Happy Belated Hallowe'en (Happy All Saint's Day!)

Wow, I didn't expect to take that much time cutting out my project for 506... At least the major cutting is done! Just to add some pictures and my text and I should be good for 13 hours from now!

My first class was cancelled today so I had time to work on the written portion of the 506 assignment. I managed to make some more edits this morning and get through half of the reading for 503.

Before 505, I went out to grab some food from the food trucks that were visiting UofC today. I forgot the name of the truck my friend and I were at, but I remembered that there was a gas fuelled heater to keep people warm as we all huddled around it. I don't remember the name of what I got, but for $10, it wasn't really worth it. =/ (I hope they used prime beef to make these things...)

As for class today
505: Life on residential schools for some aboriginal people and what they had to go through. =(
501: LGBTQQ discussion

Back to work I go! =P I'm planning to reintroduce a weekly segment starting after November 9th! In other words, after I'm done my course work at the university.

Ethical Reasoning

I woke up at 6:30 this morning due to the loud jarring sound of my alarm clock beside me, but I immediately turned off my alarm and fell back into a deep slumber.

Two hours after, I woke up again, though this time I felt fully rested. After a quick breakfast, I took time to get ready for school. Lo and behold, by the time I finished getting ready... it was already 10:25! (I needed to be at school by 11...)

I got to my 503 meeting 10 minutes late... >_> Good thing it wasn't an interview!


Onto what I learnt for the day

506: Videotaping yourself teach. There are things that I may realize that I'm doing when I shouldn't or maybe even things that I'm doing well that I'm not fully aware of!

503: More ethics... There was a tough situation today where we discuss what you would do if a terminally ill child is dying in your class and s/he has a DNR order (Do not resuscitate). I was really confused on what I would do in this situation. I want to save the child, but the parents and doctor believes that its better if the child is not saved.

Of course, it's ideal if the terminally ill child is home schooled, but in this scenario, that wasn't possible. This particular child is in your classroom and that particular teacher had to deal with the situation. I was so stumped and undecided to listen in on what happened with the real situation... =(

As for today's picture of the day

I was re-watching a Gintama arc yesterday during my lunch break. Such a touching scene during the Four Deva's arc! =;) (teary smile face)

Oh my goodness... Sometimes I am so unmotivated!

I should have done more work today...

I only got about 1/5 of my 506 assignment done. I just couldn't concentrate on homework today.

Which isn't a good sign since there's still quite a number of big assignments due in the following week. I haven't even looked at 507 yet... but I'm not too worried since it's a pass/fail course.

Oh dear me...

Why does the stress of due dates and/or assignments weighing heavily motivate me to work? It should be getting excellent-grades-by-doing-things-ahead-of-time or doing-work-for-the-sake-of-learning, or things like that to motivate me!

I guess it is something that I have to work on...

Now if you don't mind me... I'm off to go play some SC... after playing a couple hours of LoL...

oh dear...

Glad to see some sun!

For the first time this week, I think I was able to see some sunlight poking out from the normal clouds we've been having to date! Due to that, I was finally able to take my picture for today's theme!

Such a nice, laid back Sunday. Got some work done, but also had time to relax and play some SC! =P And its great that they pushed back 503 as well! It reduces the stress level, but I hope I don't end up dragging that assignment too long. =/

Sunsets =(

So far, I'm unable to take a picture for this week's theme: sunset. The past week has been full of clouds and snow. If it's still cloudy tomorrow, I will have to rely on drastic measures...

Since my finger is still slightly injured, I didn't go to volunteer. It still feels a bit awkward to apply some pressure on my right pinkie. Speaking of pressure, I've been using my ring finger to press the shift key, which initially felt weird, is the new norm for me. I'm not sure how I'm going to go back to my old method of typing (which is using my fifth finger for the shift key on the right side of the keyboard).

Today was a pretty lazy day for me. I ended up not doing any work... which I hope is not going to bite me on the butt when tomorrow comes. I'll get work done tomorrow! I actually feel quite rested from the past couple of days! =)

Hmm... picture...here's one I took last week while I was waiting for others to show up.

