By that, I mean Saw on the PS3. I’ve just managed to crack the Platinum trophy on there. There was just one silver giving me a hard time and that was “Merciless”… Curb stomp 5 minions to death. But, after just a couple more hours of play time, I got it! And along with that came the “Congratulations!” trophy which is platinum. That’s my first platinum, too! I suppose it means that Saw won’t see the light of day for a while until I decide I want to have a bash at the bigger traps again (the “minigame” size electric box was quite good).
I like the trophy system on the PS3. Same reason I liked the achievements on 360. It gives you a sense of accomplishment when you finally hit that elusive 100%. BioShock was the only bastard game to do me over on that… I got 100%, then the little buggers patched the game and added the “Complete the game without dying” achievement… Buggered if I was going to play it again like that… Still, if I find the game in the Platinum range at some point, I might give it a bash on the PS3.
So yes, that does officialy signal the complete end of the 360. I’ve tried all sorts of tricks to bring it back to life again, but it’s totally fried. Unless I can find one that’s second hand with just the 360 and nothing else, then I might consider it… My GamerScore was getting quite nice and there are a couple of games I like (also those custom soundtracks which make the difference to me when playing a driving game). How hard can it be to do that on the PS3? Seems a little silly, but there you go.
On another note, I’m quickly filling up my PS3 hard drive with movies and TV shows… It’s a nice little media centre (especially with that BluRay remote). I might even consider taking it instead of the laptop. Let’s face it, this laptop is on its last legs and constantly needs a power socket to work (battery dead). So I can probably replace the battery, but since I don’t often work on the laptop when I go out, there seems to be little point. When we do go away, it’s for a nice little break away from work (the next one wil lbe in February when Spring Fesitval rolls around… Which also falls on Valentine’s Day next year…). We’ll be going to Meixian at that time to be with Spring’s family, so I’ll probably end up taking the PS3 as it’s loaded with movies (with Chinese subtitles) so we can all enjoy a bit of a movie night or something.
Just noticed there’s a scratch on the laptop screen… How the hell did that happen?
Also, in the past week, I’ve trid to quit smoking. I say ‘tried’ because it didn’t work out so well. I had patches and gum, but ended up having a fag because it was just too much. I’m back on the cigs, but am pleased that I’m now down to just 5 a day (from the original 20 a day). So it’s getting there. If I can get down even lower, then it’ll be super simple to quit… In theory…
Picked up a set of kitchen scales this week, too. And for the first time in 3 years, made my Apple & Cinnamon cake! It was quite nice. Going to make another one sometime. At least today is payday, so I can go out and get more of the ingredients at some point. Although today is a strange day. It’s Wednesday… Usually my day is broken up by a couple of hours of interviews somewhere between 2 and 5, but this week I have a PlayWay class (really little kids)… And that starts at 7:15 until 8:15… So my interviews start at 5pm and finish at 7pm, then I have the class at 7:15 and finish at 8:15 which means being home around 8:45 or so, then probably end up in bed around 11. Tomorrow is the day we go to a middle school to teach for two classes and then I have my one-to-one, Kerry. He’s the kid who has a fascination with the word ’shit’.
The middle school is starting to feel like a chore now as Sam, Peter and myself (mostly Sam since he has had a year of full time experience at a middle school) cam up with a nice format to tech the kids and it seemed to be working well. However, the middle school didn’t like it and forced us to change. So now we’re back to spending hours on preparing PPTs and lecture-style classes. We wanted to move away from these PPTs since they take so long to create. We also have to create handouts and homework for them. We’ve said that we’re not going to sit down and check over 500 pieces of homework. So one of the local teachers is going to do it. They don’t seem to realise just how much work it takes for these classes and it starts to detract from our regular classes at EF.
Let me tell you how it works at the school. We’re contracted for a set amount of ACH (academic contact hours) which is blocks of 40 minutes. A standard teacher contract is around 30 ACH per week… That’s 20 *real* hours of teaching. Not a lot, you might think, but that’s taking into consideration the time ittakes to plan a class as well. A class should take about the same length of time to plan as it does to teach. So for a regular 2 hour class, that’s 2 hours of planning and preparation. Which makes a 40 hour week. With me so far?
Now let’s take Changqing. Each class is 40 minutes… There are basically two levels of classes that share the same materials. These are grade 7 and grade 8. A class is just 40 minutes. It should only take 40 minutes to plan… But Changqing takes and *average* of 4 hours to plan a single lesson. It shouldn’t do. A 40 minute class, regardless of how many times it’s used, should only take 40 minutes to plan. One could argue that since the class is taught by the same teacher 3 times, then it’s justified… But it still isn’t. 3 classes is 120 minutes… 2 hours… So it’s still double the length for planning. It’s stupid. And no teacher teaches the same grade more than 3 times. This week, grade 7’s class took TWO people 3 hours to prepare! That’s 6 man-hours. That’s far too long! And those teachers are already on their limit of ACH! They won’t have time to properly prepare their normal classes… It really gets me riled…
Anyway, I appear to have gone off on one and made a stupidly long post when all I really wanted to do was announce my first platinum trophy on the PS3. So happy about that. Until the next time: Catch you later!