illustration friday: dance
Tuesday, June 20, 2006, 06:56 PM - Art/Design, Illustration, Illustration Friday, English


Joan figured that after her operation, she had extra space to hold Sunday night dances for penguins.

I drew this little black and white treasure on the Eurostar back from London, resisting to read Penguin Lost by Andrey Kurkov after reading Death and The Penguin in a matter of two days. Something I have fallen out of the habit of doing due to English books not always being easy to find without an internet hunt. Especially when you are a "reading snob" as I am called. So I bought his second book while in the middle of the first, so I had it. Glad I did.

Anyhow, Penguins were burnt into my brain.
So we have dancing penguins.
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lie - lay - lie
Thursday, June 8, 2006, 05:40 PM - English


I always have had a fear that a student will ask me about these verbs... until last night. VdB (my man) asked me about the difference between lie (as in lying down) or lay (as in: that hen laid an egg).
I decided to quit not knowing and whipped out the Penguin Usage and Abusage, fabulous, answered my question, and even had a go at a couple of authors while it was at it. Perhaps it is a little clearer now?
lie - lay - lain... lay - laid - laid... lie - lay - lain... lay - laid - laid...
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that horrible accent!
Thursday, May 4, 2006, 09:33 PM - General, Language, English, French


Today, I had a lesson at Decathlon with two of the accounting team.
One had just been to New Zealand, and as it was the first lesson, I like to get them to talk about a variety of things, no matter what their level, so I can hear all their mistakes.
So this man says:


student
I went to New Zealand for my holidays, it was very beautiful, we went to the South isand by plane and all over the North Island, but the New Zealanders have this horrible accent, they turn the vowels so they are like "aieeeeiiiii" (this was his impression of a NZ accent).

myself
Yes, they say thing like fush and chups (meaning fish and chips)

student
Yes, it is really ugly

myself
...kind of like the Australian accent...

student
YES!

myself
I am an Australian! (Laugh out loud)


He went so red, and after three seconds was laughing along with me. But then we had accent jokes for the rest of the lesson. Good start. I didn't have the heart to tell him that my father is a NZer. Nor that I spent most of the summers of my childhood in NZ.
Proves to me I don't really have an accent, as such, for the French.

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"The Man"
Thursday, January 19, 2006, 06:31 PM - General, Relationships, Work (The Man), English
We have had some misunderstanding and reproaching in the household this morning. Seems French Boy doesn't understand the term The Man. (see previous post).
I had to explain to him that The Man was the person that you work for (usually). Let's use the Urban Dictionaries first definition:


The Man
The Man is the head of "the establishment" put in place to "bring us down." Though nobody has physically seen "the man," he is assumed to be a male caucasian between the ages of 25-40 and is rumored to have a substantial amount of acquired wealth, presumably acquired by exploiting those whom his "establishment" is "keeping down."
"Damn The Man!" -Victim of the "establishment"


I also liked definition 5:

Dewey Finn (Jack Black) in the movie The School of Rock defines The Man thusly:

"The Man. Oh, you don't know the Man? The Man's everywhere: in the White House, down the hall, Miss Mullins; she's the Man! And the Man ruined the ozone, and he's burning down the Amazon and he kidnapped Shamu and put her in a chlorine tank! Okay! And there used to be a way to stick it to the Man, it was called rock 'n roll. But guess what? Oh no! The Man had to ruin that too with a little thing called MTV! So don't waste your time trying to make anything cool or pure or awesome 'cause the Man's just gonna call you a fat washed up loser and crush your soul. So do yourself a favor and just give up!"
ahem...see above dude


Clearer now my love?
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laughing!
Tuesday, January 3, 2006, 08:04 PM - General, Work (The Man), Vegan/Vegetarian, Art/Design, Illustration Friday, English, French
I feel the need to write, how's that!
I haven't felt the need to impart any information for days.

Had one of the most revolting NYEs ever. Man was sick, he lay in bed all weekend, I watched The Young Ones (Series 1), in its entirety... went to bed at about 10:30pm, perhaps not that early, but pretty close.

Didn't do an illustration for Illustration friday until now : Not finished, but here is the basic, non-coloured version. The topic was "Flavour".



Damn students didn't turn up for their lessons again today: really boring sometimes... I listened to a few worthwhile podcasts, so it wasn't time completely wasted. Had The Vegan Freaks to listen to today after a good week and a half, I was laughing out loud on the tramway here, which was pretty embarassing, but I don't really care. Better to laugh than not to at the moment.
They had an interview with the guy who runs Herbivore Magazine, and they were talking about a "lime green thong" which reminded me of when I was 21, we bought (as the joke "now your 21 present") a lime green, fluorescent, polyester thong, that was given to everyone of my friends... then it disappeared, perhaps someone gave it to him? Actually I know who kept it, and it didn't really surprise me.

The othe podcast was from The Creative Cow. It was podcast #11, and the main interview was with KINO, he was a really interesting person to listen to and he had some new interesting ideas about keeping your mind creative: the one I liked the most was a simple mind game (he referenced Kipling's "Kym" as where he got the idea from):
You ask someone to set out some objects on a table, at least 10, and you look at them and try to remember everything about them. (I can understand the idea that you don't remember much the first time, as this has been proven to me whilst playing Chinese Whispers in French, I honestly am really bad at it), but if you try really hard you get really good at it. After looking out of the window all afternoon at said "where students don't come to lessons" company, I would expect every detail of the scene outside would be burnt into my memory, but I could bet that is not true.
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