Another Crap Lesson - Tim Flowers

Tim Flowers is an ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher based in the capital city of one of the baltic states. He is 42 years old. His previous job was working for the Post Office (main sorting office - as a superintendent) and this excellent and relevant background has given him a good grasp of the fundamentals of the English language, and the art of teaching it to others. He hails, as he likes to say, from Northamptonshire in England, a very glamorous part of the world indeed, and so is not at all out of place mingling with the glitterati of the Old Town where he hangs out on a Friday or Saturday night. He likes beer.

..well that was a wasted lesson I have to say. Amongst the top 10 (or so) wasted lessons I've ever taught. They just simply weren't getting it. I hardly got a chance to get any reading in, only about 25 pages of the Social Contract by Rousseau which I've been holding up in the trolleybus so people can see the cover these past days, and the thickos already started having problems with dependent prepoisitions. You'd have thought that by elementary level that would have sunk in by now, particularly as I gave a 25 minute explanation on the topic, and was even good enough to intersperse this with my views on the US political landscape, all for nothing.

Since the previous lesson, when I just decided to rest my eyes for a couple of minutes whilst said group were working through a badly photocopied set of exercises I'd taken from a book I randomly grabbed 5 minutes before the class, I'm sure they have all decided to be dead set against me. It's because they're evil capitalists, I can see it now. One of them, some 20 something blonde whose daddy works in a bank or something unforgiveable like that, had the gall to suggest I was anything other than a resounding success for renting at an overpriced rate off of an old lady in Kopli. What does she know? I remember watching the Tiananmen square massacre (on a black and white TV in a bedsit in Lewisham) probably a bit before some of these people were born.

Then when we went into my special quick fire period of asking questions, somebody didn't laugh at my witticism about Stalin sounding a bit like 'starling'. And to cap it off, somebody's mobile went off despite the fact that I vaguely gestured towards the 'switch mobiles off' sign, three months ago at the beginning of the course.

Now I hear one of them is off to Thailand. I'm sure they won't give it the respect it's due, merely coming back with talk of temples and lady boys instead of the real Thailand, that I saw, on the inside of a police cell having had the strength of character to have got drunk on Guiness.

Oh well, it's nearly the Christmas break soon, when I won't have to interrupt my day of sitting on wikipedia and facebook and cutting out bits of paper to attend to these sheep. Happy days are coming.

The Economist On Estonia

Estonia has made it on to the home page of the Economist no less, albeit in an obscure way (they could just as easily have made it a Latvian/Lithuanian/Finnish/Russian exchange student) and not particularly flattering either, but we take everything we can in this part of the world!

Don't Be Too Quiet - The Pete Best Story

Something that's occured to me a lot living here is that, whilst there is a lot to be said for modesty and reserve in all things (and am I missing London gob-shitedness?, er no, not one little bit!) it can be eminently possible to go too far the other way, in other words to miss out on what is rightfully yours and let some other, lesser person take it instead. Indeed there are foreign nationals here in Tallinn who have cut out little niches for themselves doing just that, exploiting the local taciturnity and finding a way to be a middling sized fish in a puddle. Can't say I blame them.

But for a real life example of how keeping one's mouth shut can get one, if not into trouble, then away from success, you could do worse than to look at the Beatles' original drummer, Pete Best. As this TV spot shows, some sort of 'what's my job' panel game in the States, he was even prepared to be flown halfway across the globe to speak in monosyllables, and 20 years later it was no better, as this pitiful early (I presume) Letterman interview demonstrates. True to his local roots, Pete looks more like he'd be more at home playing football at Anfield rather than the drums at Shea Stadium.

Now, there is a valid argument held by many that it was in fact Pete's drumming style, or lack of it, which kept him out of the group, and a quick listen to parts of the notorious Decca audition can confirm this, even to someone like myself, who thinks of the drums as a kind of asylum for failed musicians. However, there is such a thing as practice, it was a pop group not a modern jazz quartet, if he'd really wanted to nail it, he could have. No, he just didn't say anything interesting - even Ringo managed to do that.

