A half Chinese Girl Learning Spanish

A half Chinese Girl Learning Spanish ©

By Michael Casey

My daughter was going over her Spanish ready for a test, I was listening and was happy I could remember mine. I did the exam nearly 40 years ago, though I did relearn it in 1998/1999 prior to my trip to Barcelona. So it brought memories back.

Barcelona was my last trip away before I met my Shanghai girl, I spent 15 minutes talking to a girl I met in a Tapas bar, before she told me she could speak English. She said it was good for me the Spanish practice. I met another girl in a bar and she had an American accent, and great hair but a broken nose.

The next day who should come dancing across the stage, only a ballet dancer with great hair and a broken nose.  It was the girl from the Tapas bar, I had gone to see the Russian ballet in Barcelona and there she was dancing for me.

A few months later I was again watching the Ballet, this time in Birmingham with the friend who had introduced me to Ballet. There it was the massed ranks of the Ballet, loads and loads of dancers at the NIA. Who should I spot, only the girl from Barcelona.

When I met my Shanghai girl she told me that she had met a girl at church, the church next door to my old Grammar school. This girl was her friend and she would give me the once over to see if I was nice enough for my Shanghai girl.

So we met in a back street bar, The Queens Tavern, in the China quarter. Next to the Hippodrome which was the home of The Birmingham Royal Ballet, and yes you’ve guessed it she was a Ballerina. I was positively vetted by a Ballerina.

Which brings me back to Spanish, my daughters are bilingual, I am not. So as my daughter was practising we both had the same thought, we should teach her little sister Spanish. So then I would be bilingual with them, in Spanish. Then they could continue being bilingual in Chinese with mum. A perfect family comprise.

Life is a compromise after all, but if you have another language you can talk privately with your family while you are out. Nobody knows what you are saying, not even other Chinese as you are speaking Shanghai dialect.

So language brings families together and its fun, as for me I cannot wait  till my small daughter learns Spanish.

Spots

Spots ©

By

Michael Casey

Spots, now where shall I begin, when I started shaving perhaps, when I was 14, I am part gorilla after all. So I started shaving and made a mess of it, or rather my face. So I had cuts to the right cheek and for balance to my left cheek. So you put a styptic pencil on it and scream, and then pieces of toilet paper, or a strip from the newspaper.

Your face heals and the wounds fade, but the wounds are infected and you get a nice spot full of pus, which is so so tempting. So you squeeze it and decorate the mirrors around the house. The wound just will not heal, so it’s your duty to squeeze it, again and again and again.

It becomes a hobby, squeezing your spots. Eventually the wounds heal and the pus is drained and squeezed out of existence. The mirrors are polished to perfection by mum, pledge and cloth removes everything.

They say that only pubescent boys and girls get spots, this is a lie, to me having a spot is a badge of honour. I AM still young, even if I have reached part two of my life, the descent to the grave part. There is the joy of squeezing the spot, on a par with having an illegal fag in the bike shed.

You have to wait for the spot to be ready to be squeezed, it has to be plump enough, or the experience won’t be as good. You have to have self-control, like waiting for your first kiss, control yourself and the joy will be even greater.

After a day or two of self-control, you cannot resist it any longer, it does not matter if you are at work. You sneak to the bathroom, or the gents as we say over here in England. Then waiting for your moment you lean forward, as you would for your first kiss, but this one is all alone.

You take hold of the spot and squeeze, just at that moment half the office enters the gents, they all laugh and your zit goes all over your best shirt and leaves an almighty stain of pus and blood. Totally humiliation.

Later that afternoon you are giving a presentation, you put your name badge over the stain. The presentation goes well until the badge falls to the ground. So you improvise. You take your shirt off and dab the new cleaning liquid your company is marketing all over the stain.

Cheers and applause, and best of all, all those years of pumping iron and squeezing spots have giving you a look real men would kill for. The ladies in the room are smitten, good job you put a clean vest on that morning.

So the spot is gone, on your face and on your shirt, your spot in the presentation has impressed the client. Spot the difference it has made to your life. Spot on, and on the spot you have a new girlfriend, and yes you’ve guessed it, she is covered in spots.  

Flowering

Flowering ©

By

Michael Casey

I put a photo of my pot of shamrock on my site recently, it was more than shamrock but some red flowering plant as well. Then also crammed into the pot were some sweet peas. The red flowers had almost died then now today they are reborn, 4 small buds reappearing in brilliant red.

