Who's in Charge?

So.  This post is entirely not about Vietnam, Singapore, or any other South East Asian or Australasian destination, just a short rant, accompanied by some pictures.  Apologies for the false advertising in the blog address.  I'll name the next one emmagetspissedoffwiththepatriarchy.blogspot.com.

Now I know that a lot of people might be boooooooooooooooored with me going on about that outdated feminism thing, some so much so that they have begun claiming that feminism doesn't exist if I bring it up at the dinner table in an effort to wind me up into silence, but here's a thought I had as a teacher today...

Secondary school is a time where young people learn a great deal.  Before they learn a great deal, teachers have a lot of fun times inside their heads being amused by what they don't already know and by the ways they express themselves.  This week, a 14 year old boy shouted at his friend in one of those awkwardly loud voices at the precise moment when everyone in the class did 'thinking faces' in silence rather than 'discussion voices' to create general hubbub: 'because rabbits are bigger than chickens!'.  Another child shouted, near-hysterically at a group member across the table: 'I know what you're trying to say but it's so difficult to say it in words!'  Yet another confidently told me (having watched the entire movie, completed many comprehension quizzes and spent six weeks studying) in a levelled assessment that half way through the play, Juliet decides to break up with Romeo to do what's best for her family.  And today, a young man looked at a piece of scrap paper I had given him with a quiz printed on one side, showed me the mumbo jumbo on the scrap side and said, 'sorry, what am I supposed to do with this?'  We did a workshop on how to turn a piece of paper over, and it was like the Age of Enlightenment had dawned in his teenage world. 

Young people are so wonderful and I am very privileged to work with them, but what's true is that between the ages of 11 and 18, they still don't know what to do when their laptop battery dies when they are sitting next to a plug socket, they need clear explanations as to why 'little rolled clusters, like sausages' is a sexual innuendo, they think that Queen Victoria was queen of all Europe and they pronounce the word 'distraught' as 'distraughted' and spell it 'distrort' despite you repeating the word to them slowly and clearly and accepting that it's a funny old spelling and so spelling it out for them at least three times.  There are unlimited things that kids simply do not know.

What they do know, however, is the answer to this question: 'Who was in charge at this point?'  I have to have this conversation every single time I teach a new text in order to talk about social and historical context, to talk about power balances, to talk about character relationships, to talk about 'voice', to talk about empathy, to talk about imagery, to talk about writer's intention, and you know what?  Without a shadow of hesitation, every single child aged 11-18 can confidently, without preparation or revision, respond with 'The men'.

They don't know where that knowledge has come from; they don't know why It is Like This.  You ask them who is 'in charge' in their house, and a lot of them will say, 'MUM', but you ask them who is 'in charge' in life and they say 'MEN'.  That fact is something deep and ingrained into their inherent understanding of life, and in my job, all I seem to do is confirm this fact, through great works of literature.  Just to show you that I'm not making this up, let's have a look at the texts I've taught this year and the men in charge (and if you are a teacher of any subject, I challenge you to do the same):

Greek Myths: Zeus



King of Shadows: Shakespeare



Short Stories: Travis, The Mean Sheriff, Mr. Maloney (though he gets his comeuppance), the crazy and unreliable male narrator



Advertising: MEN



War Poetry: MEN



The Sorrow of War: Kien and other Vietnamese MEN

 (This is Bao Ninh, the author, rather than Kien the character, just to clarify - there are three narrative voices in this text, one of which may possibly be his, or all of them... whatever you decide)

The Quiet American: Fowler and other white MEN



Regeneration: MEN

Hedda Gabler: Brack and other Norwegian MEN (eventually)



Death and the Maiden: Chilean MEN (to begin with and then eventually)



Poetry from Other Cultures: Korean fathers, Vietnamese patriarchy, white South African MEN, Jamaican MEN, Pakistani patriarchy

Macbeth: medieval Scottish MEN



Romeo and Juliet: Lord Capulet, Lord Montague, Tybalt, Romeo





A Midsummer Night's Dream: Oberon, Theseus, Egeus



Of Mice and Men: the Boss and all the men who own/are mean to Curley's Wife



I'm the King of the Castle: Mr. Hooper



All My Sons: Joseph and Chris Keller



It is quite literally exhausting.  It doesn't matter what time period I'm teaching, what country, what genre of text: Q: 'Who is in charge at this point?'  A: 'The men!'