Shepherd's Pie at Jamesons (Brentwood) and Spicy burrito

EDIT: Grammar should be fixed now! =P

It was quite busy tonight due to the football game between the stamps and the lions.

Anyways, the shepherd's pie consisted of a mash potato top (I believe) with, what tasted like ground beef. For $17 after tax and tips, it was not really fulfilling. The food tasted alright, but I was definitely not full from that.

So what do you do when you still feel hungry? You go out and eat more! We went to Mucho Burrito by Studio 16 and got some food there. It was my first time there, so I went and got myself a "Hotter than Hell" Ghost Pepper Burrito.

It was definitely an experience I'm not going to forget for a while. A burrito loaded with jalapeños, hot salsa and what looked to be like 2 teaspoons of ghost pepper sauce.

I went through half a litre of chocolate milk and a bottle of water to eat that burrito.

It was spicy. It burned my throat. It made my body, from the chest down, numb. It made me cry. It made my nose run. And pretty much whatever else you can come up with (include shaky lips). My stomach is still burning, but it was for sure an interesting experience. For about $14 for the burrito, drinks and nachos, it was an expensive, but one of a kind meal.

Picture of my Shepherd's pie. I should have taken a picture of the burrito as well...

Nice to have a breather!

After a pretty hectic week, I managed to find some time to rest tonight! Strange, that I'm unable to sleep early tonight...

Well I handed in my lesson plan today. Overall, it was about 40 pages in length or so? It wasn't all paragraphs, but I have to say that it is my biggest single project to date so far. All in all, I had around 12000 words (8500ish for the unit plan, 3500 for assignments, and individual lesson plan and so on). Thank goodness it's finished!

Right after 506, I worked on the 507 poster with my group mates. We managed to finish the poster in just a couple of hours. Everything went quite smoothly!

Sooooo, for the first time in a while, I don't really have anything that I have to do (readings, 502 presentations, 507 paper... they can wait.)

Today's picture

Our poster!

And I was thinking of taking Ritalin...

I'm not even joking how miraculous I found this time management skill to be! My 506 prof mentioned this method to us yesterday to help us learn time management skills. I first tried this last night as I attempted to finish the rough draft of my unit plan.

The results were amazing...

I managed to get 8 pages of writing (not full paragraphs... there were some sections where I had point form points) in 125 minutes of work (5 working sessions).

So how does the method work? You work hard for 25 minutes, without letting any distractions get to you. So in other words, ignore your emails, text messages, mom yelling at you, etc. All it is, is concentrating on your work for 25 minutes

After the 25 minutes are up, you take a 5 minute break. You want to get up during this time and do something to take your mind off work. Once your 5 minutes are up, you get back to work.

This cycle repeats for 4 times. After your 4th 25 minute shift, you take an extended 30 minute break.

I call this the 25+5 minute plan.

And it has produce some serious results... (as you can probably tell, I'm writing my blog now because I'm on my extended break to 11:30!). Even today, I was able to finish two assignments and a lesson plan in 100 minutes of work time. That would normally take me more than a couple hours to get done since I would constantly check my email, go on facebook, browse websites, talk to people on msn, etc etc. I guess the shorter work periods make it a lot easier to concentrate for the entire task!

Ahhhh.... now to really enjoy my break before I try and go for another 4 shifts...

No picture for today! Too lazy to go find one =P

Night Owl Mode

I'm not sure how people can do it, but I will attempt staying up late (perhaps till 2) to work on homework. It's a skill I should try to develop, for it may be helpful later in my life when I do need to learn how to stay awake and do work. =P Anybody has some advice on staying up late? Besides napping... since if I nap now... I won't wake up till tomorrow morning.

The latest I ever stayed awake and was still mentally sharp was like... back in high school... I recall staying up till 12 to do homework, but that was mostly because I was on MSN chatting to people. And I guess 12 isn't consider to be remotely late at all...

