This blog is rated . . .

Back in February, my blog was rated family friendly:


Now apparently my blog is rated PG:

Why? Mostly because of this article about roadworks, but also because I wrote about getting sick from eating at KFC in Taipei! (Offending words: crack and torture.)

I guess that's why ratings systems are only guides. My kids are still terrified by some G rated Disney-type movies, but for some reason find Torchwood fascinating and will hide outside the room while we're watching it so they can watch it too!

Time For Some Campaignin'

I had this blogpost scheduled to post tonight and then found that Gaby of Bloody Brilliant had beaten me to it. I do like JibJab!

Chocolate for blood

Well, yes, I may indeed have chocolate for blood given my love for chocolate, but I'm talking bribes here . . .

The Red Cross is offering chocolate in exchange for blood donations. No, I don't know how much chocolate they're offering, or even what quality. (It's not that I'm not interested because my blood is mostly chocolate in the first place, but because, irritatingly, they won't take blood from Mad Cows like me!) Would it be worth donating blood if I could just for a couple of ounces of milk chocolate of inferior quality? Yes, of course! Not because any chocolate is better than none, but because it is simply A Good Thing To Do! I do hope this works and brings them lots of new volunteers who become regulars once they realize how easy it is to do!

The photo is courtesy of DH who saw the sign on his way to work and thought of me!

Curved grades

I am grateful that my entire degree result depended on the exams I did at the end of my final year when I 'd finally figured out that being a student was a full-time job and I needed to work at it. Had I been an undergraduate in the United States, my all-important grade-point-average (GPA) would have been so far in the toilet by the end of my second year, I probably would have dropped out. Or maybe not.

An average passing grade in a university class at the time in the UK was between 50 and 60%. When I arrived in the United States and started teaching undergraduate classes here, I frightened my first class by awarding what I thought were OK grades for their first assignment. Then I was told by my department head that my class average should be 80%. I was stunned - I thought 70 was an excellent grade! Many of my students asked me when they got less than 80% if I would 'curve' my grades.

I guess that was pretty common in maths and science classes where sometimes the class average was 40%. Rather than berate the students for not having studied, the teacher would assume that the test had been too hard and adjust the average. I'm not entirely sure how they did that - I think some teachers had a rather more complicated approach than "The average is 60, so I'll add 20 to everyone's score." My students sometimes accused me of being unfair because I didn't 'curve'. Some didn't want to accept my concept of "You get what you get." Once I got used to the inflated grading standards, I found I really didn't have to do that anyway. The average in my classes almost always hovered around 80% with no jiggery-pokery on my part. There would be a few A's, a few D's or F's, but the average would almost always be in the range of 79 to 81 - a B minus. I'm not quite sure how I did that, but it just happened.

My last teaching job (before this one) I didn't have to give grades at all. I did for one project and it was amazing how freaked out the students were. They had no idea whether I was a 'tough' or 'easy' grader or what they had to do to please me. Umm - follow the (four pages of step-by-step) directions! They didn't believe me when I said it was perfectly possible, but extremely unlikely, for everyone to get an A.

Does my butt . . .

DH walked into the room and asked, "Does my butt look flat in these jeans?"

Crack sealing

I had never realized before this week that they do so much of this that they need special signs for it, as opposed to signs that just say "Road work ahead"!

Bunnies

Torn between the delight of watching the wild rabbits in the garden and the annoyance of seeing said wild rabbits eating my plants, I realize I need a new camera with a better telephoto lens!

The Post American World and the Future of Freedom

I have a book on hold at the local library - The Post American World and the Future of Freedom by Fareed Zakaria. I'm not holding my breath, as it appears 27 other people have put the book on hold too! If the author's talk at the Commonwealth Club of California is anything to go by, it will be a very interesting read. He speaks of Americans' lack of awareness of what is going on outside their borders, and of how the balance of economic power has shifted over the past few years. He is extremely articulate and to summarize his talk here would not do him justice. Here's an extract from his book:

Look around. The world's tallest building is in Taipei, and will soon be in Dubai. Its largest publicly traded company is in Beijing. Its biggest refinery is being constructed in India. Its largest passenger airplane is built in Europe. The largest investment fund on the planet is in Abu Dhabi; the biggest movie industry is Bollywood, not Hollywood. Once quintessentially American icons have been usurped by the natives. The largest Ferris wheel is in Singapore. The largest casino is in Macao, which overtook Las Vegas in gambling revenues last year. America no longer dominates even its favorite sport, shopping. The Mall of America in Minnesota once boasted that it was the largest shopping mall in the world. Today it wouldn't make the top ten. In the most recent rankings, only two of the world's ten richest people are American. These lists are arbitrary and a bit silly, but consider that only ten years ago, the United States would have serenely topped almost every one of these categories.

