ippy

I kinda want to do a comparison. On this point and in order of teaching fulfillment (based entirely on attitude, enthusiasm and interest of the kids). 1. China 2. Korea 3. Thailand 4. Japan Though china may drop down the pecking order after a few months. Kids though are enthusiastic, high level, and energetic. Well, jhs... i have to teach SH and i hate every inte f that (but thats more becuase im genki clown dipshit by style and trade and it doesnt work on young adults). Korean kids were nice and the high motivavation kids were a JOY to teach, but really could be little asshole

Me me me me! Three fun things from China: 1. Sweet and sour sauce isnt orange. Its clear. The chicken is just as bad as ever mind you 2. Yesterday i watched as one of the teachers took his fag break down the corridor on the way to his next class. 3. I asked if i could get a meal to take away. No problem they said, 10 minutes later my dinner arrives on a plate. No no, said I, take away! After about 5 seconds of thinking the dude runs to the back, gets a carrier bag and tips the food into it. Problem solved!

all fair points

If its your first time, just go to niseko. I know it gets dogged on for being the obvious choice sometimes, but if i wanted to blow my mates heads off who could ride a bit but never experienced japan id send them there. Whats not to like? Big resort, awesome nighta, good apres, lots of varied pitches and terrain, fun slackcountry, mad powder? Ticks all the boxes for the ride. If you have only a week or two and want to go kyoto and tokyo though, then go nagano (go nozawa and hakuba probs - and maybe myoko). If its a couple of days and youre flying into tokyo, go yuzawa. If you wa

isnt it If i remember right, its an automatic thing (just in case youre searching and get caught up in a burial yourself. But its just one more thing you need to keep on top of especially (well, particularly), if youre NOT the person conducting the main search.

My BCA tracker was a DEMON for fine searching (within 3 meters). But for longer range searching it got a bit gnarly. Flux lines are a bit complicated. If you dont practice with it, youre going to be boned on a search. Ive mentioned this before, but the expectation of the numbers you think youre going to see, and the actual numbers on the screen bare no relationship to one another until you learn how to follow a flux line. And that takes practice. If youre an old hand and know all this then obviously 2 antenna is no problem. Youll be no less quick out there. But if youre new, and your chances o

I do love a good review, but definitely guilty of that one. Its never a conscious thing. Its just that if you really want to like something, youll be more inclined to overlook its flaws. Capita and Bataleon for example. Both great brands of course, but although i was absolutely convinced that my airobic worked, the riot was never gonna happen. Which sorta reminds me of another flaw in reviewing: pseudo objectivity. The riot didnt work for me because i honestly dont ride anywhere near aggressive enough for it. Then again, i couldnt ride it aggressively enough because (now i think about it), th

No targets (of course), currently trying not to die after each day at work. Just done another 7 classes on the bounce so fair puggled at the minute. As for climate, it's pretty nippy out there right now... Maybe high single digits. I've alteady caught a cold and got chapped lips. It's proper cold on the mornings. If it wasn't so dry they'd be easy swimming in winter snow, but it all blows out the way. Hating the schedule at the moment, hoping ill adjust, but haven't had to deal with the bullshit commute yet. Kids are really ****ing high level though... And enthusiastic... And cheerfu

Ha! Eikaiwa is a doddle. Turn up, play stupid games or turn up and spend an hour chatting about something. The end. This is proper grown up teaching to middle and Senior high classes (all classes are 40-55 students). Kids are really sweet though. Just spent the week (actually its been a day and half but it already feels like a week - im puckered!) flirting with the text book and actually doing the following three things: 1. QA (all stand up, ask questions, they answer they can sit down - with 50 kids! wheee! half the lesson gone). 2. 10 answers on the board about me, they have to th

chinas nice. The jobs gonna be hell though 28 classes per week. They were keen to stress that im getting it easy because ive only started. Once i get used to it, i "may" (re: will), be on a proper schedule of 34 or so classes/week These are tied into a text book which i cannot avoid using. The company i work for absolutely insist i must teach to them. They are wildly optimistic if you ask me. Well meaning text book, has lots of group production activities and even choose your own discussion topics, but yeah... im not sure its level appropriate for anything other than high level small

Have visa! will travel!

Fortunately for alyou gambaru fans, the agent sent me an email warning me that its not a done deal just because they accepted it. Theyve apparently still been rejecting applications after the processing stage for no reason. He got no bad news yesterday on it he said, but its all down to tonight apparently. So not only will i be on the hoof for the cost of returning it all without a visa, ill have to pay for the application as well (because once they accept it for processing, you pay for the application regardless of the outcome). Hooray! i mean er... gambarismasu!

