Wham, Bham, Life Update Ahead

Classes
Good Ideas in Computer Science

A wonderful course, taught by a wonderful teacher who has no delusions at all, as to why we’re taking the course. He’s pretty cool (not to mention adorkable) and at least makes waking up for an 8am class pleasurable. He’s trying to make the material as relevant to our every day lives as possible (shockingly, gnomes don’t make the internet work…), which I appreciate. I’m taking this course with Heather so I have someone to sit next to in class and to study with which is wonderful.

Writing Systems

I’m not taking this course for credit or for a grade; I’m taking it for fun (…nerd what!?). I get to sip coffee and enjoy a 9am morning lecture on a topic that interests me three times a week without the stress of taking notes or exams…it’s like going to a conference that lasts an entire semester just minus the free pastries.

Phonetics

This course is nothing short of amazing. This is Phonetician Boot Camp. It’s also a lot of work (a lot of work).

I’ll be using LIW as my informant for Tagalog; we all have a term project to work on where we get to define the phonology of a language that we’ve never worked with before. LIW was concerned that other people have done poorly on it using him as an informant before since they either didn’t listen properly or misheard things…but other people also didn’t have a field kit with an HD Minidisc recorder and a condenser mic that can pick up a cat whisker trailing along a piece of glass…we’ll get those phonemes…we’ll get all those phonemes (“…little phonemes, my pretty little phonemes…where. are. you…”).

What really makes this class worthwhile though is that not only is it incredibly informative, but the class is an energetic mix of graduate and undergraduate students and is incredibly diverse as far as interest and backgrounds go (both academically and personally) so we get each other excited and it’s a fun environment to go to and learn in because we all come from different perspectives and each of us makes the material relevant to our individual areas of specialization (Sociolinguistics, Theoretical Semantics, Applied Linguistics, etc).

Structure of English: Grammar & Lexicon

Grammar and I still aren’t the best of friends, but we’re getting acquainted in that way you do when you run into that guy you once dated, for that night, that one time and sort of have the awkward re-introduction that comes along with the tab you pay for a bottle of tequila and the morning groan of “what did I do last night…and who are you?” “I’m grammar! I’m Perky!” “I’m Matan…I need coffee…” “NO! You need Gerunds!” “No…I need coffee…”

JP is a wonderful teacher and Julia is a great TA; I curse my school district three times a week, like clockwork, for the train-wreck that is ‘Whole English’…part of the failed experiment of bizarre things that we’ve tried in the American Education System to only find out that we needed to go back to the less ‘innovative’ ways of doing things.

JP also has an incredibly dry and dirty sense of humor that rolls off his tongue in a wonderfully thick French Accent, in such a way that it takes you a few extra seconds to process what he just said…one day when I have my own class room, I plan on borrowing elements of his teaching style.

TAing

Being Scott’s Teaching Assistant (even only having two sessions so far) is fantastic. I find myself taking notes not only on the material, but also on his teaching style, classroom management, poise…so many elements of teaching and learning in a course that I’ve never been exposed to before (even having been both a teacher and a teaching assistant perviously).

While I’ve TAd and Taught before, it’s either been for an online course (and then I was essentially providing support, both technical and academic), or it was a case in which the teacher was assigned from the interior design department (…UB doesn’t teach interior design…she was UB’s interior designer…UB 101 requires every department to send someone to teach it…and boy howdy do they mean every department) and thus, since she had no idea how anything worked at UB I was the one in front of the classroom teaching.

Teaching Kindergarten for my Internship requirement for the Applied Track was well…teaching Kindergarten (and thus a whole other can of worms). My combined lecture hours for public speaking are well over a hundred…and yet I find myself entirely in new waters…which is fantastic and exciting (and sort of scary) because it means I’m learning (which is great), but part of learning is making mistakes…which means I have to allow myself to make them (and I really hate making mistakes), which is of course the hardest part of the whole thing…but it’s one that I’m approaching with excitement, with a slight bit of trepidation, and with the knowledge that – with Scott – I’m allowed to make mistakes.

Scott’s been an educator since 1977, he speaks (I believe) 12 languages to fluency, he ran a school in Indonesia for 30 years…and there are some people who can be nothing else but a natural born teacher…and he is, fortunately for us, one of them.

