So (I’m starting to sound like a friend of mine who always starts his blogs with ‘so’) I’ve started a new job.  Academic coordinator.  Excellent, loads of fun, full of interesting things to get involved in and do.  What attracted me to the job in the first place?  Well, timetabling, to be honest.

I’d probably been in Dhaka about 3 nights, we had a get together down the International Club with returning and new teachers together, and I met a guy called Richard who told me he did the timetabling, amongst other things.  Knowing what I know now, I think he was drowning his timetabling stress in beer and it was the only thing on his mind at that very moment in time.

“Oh,” I said, “I’d love to get involved in that.  I’ve been interested in timetabling for a while now.”

“Well, there’s a job going if you want it, I’ll be leaving at the end of the year.”

Well, cool.  Sounded great.  I really have been interested in timetabling for a while, I guess because in some ways it’s like an enormous ruddy great big jigsaw puzzle, in multiple dimensions.  And I really do enjoy solving problems.  I’m bored of Sudoku and things like that, so this sounded like a lot more fun.

Ok, to cut a long story short, I got together with Richard over the course of the year, learnt that he did an awful lot more than just timetabling, but it was all very interesting and I was well up for it.  Plus there were other factors that made me feel I really didn’t want to spend another year here just in the classroom, so all in all it looked great.  AND a payrise.  Not enormous, but not nothing either.

Great.  And at the end of last year, we organised the timetable.  Took quite some time, we screwed it up a bunch of times, but eventually we had something that worked.  Excellent, job done, now can concentrate on all those other things the job is supposed to entail.

Right…………………

Ok, so now it’s the new year.  One week ago today.  Come into school, meet all the new people, take a look at how everything is working, get settled in, get on with sorting out new students and datasets and classes, etc.  Except that at the very end of last year, AFTER we’d designed our timetable around the idiosyncracies of all our staff, one of them left the school.  And was replaced with someone whose idiosyncracies are different and which meant that some issues we had last year are no longer issues, so we can reassign some of those classes we farmed off to two other people last year.  Yep…… erm… no.  They’re all teaching at that time.  Can’t be done.  Not unless we reschedule, of course.

What a good idea.  Let’s do that.

To cut a very long story short, I’ve just spent the last 8 days trying to reschedule the whole secondary school, but due to one thing and another and not remembering important little details and….., I still don’t have it working completely yet.  It’s now 5:38 pm, I had 4 hours sleep last night, lots of coffee today, and the scheduler is chugging away right now.  There’s actually very few classes left to go but it’s taking a long time for each one, and I don’t think I could cope with going home and leaving it to chug away here (Oohh it just scheduled another one, only 13 left to go!  Then I’ve got to go through it with a fine toothed comb and make sure it hasn’t made any mistakes, which it has done every time I’ve looked before, and fix them as best as I can.)

I could really, really, really do with an extremely strong alcohol beverage right now, something that’d blow my mind, clear it out, and leave me standing rather shocked with a stupid grin on my face.

Nope.  It’s just got stuck again.  Can’t schedule a Humanities class because it’s not allowed to put two classes on the same day.  Now if it was two singles to schedule right next to each other, that’d be easy – I could call it a double period.  But no, several periods in between them.  Let’s see now, if I move that Science class there, that’d allow Humanities to go here… let’s try this…….

*sigh

Think I’ll be here for a while yet.

For the last two years we participated in the http://www.worldmathsday.com Mathletics competition where the goal is for students to answer a total of more than.. well last year the goal was 100 million mental maths questions, during the 48 hours that it lasts for.  Why 48 hours?  Well, because it runs from when it starts being World Maths Day somewhere in the world until when it is no longer World Maths Day anywhere in the world. It was great, kids got very excited and the goal was reached within mere hours.

We’ve been relatively low-key about it this year, although the kids do love it. It is surprising sometimes who gets into it. What I find really difficult to deal with is the kid who is so uninterested that she can’t even be bothered to have a go at answering more than 2 questions.

Anyway…. Seb has been practicing at home.  It’s great to see him becoming so motivated, I think he really loves the positive feedback he’s getting from me, the time spent doing something special with his dad, and also because although he does say he doesn’t like mathematics, he does want to be able to do it.  And he’s really getting a sense of achievement out of it.