The only texts that buck the trend are the Cuban poem Mother and Holes, where the Warden is in charge.  Thank goodness, even though she is mean and eventually outsmarted by a teenage boy.  Let's take a moment to thank Sigourney Weaver, as the Warden, for being a heinous bitch and putting it out there for female authority:



That's right, Sigourney: deny them water.  Deny those convicts water.  They deserve it for being born part of the oppressive force.  Deny them water in floral.  Deny them with that braid.  Abuse that new-woman power.  They've got it coming to them.

Let's get back on track! I don't want to present an argument that suggests that there are no women in the texts I teach and that I don't spend hours and hours and hours of my life talking about women's issues like pregnancy and misogyny and objectification and female empowerment and maternal instincts and gender neutrality and taking on masculine traits and discussing why it's inappropriate to make lewd comments about the woman licking an ice cream in the Magnum advert.  But check out that list of topics: any conversations that do focus on the significant women in the text - here they all are: Curley's Wife, Hedda, Paulina, Kate Keller, Annie, Mrs. Kingshaw, Lady Macbeth, Juliet, Helena, Hermia, Titania, Sarah Lumb, Mrs. Maloney - focus on how these women fit the social expectations of their time, or break out of them.  Breaking out of them might make them 'in charge' temporarily, but by the end of the play./novel/poem/article/advert/film, this always ends badly (Hedda, Lady Macbeth, Juliet - suicide; Curley's Wife - death; Mrs. Kingshaw - loss of her son; Annie - broken engagement) or with the  restoration of the patriarchy and a wedding/traumatic repression of voice.  Regardless of any 'breaking out' that may be happening, the mere concept and need to 'break out' or 'rebel' or 'refuse to fulfil' necessitates that there is something in charge to 'break' or 'rebel against' or 'refuse', i.e. the patriarchy!

In the texts, I teach, the children look up, essentially, and what they see is male.  And they know that it is good and right and proper and the Way Things Are.

Is this a curriculum issue, or is this society, or is this just me?

On the plus side: my job looks very cool when you put it into pictures like this, regardless of the gender of the protagonists.

Done.  Thanks for reading.

ThurSkate

Hello. This week I have decided to consider taking up roller derby.  For those of you who are not American, or have not seen the film Whip It, roller derby is a sport introduced to me by my dearest friend Courtney, who communicated its wonder through the medium of fancy dress parties and pseudonyms.  With such an introduction, I was sold. 

As far as I understand (and admittedly, at this stage, I don't understand very much), this is a sport that involves being kick-ass and aggressive on quad roller skates, skating around and around in a circle and elbowing other people out of the way, like pushing in the lunch queue, to earn points by over-taking members of the other team.

Wow. Think of all the ingrained behaviours that this sport will allow me to subvert!  

Ingrained British behaviour: "Oh dear, that looks awfully boisterous. I think I'll sit this one out and have a cup of tea. Monopoly's my competitive sport, what, what!"

Roller Derby behaviour: "Bring it!"

Ingrained British behaviour: "Let's just wait patiently behind these ladies until it's our turn. I do love a good queue. It gives one such precious time to reflect on the beauty of small things."

Roller Derby behaviour: "MOVE, bitch!"

Exciting!

