I like learning. And I like teaching. But until I taught, I never thought about what it meant to learn, and how differently we do it.

We learn differently as people, and we learn differently based on how we've always learned. I've sat through explanations that were crystal clear in the eye of the explainer, but which made me feel like such a fool. I ( Read more... )

Remember, remember
the fifth of November,
gunpowder, treason and plot!
I see no reason
why gunpowder treason
should ever be forgot.

Say the two words of the title to anyone from the UK, and chances are that they'll complete the rhyme almost involuntarily, most likely in a deep, portentous voice. Imagine my surprise, on leaving my country, to find that ( Read more... )

Here's the third most irritating question I get asked in Japan. You can read numbers 4-6 here.

3. Isn't Prince William lovely?

Is he? Your guess is as good as mine. I haven't met him, you see. In England we have this little thing called class, which prevents an oik such as myself from rubbing my filthy calloused shoulders with royalty.

Such as my ( Read more... )

There's a lot said in Britain about how we're closer in spirit to Anglophone North America than to continental Europe - as if to prove my point, I had to add the word "continental" to that last sentence on a second reading. This often rears its head in the debate over British EU integration, leading to the farcical suggestion that we ditch Europe ( Read more... )

Settling is a curious thing. It was 9 months before I made the trip home from Japan, and that wasn't just for lack of opportunity - I didn't WANT to go back. I was in Japan, getting used to the people, their ways, their customs, their language, and who I was in the midst of all this. Why would I want a break, a switch of mindset, a loss of momentum ( Read more... )

Lie number 98: you can get from where I work to where I live in 37 minutes. You simply take the overground train, change to the Victoria Line, then hop on the Northern Line at Euston. Simple - all part of living in the ultra-modern world city that is London, ha-bloody-ha.

Today my journey home was as follows. I missed the train from work, ( Read more... )

As if in the blink of an eye, a decade has passed. It seems like only yesterday that I was being driven mad by the strains of that bloody ‘thirty years of hurt’ song and already it’s fully forty years since England won the World Cup. I still couldn’t care less. Please, world, I beg of you, let England win, so the nation can get this giant chip off ( Read more... )