His total is usually 4 or 5 questions answered in 60 seconds.  He appears to find subtraction much easier than addition, which I find it.  He’s learning strategies for the numbers that require a carry, e.g. 6 + 7 (pick the larger number, count on the smaller one on your fingers so seven, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13).  I’m sometimes trying to get him to realise that he’s seen a question before, but generally not fussed.  If he has to answer 6+ 2 and two questions later he gets the same question again, he doesn’t recognize it.  But I’m guessing that’s quite normal for someone who’s only really starting to do mathematics, as he is.

Anyway, he’s got really, really into the Worldmathsday game, even to the stage that he asks to play it.  So, take a look at this.  This is a screenshot of the first game he played in the real game, once the Worldmathsday had actually started.

We were both astounded.  14!  Amazing, considering that his highest up to that point was about 4 or 5.  So of course he wanted to carry on playing, and so he did.  And now he was hitting an average of 6 or 7, even getting 8 a couple of time.  He was so delighted.

Now, I usually sit with him while he does it, but I needed to go out and took advantage of that to encourage him to try a few rounds on his own, so as I was getting ready I kept popping in and out of the room.  Here’s another screenshot where he was playing on his own.

He was so chuffed.  It’s definitely having an effect on his interest in maths and his ability to do it, and we’re going to have to find a substitute for when they close this down.  It’s only really available in the month up to the day itself, and perhaps a bit afterwards, unless we want to pay.  I think I’ll have a look at what’s around before considering that route.

One of my Christmas gifts, from Dave in Thailand, was a book called George’s Secret Key to the Universe, by Lucy & Stephen Hawking. I read a chapter or two on the day and really enjoyed it, and I think I read some to Seb, but with one thing and another we didn’t read any more.

Well, some weeks later, with the occasional mention of the book here and there and a promise to read it, I sat down one evening after dinner, while the boys were still finishing their meal, and started reading the book. I only read the first chapter, and there were cries of ‘more, please Daddy, more’ from both of them. ‘One chapter a night’, I insisted, and firmly closed the book, marking the page.

Well, the following night, I finished my dinner, and Seb quickly jumped up, ran to fetch the book, and plonked it down in front of me. So I read another chapter.

And the next night another. And so on. It’s a brilliant book, and just like a tv series with cliffhangers at the end of each chapter that keep you begging for more. So sometimes, I’d allow myself to be persuaded to read two chapters, and very occasionally three, if it wasn’t too late and Seb didn’t have more homework or reading he needed to get done after dinner.

And over the course of two or three weeks I read the whole book, with all four of us sat around the dining table, while the boys finished their meal. It’s lovely. They’re generally very slow eaters, and I find it very stressful sitting there watching them not eat. So it’s nice to have something to do, and it’s a nice way to read to them, and I think maybe they eat a bit more this way, to be honest. They both loved it, Seb would inch his chair closer and closer so he could see the pictures in the book, and Nathan would have to be reminded to go around the table, not over it, because he’d want to come eat his pudding on my lap so he could see the book too. Nathan quite liked the factual sections, Seb was more focused on the story.

Well. All good things come to an end, so they say, and finally we finished the book! It’s got a great ending, we read the last three chapters in one go. I’m not going to give away any of the story, but it’s well worth reading. The book is aimed at children, perhaps a bit older than my two, but they did love it, and I’m sure they’ll go back and read it in a few years time. They’re both fascinated by space, and rockets, and planets, and computers anyway, so even if they didn’t understand everything, they still loved it, and were fascinated by the pictures of Saturn and his (her?) moons, Jupiter and the Red Spot, and, oh, so many other marvellous pictures. It’s got good guys, bad guys, and a pig in it. What more could you want?

But what to do now? We had so much fun reading the book. Nora and I agreed it’d be great to carry on with this, the boys love it so much, so we had a thought and decided they’d like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I think it might have helped that we watched the new version of the film, the one with Johnny Depp in it, that night. But Nora couldn’t find the copy in the school library that was supposed to be there, and that night there was nothing to read. Well, I dug out Winnie the Pooh and read the chapter where Kanga and Roo come to the Forest.

