The End Game is in Sight!

Saturday 15th August 2009
OK, my followers far and wide, this is very likely going to be IT for this leg of my Saudi Experience. It's holiday time FINALLY and in four days from now I'll be sitting in Bahrain airport waiting for the plane to England. And no doubt I'll be enjoying …. well, some of the things that are prohibited here in this country.

Yes I'm sure of that. And just for the sake of defiance, I'll sample as many of those as possible. But before you raise too many eyebrows, I must say that I'm talking about food and drink related things ONLY!

As said before, these last few weeks have been much more laid back than before. I have been glad the end of this soldier boy course is coming. And, by now, we know well who is going through and who is going BACK. Too late for those no-hopers now. And good riddance to them!

However, I'm sure they'll slip through the net somehow and I'll STILL see some of those ugly faces on my return to the college in late September. That's the way it works here – it's who you know.

And that ANGERS me! WHY should these toe-rags, these lazy good-for-nothings who make NO ATTEMPT to do ANYTHING AT ALL these past 18 weeks be allowed to go on and get their 'reward' of entry to the college and their medical course??

Ahh there are many answers to THAT and it's just the way that things work in this ridiculous country and in its so-called education system. But you have to wonder WHY we were put on this course in the first place if this IS to happen.

This makes me very angry thinking about the students and what they are allowed to get away with. And I have seen it in action in that exam I sat in recently as invigilator. The way that the Saudi teacher came in and went around at the start of that exam HELPING the students who had problems with the questions. And the guy who does the computer teaching over where we work who was even chatting with them throughout rather than doing his job and keeping them quiet. YES! I had gone up there with the intention of being the “hard man” and not letting anyone talk. But seeing this I thought “What's the POINT?”

Anyway, back to present time. So how do I feel now? Well obviously I'm extremely HAPPY that FINALLY I have reached this point and that I will not see those ugly mugs again (well, until September I guess anyway). There are exceptions and there are some of them that I do wish well. Those that were prepared to put in some effort even when they found the going tough always get my respect. Nobody asks for miracles, but if a student is prepared to “have a go” and get to grips with this language, then THAT is what it's all about, isn't it? This is what we try to encourage our students to do – to gain confidence in learning English and to go on from the point they finish the course on.

Have I done that with them? Sadly no, I cannot claim much success. I think that those whose ability was good at the start have CONTINUED to do well and those who were struggling at the start are in much the same boat. If I compare test scores throughout the course then these show this too. Those scores are pretty consistent for most people with one or two random or chance variations or successes.

Speaking of successes, I doubt that any OF those were gained with any real effort and were more likely the result of cheating and, let's say, “pooling” of certain knowledge at test time. Ohh, COME ON! Of COURSE I tried to stop them and deducted marks from those who overstepped the mark. But I feel I was too lenient …. and conversely the students probably feel I was too harsh. Well, if I had cracked down on EVERY single occurrence of communication and other kinds of cheating at test time, then it would have made it almost an impossible task and both they and I would have only got frustrated, distracted and annoyed, and in THEIR cases it would have made tests an impossible thing to finish without tears.

It was hard enough doing the tests with them as I have written about plenty. WHY would I have wanted to make Test Days even more UNBEARABLE?

Then there is the relationship between the students and myself. And here we must look at something of Saudi student mentality a little. There is one student (the one I refer to as “Leg Man”) who says that, “You are TEACHER in the classroom and FRIEND outside it!”. However, I think that the FRIEND side is too much present in their minds INSIDE the classroom as well. For them, we are all good friends and buddies together in the class and none of us want anyone else to come to any 'harm'. They do all they can to help each other out and there should be a sense of 'comradeship' all round.

On one hand, I really do appreciate how they do come together. They do seem to look out for each other, and I see this especially when I am taking the Attendance Register and one or more of them is not present in class. “Five minutes please!”, they always say hoping that either the absent person WILL arrive or that I will forget to mark this person absent. Some of them even try to STOP ME marking an absent person as so. And no matter how often I have explained the rules that absent means just THAT, they never understand WHY I AM marking this person as absent. They even think that if a person has an EXCUSE for being absent, I should not put the 'X' because in THEIR eyes an Excused Absence is not the same thing.

Some places I have worked do differentiate between Excused and Unexcused Absence and there is a way to mark the register to show which one of these is correct. But here there is no such thing. In fact, there is only PRESENT or ABSENT – no mark if a person is LATE as many places would do. So LATE is the same as ABSENT here, which in a way is fair enough because latecomers are annoying.

