A lesson learnt?

It's almost sunrise and I've just got home after another ridiculous night. Bertie was supposed to be with me but I have somehow lost him along the way.

As if last night wasn't pushing it enough - nicey pricey cocktails on the 40th floor of 30 St Mary's Axe. The kinda place most teachers are just not allowed; the kinda place that has security checks for yourself and your bags, and simply assumes you are well-off enough for a tab. Good stuff.

But then tonight I officially feel hyper. As I have all day, and maybe even all week. So the Hawaiieen night reached its natural conclusion, with a French boy with a funny name, and then I decided it was time to run off home. And am I proud? No, I feel like an f-ing muppet for doing the same old sh*t once again, when I don't even care. So will I learn? I hope so. Especially since I have now lost two devil's trident type things, and also a set of flashing horns, alongside my flip-flops, which just got stuck in the stickiness of the floor. Classy. No, we were classy, when Bertie and I went to a lovely restaurant on The Strand called Paradiso Inferno (Heaven & Hell) and it was just like Luna Caprisce so I loved it, and so we started off on a good foot; I think I just can't help the drama.

My aim for this weekend now is to sort it out so I don't end up doing this again and then feeling all cross on the night-bus. Not worth it. Let alone the hangover. But then what can I do eh? It's a bit win-win, lose-lose right now.

Update 19:21

Hahaha, I have just re-read what I wrote, I am such a drama-queen. Actually, I did feel bad this morning, but Bertie Smarty Pants has reasoned and justified and managed to make me realise we only live once, so why worry eh? Besides, I like it that I have a reputation amongst lots of random strangers :)

Spent the whole day in bed, but only 4 hours asleep, the rest of it whining and moaning about the world's worst hangover. People who go on facebook and say they have a hangover are lying - a real hangover stops you from doing anything. I couldn't move my head, I had chills and sweats, and when this fly came in the room and started buzzing I thought the world was going to end. Happily at about 2:30pm I picked up the pace (an unintentional "tactical" in the words of my brother...the nausea was overwhelming) and now I am comfortably in my second wind. Meant to be at two separate parties in opposite sides of London - instead am doing the local family shindig where the whiskey will no doubt be flowing.

So no, I don't learn.

An Awesome Day

Firstly, apologies for my lack of posting this week. It's officially the summer holidays, and whilst I am working at BITC, frankly I've rediscovered what it's like to live like a normal person, thus not much time for posting. I'm sure you're desperate to find out what I've been up to - more info on the internship etc. tomorrow.

Secondly, I have had a most awesome day. It's all thanks to this at Regent's Park:

And, of course, the lovely Gid and CK, who thoughtfully invited me to tag along with them into the VIP area. Free food and drink and some time to while away in the sunshine is all I need to make me smile. Oh, and Gid's adorable dog Barney. Lots of nice chatter and people watching and generally taking ridiculous advantage of Innocent's generosity (Gid and CK managed to nab 36 free smoothies before we left! 36! Shocker!) We decided against wandering out into the melee, preferring instead to enjoy the live music and cocktail bar in our little bit. Wonderful.

After thoroughly stuffing my stomach and my liver, I popped down to Krazy's party in Notting Hill. This too was a fun affair. I don't know many international people, but this room was FULL of people from overseas. I think I may have been the only one born in the UK. It was great, lots of lovely chatter, a chocolate fountain, more cocktails and Corona's, and a hilarious wannabe stand-up comedian boy from LA, who I thought was gay, but later realised wasn't. Perhaps it was my rather revealing top that changed his mind, heehee. Fun & games indeed.

Coaching Event 1

School was school. I have decided that, as therapeutic as this blog is, today I am not going to rant.

Instead, I will skip straight to the most interesting part of my day - my first meeting with my TF coach.

My coach is called Mark and he works as an Emerging Markets Trader at Lehman Brothers. He's worked there for 3 years and doesn't appear to trade just one thing - rather, he trades all kinds of products linked to emerging markets (predominantly Asian) and is quite senior in the company (i.e. they let him take quite a lot of risk in his work).

So the idea of a TF coach is that TF match you up with someone in business/education/coaching etc. who will help you realise goals by thinking through things in a new way. We met at a lovely Thai restaurant in Liverpool St and got off to a good start when he offered to pay for everthing. Excellent. Further bonus points came when he revealed that he was holding a half a million dollar position on some product or other, and that he was really rather worried about it, but decided to fulfill his TF commitments and meet with me rather than stay at work. Much props for that, although I am thinking perhaps in this instance we should have eaten in a place that had mobile phone reception (we got out of the restaurant and he had 7 voicemails, which I took to be a bad sign on the whole money/trading/wheeler dealing etc. He also mentioned that quite a few people had gone crazy at his work, oh dear. At least stress in school means something).