Time for recap:

506: How to time manage well: 25 minute work sessions with 5 minute breaks. Do this 4 times in a row, and then take a 30 minute break. In this case, you can get in a solid 100 minutes of work! I'll try this tonight. =P

503: ATA code of ethics and scenarios. Some really interesting scenarios we looked at in class today! No time to elaborate though =P

Today's picture

credit: http://www.pamsclipart.com/clipart_images/cartoon_night_owl_on_a_branch_0515-0908-1500-2402_SMU.jpg

I will attempt to imitate this owl in hopes of being able to stay up late to work (I'm already feeling sleepy... the caffeine I drank a couple hours ago didn't work!). Maybe if I stare at my screen like this owl, I'll be able too...

It's like my brain just crashed on me!

I spent nearly 10 working hours on my unit plan today... and it's still not close to being done! I still have two more concepts to talk about and a second lesson plan... It's like this unit plan has no end!!!! I see the end of the tunnel, but its still so far away! =(

My brain just literally gave up! I felt like I was just rambling and that it wasn't justification about the way I'm approaching the unit anymore... more like it looking like a pile of BS. So I gave up trying to write more for the unit plan for tonight... =(

Not to mention that I need to get started on 507 paper, 503 paper and 501 website soon as well... And those readings (a whole truckload) for 505...

Just three more weeks (including this one) before semester is over! I'm starting to feel the muscle fatigue but the finish line is soooo close! This is the only way I can think of to push me through the last couple of weeks before practicum starts...

For today's picture, I didn't manage to take any nice pictures so instead, here is a picture of what I feel like right now with the unit plan...

credits: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOBQI_5OouXEMsDkUNro1SjhCzhj79FoSHmcVXJEO4jCTWjEgVScJZl0479NUNdVtkkx9KjF1BM8daD54ZZeMbNT1SJCJTHjlVJgNiEi02bd_x_sXyNmGUUc9LzXAWIK9ehtlJgsUd19E/s1600/cartoonsteam.gif

Injured Once Again!

I just realized that I never related my post to my title yesterday... I forgot to mention how cold yesterday felt, even though it didn't dip below zero. (Or so I believe). I'll make sure that my blog post today relates to my title! And that shouldn't be a problem at all =P

In karate today, I managed to injure myself when we were doing sai training. I think I got kind of lazy with my swings, that I ended up ramming the butt end of my left sai to the base of my right pinky nail. It was definitely hard not to curse out loud as I hopped on the spot, and even harder not to drop my sais (that weigh about 5 pounds each). I noticed that the base of my pinky was bleeding profusely (maybe too strong of a word, but I feel so proud that it exists in my vocabulary!) and thus I placed my sais down and rushed to the bathroom while I shake my hand to dull the pain...

It was painful rinsing the cut, more painful than normal. Once I got a close look at the damage, I noticed that I managed to skin a good chunk of skin (sounds a bit weird) and damage my cuticle. It doesn't look deep, but boy, it sure burns/stings...

Also, I was supposed to help my dad swap on winter tires on our vehicles, but with my pain-ridden right hand, I wasn't able too....

So when I got home, I just worked on my unit plan for 506. There's so much to write for it! I have about 10 pages so far, but that's only about.... 1/4 of what I need to write for the unit I believe? I hope that the other sections aren't too long... I'm getting extremely frustrated by this assignment!! (Though I do find that this exercise is useful, even though it is currently very tedious to complete).

For today's picture, I was complementing on showing the extent of my injury, but I thought of those who don't do gore, so I'll just post a picture of my hand! Don't worry, I have a bandage on top of the cut.

Snowy and Cold

It's been two weeks since I last volunteered at the PLC. I've been busy with projects and such, so I took the last two weeks off. Since my piano is blocked by a lot of stuff at the moment, I haven't been able to touch my keyboard for the past two weeks! It felt weird to touch the piano again, but it was almost welcoming in a sense.

Once volunteering was done, I went home and tried to study a bit, but to no avail. Therefore, I went out and hung out with a friend for a while. (I promise to study my butt off later today! It's already Sunday...)

