I should just retire now.

I should take my 6% pension and go out at the top of my game. This year has been unbelievable. Was it perfect? No. But I cannot see how it could possibly get better than this year. This year's grade 12s are just phenomenal. I wondered out loud about this to Bill Huang, who replied that they're mostly Dragons. "A superstitious lot you are." "Yes," he replied, "but you have to believe in something, right?"

Marcus Chan once commented out of the blue that I must have had a really great year, with the volleyball team and my classes. That is quite a perception from a student. Marcus is a very good student and musician and a very good-natured, down-to-earth, mature person. He came to see me today and brought me a present. Books. He gets me, obviously. Marcus is really into the history of science, and so, he has had really enjoyed storytime in my class (I read to my classes for the last 3-5 minutes of every period). He wanted to get me the two books he first read that got him into science but he was having a hard time finding or ordering copies. So, Marcus gave me his own copies.

Are you kidding me? This is too much! I should quit now, right?

My Mandarin class is over.

I can't believe it's over already. But I was in a state just before class started on Thursday. I was just a mess. I had just emailed out my part of the skit we were performing the night before so I figured it was going to be pretty tough for my group mates to get the lines memorised. Plus I happened to look at the syllabus, which said that there was an exam on the last day. EXAM? He never said anything about an exam. Although I had skipped Tuesday's class to do the bridge PowerPoint presentation. And I hadn't studied in a week. Yikes.

Well, it was all for naught. There was no exam and nobody was memorising their skits. We just read them. My group had the shortest skit by far. We stuck to the suggested 8-10 lines of 8-10 words per person. But I think it went as well as could be expected. Here we are in character as Kramer, Elaine, and Jerry. Oh and Jerry left me hanging for quite a while. Elaine "dances" in the skit.



Keep reading. I did about four entries this week.

Open Gym

I stay after school on Fridays so that some of the kids can play in the gym until the caretakers kick us out around 6. It all started during the senior girl's volleyball season when I had had it with absenteeism and made a Friday afternoon practice optional and asked a couple of the senior boys to come to give some one-on-one instruction. And it just grew from there but still it's mostly varsity volleyball players and their close friends.

The students are always very appreciative and since yesterday was the last open gym of the year, they got me a little something. I wish I had a photo of the giant thank you note, but it's still at school so that I can laminate it. But here is what the got me. It's too much! I was definitely touched.


They said that they were disappointed that they couldn't get me a pair of the team shoes (the boys all have the same ones) but they didn't have them in my size. Anyway, these fit perfectly and I jumped pretty high in them.

If the shoe fits...

On Wednesday, my gr.12 superstar was signing yearbooks and I looked over to check out his handwriting. His English penmanship is pretty bad. So a brief discussion of handwriting followed. Later in the period he asked me to sign his yearbook and suggested, hahaha, that I could sign in Chinese. Well I signed in English but added my name in Chinese.

Well something just felt wrong about the last character. I couldn't figure out the stroke order, which is weird because I knew that there was nothing exceptional about it. But I gave it back to him. When I got home, I looked it up and saw that I had forgotten the third stroke, so the next three felt weird.

On Thursday, I mentioned this to Mindy and showed her what I wrote. And she looked a little surprised and said, "Do you know what you wrote?" Uh oh. I was hoping it was something random, like "bench" maybe. But no, it was much funnier. It was very apt.

I asked for the yearbook back so that I could correct it - I like it when things are right. And I insisted that it was an honest mistake, that I wasn't trying to be funny or arrogant, so I needed to demote myself to my proper rank.
Instead of Teacher Lew, I had written Old General Lew.

They looked good before...

but now they're toast. We're doing destructive testing. The bridge must take a load of 300X its own weight for full marks. The largest was just under 500g, the smallest around 120g. With Kevin's help, I created an award for each bridge.

I did a Power Point Presentation with these photos and their group shots. I had to do a preamble for almost every award because they're very language- and culture-rich. But I think that I pulled off some humour. The kids got a really big kick out of the presentation.
In no particular order:

The brute force award. 150 kg wouldn't break this 480 g bridge.	The most elegant bridge. held 551 X its own weight. really good use of material and colour.	The most patriotic bridge. Apparently, there is a story behind the flag.
Close but no cigar award. Held 270 times its own weight.	The never judge a bridge by its cover award. This 120g bridge held 90 kg. I also considered the biggest over-achiever, the little bridge that could, and the ugly duckling.	It looked even better in real life but it wasn't especially strong. It held only 153X its own weight. Best eye-candy award.
All that glitters is glued.	The Mark McGwire award. The box they bought did say "popsicle sticks" although the rules explicitly said no tongue depressors.	Most original bridge. Cable stay? out of popsicle sticks?
The less is more award	the more is more award.	The little bridge that could. held almost 400 times its own weight.
The quality is job 1 award. This was meticulously designed and constructed. Using steam and ammonia to create the arch.	best supporting actruss	The wood wide web award? I love this photo, more for the seamless than anything.

Did I really do this?

I don't think it's particularly good and I know the text is very choppy, to say the least. But I'm certainly shocked that I can do this at all. click to enlarge. Some of the blurring and curving is caused by the binding of the workbook.