These factoids reflect a seismic shift in power and attitudes. It is one that I sense when I travel around the world. In America, we are still debating the nature and extent of anti-Americanism. One side says that the problem is real and worrying and that we must woo the world back. The other says this is the inevitable price of power and that many of these countries are envious—and vaguely French—so we can safely ignore their griping. But while we argue over why they hate us, "they" have moved on, and are now far more interested in other, more dynamic parts of the globe. The world has shifted from anti-Americanism to post-Americanism.

If the topic is at all interesting to you, you can buy or borrow his book, read an excerpt online or download the free podcast of his talk at the Commonwealth Club here.

Apparently Zakaria has a show on CNN on Sundays and I think I might make the effort to watch it.

A degree of inflation

When I was an undergraduate (back in the early 1980's) a First Class degree was nigh on impossible to get. It was somewhat easier in the sciences or maths, but in a language - forget about it! How did the joke go? Something along the lines of, only truly outstanding students would ever earn over 70%, the professor who wrote the exam might be able to score 80%, but only God could get over 90%. In my department, an average on your finals of 60% or above earned you an upper second class degree, over 70% was a First. If you scored over 70% (or it may have been 80% - I no longer remember) on the final oral exam, it was noted in your degree result that you passed the oral exam "With Distinction."

No one in my department had earned a First in seven years, but we knew that Mike would get one. He was absolutely brilliant! His year-abroad dissertation read more like a Master's thesis. If anyone was going to get a First, Mike would. He didn't. We were given times for our oral exam, and told to report half an hour BEFORE the exam in order to prepare. Mike arrived early, only to find that in fact he had left himself only 15 minutes to prepare. Even he couldn't do himself justice. Although I'm sure his average on the written papers was easily a First, he was not awarded one because he did not pass the oral exam "With Distinction". In talking to the professors after the results were announced, one of them made the comment that it didn't really matter if Mike got a First or not - he was very clearly headed for a doctorate and once he had that no one would ever ask what his undergraduate degree result was.

Sure enough, Mike went on to earn his doctorate, become a published academic, and teach at the university level. Several years ago though, he quit academia. I remember that somewhere amongst his reasons, was the dumbing down of the curriculum, so it did not surprise me to read today:

The number of students achieving a first class degree at UK universities has more than doubled since the mid-1990s.

Among last year's university leavers, 61% achieved a first class or upper second class degree.

An upper second used to mean that your performance was above average! How can 61% of university leavers be above average? Twelve years ago, only 45% of university leavers had an upper second or a first. The sad thing is that this appears to be happening because Universities want students to like them. They think that if they become known for giving good grades, more students will want to go there. I was very happy with my undergraduate education. The fact that I earned an upper second class honours degree with Distinction in the oral exam, does not change my degree of satisfaction with the university. (Yes, on paper I did better than Mike, but I will always be honest about the fact that he was a FAR better student than I was.) Believe it or not, the fact that I was given a Dean's Warning (A Bad Thing!) at the end of both my first and second years, is what makes me happy with the education I received. After the second one I was asked to consider whether I really thought I was 'degree material'. I was not simply allowed to pass because I'd got in to uni. in the first place. It was made extremely clear to me that if I wanted a degree, let alone a decent one, I was going to have to work for it. That was probably the most valuable lesson I learned in my undergraduate years, and is one I have applied to many situations since then. Of course nowadays, no one ever asks me even at a job interview what my degree result was, but I am proud of the degree I earned and I am saddened at the thought that today's students are being denied the chance to earn something of value.

Driving from Sydney to Boston

"These directions are for planning purposes only. You may find that construction projects, traffic, or other events may cause road conditions to differ from the map results."