After hanging out with my friend, I went home and got ready for dinner with my 503 group! We ate at Forbidden City at T&T. I got the chance to try out a new egg plant dish, which turned out to be pretty good! I also had the chance to have a friendly nonschool discussion with my group mates (which we never really had while we were working on our paper). It was a very enjoyable affair! =)

Once I got home, I got out my camera and took a photo to submit for this week's photo challenge: sweets. I always wanted to do water splash photography (or whatever its called) and so I did for today! It took me abou 40 minutes to set up, take a bunch of pics and to clean up. It then took about an additional 10 minutes to photoshop it and upload it onto flickr. Here's a picture of what my set up looked like:

And here was the results... top part was cut off due to my poor positioning =( And wet background...

Linguini Salmone at La Vienna

For those who don't know where La Vienna is, it is located on Kensington in Little Italy (if that's what it's called in Calgary). For $17 after tax and tips, it was a pretty delicious meal. My only complaint is that some parts of the sauce tasted extremely salty... The salmon bits were smoky, but had a nice texture. This dish is something that you can't get at Olive Garden!

The place was pretty dim so don't mind the flash photography.

Woot Woot!!

Hell week is fast approaching, but fortunately professors seem to understand the stress we're going through, thus trying to make things easier for us (ie: rethinking assignments so that we don't have to hand in multiple double-digit papers and presentations! I understand that it's important to persevere through tough and stressful times, but I'm glad that they helped lighten our load! I was starting to get slightly senile from all these projects/assignments/tests... =P

506 today: Discussed our second assignment more, which is great since I have a better direction for my unit plan now! I never expected a unit plan to be so difficult to construct! I've been chugging away at it for some time now, but it's no where near completion =(. It does frustrate me, but like I said, it will probably get easier in due time.

After class, I went to bestbuy to purchase myself a new keyboard. The reason why I need a new keyboard is because I need a quieter keyboard for the night. My old one is not bad, but gets kinda clunky when I type fast.

Also, I wanted a keyboard that is 100% compatible with my macbook, so what fits that description?

It's so slick and matches well with my laptop! Ah, Apple is crushing my soul... but it doesn't feel bad at all! Sure, they're expensive, but you can't deny that they look nice! =P

(Wow, blurry hand syndrome... don't zoom)

My first PD Workshop for this semester!

I had a long day at school today, around 12 hours in total! I got there at around 8 AM and left at around 8 PM. =P

Before class, I actually managed to get quite a bit of stuff done. I started off in the atrium, but it was too dark for my tastes. I then travelled to Taylor Digital Library and worked there. For the first time in my university career, I used one of the dual screen computers on the main floor. It was cool having two screens, but yes, I still had a lot of clutter on both screens since I had so much room! Weirdly, I enjoyed moving my head as I gather information from one screen and wrote it down on the other (one screen was in front of me, while the other one was positioned almost at a 135 degree angle from the first). It felt like a great neck exercise!

502: It was pretty much a work period, which was nice. Our group got together and talked a bit about where we're going. So far so good! Everything is working out extremely well! We also got our papers back that we handed in a couple weeks ago. I got what I gave myself on the self-evaluation, which was an A-. Pretty stoked since I was rambling about interdisciplinarity... I realized more of what it was a couple days after writing my paper... =P

505: Lots of storytelling today! There was very interesting legends that I heard! Four types: entertainment, instructional(?), moral and spiritual/sacred. We got back our tests today and I was extremely surprised I did quite well! 1% short of an A-. =P I was seriously expecting a C on that test since I was so strapped for time. =(

501: Guest speaker today (one of the 502 seminar leaders) since our main prof was doing a conference in Sicily. We watched Gangnam style in class and talked about why it's so viral (the need to be imperfect)

After an hour break, I had a PD workshop on Teacher Professional Growth Plans (TPGP). It was a very useful PD since I learnt about policies behind TPGP and the different types of contracts that we can potentially get once we graduate. The presenter also informed us of the process of applying for a job. It's not just simply applying, but rather a whole lot of things to do, such as applying for a salary estimate, learning how to start subbing RIGHT after April, etc.

A very productive day today! Everything seemed to be going well... until I was driving home. I swear I saw a couple flashes on 32nd Ave (somewhere between 26th and 36th street). I didn't see any red light cameras though... not that I recall speeding or doing anything illegal... Oh well, I guess I'll find out in a couple week's time if I was indeed caught doing something wrong =/. Cross my fingers though!

