It’s been a whirlwind week, meeting people from the textbook gig I had this year for a dinner party (complete with karaoke and a stop at a wine bar), frantic syllabus-drafting and a meeting with fellow teachers to discuss the new Listening & Speaking Course guidelines, followed by Indian food and beer, an end-of-semester lunch meeting with my department, where we wished the department head a good year off on sabbatical in San Francisco, followed by a meeting with Charles and Jeffery at Carne Station, and lots of meat and drink. Last night, Lime and I went on a futile …
Month: January 2008
It’s Been Rather…
… busy. Aside from work stuff, there have been reasons for me to leave the house almost every day this week. Last night was the most unusual one — a party for people who worked on a textbook. I proofread, and so I got invited along. Food, and drink, and some good conversation. I met a (lit?) professor at Hong Ik who is into SF. And one of the editors of the book I proofread remarked on my place of birth, Malawi. How did she know? She’d come and read this page. This surprised me, and I am taking it …
Writing — A Yearly Review
If you’re not into these “writer posts,” move along. I have sometimes considered putting these onto a separate hunk of blog, and separating them out from the main RSS feed as well, since I don’t think most people are interested, but I have writer friends who are, and no hordes of fans teeming in. Anyway, for now, it’s here, and people who want to read more can click through to the post…
Ontarians 8% Stupider Than Rest of Canada
Via Canadian SF author Peter Watts’ blog, here’s a depressing factoid: Ontarians 8% stupider than the rest of Canada. (And 2% stupider than Americans.) That is, if we can equate stupidity with evolution-denial. And of course, we bloody well can. Yet again, Ontario leading the nation in the race to import the crappiest aspects of American culture to Canada.
The Bureaucrats Are Winning…
So I have one duty left for this semester — to input the syllabi for next semester by next Friday. I said to the office assistant who reminded me of this, “Okay, but if I enter it later, it doesn’t matter, right? There’s some time closer to semester when this is possible, right? Because when I started working here, [previous previous office assistant] told me it was no big deal and I could enter my syllabi later on…” “Oh!” she said, with wide eyes. “But that has a negative effect on your evaluation.” “Huh?” “Your points. You will have fewer …