Similar directions are available for all the locations I tried in Australia - Alice Springs, Tasmania . . . Note that if you start your trip in Australia, the distances are measured in kilometers, but if you start in the USA they are measured in miles. I suspect, like the driving from New York to London directions that I blogged about some time ago, these too will disappear before long. At least this time they suggest that you should kayak across the ocean rather than swim!

Seeing in color

When I was in graduate school here in the United States, I dated an African American for a short period of time. I was absolutely furious when we had an argument and he then accused me of not understanding him "because he was black". He was absolutely right, I didn't understand him - but it had nothing to do with the colour of his skin. I had had similar misunderstandings/arguments with white boyfriends, and the Iranian I lived with when I was living in France. It had everything to do with the fact that we had been brought up in different places, and to my mind using the color of his skin as an explanation was racist on his part.

It is too easy to explain differences of attitude as racial when in fact they are cultural or personal. There are people of other skin tones I have no desire to associate with, but it does NOT mean I am racist. There are many white people I would not want to associate with - am I racist because I don't like their values? (Prejudiced? Yes. Racist? No!)

My maternal grandmother lived for many years in South Africa and although she tried hard, the racism of the white South Africans rubbed off on her. When she had a dark tan (which she worked very hard at getting), with her dark curly hair and dark eyes, she did not look 100% white herself. I am sure she never realized that, but it made a great impression on me. If it was so difficult to tell someone's race, then what was the point in judging someone by the color of their skin? The chairperson of the African American studies department at Harvard recently found out that genetically he is 50% white. He and his family were stunned! I just don't see the point in deciding in advance if you are going to like someone or not based on the way they look. Of course we all do make snap judgements - not just looking at skin color, but the way people dress or the way they sound. It doesn't make it right, but neither does it make it right to accuse me of racism when I decide that I don't like someone because of who they are as a person.

I am delighted that both my kids are in classes that, although not as diverse as I would like, are not 100% white. Already it is clear that neither of them really understands why anyone would be racist. They are way ahead of me at the same age as I grew up in a town where there was precisely one adult who was not white! It took me many, many, years before I was comfortable talking to people of other races and not constantly thinking that they were somehow different.

My biggest eye-opener was the summer I lived in Taiwan when I truly experienced what it is like to be one of the minority. I lived with a Taiwanese family, I took the bus to work every day, and I taught in a Taiwanese school. For days on end the only Europeans I saw were at a distance in the restaurant at the Lai-Lai Sheraton as my bus stopped outside it. I went through all the usual stages of culture shock even though I knew what to expect. I loved Taiwan, I hated Taiwan, I slept too much . . . I remember one day I went out for lunch with some Taiwanese acquaintances. We went to KFC. For them it was a treat. For me it was torture. It made me violently ill, in a way Taiwanese food never did at any point in my stay. Shortly after lunch I was suddenly absolutely desperate to get to a toilet - preferably clean and with toilet paper, though at that point I wasn't fussy. My friends thought fast and recommended we get off the bus we were on at the next stop as there was a McDonalds. That was one place where I was guaranteed there would be toilet paper. After I was done being ill (for the moment at least), I washed my face as well as my hands because I was sweating profusely. When I looked up at myself in the mirror I realised how sick I really was as my eyes were a strange shape - they were round!

It took me several minutes to realize there was nothing wrong with my eyes. I simply hadn't seen any Western eyes in weeks, there being no mirror in the bathroom at the apartment where I was staying. If being in the minority for only a few weeks made me feel as though I had something wrong with me when I looked in the mirror, I could barely begin to imagine the effects of years of not seeing people like myself . . .

I began writing this post months ago, before the American presidential race had narrowed itself down to two candidates. Clearly race will be an issue for many people when they vote this year. I wish it weren't. I am confident that my decision will be based on who I think will do the best job and not on the race of the candidates. Hopefully within my lifetime race will no longer be an issue in these elections - or gender either!

Visited states

create your own personalized map of the USA

Over 20 years and this is all I've managed to visit? Pathetic really, especially as 'Florida' really means not much more than Orlando, and 'California' was San Francisco and Lassen National Park.

Still, I remember teaching a college student who told me that at the age of 19 she had never left her home state. She was about to spend a semester in Spain. I never did find out how she did, but I bet the culture shock was amazing!