The reason for considering such a new skill is due to the impending months of thumb twiddling/friendlessness that is likely to accompany the Great Shift, which is the name I am giving to my move from Saigon to Brisbane via Singapore, which, were it included in a work of literature, would represent many a thing, like my transition from Northern to Southern Hemisphere, one person to two person meal preparation and, if there turns out to be nothing better to do, strategic baby avoidance to strategic baby expelling.  So multilayered.  I thought this Shift would be a great time to invest in all those things that I've always wanted to do, but never had the balls/time/opportunity: write a book that no one will read, paint a picture to hang in the downstairs toilet, learn to make my own bassoon reeds and, of course, join a roller derby team. 

Roller derby, I think, is the sport for me. It will allow me to build a friend-base of like minded, aggressive, intimidatingly sized, tattoed women and it will allow me to nurture one of the following doppelgängers (you have to have a sort of, beasty stage name to be a roller derby-er):

1. The Killer Queen

2. The EMMAncipator

3. ExtrEMMAsis

4. Danger-Dechans

What do you think?  Votes cast on your preferred form of social media, please.  Once I have my name, all I have to do is skate confidently and really fast. This is a small barrier to my success, I feel, especially as this week saw the inauguration of my new all-inclusive club, ThurSkate, which takes place at this magical Vietnamese roller disco:

Wow!  I mean, really, WOW!  Once we had discovered this venue of great wonder, Shining Shamrock, Slender Laurel, Poker Face and myself, the founding members of ThurSkate, ate barbeque and jumped on our scooters, whizzing through the Saigon night for our first try at quad skating. 

Oh, what a joy it was!  The skates: amazingly old school and smelly.  The staff: completely bemused by our presence.  The clientele: at least ten years our junior. The music: oh, the music!  For a long time I have not been blessed with the intensity of Vietnamese disco beats this roller disco had to offer and yea verily, it was entirely appropriate to the setting, including the brief moment where the Vietnamese lyrics stopped and the singer introduced the chorus with a determined, 'fuck you'. If I'd understood the rest of the song, I'm sure this would have made sense, but as it was, this unexpected little expletive broke my concentration and I fell onto my bum, arms wheeling madly like a panicking seagull.  

Check it out!  The scene is so disco, you can't even differentiate people from awesomeness.

My bruised bum was the only casualty of the evening, though; the rest of the night was spent going round and around and around and around on skates, staring at my toes and the floor about 50cm in front of me, and holding my arms out in a sort of unstable scarecrow pose. 

I, for one, think I'm going to be ready for roller derby in no time...

My Saigon

Of course, I am on holiday again. As a teacher, this is what I get paid to do. This time, it's a holiday to celebrate the Reunification of North and South Vietnam and also a day that, up until this point, I had thought was all about cider, cramming onto motorways to get to beaches, pub lunches and royal weddings. Turns out that for all those anti-royalist countries, May 1st is for the labourers, who get a day off, not a day that gives Brits yet another reason to complain about the weather.

So, since I'd been labouring very hard since the Easter holidays (two weeks ago), and complaining at length about the weather (it is super, super hot at the moment), it was time for me to be reunified with Frenchie and spend five days doing... well... pretty much nothing as it happens.  Definitely worthy of a blog post!

Now, 'pretty much nothing' obviously translates as 'some cute stuff intermingled with lots of nothing', so here are the highlights of those five days...

1. Reunification Day, the day honoured by the Spice Girls song, '2 Become 1', involved fireworks. This meant loads of people riding their bikes to the nearest street/bridge/highway they could find, parking, blocking everything off and standing to watch the fireworks under lots of Vietnamese flags that had been hung from houses and the backs of bikes and taxis. I was eating barbeque and drinking cider in an attempt to cling onto my home culture at the time, but never one to miss fireworks, I went out onto the street, nodded appreciatively at all the flags (what's not to love about this over-sized, patriotic bunting?) and rocked back and forth, toe to heel, toe to heel, saying, 'ooh!', 'aah!', 'excellent!' in tribute to the fond memories that many a St George's girl and close family friend of the Sheppards has of my father. ('Boom!', 'gosh!', 'did you see that one?', 'kablowee!'). What was especially heartwarming were the nods of approval I received from many a Vietnamese Dad. They knew this universal Father-and-Fireworks choreography and recognised it as right and fitting for the occasion. Well done, little Western girl, you have harnessed the power of gunpowder to transgress cultural, language, age and gender barriers... Wheee!  That was a banger!  Kaboooom!  Excellent!