I don't feel sorry for Pete; he brought it all on himself and no doubt has managed to make a reasonable living on the 'I used to be in the Beatles you know' circuit. But as a salutary lesson in under-fulfilling one's potential I think there are few paralells, in the public eye anyway.

By the way I'm not for a moment saying that Ringo shouldn't have been the drummer for the band, he absolutely should, but ultimately benefitted from someone else's misplaced meekness. They shall not inherit the earth..

Thought For The Day No. 47 - With The Rabbi Anders Weiss

..psychologist, spiritual guru and arbiter of good taste...

If you want to achieve excellence, you can get there today. As of this second, quit doing less than excellent work.

Thomas Watson, founder of IBM

The Real Asian Tiger

Excellent and thoroughly convincing article on the Seeking Alpha news site...

...if you thought China was, if not the snake (or dragon) in the grass at least the heir apparent to the world no. 1 spot, then think again, Ed Dolan, the contributor argues.

It was India all along. The primary reason in short is demographics. Whereas the fully 'developed' countries such as the US and Japan have a high dependency ratio (i.e. a large number of non-working people who depend on the working population) due to their ageing populations, and the developing countries also have a high dependency ration, but at the other end of the age spectrum (i.e. a large number of children) India is in the 'goldilocks' period in between, and enjoys a lower dependency ratio. I haven't fathomed out yet why ths period is named after the famous children's nursery story, but in any event this is crucial, Dolan argues, to becoming a major economy in the new, G20 world. China on the other hand is already leaving this goldilocks period to join the ranks of the ageing population countries.

Large populations aren't always a good thing of course, they need to be managed properly, but then again neither are rapid changes in fertility rates and here India scores highly over its northern/eastern neighbour again, since China's drop in fertility rate was very rapid (in no small part due to the famous one child policy introduced in the 1970s) whereas India's was much more gradual, and it still has a higher rate than China. Thus the demographic chart is likely to look a lot smoother in India's case.

There are other factors too of course - India is a democracy, more or less, China is not. The fact that English is widely spoken there (as opposed to Engrish) presumably also holds in its favour and, yes, I'm afraid I'm going to have to say it now, as an ex-pat (never would have dreamt of such a thing when I was at home) India was under British rule, whereas only one small part of China (er,...the best part) was, for any length of time anyway.

Don't take my word for it, check out the article here.

Thought ForThe Day No. 46 - With The Rabbi Anders Weiss

...psychologist, spiritual guru and arbiter of good taste..

It has been usual for men to think and to say, "Many men are slaves because one is an oppressor; let us hate the oppressor." Now, however, there is among an increasing few a tendency to reverse this judgment, and to say, "One man is an oppressor because many are slaves; let us despise the slaves." The truth is that oppressor and slave are cooperators in ignorance, and, while seeming to afflict each other, are in reality afflicting themselves. A perfect Knowledge perceives the action of law in the weakness of the oppressed and the misapplied power of the oppressor. A perfect Love, seeing the suffering which both states entail, condemns neither. A perfect Compassion embraces both oppressor and oppressed.

He who has conquered weakness, and has put away all selfish thoughts, belongs neither to oppressor nor oppressed. He is free.

A man can only rise, conquer, and achieve by lifting up his thoughts. He can only remain weak, and abject, and miserable by refusing to lift up his thoughts.

Before a man can achieve anything, even in worldly things, he must lift his thoughts above slavish animal indulgence. He may not, in order to succeed, give up all animality and selfishness, by any means; but a portion of it must, at least, be sacrificed. A man whose first thought is bestial indulgence could neither think clearly nor plan methodically. He could not find and develop his latent resources, and would fail in any undertaking. Not having commenced manfully to control his thoughts, he is not in a position to control affairs and to adopt serious responsibilities. He is not fit to act independently and stand alone, but he is limited only by the thoughts which he chooses.