And then when I got home, I realized that there was gum stuck onto the front of my jacket! Good thing it didn't get on my pants, but it was on the bottom of my jacket, which then transferred a bit of itself onto my seatbelt... Gotta clean that up tomorrow when I come home from school! Or maybe if I'm lucky enough, it'll be cold enough and the gum would freeze, thus making it easier to scrap off tomorrow... (highly doubt it) =(

For today's picture, here are the booklets/forms I got from the workshop:

FOR THE GREATER GOOD... well most of the time.

Once again, I started my Tuesday morning with a group meeting. We quickly checked to see that our paper for 503 was formatted correctly, and then we submitted it via blackboard. Once that was out of the way, I had 506.

506: The fun one can acquire via work stations! Though I have to say that the work stations make my inquiry idea for my unit plan look like bullcrap... =( It's amazing how they took 7 stations to cover the ENTIRE grade 9 ecosystem unit!

503: The different schools of ethics. We did a quick ethics questionare that tells you which school of thought you belonged too. Apparently I'm a moderate utilitarian, which means that I believe for the greater good. Very interesting, since I guess I kind of do, but at other times I feel like I'm the other type (starts with d... I believe...) in that I feel like it's my duty!

After class, I went home to pick up my brother so we can go grab our flu shots. It wasn't too busy at the clinics, so we got our flu shots quite quickly. My arm is sore from the shot, but at least I'm not having an allergic reaction!

Today's picture

My current display picture when I use my LCD monitor at home.

Cluttered Desktop

506's unit plan is slowly, but surely being pieced together. It sure is an agonizing process, but I hope that I can finish at least one of them for tomorrow morning... As I said before, practice makes perfect. I can't wait till I'll be able to WHIZ through lesson plans and perhaps come up with them on the spot (like how I do in Karate at times =P).

Another nice day, but unfortunately I was stuck at home working on 506 for ALL DAY pretty much... I didn't get a chance to look at my other assignments but that can wait till tomorrow I guess! =P Time is definitely travelling too fast! Or I need to find a way to stuff in more hours into a day!

Today's picture

My desktop as I was trying to work through 506. On the right is my own document. In the middle was a pdf copy of a chapter from the Science 30 textbook. The far left consists of a sample lesson that I'm trying to imitate.

At times like this, it would be nice to have more than one monitor! Unfortunately I do not have the space or the monies... =( I will have to deal with what I have on hand!

The need to be more flexible!

I blame the loss of whatever flexibility I had prior to the groin injury I suffered last year, which to this day, hasn't really gone away fully. There are times where it feels not bad, but other times where it pains me to kick.

Starting tomorrow though, I'm going to try and stretch out a bit... will this help really? I don't really know! Benefits of stretching (aka: working on the splits) is that hopefully I can still gain some flexibility before it's too late! (Can it ever be too late? Once again I'm do not know!)

After a normal karate day, I went home and worked on the reference section for my 503 group paper. It's the first time I ever written a group paper and it has been a pretty good experience. I was able to see how other people write on an issue where we all have similar viewpoints. I hope that this will help improve my sophistication!

After that, I chugged away at my 506 lesson plans... making these plans are a lot harder than I imagined... One reason could be due to the topic, which is on electromagnetic energy (field theory, EMR, etc). I never taken physics in high school so I don't have a clue of activities that are done in the classroom, so it's difficult to come up with ideas! I know that I can look examples up, but I would like to leave that as a last resort. =/

As for today's picture... well I didn't take a picture today so I guess it'll have to do with pictures I took on GT5.

This is my wallpaper when I'm using my laptop's display. Integra Type R surrounded by cherry blossoms. Ah... I miss Japan.... =(

Such a fine afternoon to be stuck indoors.

After a crazy midweek with snow, it was actually quite pleasant out today. Unfortunately, I'm swamped with work so I wasn't able to go outside to bask in the sun. I did open my window so I can catch the breeze! It was a bit chilly, but it felt nice. =)

I just realized that last week was my one year anniversary since I started my blog! It's time to change the format! I'll dwell on that...

