A couple of weeks ago I was covering at a Science University out in Saitama. One of my classes that day is where there isn't really a plan, it's more of a chance for students to have a free-flowing conversation. It pretty much ends up me being interviewed (or interrogated) for 40 minutes. One student asked me what my favourite animal was. I said octopus and shocked faces stared back at me. "But, why....?" I think students usually answer "cat"or "dog" because. . . "it's cute". And then I came along and was all like "Yeah but it's got like eight legs with suckers on them, and they're like really, I mean ridiculously intelligent, and they have beaks man!" I think sometimes I get a bit carried away when I talk to my students. But I have been thinking about my favourite animal and there may be a new contender. The Mooray Eel. I know it is wrong, or not so cool to assign human qualities to animals these days but I don't care. Mooray Eels are cool because they look badass. Unbelievably badass. If you were in an underwater alley, you would not want to run into these guys. Imagine you were a shady dive in Atlantis, where there is just a laptop hooked up to some speakers and you thought "this song sucks" and change it in the middle of the song, and the moray eel is all "That was my song" and then you wet yourself but it doesn't matter because you are underwater.
They are super hardcore, and if I remember correctly, I don't think they got a fair representation in Ariel, the little mermaid. I think they are way more clever than that. I am going to become a lawyer for moray eels (also maybe for Ursula too, and that lobster, talk about stereotypes).
Also moray eels hunt with other animals. They work with grouper to catch prey. How cool is that? I think, it is the only known case of two different species working together to catch prey. So, I think it is an interesting question. But I think you should discount answers based on cuteness, but allow answers based on deliciousness. Octopus is delicious. But not moray eels.
p.s. I love teaching at Science Universities. It is so much fun getting students to tell you about their studies, especially when they are Masters students. I had a really cool conversation with one student about his project which was using brainwaves to control robots. That was another fun thing about my last job. Down the hall from me was the robotics department so you used to be able to watch students test their robots in the hallway. Soooo cool!
Nothing else to it, I'm just way too lazy to have a blog. Or possibly I don't have enough interesting things to write about. I'm going with a combo of the two.
Oh, and Dinosaurs are cool. In my job I have to write lesson plans and resources for other teachers to use. At the moment I'm trying to figure out how I can put as many references as possible about dinosaurs in them.
I was out to lunch with P (funny bunny) today when he turned to me and said
"Are you doing that just to annoy me?"
I wasn't actually, I was occasionally walking behind him rather than next to him so that people going in the opposite direction could get past. But as soon as he said this I couldn't stop myself from spending the rest of the walk back to the office walking behind him and copying everything he did. Prior to this I had been lunging down the road while P (funny bunny) kind of looked embarrassed and pretended not to know me.
It made me start thinking about a conversation I have with myself and/or other people every now and again. About if you ever stop being an idiot in public, and also about appropriate behaviour for certain situations (weddings). I have had this conversation in the past with my friend Davy. I hypothesized that when you go to The Warehouse and you don't even think about going into the toy aisle to look at lego then you have grown up. Davy probably said something very intelligent or witty (he's very intelligent and witty) but I'm not a very good listener so I have no idea what it was. But I do think it was something about new boardgames.
I just had another think about lego though and I think the reason why I stopped looking at it was because it isn't as good as it used to be and doesn't encourage creativity as much. Nothing to do with being a grown up possibly.
I might have to think about lego some more, and when I go back to NZ hang out with my nephews (and their toys).
So anyway, I
turned to google to try find some answers, but it was kind of boring and my short attention span
meant I wanted to watch soapmentaries about hoarders on youtube
instead. I have decided that rather than grow up, I probably just need
to act more professionally at work. I will try to refrain from making noises
like an injured elephant (a co-worker told me this is what I sound like) when I get frustrated about my projects. I think it
is still ok for me to make noises like a robot though.
Image: Lyn Gateley
I was looking for an image of an elephant robot but then I got distracted and saw this and I was all "Whoaaaa!!" in my head.
