Need to Know

Sometimes you don't know whether something's worth doing 'til you've already done it.

In teaching (or learning) a language, it's always a puzzle which words you should tackle first, and which can wait for later. English has around 200 prepositions, of which half are so rare and specialised you can avoid them altogether unless you work in the relavent field. Here are the bottom ten prepositions in a frequency-ordered list I did:

astride
afore
apropos
neath
athwart
agin
modulo
anent
frae
aslant

I don't even know what 'agin' and 'frae' mean, and I'm pretty sure the only one I've used in the last decade is 'modulo'.

But simple frequency might not be always the best guide. So I thought, what about the number of senses? Excluding words with more 'structural' meanings, like conjunctions and pronouns, isn't it true that the most useful words are also those with the most uses?

Which would mean, if I can come up with an automatable procedure to transcribe a software dictionary, count the number of 'meanings' that each entry has, and order them by how many meanings each word has...I can get a guide to the most useful words for students to know.

So I did it. And then I did it again because the data was corrupted. And then I did it again because the processing wasn't quite right.

And now I have a list of 450 nouns, all with ten or more dictionary senses - though not generally ten noun senses, because they're also adjectives, verbs etc.

Column 1 is the word, 2 is the number of senses, then 3, 4 and 5 are whether the words has senses as noun, verb and adjective respectively.

Word	Senses	Noun	Verb	Adj
blood	21	N	V
fair	20	N	V	A
tongue	20	N	V
bit	19	N
cold	19	N		A
green	19	N	V	A
heel	19	N	V
rise	19	N	V
snap	19	N	V	A
bang	18	N	V
bone	18	N	V
death	18	N
life	18	N
name	18	N	V	A
wear	18	N	V
wipe	18	N	V
card	17	N	V
care	17	N	V
course	17	N	V
cousin	17	N
job	17	N	V
over	17	N
peg	17	N	V
quarter	17	N	V
radical	17	N		A
shell	17	N	V
shift	17	N	V
slack	17	N	V	A
warm	17	N	V	A
wind	17	N	V
act	16	N	V
bed	16	N	V
blank	16	N	V	A
control	16	N	V
face	16	N	V
fill	16	N	V
horn	16	N	V
question	16	N	V
seed	16	N	V
view	16	N	V
arm	15	N
board	15	N	V
bottom	15	N	V	A
common	15	N		A
force	15	N	V
forward	15	N	V	A
grain	15	N	V
kiss	15	N	V
mount	15	N	V
rail	15	N	V
range	15	N	V
reverse	15	N	V	A
rule	15	N	V
shade	15	N	V
shape	15	N	V
sick	15	N	V	A
silver	15	N	V
stack	15	N	V
state	15	N	V
storm	15	N	V
think	15	N	V
waste	15	N	V	A
wheel	15	N	V
wrap	15	N	V
ball	14	N	V
belt	14	N	V
bend	14	N	V
blast	14	N	V
bomb	14	N	V
boot	14	N	V
bright	14	N		A
by	14	N
chip	14	N	V
corner	14	N	V
deal	14	N	V
edge	14	N	V
fat	14	N	V	A
flame	14	N	V
flesh	14	N	V
flight	14	N	V
God	14	N
issue	14	N	V
last	14	N		A
late	14	N		A
no	14	N
past	14	N		A
perfect	14	N	V	A
reach	14	N	V
repeat	14	N	V
reserve	14	N	V
ring	14	N	V
ship	14	N	V
smart	14	N	V	A
speed	14	N	V
steam	14	N	V
stiff	14	N	V	A
sweat	14	N	V
sweep	14	N	V
tap	14	N	V
trail	14	N	V
transfer	14	N	V
wall	14	N	V
beam	13	N	V
breath	13	N
brief	13	N	V	A
button	13	N	V
cloud	13	N	V
credit	13	N	V
doubt	13	N	V
fault	13	N	V
fish	13	N	V
grass	13	N	V
grip	13	N	V
handle	13	N	V
hole	13	N	V
kind	13	N
laugh	13	N	V
liberal	13	N		A
love	13	N	V
map	13	N	V
mess	13	N	V
nail	13	N	V
natural	13	N		A
note	13	N	V
nut	13	N	V
offer	13	N	V
pan	13	N	V
pay	13	N	V
pin	13	N	V
plug	13	N	V
position	13	N	V
record	13	N	V
register	13	N	V
report	13	N	V
resolve	13	N	V
rock	13	N
saddle	13	N	V
save	13	N	V
seal1	13	N	V
shadow	13	N	V
shoe	13	N	V
small	13	N		A
spare	13	N	V	A
spill1	13	N	V
stay	13	N	V
stem	13	N	V
subject	13	N	V	A
suit	13	N	V
trace1	13	N	V
trip	13	N	V
weight	13	N	V
whistle	13	N	V
wide	13	N		A
wire	13	N	V
wonder	13	N	V
world	13	N
balloon	12	N	V
brush	12	N	V
chance	12	N	V
clip	12	N	V
close	12	N	V
crown	12	N	V
deep	12	N		A
dust	12	N	V
earth	12	N	V
fear	12	N	V
fiddle	12	N	V
float	12	N	V
grant	12	N	V
guard	12	N	V
gun	12	N	V
gut	12	N	V
hair	12	N
hammer	12	N	V
hog	12	N	V
ice	12	N	V
inside	12	N		A
interest	12	N	V
length	12	N
liberty	12	N
lick	12	N	V
lip	12	N	V
load	12	N	V
low1	12	N		A
ordinary	12	N		A
paint	12	N	V
picture	12	N	V
plot	12	N	V
positive	12	N		A
puff	12	N	V
rally	12	N	V
rap	12	N	V
rib	12	N	V
road	12	N
rush	12	N	V
sack	12	N	V
say	12	N	V
section	12	N	V
serve	12	N	V
sock	12	N	V
spit	12	N	V
spout	12	N	V
spread	12	N	V
star	12	N	V
sting	12	N	V
stone	12	N	V
stump	12	N	V
style	12	N	V
sun	12	N	V
sweet	12	N		A
tooth	12	N
tread	12	N	V
tube	12	N	V
warrant	12	N	V
yellow	12	N	V	A
abstract	11	N	V	A
acid	11	N		A
associate	11	N	V	A
bank	11	N	V
bell	11	N	V
best	11	N	V	A
bind	11	N	V
bird	11	N
bond	11	N	V
clerk	11	N	V
clock	11	N	V
cock	11	N	V
colour	11	N	V
crush	11	N	V
cry	11	N	V
dance	11	N	V
dig	11	N	V
dish	11	N	V
drink	11	N	V
drum	11	N	V
ear	11	N
flow	11	N	V
flutter	11	N	V
fold	11	N	V
gas	11	N	V
grade	11	N	V
grind	11	N	V
hack	11	N	V
hop	11	N	V
index	11	N	V
joint	11	N	V	A
leaf	11	N	V
loose	11	N	V	A
major	11	N	V	A
mantle	11	N	V
market	11	N	V
meet	11	N	V
model	11	N	V
mother	11	N	V
motion	11	N	V
needle	11	N	V
neutral	11	N		A
nod	11	N	V
offset	11	N	V
pad	11	N	V
period	11	N		A
profile	11	N	V
programme	11	N	V
quick	11	N		A
rate1	11	N	V
rattle	11	N	V
ray	11	N	V
reason	11	N	V
recall	11	N	V
relative	11	N		A
release	11	N	V
ring	11	N	V
riot	11	N	V
rod	11	N
savage	11	N	V	A
secular	11	N		A
service	11	N	V
sleep	11	N	V
slick	11	N	V	A
soak	11	N	V
solid	11	N		A
sort	11	N	V
sound	11	N	V
sponge	11	N	V
spur	11	N	V
stamp	11	N	V
standing	11	N		A
store	11	N	V
surprise	11	N	V
terminal	11	N		A
tool	11	N	V
tramp	11	N	V
traverse	11	N	V
treat	11	N	V
tumble	11	N	V
tune	11	N	V
upset	11	N	V	A
value	11	N	V
voice	11	N	V
wolf	11	N	V
woman	11	N
worm	11	N	V
worse	11	N		A
wrong	11	N	V	A
ace	10	N	V	A
address	10	N	V
advance	10	N	V	A
answer	10	N	V
appeal	10	N	V
band	10	N	V
bead	10	N	V
bill1	10	N	V
body	10	N	V
bridge	10	N	V
broad	10	N		A
brown	10	N	V	A
bulk	10	N	V
bundle	10	N	V
business	10	N
cat	10	N	V
charm	10	N	V
chill	10	N	V	A
climb	10	N	V
conjugate	10	N	V	A
cool	10	N	V	A
crib	10	N	V
crisp	10	N	V	A
crop	10	N	V
cup	10	N	V
dash	10	N	V
dip	10	N	V
distress	10	N	V
doctor	10	N	V
dope	10	N	V	A
dream	10	N	V
dress	10	N	V
drift	10	N	V
due	10	N		A
early	10	N		A
escape	10	N	V
evolution	10	N
fancy	10	N	V	A
father	10	N	V
favour	10	N	V
feather	10	N	V
feel	10	N	V
fence	10	N	V
fetch	10	N	V
flag1	10	N	V
flare	10	N	V
fur	10	N	V
glass	10	N	V
Gothic	10	N		A
great	10	N		A
gripe	10	N	V
groove	10	N	V
gross	10	N	V	A
hat	10	N
heaven	10	N
horse	10	N	V
hump	10	N	V
if	10	N
indent	10	N	V
iron	10	N	V
jam	10	N	V
juice	10	N	V
king	10	N	V
label	10	N	V
lash	10	N	V
left	10	N		A
lustre1	10	N
marshal	10	N	V
mask	10	N	V
mask	10	N	V
match	10	N	V
medium	10	N		A
mill	10	N	V
minor	10	N	V	A
monkey	10	N	V
mould	10	N	V
murder	10	N	V
mute	10	N	V	A
native	10	N		A
nature	10	N
net	10	N	V
objective	10	N		A
oblique	10	N		A
occult	10	N	V	A
pace	10	N	V
package	10	N	V
palm	10	N	V
phase	10	N	V
physical	10	N		A
powder	10	N	V
prime	10	N		A
project	10	N	V
race	10	N	V
rake	10	N	V
ram	10	N	V
ramp	10	N	V
regard	10	N	V
rope	10	N	V
safe	10	N		A
sail	10	N	V
scrape	10	N	V
sense	10	N	V
shaft	10	N	V
shock	10	N	V
shoulder	10	N	V
shout	10	N	V
sin	10	N	V
sing	10	N	V
size1	10	N	V
skew	10	N	V	A
skid	10	N	V
sling	10	N	V
snow	10	N	V
sour	10	N	V	A
space	10	N	V
spike	10	N	V
spirit	10	N	V
stagger	10	N	V
stall	10	N	V
steady	10	N	V	A
steal	10	N	V
stitch	10	N	V
straw	10	N
streak	10	N	V
stream	10	N	V
street	10	N
surface	10	N	V	A
swell	10	N	V	A
tear	10	N	V
thing	10	N
thread	10	N	V
tick	10	N	V
ticket	10	N	V
toe	10	N	V
ton	10	N
tough	10	N		A
town	10	N
type	10	N	V
vein	10	N
void	10	N	V	A
ward	10	N	V
warp	10	N	V
weather	10	N	V
welcome	10	N	V	A
will	10	N	V
window	10	N

