05 June 2002

I came back early from the teachers' class - the Wednesday, non-revolting one. Two teachers gave lectures in English, a first for each, and did fairly well. Attendance was five, not counting me or the A/V guy. But I could feel learning in the air. Happily, everything finished early, and I had us skip the break, so I was back in my apartment only twenty minutes into the USA-Portugal game. And, surprise surprise, the USA was up 2-0. When I saw the score on screen, I had to read the Chinese characters twice to be sure. And we added a third goal on a beautiful header. Portugal came out with their pants on fire in the second half, but the US team endured (giving up two goals) and even put the pressure back on in the last few minutes. Very, very exciting.

What's with all the players being so eager to yank their shirts off?

Later I caught most of Germany-Ireland, including Ireland's game-tying goal two minutes into injury time at the end of the second half. Fancy stuff.

The other day I came home and there was a half-eaten watermelon in a plastic bag in the stairwell. I knocked on the door, and someone (who spoke English) opened it.

"If you leave this out overnight, more rats will come."

"Uh ... it's not mine."

"Okay, well, I'll just keep it in my apartment then."

She made a helpless shrug. I picked up the bag and took it into my apartment.

Highlight of the Senegal-Denmark match: A Senegalese player was about to take a corner kick when the assistant ref stopped him and pointed to his untucked jersey. The player tucked in his jersey and then briefly hugged the ref before taking the kick.

France and Uraguay played - France is the defending champion from 1998, but was stunned 0-1 by Segenal in the opening match of the World Cup. France dominated the game, a very bad sign for Uraguay because France was short a man most of the match. But in the end, I fell asleep.

I had the other teachers' class today, and lo and behold they hadn't prepared. About six eventually trickled in, and we had two speeches, each under five minutes. After that we all sat around in a "okay, the other party isn't doing what I want, so now what do we do?" mood which soon broke into free talk for an hour or so. This was useful. We found out that the guy who gave the speech on Open Source, and whom I had taken by body language to be indolent, really was just cripplingly shy. Or something. He couldn't make eye contact with anybody during his speech, to the point that I wondered if he had muscular problems with his eyes. Later I couched him on the pronunciation of linux (which should not, in my experience, rhyme with "Spartacus"). The class seemed relieved that I wasn't going to be a tight-ass today.

Echo asked why I was a teacher if I didn't like to lecture.

"I don't believe lecturing is the only way, or even the best way, to teach."

"I disagree."

"I know you disagree."

Almost all of the teachers' classes are two hundred students or more, so they feel trapped in lecture. I didn't have much advice for that situation. "Do more group work...?" Hell, not my problem. Stop breeding, people. I'm doing my part on that score.

07 June 2002

Spain vs Paraguay. I'm watching and reading homework at the same time. The Spanish attackers string together three beautiful give-and-gos to penetrate the cloud of salmon-pink-shirted defenders in front of the penalty box, but a hard shot bounces harmlessly off of some shins. Still 1-0 Paraguay.

My ninety-three undergrad students handed in their sources for the final last week. Students have to find and print at least four sources on a topic of their choice. I read the sources and write three thesis topics, which they will get at the beginning of the final exam in three weeks. Sometimes the sources are very interesting, and sometimes they are interesting but hard to debate (anecdotes about blind people dreaming in color, black and white, or without visual - great stuff, but what sort of argumentative essay can you put together from four anecdotes?).

Spain scores on a perfect header from a perfect corner kick, making it 2-0. No, wait, it's 1-1. Ok, who's wearing red and who's wearing salmon-pink? Which country is more gay?

Ok, the red shirts scored another goal, which put Spain up 2-1. So Spain is wearing red. I'm less confused.

Beckham is the most famous football player in the world right now, and for much of the last three or four years. He's wearing a silly blond stripe down the top of his head and is clearly using a lot of product.

It took me a while to notice, but England really is England, not Great Britain. Clues: the English fans are all waving white flags with crosses - St. George's flag, not the Union Jack, and the announcers say Ying-Guh-Lan, not Ying-Guo. Scotland fields a seperate team, which didn't qualify; Wales apparently doesn't register at the international level, and Northern Ireland players probably immigrate. Ireland, though, is at the World Cup.

Many Argentine players wear long hair pulled back over the ears with an elastic tie. Not exactly beautiful, but at least it isn't a mullet. The ref is bald.

