Another one of my anti-tech rants, plus a frightful deluge of nostalgia

Amongst all the words I use to describe myself – not that I describe myself on a daily basis to myself or to others – ‘luddite’ must come in near the top.

One of the pitfalls of working for a good school is that it’s far better equipped technologically than any place I’ve ever worked before, including in the US and Britain. Hell, when teaching in America last spring, I had to use the standard green chalkboard that I grew up with, and occasionally I had access to an overhead projector with a temperamental bulb. I once joked with my Kyrgyz students about whether they still used chalkboards and they looked at me like I was nuts. No, they coolly replied, we have whiteboards in our schools.

Just less than 2 months into my tenure here, I’m having my difficulties with technology – and that’s a whopping understatement. It befuddles me at the best of times, and this is far from the best of times. I’m lucky I have a remarkable capacity for remaining calm and collected in public (as cool as a cucumber, if you like) on the outside, except around my sister, whilst inside I’m a raging torrent of foul language and pent-up rage if something isn’t working to my satisfaction. When I’m alone…steer well clear.

Though I’m struggling with a great variety of technology, at the moment the primary culprit is the dreaded, ghastly interactive whiteboard (IWB). I’d never used one until now, and each day is a tumultuous process of trying to get the blasted thing to work properly. There are plenty of other issues besides the IWB, but that’s my current bête noire.

In the interests of clarity and fairness, I should point out that although the school is well-equipped technologically, not all of the technology works. Certain rooms have faulty DVD players, others have mal-functioning monitors, while the rest all have some particular quirk that isn’t meant to be. So, there’s an issue with the damn stuff working in the first place – the fact that it’s not makes life infinitely trickier.

But here’s the point I really want to hammer home: EVERYONE STRUGGLES WITH THIS CRAP!!! Every day, multiple times a day, another victim of the IWB bug comes storming into the teachers’ room, throws down their books and lets forth a hail of foul-mouthed bile in no particular direction. No one is immune to the disease. Nothing ever works right. My general problem with technology is its inconsistency. Inexplicably, one day the IWB just won’t work. The next, a computer or the CD/DVD drive isn’t working and the textbooks we use are all digital and so if the application isn’t working, then we’re pretty much screwed for the lesson because there is no back-up. Of course, you can’t write on the IWBs either, and half the time the sun streams in so brightly, rendering the IWB completely useless since it’s impossible to see. Honestly, I could catalogue a whole host of problems that plague us all one day to the next. It’s so utterly unpredictable and there’s hardly anything funny about it. At least I’ve got my students on my side, for they actually find it funny. Lucky for me.

Every day there’s something new. Just when you think you’ve seen it all…

[This blog itself is another case in point: you may have noticed different formattings in different posts, whether font, font size, spacing, picture captions, etc. Every time I post, I do the exact same thing. Sometimes blogspot cooperates, other times it doesn’t. Sometimes I spend ages on the formatting and then give up on the process, starting afresh on a new day. But it’s generally frustrating and rarely goes smoothly.]

Back to the fairness doctrine…when it is working, it is damn nice to have. It’s great to be able to use the internet in my lessons and although it means I’m now spending so much more of my time planning, I actually enjoy the planning when it means I can design some snazzy stuff. One word of warning though: always, always, always screen a video before showing it to a class. I had one group the other day, the same lovely group who bought me gifts for my birthday and still regularly bring in cake and champagne for no apparent reason, who were clamouring for something funny on Youtube to watch. The only thing that sprang to mind was the farting televangelist, which was [debatably] hilarious about 7 years ago, but certainly isn’t anymore. I had recalled a colleague telling me earlier in the day about ‘Drunk History’ and so I thus chose a random – yes, random in the proper sense – episode, the one with Jack Black as Benjamin Franklin. Though we all found it funny, I was mortified by its effing and blinding, as well as another somewhat disturbing scene that probably put some of the students off their dinners. Probably not the most professional approach in the world, but then I am rather unorthodox in my methods, to put it mildly.

From the last paragraph, dear readers, you will have noticed that far from constantly whingeing about my lack of technological know-how, I’ve decided to stop lamenting the fact that I’m technologically inept and am instead doing something about it. Instead of running and hiding, I’m doing my damndest to tackle it head-on and defeat the monster before it defeats me. You see, I am mature after all.