There can be no progress, no achievement without sacrifice. A man's worldly success will be in the measure that he sacrifices his confused animal thoughts, and fixes his mind on the development of his plans, and the strengthening of his resolution and self reliance. And the higher he lifts his thoughts, the more manly, upright, and righteous he becomes, the greater will be his success, the more blessed an enduring will be his achievements.

James Allen

Thought For The Day No. 45 - With The Rabbi Anders Weiss

...psychiatrist, spiritual guru and arbiter of good taste..

Do not search for pleasures; rather, be prepared to find pleasure in all that you do.

John Ruskin

Separated At Birth Part 2...

..inquiring minds want to know

.... Father Ted Crilly (below, right), sometime padre of Craggy Island
parochial house and Radovan Karadzic (above, left), Bosnian Serb mass murderer...

...P.S. part one was only available to those of you who have the dubious honour of being Facebook buddies with me!!...

Big Train

...a very funny sketch show from the UK from about, ooh, more than 10 years ago I think; still very funny in places...

A New Take On Laziness - Seth's Blog..

...Seth Godin's little brother Sethie Godiney writes..

Great post about laziness...time was when it simply meant shirking physical duties, which meant that it was fairly obvious who was being lazy and when, much to the chagrin and disgust of those who had their noses to the grindstone. However, since most of us don't work in the fields any more, the new way of being lazy is very different and not so much of a no-brainer. It consists of 'emotional laziness' - that is, being too lazy to make that cold call (or any type of call), to disagree with someone superior to you or to innovate. The good news is you don't need to get sweating to rectify the situation if you fall into it..

On This Day 350 Years Ago..

...London diarist..

Monday, 5th November 1660...

At the office at night, to make up an account of what the debts of nineteen of the twenty-five ships that should have been paid off, is increased since the adjournment of the Parliament, they being to sit again to-morrow. This 5th day of November is observed exceeding well in the City; and at night great bonfires and fireworks.

...evidently the ghastly and triumphalist tradition had already set in a little over 50 years after the events...

History Of Estonia 101: Part Eight

Since the PMC has been going for some 60 years here in Estonia, during which time we've seen such comings and goings as the regaining of independence, the imminent introduction of the Euro, and the Beatles concerts at the Lauluväljak, we feel fully qualified to present this, a multi part set of posts on the history of Estonia which will appear, now and again as we're given time.
There's unlikely to be anything new for Estonians, who therefore don't need to read on unless they want to check we're not peddling complete mistruths. The sources are likely to be the usual internet sites such as wikipedia and any links that arise therefrom, but this should save the reader some time in finding all this stuff themselves, the one or two books we have on the subject, and maybe the occasional word of mouth stuff.
You might also want to check out our posts about a year ago now, on the Estonian language.
At the very least we hope to dispel any misconceptions of Estonia being a slavic speaking country, being located in the Balkans or being a place with a lot of stones (although this last is in fact true)...

..the previous part is here..

Of poets, writers and youngsters..

As we have seen, Tsarist rule did bring about some positive changes (or rather some positive changes happened to take place under Tsarist rule at any rate) and the 'Tsar Liberator' for Estonia was not Alexander II as was the case in Russia itself, but Alexander I, since the peasantry were freed from bondage to the land under his rule, in 1816 in the case of Southern Estonia, i.e. the Livonian part. North Estonia, roughly corresponding to the old Danish Estonia, had to wait another three years to enjoy the same emancipation.

Whither the 'Estonian' Estonians now, in relation to the Baltic German nobility, now under Russian rule but who certainly hadn't gone away? Whilst many of the latter no doubt regarded their future as simply being a fusion with the teutonic part of the country, a development which no doubt did take place at least partly in any case, there was an intriguing group of people known as the 'Estophiles' emerging at around this time. No doubt a small part of the romanticism sweeping Europe at the time, as their name suggests, these people felt drawn to all things Estonian, particularly the country's distant past and its accompanying folklore, and followed in the wake of ideas propagated by the German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder of nation and culture (don't forget that Germany itself wasn't a single, cohesive nation yet in the way that Britain and France were, either). These people were Germans, but Estonia/Livonia was their home. An important home-grown Baltic German was Garlieb Merkel (1769-1850) who, as a Livonian, had as much, or more, influence on the concomitant Latvian national awakening as the Estonian one.

