The Christmas Truce of 1914

One of my favorite (true) stories about Christmas is the one about the series of informal truces between British and German troops that began during Christmas in 1914. It is one wonderful example of how respect, peace and love ultimately triumphs over war.

And it also makes me wonder how the various troops sent to the war in Iraq actually feel about it all. Is it possible that, just like those who participated in the 1914 truce, they're just there on orders and don't really want this war?

Meteors and fireballs

The other night (13 December) I once again fell asleep without changing into my pajamas. But as usual, I woke up a few hours later, turned off my laptop, cleared my bed of my stuff and went to bed properly. After I turned off my lights and settled down in bed, I remembered that the Geminid meteor showers were supposed to start that evening and that it was supposed to be quite a spectacle this time around, with around 100 meteors occurring per hour. So I opened my curtains and, peering at the small patch of sky that I could see through my window, I was delighted to see lots of stars. This meant that the sky was clear and conditions were perfect for star gazing. And so I waited.

Sure enough, within a minute a shooting star came streaking down across the sky. After two minutes, there was another one! Wow. I'd never seen that many shooting stars within so short a time in my whole life. Then came another one... and another. All in all I saw six during the twenty minutes I managed to stay awake. And to think that I could see only a small part of the evening sky through my window. What more could there be if one could see the rest of the sky?!

I was therefore determined to spend yesterday evening watching out for meteors. Besides, I had read somewhere that the shower would peak that evening (14 December) at 16:45 GMT, which was around 00:45 local time (15 December). Thankfully it was a Friday and I could afford to stay up late and not worry about having to wake up early to go to work the next day.

So around 8:30 pm last night, I went outside to our driveway. I shut off the gate lights and light outside our garage. Unfortunately, there was still the light from the street lamp which made conditions less than ideal for star gazing. Anyway, as there was nothing I could do about it I turned to look northeast over the roof of our house. There I could see the constellations Taurus, Auriga, Cassiopeia and Orion. The Gemini constellation was barely above the rooftop but the planet Mars was well above it and shining its usual reddish glow.

Within a few minutes, I saw a meteor streak by. I saw about a dozen then (about twenty minutes) before I went back inside the house to rest my aching neck.

I went back outside around 9:20pm and saw more. There was even a really bright one that streaked through about 30-40 degrees across the zenith. I guess it was one of those that they call a fireball: it was not the usual faint streak of light characteristic of ordinary shooting stars. Instead I could clearly discern curling flames and smoke trailing behind the meteor. It was quite a spectacle.

I saw about a dozen more shooting stars later--including another though less impressive fireball--when I went out again around 11:00pm although they didn't seem to come as frequently then. I began to wonder if the shower had already peaked and that astronomers were mistaken in predicting that the peak would be much later that evening. Or perhaps I couldn't see that much (particularly the fainter ones) because of the slight light pollution caused by the nearby street lamp.

Anyway, I went outside one last time around 12:30am. There were clearly lesser shooting stars then. I saw just about a dozen during the 45 minutes I stayed outside. I felt sad and disappointed as brought in my stool (it was easier to watch sitting down despite having to crane my neck to look up) and locked the garage door for the last time that evening. But later I cheered up after realizing that I had experienced my first major meteor shower.

And now I'm even more glad I took the time to look last night. I took a peek at the sky earlier this evening and it was completely covered with clouds. And now it's raining.

[On the other hand, my mother was not so fortunate. She came out with me to take a look around 9:20 last night but went back inside after a few minutes to return to watching her tv shows. I had advised her to stay longer to watch for more meteors because there won't be a replay of this nature show. Then this morning, she announced that she was going to look out for meteors tonight. When I told her that it was virtually over because the peak was supposed to be last night she was naturally disappointed. She also thought the meteor showers were going to last over several days. I might be mistaken in supposing that there was nothing to see after last night. But even if there were "leftovers" today, there was no way one could see anything tonight now that the sky is overcast.]

Another accident and a lizard rescue

This morning on my way to work, another curious sight met me along that accident-prone stretch of road. There was a van going in the opposite direction very slowly. I noticed that the front wheels were wobbling. Then as I got nearer, I saw that the front door on the driver's side was badly dented and was being held closed by the driver himself. Closely following that crippled van was the campus police vehicle. I suppose there was another accident along that road again. Sigh!

---

A little house lizard has been living inside my car. I first noticed it on the floor on the passenger's side about a week ago. It was quite tiny then. Then when I saw it again on the dashboard a few days ago, it had grown to about two inches but was painfully thin. Poor thing was probably starting from lack of food. So I decided to "rescue" it today. When I got home this evening, I got a sheet of paper from my bag, cornered the lizard against the part where the dashboard meets the windshield and pushed the paper under the lizard. As soon as the lizard hopped onto the paper, I rushed out of the car before it could jump off again and deposited it on some old boxes we had along the side of our garage. Hopefully it will find its way to a nearby light bulb where it will find lots of insects to eat.

Wanted: Instant textbook

Sometime last month, I was approached by our former director to write a textbook for a new course to be offered in distance mode. She handed me a contract for me to review and sign if I agreed to the terms being set down. Else, she said that I could simply suggest any changes and write those down on a piece of paper and have it sent back with the contract to have it modified.

Going through the contract, I began to realize that this writing project would be quite a challenge since I had never taught such a course before. But given how much I would be paid, I was very much tempted to accept the commission. I was shocked however to later read that I was expected to have a draft of the book ready within three months (for evaluation and editing of an instructional designer)! Worse, I later discovered that it was not just a textbook that I was supposed to prepare but an entire set of teaching materials: exams, assignments, a teaching guide, a list of references, etc.! Plus there was the usual deductions on my fee if I didn't meet the deadline, etc. Of course, I knew couldn't possibly turn in something in a mere three months. Even if I could, I'd most likely be turning in something of unacceptably poor quality because having to rush it all. And being the perfectionist that I am, I'm never contented with submitting any kind of work that is half-baked. Anyway, I indicated in a small stick-on note that I needed a year to turn in the first draft.

When I finally got a response about two weeks later, it was worse than I thought. They were insisting on the three-month deadline because they needed the teaching materials by June 2008! Now I found that completely ridiculous. Why didn't they approach me much earlier if they knew they needed it next year after all? Why wait until last month to ask me to begin? Did they think I had all the time in the world to write an entire textbook and the rest of the teaching materials? Didn't they ever consider the fact that I'm teaching full time and with an overload of teaching units?

In the end, I completely refused to agree to the terms and had to drop the project altogether. I mean, is there anybody who can write a entire textbook in three months? Apparently they think so. So I'm wishing them lots of luck finding somebody who can conjure a textbook in time for the very first offering of the course.

The original "Jingle Bells"

One of the recent posts on the Minnesota Public Radio blog called Classical Notes, a classical music blog I subscribe to, mentioned a radio show that featured Philipp Brunelle and the vocal group he founded, VocalEssence.

During the one-hour show, Mr. Brunelle talked about the history of Christmas songs which turned out to be very enlightening. For example, there is after all a distinction made between a Christmas carol and a Christmas hymn. And, as expected, many songs started out with a melody very different from what we are familiar with nowadays. Often, the original melody was much more complicated that many parts eventually got simplified to make it easier for"less-talented singers" as the song was passed on and performed through the years.

Thus, what I considered a highlight was when VocalEssence performed "Jingle Bells" using the original melody as it was composed by John Pierpont way back in 1857. Being a purist when it comes to music, I was curious to hear what the original melody was like. As it turns out, I liked the original with its more "challenging" melody and now even prefer it to the newer version, which I find slightly boring in comparison. I also eventually found a pdf file of the original(?) sheet music at Project Gutenberg and, having scanned through it, simply can't stop the song from playing over and over in my head.

New leadership adjustments Part II

It looks like I'm not the only one having to adjust to the new way our unit is being managed.

One of the duties that used to be delegated to me by our former director was the approval/disapproval of requests of student organizations to use our lecture halls for their activities. The main reason for this is since I'm in charge of scheduling the classes offered by our unit, I would know when a room would be available or not during a given time and day.

Now that we have a new director, as expected, he has taken the responsibility of approving and disapproving these requests instead of passing them along to me. He however still consults with our property custodian whom I have supplied a copy of our class schedules and at whose office our teaching staff make room reservations.

That was the situation when two students came to see me this morning. Their organization had been given permission to use one of our lecture halls today but they found that the lecture hall didn't have enough seats for all the people who were participating in their activity (some kind of inter-high school quiz). So would it be all right if they used so-and-so lecture hall instead in the afternoon for the rest of the activity?

I was pondering the technicalities involved in that request (that on paper they were allowed to use that lecture hall so was it okay to let them use the other by internal arrangement, etc.) when I realized something.

I asked them, "One question. Who signed your letter? Who approved your request to use the lecture hall?"

Both students promptly answered, "Si Dr. __ ," (our new director).

