Monday, November 29, 2004
I saw four movies on the weekend at the film festival: The World, Land of Plenty, Three Exremes: Dumplings, and Not On the Lips. Dude, the Three Extremes one was about eating dumplings made out of aborted fetuses. And dude, it was frickin graphic. I sat there thinking 'Mum would not want me watching this' while I figured this is where SBS gets all their 12:30 screenings from, with the geeky guy at the beginning who warns you how frickin weird the movie is which you're about to watch.
Rehearsal is getting on my nerves because the tall girl has issues with my existence. She freaked out when I first came, like "why is she here, why is she here, is she going to be in it too?" but I thought she would quickly get over it. Now I dread turning up to rehearsals because she is always looking for something to complain about me. Like, it was established long ago that my Chinese was limited but that I would give it a go anyway with Yu-ren's sincere encouragement, but she still has issues with the fact that I'm not at native-speaker level and it's like I'm supposed to be Chinese or something and the fact that I'm not is a constant problem for her. Christine reckons she's insecure and feels threatened by my being there but I don't know why because it's pretty clear that I'm only there for fun, and don't take my role half as seriously as she does - however good or terrible I am I'm still going to stick out like a sore thumb, with most people in the audience not seeing much further past the fact that I'm a foreigner.
Anyway she referred to me as "that foreigner" the other day as if as if I wasn't there and I think that's what made me boil over and start to think seriously about it. Unlike Yu-ren she still believes I'm stuck in the Chinese-language stone ages so she only talks to me in English and is under the impression that I really and truly have no idea what's going on when the language being used is Chinese (which is all the time). The most bizarre thing is, her boyfriend is American or something, so you'd think she'd be OVER the whole
OH MY GOD THERE'S A FOREIGNER,
AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH FREAK OUT,
WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO,
IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD,
OH MY GOD,
HOUSTON WE HAVE A PROBLEM
HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO ACT,
HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO BREATHE,
HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO WIPE MY ARSE,
OH MY GOD THERE'S A FOREIGNER
thing.
Ahhh that felt good. I'm not completely ignorant, us little shits at Epping Heights knew no bounds when the new kid who couldn't speak English came. N.B. little shits under ten, not in our late twenties
Kindy was a blast today, I won them all over with a dazzling and brilliant impromptu comedy act which involved flash cards and clock-watching. I tried teaching the an-qin ban-ers a crappy ESL version of We Wish You A Merry Christmas but they were uninspired so I switched pages back to the Hokey Pokey and dude it was like the funniest thing they had ever seen, it was a big giant laughter factory in there... the best thing about it was that it was all spontaneous, and all I could see was the brownie-point-o-metre soaring up into the high 90's. What can I say, I'm a legend. I wonder if they teach you how to make kids laugh when you study Education, coz I would like to do it everyday. I wonder if it had anything to do with the three Toblerones I ate for breakfast this morning. Must try that again.
¶ 21:37
Rehearsal is getting on my nerves because the tall girl has issues with my existence. She freaked out when I first came, like "why is she here, why is she here, is she going to be in it too?" but I thought she would quickly get over it. Now I dread turning up to rehearsals because she is always looking for something to complain about me. Like, it was established long ago that my Chinese was limited but that I would give it a go anyway with Yu-ren's sincere encouragement, but she still has issues with the fact that I'm not at native-speaker level and it's like I'm supposed to be Chinese or something and the fact that I'm not is a constant problem for her. Christine reckons she's insecure and feels threatened by my being there but I don't know why because it's pretty clear that I'm only there for fun, and don't take my role half as seriously as she does - however good or terrible I am I'm still going to stick out like a sore thumb, with most people in the audience not seeing much further past the fact that I'm a foreigner.
Anyway she referred to me as "that foreigner" the other day as if as if I wasn't there and I think that's what made me boil over and start to think seriously about it. Unlike Yu-ren she still believes I'm stuck in the Chinese-language stone ages so she only talks to me in English and is under the impression that I really and truly have no idea what's going on when the language being used is Chinese (which is all the time). The most bizarre thing is, her boyfriend is American or something, so you'd think she'd be OVER the whole
OH MY GOD THERE'S A FOREIGNER,
AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH FREAK OUT,
WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO,
IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD,
OH MY GOD,
HOUSTON WE HAVE A PROBLEM
HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO ACT,
HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO BREATHE,
HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO WIPE MY ARSE,
OH MY GOD THERE'S A FOREIGNER
thing.
Ahhh that felt good. I'm not completely ignorant, us little shits at Epping Heights knew no bounds when the new kid who couldn't speak English came. N.B. little shits under ten, not in our late twenties
Kindy was a blast today, I won them all over with a dazzling and brilliant impromptu comedy act which involved flash cards and clock-watching. I tried teaching the an-qin ban-ers a crappy ESL version of We Wish You A Merry Christmas but they were uninspired so I switched pages back to the Hokey Pokey and dude it was like the funniest thing they had ever seen, it was a big giant laughter factory in there... the best thing about it was that it was all spontaneous, and all I could see was the brownie-point-o-metre soaring up into the high 90's. What can I say, I'm a legend. I wonder if they teach you how to make kids laugh when you study Education, coz I would like to do it everyday. I wonder if it had anything to do with the three Toblerones I ate for breakfast this morning. Must try that again.
¶ 21:37
