CheetahhhhhhhBlog Mark III

One day more (Sunday) and the Cheetahhhhhhh is on vacation, w’al hum du li lah (and thanks be to God). Four days to go and me, Van, and The Bug will be in Cairo, in sha allah (if God wills it). Van is excited and already packing.

My dry cleaner is Egyptian and today, when I told him I’m going to Cario, he came around the counter and kissed my cheek. He said a lot in his thousand-mile-an-hour Arabic, most of which I didn’t catch… but he did say that after you go to Cairo once, you will always return. He might be partial but I hope it’s true, because it’s quite conveniently close.

I’m starting to work on developing next semester’s curriculum. It’s going to be hashed together quickly but it will be a vast improvement over the current state of affairs. Our current course of study is completely unrealistic and inappropriate. This next semester will be a test run to see what actually works, and then I can get down to serious business.

In a somewhat nostalgic mood I downloaded some REM and realized that I’d forgotten how much I liked them. I stopped listening to REM in 1994 or 95, so it’s been almost 10 years. I don’t know what they made after that time and don’t care. But their “old” stuff, like Document and Reconstruction of the Fables/Fables of the Reconstruction are really great albums.

Some of you may not be aware that Little Chris is also known as The Bug. My entire computer is clogged with Bug pics. Here is the latest:

Don’t mess with me, I’m the next Manny Pacqiao!!!

Happy bug.

Handsome profile.

The countdown to vacation is 6 days. School ends on Christmas day, but I am taking Christmas off for religious reasons. One of the nice things about Saudi students is they will all stop showing up tomorrow, probably, so actually my last few days will be spent sitting at my desk, which is almost a mini-vacation. However I may have spoiled this for myself because I gave them a good scolding the other day about skipping. I don’t know what I was thinking.

I am rather unenergetic and apathetic. I thought I was just getting burnt out. Then this morning I realized that it’s because this is my 5th year with no Green Bay Packers football, and so, my fifth year where I have nothing to live for. I’m told they stink this year but that doesn’t change anything. Now, I’m supposed to be getting an American sports channel with my Showtime subscription. However I don’t seem to get it. I would call Showtime up to complain, but then they doubtless would realize that they haven’t billed me in 5 months, and I’m in no rush to remind them because it’s 180 riyals a month, and if they’re too hackassed to bill my credit card, why should I complain? Option #2, there is an NFL chanel on Yahoo, but the problem here is my internet speed is too slow. So in sum the Cheetahhhhhhh has no NFL and thus nothing to live for.

There was a massive dust storm yesterday. You could see the storm coming at night, with huge banks of fog, which are quite rare in the middle of the Arabian desert. The atmosphere was like the approach of a blizzard. When we woke up in the morning, the entire world was covered in red dust. I am slightly allergic to dust and spent the whole day sneezing and my eyes watering. My Egyptian colleague left his window open and woke up in the morning covered with red dust.

Little Chris is doing fine but he has a cold, and when he gets irritated, he turns into Scarry Werewolf Boy.

Little Chris’s party was yesterday. I’m going to give details in code-speak. Little Chris had an inportant ceremony which rhymes with shmaptism. So he can go to heaven now and has joined our shepherd’s fold. The party got a tad out of hand actually, lots of karaoke and lots of food. We had cake, turkey, and Filipino foods. One of the Filipino ladies has a side business of selling juice. This juice was ridiculously potent and I was out cold after 3, and missed a good deal of the party, which apparently involved something that rhymes with shmansing.

There may also have been a love connection, which has Vanessa tickled pink.

 Why all the code-speak? Well people know about my blog including my students. 

I had to call in “sick” today, woke up and was rather green. Still not feeling good. I will post a few pics later.

And cheers, the Cheetahhhhhhh is 37.

I’m melting. I’ve been playing squash for 3 weeks now, and I can now fit back into my semi-skinny pants. They’re a bit tight but I’m pleased as punch.

Well I have a promotion of sorts. I will be the English and Linguistics curriculum developer next semester, basically writing lessons for the next year. We actually have in mind to write a book for the Saudi student. This entails a lot of work and I will be teaching either one or no classes. It will also be a tight deadline; I will only have about 3 months to whip up a whole curriculum, when you consider I won’t officially start until mid-February. The whole thing came about because the English department has come to realize how utterly inappropriate our textbooks are, and indeed, the whole academic system here. It just doesn’t work well with the vast majority of our students. So I’m going to try to change that.

Tomorrow we have a little party for Little Chris. I’m not sure how big the party will end up being, because I suspect many of my Muslim colleagues will shy away because of music, and because of women out of the hijab. I’m not sure how many said they would come out of politeness, and how many will actually come.

Tomorrow is coincidentally the Cheetahhhhhhh’s 37th birthday. Little Chris is overshadowing it. And actually number 37 is nothing to celebrate in my book. I am a bit surprised at how frakkin old I’ve become.

We have a mediacom now, which is a karaoke machine. Vanessa and I spent most of yesterday afternoon singing. She seems to think I’m not a good singer. Vanessa however has a voice of an angel.

So it’s Dec 5th and happy birthday to the CheetahhhhhhhhMom, who is somewhere in South America at the moment, and so can’t receive the shipment of Godiva I had been planning to send.

The Cheetahhhhhhh is happy today because he got his shipment of Nicorette in the mail. I bought enough for 4 months. My family will be bringing me another 4 boxes that I ordered from Amazon when we meet in Cairo. So I should be smoke-free for 8 months. I have, quite frankly, resigned myself to a lifetime of Nicorette. It’s the only thing that works with me and ultimately the expense is worth it, because anything is better than smoking.

It’s exactly 3 weeks from today that the Hajj holiday starts. After that there is 3 weeks of teaching in January, then we’re off to Muscat for the mid-semester break, a bit of lounging on the beach etc.

Speaking of the beach, Van and the Little Bug AKA Little Chris… we went to the beach in Yanbu yesterday and the water was too cold to swim in. Fancy that! I’m used to seawater that’s as warm as blood.

I spent the last 2 months trying to teach my writing students how to write a proper paragraph. The mere concept of the paragraph is beyond many of them, because in Arabic there really are just lines, not textual paragraphs. It’s “beyond them” because they didn’t listen even once to my simple and oft repeated instructions. Anyway today I gave a quiz with the simple instructions, write a proper paragraph about the beach. About 75% couldn’t do it. As I was sitting at my desk correcting, I exclaimed, “WHY DO I BOTHER!”

Well this is why I have started checking the Chronicle occasionally, though I need to remind myself that I have nothing to complain about here. Easy job and good money. The frustrating thing is that it is almost impossible to teach most of my students. They’re not listening. They don’t care. I suppose this frustrating factor is a reason for the big money.