I expected this and told them, "So if he was the one who approved your request, it is him whom you have to ask permission to use the other lecture hall."

To my amusement, the eyes of both students widened and both students gasped simultaneously before saying fearfully, "Dr. ___???"

I just shrugged my shoulders when I saw their reaction and repeated, "Yes, you have to go ask Dr. ___ and not me. He was the one who approved your request, right? So I have no authority to change that."

Still looking terrified at the prospect of approaching our director, they silently nodded in agreement, mumbled their thanks and left.

I had a good laugh when the door closed behind them.

Although it was funny to see their reaction to my suggestion to see our director, I wondered at the same time why students fear him so. He's no terror at all but as he's the oldest among us teaching staff and well known for his accomplishments in research I suppose they're simply in awe of him. He also probably looks formidable because he's such a serious fellow compared to our jolly former director. He however does crack jokes once in a while which I've seen him do during our faculty meetings. I'm not sure if he cracks jokes at his classes though. I've been his student a couple of times already and I don't recall seeing him smile or joke during our classes. So I don't think the undergraduate students have had any glimpse of that funny side of our director.

Ah, well. They'll just have to pluck up the courage to deal with him as director for the next three years!

Temperamental typhoons and "winter" weather

Just an update on the weather: Typhoon Mina/Mitag did hit the northern tip of Luzon Sunday evening, bringing with it the usual wind and rain.

Over here, it got windier toward later Sunday evening. And then as I was preparing my bed for sleeping, the room suddenly went dark. A brownout! Good thing I had gotten dressed for bed and had put away all my things! But I no longer had my electric radio/alarm clock to wake me up early the next morning so I had to set both my battery-operated desk clock and my cellphone to go off at 6:30a.m. the next day (Monday).

The winds had died down and power restored however by the time I woke up: the digital display on my electric alarm clock was showing 3:38a.m. so I figured that the power got back on around 3a.m. In a way, I was relieved that I could go on with my classes that day and not worry about having to schedule make-up classes. (There was just a short power interruption soon after noon that briefly interrupted my lecture that time.)

With Mitag finally out of the picture, I thought there was nothing else to worry about the weather. But I was wrong: there was a typhoon which had days earlier passed through the Visayas and was on its way to wreak havoc on Vietnam when just like Mitag, it paused just before hitting land. Then it did something that I've seen only one or two typhoons in my lifetime do: it made a u-turn and headed back toward the country! This time it headed for Mindoro . So when Tuesday afternoon came along the rain began to pour here again. The bad weather lasted through the night as well (it was nightmare driving home in the pouring rain from work that afternoon) and abated by Wednesday morning whereupon then my 8am class fell victim to a 30-minute power interruption on campus. Ah well. At least the brownout didn't last all day and it got sunny again later in the day. That evening, temps here in my room got back to around 27c.

But the weather wasn't done with its surprises: Thursday turned out to be an unexpectedly gloomy day: The sky was overcast and no sunshine broke through the clouds all day. Consequently, temps "dropped" (I'm putting it in quotes because it's not the same as the way temps really drop in the temperate countries) and by evening, it was 25C again my room--and "dropping". I subsequently had to put on my long pyjamas aside from my nightgown to stay warm while sleeping overnight. I also got to drink warm apple cider! Mmmmm!

Friday was even cooler although the sun was out for short periods of time. Temps here in my room hovered around 25C during the day and "dropped" to 24C in the evening. Wheee! It's never been that comfy here before. Online weather websites showed that temperature readings outside were probably two or three degrees lower than that.

And today was just as cool; just the perfect weather. I hope it continues until the coming Christmas holidays!

The "calm" before the storm

With the memory of last year's disaster brought on by super typhoon Milenyo still fresh in people's minds, the whole country's been in a generally chaotic state in anticipation of another typhoon expected to hit the country over the weekend.

Late last week, PAGASA had forecast that this new typhoon (Mina/Mitag) would be making landfall in the Bicol region and then would pass through the lower portion of the Southern Tagalog region, particularly over the islands of Masbate and Mindoro. Our president even cut short her visit to Singapore in order to come rushing home to oversee preparations in the regions to be affected by the typhoon: people were moved to evacuation centers, billboards taken down, etc.

Here at home I simply prepared for another long power outage: I made sure that my jug of water (for brushing teeth) in the bathroom was full and that my pail was full of water (for flushing the toilet and for washing) as well. I tried to eat as much of the ice cream in our freezer as I could: I didn't want to leave any leftover to melt during the power outage. We also considered going to mass Saturday afternoon in case the weather became too stormy for us to go out this (Sunday) morning. (We eventually didn't when we later found out that the storm wasn't going to make landfall overnight.)

And so we waited for the weather to deteriorate further and for electricity to get cut off once it got dangerously windy.

In the meantime, I constantly checked the PAGASA website for the latest bulletins on the typhoon's progress. I also watched for the latest weather news on television. Curiously, the international news networks and another weather website (tropicalstormrisk.com) presented an entirely different forecast: that the typhoon would be traveling northwest and cross the northern tip of Luzon. Weird.

But surprise! The typhoon remained stationary for practically the whole day yesterday. Now, isn't that the perfect typhoon? I know typhoons are notorious for unexpectedly changing course. This one apparently hasn't even made up it's mind!

Anyway, with the typhoon staying put somewhere over the Pacific Ocean, the weather yesterday and for most of today remained calm and mostly cloudy. Why, even the sun took a peek through the clouds yesterday morning, just enough for our cat to enjoy a bit of sunbathing in our backyard. It still remained unusually cool throughout the day though; temperatures hovered around 25C here inside my room. It's usually 28-30C at this time of the year.

And then suddenly late yesterday, PAGASA changed it's forecast: the typhoon was now to travel in the northwest direction toward Central Luzon and Northern Luzon.

Hmmm. I felt that there was something really fishy here. I found it strange that PAGASA stuck to its old forecast for so long when all other weather forecasts were saying otherwise. It seems that the previous forecast was made in order to give certain provincial government officials an excuse to declare a state of calamity in their respective provinces/regions and receive funds as a result.

Anyway, I suppose the typhoon will finally make landfall tonight albeit way up north of us. The wind began to pick up a bit only early this evening even if typhoon signal no. 1 had been declared over this area since Friday.

We shall have to wait and see what the weather will be overnight and tomorrow morning.

A new book and an old car battery

I got a bit of a surprise today: the book on St. Therese's last conversations that I had ordered through St. Joseph's Thesaurus three weeks ago arrived.

I was a bit embarrassed though because the Carmelite brother who watches the shop was the one who personally brought the book to my office. I had been expecting an e-mail notifying me of the book's arrival with instructions saying where I could pick up the book. Anyway, I gratefully received the package and thanked the young fellow for the special delivery.

He also told me that the other book was arriving sometime next week. That's something to look forward to!

---

I also received another but less pleasant surprise later in the day when I was about to leave work.

As usual, I put my bags and other things on the front passenger seat then sat down in the driver's seat, inserted the car key into the ignition and turned it. As I was about to pull the seat belt across my front, I noticed something amiss: the dashboard lights had not turned on. Thinking that I had not yet turned the key, I tried turning it. But no, I had already turned it and yep, no dashboard lights at all!

That's when it occurred to me that the car battery was probably dead! But why? Did I leave my headlights on? I had turned on my parking lights when I drove to work in the morning because it was pouring. Maybe I had forgotten to turn them off when I shut off the engine when I arrived at work. Or maybe I turned the lights on by mistake thinking I had turned off the windshield wipers. I was so confused that I couldn't recall twiddling with any of the switches then. Oh well, whatever the cause was there was nothing I could do now but call home and ask somebody to come and pick me up.

So I ran back to the office and managed to get our utility worker to open the main office where the telephones were. I called home and told my father what happened. He said that maybe I had left the gearshift on drive. I told him, no, I was sure it was on park. Anyway, he said the battery terminals probably needed cleaning and that he was coming over in our other car to help.

I went back outside and waited beside my car, hoping my father would also bring along the new battery that he bought last year yet with the intention of replacing the old one in my car. I somehow knew that the car battery was really dead and needed replacing.

My father finally arrived after a good 45 minutes--I guessed that it took time to get together the necessary tools and paraphernalia--by which time it was already dark.

I first showed him what happens when I turn the ignition key. This time the dashboard lights came on but they were very dim and flickered. He decided to try cleaning the terminals hoping that would clear up the problem.

We opened the car hood and I held the flashlight he brought with him while he cleaned the car battery terminals which we found were not corroded at all. (He had his tools in a cute little bayong that he salvaged from an food basket gift we received a few Christmases ago.)

Anyway, we tried the ignition again but the lights were still dim. So okay, that meant that the battery was probably really dead.

My father then removed the old battery and replaced it with the new one that he had put in the trunk of our other car along with a pair of jumper cables. Once again, I held the flashlight while my father connected the cables to the new battery.

