My Hero, My Sultan

The Yanks have one, France has the best one well, that I have been around for,  even bloody Canada has one - in fact most places in the world have one except us English which we cannot really justify. These things are possibly a gory, cheesy and up-itself wankfest which is probably what the politicos would turn it into, it can though of course be and should be a great excuse for a party not just  an excuse for saying how fantastic we are while boosting the Chinese disposable flag making industry. That's right National Day. A punctuation in the year when most nations celebrate their birth often after a nasty bloody struggle against some exploitative overbearing power from far away whose language they might now speak.

Coming to the party in...er.. style(?)

None of my students could really explain why their 43rd national day falls on November 18th - the Sultan's birthday? That seemed to be the consensus anyway which Wikipedia confirmed. It certainly couldn't be for independence? From whom? Oman was, luckily for them, never formally colonized. No one could tell me, or more likely they were loth so to do, for this is a place where standing out is not considered a virtue....until that is you cover your car in red, green and white stickers, bedeck said car in flags and pics of my hero, my sultan, slip off your traditional conservative, and arguably mentally constricting clothing and go racing around the town centre well as fast as you can which isn't very fast in gridlock, but that's all part of the fun as you get to honking, hooting and cheering.

Of course your face is covered in face paint of the national colours, you might also be a wearing a Halloween style horror masks or  fright wig which is odd as Halloween and dressing up as the devil are a tad unIslamic. Perhaps most weirdly to me and cowering car mate, were the Guy Fawkes masks. None of these objects have I seen on sale anywhere - 'cos that kind of frivolity just ain't Islamic or traditional. It was great to see singing, dancing to African, Latin, Arabic  tunes accompanying the screeching of tyres and souped up engines making sounds disturbingly like gunfire. Cowering carmate was from the US so therefore used to the gunfire but completely unused to Omanis out of the strait-jacket happily sticking their heads, unthreateningly through the car windows.

Beep beep etc

There were plenty of young folk hanging out of cars, on roofs and even a few in the boot. All safe as the traffic was going nowhere.  Plod looked overawed, helpless and hopeless which is always lovely to see. The fear of the uncontrolled crowd. However, it was all good-natured and seemingly sober. Us Euros and assorted others on our way to the hotel pub were welcomed, greeted and thanked for  coming along to the party which had naturally stopped us from getting anywhere close - that was a lovely touch but I did have to turn down the offer of joining a group for a dance. Unlike back home there was no (obvious) booze and a complete absence of women aside from the Carmate who embarrassingly feared that she was going to be pulled out of the car and subjected to all sorts of nasties with her head paraded around on a spike. Oh dear the liberal mask had slipped and she won't be a Carmate again.

Apparently there was all the usual other stuff that goes on - fireworks, military nonsense so beloved of leaders the world over, and I was told that the Red Arrows even turned up. Still, all good free-flowing fun, unless you are a terrified plod or over-reacting Carmate and everyone happy and still at it when returning home several hours later....

So Happy Birthday Sultan.

Tony Bloody Blair buggered my tooth

Oh fuckityfuckfuckfuck - that hurts more than having the gove removed did...whisky (lots of) xxx painkillers (by the dozen) antibiotics by the pick-up full.....

So conscious my temporary filling  http://whingingteacher.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/the-wiill-of-allah.html  was about to burst and shatter into rotten shards before a pleasant and enjoyable root canal could be performed, I sought advice from the various shinily toothsome American and German colleagues about where to go - they all said the very expensive American or German dentists over in Qurm. The former Soviets smiled at the glories of Soviet dentistry, and the solidly buck toothed fellow NHS loving Brits...? Well, they all go to the cheapo  London trained Iraqi ten mins from work. 

So off I went smilingly along, he smiled back, saw the x-ray gave me a few chatty jabs and then revealed his painful grudge - for he was the Iraqi who could smell my evil dark and vile secret...that I... er.......ahem ...(sotto voce) voted for Blair in '97 back then the foul and grubby Tories were trying to brand him Bambi but that is irrelevant and was therefore partially complicit in breaking Mr Dentist's country which he then I reckon took out on my now fractured back molar. He began gouging the bugger out in several pieces with bits of gum straggling off and blood coursing out of my mouth through the tissue doubling as a dental bib onto my once white shirt...he let forth a flow of curse s at me and his assistant in Arabic and English stating between sweaty tugs and gouges how it was all my fault. I couldn't ask what was or why? He wasn't happy...but not a lot that could be done with a rubberised hand in your gob with an angry man poking and digging with medieval torture equipment. 30 minutes on it seemed that, with fragments of rotten tooth laid out, slightly stunned and other than to mumble a polite thank you with a mouth full of cotton pads and pay him the 20 quid.

Not to disparage the guy (much)...there is nothing wrong with the medical treatment I have had in developing countries not least as my employers have all stumped up for all the tests usually needed on entry. They will also pay for most else . That said the few times I have needed anything the insurance companies and doctors alike will royally profit from it by ordering  no end of tests and unnecessary analysis, and pointless follow ups. Bit of an obvious problem there allowing markets into medicine. Or have I missed something? Dentistry aside I am near the top of the pecking order here the multitude of other economic migrants are barely covered at all, there is no universal health provision which is bleak. So yes (insert divinity of choice or ideally none)______________ bless indeed save the NHS and all that cos Camoron and his one eyed ideologues and sponsors won't.

