I can’t post the video of me teaching, so here is a picture taken from it. I added the speech bubble to cover peoples’ faces - if you can think of a funnier thing to say I’ll change it. I haven’t watched the video with the sound on yet, but it seems like pretty normal stuff. My whiteboard writing was very messy and I tended to walk around a bit fast, but that’s it.

So I’ll be leaving for Melbourne and Sydney on Wednesday. I may not get many chances to check my email, so if you want to get in touch, write early or just phone me.

Namely, the trope of character alignment:

While we’re on the subject, tvtropes.org is an AMAZING site. Aside from having everything a dedicated fanfic writer needs to know about character alignment, it also has articles on ‘the designated hero,’ ‘dysfunction junction’ and even the classic ‘asian baby mama.’ You can also contemplate the difference between the ‘nineties anti-hero’ and the regular anti-hero, contrast ‘pet the dog’, ‘kick the dog’ and ‘resuscitate the dog,’ or find out which Buffy character falls into which cliche role in the ‘five man band’ in each particular season. Damn, I love it.

Pay particular attention to ‘ragtag bunch of misfits,’ ‘Dr. Jerk’ and ‘good is not nice.’

So… Scrubs is over. How’s everyone coping with that?

The highlights of my amazing life since last week:

I ran out of food a couple of times because I can’t be bothered going to the shops at the end of the day. I really should take the car and get a whole trolley full of food one day, but I think I’d be embarrassed by the small range of things I eat. The trolley would be one third full of pasta sauce, one third full of bread and one third full of those little cans of flavoured tuna.

My facebook username is now mark.kingston.au

It’s cold. I want one of those beanie-with-ear-flaps things, whatever they’re called. One of these:

Beanies make me look like a junkie. And a lot more like dad. So I’m hoping one of these will merely make me look stupid. Or perhaps even a little Jaynesque!

I gave some lunchtime detention today. One of the kids didn’t show up, so I may get to give proper detention next. Muhahah!

I still haven’t watched my classroom video. Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck that. And I’m not sure I can post it on Youtube because of privacy and stuff. Sorry :(

OK teatime.

Today, for teaching practice, I had to have another student videotape me teaching a lesson. This photo pretty much sums up my approach to the task:

Needless to say, I’m not going to look at the tape until someone forces me to, at gunpoint. Speaking of crying like a whiny little baby, it’s official that the WA department of education needs 500 less teachers next year, which means (knowing my luck) that a teaching degree will be about as useful in the job market as a philosophy degree or, say, chronic body odour. I may have to be a relief teacher, or move interstate for a while :( My only hope is that chemistry teachers are rare enough to still be needed here.

What else is going on? Uh, not much. I saw the latest Terminator. It was OK, except for the bit with the computer-generated Arnie which was AWESOME. And I got a haircut. How about that?

Man, I thought of something interesting to put on here the other day, but I totally forgot it. Crap. Oh, wait no, the other thing was that I’ve been published in a LEARNED JOURNAL once more. Hooray! That makes four, which is pretty good for someone who is in no way an academic.

I called it first, OK?

This weekend has been boring. All my Perth friends are in marriage hibernation or something. I have been:

a) Planning lessons.
b) Writing handouts.
c) Trying to find a scientific calculator for OSX that handles notation properly.
d) Eating quesadillas.

Pretty boring stuff. I can at least post the dates of my Melbourne and Sydney trips, in case anyone wants to know:

Arriving in Melbourne at 9pm Wednesday July 1. Staying in Fawkner, will have a car.
(Having drinks with Rachy after lunch on Saturday. Busy on Sunday the 5th.)
Arriving in Sydney at 8:30pm Tuesday July 7. Location tba, no car.
(Hanging out with Rin on Friday night, the 10th.)
Leaving Sydney at 10:00am Saturday July 11.

Oh and I taught a couple of lessons last week. They went pretty well, all things considered. I only told a couple of students things that weren’t correct, and I don’t think they understood me anyway. Next week: laboratory apparatus. Time to make some poisonous gas!

I finally saw Star Trek. I liked it, but it’s not BRILLIANT or a RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE like people say. Like all Star Trek movies before it, the plot was a bit contrived and the ending was predictable. So, I’d say three out of five. In terms of sci-fi, it was better than Terminator 3 but not as good as Serenity. (And now I’m really asking for, aren’t I?)

Went to a trivia night last night and won it. That’s two in a row for me, and something like four in a row for the main team members. There were some really crap questions, though, like:

In what month do Australians drink the least amount of beer? Answer: February, because it’s the shortest month! (They got this one from a radio station ad, and there is no way that the answer is actually February.)

How do you spell the genus name of the platypus? Answer: Omnithorhynchus. Real answer: Ornithorhynchus.

The other thing was the prizes. Yes, we won some wine and chocolate and assorted goodies, but we also won some bags of flour. Massive, spine-crushing bags of flour, from a bakery. So random. So if anyone wants knead some baps (keke) you can come over to my place and have some flour, OK?

So, I’m feeling pretty good tonight. Here’s why:

1) The power is back on and the contents of my fridge are OK. Man, blackouts SUCK.

2) Had an exam this morning and pretty much DOMINATED.

3) HD for my major science teaching paper.

4) I’m listening to Santogold. It is the music of those who DOMINATE.

Now all I need is a friend who hasn’t seen Star Trek yet and a way to make year 8s learn the first twenty elements. I’ll find a way.

Here is a post where I write about uni because it’s the only thing I’ve been thinking about all week. Wonderful! Thoughts this week include:

1) I’m getting a pretty good collection of shirts and ties going, although some of my shirts are a bit small and tend to cut off the circulation to my brain when worn with a tie.

2) Next week I get to teach some boys. Like these:

I’m pretty confident about it, and it’s a very simple lesson so it will be hard to screw up. Mind you, we’re using loads of lab equipment so we’ll see how that goes.

3) I need to stop flirting with my hot Canadian coed. It’s pointless.

4) I saw my first bad behaviour the other day - real attention-seeking and general teenage insanity. It got me thinking about how I would deal with that sort of stuff myself. My first thought was ‘karate.’ Perhaps I should think up some other ideas to use first?

Wow, I realise now how truly lost I am without my dvorak layout. I’m at my mum’s place, you see. On the lounge room floor typing with my index fingers only. I suppose if I was a real nerd I’d be able to type on both layouts properly… so, uh, good on me then for not being a nerd.

So why am I here? Well, it being Mother’s Day this weekend I’m going to a quiz night with my mum. Who doesn’t like qizzes, right? Ironically (or at least ‘funnily enough’… maybe just ‘coincidentally’) I’m also working on an essay about assessment in high schools. I have to outline the potential biases or flaws of different types of assessments - for example, multiple choice tests can often be passed just by picking the answer that ‘looks right.’ I will also argue that interviews, which are supposedly getting more popular these days, are biased against students with behavioural problems, since you can’t have a proper conversation with someone you were arguing with a minute ago. I’m in for an interesting weekend, hey?

Also, my friend Tomas Ford won a WAMI award for best electro producer in WA. Sweet!