And the next day Nora went into the school again and this time came back with Matilda. And we’ve started reading that. One, maybe two chapters a night. It’s wonderful, I love Roald Dahl’s books, and the boys are spellbound. Now that Seb is reading so well, he’s reading the chapter titles ahead of time, flicking through the book to look at the pictures and getting excited about what’s coming up. And he’s listened to some of it as an audio book, so he already knows some of the story, so he’ll say ‘oh yeah, I know this one, it’s great’ or something similar like that.
When we’ve finished this one, we’ll probably read some more Roald Dahl. Maybe The BFG. I really want to read the Narnia books, but I think they’re both too young for them as yet. I wonder if they’ll be up for the Borrowers yet. And I might have a go at Truckers, Diggers and Wings, by Terry Pratchett, I think they’d love them. And when we head out to Colombia in the summer, we’ll make sure we pick up a decent collection of good, lengthy books in Spanish that Nora or I will read. Probably Nora.

And so, a tradition is born.

Personally I’m a big fan of technology, but just as there are books, films, ideas, activities for children and there are books, films, ideas, activities for adults, so it is I think, with technology. Most kids these days anywhere in the Western(ized) world will inevitably be in touch with large amounts of technology from an early age, and to be honest your son has probably had less contact than many.

My kids are getting more involved with tech nowadays. They watch TV on the weekends, and they’re both using computers a very small amount at home. Both would like more, but that’s all I’m giving them for now. They’ve no need for a cellphone, they’re too young to allow ipods or anything similar because they’ll blow out their eardrums or do serious damage for the future. They sometimes play on an XBox or a Wii when round at a friend’s house, but I have no intention of having one of those things at home.

I think I have more of an issue with the TV than with the others, because of the way the imagery affects our brains – concentration spans, etc. I don’t think using a computer has the same effect, nor does a cellphone or the other things I mentioned.

However, I feel, very strongly, that young children need to be active, and sitting in front of a TV or a computer just isn’t that. I also think that there are a lot of habits, customs, behaviours that we learn when we are very young and that stay with us for life, and these need to be taught/experienced for that learning to take place. So they need to play, jump, be creative, have accidents, learn to limit their behaviours, run, fall, etc. They need to get bored and create their own entertainment, not have it provided for them. They need to learn how to interact with other young children, and how to behave around adults.

So for us, that’s what we chose to do with our kids when they were younger, and we continue to do that because it has now become a family habit, it’s healthier for all of us. I think this is an issue people really need to think about. Sure, tech is great, I love it, I’d be dripping with the stuff if I could afford it, but I think it is not necessarily right for children to be actively involved with it too much. Just as I’m not going to read them literature for older people, show them films for over 15s, teach them swearwords (ok, I’m not perfect in that aspect!), etc, so I’m not going to allow them to spend hours watching tv or playing computer games or listening to an ipod. There are better things for them to be doing with their time, and they’ll have plenty of time to play with those things at a more appropriate age.

Sometimes I think we (society in general) forget that children are not the same as adults, they really are different and perceive the world differently and we must consider that in our actions regarding them. Give them time to be children, it’s such a short period of time and there really should be no hurry for them to stop being children. There are so many important learning experiences that are a part of childhood, and if we don’t think carefully about what that means and how we can ensure such learning experiences take place, we’re going to find ourselves (as a society/species) losing an important aspect of our humanity.

By that I mean that although sure, kids can play around with lots of tech, use it better than many adults, do fantastic things with it, I’m not sure that’s a sensible part of childhood.  Consider a lot of the ethical issues we’re having to deal with – such as piracy, intellectual property, plagiarism, illegal downloads, etc.  We’re giving our children access to things that enable them to do all sorts of things, the consequences of which they don’t have the faculties to evaluate properly.  There’s a reason why we insist children are over a certain age before they drive.  Although you can’t really apply that appropriately to this topic, you can certainly considering restricting access.

As far as the wiring in our brains is concerned – the wiring in everyone’s brains is being affected by their experiences, and different experiences create different people. But one thing is, I think, clear. The wider the range of experiences, the better. So if he is spending a lot of time with tech, that needs to be balanced by a lot of time doing other things too.