So THAT is another annoyance for me – the fact that no matter how many times I explained this, they STILL kept on at me NOT to mark this person as absent because in Five Minutes he will be here or that he is with the commanding officer or even, as we have had recently, the student is in hospital.

Ahh – now THIS is something I haven't mentioned before. Yes, at the start of the course there was Leg Man in plaster and on crutches for many weeks and there was the other guy who had his appendix out. But a couple of weeks ago there was something new. And it really sounded very frightening.

The story was this: three of my students and one from the other class were driving back one Saturday morning. Maybe they were in a hurry as time was short and so maybe they were going a bit too fast. But somewhere up the road towards the college the car had a blowout of one of its tyres. I don't know which one but I suppose it was a front tyre because of what they say happened next. Basically the driver lost control and the car turned over and rolled and rolled over a few times. The driver and front seat passenger were flung out to the road quite badly and the two back street passengers were also bashed about quite a bit resulting in leg fractures. One said he had been sleeping and on waking up wondered why he was in the middle of the road. Or so he said anyway. He was the luckiest of the four and was back at school only a few days later.

The other back seat passenger was back earlier this week after about a week with a similar leg fracture. But the two front seat guys remained. At the start, the driver was unconscious in hospital and the other guy had amnesia and was rather cut up on his face. As I write today, the word is that they ARE both now out of hospital but since tomorrow is the last day and it is Final Exam day, I am unlikely to see them again.

UPDATE: both of the two hospital cases DID turn up – quite bravely I thought – to take their Final Exams. One of them had his face still cut up pretty bad and was very swollen and teeth were missing. The other guy, quite heroically, was here still in his hospital nightgown and with crutches. He, unfortunately, had a bad exam though the cut-face man did quite well.

UPDATE to the Update (1st February 2010) - The guy who had had the worst of the injuries was not present at all his semester. On asking about him, I was told that his leg (and maybe other) injuries had been too bad and that he, quite simply, could not continue as a student. This is sad for me because the man in question WAS actually a good student and DID know English pretty well. I mean, WHY did it have to be HIM and not one of these other morons?? Sometimes life is so unfair to those who deserve better!

Yes, better say something about the Final Exam day. Well, it was brought back to the Sunday quite unexpectedly. This meant no Speaking Exam and, as we understood it, no Military college entrance exam. Ah, or so we thought.

We had it all nicely organised. Exam Day as here, we set up the room well with labels on desks to ensure that cheaters did not sit together. It was nearing 8 o'clock. SUDDENLY the students were all gone!

Where were they? Oh, they had been taken out to the Mess Hall! Why? Well, it's a better place for the exam, the men in uniform said.

IDIOTS!! The time was two minutes to eight. NOTHING had been said to use, the teachers. They just took them out without any warning to us at all. TOTAL lack of communication and even MORE TOTAL CONTEMPT.

But that is the way these military types work. They do as they please and they don't consult.

OK, I'm finishing this off some days after having started it. Which means there will be holes. However …. see the next entry for The Last Straw!!

Testing Times and Cheating Minds

Friday 7th August 2009
Basically now things are winding down to the 'end game'. Those students who are doing well know that and also the students who have had enough are also showing this.
Actually now there is one important week of revision to go plus, in the week after that (the last one) there will be the Final Exams and Speaking Exam for them. So in fact it is NOT the end of the trail just yet either for them or for me.

However, as much as I should still be pushing them through this ….. I don't WANT TO. Oh, all I want to do just now is get on that plane bound for London and leave those good-for-nothings behind. I'll be shedding tears of course …... tears of JOY that is!

The last progress test a few weeks ago produced its share of drama. It is the ONLY time that I can get some work out of them. BUT, in their eyes it is ME who has to do the work in revision and they can just do whatever they feel like doing (or not doing).

The last test then. They'd been away for their week of holidays (and I'd had a nice break from them too!) and now they were back. The test was set for the last day of the week (Wednesday) and revision was being done.

Did it mainly on the board. However, like all things here, those boys make it very hard. There's me standing at the front doing board work, three or four of them are sitting around taking notice of what I'm doing while most of the others are locked into their own conversations ….. which invariably are about nothing much at all. Certainly nothing that can't wait, but then this is the time of the day when they all get together and they do what they can. For sure, the LEAST part of that is learning anything like English.

It just annoys me, but now I let it go. It is too late to worry much about those time-wasters and lazy toe-rags who just can't be bothered any more. Because I TOO can't be bothered about THEM! Yes, I know I know – a sinful thing to say as a respectable teacher of English. But it is August now, I have less than two weeks till my summer holiday and THAT is the only thing I care about now!

