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A place for Writing 12 students to read each other's writing, to critique, to suggest, to improve.
About Me
- Brad
- Former adult teacher who loves island beaches. Happy homebody and family man; once devoted dog owner, now without Tashi, my Tibetan Terrier. I prefer the absurdity of the imagination to the absurdity of imagining nothing.
9 comments:
Chatting on the Web Cam
Today, my daughter made me laugh during a web cam chat. She’s staying in Bled, Slovenia in a charming alpine hostel and wanted to show me how nice it is so picked up the camera and panned it around the room. It was a bit disconcerting because the colours became blurry and the movement made me feel slightly sick to my stomach. Then, I returned the favour by holding up our dog, Tashi, to the camera. She made me chuckle when she claimed that Tashi had “kissed” her when actually the dog had only stuck out her pink tongue for a moment. The funniest moment came when it was time to say goodbye. My daughter moved closer to the camera and gave me a “virtual” kiss. Her lips seemed enormous because of the camera’s wide angle view. I took a safer approach and blew her a kiss!
A happy nurse
After my cancers remove operation, I have to take chemotherapy treatment for 6 months which is injecting medicines into my vein. Problem is it might cause many side effects such as diarrhea, constipation, hair loss, fatigue, sensitiveness to cold and heat, anemia and dry eyes, you name it and you will get it. On the first day of treatment, I and my daughter went to hospital with anxious mind about it. While a nurse was inserting a needle into my port, she explained to us which medicines dose what part and she saw my face with big smile.
“You are lucky; you don’t need to wary about this anymore.”The medicine would cause hair loss. We burst into laugh.
“Take this pill with cold water; you can’t take cold water another 6months so remember the taste.” We chuckled with her exaggeration.
After finishing treatments, all I have to do was to carry a bottle of medicine for 46 hours which was connected to my vain.
“Where do you live?” She asked me and I answered where.
“Have a walk to home, it’s good for you” I knew I had to exercise but to walk back to my house would take more than an hour, beside that I might fainted out.
“My daughter drives me home and I will go for golfing. We have a tournament today.” I smiled her.
“Good for you. Make sure to show the bottle, get more handicaps and win the tournament. Buy me a coffee next time with that money, will you?”
“Sure thing!” We left hospital with light hearted. Some nurses surely know how to make patients happy feeling by saying it.
First draft
Hello everybody, it is Masaru again.
Have you ever heard a phrase “up in a shit creek without paddle “?
Since I used the phrase in my writing “All you want to know about Writing 12”, I think I should explain the meaning in case you don’t understand it. I learned this phrase from John, my first boarding house roommate, 40 years ago.
“In old time, they made penitentiaries up in a mountain beside a river. At that time they don’t have toilet facility so they used the river as a flush. When you go up the river by canoe, you need a paddle. If you don’t have it, guess what you have to do? You have to use both hands. That means you are in a big, big trouble!”
The way John explained to me with hands and body language made me laugh uproariously. Please don’t change my conclusion sentence in “Writing 12” unless Brad erases it.
Thanks and see you on Wednesday.
The laughingstock
Mr. Cheng was a teacher of Electric Engineering. It was the first time visiting Peking companying with a delegation.
At the bus stop, the bus came and the doors opened. We all hustled on , and the doors closed and the bus started to run. We shouted to him, but he didn't hear us for he was busy to gaze something. Mr. Cheng lost first.
He spoiled our tour. I told him that the bus driver in Peking can't bear any waiting for the bus has a long route to go. He nodded. Since then, he always kept to be a vanguard of our column.
Another time, the bus came and the doors opened. Mr. Cheng jumped in immediately. Before we noticed what happened,the bus had run away. And at this moment, we hadn't any idea about where we were going to yet. Mr. Cheng lost again.
Eventually we found him at the terminal bus stop. Sitting in the hotel, we were discussing the plan for the next few days. Suddenly a guy asked Cheng:"Have you ever seen such a strange converter circuit- the phaser in which lags first and then turns to lead?" and "Today it would be worked in lag or lead?"
The laughter burst in the room, for all of us knew what is that mean.
Laughing with My Granddaughter
Children are funny. My three-year-old granddaughter always amuses me with her cute actions and speech.