Besides spending most of my day on 503 and 506, there was nothing really exciting about today, so I'll stop here.

Food blog: Chipotle Mango Chicken at Market Mall's Moxies

I write this as I'm falling asleep in bed =P.

They got my meal wrong the first time (gave me a salad) so they had to redo it.

My meal consisted of jasmine rice, two slices of seasoned chicken, buttered zucchini and carrots topped off with avocado sauce. For about $19, it's not too bad. The zucchini was delicious due to all that butter! Yummy!

The chicken itself was okay. It wasn't dry, nor was it very juicy. The mangoness came from cooked mango slices placed beside the chicken. It didn't make the chicken taste really special though since it just tasted as two distinct foods instead of a blend of one.

Overall, not the best bang for your buck, but nice to give it a try.

Career Fair! For the first time, it's not about the swag!

Classes were cancelled today due to the career fair conflicting with the time. Either way, I had to be at school early to work on 502. I think we pretty much have a good idea where to proceed with the project! We decided to make a website to put our lesson plans! Also, we have an interesting idea for our presentation (in a couple week's time! Semester is almost over!)

After my meeting, I travelled towards the dining center for the career fair. There was a throng of people waiting when I arrived (about 15 minutes before the fair started). The fair was pretty much broken down into two parts: a 25 min info session of some sort of school board and a general area to see all the sponsors/boards/etc. I somehow managed to "push" myself to the front of the line for the CBE info session (I was in the right spot at the right time!) They could only fit 125ish students for each of the info sessions.

The info session was informative. I was able to see some statistics of teachers hired and what are in high demand at the moment (High School Physics; I better brush up on my physics!). Right after the CBE session was the Rocky Mountain session. I wanted to just sit there instead of lining up all over again, but I guess it wouldn't be fair to the others who were waiting in line.

I went to explore the other part of the career fair. There are actually quite a variety of jobs I can get with a BEd, such as being an educator for a corporate company, planning field ecological field trips, day care, etc. Of course, I want to be a teacher, but I can always keep my eyes open. Speaking of open eyes... there's always teaching English abroad... which does sound tempting!

For the first time, I was at a career fair to look for a job. Over the past 5 years, I would normally go to career fairs to grab free stuff. =P I did pick up a couple pens and highlighters, but that was pretty much it for free stuff at the education career fair.

Overall, the career fair expanded what I thought I could do with a BEd. It's time to step up my game and hope for a position!

Today's picture shows off the brochures I collected during the hour I spent at the career fair. Now time to find some time to read them and see when to apply!

Oh and did I mention that I've been placed at FFCA teaching Biol 30 and Chem 20? (I think there's others, but I'm not quite sure yet...). Another far drive, but I'm looking forward to seeing what a charter school is like!

Well well well...

502 and 501 were cancelled today due to Thanksgiving Monday. How does that work you ask? Well both 502 and 501 have Monday lectures/seminars, but since there was a statutory holiday on that day, those classes were cancelled. To make it fair to us, they cancelled our classes as well.

Fair enough.

That gave me more time to study for 505... not that it really mattered...

The test was brutally hard. I was going in, expecting to answer questions on general themes on First Nation education. Lo and behold, it was more of a retrieval test for the 15 m/c questions. To make matter worse, there were 5 written questions that took about 3 pages to write. All that in one hour (I spent about 8 minutes on the m/c questions). I spent about 50 minutes on the written section, but I was unable to finish one question fully... =(

And this test is worth 50% of my mark...

I guess nothing I can really do about it since it's over. =( The good thing is that I know what to expect for the final! GRRRRRRR

Enough with my rant!

So I went home early today and did some work, along with a lot of relaxing today... which I guess isn't that great of a thing, but I need a break! Back to work tomorrow morning!


For today's picture:

My shaking hands seem to get worse and worse as the days go by. =(
My laptop case finally came in! I didn't imagine that it'll be the bulky or add that much weight to my laptop! =/

I initially bought it to protect my Pikachu decal since it was peeling off... I guess I'll just leave the top on for now! (The case gives a nice glean!)

