Deep Sigh

Hello everybody. Since the last time I wrote, I've been inspected (not personally... my school has been inspected) and, as Jonny has pointed out in some comments, I've become an uncle for the second time (this required less work than the inspection). Both of those situations, though, have resulted in me feeling like popping home for a weekend or something. It's not possible, sadly, as it's a 26 hour, 500 pound round trip.

Why did the inspection make me feel like popping home for a weekend, you might ask? Well, after an inspection I tend to lose motivation for everything except loafing. I'm a most excellent loafer. Since the inspection, which finished 2 weeks ago, I've watched about 20 films (the best ones being "The Constant Gardener" and "Downfall", I think... "Downfall" is all about Hitler's last few days in the bunker in Berlin... compelling) and read two books.

I've also marked about 130 essays (just to prove that I'm doing something other than loafing).

I suffer from two conditions when I mark essays. The first is very frustrating: I reach the end of an essay, having ticked on auto-pilot, only to discover that I've no idea what I've just read, and therefore have no idea what grade the essay should get. In these cases, I'm left with two choices: read it again, or just give a high B.

Most of my classes, you might be surprised to hear, are performing at the high B level at the moment.

The other problem with marking has been given a name: I've dubbed it "markolepsy". You've heard of narcolepsy, the illness Kurt Cobain had? Basically, if you suffer from narcolepsy, you can't regulate sleep-wake cycles normally. In other words, you fall asleep all the time without being able to control when you do so. As you've probably guessed, "markolepsy", most commonly suffered by English teachers, involves the marker of essays falling asleep during the marking of said essays. It usually kicks in at around the tenth essay in the pile. What happens is, you're going tick tick tick all the way down the page and next thing you know you wake up with your pen still on the paper having drawn a long red squiggle all the way down the page.

Once I woke up to discover that, quite accidentally, I'd drawn quite a nice picture of a house in the corner of my year 9's essay on Much Ado About Nothing.

So, yeah, I think a trip home might perk me up a bit and get me off the sofa/away from the soporific desk. You see, I think the sub-heading of this blog is a bit of a misnomer. I can't really tell you much about life in SE Asia anymore because it's become a bit normal when I'm in Singers. A bit like it was in England: work, sofa and repeat.

Of course, the holidays are different here. Whatever. I do need to make more of an effort with the blog, though. Maybe I should start writing about teaching. That's always a laugh, particularly the way I do it.

Anyway, my new niece, Evie, is also more than a bit of an incentive to come home for a bit. Thanks to the wonders of modern technology (which have yet to produce marking software for sleepy English teachers) I've been able to see her via a webcam. My other niece, Frankie, has been showing me how much she can say these days too, addressing me as "Uncle Mikey", which is very touching, as she's only two, and I was half expecting her to have forgotten me since she hasn't seen me since July.

Another reason why I'm feeling tugs towards home lately is the fact that erstwhile commenter on this blog, Jonny, along with old friend H, are leaving England forever today. They're off to live in Australia. Jonny's started his own blog, which, I'm sure, will make for interesting reading. As I've written in the past, Jonny has written a diary every day since he was 19, so he should take to this blog lark fairly well. Anyway, I wish that I could've been there at their leaving party, too. Good luck, J and H... England will be all the poorer for your departure!