Once she visited me; a big crack sound suddenly shocked us.
“Grandmom, what is that?” she asked.
“A guy makes the noise above,” I answered.
“Hey! This is your place, you can kick him out,” she suggested.
I could only laugh instead of saying any word.
“Grandmom, he is not nice, yeh?” she added.
“Ha,ha,ha,----,” I grinned.
Another experience took place on Christmas Day last year. When I enjoyed my holiday in her home, she woke me up in the early morning.
“Grandmom, I heard Santa Claus,” she acted very excited.
“Really, what does Santa say?” I replied.
“He said ho,ho,ho,-----,”her appearance was so serious, and she urged me, “we gonna have presents, come out, quick!”
Then she leapt up and ran like a happy angel. I couldn’t stop laughing when I saw her active expression.
Where is no God?
Last fall, our church had a picnic in a park. After lunch, we got together and had fun with sharing stories. My husband told a real story. Many years ago, the master of Hinduism made a pilgrimage to Mecca, the sacred place of Muslim. He had no money to live in hotel, and he can only sit in the hallway of a hotel. As a religious custom of Muslim, they should bow down toward Mecca in several certain times everyday. When the time came, all Muslims bowed down toward Mecca, but the master of Hinduism did the opposite way with his butt toward the sacred place instead of his head. His behaviour irritated a few Muslim guys. They kicked his butt and said: “Why do you bow down with your butt toward our God?” The master of Hinduism said: “Oh, sorry, sorry! But, would you please tell me where is no God, and then I could put my butt there?” The Muslim guys had no answer to him. All of us laughed heartily after the story.
How I Robbed my Landlords
Very often, misunderstanding between people leads to funny and ridiculous situations because of lack of English.
One morning, I prepared to do my laundry saving a necessary number of dollar coins for this purpose.My loading process was interrupted by arrival of elderly Asian couple holding small boxes in their hands. I greeted them-- they smiled in return. While watching them with interest, I understood that they were the Landlords of our apartment building. Moving quickly around, they started to collect money from the machines’ slots . When they approached to my machine, I ask them to let me start a process first. They again smiled, saying nothing. I lost the control of the situation for a second and couldn’t find the coin that I thought I had already put in the slot. I checked my pocket, but couldn’t find money there. “The Landlords took it and I didn’t noticed,” I decided. So, I asked politely, “Will you, please, give me my dollar back; I am not able to start the process.” At last, after unpleasant pause, they understood my request and gave me a dollar without a word and with strange expressions on their faces. I happily started my machine. One minute later, at the elevator, I occasionally searched my pockets again and found the “lost” coin. With a shame I rushed back to the laundry to return money and to ask for forgiveness, but Landlords were gone. I managed to catch them in the parking lot. They took money and again smiled in return without a word.
Later, I figured out that my Landlords don’t speak English at all.
From Ben:
Drive People Crazy
Recently, an American young man-John went to China intending to teach English. Before his grand journey, he did memorized some Chinese vocabularies and simple sentences in order to communicate properly in China; how are you? -�p�n�ܡH-ni-how-ma?
It's very hard for him to pratice that Chinese sentence structures are totally different from English. It would be so frustrated for him to learn and to speak correctly within such a short period of time.
China was his first oversea's journey; he was so excited but nervous after his landing into an unfamilliar world. After few minutes, he saw a girl holding a sign board on hand with his name in order to pick him up in the airport. While john met this girl, he was so uptight. He bursted to say! �ܩp�n�H-ma-ni-how? instead of the correct way of saying; �p�n�ܡH-ni-how-ma? This big mistake drove the girl crazy becasue what he said sound like mother how are you? in Chinese.
After entering the school campus there were plenty of beautiful
flowerbeds all over the play ground. several butterfliers flapping around in front of him. John was so excited again, and hollering, 'look! Look! ���o��-neu-yeo-fei.' What he said the Chines meaning -The butter is flying; the correct pronunciation of butterfliers is ����-hu-dea.
John always made big scenes in front of people and made people laughing. Now he realized that any foreign language would not be easy to learn after all. I have heard at present that he intend to learn Chinese in China intead of rushing for teaching English.
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