This is a bit of colour to the room where I write, and scent too sweet pea are really smelly. Now what I really want to talk about is flowering of talent. My eldest daughter has developed an interest in architecture, so we watch the tv programme which has people building their own homes, their own grand design.

The programme highlights people following their own design dream. In fact the end result tonight was the best of the maybe 15 programmes I’ve seen so far. We all have a dream but here on tv we watch people follow their dream. Perhaps I should start singing “Climb every Mountain.”

Some of the self-build people or should I say self-design people nearly end up going bankrupt. With architecture you have to get it right and have to have deep pockets. Things do go wrong, even having thieves break in and steal the tradesmen’s tools.

In the end though we see the flowering of a dream , a home, a perfect home for the couple who have dreamed and strived so much. The end result is a physical thing, a house.

But what about non-physical things ? Talent is a strange thing, people are jealous if you have talent, you did not work for it, you have what they don’t have. It’s never that straightforward, even Pele had to practice,  as did Georgie Best. So talent is an ability to do something well, really well. It appears effortless because Pele or whoever have practiced and yes there is the God given bit as well.

A talent that is flowering has to be nurtured, it has to be watered just like my plant pot besides me. Now what is so wonderful is when you can see the progress, when you can see the improvement each time you observe.

We never let our girls have all those computer games we encouraged them to draw instead. So now after years of drawing and maybe 800 crayons and felts and other writing implements our girls can draw, really draw.

You may have a son who bangs a ball against a wall for hours, or practices with a basketball hour after hour. The skill, the talent can be seen growing every day, every week. Now sometimes this is a tragedy, because the child is being forced to be a tiny Tiger Woods or whatever. Decide that one for yourself.

When you write you know if you’v produced a good piece or an average piece, or if you missed it. Sometimes though you nail it on the head and  when you read it through when you have finished you know that’s one of the really good ones.

Form applies to writing as it does to riding a horse or dancing or doing gymnastics. You have to be “on form” and then you come up smelling of roses. The sense of satisfaction when you nail a piece of writing is like a sugar rush.

A parent with their own kids, all of us that is, are in a unique and perhaps holy place as we nurture our kids and see them grow as individuals with a flowering of skills. Learning to walk, to talk, to hold a crayon, to remember  things and so on. And to puke all over the parent along the way.

A teacher too is in  a special place as the teacher opens young and old minds to learning, the book is opened and the blank page is filled with learning. It’s when you can see the lights go on in students’ eyes, they understand. Then some actually thank you, if you remember the story of the 10 lepers from the Bible, only 1 came back to say thanks.

The flowering of a mind and the new connections it brings between you and your children, or you and your students IS the thing that makes your hard work worthwhile.

It just depends where you work as a teacher as to whether you are fighting a battle or leading like a merry Pied Piper. In my own teaching time I tried to be a Pied Piper, but if students misbehave, throw them out, 7 expulsions in one 3 hour session was my record, or rather their sad record.

Confidence grows and flowers grow, and as with flowers this attracts bees, who fly and pollinate the other flowers. A good buzz will ignite a class and great results can flow.

But back to family, time is the most important thing you give to your kids. In today’s busy world all I suggest is switch the tv OFF. Talk to your kids, spend time looking at their homework, encourage them to read, to watch intelligent tv. Peppa Pig is a reward it is not an excuse for being a lazy parent.

A child’s mind is a great great thing, and as Eric Clapton sang “Let it grow, let it grow, let it blossom let it grow.”

Cover Letter

Cover Letter 2014 ©

By

Michael Casey

I was talking to somebody about cover letters today, I can see the irony as I talk to you, as I won’t be needing one myself any more. However Pitch Letters are a different thing, and I do expect to have to do some of those.

So what about Cover Letters, they are part of the job search process, without one you may not get a job, or it may swing it for you. So you have to write a cover letter. I looked at my old cover letter today and realised it was too long.

A CV should be two pages and no more, the cover letter that goes with it should be just one side. HR people and job agencies are always in a hurry, they won’t even look at a multipage opus. Into the bin it will go, literally or on their PC.

So what do you do? You iron out he rough spots, and raise the molehills to mountains, and vice versa. The Cover Letter is your chance to shine, it’s like your Facebook home page. Or your paragraph on the Dating Website. It’s all about you.

So you say what you were great at, you never say “I was a bit rubbish at X Y Z” followed by but. Your Butt would be kicked out before you even start. It’s a Positive Only piece, it’s your chance to get a great job, or any  job and be able to afford to pay the rent or buy a new set of golf clubs.