I don't know whether I can do anything with this, and similar tables, after two weeks work. But if you're not prepared to invent something useless, you can't be an inventor.

The American Way (Part 2)

One definition of stupidity is trying the same tactic in the same situation, over and over again, in the hope that this time the result will be different.

Examples include:

• Students trying to flatter their teacher into giving them a discount on their fee, especially when it's not the teacher who decides the fee
  
• Teachers using the same crappy textbook that uses obscure technical terminology to explain simple ideas
  
• Schools employing Urdu-speakers with basic English to teach Arabic-speakers with even less
  

Another definition is trying to quantify the unquantifiable.

Examples:

• Teachers measuring student english level as a percentage of an imaginary "total fluency"
  
• Doing it with an exam, yielding the very precise and totally meaningless estimate that Student X has 68.3% of perfection.
  
• Doing the same for teachers with 'assessments'. Apparently teachers can assess students, students can assess teachers, and managers can assess teachers, but the only people wise enough to assess managers are other managers.

A third is: Thinking you can make reality your personal bitch the same way you try with people. Using bullshit, bribes and promises.

And when that doesn't work, shouting, bullying, threatening, intimidation...and writing memos.

And when that doesn't work, insisting that you've won already, hoping the universe will be tired enough to not contradict you. Animism and anthropomorphism are probably the oldest superstitions on the planet, and the hardest to kill.

So, I have now had four days of working for this insane company, which is odd, as there's only been work for two of them.

Interlink has grudgingly accepted that students don't come into lessons on non-American national holidays. But it has yet to grasp that they don't come in on days leading up to, or following from, national holidays.

Hence orders from head office that I and my colleagues sit in our classrooms for six hours a day, even when there are exactly zero students.

We can't mark them as 'Absent', because if we did, we'd have to expel them for multiple absenses because the Big Book Of Stupidly Inflexible Rules says we have to. So we mark them as 'Late'. Specifically, that they will be two weeks late, when (if) they return after the holidays.

So why can't we just lie and mark them as 'Present'? That is, after all, the tradition in this country. Yes, it really is. Officially, a class cannot be empty, so if it is empty, it's officially full. Why can't we adopt the local custom and do this?

The answer is that in book-keeping, spoken lies don't count, but written ones do. Lying on a school register is Document Fraud(^TM), which is Very Bad(^TM). Plus, if anyone is registered as 'Present', there must also be a record of What They Were Taught. And of Whether They Learned It. And if they didn't, Why Not? Non-existence is not considered a valid excuse.

In bureaucracy, as in sitcoms, lies lead to more lies.

So, I have been sitting in my classroom, catching up on podcasts, reading and working out abstruse bits of grammar. My colleagues have been doing all the pointless paperwork for the job, which the job didn't give them time for before. And our manager has been very busy, co-ordinating the inactivity by skype with other managers.

And his manager gets to spend extra hours in bed, so we don't have to deal with his confident self-belief.

So lets hear it for stupidity. If you're a bit clever and a bit lucky, you can get things done while the idiots are trying to define how to get things done.

The American Way

Ambrose Bierce defined a career as the first day of a new job.

If so, I hated everything about my career today.

Bad managers like to make rules, because they think managing means changing things, and they think the more managing you do, the more effective you are as a manager.

A good manager realises that if you have to change things all the time, it's probably because your last set of changes buggered everything up. And if you don't have to make changes, you don't.

An actually effective manager has nothing to do - except block the imbicilities of the bad managers - and does exactly that, letting the people who do the actual work, do the actual work.

Guess which kind runs the Interlink corporation? And yes, it is an American company.

Here's an example of how it works:

Problem: Students don't come to lectures.

Solution: Initiate a complicated registering system whereby a student who arrives less than ten minutes late is marked 'Present', while one who is between ten and thirty minutes late is marked 'Late', and one over thirty minutes late - or actually absent - is marked 'Absent'. Any student who is 'Late' more than three times gets an additional 'Absent' mark, and anyone with thirty 'Absent' marks is expelled.

This is supposed, somehow, to encourage lazy students to attend. Not so they can learn, but so they can continue to pay for the tuition they're not using.

Exactly how threating to stop charging should keep customers paying, I'm not sure.

Solution to the Solution: Students come to lectures on time, then after the register is called, develop an urgent and possibly plausible reason to be somewhere else.

Solution to the Solution of the Solution: Teachers call the register at the end of the session.

Problem: Management decree that all registers must be completed and submitted in thirty minutes after the lesson starts, neatly making the whole process even more pointless than it was.

Also, my work clothes are deemed not formal enough. This from the school which expels students if they wear jeans or don't wear a white shirt. It does this officially but not really, because if it did it would expel half the students, and lose the income from their fees.

And every student must add no less than three pages of written work to both of their colour-coded folders every week. And I have to explain grammatical concepts without using grammatical terms. And I have to teach only speaking and listening in the first lesson, and only reading and writing in the second. Even though my students are still shaky on the alphabet after six years of study

How much idiocy would you tolerate for a good wage? I have yet to decide.

Feast of Fools

"Things just seem to keep cropping up don't they."

There's a national fortnight's holiday coming up - the charmingly named "Feast of the Sacrifice" - and I was due to spend it with B. But he's developed family committments.

If you date an arab guy, just remember his mother always comes first. So it's not very different from dating any other guy.

I had three new students, all at different levels ranging from "doesn't know the alphabet" to "good conversational fluency"...and they wanted to study together because they're friends. And they want a special class just for them, so I can teach the absolute basics to the one third who didn't master them years ago.

Not that it matters, because they didn't turn up. Actually, almost all those who want special classes never turn up.

