Pappus' plane

After being gloriously warm all winter, my room is now somewhat chilly, as the people who have the power to do such things turned the heater off. A few days ago, we had a fine day of 26 degrees. Now the temperature is half of that value - on an absolute scale, no less - and I'm having to wear a jumper inside.

It was just as well that I didn't skip the country (or at least the city) for this week. I was technically still employed by the school, but figured that it was unlikely that they'd give me lessons for just two days after a holiday. But I did get a couple of hours on Wednesday - one of the Terminale teachers saying that she needed to do lots of work on something or other that required smaller groups of students. Presumably the something-or-other was Bac-related.

The last lesson was pretty anti-climactic, as only four students showed up. I used my last reserve lesson plan - celebrity heads - and it went OK, but it could have done with more students. After the first run-through of the game, I always let the students write up the celebrity names. I've done this in four (or is it five or six? I can't remember.) classes, and there were many recurring themes - Tony Parker, Michael Jackson, Clara Morgane (she should perhaps not be Googled for from work), Nicolas Sarkozy, George Bush, Britney Spears.

None of them ever chose Groethendick or von Neumann, I regret to say.

I watched La Vie des Autres today, on a DVD - I could once again happily immerse myself in subtitles, rather than watching mouths not agree with the speech emanating from them. The original German title is Das Leben der Anderen, and IMDB tells me that in English they call it The Lives of Others. Anyway, it was pretty good, though I wouldn't quite have it at #48 all-time, as the IMDB voters do (and I consider myself well-qualified to say this, having seen a whole dozen of their top hundred). Eight out of ten.

I was looking at my attendance sheet the other day and saw a retard next to one of my student's names. I thought, "Haha! He's a retard!"

I haven't thought that since last October or so.

With one of my business-type classes yesterday I had them do a little exercise where they'd choose some product out of those I listed on the board, take ten minutes to prepare, and then present the four P's of a marketing strategy for it.

One of them got to 'price', and then said that he would use a strategy of écrémage. Neither of us knew what it was in English, so I looked it up - price skimming. They seemed all very matter-of-fact about it; I guess it doesn't have the negative connotations when you're the skimmer.

More generously, one of the other people said that they'd use penetration pricing.

Forget the ICL final bowl-off or the Cloncurry Council election, this is the most nail-biting finish in the world at the moment.

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The practice of Gaussian Eliminator trivia reports has survived during my absence from the team, but subsequent chroniclers have not stuck to my flat and direct style of writing. The evolution in trivia write-ups has reached a new high (temporary, to be sure), with heroic rhyming.

I recently got a new batch of post-Bac (BTS) students who get two hours with me to practice for their oral exam. I started with introductions, as usual, and I suspect that a couple of those 20-year-olds confused the word 'daughter' with 'sister', especially the one who said she had three daughters. But I didn't want to ask, just in case. They do business English anyway, so it won't come up on their exam.