The single most important development in this period may well be the compilation of the Kalevipoeg, the epic poem taken to be the country's principal repository of national folk identity in the same way the Kalevala is for the country's northern neighbour, which was gradually compiled over time, started by  Friedrich Robert Faehlmann (1798-1850), and completed by another Friedrich, Reinhold Kreutzwald (1803-1882). Despite their Germanic sounding names, both men were Estonian to their boots. The initial version of the epic was completed in 1853 but due to censorship in Tsarist Russia could not immediately be published; it was later published in full, serialised, between 1857 and 1861 by the Learned Estonian Society at Tartu. Later a slightly abridged version, which became the 'popular' version of the poem, was published at Kuopio in Finland, itself part of the Russian Empire at the time. This was published jointly in Estonian and German.

The floodgates of the move towards nationhood were well and truly opened by this stage, with such luminaries as the barely-out-of-short-trousers Kristjan Jaak Petersen (1801-1822), Carl Robert Jakobsen (1841-1882), Jakob Hurt (1839-1907) and Johann Voldemar Jannsen (1819-1890) all blazing the trail. The latter was in fact the father of perhaps the best-known Estonian poet, Lydia Emilie Florentine Jannsen (1843-1886), known popularly by her nom de plume of Lydia Koidula, a surname deriving from the Estonian word for 'dawn'. Jannsen senior penned the words of the modern day national anthem and junior, the words to the unofficial national anthem, 'mu isamaa on minu arm' ('my country is my love' - sounds much better in the original language). We are into the era of the people who grace the bank note denominations of the Estonian Kroon (though not for much longer).

Finally one of the signature events of Estonian-ness, the 'Laulupidu' ('song festival'), belongs to our period, the first one having taken place at Tartu in the summer of 1869, a tradition which has continued down to the present day.


So much for the writing and singing, but what did the Estonian Englightenment Period/National Awakening, call it what you will, actually tangibly achieve? Notwithstanding censorships and the like, the attitude towards the occupying nation was for the most part much more positive than was later to be the case, and unsurprisingly so. One of the highest rates of literacy within the Russian Empire (for what that's worth) a growth in and industrialization of the strategically-placed capital, Tallinn, and that ever-present herald of burgeoning nationalism the world over, the appearance of the first regular daily newspaper in the vernacular, Postimees ('postman') meant that Estonia seemed a relatively progressive and pleasant part of an albeit decaying and autocratic empire.  To what extent this was cause, and to what extent symptom, of the beginnings of the modern day nation state is debatable. However it became clear that Estonia's future did not lie with the Germanic component of its populace - even many of the Germans realised that - and working within the Tsarist system, for example in 1881 in requesting the establishment of a Zemstvo, a type of local government which facilitated an equal footing for national minorities within the Empire, seemed the best bet.

However all was not wine and roses; under the third and last Tsar to be called Alexander, the odd one out in being reactionary and repressive (even Russians in St Petersburg referred to him as an 'idiot' albeit tacitly) a period of intense Russification took place, including in areas such as Finland which had enjoyed huge advances in its status under the previous Alexander. Estonia was to suffer in the same way. But of course, once you've built a well for somebody, blocking it up again is never going to solve anything...

From top, and in descending order of value, Carl Robert Jakobsen, Lydia Koidula and Jakob Hurt (500, 100 and a measly 10 EEK each).

Thought For The Day No. 44 - With The Rabbi Anders Weiss

...psychologist, spiritual guru and arbiter of good taste..