A teenager I taught nine months ago burst into the middle of a lesson, demanding to be seen immediately. Loudly, and repeatedly. His complaint? That on his six month old certificate of course completion, we'd transliterated his name with two Rs instead of one. He's very angry about it.

Oh and apparently my teacher's qualification must be a forgery because...something something something.

Another trio of students walked in as I was packing up, wanting to "practice conversation". They asked me to tell them about England. And then they started telling me I'd be happy if I adoped Islam. Five minutes later they decided they had an appointment elsewhere, and left looking disappointed.

There's a bank branch manager with an enormous book of management theory bullshit...which he wants me to translate into simple english, and teach him. I asked him about delegation - if the ATMs are broken, which department does he call? Answer: Marketing.

But it's not all bad. Ahmed is an english teacher from Jordan, complete with picture-postcard family and deeply humanist teaching philosophy. He's been dropping in for the last few weeks, asking about grammar and talking about how teaching children in a fun, life-affirming way makes the world a sunnier place.

My largely-absent boss has been telling me for months about how he's hired a new manager to market the school to businesses...and how he'll introduce me just as soon as there's a spare moment. Today I met the new man, and it's...Ahmed the Jordanian English teacher.

There's a big new technical college opening in town, with an english language department. The department head is James, a man so British I feel Japanese by comparison. Apart from his fluency in Spanish, German and Arabic, of course - not that I'm envious, oh no.

James needs more teachers. My contract has expired. The college runs in the morning and my school opens in the afternoon. Sounds good doesn't it?

Sexual History

How far back does your sexuality go?

At age 13 I remember finding the pictures in Playboy uninteresting - in fact some of them seemed a bit gross. It was puzzling why the other boys at school loved them so much - even the one with the pack of gay porn playing cards. I desperately wanted to get a closer look at those cards, which were being handed around as a joke.

In May 1981 I was 9, with a small collection of superhero comicbooks. One featured Captain Britain, which I thought was a dreadfully hokey name, to go with an equally hokey backstory and dialogue with enough cheese to feed Denmark for a year. The bad guy was more intriguing - an evil genius with terrible dress sense, name of 'Arcade' and creator of 'Murderworld'. That's right, I could have been a ComicCon geek.

But there were a few frames that showed off the hero's muscular frame in skintight spandex, which...provoked stong feelings in me - feelings I couldn't have described but which were unmistakable. If the artist wasn't a raving queen, it was someone who'd had a lot of practice drawing broad shouders and pert buttocks, all set off by inconsistent but convenient lighting.

Yes, the creators of comicbooks know perfectly well what hormones surge in children before puberty - and it just can't be an accident how much and how well they exploit it.

Before that...I think I was seven. The family were clustered around the TV on a winter night, watching some harmless, totally innocent teatime entertainment. A magic fantasy story of some kind. Told entirely 'through the medium of dance'. On ice.

The principle dancer. I just couldn't stop staring. At everything about his body, all the lines and curves, showed off by that sparkly blue costume. I actually had to leave the room, because I was sure my eyes were on stalks and my face must be flaming red and surely no one could miss the rocklike erection I was trying not to touch.

I didn't know what sex was, but I knew it was something I was supposed to be ashamed of.

There was a house we lived in till I was four. I remember the bedroom and the bed...and discovering that I could rub my...well, I didn't have a word for it...against the sheets, and it gave a kind of rushing tingling sensation.

The biological plumbing for getting an erection is in place by birth, and so are the nerves for all the sensations, including orgasm, even though sperm isn't manufactured for maybe a decade. A girl has the same nerve endings as a woman, long before she ovulates.

The intensity and emotional hair-trigger of adolescents is, I rather think, a continuation of the emotional sensitivity and sensuality of the child - with extra hormones added to the mix. But these extras are concerned with making reproduction possible, not with the pleasures of one's own body, nor with those of others.

It is simply empirically false to insist that a person is incapable of being sexually attracted before they're capable of reproduction. Which suggests the patterns of attraction - and fantasy - are laid down during childhood, though tastes can become modified in later life.

The conventional thinking about sexplay, that it's not the real thing, is based on confusing sexuality with reproductivity. It's like confusing the pleasure of eating with the process of digestion.

This obviously doesn't excuse the sexual abuse of children by adults - or as it usually is, by other children and adolescents. That's an issue of power, of taking from someone who can't resist. It's wrong to lock a child in a cellar and rape them for exactly the same reason it's wrong to lock a child in a cellar and beat them.

Yet we have this bizarre notion that sexual abuse is qualitively worse than other forms of abuse because it's sexual. We've got into the habit of thinking it's somehow an order of magnitude worse to stick a penis in a child's mouth than to stick a knife in.

How many ways are there to abuse a child - emotionally and physically? Probably hundreds. We're obsessed with protecting children from abuse, but by 'abuse' we somehow never seem to mean emotional abuse, or bullying, or sadism - we almost always seem to mean 'rape' or 'sexual harassment'. When an adult kills a child, the media always look for clues that he had his pants down while he was doing it. If he didn't, it's just not newsworthy.

A small but definite minority of children do enjoy being stimulated (not hurt) by adults - anyone with experience of churches or boarding schools could tell you that, though we're not supposed to admit that we know it.

Anyone who's worked in a field where pedophillia is an issue, knows that slow chatroom 'grooming' is almost a complete myth - the abuser raises what they want early in conversations with many children, and discards the majority who tell him where to go, show disinterest or don't understand.

Which means of course that some do understand and are interested. Something else we're supposed to pretend we don't know, on the grounds that acknowledging sexuality somehow exonerates sexual abusers.

It could be objected that the child who enjoys the headmaster rubbing their crotch in detention is actually enjoying the attention, or that they enjoy touching in general and they'd be equally happy with their feet being rubbed, because the crotch hasn't been made sensitive or 'special' yet by puberty.

But this is to view sexual pleasure as something other than bodily pleasure, as though it were a fundamentally different kind of feeling, felt with a ghostly second skin that has it's own unique sensations and only appears when androgens or estrogen begin to flow.

The spiritualisation of sexuality goes hand in hand with its mystification. Perhaps the real aim is mysification and the spiritualisation is only a convenient ruse.

The famously creepy NAMBLA (North America Man-Boy Love Association) likes to make the point that 'inter-generational love' doesn't necessarily have to be exploitative. Which manages to be true in strictest terms, while evading the point.

Plus it blurs the crucial distinctions inherent between '20 year-old with a 15 year-old', '...with a 10 year-old' and '...with a 5 year old".

It's interesting that NAMBA's chosen line relies on the trope that a mutually loving, presumably monogamous, presumably long term relationship legitimises the sexual act. Because that's really just a coded way of saying sex for it's own sake is bad.

Gay rights campaigners talk all the time about how gay people are just as capable of monogamy and love as everyone else, as though (a) that didn't meant they were just as incapable as everyone else, (b) only those judged morally upstanding deserve rights, and (c) figures of authority can and should make that evaluation.

If these lines were just bullshit propaganda to attract more conservative types to the cause, it would be a justifiable campaigning tactic. But it seems most people who want to radically change values in society...only want to change specific values in isolation. And it never works that way.

We live in a culture that's obsessed with youth and beauty - the younger and more beautiful the better. It's no coincidence that 'barely legal' is a selling point in porn - the obvious corollary being that younger than legal would be a bigger selling point. Just another thing we're not supposed to admit we understand.

Marketing lipstick and miniskirts to girls of seven has the same basis and the same reflex denial. Ditto the existence of pop magazines printing pictures of shirtless boybands. The entire point of boybands is to be sexy, so the question is, sexy to who? To the target audience of course - half of who are below the legal age of consent.

So, kids love to look and touch, and they also have nerve endings in their genitals. The distinction between the presexual and the sexual phases of life is so blurred that no line can be drawn. Humans don't acquire bodies and emotions at puberty.

We won't be able to cope with the consequences of this reality until we can admit the reality. Which is difficult, as right now we barely understand it.

Here in My Auto

---

I'm lazy. But I want to get a lot of stuff done.

The solution is to spent most of my limited energy getting my laptop to do it all for me.

If you're prepared to spend half an hour figuring out how to make your computer do something automatically, you can spend several happy hours sleeping while it does it. For example....

---

No matter how good you are at anything, there's always a few aspects where you're oddly weak.

I've got one student who's very good on grammar and conversation, but can never remember irregular verbs. Well, I reckon English has 166 irregulars, excluding compound forms like "overthrow", "understand", "redo" and such. There are also 45 which have regular alternative versions, eg. "dreamt/dreamed", "fit/fitted", which, having mentioned them, I'm sweeping under the carpet.