Anyway, I really enjoyed the meeting, mainly because I managed to actually be a little bit open with someone. Despite my copious sharing, of late, on the blog, I am quite secretive (heehee, understatement). But, my coach made it very easy to share ideas etc. and so I think our meeting was productive e.g. I told him about how my folks probably want me married in the next few years and how this might be screwing up future plans, which is something I've hardly told anyone.

I think the other thing about it, apart from the sharing and trust and mutual respect, was the fact that the whole meeting was about me. Now, this sounds grossly arrogant and self-centred and all that, but, in fact, I spend a small portion of my time dealing with things that are to do with me (again, the blog comes up as an example, but there probably should be a better example than that). Very self-indulgent to have a whole evening to talk about me and what I want, and at the start I spent most of the time trying to switch the convo back to him, but in the end he said the whole point was for him to get to know me, and so I better start talking, hahaha. This was followed by a wholestream of tough questions e.g. whose opinion matters the most to you, your family, your friends, or your work colleagues? How do you measure your success?

To cut a looong story short, the food was lovely, I didn't get hammered (bonus points for me!), and I am now inspired to evaluate myself more critically and think about what I really want and what I'm all about. Lots of tough questions, but I think I need to get on top of them. This coaching thing is a really good idea for people like me, who need some guidance and a wall to bounce things off, so I have some hopes here.

In final news, through Facebook I am back in touch with an ooooold friend from primary school. My fondest memories of him include crying my whole way through his swimming pool birthday party cos I banged my head on the side of the pool, his terrible twin brothers, and his general "gentle giant" demeanour. Needless to say, for someone who lists "Romford Fitness First" as an interest, well....ladies you can judge him for yourself, heehee (ps, make sure you look at the profile pictures album, but don't check it at work, it may look like you are visiting naughty websites!)

Here's a sample, although have blanked out his nice face so I don't get sued! Please message me/wall me if you approve!

Sunday

In a deliberate change of routine, I decided not to "waste" my Sunday lesson planning, but instead doing what I wanted. As such, it was glorious day. I did do some work, but managed to plan a good quantity of lessons for the week in about an hour (aaaah the joys of no Y8s till Thurs!), and completed an Appendix 6 during two episodes of Grey's Anatomy (yes people, I watched it today, and it's great!) True the unit of work for KS4 was awful, and made me realise how much better my teaching is now, but whatever, it's done.

Having had such a lovely and relaxed day, and despite hitting the gym hard and also drinking some delicious wine with my folks, I fear I won't be asleep for a good while. Oh well, more time to ramble!

So some things I've thought about today:

1. I can't believe that pitpads now exist in France! For those of you that haven't heard me talk about these, I swear I invented them aaaages ago, but never made a prototype, and now Potter tells me a company is making them in France! Shocker! But rather than being demoralised, instead I will take pride in the fact that this is evidence that all my "inventions" aren't a load of rubbish but may actually have social and economic value.

2. In more news of France, am really pleased there was an 80% turnout in the presidential elections today, good stuff. The consensus is that turnout was high because the candidates and parties stand for different things and because the race hasn't really already been decided - every vote could make a difference. Further proof that my degree wasn't entirely irrelevant. Will be keeping my eye on that one, but am really inspired by Royal's chatter - perhaps I'm a socialist after all...

3. Did some more research into graduate study. Found out that one of my old tutors is now a course provider and specialises in some of the things I'm interested in researching (there are many, but the current fore-runners include youth identity formation in multicultural schools, homosexuality in minority communities, and the achievement of the Teach First mission i.e. do "exceptional graduates" really help neutralise "educational disadvantage"?) Am now gonna do my best to grab a TF coach who can help me with all this future plans stuff.

4. Laughed a bit when my mother suggested acting as a potential career move for me - clearly teaching must be a downer for her if she thinks acting would be an improvement!

5. Laughed a lot at this text from Bertie: "Race is so damn funny tho, I mean ure skin colour is different from mine. Ha ha it dont get no better than that!" Awful grammar there Berts, but loving the race banter!

And finally, girls, if you've not yet seen the Aero Bubbles advert, check it out! The chocolate tastes good and the man on the advert....wow!

Instantly Fit cont.