Today I am more convinced then ever that what each of us really wants, deep down, is more life. Happiness, success, peace of mind, or whatever your own conception of supreme good may be, is experienced in its essence as more life. When we experience expansive emotions of happiness, self-confidence, and success, we enjoy more life. And to the degree that we inhibit our abilities, frustrate our God-given talents and allow ourselves to suffer anxiety, fear, self condemnation and self-hate, we literally choke off the life force available to us and turn our back upon the gift which our creator has made. To the degree that we deny the gift of life, we embrace death.

Maxwell Maltz

60 Years Of The PMC: A New Contributor

2010 marks the 60th anniversary of the launch of the PMC. Yes, it's impossible to believe, but that's because it is impossible. To mark this auspicious occasion the PMC will be taking a retrospective of some of the outstanding posts of the past six decades. From Cold War to Coldplay and from Ban the Bomb to Ban the Burka, every decade will be represented, and includes highlights from some of the most talked about of contributors...Bertrand Russell, Hunter S. Thompson, Roman Polanski, Roald Dahl and Limahl from Kajagoogoo, to name but a few - none of them contributed to the PMC's pages (oh, hold on a second, Limahl had a regular section in the early 80s). 

January 1982 saw the arrival of a new contributor to the PMC. Benedict Francis-Kentigern, or BFK as he immediately became known, was a budding motoring journalist who had risen from the humble beginnings of Stowe public school and an old Austin Healey Sprite that his stockbroker father had bought him for his twelfth birthday, to become motoring correspondent here. He also worked for Motorsport magazine, and in fact was known for  merely scaling down his offerings there somewhat and simply posting them here.. as if any serious journalist would do such a thing. 
An early excerpt from his work, the then-never-popular 'BFK's week', shows us that the young BFK was no slouch when  it came to painting a vivid picture of his glamorous lifestyle without ever resorting to cliche..

First published on 1 July 1982..

Hi all - BFK here. I've just  been driving the new version of the XJS from Jaguar. It's got a lot more kick to it now, with a 5.3 V12 high efficiency engine which has squeezed out nearly a hundred more bhp than the old version, and you certainly feel it, as I did winding my way through the leafy lanes surrounding Great Missenden in my native Bucks. It was a cabriolet I was driving, and the moody looking clouds that were gathering over High Wycombe direction initially provoked a little bit of concern, before pulling over to close the automatic cloth top, which worked like a dream. Forunately I'd donned my best black roll neck Simon Templar jersey and was closing the window just as a hot looking brunette drew parallel with me, in a gold cabriolet Golf Gti. She fluttered her eyelids at me whilst I managed to half raise my eyebrow (using my finger to help). I was about to suggest coffee at a little hostelry I know nearby, before she let out a terrible estuary 'see ya, graaandad'..my goodness, it was none other than Lorraine Chase! I was tempted to give chase myself but decided to play it cool, easy enough to do when you're driving by far the smoothest thing to come out of Coventry, not that that is saying much. 
I was getting a bit peckish so pulled over in the next village to buy a Cadbury's finger of fudge and the latest issue of the 'classical composers partwork'. It was Shostakovich this time. Must remember to leave the LP and accompanying booklet on my glass coffee table, just in case Lorraine should pop round to borrow a cup of sugar. It'll make me look as sophisticated as Christopher Cazenove, almost.
I soon got stuck behind some old biddies in a Morris Minor, and it wasn't going to be easy to get round them on a single track lane in the Chilterns. I just chilled out, slapped on the latest Police album on the cassette player (which has an auto-reverse function and Dolby reduced hiss!) and let it all wash over me.
Back at the ranch, I ran a sponge-mop and some Flash over the black and white tiled hallway floor, which was designed for me by Terence Conran no less, before settling down to catch what little of Wimbledon the rain hadn't spoiled.
Plugging into my Acorn Electron and losing off a fax to New York, in which I propsed to run a few ideas up the flagpole with our American co-publishers, I felt a wave of satisfaction come over me. This is 1982 and anything is possible, especially with your truly involved, and I pushed my red rimmed specs up my nose with an air of smugness I'd seen on a recent episode of 'Triangle'.