A few months ago I worked out an algorithm for putting them into frequency order. The result looks like this:

001 - be, am, is, are / was, were / been
002 - have, has / had / had
003 - can / could / _____
004 - do, does / did / done
005 - will / would / _____
006 - see / saw / seen
007 - make / made / made
008 - know / knew / known
009 - take / took / taken
010 - come / came / come
011 - go / went / gone
012 - get / got / go
013 - say / said / said
014 - set / set / set
015 - think / thought / thought
016 - give / gave / given
017 - find / found / found
018 - become / became / became
019 - put / put / put
020 - let / let / let
021 - light / lit / lit
022 - show / showed / shown
023 - saw / sawed / sawn
024 - read / read / read
025 - tell / told / told
026 - keep / kept / kept
027 - cost / cost / cost
028 - mean / meant / meant
029 - feel / felt / felt
030 - leave / left / left
031 - run / ran / run
032 - pay / paid / paid
033 - bring / brought / brought
034 - cut / cut / cut
035 - lead / led / led
036 - hold / held / held
037 - fall / fell / fallen
038 - deal / dealt / dealt
039 - meet / met / met
040 - write / wrote / written
041 - speak / spoke / spoken
042 - hear / heard / heard
043 - rise / rose / risen
044 - stand / stood / stood
045 - lay / laid / laid
046 - learn / learnt / learnt
047 - begin / began / begun
048 - spring / sprang / sprung
049 - speed / spe / spe
050 - wind / wound / wound
051 - bear / bore / borne
052 - spread / spread / spread
053 - break / broke / broken
054 - send / sent / sent
055 - sleep / slept / slept
056 - fit / fit / fit
057 - drive / drove / driven
058 - choose / chose / chosen
059 - prove / proved / proven
060 - fight / fought / fought
061 - draw / drew / drawn
062 - seek / sought / sought
063 - build / built / built
064 - lie / lay / lain
065 - grow / grew / grown
066 - buy / bought / bought
067 - cast / cast / cast
068 - eat / ate / eaten
069 - sit / sat / sat
070 - dream / dreamt / dreamt
071 - lose / lost / lost
072 - ring / rang / rung
073 - sell / sold / sold
074 - drink / drank / drunk
075 - strike / struck / struck
076 - hit / hit / hit
077 - forget / forgot / forgotten
078 - teach / taught / taught
079 - spend / spent / spent
080 - arise / arose / arisen
081 - win / won / won
082 - wear / wore / worn
083 - feed / fed / fed
084 - catch / caught / caught
085 - fly / flew / flown
086 - throw / threw / thrown
087 - hurt / hurt / hurt
088 - beat / beat / beaten
089 - shut / shut / shut
090 - blow / blew / blown
091 - split / split / split
092 - ride / rode / ridden
093 - stick / stuck / stuck
094 - sing / sang / sung
095 - hide / hid / hidden
096 - burst / burst / burst
097 - smell / smelt / smelt
098 - thrust / thrust / thrust
099 - wake / woke / woken
100 - burn / burnt / burnt
101 - shoot / shot / shot
102 - hang / hanged / hanged
103 - rid / rid / rid
104 - shed / shed / shed
105 - slide / slid / slid
106 - bid / bid / bid
107 - shake / shook / shaken
108 - spin / spun / spun
109 - sink / sank / sunk
110 - tear / tore / torn
111 - shear / sheared / shorn
112 - bend / bent / bent
113 - quit / quit / quit
114 - swing / swung / swung
115 - spell / spel / spel
116 - bind / bound / bound
117 - lend / lent / lent
118 - bet / be / bet
119 - breed / bred / bred
120 - sweep / swept / swept
121 - bite / bit / bitten
122 - leap / leap / leap
123 - dig / dug / dug
124 - steal / stole / stolen
125 - swim / swam / swum
126 - strive / strove / striven
127 - swear / swore / sworn
128 - shine / shone / shone
129 - freeze / froze / frozen
130 - creep / crept / crept
131 - swell / swelled / swollen
132 - flee / fled / fled
133 - forbid / forbade / forbidden
134 - plead / pled / pled
135 - slit / slit / slit
136 - spoil / spoil / spoil
137 - weep / wept / wept
138 - shrink / shrank / shrunk
139 - dive / dove / dived
140 - tread / trod / trodden
141 - sow / sowed / sown
142 - thrive / throve / thrived
143 - cling / clung / clung
144 - spit / spat / spat
145 - weave / wove / wove
146 - beset / beset / beset
147 - sting / stung / stung
148 - stride / strode / stridden
149 - spill / spill / spill
150 - grind / ground / ground
151 - sew / sewed / sewn
152 - bleed / bled / bled
153 - wed / wed / wed
154 - forsake / forsook / forsaken
155 - kneel / knelt / knelt
156 - fling / flung / flung
157 - slay / slew / slain
158 - sling / slung / slung
159 - forgo / forewent / foregone
160 - stink / stank / stunk
161 - mow / mowed / mown
162 - wring / wrung / wrung
163 - smite / smote / smitten
164 - shall / should / _____
165 - hang / hung / hung
166 - lean / leant / leant

I then used one of the better text-to-speech synthsisers to make mp3s of each verb's forms, and padded the files with silence to ten seconds each. The idea is: Put them on your generic mp3 player device, set it to shuffle, and play - while doing something which requires no intellectual power, like walking, or relaxing with quiet music in the background.

Your player recites the conjugations in random order, leaving a gap of six or seven seconds between each repeat, which according to the theory I read years ago, should help 'fix' them in your long-term memory.

---

Students often ask me: "Is this word always a noun, or is it a verb too?" Or "It has a meaning as an adjective, but does it have a different meaning as a noun?". Etc.

Well, over a year ago I set an old laptop to get the complete list of words and classifications from the digital Shorter OED, coming to around 65,500 root words. It actually took seven complete days, which tells you just how old the laptop was. After removing those entries which were both spelling-duplicates and sound-duplicates, it came to 51,446.

I've also got 18 months worth of BBC subtitles, which after word-frequency analysis, contains 97,539 individual words. Which means I can now reveal, the ten least common words transmitted by the BBC are:

neurotoxins
meisner
naguib
enshrining
centralising
oilmen
evang
losey
westergaard

Now, excluding non-root words - that is, excluding words from the BBC list which aren't in the SOED list - and then excluding those which aren't categorised as nouns, verb, or adjectives...we get 27,635 words. Which I re-arranged alphabetically, and put into a chart, showing which ones are nouns, which nouns and verbs etc.

I tried to post it on the blog I keep for stories and this sort of thing, but the new enhanced super-capable Blogger choked on such a large table. But here's an except:

Word	N	V	A	Word	N	V	A
begin		X		narcolepsy	X
beginning	X			narcosis	X
begonia	X			narcotic	X		X
begrudge		X		nares	X
beguile		X		narragansett	X
begum	X			narrate		X
behalf	X			narrative	X		X
behave		X		narrow	X	X	X
behaved			X	narrowband			X
behaviour	X			narthex	X
behavioural			X	narwhal	X
behead		X		nary			X
behemoth	X			nasal	X		X
behest	X			nascent			X
behind	X			nasogastric			X
behindhand			X	nasopharynx	X
behold		X		nasturtium	X
beholden			X	nasty	X		X
beige	X			natal			X
being	X			natality	X

---

So I've got my list of 65,500 or so words, And I often need to translate words into Arabic, and I've got google translate. Which has some quite egregious mistranslations, but is a lot better than nothing.

Unfortunately, I've also got wi-fi that doesn't work a lot of the time, so an offline version would be useful. I paste my SOED list into the English window, and copy what comes up in the Arabic window. I filter out the words which have no translation, leaving 16,898. I make a version of the Arabic list with letters listed right-to-left, but with the letters in 'isolated' form, so they're easier to read. I do another version with the Arabic transliterated into ASCII equivalents.