So I got through the revision part of the week. There was some debate, as always on WHEN we should have the test. First I'd said Wednesday. But I'd heard a rumour that it was going to be their Student Day this Wednesday coming and therefore the test couldn't take place. This rumour continued in my mind until, I think, Monday and then I went to ask and was told that it was NOT to be the Student Day.

By then, three of the class had gone. There was some reason why they were being allowed to go to their homes early. Also, one other student had said that he was going to be away in the next week because he was getting married. Well, before I was able to make the decision on when to do the test, those three had already gone.

Anyway test day came. Period 1 of Wednesday is always last-minute revision time, then it came to the test. Before the students came back in, I reorganised the chairs so they were spaced out sufficiently. Normal procedure for any test. You don't want them sitting too close together as they cheat like crazy and I want to try to stop it. Not always successfully.

In they came and all seemed to head for that same corner. Most were seated fine, but two were not and were too close to others. I asked them nicely to move and pointed out where I would like them to move to. I was not going to start until they were seated properly of course.

Now, one of them moved quite willingly but the other one refused. “No!”, he said. I asked him again politely to move and again he refused. AGAIN I asked him more firmly but STILL he would NOT move his place and seemed to think that I was unfairly asking ONLY him to move. Not true as he was one of TWO I had asked. ONE more time I asked him to move and pointed out that I was waiting for him and only HIM before I could start. But still nothing.

OK, I thought. I then gave out test papers to everyone else but did NOT give him one. If he was not going to do a simple thing then he would simply be excluded from the whole thing. And there is NO WAY he would have refused if I had been a teacher in uniform or another Saudi teacher. It was because it was ME that he thought he could be rude and defiant in this way. Or was it that if he moved then he would be further away from those he could communicate with for cheating purposes?

This particular student was one who started as not a bad guy but has progressively grown worse and worse. He will not stop talking and is VERY much one of those people who is hot-headed in nature and, when provoked, tends to go off. He is also one of those at the bottom of the class as far as test marks so far goes. Therefore he should be looking to better himself …. but they don't think that way and students like him and the so-called 'Leg Man' do very little in lessons except chatting loudly, playing with their phones and wasting time.

All the other students had their papers and started writing. This one did NOT. So back I went to the front. He was sitting there with a face that was about to explode like the H-bomb.

Then he got up angrily and stormed out of the classroom slamming the door behind him.

HOW PATHETIC IS THAT??

Well, I thought, one less to mark. I stood there and said loudly to them, “Anybody ELSE want to JOIN HIM??”. Nobody said anything and got on with their tests.

He reappeared some time later but already had lost about 20-25 minutes. When he came back, he DID finally sit where I had asked him to move to. I gave him his paper and he started on it.
WHAT KIND of attitude WAS THAT?? Tell you what – he is VERY lucky I didn't choose to go and report his unreasonable behaviour as I had done with Leg Man and his key throwing 'antics' earlier in the term. Really I think it is what I SHOULD have done because it was blatantly undisciplined behaviour and total disrespect for a teacher. They wouldn't do it for their superiors so WHY should I have to put up with it?

Of course, because of this disruption, things didn't go well. Mutterings went on despite attempts to keep them quiet. Now, I had already decided today to be more lenient with them than normal since many of them NEEDED these marks. But STILL there were some of them who insisted, despite my warnings, to go on their obvious communications and they got deducted marks.

WHY do these people never learn? OOOHHH I REALLY hate doing tests with these people!!
It is something of a love-hate thing. “Love” because I like to see them squirm and sweat and because for many it is the ONLY time I can get work out of them. “Hate”, on the other hand, because they JUST don't get the idea that they should shut up, bring pens and that I WILL not have them cheating in their tests in this way. When I tell them to NOT talk, then I MEAN IT! And when I come to deduction of marks, they react in such a way like I am wrong to do so and that I should LET them.

Some time ago I was one of the invigilators of the college end of year tests. It was a one-off afternoon occasion. But it was memorable for several reasons. First, the fact the students STILL cheated. Secondly, the Saudi teachers sitting with us as invigilators actually went around and HELPED THEM when they didn't understand. Thirdly, that soon after the exam began, in came a man (probably the professor or something similar) whose job it was to explain any questions or parts of questions they did not understand.