A grain of truth in this?

The painful will of Allah ...

(In pained man moaning voice) Ouch - that hurt a lot, actually, it hurt a fuckuvafucking lot  in a humbling and humiliating way.

 

Ibuprfen Nitro for men
 
I staggered in to the dentist with a cartoon comedy bag of ice from on my inflamed jaw. Once in the chair of pain the no-nonsense former Soviet dentista snapped on the rubber, shoved in her hand, gave me a few jabs with elephant needles, sawed, drilled and took out the long dangly, fierce sinewy web of electric pain which had, over an increasingly dreary week, spread from my bottom jaw to the top of my head by way of my sizzling sinus. It was not only a vicious lizard of a pain but far worse it was XXX Man Pain which no combination of whisky and new improved formula elephant strength Ibuprofen Nitro for men can possibly assuage.

The Will of Allah

The work based emergency dentist always attracts a huge crowd in the early morning as there are sick notes to be garnered but being an on-a-pedestal teacher hushed room was made for me at the front of the dolefully mourning queue.  X-ray taken, tooth tapped, filling removed and wire brush applied to the inner tooth while I failed pathetically to hide my discomfort in front of some slightly smiling female dentistry students who looked on as  la dentista made good the mess caused by the munificent kind and wise Will of Allah.  There was a chorus of surprisingly harmonic but shocked with a tinge of disgust bismillahs as they saw a text book seeping, suppurating abscess dealt with. Horror. But what added a fairy light to my dark day was hearing them in move to hushed and awestruck tones as their disgust moved  to medical interest and utter shufi al gove as they as the mess of my mouth was explained to the. Yes, gove it transpires is indeed Arabic for abhorrent abscess - seems to fit.


 
Regardless, the pain was gone and I can see how torture victims now come to love Mr Nice the one who takes away the pain, who cares and understands...unfortunately though she was unable to complete the root canal as in her role as the emergency dentist her job is far better it is simply to take away the pain and send you skipping and ever grateful on your way into the unknown hands of the High Street private third world dentist which is now my next job - she said I have a week to do it or the temporary filling (I'm sure I had a crown last time) will flare up and I will get a ghastly and most gangrenous inflamed infection which I really wouldn't want not least as in Gulf Arabic such a humiliating and shameful disorder is unsurprisingly I suppose called a clegg.

Teaching boys and cultural diversity

A typical English schoolboy or puce faced comedy posh wanker...?

Teaching boys in single sex classes has many merits especially in languages as it takes the little tossers out of class and allows the girls to thrive and generally prosper. Yes, indeed there are some arguments for single sex education. In Sleepy Town-sur-Mer the Very Big Man has stipulated that in tertiary and higher ed at least, all classes should be mixed much to the wailing dismay of both sexes who generally loathe it as the only members of the opposite sex they generally know are from the closest recesses of The Family around which everything revolves. They have not the slightest suggestion of an idea of how to speak to one another, indeed they are told not to in case they get pregnant or something in which case the elder brother will have to take some kind of honour vengeance using long sharp knives and swords which glint in the sun...perhaps. So they naturally self-segregate (like primary school kids do), never mix thus reducing any hope of  pair or group work. A real pain as a teacher if the group is skewed towards one gender. Occasionally though you do get given a single sex class usually when there is an orphan in the group who then gets shuttled off to another class when this happens the dynamic changes immensely - everyone relaxes opens up and is generally happier with no more of The Horror of The Other which renders both genders pant wettingly speechless.

 

English boys...well the sort I taught

• Fidgety
• Feral haircuts and sprouting bumfluff.
• Spots based on value packs no-brand biscuits, fizzy pop masquerading as breakfast / lunch / dinner
• Scratchy and itchy - based on aforementioned junk diet and putridly poor hygiene.
• Perpetual erectile discomfort caused by being congenitally teenage and consuming copious amounts of specialist one handed material on the net at 3.00 am...it was in The Mail so it must be true
• Repulsive gag inducing odour of seeping sweat (see all of the above)

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• Repulsive gag and reflux inducing use of industrial pollutant Lynx to fail to mask aforementioned suppurating seeping sweat.

• Excellence in the manufacture of fast flying sharp nosed model planes
• Thumping one another hard to cover up sexual identity confusion
• Olympic standards  in non-syllabic communication
• Creative insults (your mum, gay, wankah etc)
• Insecure homophobic comments (are there secure ones?)
• Great skills at sopping spit balling
• Disrespectful of teachers, parent(s), alleged friends, and self
• Hates foreigners - despite one in five (or something) being part - 'foreign' and trying to sound Gangsta.

Education? Why bother? There are so few -  even shittily paid - jobs at the end of it all anyway? 


