Yesterday The Man and I came out of the supermarket, and when we started to walk to our (illegally parked) bicycles we noticed a man in a suit was standing in front of them. He was just standing there on the road, looking unnatural. Nobody else was wearing a suit. Also, he was foreign.
Then I noticed the camera crew. The Man and I both hesitated. We wanted our bicycles, but the man in the suit was standing so close to them it seemed rude to just take them away. Our bicycles were providing local colour. (Orange, with great big baskets.)
He saw us hesitating, and gestured that it was all right for us to walk past.
"Er, no, we want our bicycles," said The Man, and pointed.
The man in the suit laughed. "These?" he asked. Was that an incredulous laugh? I wasn't sure. Our bicycles are ordinary. I couldn't see any reason for incredulity.
It turned out that he was from the BBC. The BBC! Filming at our local station! Why?
We didn't ask what kind of program it was, but the suited man told us we could see it if we watched BBC cable at 8am on Friday and Saturday.
Or did he say Friday OR Saturday? I'm not sure. Nor is The Man, so we'll have to watch both days, to find out what has been happening in our neighborhood. SOMETHING exciting must have happened, surely, to attract the attention of the BBC. We can't imagine what it could be, though.
And no, it's not our bicycles. We rode off on them, and they missed their chance to be famous.
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- Badaunt
- I'm from NZ, and now live in Japan, teaching English to reluctant university students. Email me: badaunt at gmail.com
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Links for language teachers
I have noticed that I get a lot of hits from people searching "present simple" and "ESL," and assume that this is language teachers looking for ideas or lesson plans. The following links are good places to start.
ESL Lounge Here you will find lesson plans organised by level. A fantastically useful site for busy teachers, and easy to navigate.
British Council Here lesson plans are organized by topic. There are more teaching activities in the 'downloads' section.
The Internet TESL Journal
They have not updated this page for a while, but there is still a lot you might find useful.
Humanising Language Teaching
This is an online journal, good for ideas, inspiration, and especially good towards the end of semester when you're feeling not quite human.
Dave's ESL Cafe
Almost too much to wade through, but a very useful resource. Lots of links to other sources.
Karin's ESL PartyLand
This is a page specifically dealing with teaching simple present and present progressive. I have not tried any of these, but there are a lot of ideas here, and they look good. At the very least you will be inspired.
Good luck!
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7 comments:
I was once in a store and interviewed for World News Tonight...but never made the cut. Oh well.
It may be a total coincidence, but I was watching BBC this morning and they said there will be an interviewer named Matt Frei on from tomorrow (Friday) doing segments throughout the day in Japan. Was he a stocky American fellow?
I'll try and keep an eye out :)
'Minds me of walking out of our Sydney inner city cottage some years ago and finding that... we were _inside_ a police crime scene! Plain clothes, uniforms, and crime scene tape everywhere; oh and TV trucks, reporters, the whole thing. Yep, a murder... not ours, thank heavens. (Radical feminist perspective: _who_ would in their right mind live with a man!)
Wish BadAunt's bike had become world famous though! Wonder what was happening!?
Mel & Seigo - you are right! It is Matt Frei! He's not American though, is he? When I checked on Google Images, that was definitely his face. He's almost famous!
I bet he's doing something about the recession, and chose our area because it looks ... recessed. I thought it was a bit odd how they'd chosen such an unlovely spot to film him - the camera was facing away from the (admittedly hideous) newish buildings, and had him in shot with the low-rise cheap buildings on the other side of the road. (They had our lovely orange bicycles in shot, but then we took them away.)
Woo hoo! Yay for me! :)
Not sure if he is American to be honest, but he often reads the 'BBC World News America'. I saw 2 segments after you got me interested ;)
The first was based on a small business and how they're battling to make ends meet in the recession, as opposed to Toyota etc.
The second was about a young IT guy who had just moved into one of those Manga Kissa cafes which have rooms for rent on a monthly basis now. He had lost his job and was searching for work in Tokyo. It was pretty depressing :(
I'm guessing they might have more details on the stories on the website.
Sorry to say I missed your bikes ;)
Mel
I saw at least a part of those two segments, too! They were pretty good, I thought. Not particularly in-depth, but I'm a reader rather than TV watcher, so maybe that was just me, with my brain half elsewhere. I find it difficult to concentrate on TV.
And I did see a bit where he was standing next to where our bikes had been, but of course we had taken them away, so they missed their chance to become famous. But that was only in one of the introductory segments, or perhaps advertising an upcoming bit ...? I can't remember. Also, I didn't see it all. The Man said, "There's the okonomiyaki shop!" and sure enough, there was Matt Frei with the okonomiyaki shop behind him - but a couple of seconds later he was reporting from somewhere else.
Maybe our area was nothing specific, just 'local colour'...?
Do you know if there will be more? I got the impression there would be, but didn't see any specific announcement.
This looks like the print version of some of what we saw.
And this page has four video clips... but nothing with our area in it.
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