Maintaining Madonna

I've recently started reading gossip columns on the internet in attempt to balance all the other serious (hah!) literature that I read at home. Well, I feel I should justify my insatiable need to know about has-been 90's star cataclysmic meltdowns and whether Britney's back with K-Fed somehow.

Amongst all of this crap which is doubtlessly taking up room in my brain which would otherwise be much better utilised for Japanese, this article about Madonna came up. It further re-inforces my views on the Confessions Tour - the woman no longer re-invents, she maintains.

Why am I so indecisive?

While posting when drunk is never a good idea, and I swear I'm not going to edit this in the morning, there's a certain amount of skewed introspecitive that's provided by an hour's solitary train ride, accompanied only by an i-pod full of music from Perth bands, amongst others, and a brain addled by ume-shu.

I was handed my re-contracting papers a few days ago, and as much as I overplay everything and be a complete drama queen and be capable of giving advice of what everyone else should do in "Amy's Perfect World", I really don't know what to do and it's completely tearing me up. So instead of writing something that I can't blame on the Hub's happy hour jumbo Long Island Iced Tea's, I'm going to leave you with this; my effort at cheering a friend up on a late Friday afternoon:


And with a flick of her sleek, glossy hair, she turned on her heels and strode out of the room, towards something, she was sure, that was better than the blandness that the day had provided so far.




Third year: crash and burn, or cut and run, or see out the opportunity that I'm unlikely to have ever again?

Do you have to? Really?

Can the man with the jackhammer drilling ditches on the tennis courts outside my house shut the fuck up already? It's 9am, it's raining and thank christ I'm not hungover.

the lights are off

while watching a storm come in over the mountains of Ono. Purple flashes of electricity, spears of white that blaze through the sky and arc to the ground. Counting the seconds after each flash until the thunder speaks to see how far away the storm is - like being on year 8 camp in Nanga Mill, but with more than a plastic hootchie overhead. The cracks of thunder which count closer and closer until both lightning and thunder are almost simultaneous get angrier, crisper and the sound ripples over the sky. Slowly, gradually, petulantly the rain begins to drop fat splashes on the tin roof until eventually it seems like all three elements of tonight's storm are in competition to be the brightest, loudest, most oppressive. Mostly the thunder wins and I retreat to my bed, to feel safe, cocooned in blankets, away from the fury outside.

When dealing with the devil

keep in mind that you may eventually want your soul back. If this happens to be the case, go here where you'll find one of the handiest How To's I've seen in a long time.

Oh, the things you find when looking for ideas for lessons...

Practising perserverance

For the past 3 weeks, I have been working on making my halo shine as brightly as possible. Either that or I'm making retribution for undisclosed heinous atrocities committed in another life. I'm not yet decided. I have been ever so patiently coaching students for the speech competition that was held in Akashi on the weekend.

I had three first year students in the recital competition, which involved them memorizing a passage about some kind of 'heart-warming' rubbish about courage or another one about the importance of the earth to Native Americans. One of the girls I was ready to strangle and nearly bit my tongue off in the attempt to not explode at the seventy gazillionth fuck-up of the pronunciation of 'the'. 'Za' is not 'the' and until Japan understands this and stops using katakana (the alphabet used for foreign, mainly western, words), they will not make progress in developing confidence in speaking English. Ooh dear, I think I'm ranting. Anyway, we finally had a breakthrough, 'za' was miracurously turned into 'the', and my sanity was preserved. It helped somewhat when the passage was actually explained to the girls and they were actually able to understand where the emotion in the passages comes from.

The two second year girls were easier and not nearly so frustrating to work with. They had to write their own speeches, so the understanding was already there, it was merely a matter of sorting out intonation (so more impossible than it sounds) and dodgy pronunciation. One girl wrote a emotive essay about her grandmother's wrinkled hands, and how they reflected her difficult life, while they other girl wrote a rather timely essay on Australia's water crisis.

Three weeks of not leaving school until 5.30, watching the wonderful autumn afternoon sunshine disappear into darkness, was not more fun than a barrel of Yakushima monkeys (and they are SO fun!). Using the apparently bottomless well of patience that I managed to dig out of god knows where was certainly a learning curve (cue teacher being taught cliches), but come Saturday, I was able to send the girls off with the ability to bluff total confidence, if nothing else.

Proof that I am a great teacher. The second year who may be the solution to Australia's water dilemma won the speech competition, and the other girl came third; one of the first years came third in the recital competition and the other two were happy with their performance. Excuse me while I go and buff my halo one more time.

Oh, and to my first piano teacher, Mrs Timoney, who coached me to many a Narrogin Eisteddfod First Place - you have the patience of a saint. Teaching a belligerent, lazy student with a modicum of talent who, unlike my students, did next to naff-all practise must have made you a millionaire at the karma bank.

Maybe this isn't for me.

11.30. writer's block.

If this was NaNoWriMo, I'd be fucked.

NaBloPoMo or Amy and Deadlines just don't mix

While I was mindlessly browsing the endless reams of the internet for the 67th time today, I stumbled across this little gem: NaBloPoMo. It's an alternative to the NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month. Instead of having to write a 50,000 word novel, NaBloPoMo merely requires you to post on your blog every day for the next 30 days. (Also means you can't write utter shite merely for the need of filling 50,000 words)

Marvellous, I thought. I can do that. Around rocks 10.30 at night, I realise that I haven't written anything for today, I want to go to bed, and once more I remember that one of the things I'm bad at is getting things done in time. I am Queen Procrastinator Extraordinaire.

However, I have managed to get a post up for today. They say it takes 21 days to break a habit...


And really people who invent these silly things, could you have picked a more bloody inconvenient name to have to type??