for later reference

I'm just putting these together for when I'm using internet cafes.

Weather in Chinese Cities
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canada.com
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Indy One long streak was broken and one was maintained. Follow the link for more info.

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.

My new cousin.

My cousin John and his wife Sophie have just brought a son into the world. He's awfully cute, you must agree. James Qi John Li Iveson. 8 lb 4 oz, if I recall correctly.

3 angry coaches

The jury is still out for Sr Boy athlete of the year at my school. Beth, Peter, and I are the committee. I'm holding out and lobbying hard for one of these two. Let me condense our HOURS of discussion to a few lines:

Eric Tsui (I was going to use a fake name but I'm being so specific that there's no not knowing who it is if you're from AY)
- vball: #4 or 5 on a team just short of OFSAA. consistent and effective but no flash.
- tennis: can't recall, never saw him play, but this is "his sport"
- badminton: 2nd in North York in boys' doubles (an extremely competitive league). lost only to one team ever - twice in a massive double knock-out
- ultimate: most skilled thrower, leads an effective and aggressive offense, solid defensively

Matthew Lezon
- vball: #1 on a team just short of OFSAA. student of the game, cornerstone of offense, positive leader technically and socially
- bball: #3 on a team that finished 2/7 in North York East league play, did not advance very far in playoffs. able to finish, held his own against some extremely competitive competition
- ultimate: natural leader, capable thrower, leads a solid offense, great read of game, anticipation on defense

This is just too close. At first, I thought I would be happy either way but I'm just not comfortable with our decision yet. I think that both of these kids are terrific but they are very different types of athletes.

Who should be athlete of the year? Why?

Don't forget to read my next entry too - I had two entries this week.

Help me with my homework...

For my Mandarin course I am to choose and investigate 8 of the following questions. I want to see what generates some good discussion. Comment on any (as many or few as you want) that seem interesting to you. Although some are posed as yes/no questions, I am expected to elaborate.

If applicable, please also tell me
a) if you are of Chinese descent
b) whether your mother tongue is Mandarin or Cantonese
c) how long it has been since you lived in "China" or any version thereof
d) which city or region in "China" is "yours"

1. In general, how do Chinese prefer to say "No" (as in, no, I don't want to do what you're asking of me)?
2. Would Chinese prefer to be introduced to strangers or to meet them casually?
3. Do Chinese bow at the waist like Japanese or Koreans? What do they do?
4. Where do you put someone's name card after they give it to you? Why?
5. What's the appropriate resonse when someone flatters you? Why?
6. How impartant is the Welcome and Send Off for the Chinese? Why?
7. Do most Chinese preer a phone call or a face-to-face visit? Why?
8. Are individual expression and rugged independence praised by the Chinese?
9. Do some Chinese have an Us-Them view of foreigners? Why? (My addition: how is the affected by marrying in or marrying out?)
10. Is China a classless society? How can you see this? Explain.
11. Name eight of the confucian values which are still important for many Chinese in the 1990s. (I guess he's been using this assignment for a while.)
12. How important is Mianzi (saving/giving/taking face) to Chinese today? Explain.
13. Explain the term Reciprocity (huxiang). How important is it?
14. How do Chinese deal with the concept of "privacy"? Why? (My addition: within the family? outside the family? for children/teens? This one really hit a nerve for one student in my class.)
15. How different are Canadian Chinese from other Chinese? Explain.

And might I add that it bugs me whenever the instructor says "a Chinese" or "Chinese" instead of "a Chinese person" or "Chinese people."?

Why did I wait so long?

So, I'm loving my Mandarin course. Things I thought were going to be ridiculously hard haven't been so far. I love learning languages. I really should have done this such a long time ago.

Don't worry, the novelty will soon wear off and I'll started posting about topics other than Mandarin. Anyway...

I think I'm not bad at word attack, word recall, and the meta-game. For example, the instructor pointed to his nose and asked the class what type of nose (bizi) it was. I had no idea what he was getting at but I came up with the answer he was fishing for - mostly by luck. I've only encountered about 50-100 words, and I figured he must be looking for one of them. So I sorted through my adjectives (which are a small proportion of my vocabulary) and said out loud the only one that came to mind - da bizi (big nose). His wasn't even a large nose. But hey, you can call a nose big, right? He was so pleased and asked if anyone had ever called me da bizi. No, I've never heard of this before. Apparently, this is a reference to white people (makes sense). I also know that America (Meiguo) translates roughly as beautiful country so maybe one could call a nose mei but big definitely seems like the better answer.

I've had to ask one of my students for help with my homework once, which was an interesting moment/role reversal. I asked him to keep this Mandarin thing to himself. One, I'd be humiliated to respond if a native speaker wanted to hear me speak, which I can assume s/he very well might. Two, I want to be able to eavesdrop surrepticiously. Three, I don't want my admin or guidance to know or I'll spend hours talking to parents.

On a related note, the topic of mahjong came up in one of my classes today. I told the story of Tiffany's purchase of my contraband set and confessed that I play pretty poorly - my inlaws usually relieve me of my money when we play. To say the least, the class was very amused. I wonder how far the cuteness of a foreigner will take one?

