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!!...