Mathletes

Living in Vietnam, surrounded by expat friends and a French husband and speaking exclusively English at work and (mostly) at home, it is sometimes hard to remember that I'm living on the other side of the world in a culture that in many ways is quite different to my own.  My day to day life revolves around Shakespeare, cappuccino, Joanna Lumley monologues, Sylvia Plath, Apple and philosophy inspired by 'Not Now Bernard', or at least today did, anyway.  This is not much different to a day as a teacher in the UK, which revolved around Peter Pan, crying in the English office, red wine, Of Mice and Men and the dead feeling inside that comes from lying to children... oh wait.  Sorry.

So, anyway, after two years of hearing young people dropping their articles and using whatever tense they fancy at that present moment, speaking in present tense all the time and skipping out the arduous 'the', 'a' and 'an's in sentence and becoming, frankly, flamboyant with plurals becomes the norm.  It's difficult then, to realise sometimes that you are not in your home environment and you are working with young people who, despite all the wonderful universals that you do have in common ('Look! The rain!'; 'Tidy desks are happy desks'; 'I like your colour coding'; 'oooh: glitter'; 'you're right, the word 'penis' is funny, as are the words 'prick' and 'fiddlestick' because they also mean 'penis' and it's even funnier that we're allowed to say them in the classroom!  Let's giggle!'), come from quite different backgrounds to you.

This week, however, I was very much reminded of my current very-not-in-the-UK-residency.  In the Big International School we have a House System, because God saw that they were good and proper and installed healthy competitive spirit in children that they carry with them for the rest of their lives, especially if they are tenderly and lovingly planted into the winning GOLD House as young people.  I am the Head of House of the GOLD House of our school, because to be in any other coloured house would be to relinquish my attitude of GOLD supremacy and would be utterly unthinkable.  The GOLD House at the Big International School does unexpectedly well at things despite a depressingly low sign up and general apathy about sports activities.  We are regularly embarrassed by the Socialist Republic that is the Green House (Green has always been the colour of highly structured, title-giving, powerhouse Houses) but somehow my students manage to win events without telling me they intended on doing so.

Anyway, this week is the week of the Interhouse Maths Challenge.  Allow me, please, to profile the students that signed up, enthusiastically and with determined, winning resolve for said Maths Challenge.  Were they spotted and slightly sickly looking?  Bespectacled with mops of ungroomed hair?  Sporting jack up trousers and pringle posture?  No, no, no.  Our Mathletes over in Vietnam are not like yours back at home.  Ours also moonlight as champion swimmers, thespians, dancers and public speakers.  Ours have shiny hair and swooning fanbases of year 7 girls.  Ours take Maths very seriously and consider it probably the highlight of their school career that they got to see Ngo Bao Chau (who?  Exactly.) in the flesh talking about the Fundamental Lemma for Automorphic Forms, which in my mind, looks something like this:

For those of you who are actually Mathematicians, this is a word joke about Lemurs.

Imagine me, therefore, who still views Maths with suspicion and frustration, thus:

...standing at the back of a large hall filled with Mathletes with a Maths teacher reminding me that 1 and 3 are indeed prime numbers, only to have this enlightening conversation interrupted by two girls: good vision, school bags from known designer brands, socks at ankle, not knee length, skirts somewhere around the respectable thigh rather than mid-calf, running, yes, running: out of breath and running, sweating a little in their haste and panic, running into the hall.

I thought: there is a fire and the fire bell is broken.  They have come to tell us to evacuate.

I thought: they have not done their homework for next lesson and have faked anxiety and sweating outside for a minute before coming in to convince me that the printer in the Library is not working.

I thought: their friend is having a diabetic attack and the nurse has gone to lunch - they want me to administer an insulin boost to her heart.

Before I could grab my epipen, though, the girls tugged at the sleeve of the Maths teacher and said, 'Are we too late?  Are we too late?  Can we still start?'

The Maths teacher looked at them without mockery or sarcasm and said, 'Well, girls, the timer's on.  Get going.'  And, as if they had actually understood what this really meant, the girls rushed to their team desk to start the Maths Challenge.

Wow.  It was as if the Vietnamese national anthem rose to a crescendo in the background and a flag that was definitely not the Maths-Hating Union Jack unfurled in front of me.  'Yea verily,' it said, 'Remember that you are in Vietnam.  We do things differently here.'

Wow.

Please, UK Maths teachers, raise your hands if in your wildest dreams you have imagined students running to an extra curricular Maths activity in their lunch break and really, truly, authentically being concerned about the impact of their tardiness on their mathematical success...  I see no hands.  This is because even the concept of an extra curricular Maths activity that isn't a GCSE revision session is beyond dreaming.  But in this part of the world, you guys, it's real.