I have no doubt that the students in this course are about to realize that they’re quickly rocketing towards things they never thought they’d know how to do or been told that they can learn how to do…and they’re about to think in ways that they’ve never thought before…which is so exciting…and I’m looking forward to that entire experience again (since I had it last semester) this time, however, from a different geographical vantage point in the classroom.

On a personal note, I was very touched, Scott brought me an Ikat back from his travels in Indonesia this summer. It’s gorgeous, a combination of black, beige, red and a deep purple and it’s just the right size to go on my desktop as a runner (which is where it currently is)…and better yet, since it’s a woven tapestry it can be folded up and brought with me when I move to Israel which makes me very happy.

Independent Study

My independent study essentially starts this week now that the first week of classes are over and my schedule is mostly set (…and looks nothing like it did when I first posted it…I’ll be posting an updated version later, though my ical is available online and is accurate and updated whenever I update the calendar on my laptop).

What I’m looking at is Language Discrimination based on Dialect and right now I’m in the process of gathering sources and trolling through bibliographies and my atlas of World Languages. I also found a journal on Sociolinguistics in Iran while strolling through the stacks the other day that I’m in the process of reading and is providing me with some ideas and insight.

What I really want to find is a language that is a minority in one area, and the majority in the other, while not being a language of prestige in either area (which rules out English in Nigeria). I’m going to have to do some database work later this week, or perhaps weekend, and see what I can find.

My fall back is to write about African American Vernacular English, but I’d rather work with something a little less well published and with a more definable scope at least similar to what I mentioned above.

Classical Tibetan

What an amazing course. The teacher is nothing short of astounding, and has made the list of my top five most influential teachers in my academic career…and that was on the first day of class.

Classical Tibetan is easier to learn than French…the writing system is very cool and easy to learn. The professor comes from teaching in the Buddhist Monastery in Ithaca to Buffalo once a week to teach us, and he has us call his cell phone weekly to let him know how we’re doing…he wears a suit and sandals (and not in the way that many engineering students do as a ‘fashion mistake’…his is a ‘fashion choice’) and as he told us, he received his graduate degree in Classical Tibetan from the University of Virginia where they had the “I bet you can’t learn this/I bet you’re not smart enough to learn this” mentality so after he was done with that, he went into a career that was much easier…be became a Trial Lawyer for ten years, and then decided he wanted to go back to Classical Tibetan.

He very clearly doesn’t come from the “I bet you can’t learn this/I bet you’re not smart enough to learn this” school of teaching and has assured us that we’ll be reading, writing and speaking Classical Tibetan by the end of the semester…and I trust him implicitly.

Not only that, the demand for translating Classical Tibetan is so high that each and every person in the room could work on translating for the next thirty years in The States and never bump into each other.

There are few books that I’ll be bringing with me to Israel, but I’ll be bringing our Tibetan Text Book with me…this is a Language that I want to continue with and not one that I want to lose.

We also get to chill with some Llamas later in the course, which I think is awesome…Covarla, ‘Resa and I may have to take a road trip down to Ithaca.

I really wish I could bring all of you to class with me…you’d love it…we spent three hours laughing and learning and not one of us was stressed…not once.

Oh, Itai, I have the CD that the professor gave us as an *.mp3 if you want it. He’s having us make copies for our friends in the course since he only he only burned ten CDs not realizing how many language geeks wanted to take his course, let me know if you want me to email it to you.

TESOL/TEFL/TESL

My TESOL/TEFL/TESL certification class starts soon. I’m incredibly excited. Fortunately, it starts the second weekend in October so by that point in time I’ll have my act together (it should only take me another week as it is to solidify my schedule, work hours, class hours, study hours, etc) and I’ll be able to really get into it and enjoy it.

Hillel

I’ve been hired on by Hillel to implement the Chai Line initiative, which makes me very happy. I’ll be meeting with the Executive Director later this week to discuss the next steps so we can have the program fully up and running by the middle of October and so I can have a staff of students trained and ready and willing and able to step up and take charge of the program the moment that I leave Buffalo on the 17th of December.

Sadly, there are still large divisions in our Hillel and it’s going to take a lot of time, a lot of footwork and some fancy P.R. to let people start healing old wounds, to provide information about what really happened and why it happened (if we can ever really figure out why) so people can put things into their own perspectives and begin to move on. It’s going to take a lot of work.