Beckham takes all of England's kicks, and I can soon see why. His corner kicks are always perfectly precise; other players sometimes kick corners clear across the field and out of bounds. Owen is fouled inside the penalty box, but Beckham takes the penalty kick. And it's beautiful - on the replay, his foot just glides through the ball, seemingly a glancing blow, but the ball shoots forward, inches above the ground, like it's on a magnetic rail gun. It dents the net before the goalkeeper has flinched. Instead of ripping off his shirt, Beckham gathers the hem to his face and kisses it. Hmmm - what's he hiding in there?

Early in the second half the hot pepper I ate at lunch speaks up. They leave the stuff soaking in oil, in little tubs at room temperature; it's impossible to say if I'm reacting to the spice or the bacteria. Uhhhhgh. What the hell - I (quickly) carry the television into the kitchen adjoining the bathroom, set it up on the washing machine ... enough said. England holds on to win.

Beckham goes up for a header against an Argentina - gets him in the face with an elbow by accident. The ref whistles, and Beckham looks terribly innocent. Blood is streaming down the Argentine's face and staining his uniform. Beckham still looks innocent.

Unlike the delicate Owen and stocky Beckham, the English goalkeeper is a lanky man, with a big blade nose and a long black pony-tail. He looks like he'd be very comfortable with a polearm of some sort, maybe a halbard. Just after I think this, the TV shows some English fans in the stands wearing full chainmail. It's gotta eighty degrees there, even at night. They're not moving very much.

08 June 2002

Chloe and I met a bunch of other foreign teachers and hopped on the bus to Yangshuo. I had a great bean burrito for lunch - mmm, refried beans. A few of us rented bicycles; others hung out on Western street and shopped. Michael, Michael, and I did a ten or twenty kilometer ride, first on the roads, then on trails between the rice paddies and through the villages.

The World Cup games were on every television in every shop on Western Street, but nobody in the villages, even the ones with electricity, was watching.

The Italian players have well-tailored jerseys (and as was pointed out, underneath are well-tailored Italians), but they hang loose below the chest. The Italian goalkeeper's jersey, however, is black and tight-fitting all around, and looks very cool.

09 June 2002

There was a judging contest tonight, my last in China, I hope. I went because I was invited in English more than a week in advance, and that's the first time I've ever been extended both courtesies.

In one stage, contestants had to get selected audience members to guess a word, which we could all see, by using other English words and body language. "Window" was the first belly laugh - the contestant looked around for a window, but we were in a stuffy auditorium in the belly of a building, windowless. Then, "the twelfth month" produced guesses of "July," "September," and "October." My notes say that "sharp" was hysterically funny, but I don't remember why.

A Turkish player took a spectacular fall with after a tackle with no contact that I could see. Sometimes the players do this, and then, as they lie writhing in faux pain, ignored, they have to decide how long to fake it before they should get up and shake off the effects of the imagined injury. I wonder if they get coached on that.

10 June 2002

Host country Korea plays the United States. Both teams won their first match, and today's winner is almost certain of advancement to the next round. The US kicks off, and dominates, controlling the ball beautifully and applying steady pressure around the Korea goal ... for about a minute. Then Korea takes over for most of the half. The American players seem afraid of the ball, afraid of tackles, tentative. Korea spends a lot of quality time in the American half of the field. But the American goalie, Brad Friedel, isn't a Man, but a Goblin, and he keeps the overall game even.

A Korean jumps for an incoming ball near the net, and comes down bleeding from the eyebrow. Play goes on, the Americans advancing the ball, until his condition becomes apparent. I'm still trying to work out the protocol for injuries; although it isn't shown, the Americans apparently put the ball out of play as a courtesy. The bleeder is attended to, and walks off the field with gauze held to his face. The Koreans get the ball from the ref, and pass it back to the Americans. The Americans kick it back and forth for a second, then run up the field and score a goal.

At last the American mode of play is apparent. Every other team tries hard to push the ball up the field, control the midfield, dominate possession, and get the ball near the opposing goal in order to generate chances. But once there, even top players from top teams such as Italy and France turn into total spazzes, their muscular convulsions hurling the ball harmlessly high and wide past the net, often by many yards. The Americans, generally helpless to control the ball on the rest of the field, turn into cold-blooded murderers when the back of the net is in sight. I'm sure the American rate of conversion of chances to goals would be much higher than any other team, if only the Americans had enough chances to calculate figures without divide-by-zero problems and other statistical anomolies.