Chocolate in my cupboard

Yes, there is too much chocolate in my house. In addition to all the chocolate in the photo in my last post, there is a ten POUND bar of chocolate in the basement . . . The good news (for my hips) is that that very large bar of chocolate, which was a present from some relatives at least 3 years ago is still untouched. Well, it's not dark chocolate, so what's the point? You'll notice that all the chocolate on 'my' shelves in the cupboard is dark chocolate. (The top shelf is DH's and I truly would not dream of taking any of his chocolate. The shelf in the other cupboard with the chips/crisps is another matter!)

The bad news is that since we got married I have put on just over 30 pounds. When I got pregnant with DS, I weighed 5 pounds more than I do now. However, this time last year (when I hated my job and was on antidepressants to make it through each day) I weighed 20 pounds less than I do now. I could blame my weight gain on DH's wonderful cooking, but it's simply a case of too many calories and too little exercise. When I was in my twenties I worked at a boarding school where I was actually paid to do an hour's exercise every day!

Much as I would hate to be working the kind of hours I put in back then, the idea of being paid, indeed being required, to exercise is rather nice. It seems so hard now with a husband and kids and a full-time job to find time to work out. I specifically remember running five miles one Friday afternoon with the kids (which for me was a very long run) and deciding I wasn't done yet, so I headed off to an hour-long Jazzercize class. I was very aware of the effect it had not only on my weight, but also on my health. My cholesterol dropped from 350 to 240 without medication, I was much less moody, and I had no trouble at all keeping my weight down. For a very brief period I was an American size 5, but fortunately for me my love of food outweighed my love of exercise as a size 5 is not a healthy size for me to be.

I thought I was being so American back then, so conscious of my fitness and my weight. I went to an aerobics class when I was back in the UK and was not impressed - they actually stood still between the songs, whereas in Jazzercize we never stopped moving. Now I'm the other kind of American - the overweight kind :-(

I made a small move in the right direction last weekend - I bought a bike. I wouldn't ride my bike on the roads around here, but we have a nice park nearby where I could ride my bike with the kids and there are some rail trails not too far away too. DH has a bike rack for his car, but I may need to get one for mine too. Unfortunately that will entail getting a towing hitch installed and, having just bought the bike, my budget is shot for now!


I also need to make more use of my YMCA membership than just walking around in the small, warm, pool when we take the kids swimming on a Sunday morning. DD had a swimming class last Saturday and I swam in the lane next to her. After 4 lengths of the pool I was out of breath and feeling, quite frankly, knackered. I made myself keep going though, figuring that so long as I was moving it was better than sitting on the side of the pool watching her. By the time her lesson was over, I was actually sorry to get out. Unfortunately, that was her last class until the fall and without the incentive of swimming alongside her during class I probably won't swim very much over the summer.

I 'only' have 30 or 35 pounds to lose. Having been reading some other blogs recently where people are documenting their efforts to lose over 100 it made me realize that if they can do that (and many have, and kept it off) then surely I can lose a mere 30?! Thanks to bloggers like Sharon for motivating me to get started again - now I have to get on with it.

Wordless Wednesday

More to follow on this topic . . .

What time of day are you?

So, what time of day are you?

Underground drinking

I had never really thought about whether drinking was allowed on the Tube or not. I've never really spent that much time in London. I'm used to the idea of drinking alcohol on trains though - on the way from The North to London and back there was usually a choice of some kind of alcohol on the train in addition to coffee and tea. Over here, it's a very obvious no-no to drink alcohol on public transportation. I'm not sure if that's the case in every state of the union, but it wouldn't surprise me - the puritanical attitude seems pretty pervasive - or is the no 'open-containers' law just a New England thing? Is it a symptom of my Americanisation that it seems normal to me not to allow the drinking of alcohol on trains or buses?

It truly does surprise me though that British journalists seemed surprised that the 'last night' of drinking on the Tube got out of hand. What on earth did they expect?





Images from the Daily Mail's report on the evening.

I'm the greatest (maybe)

DH says I am often too self-deprecating and that I lack self-confidence. I tell him that it is a cultural thing. Remind him that I grew up in the UK, and our attitudes there were different. Lucy Kelleher wrote a good article on this phenomenon:

When I was a child, we were taught never to boast. For a start it was bad manners. If you went around saying I got 97% in my algebra test, you made the dunderhead who only got 23% feel even more wretched than he was feeling already. To boast was to let your achievements get out of proportion, and it clashed with that very English idea that everything had to be effortless. Trying was fine - so long as no one caught you at it.

