Awarding quarters, experimental pickup music, stealing classes, Oscars

High-scoring words of the night:

QUARTE (450 points) - against Kate E. [two 5W]
GAWPED (100 points) - against Sandra K. [4W, 3L on W] {a good deficit-erasing word!}
AWARDING (664 points) - against Angela V. [3W, two 4W]


Teunis and I discussed fun musical software toys, anime, butter, pacing, Metallica on guitar, George Washington, pickups, violins / fiddles, experimental music, tea, mold, depression, thinking, hunger, noise, Alicia figuring out cryptic messages, boiling water, TWO FAT LADIES and cooking, RED DWARF, Cirque de Soleil, dragons, lions, WHISKEY GALORE, clips, being vague, Surrey / Richmond, and more. Interesting times once again!


Relevant Taiwan conversation:

[22:03:33] Flami: hope the class hires you.
[22:04:50] Corey: they already did, I'm just there to see what it's like before I start
[22:05:05] Corey: that's the weird thing about this place... I didn't do a demo, and I didn't watch classes, and they really never even saw or talked to me before hiring me...
[22:09:42] Flami: so how did they hear about you before hiring you? other than you or Jane telling them...
[22:14:08] Corey: well, I was apparently recommended by a member of the family that owns the whole chain (friend of Jane's friend)
[22:15:34] Corey: we tried there in March, with the same recommendation, and didn't get anywhere. that got us an instant interview there, but then they said they had to send everything to Taipei to get approval from the head office, and we never heard back. this time, Jane just called the head office directly and talked with them :P so they were already interested
[22:15:56] Corey: then Jane got her friend's friend to put in a good word again, and I think that must have helped this time, since we were dealing with the right people from the start
[22:16:38] Flami: hey, that's pretty good then!
[22:20:02] Corey: yeah, I hope so :P the teacher I met last night was friendly, but the staff there didn't seem to want to have much to do with me... I don't know if they just don't speak English much, or if they don't really like me
[22:21:01] Corey: when Jane talks to them, they say stuff like "oh well, we can give you more information after we find out which classes they'll take away from other teachers to give to Corey..." like I'm going in there to steal everyone's work or something... but if we ask the main office in Taipei about that, it's "no, we're not taking anything from other teachers"
[22:24:28] Flami: you're not going in there to steal everyone's classes away!
[22:25:38] Corey: well, presumably they just need a new teacher so they're hiring one.... so I wouldn't think I'm stealing classes :P supposedly like two teachers are leaving, so I'll get a bunch of classes
[22:29:02] Flami: there you go, then
[22:34:47] Corey: well, maybe they are taking classes away from someone. it's not like people here will tell you the truth about anything, so I don't know. I figure that's not my problem... I'm not actively telling them to get rid of anyone for me
[22:42:54] Flami: that's true...
[23:03:26] Corey: but it's kind of strange... the people that work there almost never really talk to me or anything
[23:04:37] Flami: maybe they were told not to talk to the foreign teachers?
[23:06:40] Corey: I don't think so... I think only one of them can really speak English. I don't really understand why so many people here spend so much time learning English, they're all terrified of USING it
[23:07:15] Corey: in the class last night, there was a girl who had pretty decent English who said she went to Australia, but she didn't really ever speak English there because she was too nervous to try
[23:07:39] Corey: so learn English for years, go to a foreign country, don't use it.... well, that made lots of sense, didn't it? :P
[23:09:05] Flami: you said it yourself... they're afraid of making mistakes for some reason (years of conditioning?)
[23:13:34] Corey: because Chinese people are crazy, basically. If you make a mistake, it's a horrible offense and you're going to be yelled at and called an idiot... even if you're just learning it... so they spend just an insane amount of time studying things, then they're afraid to do anything because they might not be perfect, and mean people might yell at them
[23:13:56] Corey: it's like a whole society of abused scared people
[23:14:34] Flami: definitely sounds like what my mother thinks :P
[23:22:42] Corey: in the end you shouldn't make a lot of mistakes, but if you're just learning something, of course you'll make mistakes... that's how you learn things...
[23:23:38] Flami: I know that, and you know that...
[23:23:53] Corey: I had a psychology teacher that liked to ask the class tons of questions, because he hoped a lot of us would get them wrong, not to force us to study a lot for the class. if you get something wrong, you don't usually like that, and the right answer is pretty much burned into your memory because you don't want to repeat your mistake, so do it in class and learn it easily :P


Trivia fact for Wednesday, Sept. 15: What actor has won three Oscars - all of them for films for which his leading lady won Best Actress honors? Jack Nicholson. He won Best Actor for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in 1976, when Louise Fletcher won Best Actress; he won Best Supporting Actor for Terms of Endearment in 1984, when Shirley MacLaine won Best Actress; and he won Best Actor for As Good As It Gets in 1998, when Helen Hunt won Best Actress.