Gelatin and Worcestershire sauce / Taiwanese students are frustrating! / Steve B.

Steve buzzed me on YM to say that I needed to respond to a particular Our Place thread - oh my. Turns out it has something to do with certain diaries - HA, SO DONE! Teunis and I discussed Viking sagas (the equivalent of the Old Testament), Norse religious texts which seem like the equivalent of Proverbs at first, oyster mushrooms which had gone bad, gelatin, the cranberry cheesecake (finish it today!), spinach noodles, kimchi, TROGDOR / polka, kobolds in DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS with high-pitched voices and a resemblance to a lizard (eating rats), "OOH! SHINY!" (HAHAHAHA!), and fixing the Hundred Mile House server. We also conversed about Steph and Lisa being at the hockey game tonight (we lost 3-2 to the Habs), the Chinese language, being restless, Worcestershire sauce, British pronunciation, cheese sauce, and more. Also talked to Corey for a bit, but discovered that Trillian is still messed in that it doesn't think we're on each other's contact lists!

Corey: I don't know what's wrong with your stuff, but it's still really messed up... you just sent a message, and it says you're offline, and it won't let me reply to you. but.... you're on my list right here... if you send me messages, it's in another window
Flami: um... so I'm guessing the new laptop didn't solve things in that area :(
Corey: that must be because you're using Yahoo (or Trillian?) instead of MSN... or you should use Trillian in MSN mode instead of Yahoo mode, or something
Corey: that's a program / configuration problem, not something weird with your computer
Flami: I'm using Trillian, yeah... I haven't downloaded the individual programs
Corey: try making it use MSN instead of Yahoo for me, then.. I haven't used Trillian in a long time, so I don't really remember how to do that, but you can
Flami: I actually have no idea how to do that... it says you're a Windows Live Messenger contact for me, so..
Corey: you have the Yahoo logo under your name
Corey: Yahoo can talk to MSN now
Flami: so then what can I do?
Corey: I'm sure it's in the settings somewhere
Corey: or I guess it still works like this... you send a message, then I close it and open a new window and reply (once I do that one time it seems to keep working from there :P)
Flami: haha... let's do it the second way since I apparently need to create yet another account to access the Trillian bug database :P
Corey: I have to go in about 45 minutes... I have to go talk with kids that won't even listen to anything I'm saying about student loans (now there's an exciting subject for kids) for two hours...
Corey: that class sucks so much. I teach adults, not kids, but all these 12-year-olds and stuff go to that class and they don't talk... they CAN talk, very well, but they won't do anything in class, and it's pretty damn boring if I just ramble on for two hours...
Flami: HAHAHA, um.... student loans?! Hahaha... what kind of engaging subject is that?
Corey: other classes have people that like ask questions and stuff
Corey: and talk to me
Flami: ooh, ouch
Corey: it's a different article every two days... they're not all great ones :P
Flami: well, no... I didn't think so... this student loan article just seems like one of the lesser ones
Corey: in a good class, the subject doesn't matter at all, they'll just ask me about the vocabulary, how to use the words, other words that sound similar.... but these people will be silent the whole time, and it's my longest class....
Flami: sounds frustrating... I assume you try to make it as interesting as possible
Corey: there's a new guy that came last time,... he talks. lately, there have been at least a couple people that talk, so I just teach them and let the kids stare into space or whatever they feel like doing until it's their turn to read a line in the article
Corey: there's a lady that was there for a while, but she must be taking a break
Corey: Chinese New Year basically ruined all my classes since everyone takes a month off during that time
Flami: oh man
Corey: so all my normal people (well, a lot of them) disappeared, and a bunch of quiet young students showed up instead (the old people I like more were at home taking care of kids that had no school for a while)
Corey: then school started again and the students went away (yay!) but the old people are still gone, so the classes are small and boring now... lots of good people that talk a lot aren't there
Corey: I need them back :P
Flami: well, CNY started on the 3rd, so maybe you'll have them back in a couple of weeks?
Corey: most of them took February off, so I think I should see some people back in March, which is soon... but that won't fix my night class.. the annoying kids drive away almost any adults that come in, plus there are TWO classes at the same level at the same time, by a much more experienced teacher... he has tons of students... too many, actually... I would hate to be in a classroom with that many people :P
Corey: but anyway, I think all the regular people just go to his class, and some kids that don't want to actually do anything go sit in my class
Flami: what do they do that's so annoying?
Corey: they don't talk! then they get bored, because they're not talking
Corey: I can ask them questions, and they just sit there and look at me
Corey: I regard them as useless zombies
Corey: I talk to people that will talk to me... if you want to be a zombie, then I won't waste my time on you
Flami: sounds about right
Corey: these people have been studying English for years and years, and are in a fully English class
Corey: but, most of them are still too nervous to really use it
Corey: even adults, not just these stupid kids
Corey: why bother learning anything if you're too afraid to even use it in a CLASS?
Corey: in schools here, they'll be yelled at if they get anything wrong, though, so they're afraid to make mistakes
Corey: they're even more afraid of other students hearing them make mistakes
Corey: they're pretty much a lost cause unless theere's only one person in the class... then they'll try talking
Corey: if you push them
Flami: well, YOU aren't going to yell at them if they make a mistake... but if other people might hear them making mistakes and then think they're stupid or whatever... yeah, I dunno
Corey: school here is total garbage
Corey: they study for like 12 hours a day
Corey: this class ends at 9 PM, and it's the end of the school day for most of those kids
Corey: they're burnt out by then, and I don't blame them for that part....
Flami: neither would I
Corey: but anyway, they study and study and study, but it's all memorization and they're really just wasting their time
Corey: that's how they work here, too
Corey: Taiwan is incredibly inefficient
Corey: but they THINK they're great
Corey: they think because they study and work so much that they're really smart....
Corey: doesn't really work that way
Corey: you have people that have been studying English for 10+ years that can't have a simple conversation with a foreign person in English... they're probably able, but they're afraid of it, so they refuse
Corey: meanwhile, I know just a tiny bit of Chinese, but I still go out and use it almost daily....
Corey: or when I studied Japanese... we had native speakers that spoke no English talking to us in our first semester.... if we clammed up and refused to talk to them, we'd look like idiots
Corey: actually trying is how you look like an idiot here, though... nobody seems to laugh at someone when I ask them a question and they refuse to even acknowledge that I said anything to them...
Corey: I'm going to get in trouble for kicking someone in the face when they do that one of these days
Corey: you can complain to them about it, but they just go into zombie mode and ignore it
Corey: I don't know why those idiots keep coming to class
Flami: ugh, sounds bad... when do you come back again?
Corey: come back where?
Flami: home
Corey: after my class? to the US?
Flami: US
Corey: I don't know
Corey: I have a ticket to use within a year (of when I went back for Christmas)
Flami: that's handy