I remember a family friend who used to visit our house. My parents would tell us how clever he was and marvel at the way he wore his intelligence so lightly. The great thing about him wasn't that he was brilliant, but that he hid it so well that no one would have ever suspected that there was anything special about him at all.

I didn't question this attitude until I went to university and took up with an American boyfriend. He looked a bit like Oscar Wilde - which pleased me. Yet what pleased me less was the way he used to tell me that his doctorate thesis on the economy of communist China was an important piece of work. It wasn't that I doubted that it was good. I was just mortified that he felt the need to tell me. Looking back I suspect he wasn't a particularly boastful person. He was just American, and so his mother had never told him that he must hide his light under a bushel at all times.

I thought I had learned to boast like an American quite nicely not long after my arrival here. I applied for a job that I was sure I was a shoo-in for. I didn't get it. One of the committee members was nice enough to tell me that a major reason why I didn't get the job was because I was TOO confident. Apparently, I sounded so confident that I came across as condescending and arrogant. Interestingly, a Kenyan friend who did get hired by the same committee reassured me that it was a cultural misunderstanding - "You just sounded too British." So his perception of the British was that we came across as overly confident . . . exactly the perception that many British people have of Americans! The experience traumatized me and ever since then I've been paranoid, afraid to admit that I know when I'm good at something. I get the job, but then wonder if I only got it because I was too good at bluffing my way in. Can I really do it? When are they going to discover that I'm a fraud?

At a recent meeting with other people in my field, the meeting facilitator made the point that if we don't toot our own horn, if we don't constantly remind people of what we are doing, we will be perceived as doing nothing. So, despite my lack of self-confidence, I will be doing just that, and trying to convince my colleagues that they can't do without me (even though I know they could replace me at the drop of a hat!)

Tupperware

I hadn't been to a Tupperware party in over ten years and now I've been to two in as many weeks, and I'm having one of my own next week. Tupperware is still Tupperware - all the old faithfuls are still there. Some new colours of course. There are a few new pieces that don't look like traditional Tupperware:
and some others that are probably not new but I was never interested in them before. One piece of Tupperware I'd quite like is not available in the US though - Tupperware in the UK sells a bread box.

Given that I had already booked a Tupperware party of my own, Ann invited me to hers with the encouragement that she really didn't expect me to buy anything, but I might as well come over and socialize. She explained that it was going to be a Tupperware 'cocktail party'. DH dropped me off at 4, with the expectation that I would call him when I was ready to come home, probably around 6. Well, there was red wine, rather a lot of champagne, cosmopolitans . . . and I think it was gone 7 when I suddenly realized my own children were in the room. DH had given up waiting and had come to fetch me. Of course then my kids started playing with Ann's kids, and the mothers all wanted to know what was up with DH's strange posture, and it was gone 8 by the time we left and the children still hadn't had dinner!

The next morning I got an email from Ann:

Had fun yesterday... very glad you could join us. But I fear there's something inherently wrong about being slightly hung-over after a Tupperware party!

Happy Birthday DH!

bAs I was writing the previous post, DH came into the room and told me he was going to bed and wanted some help taking his clothes off . . . He added that he'd also like me to make him a sandwich with some chips and get him a large bottle of beer from the basement and bring those upstairs.

Today is his 40th birthday. Unfortunately the above was not a suggestion to celebrate, nor was it an attempt to show off that he's not so old . . . DH came home early from work today because he'd done his back in. Again. He headed straight for the painkillers and asked me to get the TENS machine for him. I bought it at Boots in the UK years ago in the hope that it might help with labour pains, but never needed it and DH has used it more than I have. The first time DH did his back in (by sneezing!) we would have had to call an ambulance to get him to the doctor's if we hadn't had the TENS machine. Good thing we had it - you can't get one here in the US without a prescription.

The card I bought DH had the following text:

TURNING 40?
Listen to your mind say: You're young! You're vibrant! You can do anything a 20 year-old can do!

Then listen to your body say: Ha! Ha! Ha!