Just then, it started to drizzle!

As soon as the new battery was secured and connected, I ran over to the driver's side to try the ignition. The dashboard lights came on bright and steady! I turned the key one more time and to my relief the car engined started.

What timing: the drizzle was quickly turning into rain as we hurriedly put away the tools and closed the car hood. I managed to yell my thanks to my father as the raindrops got bigger and rattled on the car roofs and we both got into our cars. Then we drove home.

Fifteen minutes had passed since my father arrived to help.

Remembering that we had similarly found the car battery in our other car dead one morning several weeks ago (my mother was leaving for work but the car refused to start), I later asked my father if car batteries really just go kaput without any warning. He told me that the old ones didn't used to but that the new ones were known to do so.

Now, isn't that cheery thought? (Of course, I'm just being sarcastic here.) I just hope I don't get stranded again somewhere when that happens with this new car battery!

A visit to the old library

This afternoon I decided to check out the university library for books that I might list as references for the courses I am teaching this school term. That wasn't the only reason. Having relied mainly on my own books as well as books available in our department's reading room, I had not been to the university library for nearly ten years and was therefore also very curious to see what it was like after all this time.

Actually I wasn't expecting much. For the lack of support from the government and alumni, our university library has been low on funds that are necessary to purchase new books, maintain subscriptions to scientific journals and keep the collection updated as a whole. As a result, the library has become more of an archive of old outdated books and journals instead of the a state-of-the-art library that one usually expects of a university library. And this was true even when I was a student: I remember browsing through books published in the 60s and 70s when I had to do research for some project or homework.

Anyway, after trudging up the hill to the library building, I entered the building and was disappointed to find that the place was no longer cooled using a central air-conditioning system. Instead there were several electric stand fans placed in strategic locations that did little to ventilate the vast floor space. The heat wasn't so bad then since there were hardly any students around--which in itself was a shock to me. But I suppose most had already gone home for the weekend since only a few classes were scheduled on Fridays nowadays. In any case, I still wondered how warm it would be if the place was filled with students browsing through the collection and sitting on the old familiar library desks.

There was a slight improvement though in the library's services: there were computer terminals placed on long high desks for people to browse through the library's online card catalogue. Still, I noticed that most students continued to use the old card catalogue that stood at one side of the room. Perhaps only the most recent acquisitions were included in the online database.

I looked up the call numbers of a few books I was interested in then proceeded to look through the shelves. There I was not surprised to find that there were hardly any new books: Nearly all books I found on the shelf were published at least ten years ago. Come to think of it, while browsing through books looking for references for my courses, I don't think I ever came across a book published in the last five years. Nevertheless, I decided to take note of a few that my students might find useful at least as a sources of additional examples and exercises.

I was pleased though to find a book on a field that I was interested in and wanted to know more about. Yes, it was old just like the rest but I thought it might at least be useful for brushing up on the subject.

After several minutes of not finding anything else that I might want to borrow, I went up to the circulation counter and asked to apply for a borrower's card. I was made to fill up an application card and show my ID for verification purposes.

Then a funny thing happened: the library staff at the counter couldn't find a single blank borrower's card for faculty members. He sifted through papers in his desk drawer and found a few but none were printed properly. He consulted another staff member who also went through his things. Still, they couldn't find the right borrower's card, only the usual ones for undergraduate students and for graduate students. They eventually went to someone who seemed like their supervisor who went through several more drawers and filing cabinets.

All the while, I was wondering if I might be in fact the first faculty member to apply for a borrower's card for years. Perhaps the university's faculty members seldom visited the library itself (indeed, I didn't spot any other faculty member at the library then) and relied on the more updated collections found in the different reading rooms. Or else, many got their materials directly from the Internet. Ah, how times have changed. But what a pity. That's probably the reason why many are unaware of the poor state of the university library.

In any case, after a good ten minutes the library staff finally found a borrower's card in an old pile stashed somewhere and gave it to me to fill up.

It was then that another thing struck me: the library's borrowing system was woefully outdated itself. I had been to many libraries elsewhere in the world where books were bar-coded and simply scanned along with a the borrower's ID to complete a book borrowing transaction. Here, it was still the old manual borrower's card system.

Ah, well. One will just have to make the most of what is available and what the university can afford.

New leadership adjustments

Our department has had a new director for a month and a half now. But that's basically the only change in the department's organizational hierarchy because the rest of us who were appointed to administrative positions in the department by the previous director were retained.

I think it's a most practical step for a new director not to appoint new "cabinet members". Making the least or no changes at all would make the transition from the old to the new administration much smoother management-wise. Each of us has been at our respective positions for three years (the length of the term of a department head) and have already become familiar with the current university administration's policies and procedures. But we would have to adjust to our new director's management style as well.

In my case, I suddenly found myself already having to explain a few things to this new boss about matters related to registration and a lot of other things we usually have to do at the beginning of each school term.

Then when he was informed that it is required of each department to justify teaching load assignments of its teaching staff, he apparently took it upon himself to write the letter to the university official concerned with such things. In the past, my old boss would delegate that responsibility to me. I would have to prepare the supporting documents as well according to the university administration's specifications.

So I had been struggling to work on the latter yesterday--lots of interruptions as usual--and was about to start writing the letter with our justification this morning when our new director suddenly showed up at my office with his letter with some supporting documents attached. (I don't mind at all that my new boss wrote the letter himself. That way, the university officials will contact him and not me in case they have questions. He-he.) But when I looked through the attachments, it dawned on me that our director wasn't aware that supporting documents had to follow a specific format and I had to tell him so. I assured him however that I was almost done with the required supporting documents (in the correct format) and would be able to hand them to him within an hour.

At that point, I realized that this was just one of the few things about our new director that I'd have to adjust to.

My old boss was rather fond of delegating a lot of work to supporting administrative staff but was still very much a hands-on type of administrator. She would be constantly dropping by checking on progress, making suggestions and sometimes providing input herself. She was fond of calling meetings among us with administrative positions to update us and discuss issues taken up at the meetings held among different department heads in our college.

On the other hand, while this new director of ours similarly would delegate work to others he had less of a micro-management style and appeared to be more output-oriented. He would choose to leave it up to us to work things out by ourselves and then inquire only in the end about the results. And instead of calling meetings, he would rely on emails to send us information. (Whenever I'd peep into his office, I'd always find him sitting at his PC staring intently at the screen and busy typing up something.)

It will be interesting to see how things would work out in the next three years under this new boss.

Missing the signs

I've probably been approached by the third time this past week by a student who apparently was not aware of the new set of requirements we had made for working on a final project.

Since the teaching staff had decided on the new set of requirements before the last school term, we had to make the students aware of this. So I hung several posters around the building before the registration period then to announce the new requirements. One particular requirement I was anxious for the students to know was that they needed to present a proposal before this school term registration period before they can be allowed to enroll in the final project course.

To my satisfaction, students who planned to work on their final project for the coming academic year read my announcements and were able to meet up with their supervisors to work on a proposal. This is why we had that one day of proposal presentations last week.

Unfortunately, there were a handful of students who probably don't make it a habit to read the announcements posted on our bulletin boards. And these were the ones who approached me days after we were done with the proposal presentations. By that time it was of course too late. We had made it very clear that they had to present a proposal by last Tuesday.

It mystifies me how they could have missed any of the announcements I posted. I had one on my door, another at the bulletin board where we always post announcements about final projects, another on the corkboard outside our main entrance and a few more on each of the corkboards just outside out lecture halls.

For me not reading those posters was completely inexcusable. After all, the rest of their classmates didn't miss seeing those posters. So why did they?

Replaced by machines?

The Computer History Calendar gadget on my iGoogle page featured the following quote today:

The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers.
-- Sydney J. Harris, American journalist.

When I read that, the following thought came to me: Perhaps another real danger is that men will leave the thinking to computers.

It has long been the lament of high school and grade school teachers that the arithmetic skills of their pupils have declined since the invention of portable electronic calculators.

I for one believe that I myself have also fallen victim to the advancement of technology. I remember well when I had to use typewriters to type out my reports in high school as well as in college. Back then one had to be careful when typing, to strike the keys in the correct order and to watch out when you're about to reach the end of the line. Nowadays, word-processing software take care of justification and automatically insert a carriage return. Incorrectly typed words are corrected on the fly as well. For instance, I often mistype "the" as "teh". Unfortunately, that bad habit will probably go uncorrected because I will continue to type "teh" but the software will always replace that with "the".

With that I certainly hope my mental faculties won't be (at least further) diminished by the convenience of computers and smart software.

This blog's readability

Hey! You need to be doing postgrad work to understand this blog. Ha ha ha.

Yesterday I was checking a blog where one of the posts showed off the blog's readability. I decided to try it out just for fun for both my blogs. As I already said, this one received a College reading level rating. Curiously, it rated the reading level of my Federer blog as "Genius". I think though that its rather appropriate: you need to be a genius to read about a genius.