Before this degenerates into my most boring post ever, I’ll nip my anti-technology vitriol in the bud and move onto somewhat more interesting things.

I’d like to share a variety of links. Some I’ve discovered recently, others I’ve been saving for a couple of months for an occasion like this where I can deluge you with various bits of nonsense I’ve been divulging in.

Starting with, yet another anti-technology rant!

Cassette tapes: when music was hard work, but fun (and much more rewarding)

At the risk of getting excessively hyperbolic, I can’t remember a time in my life where I’ve come across an article that has come so close to echoing my thoughts or experiences verbatim. It’s short, but I will share one particularly apt paragraph here. How should I put it? It’s just, so, me:

Cassettes are a reminder of a lost age, when you had to work a bit harder to be a music fan. You couldn't make a compilation by disinterestedly dragging and burning in iTunes. You actually had to sit and listen to the music you were recording, noting down track titles on an inlay card as you went – which meant you really had to like what you were taping. Stealing music didn't involve clicking a mouse, but recording off the radio, finger hovering over "pause" to get as much of the song's dying seconds in, while still cutting the DJ's voice off the end. The judicious use of the pause button is one of the great forgotten folk arts.

When I read that over the summer it took me back quite a few years. I’m a bit of a past master in the forgotten art of mix tapes. Starting when I was about 14 I was constantly on the rampage making mixes for myself, my friends, girls…my sister and I would sit and listen to the UK top 40 on Sunday afternoons taping our favourite songs, trying so desperately hard to cut out the DJ's voice whilst getting as much as the song as possible. I got my first CD player when I was 15 (Christ, am I that old?) and then I could finally record songs onto tapes so much more easily. Back then, there was no greater gesture of showing your feelings to a special someone than giving them a mix tape (sorry, but mix CDs aren’t quite the same, and CDs from mp3s have hardly any romantic value) and I remember making at least 20 different mixes for various friends just before graduation from high school (I wonder if any still have theirs). I would spend hours deliberating which songs to put on, thinking of the right order, then writing them down in my neatest penmanship on the inlay card. And then there was the all important title of course, which was sometimes the most difficult part of all.

Listening to mix tapes that others made me was equally joyous, and another long lost art was having to fast forward and rewind to find a particular song you just had to listen to at that particular moment. To truly love music in those days you had to be patient and devoted. These days it just isn’t the same. The album’s importance has declined to the point of irrelevancy in this age of clicking and downloading tracks.

Whenever I’m at home I still rummage through my boxes of cassettes, checking out all the amusing titles that I came up with. There were various Britpop concoctions, there were alternative 80s ‘manic depressive’ mixes, there were dance mixes, there were soppy mellifluous ballad collections…there were definitely some very eclectic mixes. But perhaps no other series of tapes captures the nostalgia of that era like the ‘Swell Trip Tapes’ (no further elaboration necessary) that Andrew and I used to put together. There must have been at least 4 or 5 editions of these epic collections and we whiled away many a long summer afternoon and evening listening to these endlessly.

It goes without saying that I still listen to my tapes from time to time, poor sound quality and wear and tear notwithstanding.

I held out from buying an mp3 player for as long as possible, resistant to part with my massive tape and CD collection, and lamenting the fact that technology was rendering cassettes obsolete. But among other things, the sheer impracticality of lugging CDs round the world put paid to this and I finally caved in and got an Ipod a few years ago.

But what is this? More trips down memory lane as news of the demise of the Walkman hits the wire. This takes me fondly back many years, and…ach, never mind. Enough of this wallowing in the past. It was great while it lasted.

The rise of the e-book: say it ain’t so!

I might have given into popular pressure and relented in buying an mp3 player, but books…that’s another story. I may look back in a few years on what I’m writing now and laugh, but I can’t imagine I’ll ever go down that route. No way.

Half the pleasure of reading is the feel of the book. Then there’s the cover (you can’t judge a book by its cover? Bullshit), making notes in the margins, exchanging books with your friends, sneaking a peek at what some stranger is reading on public transport, checking out someone’s collection when visiting their houses (this is the first thing I go for), carefully deciding which books to take on holiday (here, thinking about space and weight limitations is part of the fun/challenge), cracking the spine, the range of different fonts, the smell of a new book (!), picking up a gem of a second-hand book and reading previous readers’ inscribed notes to loved ones (probably the most tragic thing that would be lost if books vanished forever), not to mention giving books as gifts with that oh-so special inscription, and so much else besides. (Honestly, does an e-book gift have anywhere near the same value as an actual book?

