Bits and peaces of things that happened during the last month and some change: This Saturday early morning I’ll be, for the first time, fulfilling
my second objective of coming here, travelling to the neighbouring countries. First stop: India.
Shan and David had a ‘cold war’ going between them, which is now finally subsiding -we’re all
having a dinner together at Shan’s place tonight (pic) for the first time in a long time. I felt (a bit) what kids must be feeling when the parents go though the divorce. Two ‘grown’ man acting like kids, I wanted to throw them over the knee…
Yesterday I had my first Invigilation Duty (exam police-ing) in the examination hall w/ some 600+ students. I was laughing about it all at the beginning as I was one of them just a few months back.
Ali left Tuesday morning. Sunny arrived Tuesday evening.
Monkey came back here from his Indonesian trip on Sunday evening, and then left back home to Malaysia last night. Sunny departs tomorrow evening. I love having friends visiting over, but the frequency of it made me feel a bit like running a motel; I think the feeling is excused.
The appreciation I have for my uprising in a modest environment has grown a bit further. Thanks King :)
It will be interesting to see if (how) Apple is going to stick a phone into an iPod (
this time around).
Another interesting techy
story mentiones the potential for MS to tap-in with
Zune: "Personally, the ultimate Wi-Fi feature I want is long-distance Zune to Zune sharing. If I can get on a Wi-Fi hotspot that connects to the internet, and so can my friend halfway across the country, I see no reason why I can't beam him a song, picture, or short video across the 'net. All the Zune needs is a friends list you could manage from the Zune PC software. I also want to "DJ" songs to other Zunes. Instead of sending them tracks, I want to stream audio to them, so I can play through a list of songs and have the other Zune users hear exactly what I hear, so we can jam out at the same time."
I like Daily Dime column at
ESPN. It nicely summarises the news from the day’s games. In
one of them ex Denver Nuggets GM was writing about their current coach: “When George first joined us in Denver, he loved the quality and quantity of players and talent we had. But one of problems with talent is dividing up the minutes. When you have fewer choices, you're not fighting the urge to experiment, because of your limited options. ...Injuries have solidified the lineup because it has taken the guesswork out.” This remained me that when writing about choices, I forgot the mention that too much of a good thing amounts to no-good. Or in words of
R. Sharma’s character: “everthing in moderation, no extremes”.
"What is the ultimate question of life, the Universe and everything...?" The line is from the
Hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy. One of the DVD's that Monkey brought along - just a lovely movie.
Déjà Vu is a good old story with a new, scientific twist - nice.
The pool is closed for this week due to the major cleaning. Couldn't they have done it the next wk, when I'm of to India :(
A while back, I conducted a little, informal survey with the class I find the most difficult to teach. Difficult as in the subject material is one that nobody likes, me included, and the students are rather 'lively'. The common desire expressed was less lecture slides and more tute work. I have to speak slower and clearer as they (shockingly many commented on this) have difficulty understanding me. As many know, I am not surprised by this. Also, I should not give out any kind of encouragement to do the work, as this easily can be mistaken as nagging/scolding.
Steve Goschick's "to care is not to care" is employed to the max. The good news is that since then I'm putting the suggestions into practice, some more then others, and the students have responded really well.
To answer
the question Luka posted: the difference is in the EQ not the IQ. In my opinion, the lack of care for the study on students' part is down to the two main things:
a) most of students don't end up doing the course that is their first choice
b) students' place at the Ploy is largely subsidised. So the aim is to get as many students to pass with better marks that are nicely distributed - the bell curve obsession - which improves the Poly's looks. The better the Poly looks the more funding it gets.
Mix into this 'saving face' concept and it's not surprising why the main topic at the end of the semester meetings is the justification of failures -> i.e. the message that is being send down, albeit implicitly (for the most part) is 'don't fail anybody'. BTW, the more experienced local lecturers here are 'too experienced’. (Note: just IMO)
I was bragging about the all around
efficiency as one of the things that got me really impressed. Well the running of the
meetings might be just the exception that proves that rule. On many occasions, it is as though they try to invent the purpose of the meeting because they have a meeting pre-scheduled. If you think that it should be the other way around, then that makes the two of us.
Two weekends ago I spend 3 hours scrubbing the floor (poured full container of Jiff on it), and then Monkey spend an hour the next day mopping it as rinsing the floor with 5-10 buckets of water didn’t clear out the Jiff trails. And then last weekend I had a guy come over with the industrial polishing machine and the water blaster. The professional cleaners were cleaning the lobbies in the buildings and pathways around them, so I got them to pay a visit to my apartment as well. For the next few weeks, the floor is clean!
This is the 9th week of the semester. It is a common test week, which means there are no classes scheduled. The two weeks prior to that students were working on the assignment during the classes for one (less likeable) module, i.e. no teaching. This was a well deserved welcome to the ‘paid holiday’ period as the two weeks prior that period, during the week 5 and 6, I actually had quite a bit of work to do. Along the usual teaching responsibilities I had to finalise all the teaching materials, as I was made responsible for coming up with all the content for those two weeks. The usual underestimation of the time required to do the job did not surprise me a one bit, but how badly I underestimated it, did -> slept fewer than 4h per night during the period.
Going out on Wednesday night and missing your 9-11 class the next morning is definitely a bad thing. Having students who don’t report it to no one is great. I guess all that lenience I give them, came in handy. I did report it myself to the module leader, emailed an apology to students, a bit formal one, and then spoke to them. They found it funny that a teacher ‘over-slept’ because the alarm didn’t go off, even though it was set in what appeared to be proper way: the little knob was lifted, and the time set correctly – I am thinking that I did not lift the knob all the way. Well anyhow, all that is long gone, and I can say I was happy with the way I reacted in the situation, or should I say with the lack of my reaction… Oh well, shit happens…! ("A well adjusted person is one who makes the same mistake twice without getting nervous."
Alexander Hamilton (1755-1804) - work in progress, but I'm getting there.)
Dude, where the #*&% are my noodles...? I ordered a fish balls noddles... and got a soup w/ few balls swimming in there w/ noodles nowhere to be found. Broken English meets broken English, in this case the two negatives did not cancel each other, they compounded. This happened during the two weeks I mentioned above, when workload was heavy. Thus, I had no time to go back and complain to the Uncle. Guess, had I had time for it that would have been interesting.
came in a form of the taxi ride from KL to Genting. Driver was a very old Uncle, with basically no ability to speak English, and more importantly not much of driving abilities either. It was already past 11pm, the old man should have been in bed anyhow, but instead he was still driving and driving as though he was the only one on the road... finding the apex across 3 lanes on a freeway; coming to a complete stop in a thick fog and mist - in the middle of the road as though it was a parking lot; and then falling a sleep at the wheel while navigating turns of the mountain... After we arrived, in one peace, to the resort I was trying to tell him to take a nap for a while before getting on a one-2 hour journey back to KL. He didn't listen, or I should say he did not understand - I hope he made it back safely.