Over the years I have decided that if I could be anything in life, I would like to be a cat. I think it comes from watching the 4 cats we had growing up just spending their days, chilling in the sun. Most people I meet I tell them about my dreams of becoming a cat, some look at me strangely, others, you can see in their eyes have the secret yearning to be a cat too. I think I have told my co-worker Natatat about it heaps of times. I told her again the other day.
On Friday, Natatat and I were walking back from cheesy goodness (lunch), it was a gorgeously sunny day and I said to Natatat Me: This be perfect cat weather Natatat: arrghhh!! Natatat didn't actually say that, sometimes I just like to imagine what it would be like if she sounded like a pirate. She asked me what kind of cat I would be. It got me thinking, and this was my answer: "well, I would have to be well fed, not one of those cats who isn't allowed outside. Also I want to live somewhere where there is low cat density". Natatat: Ahhhh, you want to be the cat king of the forest. Me: ???? Natatat: Like my brother's cat. He lives next to this forest, so his cat just goes and has adventures in the forest. He catches mice and rats and hedgehogs and deer all the time. Me: deer? Natatat: maybe not deer. I want to be the cat king of the forest. And catch some deer.
So. . . . where to begin? I suppose I should say why I am writing this. Someone told me to do it. Actually slightly different than that. When I first left New Zealand I used to write big group emails home. A few people told me they enjoyed them, and then slowly over time I got lazy. . . just like I probably will with this. . . The other reason why this started was because I was having a conversation with a colleague on the way home today. P: I need to get a hobby. Me: No you don't, people don't have hobbies anymore. They just watch tv or do nothing on the internet for hours on end. P: But I meet people all the time with hobbies, I used to have hobbies before I moved to Japan. Me: pshhhh! What hobbies do these people have? P: Like... rock climbing and stuff. Me: Just google it when you get home. 'hobbies for an English teacher in Japan' P: Yeah, like google has all the answers. What P doesn't seem to have realised yet is that google does have all the answers. It really does. I thought about this on the rest of the way home, and about the questions that have been bouncing around in my head for a while. One of those questions was 'How do you meet people who are from the same planet as you?' I should explain that I am not trying to meet aliens. Just people who look at the world in the same way as I do. A friend of mine, hmmmm... lets call her . . . Feijoa (she loves feijoas, and would like to be in a Feijoa association. Actually she would like to be in a lot of associations: koalas, hedgehogs, polish children's literature, etc). So, Feijoa often says to me "I can smell you are from the same planet as me" which is apparently, the direct translation of a Japanese saying into English. I really like it. I also really like finding people who are from the same planet as me (or just have a faint whiff about them). I met one the other day, she barely spoke a word of English, but through Feijoa we had a hilarious conversation about trimming people's caterpillar eyebrows while they slept. She also invited me to a hammock association meeting. As far as I understand, people who love hammocks meet in parks, talk about where to get the best quality hammocks, bring their hammocks along with them, and then everyone gets to try them out and figure out the best position for lying in hammocks. How cool is that?? Anywayhow, back to how google has the answer for everything. Meeting caterpillar eyebrows/hammock association girl was very exciting. I hadn't met anyone who had the same delicious alien stench as me in a while. I wanted more. Now, not later. So I googled it. I didn't find anyone from the same planet as me (not yet, but I will delve deeper into the wondrous world of google). But I found Adam McLane's blog about youth ministry, leadership, social media and life. (His words, not mine) He had a post called 'Do we live on the same planet?' And there was this: I believe in Jesus. He is my only hope for salvation. And I fully
acknowledge that the church is God’s chosen instrument for
believers. But there is this sliver of people in every church who… are really weird. And no one ever has the guts to tell them the truth: “You’re
weird. And you really need to work on that. Jesus asks us to be
different in a good way. Your weirdness is making it harder for me.” It made my day. (The quote above may be a little out of context, I don't really think it is, but feel free to use www.google.com to find his blog and read it for yourself).
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