I put the four columns together and the result after a week's work is...completely and utterly unusable. Here's a sample:

blueprint	مخطط	م خ ط ط	mxt.t.
blues	البلوز	ا ل ب ل و ز	alblwz
bluestocking	امرأة مثقفة	ا م ر أ ة م ث ق ف ة	amr?aa mTqfa
bluestone	أزرق	أ ز ر ق	?azrq
bluet	الهصطونية	ا ل ه ص ط و ن ي ة	alhs.t.wnja
bluetongue	اللسان الأزرق	ا ل ل س ا ن ا ل أ ز ر ق	allsan al?azrq
bluey	مزرق	م ز ر ق	mzrq
bluff	مخادعة	م خ ا د ع ة	mxadG.a
bluing	الصبغة الزرقاء	ا ل ص ب غ ة ا ل ز ر ق ا ء	als.bGa alzrqa?
bluish	مزرق	م ز ر ق	mzrq
blunder	تخبط	ت خ ب ط	txbt.
blunderbuss	الأبله	ا ل أ ب ل ه	al?ablh
blunge	جبل الطين	ج ب ل ا ل ط ي ن	Zbl alt.jn
blunt	ثلم	ث ل م	Tlm
blur	شىء ضبابي	ش ى ء ض ب ا ب ي	Sj? d.babj
blurb	دعاية مغالى فيها	د ع ا ي ة م غ ا ل ى ف ي ه ا	dG.aja mGalj fjha
blurt	أفشى من غير تفكير	أ ف ش ى م ن غ ي ر ت ف ك ي ر	?afSj mn Gjr tfkjr
blush	استحى	ا س ت ح ى	astx.j
blusher	أحمر الخدود	أ ح م ر ا ل خ د و د	?ax.mr alxdwd

It doesn't matter how clever your data processing, garbage in will always give you garbage out.

---

Lend Me Your Ears

---

It's easier to listen to a story than to read it.

Reading is faster, and you can control it better, and you can do it on your own, but it still takes more effort.

People who'd never think of picking up a book - or even reading an entire wikipedia article - will happily sit through long chalk-and-talk lectures on youtube. Audio books, once aimed only at the blind and the elderly, are having a major resurgence - name any popular book, fact or fiction, published in the last ten years, and you can guarantee that Amazon, Audible or someone similar have MP3 versions. Voice actors are now in constant demand, and it's not just Stephen Fry reading Harry Potter - you can hear Richard Dawkins reading his own polemics, or George Carlin performing the book versions of his own standup performances.

For the last few years, half of my bedtime reading has been done with eyes closed. I set my laptop to generate MP3s of almost-human-sounding voices reading chapters of ebooks, with speed and precision and tirelessness that a real person could never manage. I put them on my audio player (which occasionally also functions as a phone) and thus do most of my learning when I'm too tired to be learning.

So I thought: Is it only me who likes having a robot whisper in his ears, or could other people benefit too?

Well, here's a little experiment. On my youtube channel, you can listen to...the first famous and public-domain text I thought of.



You can also read along if you like, or use one of the many youtube downloaders to put it on your phone.

---

The Best Laid Plans of Me and Men

---

Oh dear.

I announced that I wanted to go to Riyadh, because I'm bored with this small town, bored with the hot muggy weather combined with bad air conditioning, and bored with sitting in a classroom for six hours a day waiting for one or two students to turn up.

I'm bored with everything from doors to electrical switches to mobile phones being "Made in China" and none of them working properly, I'm bored with the rancid smells that come through the vents at four in the morning, when all the local industry pours its waste products down the street drains, and I'm bored with all restauants having the same dozen dishes - all of which turn out to be chicken with rice.

So I tell the boss that I want to move to Riyadh. And he tells me that because of the idiotic bureaucracy of this country, I'm legally only allowed to work for him, because he's my sponsor.

And the next day, there are mysteriously four schools and a hospital who all need an english teacher. So I can no longer say I have nothing to do. Oh, and all those unpaid bills that have been mounting up over the last six months...are now paid. Odd that.

Of course, the real reason to move was to be with B. Who has become afraid that anyone in his family who learns that he's good friends with a british man who lives in the same city...might put two and two together, and make seventeen, which just happens to be the truth.

So he wants to spend time apart for a while, so we can get our feelings in order, and allay any possible suspicion, and chat on skype from time to time, and concentrate on our careers, etc. and so on and so forth.

I'm no good at relationships or subtexts, but I don't think I've been dumped - just put on the back burner.

Either way, I'll be okay.

---

Plan B

---

I had a look at my contract today. It contained a few things I'd forgotten about.

• I'm supposed to have 30 days off per year. Not that I need a holiday at the moment, seeing as how I have a grand total of three regular students. Plenty more signed up, but all disappeared after one or two lessons - usually when they were reminded that they hadn't paid yet.
  
• I'm supposed to get a travel allowance. Not that I particularly need to go anywhere by taxi - hotel, work, supermarket, restaurants and computer hardware shop are all on one road.
  
• The contract expires...erm, today. Which is a little bit unexpected. I thought I had another two months, and it does say I'm employed for 12 months from the day I sign my name on the dotted line. However it also says I get 12 months but not going past the 31st of August 2013. Which is
  (a) for no readily apparent reason,
  (b) a contradiction, and
  (c) a slightly strange way of turning a 12 month contract into a 10 month contract

So, the current plan is to:

• Spend my day off packing
  
• Stay for the final week of the month and teach the three students who've paid for a full month of tuition
  
• Attempt to contact the boss, in the hope that this is one of the few times my phone works properly, and this is one of the few occasions his phone is both charged and switched on - and let him know
  
• Remind him that one of the other things I'm contractually entitled to is a plane journey after termination of employment - in the hope that he might possibly honour that part of the contract
  
• Take a plane (one way or another) to Riyadh
  
• Get a decent job there where they actually pay me
  
• Find accommodation
  
• Spend rather a lot of time cuddling with B

I think it's quite a good plan. Especially the last part.

My work permit is good for another four months - renewable if things are going well. Who knows, my Arabian Adventure might turn out to be everything it was supposed to be, and more.

---

My Alphabet

---

I've tried several times to write about what's happening with B and me. But what it comes down to is:

We're chatting over skype instant messaging, and occasionally on the phone. I'm glad we spent those few days together, I get happy when I remember them, I get a little sad that we're apart, and there's a feeling that I can only describe as "romantic".

I fully intend to seem him again sometime soon, with no preconceived obligation on his part or mine, but with hope.

With D - my last significant relationship, nearly a decade ago - I was on an insane emotional rollercoaster, and quite prepared to drop everything to go and live with him. He dumped me, and he was right.

Then he found the man of his dreams. Hah.

With M I was on the rebound from D. Not helped by him constantly saying he wanted to be friends and there was no pressure to take it further. Followed by lots of pressure.

With H, we were good friends who several times stumbled into being bad lovers. I'm not sure how many times we had the "about last night" conversation. It went:

H: Last night was interesting.
Kap: Um, yes. but...
H: I'm hopeless at relationships, and too busy anyway.
Kap: Me too. I'm glad you said it.
H: See you again soon?
K: Love to.

It was H who suggested I'd make a good teacher. S said the same thing. Unfortunately S was a hopeless alcoholic and I was stupid enough to think I could cure him. Which is possibly the worst possible reason to be someone's boyfriend. Apart from staying with someone because they've decided they've fallen in love with you - which is the other incredibly dumb reason I was with S.

R was a good man, but he got confused between "being lonely" and "being in love". I got confused between "being wanted" and "wanting".

With P, our roles were the other way around.

I haven't run out of letters of the alphabet yet. C wanted an old-fashioned courtship, but not an actual relationship. Looking back, I've no idea what I wanted.

J always insisted that he was straight....but bi-curious. He just never stopped being passionately curious.

And my very first relationship, at age 19 with a couple, 10 years older. I ended that one, because I genuinely thought it was getting "too serious" and I didn't want to put their relationship in danger. I think I was not a very modest 19 year old.

Anyway, the point is: I've absolutely no idea what the B story will be, except that it won't be like any of these.

---

Time Off

What I Did In My Summer Holiday

by Kapitano, Age 41 and 3 Quarters.

---

Working for a failed business is a kind of working holiday.

Working for a failed business in the holiday season is therefore a working holiday inside another one. Like taking a snack between courses of a meal, or tweeting while blogging.

So, what is it when you take a long weekend break from work, in the holiday season...while working for a failed business?

In my case it's spending Eid (the climax to and end of Ramadan), in Riyadh (the capital city of Saudi Arabia), in bed (the place where you put all the things and people most important to you, including yourself, when you're not using them).

---

It's a law of nature that every holiday begins with something going wrong.

In my case that means arranging a taxi to the airport, then having to arrange another one because the first one can't make it, then getting an unexpected offer of a free lift at the last minute...which turns up late.

And promptly runs out of petrol, to be replaced with a borrowed car, which promptly bursts a tyre halfway to the airport and nearly flips over, requiring us to flag down a friendly car going the other way back into town, so we can borrow another car to get me to the terminal.

For the plane which is also conveniently late.

---

Two hours later I'm riding from Riyadh airport in another car. The driver is my guide and host, a man I've met once before. I'll call him "B".

