The Bureau

I've decided to take a tip from the Chinese and deal with troubling times by retreating to contemplate life by the side of a beautiful lake. As luck would have it though, the weather in Lausanne is unremittingly grey today, and Lake Geneva is just an idea in my mind as I watch the rain sleet down from my cosy indoor nest. My companion assures me the sun will honour us with an appearance tomorrow, but you can never trust the Swiss.

So, borrowing a meme from mcco12, here is my list of things I learned this year.

1. Never trust a Swiss person.

2. Pastis is not so bad, really.

3. The best liars are those who believe their own lies.

4. I don't want to be a lawyer; and spending an absolute fortune on getting a qualification in law was well worth it purely for this realisation.

5. If someone tells you he is thinking about killing himself, it probably means he doesn't want to die.

6. If someone really wants to kill himself, he will, and he won't warn you first.

7. Making your own cream cheese is surprisingly quick and simple.

8. Being in love can be jaw achingly tedious.

9. The first thing a person tells you about herself is often the only thing you really need to know.

10. Good friends are the best defence against depression.

My best wishes to you all for a prosperous, tranquil and satisfying 2009.

As the saying goes: 'If you've nothing good to say, then say nothing'. So rather than inflict a deluge of Yuletide bad cheer on you, gentle readers, here are some jokes in regional British dialects. If you don't get them, ask Johnny for an explanation - he has more time on his hands than me.

Yorkshire joke:
A bloke from Yorkshire goes to the jewellers:
He says, "Can tha mek a gold statue o' mi dog?".

"Aye, reckon a can," sez the jeweller.
"Does tha want it eighteen carat?".

"Neigh," sez bloke, "I want it chewin' a bone."

Courtesy of Popbitch.


Scottish joke:
Wha's the quickest way tae gie a Scotsman a sex change?
Throw him aff a tall building so he lands wi a fud.

Courtesy of the fitba pundits on Radio Scotland.

My explanatory guide on subjects to be avoided at all costs in ELT materials.

Pornography
Student: Teacher, what is 'pornography'?
Teacher: Er, it's pictures of naked people.
Student: Do you mean like paintings?
Teacher: Er, not really.
Student (smelling blood now): So, what is the difference?
Teacher: ... Why don't you ask Michel? He was looking at some on one of the student lounge computers just this morning.

Alcohol
Qatari education minister: So, you want to supply my country with your English books?
Publisher: That's right. We have some top-quality authors and our books have won awards from the British Council.
Qatari education minister: What is this picture on page 55?
Publisher: Oh, that... That's just ... some young people, at a party, sipping ... non-alcoholic cocktails?
Qatari education minister: Next!

Racism
Teacher: Today we're going to discuss racism. Anyone have any stories they'd like to share?
Student: My sister was beaten to death by white supremacists.
Teacher: On second thoughts, let's turn to the grammar section on page 11.

Sex
Teacher: Today we're going to talk about sex. Perhaps those of you I've already slept with could get into pairs and give me a score out of five. The rest of you should line up in the corridor outside the storeroom.

Narcotics
Teacher: Class, let's talk about drugs, and the evil they do to our society.
Student: Carlos sells the best weed. Honestly, you should try some.
Carlos: Yeah, anyone not have my number?

Islam
Teacher: So what do we know about the ancient religion of Islam?
Chinese student: Muslims are all terrorists and women-haters.
Muslim student: Chinese people eat dogs and babies!
Italian student: Who wants to hear a joke about 9/11?

Pork
Qatari education minister: Ah, I see you have chosen some more appropriate pictures for your textbooks this year.
Publisher: Yes, we spent a lot of money checking and then reprinting the series to remove all possible connotations of sexual behaviour or alcohol consumption. I think you'll be delighted with the results.
Qatari education minister: What is this picture here, on page 121?
Publisher: It ... appears to be a young man ... enjoying a ... bacon sandwich... I'll get my coat.

You know you've lost touch with reality when you start feeling nostalgic about electricity and running water.

I've just finished The Road by Cormac McCarthy and have been watching the excellent Survivors on telly. This morning as I was filling the kettle to make coffee I genuinely thought 'it's going to be so sad when I turn on the tap and no more water comes out'.

I've also started sizing up the people I walk past on the street, wondering which of them will share their last can of baked beans with me when all the supermarkets have been looted and which will chain me to a wall in a cellar and systematically cut off my limbs and roast them for dinner.

Come to that I've had to question whether I'd be able to resist the lure of cooked human flesh if that were really all that stood between me and death from starvation.

I really really hope I never get to find out.

I just had to write a chapter on Project Management for a business studies textbook.

I used to hate teaching business English and writing business English materials, but then I went freelance and started running my own business and suddenly the subject came alive for me. Working with Americans and Chinese people also invigorated my interest in the subject: they don't tend to look askance at the business of making money in the way that many Brits do. In recent years my interest in business has verged on the geeky. I've become the kind of person who enjoys taking training courses at the Inland Revenue (sorry, HMRC) and researching the minutiae of contract law. My accountant says I am his star client, because my spreadsheets are so efficient he can do my tax return in half the time it normally takes (and yes, he does charge me half as much). I knew his business was going to go bust three months before my last boss did.

This last part made the writing of this chapter a rather bittersweet process. One of the tasks I set was to read quotes from dissatisfied clients and identify the mistake made by the project manager, another was to identify the most vulnerable points along a project's lifecycle, another how to incorporate risk management. A couple of years ago this would mostly have just been common sense, but I've seen so many projects botched through bad project management in recent times that I have a rather uncomfortably large store of real life experiences to draw from.

Thinking hard, I can't call to mind a single really good project manager, and I'm starting to wonder if it's even possible to find one. The skills required are so varied that anyone at the helm of a complex project is bound to fail on at least some grounds. If you're good at managing people, chances are you dislike detail. Perhaps you're hardcore at keeping suppliers within a budget but useless at communicating with your team. Almost invariably you'll have an overinflated sense of your abilities in one area and deep insecurities about your abilities in others.

Most of this comes down to personality and ego, in the end. I've seen an entire series of books literally ruined because the project manager was out of her depth and desperately trying to salvage her reputation by ruining those of everyone in her team. Judging by the stories I hear at publishing network events, this type of thing is depressingly common.

So it's nice that I have so much material on which to base my chapter, but I heartily wish that more of it were positive. Why don't they teach management in schools?

...about working in the English Language Teaching (ELT) industry is that you have an excuse to research and write about almost every subject under the sun (apart from those that fall under the PARSNIP exceptions, of which perhaps another post at another time).

Things I have had to think about this week:

-Spontaneous Human Combustion: it can kill your pets by consuming all the oxygen in the room.
-Ways to describe an electric toothbrush shaped like a banana.
-Knowledge management - will companies invest in it less during times of economic crisis?
-How to explain to Chinese students why English people use the term 'skin and blister' to refer to a female sibling.
-Will students be able to label a diagram of decubitus ulcers?
-The subjunctive.

I love my job.

...I don't like Mondays.

Anyone know how much it costs to petition a company for liquidation?