February 2004 Archives

I've been pretty miserable for the last few days, and yesterday saw what some would classify as a watershed. I just call it a 'fucking dog of a day'. A lot of this has to do with pent up anger. I am generally a pretty unpleasant, angry individual as it is, but the last few days has seen me going jihad for no explicable reason.

Some weeks ago, a friend here told me that I had lost my Mojo and that I was in urgent need of getting it back. I have no idea how to do so. In fact, I have no real idea what my Mojo even is, but it sounds important and I'd like it back. When I get an inkling of what it is and where it's been I'll let ye know about it.

However, over the last few days one thing has repeatedly made me laugh. It's a story that a Scottish friend of mine (we'll call him Samwise) told me last week. He is a fanatical Celtic fan and is forever regaling me with amusing stories regarding Celtic and Rangers players (who hit who, who threatened to kill who etc). The one that has been making me laugh concerns the original angry young man, Graeme Souness.

The story, so Samwise tells me, came from Kenny Dalglish's biography and concerns an incident at a Scottish International when Souness was Captain. The Scots were hosting a friendly (I think it was with Belgium) and the team was making its way down the tunnel. Souness was at the front carrying a ball. He noticed that the visitors has still not made their way out of the dressing room. Taking umbrage at this, so the story goes, Souness kicked the opposition dressing room open and launched the ball into the room with a ferocious kick.

I am reduced to tears at the image of a psychotic Scotsman, replete with perm, moustache and very small shorts wreaking havoc in an interntional dressing room, the ball ricocheting around the walls and the unfortunate Belgians grabbing their heads and ducking.

Perhaps it is a sign of my impending madness, but for some reason this is the funniest thing I have heard in years.

Now. Most of you little people will assume that us blog writers are, fundamentally, a lazy bunch of wankers. The type of people who want to be writers but who lack the conviction/talent/sobriety to actually finish that 2nd draft of "the novel", and who, instead spend their time codding themselves that a blog which requires 5 minutes of your day and which gets read by 37 people and a cat, constitutes 'being a writer'.

No!

No I say!

No and NOOO again. A big dirty Ian Paisley NO.

In fact, dear readers, we bloggie types suffer for our art. Allow me to explain:

On Saturday, after 7 hours on the lash, I decided that cutting myself some Ham off the bone was a good idea. 2 minutes later and I am hopping around the kitchen, clenching my left index finger and trying to stop the flow of blood. It's true what they say about cutting away from yourself...

Today I cleaned the sink. And duly lascerated the index finger on my right hand. So, here I sit, writing with the bloodied stumps of what used to be my fingers. Don't you ever fuckin slag a fucking blog person again.

The TEFL Course for a Certificate from Cambridge University takes one month of intensive classes for eight hours a day and currently costs roughly 1200 euro spondoolicks.

For those of you wondering what I am yathering on about, I'll explain. Several months ago, myself and La Senorita Birdbath decided that we had had just about as much as we could humanly stomach of living in the south of England.

The Senorita was living in the stinking, fetid Megalopical hell-hole that is London. I was residing in Brighton, gay capital of the Universe and home to every goat cheese eating, tofu munching, right-on krustie wanker that ever hugged a tree or complained about fossil fuel consumption.

I like to think of myself as quite the liberal but these people were beginning to produce a distinctly Margaret Thatcher streak in me which I was becoming concerned about.

"Hiiiiiiiiiiii. I'd like the tofu saus-a-gezzzzz, with the fair trade coff-eeeeeee and the soya mi-iiiilk and the non-genetically modified orange juice, but only if it came from an orange that wasn't harmed while it was being pi-iiicked..."
"Oh order your fucking breakfast your stinking turd of man!"
It was time for a change.

So, we decided on TEFL. For those of you living on Mars, that means Teaching English as a Foreign Language. Also known as ESL, EFL and a batch of other idiotic acronyms too tedious to mention.

The idea is to teach English to non native speakers using only English and through a particular method which involves games, activities and total physical response. In plain, well, English, that means me jumping around the room like a demented simian whilst bemused spanish teenagers stare at me and curse their parents for making them learn this 'fucking language'.

To teach, you have to be trained and qualified. There are lots and lots of mickey mouse, half-assed courses that you can do in a week, weekend or just read off the back of a packet of Valencian orange juice. Most of them are only good for wiping your arse with. We were advised to do the Celta course. This is a certificate from Cambridge University, which is recgonised globally. The course is not cheap. It cost over a 1000 euro to do and means a serious amount of work. It was a month long, intensive learning experience which I never ever want to go through again.