If you want an idea of Riyadh, think of the biggest shopping district of New York, or the central five miles of London. Think of a place with the widest, longest highways, lined with enormous, expensive shops that each sells every concievable variation of one product. These rows intersperced with headqurters of companies with the vaguest of names and the most baroque, pointlessly perverse architecture.

Then make it go on for mile after mile. And then a load more miles.

Populate it with fifteen million men - and the occasional woman -  two thirds of who only work there, all dressed in identical and immaculate white nightshirts and headscarves. Put them in absurdly large SUVs and people carriers, and out those in traffic jams.

---

I say I've met B once - it would be truer to say we discussed comparative theology and culture for a few hours over sweet mint drinks...and then fell into bed together.

Now, months later he's invited me to spend Eid in Riyadh, arranged a hotel suite, showed me around the metropolis by car, bought us breakfast and lunch, and generally been embarassingly generous.

In the evening we discussed comparative linguistics and personal history for a few hours over strong ethanol-enhanced drinks, and fell into...love, together.

Um, yes.

Two things you need to know about me. One, I have zero aptitude and zero interest in romance. And two, I go all soppy when drunk - emotional barriers come crashing down, but I still have zero aptitude. I get...affectionate, and open, and vulnurable, and uncertain. But in an annoying way, as opposed to a cute way.

So yes, there is a place in Kapitano's heart for relationships, but most of the time love is just too much hassle, with too many risks and too many sacrifices.

Next morning, no hangover, no regrets...lots of hugs, a little soreness, and the memory of an understanding reached after much tentative discussion. Whatever happens over these few days, neither of us has any claim on the other, but keeping in contact would be nice, and future visits would be welcome.

---

Did I mention, B is more emotionally secure than me - and, rather irritatingly, more intelligent too.

Saudi culture is still struggling to find ways to encourge intelligence and creativity for work, while remaining stolidly unimaginative and unthinking everywhere else.

So I've become a little complacent about being the smartest guy in the room. And also the least romantic, of course. But my friend B is at the far end of the curve.

My boss is on his own working holiday in Sydney, Australia - having been sent to learn the arcane mysteries of 'Quality Control' in universities.

---

The arabic word for 'arse' is, rather wonderfully, pronounced the same as the english 'tease'. So the next morning I took my sore 'tease' into the 'douche', put on my 'britanni tourist' clothes, and we went off to explore the many subtly different types of american fast food in Riyadh.

Herfy, McDonnalds, Dairy Queen, Dunkin' Donuts, KFC, and their various knock-offs. My only rule: Try a new brand, or a meal choice I haven't tried for a while

I think our respective 'teases' both expanded a little each day.

---

I have English Teacher's Disease, the main symptom of which is a compulsion to look for language mistakes, and point them out.

In a city where most of the signs are in arabic plus english translation, there are many mistake waiting for my symptom. Like a restaurant called "Wooden Grill", or many little offices called "Rent Car".

In a bookshop we looked at some book-and-CD courses on learning arabic for english speakers. The one with the fewest mistakes on the front cover had two.

Here for your delectation is the back cover blurb of another one, punctuation preserved:

THE ARABIC LANGUAGE

The language that was chosen by Allah the All-Mighty to be the language of revelation that was given to his Trusted Prophet (P.U.U.H) the seal of the Prophets Muhammed (P. B. U. H) Learning it , is worship nd communicating by it, is Sunnah and speaking it,is a must on every Muslim that enters Islam and worshipping his Lord. It's an honor for Turath Center to present to the English- speaking Muslim's and to all who have interest in learning the Arabic language through this interesting program.

SPECIAL FEATURES:

* One of the first programs that teaches the Arabic language based on a step-by- step curriculum that was prepared by the research supervisor based on his expertise in teaching the Arabic language to the non - speaking population (Year 1962).

* The program solves two major problems that other than Arabs have difficulties with while learning the Arabic language, (1) the many formations of each Arabic letter depending on where it lays in the word.

Observe the letter [ta] in these words:
[Examples of the various shapes of Ta]

* The many short and long vowels and (tanween) which makes for each Arabic letter ten different examples such as:

[Examples]

* The program contains a curriculum of step-by-step series.

* It can be used in schools as a complete curriculum to the English-speaking or even Arabs.

* The curriculum is divided into various different lessons enabling the user to highlight the lesson that he learnt and finished.

---

We ate too much ice cream, browsed netbooks and computer stuff, decided not to buy a phone, and drove back to the hotel - his hand in my hand, or sometimes resting on my leg.

In the apartment: crisps, cheese sandwiches and cocktail experiments with scotch and mixers. On the plasma TV...the romantic comedy "Resident Evil". On the couch: hand-holding, kissing, cuddling, and "I Love You"-ing.

The next morning...it's my last day. B has a long lie-in on his side of the bed, and I potter about in the kitchen - drinking 'teas' (with lemon) - and taking time to watch him sleep.

We shower, clean up the apartment, pack, and hug for a long time before we're due to check out. Which is slightly delayed when we fall into bed again.

A last fast-food late breakfast in "DQ", a drive to the airport with clasped hands, a browse around the gift shops - he wants to buy something for me, but I think 1000 SAR (166 GBP) for a pair of plastic sunglasses is far too much.

And suddenly we've said goodbye.

I'm in the waiting lounge, then on the plane where a grumpy stewerdess is barking "Sandwich or cake?" to each passenger in turn, a girl behind is playing the noisiest iPhone game in the world, and a man in front has a wet hacking cough that would suit an elephant.

An hour later in Arar airport there are no taxis. But a cute young man is visiting from america to see his family, and he offers me a lift...with his wife. He says if there's anything I want, he can help me get it. Turns out he's trying to sell me alcohol - I politely decline.

And I'm back in my own apartment. It smells bad and the wi-fi isn't working. I go to the shops to get some bleach and teabags, throw the bleach around the bathroom and fill the kettle. As it's boiling I try to fix the wi-fi...

... so I can write an email to B.

---

Why do I bother?

---

It's four months ago, and a man in early middle age wants help with revision for some exams that were coming up.

That's "revision" as in "hasn't opened any of the textbooks yet". More specifically "wants a teacher to read a few thousand highly technical pages for him on phonetics, phonemics, morphology, syntax and chomskyian grammar...boil it all down to bullet points and tell him the answers to the exam questions".

Oh, and something similar for a Lit Crit exam on Jane Austin and Shakespeare. Which he also hasn't started to read, after nine months of "home study".

Well, I like a challenge, and I taught myself most of the technical stuff in my 20s, and I'm enough of a scholastic pervert to enjoy talking about it. Plus, this charming man likes to feed and entertain friends at his home, so I become a dinner guest.

It takes three weeks just to hammer the phonetic alphabet into his skull - two hours a night, six days a week. He decides not to take the Lit Crit exam this year. I mention that he hadn't yet started paying. And he stops answering calls or coming to lessons.

One month later, slightly less charming, he calls my boss to charge him for the food he'd given me. They tell each other to fuck off.

---

Last week, a teenager walks in at midnight, just as I'm packing up. Says he wants to spend a month in England, learning English at a good school, and could I arrange it all please?

No, not tomorrow during actual working hours, now please. It'll only take two hours or so.

Oh, and he wants to leave in under a week.

Fortunately, I've already navigated the bureaucracy involved in student visas and overseas study - for another student who changed his mind three times before signing up with a school I used to work for, getting the visa, saying he'll buy the plane ticket...and vanishing into thin air. Neither I nor the school have been able to contact him.

So I spend a few hours making the arrangements. The school contact me a few days later to say he's not answering phone or emails, and do I know what's going on?

He seems to have changed his mind without telling anyone, and gone on holiday instead. My opposite number at the school in England says this is normal.

---

Yesterday, three businessmen arrive who're planning to spend five years in America...starting in a month. So they think it might be a good idea to spend the time brushing up their English, for an hour a day.

Today, they decide they want to study at a different time, so I add them to the highest level group, and we spend a happy hour picking apart the vocabulary of food shopping - the differences between a box and a carton, a packet and a bag, a jar and a bottle.

Afterwards, they say they want to change groups again, but there's no other group at the same level for them the change to, and no spare slots in the timetable to make one.

Two hours later, after I've packed up, gone home and relaxed with my nightly bowl of pasta and episode of Star Trek...I get a call from the boss. They've, erm "asked" for a special meeting, right now please, to discuss their needs. Which are:

* A special class just for the two of them - one's dropped out
* Six days a week - seven if possible
* Two hours a day - minumum
* A different syllabus - because they only want conversation and grammar, and learning new words is too hard. Yes, that's what I thought.