The Americans celebrate, but keep their shirts on. After all, they've just scored against Korea in a stadium in Daegu. The crowd is pretty quiet. The bleeder comes back on the field, wearing a gauze helmet around most of his head from the pupils up, thick enough hopefully to endure many more headers. Soon defender Jeff Agoos (he of the own goal from the first game) commits a yellow-card foul in the penalty box; the camera angles available neither confirm nor deny the crime. We're about to have a tie game against.

Except for the fact that the American goalie is a Goblin. Brad Friedel - starts at goal for this year's English Premier League champion team. He has a shaved head, long face, shoulders bowed by their own breadth, and ropey, muscled legs. The Korean lines up for the kick, runs forward. Friedel guesses right, dives right, and reaches up to punch the ball away with his fingertips, it seems. Everybody charges forward (which answers my question, unaddressed by the rulebook at fifaworldcup.com, about whether or not the ball is in play after a penalty is blocked) and more blood is nearly shed in the chaos before the ball and the chance are lost to the Koreans.

The American players' sphincters presumably much tightened, play proceeds, and the Korean edge in control seems slightly diminished.

The American strategy continues to come into focus. It is to score early goals in ways not easily explained by physics, and then to hang on desperately for the balance of the match.

The bleeder, Hwang Son Hong, is back, his gauze dierndl replaced by a small bit of tape along the brow ridgeline. He is eventually replaced by a sub partway through the second half.

The ball spends so much time deep in the American half that I begin to wonder if the Koreans' real problem is that they are outnumbered because their goalkeeper doesn't get to participate in the play.

The Americans suddenly kick the ball out, because Claudio Reyna is lying on the ground writhing . He's carried off, victim apparently of a blow to or misstep on the ankle. The Koreans get the ball after he is cleared, then kick it back off the field to the Americans. It's a system, all right, but why doesn't the ref just stop the game? I guess he gets so many bogus supplications that he ignores everything the players say.

My cold-blooder murderer theory is disproved when an American gets the ball directly in front of the net, having timed a run past three defenders to recieve a pass without being offsides, and then chokes and taps the ball to the Korean goalie.

The Koreans dominate in every way but the scoreboard. They are faster, better passers, make fewer mistakes. The Americans are perpetually a few feet short, kicking up at balls that land past them, driving their heads at balls that don't arrive until after they've hit the grass.

The entire game is compressed into the space between the half-line and the American goal. Worse - it's as if the half-line has been moved a quarter of the way down the field. The Koreans start every play ready to score, while the Americans occasionally run down the field on the attack but then, as if perceiving the end of the field twenty yards short of reality and unable to figure out where the goal went, meekly return the ball to the Koreans. The Korean pressure is constant, but for many minutes, futile.

Finally, the Koreans win a header contest right in front of the goal. The Goblin is many yards away as a ball is directed right into the corner of the goal.

Play continues for another fifteen minutes, but the game feels over.

The final whistle blows, and the cameras survey the crowd. By the time they show the players shaking hands, the entire Korean team and half of the Americans are topless.

I read homework during the lulls in play. Some students' research is pretty hard to deal with. In some cases, it's very interesting to read, but almost impossible to think of non-obvious exam topics. As I read more and more and my brain goes numb, I frequently throw in "... is not Marxist" as a filler thesis. I don't really know what that means, but they've had years of classes about Marx so they'd damned well better know.

11 June 2002

I had office hours, but nobody came except for Hunt, who wanted to borrow more DVDs. Then I took a nap, and in consequence was catatonic when I ventured out for dinner.

Cameroon vs Germany I saw most of the second half. Cameroon's uniforms included almost the entire African flag color scheme: red, green, yellow, black. Very nice. The referee was brutal - eight yellow cards for each team, including one player sent off from each side. Zhang Ming later complained, but it's hard to say - all he did was call it like the rulebook. It's lucky for the teams that nobody tried the stunt I saw one team do last week - five guys lined up to block a free kick were dragged back a yard by the ref, and the instant he turned they leaped forward the exact same amount. If they'd tried it on this guy the game might have had to stop after he threw them all out, because FIFA rules require at least seven players per side. Perhaps, though, nobody tried that crap because they knew they'd be thrown out?

12 June 2002

South Africa vs Spain

The South Africans, like all African teams, have cool uniforms. In this case, bright yellow tops and red shorts. The Spaniards wear red shirts, but not in as attractive a shade as the African shorts.