So today it was the turn of my advisory, and off we went. It took us a couple of hours to get to the village, basically because the traffic was horrendous. Once we arrived we split the students into 3 groups of 11 and each group was taken off to a building site where they’d work for a couple of hours. For my group, we were here:

As you can see on the right there, one of our jobs here was to move that great big pile of dirt they’re all admiring, using those baskets you see on the ground over the wall and into the space behind. This will later be tamped down and covered in concrete to create the floor.

The pile was a lot bigger when we arrived, by this point in the photo they’re all pretty knackered after working at this for probably about an hour. Shovelling is hard work anyway, even harder if you’ve never done it before.

Under the bamboo slats on the left hand side of the photo is a 16 foot hole from where they’re obtaining the dirt. The hole will eventually be lined with cement rings and be turned into a well. There’s another hole just to the left of the photo.

Our other task here was to clean these bricks. They’re mossy and dirty after being stored for a while, and need cleaning otherwise the mortar won’t stick to them. The water was obtained from a tube well, the kids had to head over about 40-50 meters, pump the water into one of the small buckets by hand, carry it back and pour it into a large bucket, then get scrubbing. One kid told me he’d never scrubbed anything in his life, and I believe him, probably not even a dinner plate. Now THIS was boring work, really. The digging was W A Y more fun than this. But they generally got on with it, more or less in good spirits, and cleaned up a fair few bricks. A drop in the ocean, but worthwhile, and a big deal for them to get their hands dirty.

At lunchtime we all gathered back at the buses for lunch. Overkilling on the packaging, we’d been provided with sandwiches wrapped in clingfilm then packed in a large cardboard box, a packet of spicy nibble things, and a banana each. We had more than we needed, so after everyone had eaten once, instead of having seconds we decided to hand them out to the crowd of young children who’d gathered around us.

The kids were interested in the food, especially the nibbles (come on – it was obviously artificial and something they almost never eat, in a big shiny red package, of course they wanted that more than half a white bread tuna sandwich!), but it turned out that what the women wanted, or one in particular, was our rubbish. After a bit of confusion trying to get the driver to ask her a question (no, we aren’t going to say no, she can have it anyway) we managed to find out that she wanted the rubbish because of all the cardboard in it. To make things? No, for fuel. It’s about 15°C at present, and people get really cold at night. So there you go, our rubbish which the kids were chucking away without a second thought, was like gold dust to this woman. She took everything – the lunchboxes, the cardboard boxes the lunchboxes had come in, and anything else we had that could be burnt.

Of course there was also the obligatory “Pick up your rubbish, don’t be such slobs, consider the things we talk about in school, etc etc etc” talk the students needed as they quite without any consideration whatsoever just dropped stuff on the ground wherever they’d finished eating. Or not finished eating – once we started the cleanup I was fishing out and eating half eaten sandwiches and packets of crisps they’d chucked away. (I know, I know, it’s a neurosis. I can’t abide seeing food thrown away, I really can’t, and ESPECIALLY not where we spent today. It’s enough of an ordeal eating lunch in the canteen at school and not losing it every day screaming at the entire school to finish the food on their plates. But in a place like where we spent today – you have to eat everything. It’s just disrespectful otherwise.)

Then it was back to work. We switched sites, so we’d have some variety and got to try the other tasks, which meant that instead of washing bricks and digging dirt, we got to break bricks and dig dirt.

Here’s the house we worked on in the afternoon:

That’s the hole they worked at filling in. They were a bit sillier now, the fatigue from the unaccustomed physical labour was kicking in, and it was a more confined space here so less easy to really get into it, there were only 3 hammers for breaking bricks, 3 shovels/scoops for the dirt, and a bunch of baskets, so there was a fair amount of standing around which was unavoidable. But they got into it – breaking things is always fun

So, why break bricks? If someone’s gone to the effort of making them, why break them? Well, they make them in places like this,

we saw loads of these chimneys along the road. Apparently they can make one brick every 3-5 seconds, and they work 24 hours a day for 8 months. The other 4 months the whole area is under water. Thing is, there aren’t really any stones in Bangladesh, so if you need hardcore, gravel, or anything like that, which you do for building foundations, and concrete, you have to make it yourself. Take clay, make bricks, use some to build with, break others up as substitute stone. In large quantities. Everywhere you go there are people breaking bricks. So that’s what we did. I’m afraid we wouldn’t have been able to make a living from it, our contribution in the hour we were there wasn’t very large at all, maybe enough to fill a small bucket, but we do have plenty of conversation topics for when we’re back in school, and it means that when the kids look out of their car windows on their way anywhere, they’re going to be able to make a bit more of a connection with what they see around them on a daily basis. Assuming they look up from their PSP and do look out the window of the car.