By rearranging everyone else's timetable, I make space for them. Which is when they mention they want a discount.

We make an offer - about 20% off. They want a bigger discount. We do not make another offer.

They decide they don't need any tuition at all for their five year plan. Not if it involves paying more than half the going rate, and especially not in advance.

They leave, without paying for the two lessons they've already had.

---

Disengaged, Mr Crusher

Ramadan, the month of fasting and prayer.

The time when eating, drinking, smoking and sexing are all forbidden during daylight hours. Thirty days of sleeping all day and waking up at sunset, then getting together with your extended family and eating far too much...which you then have to sleep off.

A mashup of lent and christmas, a time when my school timetable gets shifted forward six hours and I find I'm teaching night classes, and a time when no one wants to be in night classes because it's the one month of the year when Saudi has a nightlife of sorts.

I was planning to spend the downtime writing my great detective novel and catching up with philosophy lectures on youtube.

Instead, I got food poisoning. And spent the hours between bouts of diarrhea on a two-week Star Trek TNG marathon.

Eating just made me ill, so unlike all the sneaky muslims who cadge crafty snacks behind each other's backs...this atheist has spent the month of fasting...fasting.

T = Time

Two years ago I started writing a series of short stories. Today I finished the last one.

One definition of science fiction is: Take the world roughly as we know it, add one magic thing and see what happens.

Aliens land - how do governments react? A new drug is developed with doubles lifespan - how do people cope? 99% of the population becomes blind overnight - how does it change the triffid situation?

My question was: You can travel to the past for one hour to correct a mistake - which mistake do you chose? That, and what are the effects on society of this power?

Nine stories, three overlapping sets of three, overall title: "T". They're deliberately big on discussion and short on action, like the stories of Issac Asimov. I've also tried to be more emotional, more humanistic - these are stories about people, not technology.

T: Yesterday
T: Today
T: Beginning
T: Middle
T: Prelude
T: Interlude
T: Coda
T: End
T: Tomorrow

They're listed here in roughly "chronological" order, but seeing as they're about time travel, you can put them in any order you like. Hope you feel like giving them a try.

Defining Unbelief

What exactly does an atheist not believe in?

I'm not asking about a definition of god - I'm asking about the various ways the word 'atheist' is used.

1) Benjamin Franklin for instance believed in a creator god, but not a personal god. That is, he believed that something made the universe, but not that this 'something' intervened in human affairs, performed miracles, set aside a pleasant afterlife for humans he liked and an unpleasant one for the rest, etc.

He was in strict terms an atheist, but not an adeist. Thus we could call him both atheist and christian.

2) Buddhism doesn't have a god, but it does have spirits, which act much like angels and demons. It's also rather hazy on where the universe came from.

So should we call Buddhists atheists...and adeists? Again, strictly perhaps we should, but I don't think it's useful to distinguish between those who believe in a single, all-powerful supernatural tyrant, and those who believe only in a vast number of less powerful supernatural tricksters.

The difference is of degree, not of kind. Atheism is in this sense a disbelief in the supernatural.

3) Catholics like to say there's no 'real' difference between a protestant and an atheist. Sunni muslims say the same about shia muslims, and vice versa.

The arabic word 'kafir' sometimes means 'non-muslim', sometimes 'member of a non-abrahamic religion', and sometimes 'without religion entirely'. And sometimes it means 'muslim in name only' - ie. someone the speaker disapproves of.

We might say there's no practical difference between an atheist and an agnostic. The agnostic may decide not to decide whether there's a god, but have you ever met an agnostic who prayed?

The difference between deciding to not believe and not deciding whether to believe, is a little like the difference between deciding not to eat and not deciding whether to eat. The motivation may be different, but the result is the same.

4) There is a deeper way in which one can reject the notion of a god, and that is to reject the notion of a universal masterplan.

Most christians believe not just that a god made the universe, but that he cares about it, has desires for it, and made it for a reason that wasn't just a whim. For them, the universe has a meaning and a purpose.

Buddhists and jains may not have a god, but they do believe in an overarching plan - as though a god had put one in place. 70% of jews in Israel are happy to publically define themselves as having no religion - but they still treat their right to a homeland as god-given and inviolate.

Pantheism is the notion that god and the universe, in one way or another, are the same thing. Hermetic theology holds that this god-universe is evolving towards a pre-ordained goal - one where the universe becomes self aware, and thus aware that it is god. Or rather that it achieves godhood by this becoming.

Who or what sets this goal...is not entirely clear.

The consciousness of individual humans, and that of human societies, is part of this process. Thus god, to become fully god, needs humans to become fully human. The parallels between the cosmic and the small-scale continue down to the level of chemical reactions.

Hegel was a hermetic philosopher, and Marx was a follower, incorporating into his 'atheist' system the notion that History has a plan, which will culminate in post-capitalist world Communism. Marx's collaborator Engels tried to show that the cosmic schedule of which the political struggle was a part, extended up to the formation of galaxies, across to geological phenomena, and down to electricity and magnetism.

A revolutionary may not believe that god is on their side, but they can still believe that history is a quasi-conscious force with a timetable, and this godlike thing is on their side.

Generally this behind-the-scenes guiding force has a moral aspect. Society after the revolution will be fair, just, ethical. Even among non-revolutionary social progressives, there is the idea that society gets ethically better as it 'develops' and 'progresses' over time.

Atheism is then in this deeper sense atelism - disbelief in a grand plan, pre-destination, fate, teleology. A through-going atheist does not ascribe an inbuilt purpose present at all levels of reality, though of course humans can create their own purposes at their own level.

5) For the religious believer, god is the ultimate authority.

It's no accident that the most authoritarian cultures tend to be the most religious, and have the most oppressive religions.

Thus for the believer, questions of fact are settled not by investigation, or debate, or reasoning - they're settled by authority. If something is true, it's not true because we see it, or intuit it, or reason that it must be so.

It's true because the man in charge says it is. Literally. The act of saying it makes it true - even if no one hears. And even though it has always been true, it didn't become that way until it was said. It's a kind of word magic.

This is an entire epistemology - an entire theory both of how you find the truth, and of what the truth relation itself is.

The truth is whatever god says, therefore whatever the scriptures say, therefore whatever whatever the authorised interpreter of the scriptures says. The priest is infallible - and the priests of other sects are wrong because our priest says so.

When a new priest takes over, truth changes - and some truths of the past retroactively change to falsehoods. In the required doublethink, everything that's currently labeled 'true' has always been and always will be true - but the eternal truths of last week are different from the eternal truths of next week.

This thinking is only possible in a culture or sub-culture where the criterion of authority over-rides all other criteria for deciding what to believe. You can use whatever methods you like to decide on your beliefs about everyday matters, provided all these beliefs are subject to immediate revision on the word of god's mouthpiece.

Except actually, a belief in a god isn't even necessary - just the mouthpiece. It's useful for the human leader to have supernatural backup, but the authoritarian epistemology doesn't need it.

There's a libertarian version of this - supposedly anti-authoritarian - in which every individual has the authority to pronounce on 'their' truth. But in practice it's simply untenable.

The fifth, and I suggest deepest sense of atheism is therefore a rejection of the authoritarian theory of truth.

Those of us who are not cult members still frequently fall into the trap of saying 'It's true because X says it is', and still believing when evidence later casts doubt. To be through-going, we need to get out of this habit.

This doesn't mean automatically disbelieving whatever someone in power says - that would be in itself an authoritarian theory of truth. It just means that authority is the lowest form of evidence.

Now, there is the question of how deep you want your unbelief to be. Deeper is not necessarily better. There is the question of whether radical skepticism is consistently possible, given that humans are social creatures, and societies seem to require power structures by definition.

I've never been to Brazil. My belief that there is such a place relies on not having any good reason to doubt what I've been told about it's existence. In strict logical terms, my default position (the 'null hypothesis') would be provisional disbelief - not even agnosticism on the topic.

Trying to live your whole life like this would be impossible. The practical skeptic is only skeptical about issues they judge important enough to be examined. Plus, there are only so many hours in the day, and so much personal drive.

Humans are remarkably susceptible to the impulse to turn experiences into stories - to see patterns where there are none, to imbue the world with meaning, direction and purpose.

The simple fact that religions are successful suggests that teleological thinking and authoritarian epistemology are easy default positions to slide into. It takes education, some careful thinking and a fair bit of willpower to avoid them.

These are my five notions of atheism. No doubt there are others.

Darling You've Got to Let Me Know

I don't know what to do.

I'm teaching two or three lessons a day, and the largest class has four students. Usually it's one or two.