Also, our instructor is really into language as culture, culture as language. And I do find those things interesting, too, but a part of me just wants him to get on with it give us speaking drills and feedback. You can never get a short straight answer on anything with any cultural implication at all, e.g., which title to use for a stranger of a certain sex who is clearly older/younger than you are). It always depends - where are you? where is the stranger from? how long has it been since s/he lived in China? how educated is s/he? But I'm thinking this culture focus is a good thing. Any Mandarin-speak to whom I've mentioned this has a quick and positive response to this description of the instructor. I'm just so pragmatic about most things. I figure that my appearance is going to let me get away with all kinds of minor or even major breaches of protocol.

Mandarin Lesson 1

Woah! That was really fast.

We covered
- a few statements (most about belonging to national groups)
- forming questions in two different ways
- negative statements
- a vocabulary word for each "letter" or group of "letters" that appear in Pinyin

I understand better now why Mandarin sounds like "sure, sure, sure, sure". I think it has a lot to do with the verb to be.

Cantonese vs Mandarin

I've been using this debate to put off learning to speak Chinese. But I think I've finally decided. At risk of offending my new family (sorry, guys!), I've decided on Mandarin. Let me be a little defensive. On the side of Mandarin we have:
- only four tones vs SEVEN
- daily practice at school
- eavesdropping on my students
- increasing Mandarin proportion of Toronto's Chinese community
- more usefulness for travel

I'm going to take an interest course or two this summer.

Mozilla rocks.

I just discovered the "open in tabs" feature. I used to right click and select "open in new tab" for each of the blogs I've listed above. Now, I have them all bookmarked (plus a link to comment moderating) in the same Mozilla directory and open them simultaneously with one click. I know it saves me less that a minute but I still love it.

mea culpa

um... It would seem that the absence of comments since September is my own fault. I wasn't aware that my blogging service now "required" me (by default) to moderate comments. But hey, even still, my ultimatum generated more comments than anything else I've written.

ultimatum

Start leaving comments or this blog has had it. In one year, I've had eight comments from three people (Thank you, Kern, Kristin, and MarkMark) and none since September.

You don't need a login. Just sign in as "anonymous" and leave your name in the body of the comment, if you want.

an ungodly speed

On a recent unit test, I asked my grade 12s to
(a) calculate the orbital speed MIR (or the Hubble), (3 marks)
(b) the period of its orbit, (1 mark) and
(c) explain whether their answers to (a) and (b) were reasonable. (1 mark)

The purpose of part (c) is to train the students to think about the meaning of their work during the test. I do this check every time I do a problem on the board. Some students do this instinctively but I figured the mark for checking reasonableness would motivate the others, especially since they could earn full marks for the question even if (a) and (b) were wrong but part (c) was good. It was also an opportunity for a discussion about good test-taking skills.

I've had good laughs over students' answers before. And I got another laugh this time when a student got answers of 10^40 or more for each of parts (a) and (b) in m/s and s respectively. At the very least he conceded that 10^43 m/s was - and I quote - "an ungodly speed" and that it would take "several centuries" for MIR to orbit the Earth. Well, the universe has only existed for around 10^18 s. The laughs continued because I wrote "LOL" next to "ungodly." Well, the student thought that this was the greatest thing that any teacher had ever written. The camera phone was whipped out. Another fun answer: an orbital period of 0.3 s. Imagine three times a second: "There it goes... There it goes... There it goes."

Aside: I had another student use a camera phone to record a demonstration we did in class. It's a different world, eh? Interestingly, technically speaking, the students aren't even allowed to use cellphones in the school, let alone in classrooms. But clearly, there are great uses.

Keep reading... I have a second entry today.

Did this really happen to me? or did I do it to myself?

Friday morning, I woke up before my alarm, needing to use the washroom - around 6:10. I sat up and something that didn't seem quite right. But I didn't think about it. I wasn't in any state to think about anything. I stood up. step up with the right foot. "step" with the left foot. Except that my left leg was entirely asleep and bore no weight at all. So next thing I know, I'm on the floor swearing. Lucky I didn't hit my head in my tiny, furniture-stuffed bedroom.

Well, my left knee had gone through a range of motion unknown to it for almost a decade. I landed hard on my left heel, which felt a little bruised. I was more worried about my knee but it didn't hurt. So I proceded with my day but investigated a little when I got to school. My knee seemed perfectly fine, not even any swelling which I can get from regular exercise. But the "bruise" on my ankle happened to be right over my ligament. By the end of the day, it was somewhat swollen, stiff, and lightly discoloured. Definitely a sprain.

It's pretty much okay now. I curled Monday and yesterday without any trouble.

crock pot

I got a crock pot for Christmas. It's awesome. I made stew and chili last week. I don't know if the best part is having a hot dinner ready when I get home or leftovers. Most recipes feed 6-10 people. I think my next effort will be a chicken. Ingredients: 1 chicken. 1.5 cups barbeque sauce.

second post in a day

So, look what they have at the Geography Challenge now. I am shocked that in my first three tries I got 6, 6, and 7/10. Same idea as for countries. They give you the capital. You click on the country. This IS a challenge.

Darn it. After playing for a few hours and pretty much getting the capitals down, I just discovered a good feature. If you click on "give me a detailed analysis" after your game. You get a list of the questions and your answers. What I didn't know is that each entry on the list is linked to the map. Click the word and they show you where it is on the map. That would have been helpful. I think it's too late now.