StewBlog

Leon, Vicki and I met in the Cherry Tree at 8:30pm and thought it would be a good idea to go to Alberry's afterwards..

We discussed the smallest handbag in the world, which actually belongs to Vicki and also the recent fashion for wearing belts really high, as pictured...

Gonna watch this tonight!

http://www.apple.com/trailers/miramax/nocountryforoldmen/trailer/

Well it was certainly tense throughout, with no soundtrack at all. It did almost remind me of the Terminator, in terms of the relentlessness of the pursuit and the hunter's iron fortitude. I thought Llewellen was a great character and I should mention I thought there was something of Chuck Norris about him... It has made me think I should pay a visit to some of those Southern states to get a new pair of cowboy boots... I was surprised to see Kelly Macdonald make an appearance as well - the last time I saw her was in Trainspotting although I'm sure she's made loads of movies since then.

Looking at the revised snow forecast for Alpe d'Huez next week has got me very excited this morning - I can barely contain myself! They're expecting nearly half a metre of snow to fall on the resort over the next week, just in time for our arrival on 8th March...

Meatballs
Aberdeen Angus Minced Beef
Crushed Black Pepper
Salt
Finely chopped onion
Finely chopped chilli
Good sprinkling of dried oregano
Lug or two of olive oil

Just over a week to go now until Snowboarding and it looks like fresh snow is on the way. Woohoo!

I was round at my folk's house for dinner this evening. We had a discussion about my parent's proposal to build an extension to the rear of the house which didn't really get all that far...

Matty brought the Wii down to the living room and we had a go of that instead. I'd played Wii Sports before so I was used to the tennis, golf, bowling and baseball, but my brother just bought a new game, Mario & Sonic at the Olympics which is brilliant! I especially like the archery! There are many other events to compete in from sprinting to fencing...

We won the pub quiz in the Dolphin again this evening, so we got another Oxfam goat and, of course, some chocolate...

Matt mentioned in passing that he has (as I later learned for the past 7 years) been working on developing a boat made out of meringue that he will use to sail across the channel and eat on arrival in France... This is all because a man, apparently, once crossed Windemere Lake (or somewhere like that) in a giant Yorkshire Pudding, although I understand he didn't eat it afterwards. Something like this, I guess:

Getting back to the meringue... through some experimentation, so I am told, it was discovered that it will dissolve fairly quickly if placed directly in the water, so will need some sort of coating that will be waterproof on the outside and also bond to the meringue on the inside - this is the next main obstacle to overcome...

My personal interview was scheduled for 6pm, so I got there in plenty of time and sat in the hotel reception trying to think of answers to questions they might ask. I also had a quick look through my CV and tried to remember what I'd written in my 500-word essay entitled 'Why I Want to Live and Work in Japan' - I handed in the only copy I had the previous day and forgot to print one for myself... It came round quickly anyway and I made my way up in the lift to floor 6 and along the corridor to room 624...

Matoko came out of the room at precisely 6pm and the interview began. First of all, I was told I had to spend 10 minutes preparing another lesson of which I was to teach 5 miutes of to Matoko as if she were a beginner Japanese student of English. This was a bit of a shock, but I gave the lesson on 'I used to...' 'but now I...' i.e. 'I used to have long hair, but now I have short hair' and that seemed to go quite well. Next I had al little bit of feedback and went through another minute of the lesson and we moved on to lots of basic questions about what sort of school I'd like to teach in; what sort of location I'd be interested in; about the teaching schedules; expectations of teachers and many other things. The whole thing took about an hour and fifteen minutes.

Pics to follow soon...

The day started at 6:00am for me. My own fault really as I was meant to have prepared a 30-minute lesson plan, of which 5 minutes was to be presented at my interview with AEON, later that morning, at the Harrington Hall Hotel in Kensington.

I decided to draw up a lesson teaching basic directions in relation to other things: Next to, Opposite, Behind, In Front of, On the Corner of etc... I used Powerpoint to draw a fictitious map of a crossroads in Canterbury and labelled boxes on the map as the Bank, Butcher, Bakery, Chemist etc... My plan was to teach the question: 'Where is the ____?' and the response: 'The ____ is next to the/behind the/opposite the ____.'

After a frantic few hours typing and printing lesson plans and CVs, I was out of the door in time to catch the 8:39 service to Victoria. Karen had brought round a breakfast the previous evening for me to have on the train which was great! Apples & grapes, a croissant and some orange juice - Cool! I eventually made it to the meeting room in the hotel at 10:57am, just three minutes prior to the start at 11:00am... Phew!

There was a pretty lengthy information session covering all sorts of things, presented by AEON's two main recruiters, Lars and Matoko. I guess there were about 40 of us there. We broke for lunch and had to come back in groups of six with all of our documentation and present 5 minutes of our planned lesson. I was first to go... gulp... I was nervous because I knew I was being scrutinised by the recruiter. In addition, I'd never taught English before so I was worried about speaking slowly enough, making myself clear and about a hundred other things! Still, I could relax once mine was over and look engaged when everyone else was doing their 5-minute piece. After that was all over, we were all given a short test, with a several sections: They read out the following words to spell: accommodation, committed, camouflage and three others which I can't recall right now, then there was a grammar section and some short essay-style questions. Then, we all had to wait in the Hotel reception while the tests were marked and our lessons were assessed. Lars and Matoko appeared about 30 minutes later each clutching a set of named enevelopes. As we had learned earlier, some would contain an appointment for a private interview the next day and others would contain the disappointing news that they had not made it through to the next round... All quite dramatic and not unlike X-Factor!

