Friday Bloggings

The Coolness of Google Reader

I have been playing with the Google Reader feature that comes with my Google Account.  It is cool.  It is the best way I know to access all the things I want to read on one page.  Subscribe to any site you want, and their updates appear in the Reader. 

 

Sacrifice is Good

Happiness is living for others, someone said.  Taking this to heart, I tell myself that every sacrifice I make for Tony and Jenny is to be reveled in.  So no going to the bar?  Great!  Not satisfying some consumer urger of mine?  Even better!  No beer!  I have achieved sanctity!

 

A talent for isolation

That's what I am good at, I noticed, looking back on my life.  All those long weekends that I spent in Canada alone.  This is a bad thing?  I think of the people I haven't meet who may resemble the people I have meet and didn't care for.  But at the same time, everyone is not so bad.  

 

Ray Steiger

Watching him in Oklahoma!  I noticed he resembled Brando.  Then I watched On the Waterfront, and Steiger was cast as Brando's character's brother.  He is sitting beside Marlon as he said his famous "Could have been a contender" line.

 

What can I tell you?  Great Minds (the casters of OTW and I) think alike.

 

Expo Reviews

A Canadian living in Shanghai has gone to Expo twice.  She tells me she wasn't impressed.

 

Teaching Politics in Vocation School?

It seemed strange when I heard about it, but now, that I think about it, it makes sense.  I had a student, who was a teacher, tell me about her experiences teaching at a vocational school in Wuxi.  One of the classes she had to teach was politics.  She used a textbook supplied by the government filled with the political theories of Chairman Mao and his successors.  To me it seemed absurd.  

 

Could you imagine a trades school in Canada having a history  or political science department?  That lot of students would be bored out of their mind.  "Don't waste my time, teach us what we need to know!" 

 

Here, though, it is about the worker.