Why is this unusual or strange, you ask me. Well, come ON!! This is an EXAM, a test of THEIR KNOWLEDGE. If they don't understand the questions then it is their OWN fault as students. OK, one thing I would say is that there are times when a question is badly worded and that IS then the teacher's fault. I personally try to keep instructions simple though there are times they may not be. But I ALWAYS give an example to show them what to do (but even THAT confuses some of them at times!)

Explaining the question as as good as telling students HOW to answer the question. NOT the role of the teacher! I HATE IT when, during a test, a student asks me if “this” is the answer or what a word means or something similar.

It is the STUDENT'S job, during an exam, to answer the question. NOT the teacher's!!

And yet they constantly try it on!!

I rather feel that if people are allowed to get away with cheating, they will continue to do it and it will become acceptable practice. ALSO I think this: in this country the teachers want their students to do well as it reflects well on them as teachers. That's obvious for us all as teachers of course. But if a teacher gives his students answers and help then WHOSE brain is being used during the exam?

In this country too, the teacher is always the man at fault. If his students do badly then it is the TEACHER who is at fault. Not the poor, helpless, innocent student – oh no, no, NO! But ALWAYS the teacher.

Students here do very little study outside classes. I am convinced of that. And yet they feel they have some RIGHT to behave like that because the blame for bad marks and grades will rarely lie at THEIR doors. Well, if YOU knew that the teacher would get the blame instead of you then of course YOU would do the same, wouldn't you?

Looking at it, for one moment, from a student's point of view. There are situations where the student has too many exams at one time and where it is not always possible to study as much as you would like for everything. Times when it is UNREASONABLE for a school to give so many exams at one time or where giving exams has no real value. In such situations, YES, it might be justified for a student to find ways to get through such a “landslide period” of so many exams by giving himself an “advantage”. I've seen the cheat sheets before!

But THAT is rather the exception, NOT the rule. Students should not be thinking that the way through ALL exams is by cheating the system.

I was never much good at exams. But they DO have an important use – they test that we have in our heads the things we NEED TO KNOW in order to progress further whether in life or career or other times. IF somebody gets through such times by cheating then in the end they only cheat themselves because they go will go further they then are able to.

So …. revision week (of a sort) is coming up. Then it's Final Exam week which will include their Speaking Exam (to be devised). And if they think they're in for an easy ride in THAT week then they'd better think TWICE!

Holiday Request Form Blues ....

Saturday 25th July 2009
Was an interesting time with the holiday request form recently. Yup, as you have predicted already, it involved delays and bureaucratic, infuriating nonsense. Ohh but the kind that, if my hair was weak enough at its roots, would have involved a large amount of hair LOSS during the two weeks it dragged on.

So what happened? Well, I finally got around to filling in my holiday request form. No, I hadn't done it before now despite the warring mood I was in when I mentioned it before. Now was the time. The filling-in process wasn't too horrific itself despite confusion over what the hell Arure Days were (was a mistranslation and/or mis-spelling of Accrued Holiday Days so far).

Ohh I don't really want to drag on about this as it is really not worth the time and effort. So I'll distill it rather. So ….. I gave it to the HoD to sign which he duly did. I then took it “upstairs” with the SIX PHOTOS that were required for, I presume, Personnel Department approval or whatever. There it stayed for a few days. In the meantime, my colleague had got his all done. How DOES he do it? Actually he seems to have got this place sussed and knows how to get things done. He sure does have a way with people here that nobody else does. Gift Of The Gab? A Way With Words? Insider Knowledge? A Nod and a Wink?? Who knows, but he has lived in similar chaos before. In fact, he said at the start just how surprised he was how quickly everything went!! Bloody hell!! Don't even THINK about what he is normally used to!! For SURE I don't want to. I do still have a lot of useful hair STILL standing on this head of mine. Please let it remain!

Anyway, where was I? So a few days passed with no word on where my form was. Then I had a call from a woman in the Personnel department upstairs. She “kindly” informed me that the number of holiday days I had requested was more than what I had accrued so far. Just to explain that, as a new staff member, the number of holiday days IS stated on the contract BUT you kind of “build them up” the longer you are here in the first year. It is, I suppose, to prevent people who have just joined, taking all their holiday in the very first month and, therefore, never being here. Perfectly reasonable. Anyway, I knew that this was the case. So, she informed me, my only option was to take the “extra” days as Leave Without Pay. OK, no problem, I thought, and that was the end of that phone call. No further action had been asked of me. Just a clarification that was, I thought.

