my home is in empty spaces.

Oh it begins next Monday - they told us this morning. Good, I have more time to prepare.

There are so very many other things going on that I cannot say here.

It begins on Monday. *cool quiet breath*

I passed a test today. Barely. But it marks my freedom! :p

What you call consistency, I call inertia. Because 1. you are not happy where you are, 2. you're not learning anything, neither are you absorbing daily events well to extract something to learn from them, and 3. you're utterly exhausted by the end of the day. So you're going to get promoted next year - that's not an excuse for messing up your spirit such that you actually think that clinging on to dead things is a virtue.

That's my take on it.

I don't like inertia very much because many things I have in my life were made and held on to with my own hands, and not through drifting about hoping that good things would happen to me in bad times, like the other 'natural' law of "equilibrium in a reaction".

You know that things are not going to go too well when you want to get six hours' of sleep but get only four hours due to being jolted awake by a dream stab wound. (only for those who want to know -) From someone I trusted very much, knife descending in through my right side between the bones of my ribcage and hitting only - air. Which is what I was gasping for when I woke this morning at the unearthly hour of 5.30 am.

Not wanting to disturb W who might have been a light sleeper, I spent about half an hour trying to go back to sleep before finally clunking into the bathroom with my imaginary stab wound. Everything all cleaned up, yay, I did some really productive work on the computer and waited for W to wake. Which turned out to be entertaining in itself, because W sleeps like a log, but that's another story.

By 4 pm today my mind was dead.

Sometimes I don't know what to say here. Msn or email me. The address is over there on the sidebar.

XY, I hope that you are well and continuing to remain happy.

C, tell me how recruitment goes :p

Jnet, I wish.... I wish things could be different.

O, I never knew how beautiful you were.

W(), you are precious to me and I love you.

JK, *hugs*.

Grace, Bjorn: the offer is still open.

DM: I am overwhelmed by your generosity and that of your wife.

*------------------------------*

Dinner with June at Carl's Jr. No I don't see what's so great about the food there, other than it doesn't smell of the usual leftover grease that fast food outlets tend to have. The fries are awful - don't eat them. Free flow of drinks.

Have finished yelling at tiny cute rascals and becoming gradually infantilized. Moving on.

Hilarious. The Very Secret Diaries of LOTR. Excerpt follows.

Aragorn: "...Turns out he did not actually die but instead was forced by Balrog to sell out to laundry detergent company and is now Gandalf the Sparkly White. PR whore. ..."

I was reading an article that suggested that scientists be more proactive in translating their research into action in the non-academic community. One memorable quote

"Academia gives more credit for journal publications than for helping a hospital prepare for a crisis."

was from Ivor van Heerden, director of Louisiana State University's Center for the Study of the Public Health Impacts of Hurricanes.

I'm not recommending the whole Nature 437, 174-176 (8 September 2005) here because it's in many ways a post-hoc rant on American politics messing up preparations for Katrina. (You'll need to be a Nature subscriber to access the full text.) Enjoy.

I should have done this much earlier. Why. Ah the wonders of broadband.

Ah no "this" does not refer to blogging.

On a side note, it puzzles me that any organization that asks me for my money, where I do not have to give it, should have the words "we are terribly disappointed that you have not ...." anywhere in its solicitation.

Note: the previous entry was for the nice but somewhat happy-go-lucky classes.

Today's post is a rant. It is a rant on a class that is supposedly a "good" class.

Yes, it's "good". They have the best results for their level for nearly every subject, in their school. They are also the most arrogant bunch of morons I have ever seen.

If you want to be rude to me, prepare to receive return fire and no quarter. I've seen so many people who have so much more to be arrogant about and are less arrogant instead.

*fuming*

I wonder why, when I ask my students to do some work in class and they refuse, they never ask me why I can assign them the work in the first place.

Why I can fritter away their time on their behalf, studying something they will never need in the future, except for only some exam. Why, if they don't obey me (I'm always like, who, me? *swift disbelieving grimace*) or any other apparatchik, the entire school discipline system would fall upon them in boundless wrath.

Why we take it upon ourselves to ensure the future good of our young, who are not blood of our blood except in a societal sense, by exposing them to massive displays of raw unchecked power. Why we presume to instruct our children in the ways of manners and discipline.

*sadly* Why we punish a boy who put a frog in a girl's hair, only to demonstrate his regard for her, and the girl not having been even distraught in the slightest bit by it?

Why we force them into school uniforms, into classrooms, into our own wilful and exasperating domains.

Cherry chocolate with coconut filling. Mmmm.