From Bertie:

meena just caught up on ure blog thing after a bit of a break and could barely concentrate on anything other than the fact that mos was put forward as ure 'instantly fit' candidate. i hate u.

x

Hahaha! But he is instantly fit - I can't help that. Also, how instantly fit is this guy? I found him on SB's blog and have no idea who is he, but yum yum yum.


In other news, when support teaching Y9 today, "G" says to me: "Miss, you should become a teacher you know". Humph. Clearly have had an impact there then.

Am on an Autograph course tomorrow, yay! Autograph as in the software package, not Autograph as in learning to sign my name (as my mother thought - strange).

Timekeeping

I told myself that I had to get all my work done by 9pm. Lo and behold, I did. Clearly when it comes to setting myself mini-deadlines, I can stick to them. Why is that the case? Well, because this is the very last opportunity I have to plan my full day of lessons tomorrow, so procrastination was down to a minimum and my time was well used.

More generally though, why can't I use my time well all the time...or, more leadingly, why am I often late? The answer can be found in this article in yesterday's Sunday Times. I was surprised at how many psychological traits I share with the chronically late (anxiety, being messy and easily distracted, perfectionist habits, low levels of self-control or a penchant for thrill-seeking...I have all of those to a degree, with thrill-seeking and perfectionism right up there). So that's my excuse then, I was meant to be late.

This is seemingly at odds with being a Virgo, and true, I'm not late all the time - mostly when it involves going somewhere different from my routine. I'd say the best explanation from the list is that I underestimate how long it takes to do something, or even just how short a minute is. This is clearly evidenced in my early lesson plans, where I'd plan impossible amounts of material for a lesson and then feel like I'd failed when we couldn't cover it all. I know that I'd patently be one of those people still reading two minutes later in the test where you're supposed to stop reading after 60 secs. This is actually quite hard though - I did something similar with my Y11s where they had to shut their eyes and put their hands up when they thought a minute was done - the range of time during which hands were put up was hilarious, with one boy putting up his hand after about 20 seconds and another girl waiting for almost 2 minutes!

In other news, it was a training day today so fun and games. All about the new building and our move into it. Cue lots of drama about equipment and classrooms and planning and who gets what etc. Fun.

And finally, it turns out that OFSTED are only coming to see me, not everyone, thus I am the only one who has to prepare all the paperwork. Further, I figure it's quite a big deal. My professional mentor, who consistently ignored my emails last term, failed to pass on details of observations, didn't hold our IRB meeting or tell us our IRB gradings, hasn't got us an SSE, and barely checked in at all, came right up to me first thing this morning to talk about the visit. My subject mentor did the same thing, so it must be important.

Sometime this week I will make a little OFSTED list of things to bring up, that way I won't forget.

Oh and finally, yes, I know, he's totally instantly fit, and has a magnetic personality too. Sadly he is of the others. Boo. Puja, use the comments! I love getting comments, it makes me feel like I'm not rambling away to myself. Even though I mostly am. Right, bed time, it's a school night!

PS Crumbs, I accidentally posted this to the OUWAFC blog, whoops! Sorry MT!

Bierodrome, Instantly Fit People, Finals

Went to the temple yesterday, good stuff. Decided this made me well enough to resume battle so completed Bierodrome Take II last night. Bon. Lots of nice Belgian beer. Music a bit loud and the ladies' lavatories smelt of dried fish, but the barmen were fit. Allegedly.

Puja wimped out early in the game, perhaps in sympathy for the temporarily absent Sparrow. Luckily Jade was able to soldier on and so we completed five glorious toasts.

1. To the beautiful weather and may it last evermore (Puja, Lindemans Cassis, nice toast nice drink).
2. To a happy Tamil New Year for everyone (Me, Lindemans Framboise. Not convinced this was raspberry, tasted more like cherry).
3. To health, wealth and happiness (Jade, Chimay Rouge. A traditional Chinese greeting for a strong Trappist Ale).
4. To fit people (Me, Lindemans Cassis again. Yes, the standard of toast dropped here).
5. To true love and may we find it this year (Jade, two glasses of beer, one passion fruit, one apple. What a soppy toast, bless!)

Realised just now that we missed out Delirium, some beer that Braden was raving about in Montreal. Also didn't drink any Kwak, the good stuff in the sciencey-type glasses. Would def go again then, if only to finish off the menu (we have a looong way to go!)

At some point we discussed the concept of instantly fit people, and decided we didn't really know that many. Our contenders:

They will remain unnamed for legal purposes, and they're not the best photos, but I'd like to point out that clearly my contender, "blue tie", is fitter than the other two. Right girls?

And finally, you wanted to see photos of finishing finals. Well, I sadly can't locate mine, but here are some others: