Great friends

• Michael – from Canada, my team teacher in Grade 5, laid back, encouraging, organised, experienced…
• Chee Wan – from Melbourne, travelling mate, neighbour, happy soul…
• JoJ0 – from inland from Pt Macquarie somewhere – great friend, help in time of need, clarity of thought…
• Vicki – Russian speaking ESL teacher who one day may be living in Australia
• ah, gee there’s so many friends

Trip to Iran.  An amazing country that is now in turmoil due to corrupt elections.  We now have a dear friend from Tehran, who relates her stories of the demonstrations, the tear gas, the restricted communication, the imprisoned and murdered…

Professional Development in the Primary Years Program of the International Bacalaureate.

A greater sense of internationalism.  Love of difference of culture.

I’m now finishing in Imanpa, N.T., Australia.  Now to find a job.

Now that’s a worry.

While I’m here.  We had a bomb threat this morning.  I arrived at school at 7.25am and at 7.40am we were told to leave the building.   We ambled out wondering what the story was, knowing we had never been asked to do this before, apart from fire or earthquake drills.   Staff were arriving in buses and cars and then were waiting around outside the main gate while guards were scurrying to ensure people were out of the various buildings.

Larry, the Director, said that the threat came in an email addressed to the four admin people with a brief explanatory note (content was not described) and then the threat was at the bottom, saying that a bomb would go off at 9.15am in the school. We haven’t heard anything so assume that school happens as normal tomorrow.

At 8.20am we were in buses going home and at 8.25am we saw the first emergency services vehicle, a small police vehicle, rushing in TISA’s direction.   Sadly we saw no other police, ambulance, fire brigade, BP security (we’re under BP’s control) or bomb squad.  If there was a crisis here you wouldn’t want to be relying on emergency services.  Thankfully the school has its own security staff.

As soon as you use “jihadi, mujhadeen, salafi” it gives the insurgents credibility as holy warriors.

Al-Qaeda and Taliban actions are justified by three propisitions:

1.  Religion.  The Koran talks about a defensive jihad where it is an obligation to fight an invader.

2. Political interpretation: Some posit that Western encroachment constitutes an attack on the identity of Islam and therefore justifies jihad.

3. Military interpretations: Because the US forces are so large it is legitimate to fight with terrorism.

However not all Muslims agree with all three justifications, only fundamentalists, who view fellow disagreeing Muslims as infidels and deserving of death. In Afganistan and elsewhere others refer to Taliban as ‘takfeery’  – which is similar to “heretics” http://moourl.com/l9sim

They love their speeches here.  A German man spoke with an Azeri woman interpreter interpreter and after that he gave his speech in English.   Then after they were clapped off another little Moulin Rouge man came with wringing hands and spoke for another 15 minutes in Azeri.  Who knows what he said but when he finished I think people were clapping to get him off.  Thirty minutes seems a bit much for speeches at the start of the night.  I guess they don’t give them at the end as people would walk out.

During this time a cameraman was going around shining bright lights in people’s eyes, presumably to splice our concentration into the playing that came later.  Talk about intrusive! There were TV crew everywhere and there was serious lighting setup for this event – obviously a significant event for someone.

A female soprano and male jazz pianist performed an interesting selection of classics by German Brahms, Schubert and Mahler.  She appeared to give a very polished, accomplished, straight classical version but his playing was heavily influenced by jazz, which Baku delights in and has some reputation for.  Around October I saw another German jazz group sponsored by the same Society in another part of the town, which I enjoyed more as it was more dynamic and energetic.

While in Dubuque years ago we went to a concert where the female singer had a degree in projecting rapture from the stage.  Tonight’s singer took her rapture to another level whilst the pianist did his thing, by striking poses at different points around the piano, armed stretched on the piano, head leant on various angles hands then wrapping around herself in different positions to break the boredom every minute or so, sometimes looking towards the pianist, sometimes looking sidestage.

Anyway, it was good for another experience.  Tomorrow night, ANZAC night, downstairs with the Aussies on campus, of which there are quite a few.

This library was the one that most cool school kids flee from.  There were horribly dusty shelves.  When people sneezed, dust exploded into people’s faces.  Everything was old, especially the librarian.  She was wrinkled like a tortoise and had warts like a witch.  Her hair was as white as mist.  Specks of dandruff fell from her hair and mingled with the dust.  The books on the shelves looked like they came from the Roman Empire because if you touched the pages they disintegrated at the edges.  They were also just for adults. The writing was microscopic and seemed to be in ancient gibberish. It looked as if the books hadn’t been checked out for ages because no-one could understand them.   The only sound was the silence pulsing through the bookshelves.   Strangely, everywhere there was a carpet of torn pages lying everywhere, like wounded people in a hospital during a war.   There were spider webs on the pages on the floor.  Some of the pages looked as if they had been eaten by termites and vomited back out.   The library looked like a gigantic toilet for mice.

Today I’ve spent hours putting up family photos, prints and wall hangings to make the apartment look a little more friendly.  It now has a welcoming feel and I now have a family obvious for the world to see.

It’s a foggy day in Baku.   We even had some rain overnight and drizzle today. Meanwhile Victoria burns.  I hadn’t been out since Friday night so just had a long walk exploring this part of the world.  Photos to come soon, once I’ve paid some money to Edublogs so that I can load more photos.

Better work on enrolling in the next subject for the M.Ed.

First a bar opened downstairs.  The sequencer kicked in 5 nights each from 9.30pm which put an end to studying and sleep.  I would walk across the yard to another teacher’s spare room and then back again pre-dawn to start the day.  The school finally moved me to a temporary apartment where the floors had been lacquered some four or five weeks earlier.   The floors were still giving up formaldehyde so I was feeling sick, depressed and couldn’t concentrate on the simplest of tasks.  I was leaving the windows and doors open so was then battling mosquitoes at night.

A week ago I swapped apartments with another teacher as I have been told that I will be moving to a decent apartment in a week.  I’m not sure if it will happen yet. I swapped as Tasha had to get out due to contested ownership of the apartment and BP won’t pay rent under such conditions.

I’ve been struggling with a cold for four weeks and still had today mostly in bed.  I’m worried that it’s more than a virus so am off to the doctor on Monday.  Many other teachers here have had colds for up to four and six weeks so I guess that’s comforting in a way.

Last night was a farewell meal for Judy at Sultan’s Restaurant.  Judy has been with us only since August – a short stint.  Sultan’s is a classy restaurant that overlooks The Maiden’s Tower.  This link may show a photo.  It might not as well. Just tried to post the photo here but Edublogs seem to have reduced their allowance to each blog and I’m at 100%.  I guess that means no more photos, until I delete some old ones.

Five school days and I fly back home for three weeks.

november-4-2008.jpg (JPEG Image, 1440×847 pixels)

It’s a momentous event.     http://www.patrickmoberg.com/

I’ve had if for a while actually.  I created the new site while I was waiting for the old page to expire so that the new server could reserve the url for me.  The new server however was slack in following through and a web crawler has taken over the site and  filled it with rubbish.

This post and the included link is part of my strategy that search engines find links to the new .au site.

Here’s the url again.    http://leighnewton.com.au/  If you have a blog or website would you consider adding it to your page in order to help people find me.  Thanks.