HAH!! TEN MORE DAYS passed without anything more being heard of my holiday request. I mean, WHAT could they have been DOING with the blasted thing? Eventually I felt I HAD to go over to the Leave And Travel department because this was where I thought my holiday request was now.

Can you guess what is coming now? Ah, well, no you might not be able to. Although you surely realise that it is not a straightforward thing and that this is NOT the end of this blog entry.

Well, I hate to drag a story out. Basically next the young Filipino lady in Leave And Travel looked up my Leave Request on her computer system AND she found my paper request form. Good – so they hadn't LOST IT at least. She told me, first, that there was not even a photo of me on the system! Despite handing over a total of EIGHTEEN photos to these people, NOBODY had bothered to take the few seconds to scan my picture and get it on there. But I doubt that I'm the only person who has been ignored there. So THAT was dealt with first which involved going to this person, that person and then this office person here. Fine.

Now back to L&T and again after much faffing around where nothing concrete was found they said I should phone. Gave me the number and a strange name which I'd never heard of. Phoned, and it seemed the woman knew me. AH! It was that woman in Personnel back in the college building – the one I'd had the phone call from to ask about my “extra days”.

OK, now it gets really silly. I was told this: I needed to write a memo to my Head of Department to inform him that I intended to have these extra seven days over and above my currently Accrued Holiday Days and for him to agree that this was all OK and above board. Or strike me down with a lightning bolt I presume.

A MEMO?? To the man who is only ONE PARTITION AWAY and ask him what he already knows? What the BLOODY HELL do I need to do THAT FOR??

More to the point …. WHY THE FUCK DIDN'T THAT WOMAN TELL ME THIS WHEN I TOOK THE HOLIDAY FORM UP TO HER??

Ten days had passed with nothing having got done. As I had been asked the question of what I wanted to DO with these 'extra' seven days, I naturally assumed that this was all I needed to do. I was certainly NOT TOLD of any stupid memo to be written!!

Just imagine if I had NOT gone over to L&T to check on this!! I would and COULD have NEVER KNOWN that this was required of me and nobody would have told me till way too late!! And then BANG would have gone my holiday!!

IDIOTS!! IDIOTS!! IDIOTS!!

When I went back down to the English department it was nearly home time. So in the morning it would be dealt with.

Went in the next morning and told the HoD about this memo. He didn't react with surprise, and his response was one of the type, “Well, yes, that's obvious and normal” ….. as if I should've known this. HOW COULD I HAVE KNOW ABOUT IT?? I've never done a holiday form before and nothing about any memo was ever mentioned.

OK, so I knocked up a quick memo – gist of it was to inform him that I was having these 'extra' seven days and was it alright and that I would take them as Leave Without Pay as I had been advised was the option. Seemed to do the trick, gave it to him, he signed then it went upstairs for “further approval”.

End of story? Noooooo!! Soon after it had gone up, a phone call to the HoD from the secretary up there. She asked him to ask me if I actually wanted Leave Without Pay or to Borrow From Future Holiday. What?? BORROW from Future?? I'd been told that was NOT an option! But apparently it was now so I said yes, I'll Borrow. End of phone call.

Ah, but NOT end of story (of course!). A few minutes later ANOTHER phone call from the same person informing me that I now needed to write YET ANOTHER MEMO with this new information on it that my Option Of Choice was to Borrow From Future.

GRRR!! OK, you morons I'll do it. Just get this done please! So I did the memo, and the signing and delivering procedure was repeated. Up it went.

Before you ask ….. NO it was STILL not the end of the farce. Some minutes later YET ANOTHER phone call came from upstairs. Can you believe it? THIS TIME they wanted to know when the Start Date of my contract was. Well, I didn't have this off-hand but got it in the end and had to correct myself after the HoD had put the phone down which annoyed him a bit that he had to phone again.

SO MUCH STUPID BUREAUCRACY for a holiday request!

I am just so unlucky with this kind of stuff. Sometimes in the past I've had help with doing this which is always welcome, but THIS kind of thing only serves to INFURIATE me and I am NOT a patient man in such situations.

I didn't rate my chances of getting anything done. A few days later still no word so I went up again. No, still no signed form and it was STILL on the desk of the useless man who has to sign so much and yet delays everything.

There was nothing I could do but wait. Well, anyway, I decided to go ahead and book my flights and get my plans in order. Surely this WOULD come in eventually.

And so it did ….. early this week.

You know, people wonder why bureaucracy grinds on so long in some places. One answer here seems to be plain, simple lack of communication and with all sides blaming each OTHER for not getting things done.