The universities and schools are having their final exams, so a lot of students are skipping english classes for last-minute revision, which is understandable. So hopefully they should come back in a week or two, after the exams are finished.

Except there were smaller exams three months ago, and most students didn't come back after those.

There's the promise of a big contract just around the corner. But it's been just around the corner for six months. The delay is the same, only the excuses change.

Last months takings wouldn't even pay for my wages, so I agreeed to defer them until this month. But the takings of this month are just as low. So should I go two months without wages on the promise of getting them as soon as there's money to pay them?

Ordinarily, no way in hell. I've worked for schools which bounced cheques, and schools which were late in paying - but they always managed to pay in the right month.

The point of doing a job is to get paid. If you don't get paid...well, you'd better damn well love what you do. And truth to tell I'm pretty bored with it.

So I could walk out, if not exactly with a clear conscience, at least with some justification. But if I do, that means going home - at least in the short term.

And that means....

• Imposing on my parents, because I can't afford to live elsewhere
  
• Exchanging free accommodation and cheap food for cheap accommodation and expensive food
  


• Exchanging a friendly but unpleasantly hot small town in the middle of nowhere for an unfriendly, unpleasantly cold small town in the middle of nowhere much
  (Yes, it's snowing in britain. In may.)

I'm working maybe twelve hours a week, and even if no wages were to appear for the remaining six months of the contract, I have enough saved from the first six months to live on. So I'm free to work, alone and unhindered, on whatever seems interesting for several hours a day, and there's no immidiate money worries. For some, that's a situation they dream of.

I think...wait till the end of the month (that's the saudi month, not the one the rest of the world uses)...and see how things stand. And then decide.

A Sandstorm Coming

Saudi is trying to industrialise. Specifically, it's trying to move from a nomadic, tribal, semi-agrarian culture to an urban, technological, capitalist one.

It wants to do this while remaining an absolute monarchy, which means the ruling class has to change from a royal family to a band of mutually hostile businessmen who happen to be closely related - and who collectively form a one-party state. I'm not sure they fully understand this themselves.

Capitalism doesn't need a lot of capitalists. It doesn't necessarily need high technology. But it does need a lot of workers. So who does the work in Saudi Arabia?

The owner of the building where I work is a Saudi businessman. All the two dozen who work for him are Sudani or Indian. Outside sweeping the streets, working in the auto-repair shop, and serving in the restaurants opposite, Pakistanis and Lebanese. Operating the hotels and shisha-houses, Bangladeshis and Philipinos.

There's a lot of building work, which means not just builders but plumbers, electricians, carpenters etc. Of those I've met, none were Saudis, and of the remainder I've seen, none looked to be from this country.

You see almost no Iraqis or Afgans. Saudi welcomes economic migrants, but refugees are kept in camps for several months, before being repatriated.

I've met a lot of teachers - a few are Jordanian or Syrian, a few are South African or even American, most are Egyptian. Apparently there's one other Brit around somewhere.

In other skilled trades - engineering and medicine mainly in this town - maybe half are Saudi nationals. If you want to see a workplace full of saudis, visit the vast but largely inert bureaucracy.

The government knows all this, and they know they can't rely on migrant work forever. They've passed a law forcing businesses to employ saudi nationals - a law which has proven easy to avoid and difficult to enforce, on account of that achingly slow and incompetent bureaucracy, and the simple lack of saudis who want the jobs.

Now the government is trying to run a kind of giant job agency, which I imagine could only work if they make registration compulsory.

At the moment, the Saudi economy is flying high, in spite of it's precarious reliance on transient and migrant labour. So what happens when it falls? The people here know the west is in recession, but have difficulty grasping that the same could happen here - or more likely, they don't want to understand that Arab capitalism isn't immune to crashes.

A recession would mean the supply of foreign workers would dry up, so there would need to be a supply of replacement native workers. Which there isn't. And isn't likely to be soon.

Look Back in Arabia

In a few days I'll have been here for six months.

The first three crawled by like a depressed snail on barbituates stuck in treacle. The last three trundled past amiably enough, and I've no idea what the last six will be like.

A twelve month contract - no compelling reason to cut it short, and the option of renewing it at the end. So, what's good and what's bad about where I am?

What's good:

Money.

I'm getting UKP1000 a month, which elsewhere wouldn't be great, but there's no tax and I can save 95%.

Food and drink is cheap - the 5% of wages goes on little luxuries like biscuits and squash. I get a small but adequate hotel room effectively free - in exchange for teaching the owner's sons.

So after a year, I should have 10,000 - enough to invest in something or other, so if I live to be an octogenarian, I might not be a destitute octogenarian.

Food.

British food is rubbish. You don't realise that until you go elsewhere.

The Lebanese can make an excellent three course meal out of little more than herb leaves, bread and a slice of meat. That, plus vast amounts of every variation you could imagine on milk, yoghurt and cheese.

If you're lactose intolerant, don't go near a Lebanese resteraunt. Your mouth will love you but your stomach will want a divorce.

A simple Jordanian salad will leave you wondering exactly what alchemy transformes tomatoes, olives and various chopped greenery, sprinkled with lemon and/or lime juice, into something you could happily eat all night.

The same for the bowl of humus next to it, topped with olive oil and served with bread to mop it up with. The bread itself is a pleasure to eat on it's own - which is not something you'd ever say of even the best bread in a western restaurant.

Shauerma is grilled strips of chicken, wrapped in a very thin, oily bread, served with pickles and chopped vegetables. Potatoes when they appear are generally in the form of french fries, wrapped up with the chicken.

Most of this is, I admit, basically carbohydrates swimming in too much oil. And all the drinks are astonishingly sugery - I get looks of surprise when I ask for tea without sugar.

Not a good diet for an overweight diabetic, you'd think. But I've been living on this stuff for nearly six months - and I've gone from morbidly obese to almost thin. With no more exercise than climbing a few stairs.

People.

Hospitality is important in Arab culture, but behind the obligation to be nice there's...actual genuine niceness.

I haven't once felt threatened or unwelcome here - and this is a small town monoculture backwater, not a cosmopolitan metropolis.

The equivalent of a small town in Iowa, I'm the first British person - and the first atheist - most of the denizens have ever met. Culture shock has yet to occur, on either side.

What's bad:

The weather.

Winter is three or four months of the year, starting November, and the rest of the year is Summer. Yes, there's no need for more seasons in this part of the world.

Winter isn't just cold, it's bloody freezing - sub-zero and snow is common. Summer starts hot and gets hotter - up to 45 celsius in June.

Health.

I wake up every morning with a new insect bite, and spend most of the day with the dry scratchy feeling in the lungs that's my common reaction to it. There's raised red itchy lumps coming up and going down all the time, all over.

I haven't had a normal bowel movement since arriving. A combination of constant low-level fever and the incredibly oily food mean constipation is not something I ever expect to have here.

Bureaucracy.

The government doesn't get its money through tax. Instead, it charges extortionate amounts to do anything for you besides providing electricity and water.

If you want to run a business, employ someone, rent a room, travel outside the country, have a medical, own a mobile phone, drive a car, open a bank account or anything else involving paperwork...there's a mountain of paperwork, and a row of bureaucrats to stamp it, once you've written the cheque.

If you want to start a business in two years, go through the system, paying the fees. If you want to start it in three months, bribe the bureaucrats and call in all family favours. If you want to start it tomorrow, make sure you're a millionaire.

What's next?

The general plan is: Stay another six months, have a little holiday back home, and select another country.

Gnobody Gknows

There is an atheist movement in America.

We know it's a genuine movement, because it's developed it's own fashionable nonsense.

They speak of a four-way distinction:

Gnostic Theist - One who 'knows' that a deity or deities exist.

Agnostic Theist - One who only 'believes'.

Gnostic Atheist - One who 'knows' there is no god.

Gnostic Theist - One who only 'believes' it.

The terms are not exactly clear, and not consistently used, but it seems to come down to this:

Gnostic Theist - One who believes, and can't imagine disproof.

Agnostic Theist - One who believes, but is prepared to imagine that they might be wrong.

Gnostic Atheist - One who doesn't believe, and can't imagine that there might one day appear some good evidence or argument for god.

Agnostic Atheist - One who doesn't believe, but doesn't dismiss the possibility they might be wrong.

It's an incredibly unhelpful distinction. Because 99.9% of atheists are 'agnostic' in this sense, and so are 99.9% of believers.

This 'gnostic'/'agnostic' distinction doesn't describe the belief itself, but an attitude towards hypothetical future evidence.

This makes no more sense than dividing vegetarians and meat-eaters according to whether they think they might change their eating habits if the nature of meat were to change.