So tell them what you are great at, and think differently about yourself, put yourself in their shoes, the Saint Augustinian Way, and Sell Yourself. You may not think  that visiting the sick is anything special, its your good deed. This proves to an employer exactly where your heart is, he may be a hospital visitor himself, yes him in the £2000 suit.

You may be embarrassed by your kindness but it lets the employer know just what kind of person you are. Your Community Actions do make a difference.

I

n your job it may have been you who trained all the new people, and wrote the basic Bible for the job you all did. Nobody else could have been bothered, but you did it. So put it in the Cover Letter, you have Training Experience, so boast about it.

You may speak several languages, and the office staff may have poked fun at you for it, but it’s you who speaks to all the truck drivers when they arrive from all over Europe. Tell everybody as the Billy Joel song goes, you may even overlook it, because it’s only a few minutes. But only you can do it, so boast about it.

Write a list of everything you can do, and everything you do do, then write a flow chart of it, and join the dots with words. If you sell your house you put everything down in a positive way, so on a Cover Letter you do the same, but about yourself.

I am fat and have white hair, this describes me. In a Cover Letter it becomes I am distinguished looking with silver hair and a strong athletic build.  Ok the athletic may be stretching it too far. You are painting a picture, a pretty postcard showing just how great you are, so you get that job.

All this has to be done on one page, it’s a sprint and the winner gets the job, so don’t be shy give words a try.

Counting Your Chickens

Counting Your Chickens ©

By

Michael Casey

They say don’t count your chickens before they hatch, and why do we have that truism, because it is true. Then there is opportunity and lost opportunity, and hope beyond reason too.

I suppose my life is close but no cigar, which proves I’m close, but I am a non-smoker so maybe a cigar would just may me sick. It’s like winning the lottery, you had all the numbers, but you forgot to place the bet. I was a trainee betting shop manager in one of my previous lives too.

Which reminds me about my Tarot reading. My friend did a tarot reading after we had chips in the computer room rest room. So for fun I picked the cards and all the answers had money connections. Sadly none went in my pocket.

I did my 21 years in that computer room, then my next jobs all had a money connection:- Insurance, Finance Dept, Bookies, 4 star deluxe business hotel, Life Insurance, Law Firm, private school Esol teacher.

o close to money, but none in my pocket. Some say you lost a million or ten million because  you did not put your money on the lottery or because you did not join that company or sell your book at the right time.

I disagree, IF it’s not in your hand then it’s not in your hand. Some say God did not want you to follow that path and another path, a better path will arrive. I’m inclined to believe that, when you deserve your reward at that point you will get it.

And if you don’t get your reward don’t worry about it, it may have not been worth waiting for in the first place. In the past few months I’ve assumed things would go one way then they didn’t. This proves I have Hope, I can wait, I have to. Don’t be bitter or even jealous, all good things come to he who waits.

You meet this man or this woman and they’ll help with your dreams, they don’t, they cannot even if you had hoped they could. It’s like waiting for the bank manager to agree that business loan or that mortgage. Your life in their hands.

Networking is about building, friendship, trust and even love. There can be business partnerships or life and marriage partnerships, love in other words. For your dreams the partner the investor must share your dreams, then he risks his money for a fair share of the profits.

You can frighten partners away by the way you look or by the way you sound, or the way you dress. Some partners want you to brown nose as they say in America. Some want fun, if they are truly independent they can spit in their hand and you shake on it and it’s a deal. They can afford to lose some dollars so your project is just fun for them.

Politics plays a part with other potential partners, you are too left of field for their image, you may damage them. So they walk away from some fun, and hard work, but it should be fun if you are investing so much time in a project.

Remember what Bill Clinton said somewhere, now he wasn’t President he could say what he liked and enjoy himself more. Which gives me an idea, has anybody got his email address, do you think he’d invest in a fat writer from Birmingham. I won’t count my chickens before they hatch, but you do have to crack eggs to make and omelette.

Creature Comforts

Creature Comforts ©

By

Michael Casey

We all like to have nice things, we save up for them, we are excited when we get them, it’s just nice. We may scrimp and save so that finally we can have a house, a home of our own. Then we make our home into a home, by adding our creature comforts.

One creature comfort may actually be nothing, because we no longer live at home with mum and dad so we no longer have to wear PJs. Mine always used to spit as I’m active when I’m asleep. I move about a lot, so my PJs always split.