Driving under a different perspective

Started my day off with a 503 group meeting. We pretty much consolidated what needed to be done for our paper due next week. My group mates did a fantastic job of taking the argument of Section 11.1 of the Human Rights Act to a level that I would never be able to do on my own. For the whole meeting, I pretty much sat there in awe, trying to absorb it all. Fortunately for me, I have a couple of days still to analyse well enough to contribute something meaningful!!

506: Arguments in science classroom. Pretty much it reminded me of law class: you got to have evidence to support your claims!

503: I was a bit late for class so I sat at the very back. It gave me an interesting perspective of the classroom for I usually sit in the front. We discussed mostly of ethics today. When I entered class, the prof was asking if there was ever such thing as universal ethics. For me personally, I didn't believe in universal ethics for I believe that it differs from time to time and cultures have their own interpretation of what is right or wrong. After a discussion, we watched the Stanford Prison Experiment (which I seen in Social Psyc or Intro Psyc). The interpretation I got from watching the  clip for a second time was that good people can do acts of evil.

To ensure that we leave class with a happier mood, the professor showed us a couple of videoclips of goodwill acts that took place during WW2. Certain people sacrificed their own happiness/careers/safety to ensure that mass amounts of people were not murdered. As a finishing thought, the prof said "Good can become evil, but so to can evil become good".


Now onto the title of my blog post. I foolishly left my sunglasses in my dad's car and lo and behold... it was sunset when I was leaving school. Luckily, I was travelling east, so direct sunset-sun wasn't really affecting my driving. I had to say though, that it was my first time driving without shades since 2nd year uni. It was definitely a different ride home, since everything had a reddish tint to it.

My sunglasses that I'm currently using! I like the design, but unfortunately they're not the best fit for my face since I don't have a prominent nose bridge =(

Thanksgiving 2012

What a Thanksgiving... spent most of my day working! Oh well, I guess I should be thankful for what I have!

Unfortunately, I did not have turkey today. =( Instead, I had salmon and rice!

Ah, well time to sleep... lots of stuff to do still! 

Weekend Recap

After blogging on a daily basis, it feels weird not to (despite blogging once a week in the summer).

Friday...

507: Inspiring Education steering report. It's pretty much what we have been learning in my other courses.

504: The different models for picking up an additional language. Apparently, the best way is to immerse yourself in a language by listening and speaking.

After I finished class, I went down to kines to help out with CSS's meet and greet. I was the photographer for the day and I had to say that I was pretty nervous. That was the first time I took pictures of a group of people. Despite my nerves, it was extremely fun! At first, I took pictures from afar, but after a while I started to move in. I was scared that most people didn't want to be photographed, but that wasn't the case! Most people didn't mind me taking pictures and I was glad that people didn't reject me when I asked them to take close up pictures of them! =)

I'm still in the process of editing those pictures. There's a lot of yellow lighting in the room, so I will have to change that. Also, I realized that my shutter speed was too slow since I didn't want a lot of picture noise. There's a lot of blurry, out of focus images unfortunately. =( At least I learnt a lesson from this activity!


Saturday...

I got a lesson plan completed for one of my many group projects =P. It took a lot lot longer than I expected since I wasn't quite sure of the format. After figuring out what I wanted to do, I wrote it down following the UBD format. I hope it goes alright! I guess I can still flush out the actual lesson itself more once I think about it in greater detail.

In the evening, I went to Studio 16 to go watch Looper. Apparently, Studio 16 is the only theatre that offers a student deal (admission, regular pop and popcorn) for just a bit over $15. It was a pretty sweet deal in my books!

The movie itself was well made. A sci-fi thriller that had an intriguing plot! I won't ruin the moving by describing the plot, but I recommend that you should go watch it!


Sunday...

Karate was pretty much the same as any other day, besides the fact that I allowed the green belts to free spar. My rationale behind the change in curriculum was because I wanted my students to have an easier time transitioning to the brown/black belt class. I was a bit apprehensive today since it was the first time I let my students spar. I didn't want any injuries from such a high-risk activity, and this activity is the highest in karate (in my humble opinion). Luckily, I only had one small incident, where a student of mine was hit in the eye. Fortunately it didn't look like he'll develop a black eye!