I really wonder what criteria it uses to rate a blog or profile's reading level as I've noticed that it gave rather well-written blogs I read a "High School" or "Grade School" reading level. The website does claim that the tool works for most websites.

Still, I'm curious.

Old homes via mail

One of the blogs I subscribe to via Google Reader is Interesting Thing of the Day. Given my love for trivia, I find the varied topics discussed there, well, interesting.

Recently, the topic was on the mail-order homes offered by Sears during the early part of the 20th century. (Goodness, saying that makes it seem so long ago.) While it was entertaining to read about the logistics entailed by mail-ordering a home during those times, I was more curious about the house designs then.

So I visited the archived Modern Homes Sears website hoping to see floor plans of the Modern Homes that were offered and was amused but not surprised to note some common features of the houses back then:

• As expected, the kitchen layout didn't indicate the presence of a refrigerator until the later models. Pantries appeared to be the standard instead in the early models.
• Some models didn't have a living room per se but rather a parlor (is this a Britishism for living room?).
  
• Cooking ranges appeared to be rather large. I think they were still using wood stoves as today's gas stoves were most probably unknown at that time and electricity was a luxury? (Sorry, I'm not an expert in this area.) The description of one house (The Wabash, Model Nos. 248) in fact explains that "Under the work table [in the kitchen] is a fuel box which can be filled once a week. The ashes drop from the stove through an iron pipe to the concrete ash bin beneath the floor."
• Long continuous kitchen counters didn't seem to be the norm either. There would be a sink with just enough counter space for dishes, a work table, the aforementioned range and a cupboard or two.
• Bathrooms were optional particularly in the smallest houses. The main page explains that "An outhouse could be purchased separately...". If ever a bathroom was present some floor plans, particularly that of the early models in the 1900's to 1920's, seem to indicate the old free-standing footed bathtubs rather than the fitted ones in use today and apparently introduced in the 1930's. Even then, each house was generally equipped with just one full bath. There was no such thing as a separate bath for the master bedroom which in itself was nonexistent as most rooms were simply labeled as bedrooms or chambers.
• There seemed to be greater variety in the architectural styles in the later models: a few houses featuring what I think is the Tudor style started to be introduced.
  

What I also found intriguing was a sentence in one of the descriptions that implied the imposed gender roles that was typical of that era:

From the screened porch you can enter direct to the combination dining room and living room without disturbing the women in the kitchen.

That statement seems to not only assume that women were relegated to the home and kitchen but also that it was a man who, being responsible for providing a roof over his family, was the one going through the sales catalog and likely the one as well to make the decision regarding the choice of a home.

Altogether, browsing through those floor plans provided me with a rare glimpse of the lifestyle a hundred years ago.

Trying to please everybody

I've already mentioned that one of my responsibilities at work was setting teaching assignments for our department for each school term.

This involves first of all deciding how many of each type of class (lecture or laboratory) each faculty member will be handling. This is a tough thing to do given the we are short of staff compared to the courses that we have to offer each school term. Most of the time, I have to make the painful choice as to who would have to handle more than the required normal teaching load.

The next thing I do is decide which courses will be handled by whom. In doing so, I naturally have to consider each faculty member's teaching preferences and, to a certain extent, qualifications to handle a course. As always, there are the very popular courses, which are those that most would prefer to teach, and then there are unpopular ones which are the courses nearly nobody wants to teach. (I happen to be handling a pair of courses that nobody else wants to teach and this is the main reason why I've been stuck with these two courses for nearly ten years now.) Most of the time, I get to assign to each faculty member the courses they would like to handle. But since somebody has to teach the unpopular courses and there are not enough sections for the popular courses for all those who want to teach them, I have to make another set of painful decisions regarding who would be forced to teach the unpopular courses and who cannot teach the popular ones.

Then the last thing I do when making these teaching assignments is assign specific lecture and laboratory sections to each faculty member so that the class schedules are not in conflict each other. While this is complicated as well and takes a few hours to do manually, this is not as big a hurdle as the one regarding teaching preferences.

Once all is done--and it sometimes takes me one or two days depending on how I get interrupted at work in the office--I finally release the teaching assignments to the rest of the teaching staff in the department.

And that is exactly what I did yesterday. I mailed everybody a copy of the teaching assignment and waited in my office for the first bomb to drop. And sure enough they started coming.

From those who were forced to teach the unpopular courses I got the expected howls of protest. But what can I do? I simply tell them to find somebody to swap courses/sections with if they really don't like what's given to them. There are those who also let me know that they don't like their schedules because they would like to have so-and-so day of the week free. So I tell them the same thing I tell the latter group: find somebody to swap sections with. Others are more resigned and accept what is given to them. But generally to those who are unhappy with their teaching assignments I just have to step back and wash my hands of the matter because I've done what I can do.

Besides, I've tried handing over the responsibility to others but they've all refused. They all understand that it is after all a very tough job trying to please everybody.

A very brief meeting

Yesterday I received a note saying that I had to attend a meeting this morning to present one of our curricular revisions to a the committee who is in-charge of evaluating such things before it is passed on to other committees higher up in the administrative hierarchy of the university.

As the meeting was set at 9am, I once again showed up at work earlier than usual to attend to other matters before I left. Then after posting a note on my door on my whereabouts and letting our department secretary know that I wouldn't be around for the next hour or so, I set off walking at around 8:50am to the venue which was at a building about a couple of minutes away.

Upon arriving there, I was shown to the conference room. To my surprise and slight irritation, I found the place empty: I was the very first to arrive there. Knowing that I would be wanted back at my office to sign papers as usual, I hoped that the members of the committee would arrive soon so that we could get the meeting over and done with. After all, we only had three short curricular proposals to discuss.

[This so-called Filipino time where Filipinos generally arrive very late for meetings or gatherings is one of my pet peeves. I recall being asked to be piano accompanist to a group for a particular event. I would always show up a good ten minutes before scheduled rehearsals to set up my keyboard and other paraphernalia. But the the group's members would always arrive half an hour late. I was so irritated with having to waste so much time waiting that I refused to play for the group for subsequent events.]

After waiting for about 5 minutes, somebody finally did come. We had to wait for a few more minutes before the committee chair arrived. And then it took another ten minutes for two more committee members to arrive. Still, the meeting couldn't start yet because a quorum of five was needed.

Finally when it was apparent that nobody else would be arriving--it was a few minutes past 9:30am!--the committee chair decided to start. So we went through the usual procedure of taking up curricular proposals: I as resource person would present each proposed revision and the committee members would make comments. As expected, we were done in a mere ten minutes--which is a laugh, because it took more than twice that time to wait for everybody to come.

Anyway, we all made our quick goodbyes--the committee chair was just as anxious as I was to get back to his office to attend to registration matters--then I started my walk back to my office building. I had gone less than ten meters when I heard somebody calling to me. It was one of the staff at the office where we had the meeting: I still had to sign the attendance sheet and would I mind waiting for the snacks to arrive? It turns out that the office staff had ordered some sandwiches and drinks but our meeting was over so quickly that the snacks had not yet arrived by that time!

In the end, when the snacks did arrive a good twenty minutes later we all just grabbed a sandwich each and left the drinks to the office staff. (By the way, I had the sandwich for lunch.)

Stood up and harrassed

Yep. I got stood up today but it wasn't such a big deal. After all, it was just a "date" with a colleague to discuss a proposal to institute a new course. Haha.

This happens to be the third time our meeting had to be postponed. We had agreed to meet two Fridays ago but I fell ill in the morning and had to go home before lunchtime. Before I left though, we reset the meeting to the next Wednesday, 31 October. But when I dropped by his office on Tuesday to confirm that meeting, he said he couldn't be around because he was driving his mother to a province far up north to see her dying father. So we decided to have our meeting today and as it turns out, he apparently forgot about it.

I had reported to work early today in order to get some things done before our meeting which I believed would start around 10am since my colleague usually shows up at work around that time. But as the hours rolled by and my colleague remained absent, I decided that he had forgotten all about our meeting (my cellphone battery was dead so I couldn't contact him either) and turned my attention to other pressing matters I had on my to-do list. So it wasn't so bad that I got stood up.

Besides, I had important letters to write for various purposes to administration officials in relation to the coming registration period. I was also busy with setting teaching assignments for our teaching staff for the coming semester--which is one of the toughest tasks I've ever handled as we are don't have enough faculty members to handle all the courses we need to offer each school term.

In fact, I nearly didn't get those done as I was always being interrupted by a constant stream of students coming in to my office to see me for all sorts of reasons. A small percentage of these were students who were dismissed due to failing grades and needed my recommendation to back up their appeal for readmission. These cases take a lot of my time as I have to review their supporting documents and talk to each student before deciding whether I should recommend approval or disapproval of his/her readmission. Some of the students were those whose final projects I was supervising as well and it took some time as well to read drafts of their final papers before I could approve of them. Most of the students though who came simply needed my signature for all sorts of forms they had to accomplish for the coming registration period. While it doesn't take too much time for me to ask a few questions before affixing my signature on the forms, these brief interruptions can still be annoying as they usually break my train of thought when I'm especially working on something difficult--like making teaching assignments!

