News

April 2009

Gosh, I haven't been keeping this up to date, have I! I guess Facebook has superseded my website. But for the benefit of anybody who ends up here, this is the news: We're enjoying living in Malaysia and expecting to be here for the next year or two while I do a diploma course (when will the studies ever end?!) KL is a nice place to live, with endless (if slightly stormy) summer, easygoing people, and some fantastic places to visit nearby, such as Sipadan Island) for snorkelling, Bali, and Thailand (which we visited before the recent unrest kicked off). I'm taking music lessons from a charming and talented Malaysian guy called Saiful - check out his band Seven Collar T-Shirt. Um... what else? I'm creating a monster - that is, an online interactive glossed audio/text edition of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. You can see the work in progress, but I'll shout about it when it's finished. And finally, I'm experimenting with Twittering about English, learning, and web resources for English learning for the benefit of my students past and present (and anybody else who's interested). That's all for now - another update in a couple of years?

28th November 2007

Back on the road again! We are moving to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia at the end of this year where I will take up a two-year teaching contract with the British Council. I'm very much looking forward to getting back into the classroom in an exciting new context. Malaysia sounds so much fun. We visited it once on our honeymoon, and both Tomoko and I liked it very much. I plan to take lots of photos and post them on my galleries page.

By way of celebration, I've finally got around to posting another song I wrote, called "On My Way" which Nigel and I recorded in 2004 to catch the mood when I was packing my bags to leave Japan. Now it seems appropriate once again!

22 Sept 2007

In the end I got a distinction for my dissertation and thus also for the whole of my MBA, so I'm feeling very chuffed about that. Thanks to everybody who supported me through the long grind!

I'm now living right next door to Tti School so my walk home in the evening is not quite long enough to get the keys out of my pocket and decide which one fits the front door. In theory I should have a lot of extra time, but extra time never actually seems to materialise!

Our plan is to stay in London for a few more months while Tomoko studies massage, and then go to live in Himeji. I'll teach English again and work on my plans for an online tuition business. For the time being I'm experimenting with online tuition on Skype (see my skypecasts page).

After an aborted attempt to learn the clarinet (just not enough Maxwells to do everything!) I'm finding new enthusiasm for the guitar with the help of lessons from fingerstyle doyen Duck Baker, who graciously offered me lessons when at the interval of his concert I requested a tune of his I'd heard on the radio 15 years ago. I didn't know its title but I was able to hum it to him! He is teaching me a few blues and gospel type numbers and a wee bit of swing for good measure

19 May 2007

Well, after two and a half years of hard labour I've finished my MBA, and I've heard that the last piece of work, my dissertation on disruptive innovation and e-learning in the EFL industry has passed. To anybody thinking of doing an MBA, please explain to your partner that MBA stands for "Married But Absent", although in my case it now stands for "Much Better Afterwards".

I celebrated finishing my course by taking a holiday in India and paying a visit to the highest point on the planet. I didn't climb Everest, but I climbed a fairly high mountain to get a good view of it. There's a write-up in progress on the Galleries page.

I haven't achieved a lot musically while I've been doing my MBA of course, although when Nigel spent a few months in London we managed to get back in practice to do a little gig at Tti, and he very graciously recorded another of my songs, which I'll post here soon.

Tomoko and I have decided to leave London, though where exactly we'll end up is not yet clear. Watch this space!

Autumn 2004

The gravitational attraction of London proved too much for us and we moved after only a few months in Oxford. I am now the registrar of Tti School of English in Camden, which is a really nice place with a lovely atmosphere. After eight years of teaching I'm now seeing what it is like bringing in customers and making the business run smoothly. I'm busier than I've ever been before, but I like it.

Dad's website for the Nida family is now fully operational and hosted here on my domain.

My guitar partnership with Nigel Crossingham (my colleague at Kensington) regretfully will go into suspended animation upon my return to England, although we hope it will come back to life next time we are living in the same country. We recorded a couple of songs, including one that I wrote on Nigel's eight-track equipment. Short excerpts from our concert at Hanaichizen Bar in Ofuna in 2003 can still be heard below. Naturally, I've chosen the bits that show my contribution to best advantage, to make sure you get a thoroughly erroneous impression that it wasn't mainly Nigel's vocal talent and fine guitar work that actually got us through the evening. (Note: the recording level was pretty low so you may have to turn up your speakers.)

My photography teacher Andy Barker's Friends of Photography went to Kawagoe city on March 14th to take pictures of the street of traditional Japanese confectionary shops and the bell tower. It was an enjoyable day, and I'll miss Andy's club when I'm back in England. Anybody in Tokyo interested in improving their photography, get in touch with Andy via his web page. Previous Friends of Photography trips and other photographic projects can be seen on the galleries page.

Lately I've been getting into audiobooks, with the help of a super-cool accessory called an iPod which allows a shelf of the weightiest tomes to fit in your shirt pocket, and Internet content supplier Audible.com. Despite rather intransigent customer service at Audible, I recommend both. It's amazing -- I'm devouring books like I never have since I was a kid, and what's more, washing up and dusting don't distract me from listening, so it even keeps my house clean!