And then on the back of the card was printed:

Hey, why aren't you laughing?

A couple of weeks ago we had a get together with lots of DH's friends, some of whom he's known since he was five years old. I decided we should get a birthday cake and celebrate a little early. The children decided that if it was a birthday cake it definitely needed candles. Hmm . . . well, we got the candles, and despite the smoke did NOT set the smoke alarm off!



(Image courtesy of Jenn.)

The little bloggers!

Back in February, DD decided that she wanted a blog of her own. It seemed as though it would be a good way to get her to improve her writing, so I set one up for her. She is very enthusiastic about it, though she does not always follow through and write blog posts about all the things she decides are 'bloggable'.

My brother in the UK has set up a blog for my niece too, and it is interesting to see what she blogs about. There are some nice intercultural exchanges going on as we share stories from our lives. We hear from my brother and sister more often now that we have yet another way to communicate.

Last Saturday DS and I saw a bear in the backyard. Later, as we were going somewhere in the car he was still babbling with excitement about the bear. I was only half listening at first, but then suddenly I heard him say, "I'll have to write about the bear on my blog."

"Blog? You don't have a blog!"

"But I need one so I can write about the bear!"

So I set the blog up, and in the first two days he dictated three posts. He had a little difficulty understanding how it worked at first. We posted one story about the bear, and then he wanted to add to it later. I explained we could do that, but seeing as Aunty England had already read his first post, we should probably just write a second one. He wasn't too sure about that. He also didn't understand at first that he could actually write about things other than the bear. Nor did he grasp the concept of the interface being the same for his blog and for mine when creating posts, so he threw a hissy fit when he saw me writing a post for my blog as he thought I was changing his blog.

So both kids now have blogs and we're a four blog household. Their blogs are open by invitation only, but I am still teaching them to be very careful about what they post on them. No real names, and we think carefully about what photos we use.

And to think it wasn't that many years ago that my brother and I could not even send each other email because the systems we were on didn't 'talk' to each other! Now I have a variety of email addresses for different purposes. When I say we're going to call grandma, the kids automatically head for the computer rather than the phone, assuming I mean we're going to use Skype. They want the instant gratification of a reply to an email the same or the next day, not a letter a couple of weeks later. They ask if we can scan their artwork to send it to grandma, and they expect responses to their blog postings within the hour! Although their computer use is limited (no Club Penguin or Webkins) compared to some of their peers who already have unlimited internet access from computers in their bedrooms (disasters waiting to happen), they are still very firmly a part of the digital generation.

What was the best decision you ever made?

David asks: "What was the best decision you ever made?" The most influential decision I ever made, which in a very long roundabout way led to the best one I ever made fourteen years later, was many years ago. I'll keep the story short:

I was at university in the UK. I was not a great one for going out to nightclubs, but for some reason when some blokes came around selling tickets for a Cricket Club dance at a local nightclub, I was determined to go. I convinced some friends to go too, pointing out that the blokes selling the tickets were very good-looking and there were going to be more of them at the dance. My friends wondered what had got into me that I actually wanted to go to a nightclub, but agreed that we would all go. This despite the fact that it was on a Wednesday night, and I usually turned into a pumpkin on weeknights by 10:30 p.m.

So we went. I didn't meet any nice men from the Cricket Club. I did, however, end up dancing all evening with T. from the Boston University Rugby Club.

We ended up writing to each other after he returned to the United States, and the following summer I flew over here to visit him. My first visit to the United States! I had a nice visit, though it was clear by the end of it that the romantic relationship wasn't going to go anywhere, he was a good person to have as a friend. He was already looking ahead to when he would graduate from BU, and planning where he would go to graduate school - preferably somewhere overseas. This was a revelation to me. I had never thought of going to graduate school, nor of studying abroad to get an actual qualification, despite the fact that I was about to spend a year in France for my undergraduate degree. I spent a lot of time thinking about that over the next couple of years, and eventually ended up applying to an American university to do a Master's degree. (No language problem, sorta, and they funded me!)

Had I not made the decision to go to that dance, I would never have met T., would never have visited Boston, and in all likelihood would never have considered coming to the US to study. It's amazing to think that I can pinpoint so precisely the first in a long chain of decisions that led me to life here in the US and the best decision I ever made - to marry my Dear Husband.