maxiewawa

Well I’m almost through the first week of my CELTA course. I’m almost a quarter of the way through it!

Each day is broken up into lessons in the morning, and teaching practice in the afternoon. We sit, listen carefully and take notes in the mornings, and teach the kiddies in the afternoon.

Well they’re not kiddies actually, but adults. Wouldn’t you know it, of a class of fifteen, we have one Thai, one Argentinian, and thirteen Koreans. Those guys are everywhere!

This gives me an advantage when correcting pronunciation; I know beforehand that students will probably Konglify words that have a Konglish equivalent, and know how hard it is for them to differentiate between ‘b’ and ‘v’ and ‘z’ and ‘ju’. I also knew today that the Koreans would have trouble understanding “brother” and “sister”; I explained that one’s “brother” is someone that has the same mother and/or father. If you didn’t already know, in Korea one often calls a good male friend of a similar age “brother”.

I haven’t had much of a chance to bust out my Korean language skills yet; naturally during class we’re expected to use only English. I’m trying to catch people in the corridoor after class to say 안녕 and ask how they thought everything went, but haven’t had many opportunities.

If you’re in Australia and want to come, feel free! Lessons are free. 11 York street, Sydney. Come Monday – Friday, at 3pm!
어서어새요!

During a break in a rehearsal last night, when everyone was outside smoking and chatting (except me, I was just chatting of course), I turned around and noticed this little fella.

The picture isn’t so clear; it’s a spider, hiding in a little nook made by a metal fence. Including its legs, it was about the size of the palm of my hand.

Obviously I’m still getting used to life in Australia, because no one else seemed as alarmed as I was.

“Ah yeah, there are lots around here,” someone said.

“They eat all of the bugs that are attracted by the lights.”

“Maybe you should put your hand next to it, to show the scale,” someone joked.

We have an interesting relationship with quite scary animals here in Australia. Everyone knows that they are dangerous, and should be avoided at all costs, but there is a familiarity that foreigners find strange.

Once Aika asked me about a helicopter that was flying over Bondi beach. I told her that it was probably looking for sharks. She was shocked! I told her not to be scared; NOT having a helicopter looking for sharks when they might be around would probably be more scary than having one, but that didn’t really help… She also wondered aloud how someone in a helicopter, flying so far above the water, could possibly see a shark. I told her how big great white sharks can get, and that someone in the chopper would definitely be able to see something that big from a helicopter… suffice it to say that she hasn’t been in the water since!

Like I said, we’re quite familiar with scary animals here, since we have so many. But it’s just like people who live in earthquake prone countries get familiar with earthquakes… Foreigners freak out because they aren’t used to them, but once you learn what to do if you ever are in danger, it’s not so bad.

Anyway, as I took photos of the spider, everyone got to telling stories about encounters with dangerous animals. It’s then that I realised how uniquely Australian this is… we all have stories involving snakes, spiders or something similar… to tell you the truth I didn’t find this uniquely Australian until I got back from China. It’s interesting how time spent abroad opens your eyes to the peculiarities of your own country!

I’m not sure if this story involves divine intervention or just coincidence but it’s pretty funny anyway if you ask me.

Aika and I were feeling a little sad. I won’t get into why, but we arrived where we were going, and were feeling just a bit down in the dumps.

I parked, we got out, and couldn’t have walked more than three metres when we came across someone’s front yard, with the aforementioned gifts from God.

About seven of them were crawling around someone’s front yard, biting things and generally making a mess. Two others could talk, and I shouted a greeting:

“Wow, that’s a lot of puppies you have there!”

“Yeah!” she replied (the other two ‘gifts’ were two little girls actually, one was four and one was six).

“How many have you got?”

“Um… seven.” said the older girl.

Aika, goes to absolute pieces when she sees a dog, and the seven puppies were too much for her. She squealed and picked one up.

The girls’ mother eventually came out in the front yard to say hello. Apparently she had had a dog, and agreed to adopt another one that no one else wanted. That dog had a litter of seven puppies a few days later, and that’s why her place was crawling with puppies.

We chatted for a while (as it turned out, both the girls and the puppies were half Chinese, just like me!) and eventually left. Aika was a little disappointed that they didn’t offer her a puppy, but I thought that it would be a bit too forward to ask someone for one of their animals after just meeting them.