Sigh. Such is my life in between school terms.

Proposal presentations

Most of today was spent with a couple of colleagues at one of our lecture halls listening to students present proposals for their final projects. The main purpose of these presentations held at the beginning of each school term is for us to assess whether each student's proposed project is worth implementing as a final project.

As there are around a hundred students enrolled in our undergraduate degree program in each year and only a handful of instructors who can serve as project supervisors, this is a long and tedious process. We instructors are practically forced to sit nearly all day scanning written proposals for their main points and watching slide presentations while listening to the students explain what they plan to do.

The presentations provide one of a few opportunities for me to pick out students whom we might tap to join the teaching staff when they graduate. I'm usually pleasantly surprised to find some students who can prepare good slide presentations and explain concepts clearly in straight Filipino or English--a rarity these days when most people use a shockingly ridiculous mix of both languages.

On the other hand, I'm appalled that most are still unable to make a decent presentation. Instead of including just key words or phrases in their slides, they write entire paragraphs--often verbatim from their written proposals!--which they tend to read off the slide rather than expound on using their own words. (There was one student who did have phrases only on her slides but read right off her written proposal.) I sometimes wonder if they were ever taught the proper way to present a seminar in the required undergraduate seminar course which they were supposed to have taken last school term.

This disappointment together with the fact that listening to proposal presentations hours on end can be very wearying--we had lunch almost an hour late today--is what I don't like about this part of being a project supervisor in particular.

Nevertheless I find the exercise very enlightening and gratifying at the same time especially when students surprise me by coming up very much on their own with unique and unusual topics that I most probably would never have thought of.

Grand Tour 2007: Bringing art to the people

I was sort of bored yesterday: there was nothing that new to read on my Google Reader and I was pretty much done re-organizing my stuff here in my room. So I thought I'd check the television for a change and switched through channels yesterday in search of something interesting to watch.

That's when I saw something being shown on BBC that I found odd: a framed painting by Monet--or at least a full-scale facsimile of it--hanging not in a museum but on the outside wall of a building. And then came another, this time a portrait of Spain's King Philip IV by Velasquez hanging on some street corner apparently somewhere in London. A third was a magnificent painting of a famous horse named Whistlejacket by a painter named George Stubbs. Still another was a self-portrait by Rembrandt. Every time a new painting--each hanging on some wall out of doors--was shown a reporter came along to comment on it.

By this time, I was intrigued and couldn't resist looking up the Whistlejacket painting on the Internet (which is a habit of mine whenever I want to find out about something). That's when I learned about the National Gallery's (in London) Grand Tour 2007.

A press release by the Gallery about the special "exhibition" reads:

For twelve weeks, the streets of London are being turned into a Gallery - as around 30 full size recreations of National Gallery paintings are hung on the walls, in the most unexpected and unusual of places.

Masterpieces from Caravaggio to Constable will be vying for position among the bustling streets from Soho to Seven Dials. Celebrating the richness, diversity and stories of the National Gallery's permanent collection, the Grand Tour aims to encourage people to make the short journey to visit the genuine works, and many more, for free.

Each picture will be in a replica frame, and have an information plaque next to it - just as it has in the real Gallery. The plaques will also include a phone number, which people can call to access a specially recorded audio guide to that particular painting, and its artist.

Isn't that an wonderful concept? Although it's some sort of advertisement for the National Gallery's impressive art collection, it's an innovative way of introducing and educating the public about these masterpieces.

I wish they could do something similar here in this country to at least help familiarize our people with our local (professional) artists or even about classical music in general.

I've heard of the likes of Juan Luna, Felix Resurrecion Hidalgo and Fernando Amorsolo and have seen a few their paintings mainly in pictures in books or postcards and, in a few exceptional cases, in special art exhibits. But that's it. I think nearly the rest of their works are hidden in some expensive museum or remain unseen by the public in someone's private collection--which is a pity to say the least.

Plus I'm sure there are a lot more Filipino artists from the Spanish times whose body of work has been sadly lost or at best is virtually unrecognized nowadays. (I should know: My family's got a few intricately painted portraits whose creators are little known painters in the 1800's.)

Such art should be more accessible to the general public for it to be better appreciated as well as for the people to be more familiar with the long history of Filipino art.

Actually, I must be an old soul: I am partial to the neoclassic--not sure if that's the right term as I'm no art expert--works of Luna, et al., to that of the modern ones like those of Manansala, Baldemor or Sanso or those that I see on the covers of PLDT phone directories. And I think the younger generation is getting too much into the Japanese anime type of artwork, though I admire the style myself.

Anyway, I for one would love to see more of Hidalgo's paintings. I saw one of his portraits, that of an old friar, at the Bangko Sentral museum a couple of years ago and my jaw dropped at the sight. I never realized what a talented painter he was until then. In fact, after seeing that painting and a few more others at the same museum, I now prefer his style to Luna's.

A bright morning and lost in time

Just a couple of thoughts. (Ha ha. I suppose it's obvious I have a lot of time in my hands nowadays.)

---

First, I woke up this morning to find my bedroom bathed in sunlight filtering through the white curtains on my bedroom windows which were facing southeast. It was a wonderful sight. Such a thing happens only during this time of the year when the sun is low and angled to shine right through my windows in the morning.

I'm really glad that I decided to switch to white curtains after having boring peach-colored ones for more than a decade. Having white curtains definitely brightens up the room.

---

These breaks between school terms are a very welcome respite from the drudgery of teaching day in and day out. The only trouble is that I tend to lose track of time or what day of the week it is.

With Monday earlier this week being a holiday for instance, I was momentarily confused about what day it was yesterday when I reported to work. The different classes I would have each day of the week obviously served as some sort of time markers during the school term.

And this morning, I was slightly depressed to realize that today was already Thursday and that practically most of the week had gone by. I also began to wonder what I had done with all that time only to recall with some relief that at least I had spent it cleaning up my room and meeting with my numerous students at work. Thank God not everything had gone to waste!

At the hair salon

I decided to have my hair trimmed today and went to our usual hair salon early this afternoon, work being half day only today in anticipation of tomorrow's holiday (All Saint's Day).

It was about time to get my hair cut as I was starting to find it a bother to constantly put it up everyday now that wearing it in a ponytail didn't look that neat anymore. Plus, the increasing number of white hairs on my head--oh, horror of horrors!--would show all the more when I have my hair in a ponytail.

A typical visit at the hair salon usually begins with me being shown a chair and being asked how I want my hair done. After saying that I simply want it trimmed to just about shoulder-length (it extended to about eight inches below my shoulders today), I am made to walk over to the sink to have my hair shampooed.

Then it's back to the chair in front of the mirror where my hair gets cut. This takes about fifteen minutes followed by another fifteen minutes of drying my hair with a hair dryer.

The latter is what I least like about going to a hair salon here in this country because the people at the salon always insist on using a hot dryer (hello, damaged hair) and pull at my hair in an attempt to get rid of my natural curls.

I'm not really sure what it is about curly hair that people here have against. I suppose it's because straight hair usually looks neat and shiny, judging from the shampoo commercials that are produced here.

But then I wish that people at hair salons would refrain from constantly suggesting that I have my hair straightened. When I used to go to hair salons in the US, I was delighted to find that the ladies there would envy me my curly hair and never suggested that I have it straightened.

Besides, I actually find straight hair too boring and common for my taste.

I love my naturally curly hair so why can't the hair salon people here work with that instead of trying to change it?

Catholic book center revisited

Remember the little Catholic book center I visited about a month ago?

I dropped by again two weeks after that first visit to browse through a few more books and in particular read a little more of Celine Martin's My Sister, Saint Therese.

Soon after that second visit, I checked the Internet again to see if the books for sale on line were still available and was delighted to see that My Sister, Saint Therese and a few other new books had just been put up for sale. It was then that I decided to purchase the book myself so that I could read it at my leisure.

Given my hectic schedule at work in the past few weeks, I only got to drop by today around 4pm to inquire if I could order the book directly rather than online. Naturally, I was happy when the young fellow there informed me that it was possible and handed me an order form to fill up.

Then he mentioned that tomorrow would be the last day that the center would be open and that the center would be operating exclusively online from then on.

I was stunned. I had long feared that that would happen, seeing that hardly anybody visited the place. At the same time, I realized that it was a good thing that I had decided to drop by today to place my order instead of next week.

Anyway, while filling up the order form, I glanced at the bookshelves at the back of the shop and told him that it was pity because there were a lot of books there that I wanted to read. To my surprise, he said that the center might reopen, that it was closing only because there was no one available to keep watch since he couldn't be around because he was returning to the seminary.