A class of 12 students are trained in teaching methodology, teaching practice and, wait for it, grammar. Oh yes. Grammar.

I find it difficult to speak of this without a faint queasiness overcoming me - a general nausesous miasma which threatens to engulf me where I wake four hours later, face down in a pool of puke, piss and half-digested Paella. In a nutshell, grammar was unpleasant. Indeed, so unpleasant, that I cannot even abide the word anymore. Henceforth, it shall be referred to as the unpleasantness.

Each day of class commences with an hour and a half of the unpleasantness.This, they claimed, was because we were supposed to be fresh in the mornings. In reality, I think it was because we were too weak to protest. Then at 10.30 am came the teaching practice which began on day two. That's right day two. The students were Spanish guinea pigs getting free classes (usually the unemployed and plain bored). At first you only do 20 minutes. Then you do a half hour. Then 40 minutes. Then you work up to an hour, all over the duration of a month. Truth be told, this was the most fun part of the day, as at least you got to have a laugh with some of the students.

After that came teaching methodology (a.k.a 100 ways to make an arsehole of yourself in front of foreigners). Then lunch...

Following lunch, you get input (a.k.a. savage criticism) of your TEFL Mojo. Finally you make lessons plans for the following day, get home at about nine and collapse in to bed exhausted.

I have never really understood why I chose to become an English teacher. It�s a mystery to me. It really is. I had done some teaching in Ireland and enjoyed it but it was quite clear that it was not something at which you could make a fortune. Now being 28, I had felt that the mythical million I had promised myself when I was 18 should be appearing, well, about now. It hasn�t and it don�t expect it to anytime soon.

So why bother? And why am I bothering to even write this stupid piece of text. I don�t know the reason for that either. However, my life has become amazingly befuddled in recent months and writing about it seems to help sometimes. Besides, some rather amusing things have happened since I got here. Some to me and some to others. I�ll be relating these tales over the course of the next few weeks. The names may or may not be changed to protect the guilty.

I arrived here (Valencia, Spain) in September of 2003. I had just spent the last 12 months working for an e-learning company in Brighton England and I can safely say that I had never been unhappier than I had been in my entire life before leaving there. I hated my job. Hated it, hated it and hated it some more. It was a vicious, bitter hell-hole run by middle management David Brent types who sadly believed that they were actually Pierce Brosnan.

The decision to leave was actually made much earlier: on New Years Day 2003. I had returned from visiting home for Xmas and found myself in Brighton, in the pissing rain, howling wind, in a city where I had no friends, a job I hated, a flat I couldn�t afford and a girlfriend who was running out of patience with me. I can�t blame her: I was a wreck. Directionless, maudlin, self-pitying and bubbling over with self-hatred. I decided that it was time for a change. I always thought that such powerful, life-altering moments were supposed to occur with bolts of lightning, music and earth-shattering realisations. Not so in this case anyway. It was a cold moment, in the middle of King�s street. I just decided that I had had enough. I wanted some �happy� in my life. I decided to move to another country. Sun, fresh air. That sort of thing.

In truth, I had no idea what the hell I was doing.

I looked at a book on English teaching, looked at where I could study to be a teacher and found Valencia, Spain�

A certain blonde haired footballer and his wife have long been the bain of the cheery souls here at Globaleyes, but we've never really bothered to comment much on the matter as yards of print are wasted on this insipid pair every day as it is.

Today however, Senor Beckham has demonstrated what a corporate automaton he really is, by making a statement regarding the new 2004 Adidas ball for the Euro championships.

The ball was used in Spain during Wednesdays' friendly with Peru and to a man, the Spanish lads have said the ball is a piece of shite.

Said Real Betis winger Joaquin "It's hard to believe they can call this a ball. It lifts a lot and doesn't follow a true line." And, according to Coach Inaki Saez "it has no seams it behaves very strangely. It's horrible, difficult to control and to pass."

Funnily enough however, one man in Spain seems to love it: "The new Roteiro reacts very well to my foot... I've noticed that the accuracy of my corners, my passing and, of course, my free kicks improved."

Of course I am quite sure that the fact that Beckham has a lucrative sponsorship deal with Adidas, in no way influenced his comments...

David Beckham you are The Corporate Whore of the Month.