Nanshan is about 100km away. (bus) Jade Dragon is almost the other side of china due west. (flight) Wanlong about 250km away (bus) Yabuli about 500km away (flight) Tianjin resorts about 60km away (bus) Qiaobo is around 120km away. (bus i hope). As for snow: they are kinda boasting about ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY CENTIMETERS!!! on yubali and thats supposed to be the deepest place (well, jade dragon is a glacier). As for the resorts: i dont think theres a top to bottom longer than a km in the whole list. Two at a push. Yabuli might have the longest course, but i mean... lets not g

Rightyo, now i can start planning this: (Yulong Jade Dragon - gonna have to earn those turns) In no particular order: 1. Nanshan (biggest resort near beijing) 2. Yulong (Jade dragon - apparently a beautiful area in its own right, and season stretches Nov-june. Could be a nice late season holiday). 3. Wanlong (newest resort near-ish beijing (250km)) 4. Yabuli (looks like it might be far enough away to keep away ALL the crowds and with maybe enough resort to at least enjoy it a bit). 5. Tianjin Yulong and Jizhou (nearest okay resorts to my new digs - probably the ones ill be at

Wednesday: Reje... oh hang on! ACCEPTED!!! Looks like china won. Today i scored two jobs and seem to have a suspicious looking mole suddenly appear on my upper inner arm! its been a trip!

Update time! After a whole month the docs are with an agent in the UK and ready to be sent to the chinese embassy. Im absolutely broke. Ive just worked it out and assuming a $400 flight to china, $300 for the visa+agent+courier fees to return it to thailand (changes from july 1st this year - THE FIRST IMMIGRATION SHAKE UP IN A DECADE apparently - mean that you can only make the application from the country on your passport so i had to wing it to the UK), that means i'll have just over $300 left on my CC. (i also have 500 promised if i need it from a friend so not too atrocious). Anyway

Ive probably already said this one before. But i just cant love it enough. Paul Giamatti must be my secret favorite actor since hes in two of my all time favorite movies. This one: Man on the Moon. And this one: American Splendor.

How the **** does resident evil gross almost 300 million?

Mine fitted beautifully with my helmet. It was like they were designed in conjunction with it (maybe k2 and eg2 have a relationship - i should research but on a quest to research nothing at all this year). Pity i trashed that helmet before coming to thailand (no space to put it in bags). It took me ages to find one i actually liked Know nothing of eg2.5s im afraid.

i never ever think about goggles because eg2's are pretty much perfect. i would also argue that ive snowboarded plenty in boots that havent exactly fitted like a glove and still had a blast. If ive got shitty goggles on though im having a shitty day. goggles=boots>everything else.

get a template that says "sorry, dunno, sign up to the forums, someone there will know" and voila, more sign ups on the forums

This is pretty much the first year in 7 when i wont be in Japan. I cant even conceive what might be a target in China since the best mountains are half a continent away. Theres a few around beijing and towards north korea, but nothing that would qualify as a target. BUT in other targeting news... ive suddenly found myself interested in the idea of travelling to the Himalayas and just gawping at 8000 meter mountains. It dawned on me that i just didnt have that kind of scale inside my head and i really need to see it to get my head around it.

I always wanted to play that game. At the time it was mind boggle genius! Alas, a four or five month binge on morrowind and tribunal put me off the idea of open ended games for life.

I actually have a photo, which i took deliberately of me sitting behind the ropes at the top of Kagura staring at the bowl to Tashiro. If you ever look at a kagura map, its the roped off bit that looks mega yummy. I took it because whilst looking across at this face getting strapped in and thinking about my line, 2 ski patrol came under the ropes and stood about 10 feet away from me talking about the parts of that area they really needed to check out because it was a bit dangerous (all hail survival pera pera nihongo skills!). It was my first time ever running that line, and my reactio

oooh, how can we set up the challenge? No vague guessery. Lets all play! What shall we use as the control and what data will be predicted? Since i have zero weather claims, i definitely count as a member of the control group. Ideally we're looking for something with much less than a 25% chance of randomly guessing correct. I'll leave it up to you science bods to thrash out the details of how we can go about this... but if you can come to some kind of agreement on places, temperatures and snowfall for a VERY SPECIFIC period (can we use something like SJ weather reports for material),