I was slightly relieved upon learning this but just the same the thought that the shop would not be there whenever I felt like dropping by to read was depressing.

But at least I have the books I ordered--I also decided to order Saint Therese: Her Last Conversations--to look forward to. I was told that I would be contacted via email once the books were ready for pick-up. Now I simply can't wait for that day to come.

Cleaning, getting organized and taking stock

We're having another unusually long weekend: today was declared a holiday to allow people to go and vote during the barangay elections. Having no lecture notes or slides to prepare or review, I thought I'd take the opportunity to finally clear some things from my shelves here in my room and organize whatever is left.

I have a large open bookshelf here in my room that's filled with books, mainly books that I use for my work and books that I read for pleasure like novels, reference books and books on the Catholic faith. Although these were more or less organized, there were many books that I no longer referred to or read and thought should go into archive, i.e., stored in cabinets in the basement. Likewise, there were some books downstairs that I felt like reading again or else thought I would be referring to in the near future for my work. So with several trips up and down the spiral staircase (which I began doing yesterday evening), down went the old and useless books and up came the books I wanted to read. Several other books that I kept in another but smaller shelf in my room got moved up to the big one as well. I also managed to dust the shelves and clean out the accumulated dust with my trusty chamois cloth before putting the books back on the shelf.

There were also a few other articles that I happened to dump on the shelf because it was convenient to do so then. Deciding that I had finally to get rid of those--they were just collecting dust anyway--I dug up an old box and place all the bric-a-brac into the box and stashed the box away in one of the cabinets downstairs.

Now that I've moved and organized my books, I've just realized how many books I actually own. (Here, that is. I actually have more books that I left with my sister abroad plus I haven't considered the other books around that house that I could include in my collection.) By my estimate, if I stood all my books together in a single row, they would form a line more than twenty feet long. Considering that I also have my huge collection of CDs and a sizeable library of music books and sheet music, I don't think I can live in one of those tiny Tumbleweed houses anymore. Else, if I manage to do so, I'd need a separate shed for my books and CDs alone. So much for my hopes of living small!

A bit of crazy weather

This is the time of the year were we expect to get hit by a couple of powerful typhoons. We had one supertyphoon last year (Milenyo) followed by another pretty strong one (Reming). But as there seems to be some kind of a cycle where we get lots of strong typhoons in one year and hardly any the next, we're having some crazy weather this year as a substitute for those typhoons.

Most of last week was unusually cool and rainy or else gloomy at best. Just the perfect weather that makes you want to stay in bed longer and not get up for work. In fact, I would even find our pet cats--and that stray male cat on the front door mat --sleeping in late whenever I leave for work whereas they used to be up and impatient to go outside to see me off. People at the office took to parking their cars near the building rather than at the far end of the parking lot where there are lots of trees to provide shade.

Then suddenly on Friday, the sun came out. Cars were parked under the trees once again at the office. I had to turn on the electric fan here in my room to keep cool in the evening and was considering turning on my air-conditioning as well.

When Saturday came round, the morning was sunny but the rain came pouring down again in the late afternoon. By evening, the temperatures had dropped sufficiently for me not to use my electric fan again. My poor father started getting the sniffles, a common ailment when the body is unable to cope whenever the weather turns crazy like this. (I usually get the sniffles too but I suppose my immune system is up and running on high gear nowadays given that I'm no longer suffering from as much stress during this term break.)

The cool weather continued through the whole of Sunday but gave way a to another sunny warm spell this morning. Then again that was short lived when it became cloudy this afternoon (lucky for the man we hired to mow our lawn today) and it began to rain again early this evening.

This capricious type of weather is highly unusual here where in the past, it has remained hot, or else rainy but still balmy and humid, or else cool, always for weeks at a time. Instead it's like being abroad in the temperate countries like the US or in Europe where the large variations in temperatures day to day leave you guessing what the weather will be like the next day.

This now makes me wonder what kind of weather tomorrow will bring.

Seaching for sheet music and a shutdown

Late yesterday I decided to stroll back onto the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP) website after not dropping by for about a week and a half. I wanted to once again check out the latest uploads to see if there was anything that I might like.

As it usually takes a while for the main page to be fully downloaded and displayed on my browser, I read some other webpage on another browser tab in the meantime. When I returned to the tab where I had the IMSLP page loaded, I was momentarily surprised to find not the usual wiki-looking main page but just some plain text displayed on the screen. At first I thought that I had typed in the wrong URL. But no. There it was on the address bar, http://imslp.org.

Finally after recovering sufficiently from my initial confusion to read what was on the screen, I was shocked to realize that the website was no longer there. It turns out that the website's project leader had received legal threats from a classical music publishing firm regarding some uploaded material that was in public domain in Canada (where the IMSLP server is located) but protected by copyright terms in certain countries. In order to avoid the expenses of dealing with the issue, the project leader decided to simply shut down the site.

I tell you I was downcast after that discovery.

I love playing the piano and always look forward to the challenge of learning something new to add to my so-called repertoire even if it takes a long time since I rarely have the time to practice nowadays. (I reckon that if I got to practice daily, I'd be able to learn a new piece every one or two weeks, depending on the difficulty of the piece. But as I actually get to snatch about three hours of practice every two months--more or less, depending on how hectic things are at work--that rate is down to about one new piano piece a year.)

So it became a habit of mine to stock up on music pieces that I wanted to learn sooner or later. I naturally began looking for music books and sheet music in bookstores here but was only met with disappointment when I found that bookstores here generally don't stock up on classical music books or sheet music. Music stores that had shelves of classical music books were rare as well. I'd come across a store that labels itself a music store only to find musical instruments (mainly guitars and electronic keyboards) and pop sheet music. Classical music here seems be an extinct commodity.

Of course, it is an entirely different story abroad where there are many good music stores stocked with good classical music. I would come across one and upon entering, I'd feel like a kid let loose in a candy store with a blank cheque. But then, I can't afford to travel often and I can't stay forever in one country when I'm a resident in another.

This lack of a local reliable source of classical sheet music is the main reason why searching for new music on the web had been an on-and-off obsession in the past few years--especially after locating a few good websites with sheet music still in public domain.

And IMSLP happened to be one of those websites for the past several months.

Sigh. This feels like Sam the Record Man store closing shop all over again.

Editing papers

One of the many things I have to do at the end of each term here is to read and edit my thesis advisees' papers. As we often accept students to be our advisees based on what they will be working on for their thesis, I get students who vary in terms of writing skills as well as their capability to do quality work.

The most disappointing are those who simply have poor English writing skills. Their English grammar is atrocious while sentence structure is poor and at best awkward. I immediately recognize these types when after reading the first few opening paragraphs, I notice that I've made a dozen corrections on subject-verb agreement and verb tense. Often, they write sentences that mean something entirely different from what they mean to say. Or worse, there are sentences in which I can't figure out at all what they're trying to say. These are the students whose papers we teaching staff often call "hopeless", the ones whose papers I feel like rewriting entirely but know that I shouldn't or else it will no longer be the student's own work. In these cases, I make corrections on the first few paragraphs and simply tell the student to check the grammar for the rest of the paper. Or if I'm in a patient enough mood, I make corrections on the entire paper, by which time the paper is filled with slashes, arrows, carets and admonitions to "Rewrite!" written in red gel ink.

The more frustrating types are those who are pretty much capable of writing well in English but who are just lazy or don't care much about turning out quality work. These are the ones who write the shortest of explanations and descriptions, don't pay attention to indention or spacing between paragraphs and make careless mistakes like typographical errors. (Actually, I already notice this poor regard for quality when they present their thesis work to me and I can see that everything has apparently been done and put together haphazardly.) Obviously they simply slapped together ideas into a paper and didn't proofread before submitting the paper to me for my review and comments. Sometimes I end up giving the student a short sermon on how poor work will not likely be tolerated once they get a job and that even so, they should make it a habit to pay attention to quality this early.

Of course, the most satisfactory are the students who can both write acceptably well and do quality work. It is especially pleasing if the student has not received exceptional grades for his/her coursework but has still shown through thesis work that he/she carries out tasks with care and dedication. Every detail in their thesis work and thesis paper indicate that everything was thought out carefully. And although they still make mistakes in writing their thesis papers, these are the types with whom you can discuss making improvements at a higher level and not worry about not seeing the final draft before they make a final copy of their thesis paper.

Naturally, one would always like to work with students of the third type above. They cause the least headache at stressful times like these. But it is nevertheless rewarding to work with the other types and do your best to guide them in the hopes of helping them be better prepared for a career after graduation.

How's that again?