Lucky for me and three of the other guys in my group, we opened our envelopes to find we had interviews the following day

Karen came over at about 9 and we sat down to watch Babel. As was explained to me, the movie is based on the story of Babel from Genesis, whereby God punishes some folk for trying to build a tower up to heaven by scattering them to the four corners of the Earth 'confounding their language, that they may not understand each other's speech'.
So, the story centres around four families speaking four languages: English, Spanish, Arabic and Japanese.

6/10

The A-Team star, Mr. T, has vowed to never shave off his trademark mohawk because he believes his exotic hairstyle has been the key to his Hollywood success.

"You see Frank Sinatra sang my song My Way. I'm not wishy washy. I ain't changing with no styles."

*Taken from Yahoo News*

I can't help reading his quote (in my head) in the style in which Mr. T speaks in the A-Team.

Went for a few drinks in Simple Simons with Karen, who spotted, as always when a jazz band are doing their stuff, a chap so wrapped up in the music that he couldn't help but make slightly involuntary movements of the oddest fashion... He had a jumper on like a bee.

A man (M) and a lady (L) who are very much in love and devoted to one another, are separated by a river with no way of getting across to the other side. On L's side of the river, there is a boatman (B} who is able to take her over to the other side of the river but refuses to do so unless she pays him $20, twice his normal fare. L has no money. Another man (S) then tells L that he will giver her $20 if she sleeps with him. L agrees to do so and on receiving the $20, pays B who takes her over to the other side of the river. She is reunited with M and they are very happy together. However, a friend of M (F) finds out what L did with S and immediately tells M. On learning the news, M finds L and ends things with her, stating that he wants nothing more to do with her. Your task is to rank these five people, M, L, B, S, and F, from best person to worst person and give reasons.

http://video.news.sky.com/skynews/video/?&videoSourceID=1306297&flashURL=/feeds/skynews/latest/flash/nakedrace_210208_1007.flv

After passing from the mortal world to that of the spirit world you are confronted with two identical angels, guarding two identical doors. One of the doors leads to heaven and one to hell. You may ask one question of either of the angels before making the decision to enter one of the doors for eternity. The angel guarding the door to hell always lies and the angel guarding the door to heaven always tells the truth.

What do you ask... and why?

MJ and I found a Starbucks on the end of Bread Street and went in for breakfast rolls and coffee - A very pleasant way to start the day!

We then just hailed a cab to take us down to the Kings campus for the start of the physics open day. There was a talk about the course structure, the university itself, a guided tour of the accommodation and then lunch in the student union. We also had a bus tour of the City which is covered in road and building works just now.

Another trip up north, this time to look at Edinburgh University with MJ. We took the 20:55 EasyJet flight out of Stansted...

A load of us from our group at work went down to the Fleur de Lis for Vru's leaving lunch. I had the vast Taste of Mexico again... and an obligatory Guinness.

Bought this thing today. I can highly recommend it if you're a beginner (like me) but you're keen to move into Digital SLR photography. The settings are pretty basic: You can ask it to do everything automatically, set shutter priority, aperture priority, leave certain other things for you to set or make it all manual! There are also a selection of modes to capture sports shorts, close-ups, landscapes etc... the maximum resolution is only 6.1 megapixels, but if you mostly just want to look at this stuff on the computer and don't want to print anything larger than A4, this is more than enough, I think.

Anna texted me in the morning to say Scott had asked her to marry him, so a few of us gathered at the house for some drinks and snacks in the evening. I took round a champagne from a small, independent house just outside Rheims - I have it on good authority that they concentrate on making a small amount of great champagne rather than churning it out en masse like Moët & Chandon and Veuve Clicquot.

A few of us decided to meet up for some drinks in Canterbury and avoid the usual Valentine's Day shenanigans, so we all spent quite a bit of time in Casey's with some Guinness and Sambuca and later moved on to Alberrys...

Finally, the annual jaunt to the French Alps is organised for 2008. One week in the fine looking resort of Alpe d'Huez! I cannot wait to get underway on the 8th March now...

This little kitten keeps running into the house and making herself at home whenever I open the front door!

Some friends of mine were discussing their top 10 TV shows of all time on Tuesday. Here is my list, in no particular order:

Extras
The Office (UK)
Poirot
The Apprentice (UK)
I'm Alan Partridge
Nighty Night
Midsomer Murders
Louis Theroux
Red Dwarf
Bread

Matty and MJ were keen on heading out for dinner as my parents were both out for the evening. We hadn't been to Wagamama for a while so I met the guys there at 7:30 and promptly ordered a (not quite cold enough) bottle of Kirin Ichiban. We got in some Tori Kare Age, Duck Gyoza, Ebi Katsu, Yaki Soba, Some kind of salad(?) and a Chicken Katsu Curry - Lovely! Somehow the chaps managed to find rooom for White Chocolate and Ginger Cheesecake and Chocolate Fudge Cake. We went off to the Two Sawyers for a drink and to have a go at their weird quiz thing - You each get given an electronic control panel and use that to input your name and answer sets of multiple choice questions that appear on TV screens dotted around the pub. It all occurs silently, so you can play the quiz alongside regular boozers. The questions are too difficult though!

The guys went home just before 10 and I went on to meet a few guys in the Old Buttermarket Inn (a terrible pub). We moved on to the Canterbury Tales for late beers...

I made up some pancake mix when I got home from a Delia Smith recipe that I found on the BBC website - I omitted the butter though!

Karen came round but had already had dinner, so I had to eat all of the pancakes! I managed 4 and 3/4 - One of them went a bit wrong in the pan when Karen tried to flip it so it ended up not being round...