So my creature comfort was being able to sleep in the nude, it’s much more relaxing being naked in bed. Ok I know half of you reading this have just had a really horrible picture put in your mind. That’s your own fault by having too good an imagination. In reality it’s like a gorilla in bed,  but even  hairier.

Moving swiftly on, nice Egyptian sheets from John Lewis also make the sleeping experience so much better. To top it all recently Aldi the discount shop had real duck feather pillows, these ARE the best pillows  I’ve had in my life. So my sleep experience is so good now.

There are other creature comforts, such as soft toilet paper, growing up we could not afford the softest, we even sometimes had to use old newspaper. At least you had something to read while you did your business.

We did have an outside toilet too until I was 10 I think, my eldest brother would have been at University. Dad always used to knock the yard light off, as it was wasting electricity. The same switch also switched off a 2^nd light inside the toilet itself. “Put the Light On” was shouted from the cold of the toilet. In winter we had a little oil lamp to heat the pipes so they would not freeze over.

Funny what you think of when you sit down to write something before bedtime. Slippers are a creature comfort too, at home we had lino up the stairs to the bedrooms. So at bedtime we used to split our legs so we could stand on the wood at the side and not the lino. Why? Because lino was so cold, absolutely freezing. We did not get central heating till I was 12 or 13.

This was the norm when we grew up, it was the same for everybody in the 1960s and 1970s.  Baked bread was a treat too, not the sliced variety. So we’d tear the crusts off and leave a lump of exposed and naked bread. Mum would rescue it and use it in soup another day. I still have our old metal bread bin, it’s under the sink in the kitchen behind me. An antique now.

Simple little things make us happy, like a few sweets bought on a Saturday at the market, or glazed ring donuts. Can you all remember those?  How about Madeira  cake all nice and yellow on a Sunday?

These are simple creature comforts, I did not expect to write this, I was going to be more consumer goods orientated, but as I just sat down this is what came out. I suppose it’s all the Love I’m remembering. A connection said just a few days ago that I made her cry because I had evoked a memory that reminded her of her own dad.

So if when I write this happens it’s the greatest thing I can possibly do. If I can steer everybody else  back to the Love they remember when they were young or memories of things past, then I think I’ve found my true vocation, my 3^rd wish granted from Padre Pio.

Echoes 2014

Echoes 2014 ©

By

Michael Casey

I’m listening to Peace by the Eurythmics  as I talk to you, now that album in itself is an echo, I didn’t  know I was going to mention it, till a second ago. Peace by the Eurythmics is a great big echo the more I think about it. I took it to Shanghai with me when I went there to meet my future family.

After my visit I was “forced” to leave it in Shanghai as proof that I would not forget my future wife. She came back to me after she had told her family all my bad points, and now we are married with children, 14  years on, and I still play that album.

I’ve just popped to the kitchen to make some green tea, and brie on biscuits  for my daughter and me, I passed the mirror on the way. Another echo jumped out, my bright orange Polo with a polo picture on it. This is my normal attire around the house, but there is also a big laugh attached to it. Rumplestiltskin to be precise.

We were in Coral Springs Florida in 2006, visiting the wife’s uncle, we also went to Sawgrass Mills. This is a linear shopping mall that seems to go on forever , great food and even greater shopping. Now in one shop there was a Polo sale, Ralph Lauren, so obviously I took a look, as did the wife. The wife is extra small and I’m extra large, yes opposites must attract.

She got some nice things and I spotted these bright orange  Polos with a polo match printed on it. Now at the checkout the sales girls were data collecting, so obviously this was too much temptation.

So I told them my name was Mr Michael Rumplestiltskin, and I gave them a fake address too. I was on holiday and they wanted my name, rank and serial number, for marketing purposes.      Mr Rumplestiltskin was my reply. So the girl asked me to spell it. R U M P L E S T I L T SK I N  I spelt it out. And no, she was serious, and I did keep a straight face. My Shanghai wife didn’t know Western Fairy Tales then so she was bemused as  I spelt out my name. The checkout girl, had no idea she was being teased.

So that’s another echo, another memory. Tomorrow is another echo, but much much more. It marks 18 years since my mother died. Pause.

I can remember the last time I saw my mum alive, she was standing in front of the fridge with her blue smock on. Always feeding us. Though I feel no sadness for her, she and my dad made me the man I am now. So their love and values echoes and resounds through me, and the next generation, my 2 Chinese/Irish daughters.

There are many things that remind of things from the past, the good and the bad, the hope and despair, the agonies and the joys. In the end though the echoes and ripples from the past are just that echoes and ripples. We go forward to the future and all else is left behind.