After karate, I went to a friend's house to play some games. We went through the board games that we usually play (Bang and Werewolves/The Village). Werewolves goes by quite quickly when you have a smaller group of people!

And now I am at home... slaving away at this list of assignments/group projects/readings and other chores that I need to have completed. Oh well, at least it keeps me busy...

AND I FORGOT TO MENTION, but I picked up my copy of Black 2!!! So excited!

(I'm just a big kid at heart!)

GINTAMA!!!

I'm so stoked that Gintama is back! Even though they were only gone for 6 months (compared to a year for the fifth season), I was sure feeling deprived from not being able to watch my favorite anime! What makes Gintama so special? There aren't a lot of animes that can put humor and tragedy in one episode!

I won't spoil the premiere episode for season 6, but I have to say that it was a funny/touching episode! The only problem I had with it was... that it was part of an arc! I'll now have to wait a week to see the next episode =P Oh well!

Exit card time...

506 - Formative assessment should not be about marks, but rather to inform the student where they're currently at in terms of their learning,

For today's picture

Sakata Gintoki, the main character of Gintama. He's definately ready for season 6!!

 

Credits: http://static.zerochan.net/Sakata.Gintoki.full.647160.jpg

Love on Top

When I was doing my readings tonight, I couldn't stop listening to Ailee's rendition of Beyonce's
"Love on Top". You can really sense her energy from her voice and dance!

It's so catchy! It makes doing my readings difficult though since the lyrics keep catching my attention. (That is why I normally don't listen to English songs when I study!)

Back to school. I decided from today, that I'll try to post at least one key point that I took from each lecture/seminar. This way, I hope it'll help me remember what I learn in class. It seems like knowledge has been leaking through my ears once again. =(

502: Interdisciplinarity is spoken through multiple tongues, bringing different disciplines to a subject without losing the discipline's original meaning (I believe...)

505: Treaty = Reserves, Indian Act = Status
That question is going to be on my test next week!

501: Are athletes being bought as a commodity? Since they are traded from team to team?

Time for today's picture:

Don't mind the blurriness... my hands were quite shaky today! It's a bit faint, but you should be able to see the snow flakes in the picture!

It's one of those days...

...where everything you do seems to go wrong. Well at least nothing disastrous occurred yet! (Knock on wood)

What a seemingly long day today! I hardly could recall what went on in my classes today... but good thing I was extra vigilant in taking notes! Speaking of notes... I should get started on studying for 505 soon...

Well one thing I remember about 506 today was the little demo we did today. It involved snapping toothpicks into half (without breaking the pieces cleanly). We had to place the middle of each toothpick together to form like a 5 pointed brittlestar shape. Afterwards, we added a couple of drops of water to the middle of our shape. This is what it looked like after applying the water and allowing it to... work its magic =)

It formed a star! It's due to the water flooding the xylem tissue within the tooth picks. This would make the bent toothpicks "straighten" out!

Pretty neat!

5555

When I opened up blogger a couple of minutes ago, I found out that I had 5555 page views! Pretty cool! Four consecutive 5s!

I went to the dentist this morning since I needed to get some "white filling" to cover up some soft spots on my upper left molars. According to my dentist, it's a preventative measure, so that it doesn't decay in the future. The procedure itself went by pretty quickly: just the drill, fill and UV to cure (I believe its UV light).

Luckily for me, my toe wasn't hurting as much as yesterday, so I was able to walk back home without too much of a hassle. Sure I bled a bit coming home, but the amount of bleeding has subsided! =)

Since I didn't have school today, I managed to get a bunch of readings done and get working on 503 and 502. I was looking at a potential article for 503 and I thought I found such a steal of an article... till I found out that it was already a require read for my group assignment! The reason why I didn't catch it was due to two reasons:

1) I didn't read the required paper first

AND

2) It had a DIFFERENT TITLE!!!!! GRRRRRR AND NO AUTHOR's NAME!

I guess it's time to look for another article.