Of course the usual crowd of kids clustered around to watch us, and as always I got a kick out of taking their pictures and showing it to them on the digital camera. They loved posing:

and when we saw how good they were at tree climbing they had fun posing up the tree too:

Then back on the bus and back to school. Completely knackered. A good day had by all, methinks.

So I bought some replacement spokes and a few additional bits and pieces while in Bangkok, and I spent most of Thursday (we had the day off for Ashura) fixing up the bike – replacing the spoke, learning how to true a wheel, cleaning it (so much gunk), relubing it, adjusting brakes, gears, etc.  The intention was to head out with a group led by Ken, who I’d been out with on my previous trips, but Nora wasn’t feeling great on Friday so I didn’t want to leave her on her own with the boys.

However, we met up for lunch with Mark and Sholu at the Bhaga Club, and he and I agreed to head out the next day.  I’m so glad we did, it was great to get out of the city.  It’s all traffic and construction and concrete high-rises and people and people and people and dirt and people everywhere and noise and dirt and grey everywhere.  The whole place is a building site, it’s like there’s a major construction taking place on EVERY SINGLE ROAD.  It seems like almost every time there’s a three-storey building somewhere, it’s being torn down to build a six-storey building in it’s place.

So it was great to head out into the countryside.  It’s changed hugely since I was last out there maybe 2 months back.  The water level has dropped maybe 3-4 meters, perhaps more, so where was once a trail with water either side now runs along a ridge with cucumbers growing down its sides.  There’s rice fields everywhere, all in different stages of growth, some fields are dry, some still have water.  There’s places where they’ve installed an electric pump by the river and build an irrigation ditch to take the water out under the road and across the fields.  There’s fields and fields of gorgeous looking cauliflowers and cabbages.  Greenery everywhere, every space is being used for something.  And of course now the weather is quite cool it was lovely being out there.  Not much of a breeze except that which we created ourselves as we rode along.

	People stop and stare at you as you go by. We paused on one bridge and this guy stopped behind us, we figured he wanted to get by so we moved our bikes but it turned out he just wanted to stare at us.
	Digital cameras are great, as you can show people the picture you’ve taken of them. I love that, they get a kick out of seeing themselves. Later on, we paused on another bridge after a particularly bumpy section, and there were a group of old women coming along, I asked (via gestures) if I could take their picture and they all gathered together for it, then got a real kick out of seeing themselves on the screen. It was fantastic.
There’s a few more photos here

We’d only intended to head out for maybe 2-3 hours, but it was about four hours by the time we made it back.  We were never exactly LOST but there was quite a while there where we weren’t sure if we were going the right way.  It’s fun trying to find your way home when you don’t speak the language.  You ride through a village, just a collection of huts and dirt trails, trying not to kill anyone’s chickens, and trying to work out which trail looks reasonably well used enough to be a major route, and saying “Dhaka? Uttara?” with a terrible accent to anyone who looks like they might know.  Some of them look at you blankly, like “Huh? What?”.  Others nod and point the way you’re going, but you’re not sure if they’re really telling you you’re going the right way, or if they have the desire to please so they don’t want to tell you you’re actually going the wrong way!

When we started heading back we asked a biker who told us to go left, then straight on and we’d come to a river where we could get a boat across to get back to Dhaka.  But a good hour later we still hadn’t found any river, and it was so much drier than last time I was out there we weren’t sure any boats were going to be necessary.  There were paths we followed that were definitely under water a few months back.  But eventually, yes, we came out by the river, and Mark recognized it as he’d been out that way on a boat trip last year.  Finally we saw the landing area where they’d caught the boat, and there was a rickety flat boat ferrying people backwards and forwards across the river, so we waited until it came back, hopped on board and a few moments later were across the water and on our way back home.