Birthdays (Mine & Dr. Jaeger’s, My Dogs and Alice’s…but not in that order)

We had Alice’s Birthday a bit early last Friday since her birthday is in the middle of this week (Sept. 5th). It was at a Karaoke place. For those of you who know me, you know that I cannot sing (…at all), and while two people there were (as one of Alice’s friends, Lindsay put it) “possibly the worst two singers ever…there’s no way you can possibly be as bad as they were…you should sing” I divert to Winston Churchill on the “you can be thought an idiot, or you can open your mouth and confirm it” school of thought on this one, so I enjoyed myself with some wonderful drinks and some (mostly) wonderful music courtesy of the other patrons.

Today (Sept. 3rd) was Dr. Jaeger’s Birthday and coincidentally my dog Raider’s birthday (he turned 11). Dr. Jaeger, Alice, Bob, Ashley and Myself all went out to Kebab and Curry (where I had some wonderful spinach) and then we went back to their house to open presents (I gave her the DVD Set “The Best of Queen Volume I” which we later watched) and we had some wonderful Birthday Cheesecake that Alice made.

My 23rd Birthday (Sept. 2nd) was wonderful; it started with numerous phone calls, voice mail messages, text messages, face book messages, LJ Posts (thank you, everyone!) and then Chris, Candie and ‘Resa,/a> took me out for Birthday Sushi at Fuji Grill which was great…after being dropped back home, Adira and I made our way down to the Black Party at Club Marcella.

The Black Party

The Black Party occurs Labor Day Weekend annually ‘because you don’t wear white after labor day’ (this was the 13th Black Party at Club Marcella) and has a counterpart, The White Party (on Memorial Day Weekend) and while it wasn’t as fun as their Domination theme from last year (few things really are as nice as muscle boys in chest harnesses with leather bands around their biceps), it was still a blast (the entire community comes out for it, so it wasn’t just 18 somethings). A ton of my friends came out for it and we had a great time dancing, seeing the drag show, drinking and…other things…

I ran into a ton of old interests, old dates, old hookups and old friends which was fun (and got the current telephone number from at least one person in each category).

The entire night was rocking until all of a sudden the fog machines were going off and we started coughing hardcore and at first we didn’t know what was going on (not that this is actually something to be proud of) but I can inhale tobacco (or other herbal products with a harsh pull) without coughing and without needing a breath…so I was confused as to why fog, from a fog machine would be setting me off…until one of the security guys clued us into what happened:

Some douchebag sprayed MACE (which is illegal in NYS, you’re only allowed to carry pepper spray) into the fog, while the fog machine was going off…nothing says a rocking night like MACE in the face of every club goer. We made our way outside and got some fresh air, while coughing, hacking up phlegm, and doing all those other attractive things one does when they’ve gotten a good whiff.

I don’t know if the caught the guy, but if they did, personally I think they should just let the Fanta-see Island have him (she’s a paid dominatrix as her ‘day job’ and Drag Queen as her night job).

But that was at 2:30AM and most of us were ready to call it a night at that point anyway: there were 1,000 people crammed onto a dance floor, in 90+ degrees of heat; we came, we partied, we rocked out, and we were ready to retire for the night…which we did.

I don’t ask for or ever expect birthday gifts, but everyone who sent me one did so with wonderful intentions and all were incredibly thoughtful; those who didn’t left me some beautiful messages and cards and I appreciate everyone who took the time out of their day to wish me well, whether it was a voice mail, text message, or otherwise…I really did (and do) appreciate it, this was one of the best birthday’s I’ve had in a long time. Thank you, everyone, who came out. It was a great time, and it was awesome to see everyone dressed in black partying it up.

General

Right now things are going really, really well…things that can use improvement are adding more than twenty-four hours in the day (which is really up to Hashem and not me, despite my best efforts), or making my laundry do itself (which I leave to modern science).

I’m still in the process of cleaning and organizing my apartment, though I realize that in reality, I won’t be ‘happy’ with the apartment until I’m turning in my Keys because even me being in the apartment means that there’s too many things in the apartment…I’m ready to move on, and I really want to move on now…but there’s just those few loose ends that need to be tied up…and I need to be able to take my time tying them.

Other things that I’m doing asides from hanging out with friends, going to festivals that I haven’t gone to before, or enjoying old haunts for that ‘one last hurrah’ is things like planning my Photo Walking Tour of Buffalo. I want to be able to show new friends that I make my old friends so I can sing their laurels, some of the really cool buildings that I’ve either lived in, or partied in, or done other things in, the coffee houses, the bars, the restaurants that we called our own, the campus, my professors, and just the people, places and things that were a large part of my life for five years here.

