Cheating Problems with Thai Students

This week is the final week for both my regular and weekend classes; the last final for my last class is tomorrow and I just threw a pretty good one together.
I will make a rather blanket statement here and say that Thai students are pretty bad cheaters. Not only is cheating rampant, it’s so rampant that I suspect it must be ignored or even allowed by some of their other teachers*, hence the students are quite bad at it.
I was a pretty good cheater when I went to school(which is not to say I cheated a lot, just that I never got caught – except once when my dad busted me with a “borrowed copy” of a Teacher’s Book for pre-calc in high school), so I know what I’m talking about. And (hold on, let me get on my high horse here) since I’m here to give these kids a well-rounded education, I basically throw down the gauntlet by telling them: I don’t care if you cheat. Cheat all you want. But don’t get caught. It will end badly for you.
To date, I’ve caught two.
They’ve never been seen or heard from again (I sent them to the cornfield, yo).
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*Not only do I suspect it; a teacher was apparently found to have helped a large number of students cheat last term… and wasn’t fired.

Ant Infestation


They appear with no warning
When they sense the rain coming (and they are never wrong about it), ants can move an entire colony inside the house overnight, as happened here. I sat down to type out some morning emails, and a thousand little dots erupted from under the keyboard, spreading out in all directions. I flipped it over to find this – it was pretty much one of the creepiest things to wake up to, ever. Previous infestations have sprung up in laundry pilers on the floor and in my inkjet printer – I was printing out sheets with little black ants embedded in the paper for weeks after that (it was actually a cute stationery effect, although no one actually asked me where I bought the paper).

Songs in the key of fetus

Somebody at work gave Nam a Mozart for Babies type CD (perhaps this freely downloadable one) – and I cannot state this lovingly enough – but it’s driving me fucking insane. It’s basically Mozart on Valium, and I didn’t exactly start out a Mozart fan anyways. Nam plays it on the Pioneer system I have next to the bed every night, and it’s so babyishly cute I want to pour baby powder in my eyes and watch Happy Tree Friends reruns all night.
On the flip side, though, maybe the baby will be a genius, so I guess it’s worth a try.
Still, maybe I can convince her to switch to the String Quartet’s Tribute to Led Zeppelin tomorrow night.
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Of course, the best fetus song of all time is Yellow Ledbetter.
And I’m immensely happy that we’ll soon be able to experiment on the efficacy of the infamous Takemoto Piano ad (the second video in that post).

A Hyperlinky Ode to a Damn Fine Fish – Soft Tilapia Pr0n

Oh, Tilapia, how versatile thy be!
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You are on my plate nearly every week, and my favorite New Years repast.

In fact, you are farmed in such numbers, so misused for pest/plant control, and just so damn tough that you threaten every natural environment you visit.
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Some even call you the farmed fish of biblical fame.
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However.
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Now they can make your skin into leather.
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… And can hence be used for bust control.
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THE END
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Link to the online retailer of tilapia skin products mentioned in the latter Reuters article linked above: angie&penny
I finally found the video most of the graphics used above were pulled from (the others are mine or from Google Images):