About 25 minutes later and we were back in the (relatively) quiet streets in Baridhara where I live.  The back wheel had held up fine, though I do need to review it before heading out again this weekend.  And I was chatting to Mark this morning who told me they’ve found another route out which avoids the horrendous market we had to go through, so that’ll improve that aspect.

Excellent.  Can’t wait to get out again.

My laptop touchpad gets very hot.  I’ve always been quite concerned about this, but right now it’s wonderful, toasty and warm!

Seb had tennis this morning, we maybe weren’t going to go as he played yesterday, but the boys were way too wound up and we needed out of the flat.  He decided to wear shorts, then regretted it when sat on the rickshaw

And I’m going to have to start wearing long-sleeved shirts.  This is great, and apparently continues until around February.  Not exactly what we expected when we moved here!

If you ever have the opportunity to fly with DrukAir I’d recommend them, they were absolutely fine and the food was very good.

Coming through the airport, we arrived at Passport Control where we discovered we hadn’t filled in the landing cards on the plane, so we had to wait for a while at the desk while we completed one for each of us – they require so much detail it took ages.  Fortunately there was no one waiting, but while we were doing this the room filled up with hordes of men and the odd woman here and there all returning from the Hajj.  We weren’t at all impressed when loads of them came to our desk (wrong one, it was for foreign passports only), surrounded us, and started laying their passports all over the place, through my arms, over our papers, pushing them closer in as if to say ‘here, do mine, do mine’.  It felt extremely disrespectful, here we were following procedures accordingly, as fast as we could with two hyperactive children who were busy throwing their teddies at the official, knackered because we’d been up since about 2:30 local time with only a couple of hours sleep, and here were all these old men swarming all over us, completely ignoring the rules.  Fortunately, after a little while the officials herded them away and the one attending us was enjoying distracting the kids, so we survived.

Welcome home.

It’s cold here.  Right now I’m wearing jeans and a t-shirt and I’m cold.  Not freezing, but I think I’ll go put on some socks and a long-sleeved shirt.  Concrete floors are chilly, and I can feel that my fingertips are a bit cold.  Sebastian is excited to go to his tennis class at the club as we bought him a racket in Bangkok.  We’re going to have waffles again for breakfast (we bought a waffle iron and used it for the first time yesterday, it’s great!), and I think a hot cup of coffee is in order.

Trying to get my head back into work mode, I teach the first 7 periods straight on Sunday, followed by the last 6 periods straight on Monday (8 period day), so I need to get lesson planning done over the next couple of days.  Much more fun doing other stuff – just finished building a wooden model aeroplane with the boys and I have a model of a traditional Thai house to build, I’ve bought new tyres and cables for my bike and replacement spokes so I need to deal with that, and Nathan and I are planning to use all of our lego to build a huge pyramid.  Much more fun than lesson planning.

Ok, starving children, and I’m cold.  Better get on with it.

We met Vasilia, Dave’s wife, as we came through customs, she sorted out our taxi, (had to get a large one as we came prepared with three large suitcases!) and we headed back to their place. I’m not going to even attempt names of places if I can avoid it, but they live on the outskirts of Bangkok about 10-15 mins cycle from Ruamrudee High School where Dave works.

They have a large house with a covered patio, a pond with some Koi carp Vasilia bought, and a small annex in front where Thanasi has his play room (apparently it was originally built to be an aquarium but it kept leaking). Lots of rooms in the house, lots of space, in fact it seems this was originally two houses which were made into one years back. This makes it very nice to be here as a guest because it’s like having separate quarters.

So we’re comfortable here, and we’re here until Dave breaks up on Friday, then we’re going to Koh Samet island for 3 nights.  After that we’ll come back to Bangkok, spend Christmas day here, there’s a few friends coming round and we’re going to do a big Christmas dinner, then on the 26th (I think) we’re going to Kanchanaburi which is a town near the Khwae Noi River, apparently near the site of the “The Bridge over the River Kwai“.  We’ll be there for a few nights before heading back to Bangkok then Dhaka and back to work on the 4th January.

I’ll try to blog other bits and pieces over the next few days.  Lots of great stuff, loads of cool pictures.