Slackin'

Sorry folks, I've been lazy in keeping up with my own blog and let ALL (2) of my readers down. :P I will try to keep up and update some info here.

It's been awhile since I wrote anything. Not too too much news other than I've been busy trying to keep up with teaching English classes, trying to keep up with looking for new ideas for Popgadget playing a professional blogger, playing/practicing with my band, going to see mom, and spending time with Tunji and still try to catch live music here and there.

It's getting better AND worse at the same time at my teaching job. The good news is that I'm getting a little better at being able to tell what would or wouldn't work for a class. The bad part is I'm getting a bit tired of never knowing what really to prepare for the class, and out of ideas on what to teach them. Sort of a catch 22 really. Because of the nature of the school's set up, teachers never know how many students will show up, or what some of their levels may be if we get any new faces. Since there's no textbook or a curriculum to follow, teachers are left to their own devices and have to dream up new things to teach the students at each and every class. I'm constantly struggling to come up with new and fresh ideas to teach them. We shall see how long will I last doing this.

Writing for Popgadget has been a lot of fun so far. Since I have to keep up with research and finding new toys on the market, I've been just "tech-crazed" with all my feelers and antennas set at at 11, picking up all/any signal that comes my way. Supposedly I need to submit 5 posts each week, which is quite a bit 'cause each post also involves certain amount of research and editing. I've been doing alright until this past week. So I'm afraid I have a bit of catching up to do and will have to write some more.

Some of you may already know that I have joined a band! We just did another one of those open mic thingys the other night at The Wanch. Good fun, but sorry to say, I still suck. Tunji helped and shot some video, which I still have to edit and compress. Hopefully I'll be able to put it up soon to share. Also, we now have a gig lined up for the 17th of June, but we'll have to come up with FOUR hours of material. So we'll be practicing more and gonna try to work on more songs. Yikes! That's just 2 weeks from now. I shall keep ya'll posted on how it'll go.

Back in Sunderland, the TV downstairs had been "fuzzy" recently, and it finally gave out. Took me 3 tries to make an appointment for Sifu Cheung to come over, but he finally showed up and brought enough people to help and moved the second floor TV downstairs. So now mom has TV to watch again. Though that also means there's a giant empty space on the second floor where the TV used to be. I wasn't thinking correctly, but I should have asked him to move the third floor TV down here instead, since it's not doing anything up there anyway. Maybe I can enlist Tunji and Timothy... :)

Speaking of Tunji, he was trapped in the elevator the other day. I was coming home, and just got out of the elevator when he called. He calmly asked me where I was and I told him I'm just getting home. I asked him where he was, and still in a very calm manner he informed me that he's in our building's elevator. I said, but I just got out of one. He said, "Well, I'm in the other one, and had been for the past 15 minutes." The elevator maintainence people didn't show up for another 20 minutes, and he was finally out after being trapped in there for more than 30 minutes, and late for his audition for the Elvis band. It was a good thing that the lights didn't get cut off and there was still a fan running inside. Since we moved in, this has been the second time that happened. Tunji wasn't the unfortunate victim last time. It was some other poor soul who was trapped, but Tunji did had to walk up 12 flights of stairs to get to our apartment. Sucky building. Perhaps they'll tear it down afterall.... :P

Yes, if you were reading the last paragraph carefully, you may be asking yourself by now, "What Elvis band?" See, that was a test to see if you were paying attention. Tunji was asked to audition as a drummer for this Elvis band that a friend of a friend was putting together. It sounded like it was a pretty odd experience with some very strange "cats". Long and short of it is that sorry to disappoint ya'll, but he probably won't be playing with Elvis anytime real soon; which is too bad, 'cause it could have been a lot of fun if it were done right.

As a side bar, we've just bought a small Iranian rug. Something we've been wanting to do for years and years, and finally decided to go ahead. Will try to take a picture of it later.