Apparently the next round of this Maths Challenge involves a relay and actual sprinting across the length of the assembly hall to deliver solutions to highly trained Maths teachers who pass judgement on answers before bestowing new problems on the 'runners' who then sprint back to the Mathletes who eagerly await the new set of algebraically titillating puzzles.

Wow.  Really, this is culturally alien to me.

Luftwaffe Boom

This weekend I saw my life flash before my eyes. Three times. 

Frenchie will say that I am exaggerating and that I was, at all times, perfectly safe, and had nothing to fear, but he has not stared watery death in the face like I have or experienced the lurching forces of near drowning and lived to tell the tale. 

After a trauma, the body becomes adept at recognising the warning signs that it failed to notice the first time round, and the senses become acutely alert to sensations that bring the familiarity of past death into the present moment.  Thus, my body - my stomach and heart area in particular - are close friends with that feeling you get when you are about to fall and realise in split-second horror, that this fall could mean serious pain or infinite darkness accompanied by a growing pinprick of light and, depending on your beliefs, naked glowing harp-playing babies.  The antidote to this feeling is wheeling your arms around in a windmill motion and leaning forwards - you know it well - but alas, when you're on a plane plummeting in turbulence, or a small, unstable boat, holding onto the tiller, this gesticulation just isn't possible, so instead, you have to risk pooping yourself by gritting your teeth and internalising the horror by pushing it down into your intestines. 

Imagine the scene, if you will: Frenchie and I, young, adventurous, in love, glamourous, European. If it's easier, imagine a Ralph Lauren advert on a posh sailing boat, but reduce the boat by ten and replace 'windswept' with 'frizzy'.  This is how Frenchie and I have spent our last two weekends in an attempt to break the monotony of plastic Singapore: we want to feel alive and free, with the wind in our hair and nothing but the wide blue ocean and some container ships and a twenty metre marker buoy in our path!  

Frenchie, who believes in gender equality, has decided that I shall take the tiller once again today, and I am very pleased with this. The wind is strong, the sun is shining, I am in control of something and we are flitting along the waves being glamorous, as previously mentioned. Our first turn goes well: Bridget Clay would have been proud. I seat myself on the other side of the boat without becoming tangled in ropes or having to drop onto all fours and avoid the incoming Luftwaffe Boom. Very good. Very neat. Everyone feeling confident. 

We carry on. The waves get a little choppier and we speed up. I refrain from telling Frenchie that the tiller is behaving badly and actually my arm is getting tired because I don't want him to think that I am undeserving of equality. We turn again. Everything is fine. I am still in control. We are sailing 'against the wind' apparently. 

The waves get increasingly disagreeable. Frenchie keeps repeating things like, 'whoa, this is great' and 'look at us!' à la my father watching fireworks. In his excitement, he does not notice that I have been silent for some time, gritting my teeth against the increasingly difficult tiller and growing fear that my tension has clouded my knowledge of the fact that left means right and right means left.  Frenchie, confident in my own abilities, informs me that we shall turn again, but this time, I will tell him what to do with the sail. All I need to do, he assures me, is think about which direction the wind is coming from. 

I laugh, because clearly he is joking. I remind him that the sail is his job. He laughs, in hindsight because he thinks I am joking, not because he is agreeing that yes, he is joking.  His laugh is sort of carefree and boyish. Mine is nervous and hysterical. I should have realised what was really going on. 

We turn. The boat veers wildly to the right. This was not what I had intended. The Luftwaffe Boom whips round, as is it's wont.  We replace ourselves on the other side, panicked, and nearly capsize. Before I can grab the tiller, the boat spins violently to the right again. Frenchie yells 'your head!' and I narrowly miss decapitation as the Boom swings over again.

I am now hysterical. What has gone wrong?  I scrabble wildly for the tiller, because the tiller is the source of all control and we have lost control and are going to die. But the tiller cannot help us anymore.  The tiller is under the impenetrable power of the waves and continues to push the small boat around and around in circles. The Luftwaffe swipe overhead and by the time I regain consciousness of my own actions in the thick fog of terror, I am on all fours in the middle of the boat, wailing at the oncoming wind, 'Frenchie!  This isn't fun anymore!  I don't LIKE IT!' like a frightened cartoon donkey braying at the moon, and still the Luftwaffe is circling overhead. It never lets up. This is the scenario of my death. 

Thankfully, Frenchie reinstated the patriarchy and took charge of both tiller and sail and after a while, we were floating quite happily and calmly towards the container ships. I was still in a state of delirium at this point though and possibly asked for a divorce through my hicoughing tears.  Meekly, Frenchie offered me the tiller again, hoping that jumping straight back on the beast would cure my fear but, from underneath my waterproof sailing hat, which I had pulled down over my eyes to hide my toddler tantrum, I simply told him that I didn't want the tiller, I wanted to go home. 

Oh dear. Wasn't lying when I said I'd retired from the Li Hi lifestyle, was I?