As we were in a shop later, I remarked to her how lucky it was that we, in such a sad mood, just happened upon nine of the cutest beings (seven dogs and two little girls)  that exist on the earth. That’s when our conversation got into the theological; we didn’t actually resolve our opinions as to whether God, or a divine Being had taken pity on us and put those little balls of cuteness in our way, or it was just lucky… I guess you’ll have to make up your own opinion. I just think that you couldn’t have come up with a better way to cheer a person up if you’d tried. Lucky coincidence? Intelligent design? I don’t know, but I sure am thankful for it.

Oh and on another note, I start a CELTA course next week. After a month of full time study I will be a CELTA certified teacher of English. I’ll then start work in a private institution, move my way up the ranks, while accumulating experience in foreign locations (Seoul, Osaka, Dubai, Slovakia, Marseilles, Morocco etc). I’ll then start my own school in a location that is yet undecided. A lot of this is just pie-in-the-sky dreaming, but keep your fingers crossed!

Aika and I were in the Botanical Gardens today. Aika had picked a pretty little flower, and was considering putting it in her hair, or on her jacket, when we came across a flock of large white birds. Cockatoos.

I hadn’t seen cockatoos for a long time. I don’t think Aika had ever seen them. They are usually tame, and will allow you to come right up to them.

I got as close as I could, and Aika tried to get one’s attention with her flower.

It waddled over, clamped its beak on it, and pulled hard. Aika was a little surprised by this, and pulled back. It kept pulling though, and eventually got it out of Aika’s hand. It promptly tore it to shreds.

Cockatoos are notoriously loud, and aggressive. As we stood there, a few kept swooping at my head. I had a light coloured hood, and they kept trying to get at it for some reason. You’d suddenly feel a tug on your shoe, and you’d look down to see a cockatoo gnawing on it. They’re quite tame, tame enough that you can hand feed them, but if you’re not careful you’ll get a painful bite.

In the first house that I ever lived at we had a cockatoo problem. As I said they’re quite noisy, and have a bad habit of tearing to pieces anything they can get their hands on, whether or not it’s edible. Apparently my first complete sentence was “Go away cockie! Go away!” (a “cockie” is slang for “cockatoo”). I guess mum and dad used to yell that out a lot, and I picked it up. I have faint memories being a toddler, picking up a shoe and throwing it at a flock of cockatoos.

Aika and I went to a Japanese meeting last night. We had dinner at a pizza place, and afterwards retired to a bar (we call them “pubs” here).

At about 10:30 we left, and made our way down to the bus stop at Circular Quay. But just as we turned the corner, we saw our bus, not stopped at the bus stop waiting for us, but coming down the street towards us.

Public transport in Sydney is terrible, particularly bad on Sundays, and horrible on Sunday nights. If one misses a bus on a Sunday night, there’s every chance that there won’t be another one for an hour or so. And taxis are approximately 200 times the price of those in Shanghai.

We hurriedly said goodbye to our new friends and sprinted back the way we had come, towards the next bus stop. I frantically waved my hat at the bus driver, hoping to get his attention, and praying that he’d understand that we wanted to catch the bus at the next stop.

He stopped at that stop, and opened the door. We were still about 10 meters away and gaining fast, but I was worried that he’d pull out without waiting, but wait he did, and we were able to get on, luckily. We both thanked him, paid and sat down.

On a cold Sydney night (yes, they do get quite chilly I admit) when one’s funds are running low and needs to get home, and at a time of the week when public transport is hard to find, a bus driver who does something kindly like that deserves to be thanked. I didn’t think that the frantic thanks we gave him as we got on were enough, so I thought I’d write this post to say thanks more properly. I doubt that that specific guy is reading, but if by some chance you’re a bus driver that does stop for people running for the bus, on behalf of all your passengers, thank you.

Oh, and here’s a photo. It’s of the Sydney Opera House. People who live in Sydney usually don’t see what the all the fuss about it is (it loses the appeal when you see it often), but I had been away for so long that when I saw it last night, I was struck by how beautiful it looked. My crappy camera phone doesn’t really do it justice, but then again no camera can really capture the feeling of standing on under the Sydney Harbour Bridge on a clear night and looking across the Quay at the Opera House at that peculiar building.

Aika and I were in Chatswood, a suburb of northern Sydney today. Aika noticed that there were a lot of Korean being spoken.

“Is this Korea town?” she asked.

