Traversing the triumph of Brutalism

Such pleasant weather, such agreeable doggie companions–and so little to say. This is not like me at all, as any of you who’ve met me will know. (There is something not quite right about a huge vocabulary and an accent that would strip wallpaper under received pronunciation kind of circumstances. You guys just get the vocabulary, of course.)

The signs of spring are becoming less like projections or aspirations and more like something tangible, which is to say that the weather is no longer (for the moment) a cruel mockery of the emerging blossoms. It’ll be a while yet before I can step out in short sleeves, but I’m down to three layers instead of the requisite seven-plus of winter. Which is a good thing, I do believe.

The next five weeks are going to be the busiest of my year, work-wise, which I keep mentioning but don’t quite believe yet. At least it’s a short enough run to be tolerable, although in ten days or so I may not be quite so perky. I’ll have weekly art gallery visits with my February arts students to keep me amused, not to mention the challenge of teaching Warhol to international students. I don’t think I’ll tell them about Blow Job (non-pornographic link; we’re all class here), somehow.

I have a new clutch of local students now, who will be with me taking study skills until December. They seem like a neat bunch–a multicultural class, which is always a bonus–and I only hope not to bore them too much. I promised a Library Traverse tomorrow, which sounds much more exciting than a library tour. The first time I had to go to the Concrete University Library (aged 18), I made harvestdad come with me. (He does work on campus; I didn’t fly him in for the occasion or anything.) Hopefully these students will develop more confidence than I had, although in my defence I should note that the building itself is considered a triumph of English Brutalism.

Otherwise, there’s middle-to-lowbrow TV to hold my attention and that stack of philosophy volumes into which I keep dipping. My local supervisor has given me her marker’s report for my dissertation; now I just have to wait on Dunedin. Despite the fact I turned out to have spelt one source’s name incorrectly throughout (I swear, “Mourard” looks better than “Mourad”–and how does one pronounce the latter anyway?), she had good things to say.

What next, then, I wonder? At the moment I just want to work on my novel, take the dogs camping in the late spring and enjoy the summer when it comes. I am also dipping in and out of Korero Mai, the Maori language learning programme on Maori TV. I’d like to find a way of fulfilling some of my language-learning ambitions in a way other than dilettantism.

Meanwhile, over at the competition are some suggestions for ways to increase traffic to one’s blog. Here, quoted likely in breach of copyright, is one recommendation from which this journal departs, as far as “blogging technique” goes:

Keep your posts and paragraphs short. … People will come back daily to read your fresh new work but spare them the one thousand word diatribes. Strive for succinct posts that pump pertinent new information into the blogosphere and move on. Keep it short and sweet so visitors can pop in, read up, and click on. Think of you blog as a cumulative effect. This doesn’t mean you should never practice some long form writing now and then, it’s just something to keep in mind.

I hope nonetheless you will feel sufficiently pumped full of pertinent new information to come back next time. À bientôt.