Read more here...

President Bush's administration has been accused of suppressing and distorting scientific findings that run counter to its own political beliefs.

The charge comes from an American body, the Union of Concerned Scientists, in a statement with more than 60 supporters.

Said Dr. Kurt Gottfried: "Across a broad range of issues, the administration has undermined the quality of the scientific advisory system and the morale of the government's outstanding scientific personnel. Whether the issue is lead paint, clean air or climate change, this behaviour has serious consequences for all Americans."

In light of yesterdays report from the CIA (reported by the Observer) which say that global warming could destroy most of Europe within about, oh, thirty years, I'd say that it was pretty f**king important to be listening to scientists right now...

Read about the Scientists complaints here

Read about the CIA report on Global warming here

So. Here I sit at my PC. It's 11.30pm. I've had dinner. I feel reasonably good, not least after the wretched flu I have had for two weeks. Yet, I cannot help but be pereturbed. Let me tell you why...

Two weeks ago I moved into a new flat. Yes, again. The whys and the heretofores of this are too tedious to go into, but I now find myself sharing a flat with an Italian and a Spaniard. They're nice guys. Easy going, relaxed, calm about dishes etc. Also they are being very patient concerning my lack of Spanish and are happy to chat to me in a little bit of English when I lack the words in Espanol.

That said (drumroll) certain small things have begun to bug me. First, the Italian likes to leave his bedroom door open all night. Wide open. Looking onto the living room. Is it wrong of me to be bothered by this? Perhaps.

Secondly, but most importantly, the Spaniard has a lot of friends. I have no problem with these guys being in the house (some of them are sound) but there are three of them who I could quite cheerfully shoot.

Last Friday I went to play football. 90 minutes of frantic running and being humiliated by sickeningly gifted Spaniards, 3 beers and a smoke later, I rambled home to find a full scale party in swing in my flat. This was replete with Bongs, thundering techno and scantily clad women dancing in my living room.

I imagine that you are wondering why I would have a problem with this. Well, if you can read between the lines you might understand, but let's just say that I had a very hard week at work, a flu, 3 beers and a joint inside me, and I had just run my legs off for 90 minutes. I wasn't feeling great. In fact I just wanted my bed.

However, that was impossible and this is where the irritating friends (remember them?) come back into the story. I had no choice but to have a drink and stay up for a while. Sleeping was an impossibility with the noise levels. It was just as I was thinking that I could sit quietly in the corner or fiddle with the stereo so as that I wouldn't have to speak to anyone, that the three stooges accosted me.

The first one greeted me with 'Whasssup muddafucka!'. The second with 'Howssss it going MAN????' and the third just smiled and nodded sagely.

At first I thought that they were trying to wind me up. But, as the minutes passed, it finally dawned on me that this was the way that they spoke English. Half of their idiomatic expressions and vocabulary had come from listening to hiphop and watching shit 1980's Eddie Murphy movies. Oh, and they're English 'filology' students.

Three minutes of this and I made my excuses. As I left, one of them (whassup) asked could I help him with his English. I told him to stop talking like that. He didn't seem happy.

Anyhow, here I sit. And the three of them have just come into the house. Drunk and yelling. It's gonna be a fun night.

'This is his story. It is a sad and frightening example of the scores of unlawful and unaccountable detentions and deportations that have been allowed to take place with increasing speed and efficiency following Sept. 11, 2001. In the name of national security, Muslim citizens of foreign nations, as well as immigrants of Arab and South Asian descent, have been placed under heightened and unwarranted scrutiny. Many have faced physical and mental trauma, and still others have been locked up without due process or trial and deported.'

More here...

One of the things about living in Spain which is quite remarkable, is the extraordinarily relaxed attittude towards the public consumption of Marijuana. I'm not saying that you can stroll past a police officer sucking on a Camberwell Carrot, but it is quite a common occurence to be sitting in a crowded bar of a Saturday night and suddenly be aware of the pungent odour of grass wafting from all around you.

I, of course have been taking advantage of this extraordinary liberalism and smoking my poor, already-frazzled brain to the verge of dementia. As an example of the utter non-sense which I have been coming out with on a regular basis, I came up with this little gem the other evening (which, of course, I thought was the funniest thing since the dawn of the Cretaceous period)

"Is Apt an appropriate abbreviation of Approximation?"

So, what is the most stupid thing that you have ever laughed at while under the influence of the herb? Answers in a comment please...