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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.
6 comments:
After I had worked for B.C. Telephone Company for two months in the fall of 1975 (at age 19), my old high school friend, Brad, asked me if I wanted to buy his car, a 1970 Datsun 510. He was going to buy a motorcycle instead and offered me the car at a good price--$900. I knew a bit about the car, especially since I had helped him with a transmission problem that happened while we were up at Whistler Mountain the previous winter. The car had “stuck” in fourth gear, so Brad had driven it home to New Westminster in the middle of the night, trying not to stop even once as to start again meant he had to coast down a hill to get going.
But I said yes anyways and became the proud owner of a pumpkin orange car with racing stripes, an Ansa Italian sport muffler, and a wooden knob on the stick shift. The car made a throaty growl when I revved it and had lots of power (at least for 1975 it did). The first week went well and I loved the freedom of having my own wheels. It went downhill from there, however!
One night, I was returning home on Canada Way, coming down the hill just outside our school over by the Petro Can station at the corner of 8th and 10th Avenues. Brad had fixed the car with the help of one of our friends but, apparently, he hadn’t done it right. The car was, once again, stuck in gear. I had to find a pay phone and called my dad. He came with his big old Ford LTD and pushed me all the way home to avoid a big towing bill.
Luckily, I had a good, union job with high pay. The first repair bill was almost 200 dollars, about 1/3 of my monthly income. Then, the muffler went and the pipes, too. Another 100 bucks! After that, I decided that I could change the front shocks all by myself until I discovered that they were sealed and needed a specialized tool to replace. But not before I’d wrecked a rubber grease fitting under the car by using a propane torch on a bolt that was hard to turn.
So, my 900 dollar car ended up being more like a 1400 dollar car by the time the winter ended in 1976. I drove it until I left for Quebec in 1979 but have one last story to tell about selling it. I took a cheque from some young guys from Richmond. When my dad found out, he suggested I go to the bank to cash it right away and, wouldn’t you know, it bounced! But the story ends well: we found the guys at their shop in Richmond, got my 150 dollars and that was the last car I owned until 1980.
-My first time teaching Japanese in English:
“Psst, Psst. Hey, Esther. Come over here and help me with this one.” He said to me during the test time.
When I first heard I got a spare time in grade 11, I was so happy and excited because I could do anything; I mean anything during my spare time.
So here I was, standing in front of my guidance counselor to talk what to do about my spare time.
“Ok, Esther… here are three options to your spare time. One is going back home and study; two is of course study at the study hall and finally, doing the TA. Which one do you want to do?”
I, of course, didn’t know what to do, but I was kind of wanted to do the TA because when I was in grade eight, I was so jealous of TAs because help those who needs help, and besides TAs can mark the students’ tests, SO COOL!!
So without thinking, I did it. I was to become Japanese TA. Just think students would look up to me and think of me as their mentor.
But boy, was I wrong because when I entered the beginner Japanese 11 classroom, there were so many Korean students and Chinese students. The Chinese students were ok.
But oh boy, the Korean students were the worst kind of all because when they knew that I’m Korean, oh man! I couldn’t even speak what they’ve done to me, let’s just say after this experience, I no longer interested in doing TA because they asked me to translate for them, which were ok because I thought the textbook was hard for them to translate, so I began to translate for them, kind of.
But boy, was I wrong because ever since that day, they started to take advantage of me, and when I’m in front of them I couldn’t speak English at all, ONLY Korean. Yup, you heard me right, ONLY Korean is accepted, and they even asked me during the test time!
So one day, I decided that enough was enough because I yelled to the students when the teacher was outside. And guess what! No Koreans were taking advantage of me from that day.
My first job:
I was a few days shy of my eighteenth birthday in November when I started my first job. I had been a nanny of sorts during a few short stints with friends of our family here and there, but nothing like an official "office job" like this one. It was a small, privately owned travel agency in downtown Vancouver, and I do mean small. There was just the boss, a co-worker who was a travel agent, and myself. Our desks were almost side-by-side to each other, (mine being exactly adjacent to the tiny washroom, an unpleasant experience unto itself), in a whopping 400-500 square feet!
