On popularity

My teaching “niche”, so to speak, are fourteen to twenty six year-olds. It doesn’t matter if they are poor or rich, fast or slow, boys or girls, gay or straight, popular or nerdy, good at English or struggling with the language: it’s very rare to find a person from this particular age group with whom […]

I know it’s over – new and improved

I am a grown-up. I know what it means when somebody doesn’t answer your texts or when it takes them too long to do so. To make a long story short(ish): I went out. I drank. I sent F a message. Nothing too incriminating, thank god. Just saying that I was in a bar with […]

Teaching tall tails

Anyone has the potential to learn anything. If a student isn’t learning, it’s because the teacher hasn’t found the right way to teach them. If you are a language teacher, chances are that you’ve heard and read this before. Probably many times. We’re led to believe that everyone will eventually learn a language if we […]

A lengthy history of time

I’m just going to say it: Einstein was out of his mind when he said time is relative. There, I said it. Seventy years of scientific advances just went down the drain because I’ve made a groundbreaking discovery: time is not relative, it is inexorable and inescapable. It doesn’t matter that I don’t look 39. […]

The third party

I am obsessive-compulsive. I am often ruled by my impulses and find it very hard to control them. I’ve always been this way. That’s one of the reasons why I’ve always struggled with my weight. It’s very hard for me to stop. As I grow older, I find that aging does very little to help […]

F: a character sketch

F is the real version of a character that I imagined 12 years ago. I sometimes think that F probably didn’t exist before my imagination began to shape his fictional counterpart. Perhaps I actually and supernaturally willed him into being. But regardless of how he came into this world, F isn’t fictional and is therefore […]

Fiction trumps reality

The best thing about fiction is that it ends. Eventually. You write a story and at some point you think “that’s a good ending to my narrative” and that’s it. Time stops. The end. Full stop. Reality, on the other hand, is endless. I’m not saying that I think I’m going to live forever. I […]