[Here’s a real gem from a collection of William Hazlitt’s essays that I found about this time 1 year ago in a second-hand book sale: “For Mary R Drury, as a token for her last birth-day, for sundry ‘bets’ about exams, and a small amt. of personal regard. from her brother, S. S. Drury. June 19, 1898”.]

One of the best covers around

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I can’t imagine a time will ever come when we can look at a coffee stain on our e-book and reminisce about that special café in Siena...or even a beer stain, taking you straight back to a bar in Prague…or having sand falling out of the pages, taking you back to a certain beach in Sicily…or countless other mementoes and reminders that come only with a book in proper book form.

Let’s face it: e-books are hardly a conversation starter. There’s hardly any romance in leaning in at the right angle to see what someone’s reading on their Kindle or whatever and then commenting upon their choice of material.

It was my ever-so-astute pal Jeff who told me to calm down when I panicked that books would eventually go the way of the cassette tape. After all, he pointed out, books have been around for centuries. Cassettes and CDs for decades at most. And I’d like to think that diehards like me will continue to prop up the old-fashioned way of reading. Not that I’m an expert on this, but my bet is that e-books will appeal to a lot of people, but predominantly to the Da Vinci Coders amongst us. In other words, those who read mainstream fare casually, and not literary snobs such as myself. There will continue to be suckers like me weighing ourselves down as we traipse about the globe acquiring massive tomes, moaning about the fact that there’s nowhere to put them all. But then dreaming of a day when we might finally have a place of our own to display the books for the benefit of our viewing public.

‘No matter who busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance.’ (Confucius)

I don’t think he had e-books in mind.

The Sheltering Sky: another classic cover

A quick-fire round-up of various nostalgish links

* An ode to Twin Peaks, in my humble opinion one of the greatest series of all time, even if for only 1 season. At the time, I think I was one of the only kids at school watching this, though these days it seems like everyone watched it ‘back in the day.’ Yeah, I’m cool.

* And here, paying homage to another great 80s masterpiece, Back to the Future. Although for me this fell a bit behind the brilliance and majesty of Top Gun and the Karate Kid, it was still a splendid classic of my childhood, one watched over and over and over.

* This is merely nostalgia dating back to spring and summer 2009, but it’s nostalgia all the same. You will do doubt recall my fetish for amusing t-shirt slogans, and Bishkek was home to some of the greatest in history, with a firm favourite being ‘No Romance without Finance’. Is Jane Austen popularly read in Kyrgyzstan?

* Is there a greater exchange in 80s cinematic history than the one between Goose and Slider?

Slider: Goose, whose butt did you kiss to get in here anyway?

Goose: The list is long but distinguished.

Slider: Yeah, well so’s my Johnson.

Here's a slightly more ‘scholarly’ look at Johnson.

* Definite nostalgia here: I have many fond, hair-raising memories of zooming around town (Port Harcourt, mainly) on okadas, Nigerian motorbike taxis. The first few times you’d hang on for dear life as the blasted things zipped in and out of traffic. It wasn’t an uncommon sight to witness people hurtling off their bikes. But it was one of the only ways of getting around and one soon got used to it. There’s an image of a family of four with live goat crammed onto one that’s indelibly planted in my mind. Just in case you missed out on the hoopla and are wondering what all the fuss is about.

* And lastly, if you want to read about the plight of the poor English teacher abroad, then this is for you. However, I must say that it’s a woefully inadequate, unfair and misleading account. Most of it anyway. Bits of ring painfully true, but keep one very important thing in mind: by nature, English teachers are some of the biggest whingers around. We complain about everything and anything. It’s almost a prerequisite for the job. If I can be bothered, I may spend the time to Fisk it at a later date, since there are parts of I vehemently disagree with. It is a bit long and rambling, and most certainly dated. Which also pretty much describes your typical Tefler.  

Let’s end on some sappy, epically cockles-of-your-heart-warming nostalgia.

For my money, one of the most moving, inspiring, yet ultimately cheesy moments in cinematic history, featuring some of the more underrated film villains to ever grace the silver screen. Does it really get any better than this?

And one last cover for the road