere.  The store was pleasantly empty and I made quick work of every aisle.  When I finished I went to KFC for a so-so fillet burger.  It's hard to believe a Dominos is the other and only fast food chain in this town.  I shall visit it later in the future. 

When I walk north I am confronted with the surreal lights of Jabel Hafeet.  I am on the other side of the fence, why is it so familiar and so far away?  I walked forty minutes looking for a tailor to take up the new khakis I bought.  If I had taken a different route I might have found a closer shop.  This one is past the souq, amidst hundreds of ladies only tailors.  Glitzy, flashy, staffed by eunuchs, ok I don't know it that's true, but it's possible.

The coordinator will require more time and paper shuffling and I am up for it but when the email isn't working, when the overhead projector isn't working, when one teacher is still waiting for students while seven of the stuff have over 30, well that doesn't make much sense.  But who's here to make sense of it all, accept each day as it comes, ignore the vipers who throw rumors around like the fat of a turkey.  Our honesty will prevail, God willing.  For what else do we have except our dignity in the end? 

anxiety for naught

A thirteen hour flight is manageable with a few items at your disposal and with some luck:  a few vicodine and two glasses of white wine, no one sitting next to you, and hundreds of movies to choose.  The new Star Trek and a perennial favorite, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest took off at least 3+ hours.

Upon arrival in Muscat I waited three hours before a driver showed up and off we went back to Buraimi, another three hours.  The road you turn left off of the coastal road was at one time a two lane carnival ride, a place madhatter drivers try to pass each other in hairpin turns in the mountains required Led Zepplin and supplemental nerve softener that made this trip memorably necessary.  No more.  A four lane divided highway has been built, cutting corners and making the drive very safe and gee, almost boring. 

A three day crash at a dry hotel and I was glad to finally sleep in my own place last night but what a dump though I'll give the dude a month, why, I don't know, such kindness is necessary when the bathroom drains don't work and the air conditioners buzz and rattle.

I cleared the medical test yesterday and proceeded to get the coveted labor card but oh last night I worried and anxiety like I've never known, all because I peed in a cup and combined with serious jet lag left me without a wink.  In God's name all was ok, but sadly all did not go well for the Australian bloke who, in his own words, was a google search away from knowing in this country if you have hepatitis C, you will not be given a labor card.  He has it and off he will return to his country.  Stay well my friend.  I think he knew before he came it could happen but I think he was hoping he could slide past the test. 

So we begin another chapter in a life that sputters along.  Is this it, can I stay here for a while?  If I don't I will have something lined up.  Of course I must have something lined up if I leave, but I don't want to leave.  I have a clean office, most of the students are females and they are easy to manage.  The flat is a disappointment but the door has been left open to look elsewhere.  I think the manager of the building is aware it's a dump.  What to do but still be thankful.  We are.