Quick facts about me (response to @cgoodey)

I’m sitting on my sofa surrounded by a hoarder’s dream of clutter while two rooms in my place are being stripped clean of the disgusting builder’s carpets and replaced by new flooring. I’ve taken a holiday from the university to “supervise” work being done, but as I’m useless to concentrate on more pressing work or MA-related tasks, I find myself with the rare opportunity to participate in a chain blog questionnaire, the previous link by Carol Goodey. A fun snapshot into who we are beyond the blog, the idea goes as follows:

1. Acknowledge the nominating blogger. (check, done above)
2. Share 11 random facts about yourself. (check, done below)
3. Answer the 11 questions the nominating blogger has created for you. (don’t want to bore you with reading too much about me at once, so this will come in the next post)
4. List 11 bloggers. (next post)
5. Post 11 questions for the bloggers you nominate to answer, and let all the bloggers know they have been nominated. Don’t nominate a blogger who has nominated you. (next post)

Why 11? Good question, so I’m doing 13 for 2013.

Random facts about me

1. My full name is Tyson Brian Seburn, but I wasn’t born with only these names. Seburn is actually my mom’s maiden name, and originally one of my middle names. I was born with the last name Davies.
2. I was a basically a straight A student until high school in everything except Physical Education class. Ironically, I excelled at gymnastics, which is the only part of that class that pulled me grade up from a fail.

   

3. Continuing that thought, for the most part I taught myself gymnastics with a mini-tramp and lots of mattresses piled up in the backyard. I’d dreamt of going to the 1992 and 1996 Olympics, but it just wasn’t meant to be. In fact, my only excursion into competition was during my first year of university, where I competed on floor exercise and vault.
4. I grew up in a small town in one of the southernmost parts of Canada, called St. Thomas–population 30,000. It’s pretty close to a larger city, London–population about 350,000–, so whenever I told students where I was from, despite my Canadian accent, they’d almost always confuse it with London, UK.
5. ‘Numbers nerd’ would describe me well. Though I’m no mathematician, I do like studying statistics, particularly that result in rankings, charts and graphs. Though it’s become an unpopular idea, I’ve always loved marking assignments and tests, and seeing the resulting grades, as well as rankings from best to worst. Sue me.
6. My first language teaching gig was in Seoul when I was 23. I taught both adults and kids. I ended up calling Seoul my home for almost 6 years after that. Though I left in 2003, I did bring two Koreans back with me to Toronto–my partner and puppy.
7. When I came back to Canada, I had no intentions of continuing my language teaching career, but wanted to move into writing, both in the form of novels and magazines like Scientific American. Wasn’t meant to be, but my language teaching career was.
8. At home, I almost always do my work and blogging in front of the TV while watching reality TV of some sort, from Survivor to Big Brother to Income Property.
9. Though I wouldn’t consider myself an avid reader these days, I always anxiously anticipate novels from Canadian author, Margaret Atwood-most recently, MaddAddam. Her best: The Blind Assassin, The Year of the Flood and Alias Grace.
10. I eat an ungodly amount of toast. It’s my favourite snack. Oddly, I prefer a full breakfast (eggs benedict, bacon, fruit, hashbrowns, etc.) to it. Best toppings: lots of butter and brown sugar.
11. I used to handwrite all my lesson plans and more often than not, all my handouts for students (which I would photocopy, not handwrite duplicates). This was back in the day of no computers in teacher lounges, let alone the Internet. Sadly, I just recycled the only one I had left from then. It was a lesson on “movies”, go figure.
12. If we go by historical pattern, I’ll grown my hair out to ponytail length next year, as I’ve done so every time my age ends in zero. It stays long for two or three years, then I go super short again.
13. I have over 2000 comic books in bags and boards, most of which are X-Men of some sort and Wonder Woman.