{"id":1465,"date":"2013-05-15T22:58:19","date_gmt":"2013-05-15T20:58:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=1465"},"modified":"2013-05-24T10:55:45","modified_gmt":"2013-05-24T08:55:45","slug":"crazy-energy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=1465","title":{"rendered":"Crazy Energy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Reality...<\/a>My boss: \u201cMohl bych V\u00e1s po\u017e\u00e1dat o laskavost?”<\/p>\n

OK, so on the off-chance you ever move to the Czech Republic or end up with a Czech boss, should you ever hear this out of their mouth, just cancels any plans you had for that evening. Also, prepare to do something you don\u2019t want to do.<\/p>\n

It is a formal phrase meaning: I need a favor.<\/p>\n

And it comes with its very own sister phrase: \u201cM\u00e1m<\/span> mal\u00fd probl\u00e9m<\/span><\/span>.\u201d I have a little problem<\/em>. Oh, and \u2018little\u2019 is usually as much an understatement as \u2018favor\u2019 is a misnomer when it comes from your boss\u2019 taco grinder.<\/p>\n

I put my head on my desk. Here it comes.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The gist:<\/p>\n

other teacher<\/p>\n

ouchie<\/p>\n

broken bone<\/p>\n

blah blah -ovat<\/p>\n

f*cking bad timing<\/p>\n

Who is free?<\/p>\n

Damien<\/p>\n

sorry<\/p>\n

blah blah -i\u010dku<\/p>\n

At the end of this angry list, I am eating an apple standing over a course book preparing to teach a last minute substitution lesson that starts in nine minutes. Also, I hate the world.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the thing, a teacher has to portion out their daily dose of energy depending on how many classes they have. That way they can assure that their energy levels aren\u2019t totally incongruous in their classes. Basically, one class gets teacher in pudding and the next class gets teacher on meth. Adding another class to the mix, especially a surprise one, throws off this delicate balance of energy.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s what happens today.<\/p>\n

I start out the class riding a bit of \u2018Hey, you\u2019re not our teacher\u2019 energy, but it wears off quickly and I find that very soon I am speaking like the thirty-year old actor playing a 17 year-old stoner in a teen comedy. The students show their approval of this by yawning and looking at watches, which surely show them the time, date, weather conditions on Neptune and the location of every taco stand in Prague. Moments into the lesson I find that I too am yawning, thinking about tacos, and looking at my watch, which, though Swiss, knows nothing about Neptune.<\/p>\n

A change is needed.<\/p>\n

And though I don\u2019t know when exactly it happens, things get exponentially louder, a lot more rambunctious and funnier than cats in shark outfits. I think I tell a joke in Czech, that always gets them. And just like that, I go from movie stoner to pre-rehab Robin Williams.<\/p>\n

I run around the class, jump up on desks and shout crazy things at students to motivate them into using language, which they do. Soon, they are my linguistic marionettes and I am standing above them like their twisted, sweaty master. They are in such a fury that they are spewing mangled language like the spaceship Hell scenes in Event Horizon<\/i>. (NB: Nobody pulls out their eyes) Nobody cares; it\u2019s all working and the students are challenged and engaged. My energy level peaks sometime during the last few minutes of the lesson. I step off the desk.<\/p>\n

Then it ends. The room actually (I am told) smells like wrong prefixes, botched word order and participles dangling like worms off of hooks. We say goodbye and think that at least I\u2019ll never share another classroom with them again. I head to my next class.<\/p>\n

They get teacher in pudding.<\/p>\n

Anyway, I hate substitutions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My boss: \u201cMohl bych V\u00e1s po\u017e\u00e1dat o laskavost?” OK, so on the off-chance you ever move to the Czech Republic or end up with a Czech boss, should you ever hear this out of their mouth, just cancels any plans you had for that evening. Also, prepare to do something you don\u2019t want to do. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1EvEu-nD","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1465"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1465\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1467,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1465\/revisions\/1467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}