Then I ate more barbeque. At a place called Quàn Ut Ut, just to give it a shout out. They have an amazingly anti-vegetarian logo:

2. I took Frenchie to visit the rubber plantations of his ancestors. In this version of the story, Frenchie's ancestors are Catherine Deneuve and Vincent Perez.  Frenchie, who has seen rubber trees before (quite a lot) was more entertained by me falling off my stationary bike into gravel and submissively waving my legs in the air like an inverted tortoise as the bike fell on top of me in slow motion, accepting my fate.


He also enjoyed the strangely familiar scene of a lorry driver driving with his hand brake on.

"Oo would do a stupid thing like zat?" Frenchie scoffed.  "Me, I av never done anything so stupid in a camper van in Australia.  Quel con, zis Vietnamese lorry driver. Ee definitely did not learn to drive from ze French!"

As the eight week countdown to my departure from this blessed country begins, the trip also gave me the opportunity to take stock of all the things I will and will not miss. 

Will miss

Cattle, grazing wherever the heck they like.

10p ferry rides

My motorbikes - they have all been so good to me, even the one that left me permanently scarred.  Good times. 

Rubber trees - so peaceful

Rooftops

 All the lines and angles you can find in urban spaces

Will not miss: detest

- mosquitoes - I got bitten seven times on this trip alone and twice whilst writing this blog

Monster trucks - much bigger than bikes and very scary

- the police - like those naughty, corrupt boys in classrooms that you're not allowed to outwit because their parents have some sort of authority over you.

3. We visited the long ignored HCMC Museum of Fine Arts. There were many beautiful things, mostly the building itself, which Frenchie would like to turn into a hotel, and I would simply like to live in and wander around in a yellowing wedding dress with a fan and a small bell with which to ring for tea/gin, depending on the time of day.

Obviously, life would be no fun if all it contained was colonial beauty, so I was glad when Vietnam threw a few of these choice morsels into the mix...

Propaganda Tin Tin

Works of sublime talent and beauty by leading Vietnamese artists:

... no words...

Thanks, Vietnam!  You sure know how to put on an exhibition worthy of this blog!

Tiger Time

Tiger Lady: please, Madam, this is the last call. We are boarding!

Me: alright, alright. I was just at the bar. 

Tiger Lady:... Madam, it is very important that we board the flight on time. 

Me: don't talk to me about 'important', woman!  I have been at school for a whole week!  My next holiday isn't for a week and a half!  Year 7 did drama last thing on a Friday. Do you know what that means?  I'll tell you what's important: that second glass of wine at the bar was important. Now move out of my way so that I can sit on a flight full of crying babies wishing sterilisation on everyone around me!

Yep, this child stared at me for the entire flight.

Look at the view, small child, not at me, the first white person you have ever seen this close up!

Food for Thought

So, since I am now such an international butterfly that I have contacts and friends in eight countries spanning four continents, I decided to spend the second part of my trip sweating until my peeling skin formed small balls of dirt, coating my innards and outside in a thick film of dust and pollution and observing a side of Manila that the average tourist probably doesn't get to see with my friend Saint Karin. 

