Black Tuesday. Rant.

Dark morning, overcast, humid as hell suddenly and sleepy from too many car alarms. Bus muggy, arrived late.

Assembly on 'Community Service'. Two minutes in the room was collectively entering hypnosis. I could only concentrate by sweepstake betting with the person next to me on which kid would fall asleep/lose consciousness first. Turns out it was a dead heat between the girl in Year 9 and EVERYONE ELSE IN THE ROOM.

I swear I could feel my heart rate slowing.

So, man wth microphone rambles on for TWENTY FIVE MINUTES, ruining the chance that ANYONE would ever want to do ANYTHING for the community again. Spanish collegue leans over: 'Are you understanding this?' I shake my head. She looks jealous, 'Enjoy that.'

It takes a certain arrogance to be THAT DULL for that long. And I'm free Lesson 1. Or I was. 15 minutes left, barely enough time to do anything useful. Curse Community Idiot.

Lesson 2 in Library, destroyed by loud irritating class whose teacher wouldn't even tell her students to be shut up.

Lesson 3 and 4, dull, though mostly my fault. Lesson 3 I had a teacher observing. She taught them last year. There are 24 of them, and clearly it would be impossible not to greet and kiss EVERYBODY before you enter the room; that would be just rude. Glad I planned for an hour and wrote a tightly timed lesson. Lesson 4 taught in dark, dank room with brown curtains like an old woman's hair.

Lunch. First 30 mins, stopped in to Admin. Found out our flat has 'fallen through'. Wonderful. Landlord has apparently sniffed that some English speakers are renting and uped the rent by 20%. Boludo!

Arrive late for lunch: food cold, maximum possible noise in the canteen. One empty table, thank the Lord: I can sit on my own like a loser and relax without having to talk and silently fume about the flat. About to enjoy my food, I look up and the originator of this disasterous day - the Community Service guy - takes a place. And he speaks English. So I get the ENTIRE torturous assembly for a second time, and, though I would have thought this impossible to believe this morning, it is even more dull in English.

Lesson 5: Primary. The little monkeys are trying on their outfits for the school play today. So obviously their Mummies have all come to look at them. Every time I look up during the lesson there's another Mummy at the window asking if they can just borrow little Manuelito for a momentito. Rolling subs of a lesson. Only the town orphan makes it through the lesson uninterrupted.

Spanish meeting. One hour: at no point are their less than two people speaking, at no point is anyone speaking English. Which is fine, but made my response to the question, 'Doug, what do you think?' slightly monosyllabic.

Toys out the pram, I phone for a remise (taxi) to bring the day to a close.

End of Black Tuesday, end of rant.

Bees

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I spent the whole of lunch talking to a fellow teacher about bees.

No, it wasn't, it was fascinating. It turns out that bees are amazing, and here's why, in 5 easy to remember facts.

1. Your average honey bees lives for about 2 months.
2. A queen bee, genetically identical to its honey bee brothers and sisters, lives for 6 YEARS, simply due to it's uber-organic royal jelly diet.
3. Honey bees become alcoholics (but they never smoke).
4. Hive politics: on occasion, a hive will rebel against the queen bee, and breed and feed up a rival queen bee II. When queen bee II is big and strong, there is a mutiny, and the most dominant set of bees forces the other out. (And you can bet your ass there is then one hell of a hive party.)
5. Bees are not allowed to travel to the United States as stipulated in the Patriot Act.

Good, eh? And you're still dining out on your 'bees-can-only-sting-you-once-cause-they-die-when-they-sting-you-oo-but-they-can't-tell-anyone-cause-they're=already-dead' knowledge. Shame on you.

So the next time somebody snooty tries to get one up on you in the workplace based on their superior bee knowledge, that's apis florea, by the way, hit them with some of these learnings.

And yes, no 3 is almost completely true. Google it.

Being this, and a disponsable condition to board.

Whilst in Colonia ferry terminal, awaiting carriage back across the water home, a very strict man announced the following. He announced it every 5 minutes, and we were there for a while, so I wrote it down.

We are home safely now, so it can't have been that important. Still, any suggestions as to what the meaning might have been would be welcome:

"Ladies and Gentlemen. Please be advise-ed that passengers travelling without teeple (?) for safety they must dispatch all baggages at the terminal hall access. Being this, and a disponsable condition to board."

Essential Training

Last night I read several pages of the Al Queda training manual.

It is rather mean about people like me.

Work avoidance

Late night, too much Malbec, too much beef, flat was too hot, too many car alarms, couldn't sleep, up since 5 etc

So day of pottering and work avoidance in order: bless the internet for making that so much easier. Today I have:

Been hooked to cricinfo for most of this avo hoping England can scrap for what is now an unlikely victory in the 4th one dayer. 'Watched' the whole Murray-Bjorkman in US Open on the bbc textupdate site, sent dozens of emails, updated blog, perused facebook, caught up on the world news (China's big, isn't it?) and wrote a poem (it was rubbish, but better than trying to think).

Que bueno!

Colonia del Sacramento

Colonia, just across the river from here into Uruguay, where we were for the weekend. Gorgeous little UNESCO World Heritage town, best described through the photos methinks. (Click photos to enlarge)

Snapshot and sunset

TwentyFourHoursInBuenosAires. This is what's going on:

River have taken only 2 points from 9 at the start of the new championshio, but Boca have started stronger than expected without talismanic genius Riquelme (who they couldn't keep as, like Beckham, he would cost more than the whole squad combined. Unlike Beckham, he's worth it).

It rained for 40 hours Saturday - Sunday, when will the winter end? Didn't spoil our weekend getaway to Colonia del Sacramento, cute little town 50 minutes by ferry across the Rio Plate in Uruguay. Muy lindo. Woke up to Evita on the TV: realise why the Argie's don't really like the way Santa Evita is portrayed in the movie.

An ex-Cabinet minister, Daniel Varizat, was swamped by irate protestors in Rio Gallegos last night. Saying he feared for his life, as his car was surrounded, he hit the gas and ran over 19 people, 3 of whom are now in critical condition. Horrific.

The Kirchners have decided which one of them will run for President: Nestor will stand down, his wife's going to run. No need to re-print the posters or anything, they still just read: KIRCHNER.

Crisis de energia continues: signs are all over the school urging people to join the country and save energy, switch lights off etc. Better than before though (when my remise/taxi could only drive me half way home, and I had to walk the second half in the cold: about an hour.)

On the bright side I have no idea if the UK still has Big Brother.

And I just bought a half-litre tub of ice-cream for £2 (chocolate suizo, vanilla, limon), have a large glass of fine Tempranillo (another £2) in front of me, I'm listening to the uber-camp upbeatiness that is Mika and outside is the most beautiful sunset I have ever seen.