Billy-Bob the Sanitation Engineer

This is so strange. I’m here 11 minutes before the class is scheduled to start, and the classroom is empty. Not because it’s the wrong classroom, but rather because the students and teachers here operate on “Thai time.”

My History of Western Art class is going to be great. My prof is the quintessential high-energy Brit– speaks a dozen words a second, throws in lots of subtle, dry humor, and is generally a riot, as most high-energy brits are.

Five minutes before class begins, the first student (myself aside) shows up.

I’m very concerned, though– the class is 100% lecture. Although there is “suggested reading,” there isn’t a book for the course. For a guy who likes to go to 50% of the class and do 100% of the reading, this is going to take some adjusting. Additionally, my grades will be determined entirely by a mid-term and a final. Since I won’t have any nightly homework, I’m going to need to somehow force myself to sit down and study… and that’s going to be difficult. But I’ll manage.

Ah. Two minutes before class is scheduled to begin, and the four students at came in three minutes ago have disappeared. They left their stuff, but I still can’t help but wonder– did the room get changed? Did the meeting time get changed? Oh, good. 3:29, and here come some more.

Mmm. Ice cream. The Green Tea ice cream here is… amazing. Amazing that something could taste that good.

(five hours later)

It rained like crazy this afternoon. Well, it rains here like crazy most afternoons; it’s monsoon season, after all!

Here’s a picture of the mall I mentioned in my last post:

It’s kinda a fish-eye effect… because I’m tricky like that. In actuality, everything is quite square and flat.

This is the river that I take a ferry across every morning on my way to class:

I’ve been re-working my schedule a little tonight. I’m having a hard time finding 18 credits of classes that are going to transfer back to MSU within my major, which is a little troubling.

William… you’re going to laugh at me. I had signed up for a “Basic Business Communication” class, which, you’ll be relieved to know, after one class period, I’m dropping. Honestly, I’m thinking about picking up a business minor, but maybe I’ll discuss that at some other time. It’s ironic and it’s not. I’ll explain. But later.

Anyhow. As the prof is introducing the course, she’s explaining that “the purpose of this course is to teach you how to use words to make you sound more powerful, simply by using proper business terminology. Some of you may ask, ‘isn’t that lying,’ but it isn’t– it’s just making yourself look as good as you possibly can, Because, at the end of the day, it’s a dog eat dog world out there. It’s difficult. You need to be able to get ahead, to stand out.” Ug. Somehow this is exactly what I expected a business class would be like. After the intro, we spent the entire class working on exercises where we would take a modest sounding resume item, “Five years of babysitting experience,” for example, and (by using the correct business terminology) make it sound more impressive. Thus, our example became “Five years of coordinating and supervising activities for small children.” (no joke!) “Did volunteering at battered women’s shelter” became “Actively volunteered at a community battered women’s shelter.” “Seven years as a housewife” became “Planned, administered and controlled the household budget for seven years.”

I kid you not.

Anyhow. At the end of the class, the prof decided that I was sufficiently proficient at over-inflating my resume (c’mon– I’ve been doing this for years. Even in Jr. High, when I mowed lawns, we weren’t just some lawn boys, we were “landscape engineers” or “lawn care professionals.” Ke ke ke) and she advised me to find a more challenging class.

Sheesh. Makes one wonder how people like Jade could turn out to be so cool. =)