“Well… yeah I guess.”

“But how about Strathfield?”

“Well, yeah… Strathfield is the main Korea town, but I guess Chatswood is another Korea town.”

“And Ashfield?”

“Well… there are some Korean shops there but I think Ashfield is more of a Chinatown.”

“I thought Chinatown was in the city.”

“Well, yes… the place called “Chinatown” is in the city, but Ashfield is a place with a lot of Chinese shops… I guess if you wanted to be specific, Ashfield is Shanghai-town, and Chinatown is Chinatown.”

I think it’s great that we have these little language isolates in Sydney, and that we don’t just have one Koreatown but several. Unfortunately some idiots think that this is a bad thing, and have formed an anti immigration party, but I am sure that they will go the same way as all of our other anti immigration parties, and fade away when everyone realises how stupid they are.

I can understand why some people are put off by test cricket. For those who don’t know, test cricket is that form of the game where matches are so long that every now and then play is interrupted while the players go home, say hi to their family, sleep for eight hours or so, then return to the playing field.

Well, picture this. I’m sitting in a warm room, reading an interesting book (“Online Share Investing for Dummies” if you must know) and still enjoying the game. It’s the first match of the ashes, which is a series of matches between Australia and England.

I’m not sure if the fact that the game is so sedate that it doesn’t distract from one’s reading material is something that makes it more appealing to outsiders, but it’s something I’ve always liked.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to the game. Well, to be honest, I could probably keep writing and occasionally look up at the tv, as I’ve been doing, so I should probably say that I should get back to my book.

This is a blog post. If you can’t see the photos, come to www.maxiewawa.com. If you can, obviously you’re already here!

Some Swedish friends were enjoying a drink in a Shanghai bar one chilly winter night with Aika and I. We were sitting under one of those outdoor heaters, and so most of us had removed our jackets, and had piled them on an empty chair. They were all thick winter jackets, and so the pile of clothes was quite high. Naturally, the topic of conversation got to the weather.

Someone, I think it was Gunnar from Stockholm, who asked me about Australian winters.

“Oh, they get pretty cold,” I said.

“Really?” asked Ada, also from Stockholm. “How cold?”

“Well, when it gets really chilly, and I mean, REALLY cold,  it can get down to as low as fifteen degrees celsius.” I said. “And sometimes even colder.”

Both Ada and Gunnar, who were born and raised in Sweden, laughed heartily.

“No, really!” I said defensively. “Sometimes you even have to wear a sweater!”

“Cold” is something that we don’t have much understanding of here in Australia. Case in point: yesterday, July the fifth. If you didn’t know, July is the middle of winter in Australia. And what do we do in Australia in winter? Why, the same thing we do the rest of the time! Have a barbecue. We just put on a sweater (or “jumper”, as we call them).

Here’s a photo of Peter. It’s Peter’s house we were at. Thanks for having us. That’s the pool in the background. We weren’t able to swim in it though; another disadvantage of being in the middle of winter. Notice the short sleeves!

Big Max and Udo. Udo has recently come back from Alaska and Northern Canada, where it snows even in winter. Seems a little back to front: there we were having a BBQ in the middle of winter, and hearing about a place where there’s snow on the ground, even in the middle of summer.

Here’s Aika. Just before we took this photo we were saying how our friends in Shanghai wouldn’t believe that we were having an outdoor lunch in the middle of winter, which is how I got the idea for this blog post. Hope you like it!

Just a short message to let everyone that I’m still here!
안녕. 걱정 하지마.
まだいるよ。
还活着。

I haven’t written/YouTubed in a while, for which I’m feeling a little guilty, which is why I’m writing now.

At the moment, I’m looking for a job, and researching a uni degree that will allow me to teach English properly, and in Sydney. I taught lots while I was in China, but to do so here I’ll need some sort of qualification.

I’m also getting interested in wealth management; if Aika and I are ever going to go and visit all you 한국사람 again, drop in at 中国, get some real good すし or ever hope to get our Svenska past “Hej!” we’ll have to save up quite a lot of money for plane tickets.

The business world has a whole language of its own too. “ASX” means “Australian Stock Exchange”, “volumes were down” means that “not many people were trading shares”, “rally” means “to go up”, “slump” means “to go down”… sometimes I think they’re deliberately being difficult, by not using word that everyone understands…

Anyway, 안녕!