You know how sometimes people say something without thinking. (Reader's Digest is filled with such anecdotes.) Or in the case of most Filipinos, say something in English without realizing what it actually means. Here are just a few instances from my own experience:

• Years ago, my family invited my beloved piano teacher over to lunch at an exclusive restaurant after which we returned to my grandparent's house to chat. Since my elderly grandmother and my piano teacher's mother grew up in the same town, the two were eagerly exchanging stories about friends and relatives. Then my piano teacher asked my grandmother how she was related to so-and-so who also came from the same province. When my grandmother replied that he was a distant cousin, my piano teacher exclaimed, "Really? I thought he was your nephew or something. I didn't know he was that old!" [My piano teacher instantly clapped a hand over his mouth although my grandmother didn't seem to have noticed anything wrong with what he said.]
• I read in a newspaper probably a little more than a year ago this article about a well-known broadcast journalist who had just given birth to her and her husband's first child, a daughter. The brand new mother was being interviewed about her experiences as a first-time mom and the article actually quoted her as saying, "Malunggay is an excellent source of mother's milk." [And all the while I thought she was advocating breastfeeding. Haha.]
  
• Just earlier, I saw on television a local talk show hosted by another prominent broadcast jouranalist. As the current show focused on the recent explosion in Makati, a couple of victims of the blast were invited over for an interview. One was a lady who appeared to be in her early 30s and had suffered a few cuts on her left hand and arm. She was recalling (in English) that she was in Glorietta 3 with a friend when the explosion occurred. When asked in which direction she heard the noise, the lady replied, "I heard the blast come from my behind." Now, that's proof that the tragedy was not due to a bomb but rather by a "gas explosion"! [My guess is that she literally translated "galing sa likod ko."]
  

Final grade reactions

Like I mentioned previously, I'm just about done with the current school term. The past week has been spent giving final exams, grading final exams and computing final standings. And so it was with great relief that I finally posted the final grades of my students in the various courses I teach.

Since I post the grades on the corkboard nailed to my office door, I can overhear my students' reactions to their grades as well as to their classmates' grades. Often what they say add to the little entertainment I get each day at work--one of the few things I enjoy about these end-of-term periods. You get those who go absolutely hysterical when they learn that they had just about passed the course. I can hear exclamations of disappointment from those whose standing went down due to a poor final exam showing. Some obviously scan the entire list to see what the others got because I can hear a few wonder aloud who it was who got that unbelievably high score in the finals. Or else some are aghast to see that many failed the course. (I believe these are not my students but rather those who are planning to take the course in the future and want to get an idea of how easy or difficult the course is.)

What I dread though are students who received a failing and come into my office to beg me (which is against the University code, by the way) to give them a passing grade, often asking me to give them some extra project to do to make up for the deficit. I get a multitude of reactions as well when I, of course, refuse to change their grades. I've had one, like many others in the past, look totally downcast and eventually break down in tears as she left my office. On the other extreme, a few bounce in with smiles on their faces and bounce out almost just as cheerfully. I suppose these students make going through college as some kind of a game: take a course and see what happens. Most though, after listening to why I can't change their grades (an unnecessary explanation if you think about it) or else seeing what contributed to their failing grade (often extremely low scores in the exams or quizzes), appear to accept their fate more calmly and with a heavy sigh leave the office. A few take a more optimistic outlook and look forward to re-enrolling the course hoping to do better.

When you're feeling blue, just watch the cockatoo

This video made my day. I first came across a link to a shorter version in a recent blog post at the Mental Floss website before looking it up at YouTube. The description of the video there reads:

Snowball is an Elanora Cockatoo that dances to the Back Street Boys. He came to the Bird Lovers Only Rescue a couple of months ago and is a joy. Visit us at www.birdloversonly.org

Music is truly a universal language. Even animals "get it".

P.S.
Oooh...it turns out that this is my 100th post here.

Monday treats

The school term is winding down and I'm nearly done with giving lectures to my different classes. More and more of my time at the office is now spent grading quizzes, recording scores, double checking my class records and making exams and less on preparing lecture notes and presentation slides. In other words, things are not as hectic as they usually are--at least for the time being before there are once again exams to grade and grades to compute.

Anyway, since I normally have a class at 1pm, I would go out to buy lunch as early at 11:30am to beat the lunch crowd, But today having given my last 1pm lecture last week, I remained at my desk longer than usual before leaving to buy lunch at nearly 12:30pm. I got myself a chicken fillet sandwich with coleslaw and dalandan juice from KFC and two Mister Donuts chocolate doughnuts. One of the doughnuts turned out to be a surprise: it was sprinkled with cinnamon. Yum yum. I had not tasted cinnamon for ages. (The other was rolled in crushed peanuts.)

Then later in the afternoon, I heard the excited voices of some our younger staff outside in the hallway. After popping my head outside my door to see what was going on, I learned that ice cream was being served at the office kitchen. A couple of our instructors were celebrating their birthdays and were treating the rest of us to ice cream. There was palitaw as well and I got some to bring home for desert after dinner.

The cat on the mat

For a long time now our house has been used by a few cats in the neighborhood for hanging out. We have two cats of our own but they appear not to mind sharing their territory with strangers. Lately, there's this cat who apparently enjoys lying down our front doormat. I've noticed that he stays there nearly all day during weekends (I'm at work during weekdays so I don't know if this is true on weekdays as well) and only disappears around sunset, perhaps to go hunting or have dinner at his real owner's place. I've seen him around before, particularly sleeping on top of a pile of newspapers in our garage but I suppose he feels freer to roam around our backyard now that we no longer have a dog.

Anyway, I decided to take a picture of this visitor of ours earlier today and here it is. He's got a funny expression on his face because he was apparently annoyed when I woke him up as I approached to take the picture.

A week with a back ache

It's been more than a week since I hurt my back and I'm glad that I'm nearly back to normal. I thought that I would be okay after just a few days because last time I hurt my back (which was I think a couple of years ago) the pain and stiffness were gone after a day. But that was probably because my mom contacted our doctor and he prescribed me an anti-inflammatory drug which did the trick. This time around, I opted to skip consulting a doctor (I'd have to spend a long time sitting down anyway waiting to see one) and taking any medicine and so ended up being uncomfortable for a week.

Like I said last time, I would be rarely free of pain. I thought for a while that I needed to keep moving to get rid of the pain but that only made it worse and I eventually decided it best to take things a step at a time and take the slow but sure road to recovery. In fact I thought I was already all right come Monday morning that I opened the garage door myself (everyone else was still asleep and not around to help anyway) so that I could bring out the car. That turned out to be a bad idea because my back ached all day after that.

I would be especially stiff after sitting down for a long periods of time whether at my desk, computer or in the car driving to and from work. I read somewhere though that not sitting up straight puts less strain on one's back. So I'd try "slouching" with my back at the prescribed 135-degree angle instead of sitting up straight and strangely enough, it works. (That's how I spent most of yesterday afternoon as I graded papers.) For a while, I also thought that by standing up instead of sitting down, I would be less likely to feel pain. But I found that I was wrong particularly when my back would feel so tired after giving an hour-long lecture. (I wonder if my students ever noticed that I wasn't walking as briskly as I used to or that I seemed to move around like an old woman.) And then I'd had to sit down to "rest" my back, which I already knew didn't really rest my back. After also finding out that I was stiffer than ever after sleeping flat on my back, I also ended up sleeping in bed at night with my pillows piled up so that I was half sitting (again with my back slightly at a 135-degree angle). But at least after a few nights of a good night's sleep, I was starting to feel much better and less stiff. I also slowly started doing a few stretching exercises to get rid of the stiffness.

And so now, I don't feel pain too often and I can bend at my waist and not feel too stiff. My back still feels tired after sitting down but at least it isn't as bad as it used to be. I even got to spend three hours practicing piano late yesterday and today. I suppose I'd get so carried away playing that I forget all about the pain. Of course, my back is a little painful now but it's the first time it's been painful all day which is sort of a good thing, right? So I'm truly relieved and thankful that I'm getting over this back pain business and do so look forward to a week with lesser back pain.

Monday morning surprise

I woke up this morning as usual to get ready for work: took a shower, got dressed then had breakfast. As it was a Monday morning, I was the only one up at that time and my parents were still fast asleep. After brushing my teeth, I had to go back to the kitchen to get something. As I was about to pass through our dining room, I happened to look out our glass sliding doors that opened out into our screened rear terrace with its view of our backyard.

There I noticed were several birds either perched on the branches of some our plants or on the clotheslines my father had put up the week before. There were also several just standing around on the pebble-washout surface of our terrace.

I don't know what species of birds these were but when there was a rectangular tub filled with water placed just outside our rear terrace to catch the water leaking from a hole in one of our roof gutters, several birds used to come in the morning to the tub for a bath. It was amusing to watch them test the waters (the tub being much deeper than a traditional bird bath) before diving in for a quick bath. Each bird had its own "technique" of diving in. From their perch on the rim of the tub, some would jump in and flutter their way out back to part of the rim from where they came. Others opted to jump into the water and instead make a right-angled turn to the adjacent rim.