Sleepy part of Gulf (but only in all boys classes)
 

• Fidgety - which they cannot ever be among girls who inspire all sorts of evil and depravity and must therefore be covered up
• Scratchy (surreptitious fear ridden comedy stiffies being constantly slapped down as they don't go with pre-medieval nonsense belief systems)
• Beautiful moulded, hair and sculpted trimmed beards showing a careful balance of machismo and religious devotion and piety.
• Clear skin based on plenty of  fruit and veg owing to a sad lack of value brands
• Excellent mosque and religious based personal hygiene hammered home by fear of relgious damnation and death by slow spit roasting for the teensiest morsel of stray and bedraggled toe jam
• As there is rightly a fatwa banning Lynx our boys use lots of musk and frankincense based oils and skin fresheners. Nice it is too.
• Shit at anything kineshetic creative subjects are not taught as they get in the way of religious devotion...
• Never violent or touchy ... in class anyway.
• Mono-syllabic and unfailingly polite in English as teachers are hugely venerated objects of respect placed upon gleaming sun flecked pedestals of marble and gold.
• Creative insults in Arabic (not that I can understand and they won't tell me but I suspect your mum is NOT in the repertoire)
• Attitude to LGBT? Stone to death and get a few virgins in reward
•  (Question I have yet to ask my Omani friends - what if the virgins are boys?)
• What's a spit ball?
• Foreigners? Ah yes, horrid poor people with their ...oh hang on they do all the hard, unpaid dirty dangerous frequently life threatening work don't they? Also mainly brother Muslims who do it. Just saying...
• Westerners - Indian whisky and Filipina sex workers. Confused feelings of either jealousy or hatred or both. 

Education? Why bother I'll get a cushy government job with a big house and pension as the unelected  government needs to keep us all onside to avoid a Syria style spring.

Striking teachers - Mexico

Our Mexican colleagues have been a little active over reforms. I am just trying to imagine UK teachers (or any other group of workers these days) occupying say Trafalgar Square for three weeks and the trying to face down our noble riot Plod? Not that I would ever condone or encourage such action as that would doubtless raise eye-brows among those who have drawn the short straw and have to read such things.

Sure, it's a different political and educational culture and possibly to strike have not been so circumscribed as they have back home. To get teachers, the er...new vanguard of the revolution, so angry that they have been pushed to take such action is at the very least interesting.

From The Guardian 15/09/2013

Initially the protests were aimed at pressuring the legislature into modifying a wide-ranging education reform that threatens teachers with dismissal if they fail evaluations aimed at improving the dismal standard of the country's state schools.
With the reform approved earlier this month, they began demanding that it be scrapped. They also demanded face-to-face negotiations with the nation's president, Enrique Peña Nieto.
Most of the striking teachers come from Mexico's poverty-ridden southern states, and argue that the country's educational deficiencies are more closely tied to social inequity than their performance in the classroom.
They belong to the smaller of the country's two teachers' unions – the National Education Workers Co-ordinating Committee.
The larger union, much weakened after the arrest of its legendarily powerful leader Elba Esther Gordillo in February, has supported the reforms.
Having lost control of the Zócalo, the protesters began regrouping at the nearby Monument to the Revolution.
Organisers said teachers were not responsible for the earlier violence, blaming radical supporters of the movement who had joined the protest just before the police moved in.

My inner prostitute

Well, that was fun - a while back now, it seems so, I did enjoy a freebie to London for a rigorous interview to become a value free, grubby, educational prostitute in the jolly old Kingdom of the Magic Stones. It is not a teaching gig for everyone - least of all me. The brutal client is a hard bastard  who deals in oil, vicious weaponry and medieval high tech torture equipment (probably) for the greater benefit of  Britain and this part of the unethical conscience free business sector of course. They take unfeasibly large sums from folk who, like them, don't give much in the way of a micro-toss,  and of course they could see right through my facade of enthusiasm and a few days later thanked me so much and said they would keep me on file - adminese for naaaah not wanted. That said I knew I would not accept any offer not least because of the hassle I was getting from people around me and the sober finger wagging voice within that was telling me that it was a compromise of jaded and faded withered principles too far. There is just so much yogic bending over and contrived contorting and Obama style empty self-justification you can make.

I had found and breached my limit which, after times in the semi-slave feudal Gulf, is tolerably, worryingly, too high for a once high-minded wet lefty. My twenty year old self would loath what he has morphed into - or perhaps not?  Still, by desperate default I have kept the ragged shreds of my distressed dignity.  Yet my cheap and nasty inner prostitute (you have one too) would like to have at least been offered the gig with of course the option to high-mindedly turn it down. The terms and conditions were really rather good. Droolingly good - in such a place they would need to be. I could have closed my eyes, served my time painlessly and been out in three years with several heavy swag bags full of untaxed cash that Grubby Gideon and his fellow lizards would not get and who knows do something useful like erm...teaching for the good guys.

Ho hum, what next? See out the contract in the sleepy end of the Gulf or maybe I should get some tatts for I  am the only man or woman left in England without one, and do a crash course in the latest whacky wheeze from that educational colossus G*ve and sign up to the soon to be piloted teachers to troops programme...?