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Tuesday, 07 July 2009

a one-liner.

i've found that the more beautiful i find someone's insides, the more beautiful i find their outside as well.

Monday, 06 July 2009

about the last blog:

hmm...

it's good to be aware of those feelings cause it's so important for a teacher to know when you need to repair a relationship that has been damaged. and yes, every interaction with a student is an important relationship, one that must be maintained.

i see it as a mistake to say that i just need to get over it, cause that ignores any hurts that may happen when you try to maintain order in a learning setting. the rules must be upheld and i won't feel bad for singling you out of you break them is the most common mistake that teachers make. i'm sure that everyone has experienced this.

yes, you admonish the rule-breaker, but then you also must bring that person back, reintegrate them with the community. this is the step that is most often lacking.

and if you don't feel bad about admonishing rulebreakers, and merely harden yourself believing that punishing is for their own good, then that repair tends to not happen. and you get unhappy people.

the minute i stop empathy is the minute i become ineffective as a teacher.

be joyous.

Saturday, 04 July 2009

life is pretty good, but why am i feeling so sad?

i guess it does bother me when i hurt someone's feelings, even tho i only meant for the health of how the group functions as a whole.

meh.

i guess i said the right things, tho i could have said them in a better way.

Tuesday, 30 June 2009

try to not make it long.

ok

the days are moving slowly and quickly. i didn't really play piano last week at all except for friday where i played for practice, and sunday where i played for mass. i didn't practice at all. which is all good cause i really did over play... and yeah it reinforced my need to have an expert scrutinize my technique.

so before i get into that lets go to saturday where it was rafting. they said meet at starbucks at 7. so i get there and it's 7:05 and nobody's there except tri and my. and it's 7:29 and the first group (marie and brian and sabrina) show up.

anyway we leave by the time it's about 8:30. it's about 10:30 by the time we get to River Rat in Fair Oaks.

we pick up our stuff and walk down to the river... jump in!

yah. not much more to say here except we took the right forks and had more adventure than if we took the left ones.

ate at the parents. they had to leave for church while we were still there.

then we went back to sj/milpitas, and i was too tired to continue on to camping... so i just slept.

next day was the usual, church stuff.

monday was piano lesson, and after discussing conceptual things, i played a little bit, and found some things to work on, on both technique on scales and that fast passage on the gloria i keep messing up on. yup. applying the conceptual to the concrete. it works well.

that night was sight singing at mary's house in mountain view. ruth ann wanted to carpool! so we went together in her car... tho hindsight says we should have taken my car for the only reason that i had mary's binder in my car and i forgot to take it with me. twas a lot of fun =) we sight sang quite a lot of stuff. i wanted to bring stuff that was not typically normal, so i brought Famine Song, It Takes a Village, Ikaw, and Black is the Color of My True Love's Hair. mary, ruth ann and i stuck around after and chatted for a while. mary had cat cookies (for people) at her house. pretty yummyyy.

one of the songs that i didnt bring was a choral verson of billy joel's "And So It Goes" arranged for the King's Singers. Muy nice.

In every heart there is a room
A sanctuary safe and strong
To heal the wounds from lovers past
Until a new one comes along

I spoke to you in cautious tones
You answered me with no pretense
And still I feel I said too much
My silence is my self defense

And every time I've held a rose
It seems I only felt the thorns
And so it goes, and so it goes
And so will you soon I suppose

But if my silence made you leave
Then that would be my worst mistake
So I will share this room with you
And you can have this heart to break

And this is why my eyes are closed
It's just as well for all I've seen
And so it goes, and so it goes
And you're the only one who knows

So I would choose to be with you
That's if the choice were mine to make
But you can make decisions too
And you can have this heart to break

And so it goes, and so it goes
And you're the only one who knows.

Wednesday, 24 June 2009

obama's health plan

ok watching c-span for a while last night. damn, people are stubborn.

obama's plan for health care is pretty much centrist in my opinion, tho people on either side will vehemently argue that it's too far left/right. those on the right would probably argue that it's extreme left, tho that's not exactly accurate.

they had an economist from georgetown university talk to congress about the proposed bill.

the bill indends to provide another competitor into the health insurance market, in the hopes that it will be more cost efficient and cover more people than other providers.

she did really well in trying to confront arguments from both sides. the big, main, and valid argument against the bill from the right is that, while the health care plan intends to merely to be a competitor, it should run by the same rules as the other companies, including not being artificially supported by taxpayer funds, and also be allowed to fail should it not be able to truly compete with existing health insurance. i agree with this in principle, and disagree with those on the far left who would propose to do away with the broken insurance system itself and manage the system entirely from the government's side. obama and the georgetown professor both advocate the market for innovation in terms of efficiency.

but the current system is broken. you can't just leave it alone, because the system is currently stuck in a rut.

time to get geeky-abstract.

in computer science, there's this concept called the "greedy algorithm." in the greedy alogrithm, you always take the best local path without looking ahead. you can wiki it if you're curious.

imagine you're walking down the Yellow Brick Road to Oz. but you come across a fork in the road. both look equally well, but the one on the left is nice and shady and the one on the right is sunny and hot with no shady spots in sight. you decide to take it easy and go left.

a while later, you come across a fork where the left is shady and the right is sunny. you go left again.

you come across a fork with the same setup. if you're using the greedy algorithm, you're going to turn left again. but if you're being a human being about this, you've realized you've been going in circles, and you'll turn right.

you bite the bullet and take the sunny path, because you know that's the one that will take you to Oz.

This is where so much of our economy is right now. it's stuck in sub-optimal ruts and either going in circles or downward spirals. and it's cause individuals choose big short-term gains over long-term financial health.

this is true of the financial state of our health care system. too much money is being spent on administration, and not enough on actual physicians and buildings. we shouldn't be paying for insurance. we should be paying for health care. and the system is set up for the former, rather than the latter. the obama health plan will add a new, altruistic competitior in the market that would force the existing companies to adjust... or fail. when the market adjusts... well then maybe the government plan won't be necessary anymore, and it should be allowed to recede or fail.

so yes. the market will find the optimal solution. but it needs a nudge in the right direction. we need another factor that will make them choose the sunny path that will lead us to Oz.