Just to preface, before going to Manila, I thought I lived in a big, busy, polluted city. If you think this about your home town, then visit Manila and see if you still feel the same way afterwards. I may be remembering it inaccurately, but Saigon is a country village with a parish church and farmers markets in comparison to Manila. Obviously, with so much concrete and life and so many people comes a lot of social issues that the government of a given country either do, or do not address. For the communities that Saint Karin works in, the depressing impression is that it is up to the NGOs to battle the red tape and barriers of poor education, infrastructure, lack of employment, sanitation and malnutrition rather than the government. As a liable protector, I'm sure that everyone is doing as much as they possibly can, and that there are as many shades of grey as there are malnourished street children, but I'll let these photos speak for themselves:

Saint Karin's organisation predominantly provide community outreach in the form of educational opportunities and feeding programs, and Slender Laurel and I were fortunate enough to help out with some feeding sessions, a community visit and a visit to a partner organisation who run a children's home.  Behaviour in Watford and Birmingham classrooms prepared us well for the 2-14 year olds that we met and Slender Laurel and I were particularly proud of the success of a skipping rope that we introduced with the intention of a two-pronged attack: either we would use it to skip, or if the fighting in the line continued, we would use it to tie some of the worst offenders to the nearest lamppost. That's good British discipline for you. Luckily, the skipping worked a treat, as did giving policeman, manhandling rights to the big boys, who kept the queue in order. 

Check out yellow-basketball-vest bruiser who totally rocked the queue management, even when there were 15 small children to control. Somebody give that boy a prefect badge - he's already wearing the Watts House colours!

Clearly, there is a very serious side to this blog that I won't get into, but as a bit of a shock fact, yellow-basketball-vest boy is not 11, he is 14. The majority of the children in the queue are over 8 years old, and the kid with the red flash in his hair, I think is 10 or 11. This is what malnutrition does, which is very scary. Some of them are at school, some of them are not, and for some of them, the main reason they are not at school is because of the shame of arriving at school without lunch because their parents cannot provide them, or their six other siblings, with lunch. If you'd like to hear more ranting about social injustice, email or arrange a Skype call with Saint Karin, who feels very strongly about these things.  

If you are currently experiencing Western guilt, stop for a second and reassure yourself: what you do in your daily lives probably makes a significant positive difference to one or more people around you, and this is a good thing. If you still feel bad, please, don't book a holiday that allows you to skip with street children unless the main purpose of your visit is to buy Starbucks for an overworked friend. Instead, set up a direct debit that does something about children's education at home or abroad through a charity that you trust and believe in and educate your own children about global inequality so that they do the same. We are super fortunate to live our lives in the way we do, and everyone has a gift that they can use to improve the lives of others. If yours comes in an plastic oblong shape with a shiny gold square at one end, then do use it if you feel inclined to. 

Phew!  Altruistic rant done!  Let's get back to the normal blog stuff...

Slender Laurel and I didn't spend our whole visit enforcing skipping rules or sitting in dirt because frankly, we're not that nice. We do good deeds every day in term time when we allow very excitable year 7s to do drama rather than sit in silence and read, and smile at children before 7:55am. Allowing children to leave our rooms on time for break has already bought us our ticket into heaven. Instead, we spent some of our days being tourists and taking fun photos around the old city of Intramurus...

And climbing active volcanoes, leaving a river of sweat to run down the hill behind us...

And obviously, no trip to an Asian metropolis would be complete without a visit to the depths of hell, also known as the meat section of the wet market where skinned pig heads stare at you like the hideous thing from 'Lord of the Flies' and men sleep beside pig carcasses waiting to be butchered and bags of blood sit on the floor and everyone who is anyone wields a huge meat cleaver, and intestines sit juicily in little bowls. Yes.  Delicious.

I tried not to breathe, for fear of vomiting:

Unpleasant!

Boracay

Before I begin this post today, I'd like to state, once and for all, that for some time I have been living a Li Hi lie. You may have noticed this from my recent blogs that have featured flower arranging, cafes and GOLD lounges, but if you have been reading over the past few months and have been passing this off as a phase, whilst whispering, 'No, it's not true!  It can't be true!  I won't believe it! Remember Salkantay?  Remember Toubkal?  They can't all be lies.  We'll see the true Li Hi Shan soon enough!' then I'm afraid I'm going to have to break your hearts and remind you of Rinjani, the beginning of the end for me. Remember Rinjani, guys?  Now, here, look at these pictures and you tell me whether I'm still an intrepid explorer, or a  five star, highly strung, middle class brat with a princess delusion...