And you wouldn't believe how green I was. I had never answered a phone in a business environment in my life, and I was absolutely terrified when that phone rang. For over a month, I think, I would freeze in a panic whenever I heard the ring, hesitant to pick up the receiver because I had absolutely no idea what to say when someone asked me a question. Of course, it didn't help that I had not a clue what was involved in a travel agency, and that my boss basically threw me into the job from the first day and pretty much said, "Here's your desk, here's the phone, press the line number when it lights up to answer. Now go!". It was literally "learn-as-you-go" job training. Needless to say, it was all too painful for an inexperienced, underconfident teenager!
However, as time went on, I got the hang of my job, and found out certain things I liked about it (such as the administration and accounting aspects of it), and what I absolutely disliked (the actual sales to the people coming in off the street; I was a very shy teenager).
So I concluded, after about three months on the job, that I absolutely detested being a travel agent, and desperately wanted out of the business. I took three months off the following summer, (actually, I had emphatically told my boss I quit!) and went to stay with my cousin and his family in Calgary, to "find myself". While there, I attended a career workshop to figure out what on earth I was supposed to do with my life. But in the end, my former boss called me up while I was there, and asked if I wanted to come back to work, but do less sales and more admin work. So, with much reluctance and, by now, very little cash left, I found myself back in that rinky dink office once again, but still determined to find a way out and do something "real" with my life.
It turns out, after many attempts of escape later, I ended up being employed at that little agency for almost seven years! And, even worse, I very grudgingly stayed in the travel industry as an actual travel consultant for another 9 years! Because, as they say in the industry, "once you're a travel agent, you never really get out".
Trees;
1)Maple..syurp..maple leaf Canadian emblem.
2)Ash..baseball bats
3)Fig..mentioned in the bible,claimed to possess abundance of good health properties
4)Pine..Christmas tree.
5)Oak..strong,lasting ,exelent furnitur
6)Hemlock ..has poisonious properties
7)Cedar..Evergreen, very old tree
8)Cherry..wonderful blossoms and fruit
9)Spruce..blue and green,nice ornamental garden tree.
10)Apple..when old becomes narled,but the fruit remains sweet.
My Computor purchase:
Jan. 13, big day, big change in my life, I now like to think of myself as a "Techie". First day I did not want to touch it for fear I would break something, well I wasn't too wrong, I don't know what I did but I ended up with an completely black screen with a curser only, at that point I just left the room hopeing it would correct it self, after peeking in the door a few times to check the screen to no avail, I decided to phone my daughter and she guided me through the return of my work .
kids are so much smarter then their parents , but not wiser!
“Touch me,” she said.
“Where?” I asked.
“Where ever you like.”
She was in the bed, naked; she undressed as soon as we entered her parent’s room, and went straight to the bed. I turned off the lights, while the full moon lit the room--watching us, a deaf witness to our foolish deed.
I was trembling, as if possessed by some spirit, apathetic, I was not myself. I thought, when that special moment arrives, I would know what to do, but I did not.
“Come on,” she said, smiling. “We can do this.”
“Can we do this another time?” I said. “You know . . . Your parents might be back sooner than we think and we’re dead if we get caught.”
“Don’t worry, they won’t even think, not even in their wildest dream, that I will be having sex with you. I am ten years older than you and they think of you as a young boy looking for an older sister--I teach you Math.”
For her, it seemed that what we were about to do was just some experiment. She was indifferent to my feelings, not caring that for me it was the beginning of my “teenage life”--I just turned thirteen!
“Ok, wait for me,” she said.” I’ll just grab some wine to get rid of that nervousness of yours.”
Her back, as she walked out the door, looked perfectly carved, anointed by the light of moon, she looked like a goddess. I wanted to kiss it, feel it, but I was like a stone, I couldn’t move. She came back, in no time, holding a bottle of wine and a crystal glass. She poured some wine on the glass and handed it to me. “Now, drink,“ she said. “Drink all of it, bottoms up.”
“Bottoms what?”
“Just drink it.”
I smelled the wine, the tip of my nose touching the crystal glass, and in that moment, I felt something strong, something strange, something I have never felt before. The wine aroused my hidden desires, as if telling me, “ Consume me and free yourself, lose yourself.“ I emptied the glass and asked for another one, and one more, and one more. I felt extremely dizzy.
The moment, became perfect--the full moon, the wine, the satin bedding sheet-- when Marvin Gaye started singing, “Let’s get it on . . .”
The next day, I woke up with a heavy headache, the world was spinning around me. She was sitting beside me, watching television. “Finally, you’re awake,” she said, laughing. “You passed out.”
That night, the first time I tasted wine, thought me a very important lesson: A glass of wine is enough to get you going.
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