South Africa came into the game in second place in their group, but, according to fifaworldcup.com,

"If Spain and South Africa draw, Spain win the group and South Africa go through as the second-place team. If South Africa win, they win the group and Spain take second place."

However,

"If Spain and Paraguay both win by a combined margin of three goals and Paraguay score more goals than South Africa, Spain win the group and Paraguay go through as the second-place team."

And,

"If Spain and Paraguay both win by a combined margin of three goals and South Africa and Paraguay score the same number of goals, Spain win the group and lots will be drawn to determine the second place team."

(I'll leave out the other eight possible conditions.)

Spain went up 1-0, and South Africa tied it, 1-1. Just before half-time, Spain went up 2-1, and early into the second half South Africa tied it, 2-2. Then Spain went up 3-2, and meanwhile the ticker reported that Paraguay was up 3-1, and that's the way it ended. Obviously, South Africa was crushed.

Other notes on the game: The South African goalkeeper looked much more Spanish than his counterpart. I don't know if that means anything. The South African captain cleared a ball from in front of his own net, then took a Spanish knee and a teammate's chest in the head while still airborne. He landed on his feet, gracefully crumpled to his back, and became unresponsive to stimuli. Eventually they carried him off the field, and he was last seen walking very, very slowly out of the dugout to the clubhouse. Ouch.

The only decent chocolate you can get around here is the Dove Bar, which is reasonably good, made in a Beijing factory, maybe 25% cocoa butter in the chocolate if the label is to believed. There are other brands, cheaper, but they taste more like dirt than chocolate. Dove bars come in three sizes, not counting the bite-sized kind which is just a waste of time. The small bar is five yuan and fifty fen, which is twice what a good plate of noodles with an egg costs. The medium bar is nine yuan, a bit over a US dollar. There's a giant bar, but they only have it at the supermarket downtown, and it costs twenty.

The medium bar is perfect to go with a bowl of oatmeal. Break the bar in half and lay the pieces in the bowl, then scoop the oatmeal from the pot and wait for it to melt. Two small bars also works, and you can take a bite or two before you put the oatmeal in the bowl. If you have the giant bar, half of it is plenty and fits well in the bowl.

In the last month, all of the small stores across the street from the school have run out of Dove bars. This happened once or twice last semester, but then they restocked. But it's been a month, and all that's left are the bars with nuts. Screw nuts. I think that the store-keepers think demand for good chocolate is too low to stay stocked. But clearly, if my morning oatmeal needs are enough to deplete the stock of four or five stores in less than two months, I alone am sufficient demand to keep Dove bars in stock.

Alas, these nouveaux capitalists don't see it that way. More and more, I've had to go downtown to the big Japanese supermarket and buy the giant bars. I try to limit my chocolate breakfasts to only the days when I teach in the morning, but I lack the will. Breakfast is my only Western meal, and oatmeal without chocolate is only half a breakfast. Alarmingly, though, on my last trip to the supermarket they had only milk chocolate, not dark chocolate. (And, of course, the varieties with nuts, which are not worth consideration.) Perhaps I am personally consuming more chocolate Dove Bars than the other million nearby urban inhabitants? A sobering hypothesis.

So I hoard my chocolate in the refrigerator, conserve supplies by eating peanut butter and rye (purchased under the name "brown bread" at Rosemary Cafe) instead of oatmeal for breakfast some days, and bide my time.

I got another electric shock, this time by touching my television, the metal chair it was sitting on, and the antenna cable, all at the same time. Clearly a risky maneuver.

Oh, and the Cameroon football players trying to look innocent after fouling opponents so hard that you expect to see teeth or credit cards in the grass.

13 June 2002

As I was heading out for pizza, I surprised a small rat or large mouse lurking between the inner door (too snug for a rat) and the outer, metal door (an inch gap, practically a rat expressway). I reacted as I always do to vermin and big insects: I shrieked like a schoolgirl and jumped up and down. The rat decided that his safest path was to run past me into the computer room and hide underneath the dresser. When I peeked down there, broom in hand, he crawled up _into_ the dresser. I went to lunch, and left the inner door wide open.

When I came back, and carefully checked the dresser, I found a tiny rat turd in the empty bottom drawer, but no rat.

Late in the evening, as I was getting ready for another "Special English Corner", sitting by the computer, the trash can by my feet rustled, and then a rat climbed out and ran behind the dresser. I was not happy.