 

Not very intrepid, I'm sure you'll agree.  However, if you would still like to be my friend, even though I have retired from hard work and dirt, please read on.

So, having sat on a plane on a runway for an hour in the middle of a raging storm, I eventually managed to leave Hong Kong and had a turbulent flight that scared the life out of me. I even had a conversation with God about all the things I had achieved so far in my life and all the reasons why, I guess, death at this point wouldn't be such a terrible thing and if this was The Plan for me, then at least I'd experienced business class at least once in my life.  The pilots, however, managed to deliver me safely into the arms of my long lost friend, Saint Karin, who has also been living in the tropics for 18 months. Her Tagalog far out trumps my Vietnamese and she was pleased to see that I too spend my days inside and thus am also a shade I like to call 'pale milk' despite the consistent 30+ degree heat we live in.  

This brief stop was followed by another flight on a very small, propellor powered plane, which was also delayed by over an hour, seemingly because Philippine Airlines forgot that they had to provide planes that day. That was quite an exciting plane, though, and I didn't fear for my life, and got to descend a small set of stairs like a 1960s First Lady in order to get off in the tiny airport of Caticlan. I managed to get some photos on my way back, which was quite cool:

Other than beautiful views from hotel balconies, enforced relaxation and sunbathing on floating bamboo rafts in the middle of greeny-blue bays, the point of this trip was to do some scuba diving. I'd explained to my part time travel buddies, Slender Laurel and Captain Mathman that if they were for scuba then I was a pea, and wonderfully, they were for scuba!  Even better, they were even more for scuba than I was, and Slender Laurel, a girl after my own heart, had signed up to do learning with scuba to get a certificate. Who doesn't love a certificate?  

Her advanced skills came in handy to me when it became apparent that I could not remember how to dive and would probably have been a liability under water had she not been my dive buddy. Having been reprimanded, gently, by the dive master, Peter, for testing my mask in the wrong way, I decided to spend all my time on the boat watching Slender Laurel put her equipment together as she mouthed and demonstrated each step to me like a Blue Peter presenter on mute.  I think I got away with it: any casual observer would have thought that I was a qualified expert. 

I was feeling much more confident when my life jacket was inflated and air appeared to be coming out of the pipes attached to my breathy thing, until I realised that if Slender Laurel was my dive buddy, responsible for my underwater survival, then I too was her dive buddy, and thus, if she died or got lost in a web of seaweed or eaten by a shark or stung, fatally, by a jellyfish, it would be my fault. Considering later in this trip I managed to slice the top of my finger off when trying to change the direction of an electric fan, the task of looking after someone else seemed somewhat daunting but hoping for the best, we all unceremoniously fell over backwards into the water and floated around looking at fish. 

Luckily, everything was juuuuuuuuuust fine, and the fish were very pretty. Highlights included these guys:

Big triggerfish.

Enormous Napoleon fish. 

Red snapper, which don't actually go red until you kill them. Fun fact!  All of them were quite big and scary and I wondered if they would be able to eat us. 

There were also some of these sea cucumbers, which I thought I had invented, aged 8, because every time I told someone about them, they refused to agree that they existed. But look, they're real (and really ugly):

We also did a really cool deep dive to 31m, to see a wrecked Yak-40 that we were able  to swim through, living out our Tin Tin and Indiana Jones fantasies Doing Exploring and Looking for Sunken Treasure and stuff. Cool. 

Obviously, this was all interspersed with lots of ice cream, beer, sunbathing, reading of the depressingly epic Philippino, 'Noli Me Tangere' (will I ever finish it?!) and frolicking in the sea at sunset, which is decidedly un-Li Hi but as I said, cometh the era of no shame associated with spas, posh hotels, champagne and business class.

Also, never fly with Philippine Airlines. Every flight I have taken with them has been delayed by more than an hour. Thank goodness for airport coffee and wifi.