Mini me

Hello hello, and back to the blog we go (^_^)
Just a mini one, so the last month has been pretty busy with a lot of paperwork being thrown my way. I had a load of student counselling and kids reports done by the end of the month.
Counselling is just a talk with the student about how they think the course is going, and how to improve the class. Doesn't sound like much but when you have a good number of students to get through, it does go on a bit (-_-)
Anyway thankfully the last week of the month of June, as in this week, is a school holiday!! woohoo!! so for the last few days I've just been resting and watching the footie and now wimbledon too!!:))) shame about Tiger Tim but he was playing Federer :( Go Murray go!!
Oh something that happened that I thought was kinda cool, while walking around some part of Nagoya, I come across a hachiroku!! a hachiroku!!!! what you don't know what a hachiroku is!?
*sigh* look at the pictures then :P

Even has the black hood (^_^)



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My return...

I've finally got my arse in gear and returned to the blog! I've yet to finish my account of the China trip or start one about Singapore and Japan so I'll just go right ahead and completely avoid it by talking about my trip to Sweden! ;)

It was my first business trip! I have another to Newcastle at the end of the month. My Project Manager and I flew out to Stockholm on a Sunday afternoon expecting cooler weather than we had in London; which was baking! However the weather seemed to travel with us; it was sweltering in Stockholm the whole time we were there!

We touched down in the evening at Arland airport; which as you'd expect is very Swedish in design being open, wood panelled and square; very different to all the airports I normally pass through. We took the 20 minute express train ride to the Stockholm city centre and walked to our hotel that was nearby.

I'd skipped dinner on the plane because you had to pay and there were only sandwiches available! Unfortunately after dropping our bags off it was past 10.30pm and the restaurants had stopped serving food; we ended up eating in McDonalds who stop serving at 11pm.

The next day we took the underground train to the office. An interesting thing about the underground system in Stockholm is that all the stations look like roughy hewn cavernous passages and not the usual uniformly shaped examples on all other systems I've used; a picture would have helped here! Additionally after 9am, if the ticket office is closed, then you can effectively travel for free! In fact I don't remember seeing any ticket machines; it looked like residents buy booklets of tickets to use on the system.

The food I sampled in Sweden was very good! They eat a lot of fish over there and I had a typical grilled Mackerel salad for lunch on the first day and not as typical roast Ox (?) salad on the second; I don't normally eat a lot of salad but it is the norm for summer.

In the evening of the first day we were taken to a very nice restaurant (pictured), that effectively sits in midair, where the food was excellent. I had a veal dish with potatoes and vegetables, including asparagus, followed by a warm Winterberry and Vanilla ice cream dessert; the berries being a Swedish speciality.

After the meal we walked back to the hotel and we based a motor powered Viking boat for the tourists(pictured). The building in the background was the national gallery or museum, I don't remember which...

We took a taxi to the airport on our trip back and facing a good amount of traffic partly due to the many bridges around Stockholm being bottlenecks; the city is made up of several islands off the mainland with a network of bridges.

My PM had said that he almost always experiences delays with flights and we did this time; due to the storms around London! I usually don't have problems with flights, bar the resent experience of Singapore that I will recount at a later date...

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Waiting for Big Brother

So here's another update then while waiting for big bro to get off his butt and get in his two cents :P
So lately I've had even less time than usual.
Last week I had parents observing me teach their children. Not the most fun thing in the world to be doing I'll tell you. Nerve racking and muchos stressful. By the end I got a good response from all the parents except one class. Yup you've guessed it it's the problem class in Tuesday.
Not only are the kids hard to control, the parents are also major education freaks. They want their children to be having conversations in English during the class. They're only 6!! and learning two languages at the same time *sigh*Well at least thats over just have to some paperwork then it's back to normal.
Still playing Tennis and looking for Badminton (still!!). Broke my first Tennis string last Sunday. Broke smacking a bullet serve. Break was right in the middle which is cool :D but stringing costs a bomb which isn't.
Another reason for my lack of time, is that I've been meeting up with various people who I contacted for language exchange. So far theres Yuko (a School nurse), Kyoko (a trainee Japanese teacher) and just recently Harue (works for an import/export company).
Met up with Harue yesturday and had a ball. She was born in China and can speak Mandarin. We spent the day teaching each other. I taught her English and Cantonese, and she taught me Japanese and Madarin :P.
Last reason is of course the WORLD FRICKIN CUP!!! :))))
So watched England and what a shite game that was, crouch played shite, but the referee really ruined it for me. Kept blowing the whistle at every oppurtunity :(( And still don't get erikssons choice of substitutes. I understand resting Owen but bringing on another midfielder? the side was just completely off balance *sigh sigh*
Watching the Japanese game tonight with Kyoko and hopefully Yuko as well, should be fun ^_^.
dewa ja ne



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