say cheese

Well, I just finished recording this presentation I had to do for DoDAF 2.0, and now all I have to do by saturday is study for and take my ITIL exam (Saturday morning is D day) and finish up some software testing. Hopefully I won't be working until 10 o'clock at night every night in July.

So a weird thing happened to me today. I'm teaching a class at my company's site (while still trying to do 8 hours of work on my other project and manage it). The class is all emirates. The class is going surprisingly well considering all the cultural issues. They are even laughing at my jokes and trying to use some slang. Today one of my students told me that if I cheered him up he would eat one more slice of pizza (we had pizza delivered for lunch because if I let them go on breaks they don't always come back). I realized after a few minutes he meant for me to cheer him on. I had initially thought he was depressed and couldn't eat.

Anyway, I was in the middle of a heated discussion about meta models when this weird looking white guy came into my room with a camera and asked if he could take my picture. I thought it was a joke, but decided to play along, so I said "sure you can take my picture". Then he asked the emiratis if it was okay (they don't like to be photographed). They agreed but said he had to shoot the picture from the back so no one could see their faces. And then they all turned around to look at me and started making faces at me.

The photog said "do something dramatic" so I pretended that the white board easel was falling on me. He said "no, do something dramatic as you're teaching". It turns out he was hired to take pictures of the training facility for some brochure and picked me over the other instructor, who looks like a troll, to be the "action" picture.

I stood there, not sure what to do, and trying to to look at my students who were still making faces at me. The photog said "just start teaching again and I'll take some shots when you don't expect it". Great. There will probably be a picture of me doing something retarded on a brochure that's being distributed throughout the middle east.

So I started teaching again and, as he looked at my profile, the photog suddenly said "hey, do you want to comb your hair before I take this?" Everyone started laughing because we had 90% humidity today, and it was insanely hot, so my hair looks like I've been living in the forest for the past 5 years. It was curling and sticking straight out from my head. I was really embarrassed but also kind of pissed so I said "I'm not going to comb my hair for your picture. Why don't you pretend to be the instructor and I'll take the picture?"

I started trying to teach again but my students decided that this would be a perfect time to ask me a bunch of embarrassing questions. One asked "if you meet a nice guy, do you talk about meta models, because that's not sexy?" Another said "didn't you wear that shirt yesterday?" (in fact I had, I've been so busy I've had no time to drop off or pick up laundry). Then another said "how come your hair is so fat?" which made me laugh, and the stupid photog took the picture. It will be hideous.


Because we cooperated the photog offered to buy us lunch tomorrow. He asked what we wanted. My favorite student, M, said "lobsters", but he said it like he was requesting a sandwich. The photog said "hm, um, I was thinking more like pizza". A round of boos from the class. So the photog said "well what did you have for lunch today?" and M said "lobsters". Everyone started saying ridiculous things like they wanted food from this expensive 5 star restaurant.



God only knows what we'll end up with.


As the photog was exiting my class I said "wait, don't leave! they're picking on you now instead of me!" and he said "I'm sure you can handle yourself around these guys". Which might have appeared to be the truth from the back of the room, but seemed less apparent from the front of the room.