I mean, if such a simple thing as a holiday request causes so much organisational pain, then WHAT is the point of trying more complex things like getting them to send my salary direct to my bank account? May as well save the bother and continue to take the cheque down the bank every month and pay it in myself. More reliable that way and I KNOW that it's gone in the right place.

Just want to finish with one more word ….. AAAGGGHHH!!

There. That's better.

Sick in Saudi (Again!)

Saturday 25th July 2009
Now, now!! Before you accuse me of ignoring you, my blogsters, let me say how BAD my internet connection has been lately. I always put aside the weekend Thursday or Friday or, if not done, at the latest I do it on Saturday evenings. But ALWAYS I have been foiled by, as I referred to last time, the “Curse Of Mobily”.

I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong but it just seems as though this connection is getting so much WORSE the hotter the summer period gets. And I have NO IDEA what to do to make it better. Or even if I CAN make it better.

Far too many times lately it has been as good as down for the best part of the day. I used to be able to rely on daytime at weekends for my best surfing time, but no more. The weekend just gone, for example, I had almost ZERO uptime. And I know it to be so because I didn't go out at all since I was feeling ill.

Yes, indeed, sick again. Why this time? Well I really don't know, but here are my top theories …. in no order of preference. Firstly, my cheese was off. I thought it tasted funny but kept on eating it because it was actually quite good in this state. But the longer I went on, the less wise I felt about eating cheese that tasted like “bin food”. Eventually, in the latter stages of last week, I really DID feel rough and so thought it best to be kind to myself and my refuse tip.

“A bit rough?”, you say. Well, yesssss and not like the last flu-suspect time. This was different and actually was more worrying. It's gone now, but it involved an iffy stomach and dizzy spells on Wednesday morning and afternoon.

What could THAT mean? Not sure. Sometimes such dizzy spells mean trouble in the ears which was worrying as I'd had all that ear problem stuff earlier in the term here and thought it cured. Dizzy spells meant that lying down made the room spin madly as if I'd been a night on the town (impossible of course here!), or it meant that, on one occasion, standing up to go back into class after the long break time needed two “goes” because the first attempt sat me down again pretty sharpish and needed me to hold on to the chair to keep my balance.

Doesn't sound good, does it? No, I didn't go to the doctor. Whatever for? A special appointment, the effort to get myself over there and a hot walk into the bargain. Yes, you could say I should take advantage of the facilities. But YOU try a wander across the exposed concrete in near 50-degree celsius heat in mid afternoon and then YOU will see the problems it brings when you're not feeling at your best.

Well, I took a rest at the weekend. Didn't go out (except to the laundry room), and didn't even make my once-a-week trip to town for shopping and coffee. Quite simply I did NOT feel up to it and even felt decidedly wobbly still. So really it WAS the best thing to do just to take things easy and have a rest.

And that did it. Had a good rest Thursday and Friday, got to bed in good time Friday night, even put myself a new pillow on the bed. Got up this Saturday morning feeling MUCH better.

So you know what I think all that dizziness was about? Plain and simple – the HEAT! Yes! These last two weeks it really HAS been absurdly hot and I mean MORE than normal. My umbrella offers me little or no protection when a hot wind is blowing and dust is flying. The purpose OF the umbrella is just to keep the sun off my head. Yes, to some extent it helps, but my face is still well exposed. AND NOW I have, for some bizarre reason, some VERY raw spots round the sides of my neck left and right. Makes wearing collared shirts in the morning a rather painful affair especially the newer shirts I have with their stiffer collars. OUCH!!

And STILL it is only the end of July! STILL they tell us that it will get EVEN HOTTER! Well, so in that case I hope there is somebody to pick me up off the floor next time! I mean, I walk the minimum I can, but I do so at some of the worst times of day – namely from midday to just after 1pm. Well, I HAVE TO at those times because it is the beginning and end of lunch hours. I CAN'T NOT go to and from lunch, and believe me it is far better to do my lunches at home in my room instead of going over to the hospital canteen which IS that Hot Walk over the concrete. No Way matey!!

Even though I was feeling better this morning, I was AGAIN feeling a bit rough after my walk back to the college building after lunchtime in all that heat.

And so it will continue ….

One thing I was wondering today is about my clipon sunglasses and their effectiveness. Since it has been nasty headaches which have been part of my problem, one wonders if these have been brought on by not proper UVA filtering by my clipon sunglasses. If they have not been keeping out the sunlight properly then this would explain the headaches and the dizzy feeling suffered at and before the weekend. Something I must consider when I am away from here in about a month's time.