Time flies

Already the middle of June and I have a grand total of one post for the month.

Well, I've just doubled it. Such is my blogging prowess.

I have been busy of late and to be honest there hasn't been all that worth writing about. Unless you are notably interested in the intricacies of teaching EFL and/or the goings on in a far flung corner of Japanese academia.

I have my classes, I have my research (which involves weekly visits to a number of local elementary schools) and I have my meetings.

Lord, do I have my meetings.

To earn your stripes here in tertiary-land it's not enough that your students rank you up there with Socrates and your research is getting the Nobel Prize people excited, you also have to be on committees with names like "The Committee for Progressing Local Area Relations". Being a member of said committee involves a lot of meetings which, I think, in some form of obscure mathematical calculation, equates to progression.

These meetings have names like "Advancing Strategies for Locally Integrated Research Activities in the twenty third year of the reign of the Heisei Emperor".

It usually takes me a good ten minutes or so with my dictionary to figure out the title of the meeting by which stage (a) I still have no idea what it is actually about; and (b) the committee chairman has launched into a long, meandering speech that, like the rivers in Fermanagh, wanders rather than flows, and I am abjectly lost and give up any hope of comprehension.

So, I keep my head down and pray I won't be asked to comment. Unfortunately, my god is an irritable god and every now again I am asked my opinion. I usually declare that at this early stage of the research activities it is unclear how they will progress, but I am confident that if we all pull together, progress they will, and his majesty the Emperor will look back on his twenty third year as being a particularly bountiful one. Or words to that effect.

Then I go back to sleep, or rather, I try, desperately, not to go back to sleep, but the Chairman has this soft, quiet voice that lulls you with its steady monotone, so that your thoughts begin to slide, your gaze blurs, eyes droop, head begins that slow roll and loll and zzzzzzzzzzzzz....