Anyway, that was a long time ago. Now the tub is gone because the hole in the roof gutter has been mended and I was sorry to no longer see the birds come visit especially because of our cats which we now let out into our garden. That's why the sighting this morning was so unexpected and particularly welcome. I counted at least ten birds there and they stayed around for a little over ten minutes before flying off one by one to the chico trees.

It was a nice way to start another busy week.

Spending the weekend with a backache

It seems that I spoke too soon when I said I thought that I exceptionally healthy for my age: yesterday morning, I carried my laundry basket with my dirty clothes to the laundry area. As I bent down to put the basket down on the floor, I felt a sudden sharp pain in my lower back. Alarmed, I stood up straight right away and immediately regretted that I didn't take care to bend down the correct way, that is, bend at the knees rather than by the lower back. Anyway, I didn't feel any more pain then and was hopeful that no major damage was done. But I felt stiff as I began to walk around and especially after sitting down even for a few minutes. And so it was for the rest of the day which was rather inconvenient because I practically do work sitting down whether at my desk or at my PC in my office. (Curiously though, after spending half an hour sitting down reading books at the Catholic book center I mentioned last time, I didn't feel any pain or stiffness at all as I left the place to walk back to my office.)

I'm still as stiff as ever today especially after sitting down. Lying down flat on my back does bring a little relief (at least it used to when my back would feel tired) but I found that I felt no pain at all if I remained standing. Perhaps sitting down means bending my back at the point where I injured it hence the stiffness upon standing up. Anyhow, I can't stay too long here at my laptop surfing or writing this post for my blog and so will have to log off soon. I hope I will be much better tomorrow since I brought home something to do from work, was looking forward to practicing some piano this weekend and have mass (with all the sitting, standing and kneeling to do) to attend tomorrow morning.

A little Catholic book center

About a month or two ago, I noticed a poster at the local shopping mall advertising a Catholic book center called St. Joseph's Thesaurus located in the same shopping mall. I was at once interested in checking it out because I especially love reading saint biographies and other Catholic books.

Indeed I did get to check it out a few days after that and found it to be more of a reading room rather than a book shop. The small room had a couple of shelves at the back and a few tables with chairs for reading. From where I stood outside the glass door, I could recognize a few of the books on the shelves: they were a compilation of saint biographies by Ann Ball and published by TAN books. Having a fair-sized collection of TAN books myself (mostly purchased from Goodwill Bookstore over a five year period starting a decade ago when that bookstore was doing well), this peaked my interest all the more. But there were no people inside except for a shopkeeper sitting behind a counter near the door and I was too shy to go inside. Besides, it was a weekday and I had to return to work, having just gone out to buy lunch.

It was only this noon after lunch when I thought I had the time to drop by and spend some time reading. To my dismay, there was a sign posted on the counter saying that there was a charge of Php25 (Php20 for students) for reading. But never mind. Here was a chance to relax even for just a short while and read books I've wanted to read for a long time. So I went in and greeted the shopkeeper who directed me to the shelves at the back. I timidly walked down to the back and looked through the titles. To my joy, nearly all the books were published by TAN books and there were even some (like Celine Martin's My Sister Saint Therese and Joan Carroll Cruz's Angels & Demons) that I had longed to purchase but couldn't. (I was slightly disappointed to not see the biography of the Cure d'Ars by the Abbe Francis Trochu but as this was just a reading room and not a TAN book shop, I wasn't--and shouldn't be--surprised.) Goodwill Bookstore had stopped stocking up on the books and I couldn't buy the ones available through the TAN Books website simply because I didn't have a dollar credit card account. Sigh. Anyway, this little book center was therefore a dream come true for me. Here I was with most of the TAN books I've wanted to have right before me. And so I contentedly spent the next half an hour or so reading a few saint biographies and browsing through a few others I had been eying. One funny thing happened: when I got the second volume of Ann Ball's Modern Saints to browse through, I found myself face-to-face with a picture of the Cure d'Ars, my favorite saint. It was totally unexpected as I thought modern saints referred to saints who lived in the late 1800's and in the 1900's. (In the meantime, the shopkeeper I noticed had been reading St. Teresa de Avila's Interior Castle which he later returned to the shelf. Then I saw that he began reading a Bible and I could hear some Gregorian chants being played on a small CD player.)

It took some time before I could tear myself away from that bookshelf and walk up to the front counter to pay my reading fee. When the shopkeeper told me that it costs just Php20 for students, I realized that I did look like one as I was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt. I just replied that I wasn't a student and proceeded to dig out Php5 coins to pay the fee. The smallest bills I had in my wallet were Php100 bills and seeing that the place was rarely visited didn't expect that the shopkeeper would have any change. I handed the coins over and inquired who owned the place and if the books were imported. The young fellow said that his aunt owned the place and that, yes, they had to import the books. At that I said my thanks and left.

When I got back at my office and after a short search through the World Wide Web, it turns out that the shopkeeper was most probably a Discalced Carmelite novice-friar. This explained why the saint biographies available at the book center were mostly about Carmelites like St. Therese and St. Teresa and why the shopkeeper was reading Interior Castle. Then I made a sobering discovery: He had put a few TAN books on an online auction to support the center. All the while I had been wondering if the little place had been making money at all all this time. I might have even been the very first person to go in and read some books!

You know, I'd hate to see this little place fold up like so many businesses that have put up shop in the shopping mall and failed after a short time. Long time ago, someone had a cart making those cute little mini-donuts. I've loved those mini-donuts ever since my sister and I bought some at the Iowa State Fair more than a decade ago. So it was sad to see that cart disappear after several months of doing poorly. A year go, a bakery had also a kiosk selling all sorts of baked goods like brownies and oatmeal cookies. I often bought the latter for snacks. But that kiosk too disappeared. Then just a few months ago, someone had a popcorn stand from which we would buy a big bag of sweet/salty popcorn for Php60 nearly every Sunday after mass. But that too disappeared. The Mister Donut counter that had been located near KFC also closed shop lately. Sigh! And now while I was happy to find that a Catholic book center had opened right here in town, my heart sank to see it practically empty of customers. So I really hope that it will be here to stay--at least for a very long time, if not forever.

Marcel Marceau, mime artist

I was not totally surprised but still deeply saddened to learn late yesterday afternoon that the legendary mime Marcel Marceau had passed away. He was 84.

I remember very vaguely watching short black-and-white clips of his performances as Bip on a local channel years and years ago when I was still in grade school. I didn't know who he was then but somehow the image of this funny and melancholy man with the expressive face and hands stuck in my mind. I did eventually learn what his name was but beyond that nothing much.

Then nearly two decades later when I was in Ames, Iowa with my sister pursuing graduate studies at Iowa State University, I learned that Marcel Marceau was to perform at the University's theatre as part of his farewell US tour. I knew by then that he was famous and recalled those short sketches I saw on tv when I was a child. I read that he had frequently toured the US almost always to standing room only. I wanted to see him perform live naturally and persuaded my sister to come watch his show along with me. We got tickets and the perfect seats: we were seated some 13 rows from the front, smack in the middle and practically level with the stage. I was slightly disappointed though that there were several empty seats. But that was forgotten when the performance began. As usual, the program distributed to the audience listed several vignettes from which Marceau would select for the evening. My favorites of course were the Bip sketches particularly the ones of Bip at the circus: his laughable attempts to get a lion to jump through a hoop, at tight-rope walking, at knife-throwing (the audience roared with laughter at Marceau's reaction after he pantomimed removing his blindfold) among others. Another sketch of Bip trying on masks with different expressions was also amazing. What I saw unfold on stage that evening was truly something unique and never to be forgotten. I'm sure the rest of the audience felt the same: we gave him a standing ovation at the end.

Being his farewell tour, I thought that that performance in Ames would be the only and last chance I would have to watch him perform. But by some happy circumstance, it was not so.

Just a few years ago, while I was Singapore (again to pursue graduate studies), I was ecstatic to learn that he was coming to perform at the Victoria Theatre in Singapore as part of his farewell world tour. I of course got tickets right away and watched his show with a friend who had similar interests in the performing arts. Ten years has passed since I saw Marceau perform in Ames but while he was obviously much thinner he was just as eloquent as ever and I enjoyed this latest mesmerizing performance just as much as I did the one in Ames.

It is indeed a lonely thought not to see him perform live again. He was apparently one of those people who refused to let old age stop him from working. And it did seem that he could go on and on, that he would always be there to perform and to create new Bip episodes. Unfortunately, it was simply not to be. But as it is with creative geniuses like Marceau, his memorable wordless portrayals of Bip and the art of mime that he single-handedly restored to the world stage will hopefully always live on.

Still, the death of a legend is always a great loss. This was a man whose silence was louder than spoken words. That silence will be missed.

Graphic: Marcel Marceau, as drawn by another uniquely talented artist, Al Hirschfeld.