New Bag

Given that I tore through my other messenger bag (which, sadly, was bound to happen given how cheap it was) and that I wanted something a little more classy/proffesional than what a duct tape messenger bag could offer me, I sprung for a Mandarina Duck Bag as my Birthday & Graduation gift to myself.

Currently, it’s in Milano, Italy enjoying it’s time there without me (according to the UPS Package Tracking Application) but come Friday, this beautiful piece of craftsmanship is mine (in the color that you see displayed there).

Israel

Currently there’s not much more I have to do as far as Aliyah goes. I’m approved to go in February. I’ve turned in my Nefesh B’Nefesh application for funding. I’ve turned in my application for Ulpan on a Kibbutz and will find out in December where I’m placed which means that right now the only thing I’m doing is attempting to get some level of confirmation from Garin Tzabar other than the form letter that they keep sending me which amounts to a lot of words that, at the end of the day, signify nothing.

Fortunately, I’m a New Yorker which means that I’m about 10 times as pushy as any Israeli so if I don’t hear back from them by the middle of this month I’m going to fly down to New York City the first weekend in October and meet with them sans-appointment because I do require a yes or a no; and given that Israel is currently dealing with a situation of having a military shortage and draft dodgers, you would think that having someone go “Ready, Willing and Able” would make them more inclined to cooperate than to bicker.

…apparently being 23 means that I’m over the hill…and I’ll have to gently dissuade them of that belief.

“I’m not a shopboy, I’m a boy who works in a shop…”
– Tristan, Stardust

It’s funny, a year ago, a year and a half ago…I had family members saying “you can’t do this” and “you can’t do that” and “you have to do this” who didn’t listen to me when I said what I wanted out of life and what I wanted to do with myself…what I needed or what I thought I needed to make me happy, and it took some heavy words…some strong words for them to start to get the message…but they’re finally getting it (not all of them, but most…slowly and surely).

Every time one of them told me I couldn’t do something, I quietly went along and did it anyway…if it isn’t against the law, there’s really nothing stopping me and it took a lot of fighting to get a bunch of them to the point of understanding that, no I don’t require a job with benefits or a 401k, no I don’t have to have answers to all of life’s questions before I decide to do something, yes I can go to foreign countries and do things that are bizarre to you but cool to me like, learning how to throat sing, or basket weave, or walk on coals or raise sheep, or make cheese or candles without having to answer to anyone but myself (beautiful part of being single and owning next to nothing is that it’s really easy to move around), yes I want to work on my own terms, doing my own thing, at my own pace…no I don’t want to wear a business suit every day and yes, my version of success is vastly different than yours and no, I’m not going to explain myself to you.

I’m heading to Israel in February and I’m entering Ulpan and then the IDF…and then after that, if Givat Haviva is still around, I’d like to do that…if it isn’t, I’ll find a similar program. Then I’m going to do my Masters Degree, whether that will be in Israel or not, I don’t know…while it’s great that it’ll be paid for if I get into University in Israel there’s no guarantee that I’ll get in and there’s a world out there for me to see and learn from and I’m willing to make my fortune that way too.

But after my Masters Degree (or if I don’t get in, after the IDF) I want to spend some time in Tibet, I want to see Africa, I want to swim with Dolphins in Mexico and dance in Panama and go to Italy, Rome…every day I realize how much I don’t know…how honestly ignorant and uneducated I am, and how much there is for me to see…and if I have to take odd jobs here or there to buy the ticket to my next destination, if I have to flip burgers in France to be able to afford a plane ticket to Brazil…well…I’m happy to do that…and when I’m no longer happy to do that, I’ll re-evaulate things and move on from there. At the very least, I’ll have my B.A. if not my Masters, and at some point (and perhaps I’ll reach that point well before I think I will) I’ll be able to settle down in Tel Aviv with a beautiful Israeli husband and that’ll be okay too…because I’ll be doing what I want to do.

I’m in an exciting place to be in, time and age wise.

Today

I’ll be leaving the house around 9am, TAing from 11:00 to 12:20, then I have my office hours from 2:00-3:00; and then I plan on coming home, taking a nap, then finishing cleaning my apartment, doing dishes, readings, homework and all that other fun stuff. Anyways, time for a few hours of shut eye!

Peace!

– Matan