I was able to see it before my class at 420pm started, facing due north. For a time I thought it was a kite since it seemed to be just hanging there, but then it would twist and change angle and move behind the mountain.

I wonder if it would be possible to have something like that in campus, and if there are enthusiasts to talk to about it, of course maybe even a professional organization with all the safety precautions and such.

@@ Well, it seems like I will be a last minute replacement for a speaker in the entrepreneurship talk show that is part of the Business Administration week celebration. They just sent me a text last night about it.

And I guess that means it’s will only be religion and social sciences that I haven’t given a lecture on.

Literature has been covered in Science Fiction, and Grammar has been covered in Technical Writing.

Not that it’s any ambition of mine to be such a jack of all shades. Those kinds of people often already blur the line between what they know that they can talk about and what should be in the lesson plan.

@@ After that there was a defense of a wall climbing robot thesis by students Carl, Leo and Daryl.

It used a suction vacuum under the chassis to stick to the wall, with slight adhesives on the six light rubber wheels.

They had a nice trial and error method for finding out the different ways of making the wheels stick. Same is true for keeping the weight down by using different batteries and materials for the frame. I just asked them to quantify their experimentation with respect to adhesion measurements.

@@ Daily Leadership Lessons November 7 - Great minds have purposes. Others have wishes. - Anonymous

My take on this: it seems to be just the latest in the series that tries to distinguish between what someone great would label what they are doing as compared to an ordinary everyday, maybe even mediocre person.

Not that I take much stock in it. Everyone has dreams at the start. The question is whether they stay dreams or not, or they work on it to become reality, not whether they have another name for it from everyone else.

November 8 - But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. - 2 Corinthians 12:9 NIV

My take on this: Okay, grace and power. Some things that a person has to believe, or maybe even feel in their hearts, that they have received from a divine source before they can proceed with achieving greatness.

November 13 - It is a funny thing about life… if you refuse to accept anything but the best you very often get it. - William Somerset Maugham

My take on this: well, I think you have to ignore a lot of dross first. Law of averages and everything says you will eventually seek the perfection you are looking for, just as a billion monkeys on a billion keyboards can.

@@ First rule of advertising: make sure that your poster has all of the needed information: what, where, when.

So if some of these vital information are lacking because it’s an event that caters only to a select few anyway who will be able to text the contact person anyway (who is also not named in the poster) about these details, then what’s the point of having the publicity in the first place unless it’s to tell the rest of the population that sees it: “We have an activity and you’re not invited.”

Of course, part of the problem is leadership: someone who wants to be in charge because they were in charge the year before, not realizing that this means that all the same mistakes from the previous event will be repeated, if not escalated. There really must be a time when someone knows they have to step down.

This is especially true in a school, where as one gets older and more desperate to graduate, it means they should start concentrating on studies and not extra-curricular activities. Thinking they can do both is just ego talking.

It also means that they learned nothing from their teachers about passing on the torch of knowledge, which means letting others take the rein (or is it reign) for a bit so they will be more comfortable in the saddle when they do get to the same position as you, not let them flounder in ignorance of what to do and starting everything from scratch, including mistakes, after you are gone.

@@ And what’s with this “letting the students make their own mistakes” crap? If that was true, they could learn that in the streets and not in school. You don’t go to school to learn from your own mistakes.

As I posted in my social network today: maybe it has gotten to the time when schools don’t play the role they were first made for in this globally linked world of instantaneous search engine results.

@@ Daily Leadership Lessons November 5 - If you find yourself face to face with an impossible task, regard it as a compliment God has paid you. He knows you are the person who can do that task.

My take on this: That’s it. Someone who knows you better than you know yourself is manipulating reality to put you to a test to find out whether you have the mettle to be something greater or if you are a quitter.

@@ November 6 - Our lives improve only when we take chances… and the first and most difficult risk we can take is to be honest with ourselves. - Walter Anderson

My take on this: honesty can be brutal. Being too self-judging can be debilitating. But so can self-delusion. Again, it’s about toeing the happy medium, having the right amount of criticism of self to keep going, doing something productive and to improve, and having a healthy amount of confidence not to wallow in pity or failure.

@@ November 12 - Be careful to obey all these regulations I am giving you, so that it may always go well with you and your children after you, because you will be doing what is good and right in the eyes of the Lord your God. - Deuteronomy 12:28 NIV

My take on this: yes, organized religion at it again, promoting a book written by the divine with human mediums (a different definition from the previous usage) for them to obey the human counterparts unfailingly.

@@ Okay, I don’t know what’s with me today, with all this cynicism. But I won’t take back what I said up there.

@@ We don’t say thank you enough to people for being there. Even if they didn’t go somewhere for you, it should be some consolation to us that our presence there brightened up someone’s day.

@@ A not so wise man once said that there wasn’t a decision he made in his life that he didn’t regret at one point or another.

That’s okay, as long as it’s only fleeting regret and not wallowing, and if it turns into learning experiences that lead to better decisions in the future. It’s also better to have some regret than to always be able to justify, no matter how logically convoluted and peppered with lies, everything one did in life.

@@ I read somewhere about how satisfying it is to be able to do something that others say you will never do.

Again this has to be qualified though. If someone is dragging you around with their negativity or just telling you about impossibility because it will conflict with their own personal agenda, yes, by all means defy.

But if someone tells you that you will never step on their dignity or you will never steal something away from them, is that such a good thing to defy? Sometimes people are right to warn you against something.

@@ The DLL’s are back! This is the longest that I’ve gone without writing about them, mostly due to the bad combination of missed classes, holidays, weather suspensions and just being plain busy.

@@ Daily Leadership Lessons November 1 - The greatest leaders are always the greatest followers. - Anonymous

My take on this: this is so damn true. It’s like when I tell my students, using the analog voltmeter first before using the digital one, that they have to learn to walk before they could run.

Obviously someone who did not make a obedient follower will never make a leader who will be followed, because they don’t know what kind of thinking a follower has that makes them willing to be led.

So it’s amazing for me to see people who are scratching their heads wondering why there are those who would not follow them, thinking that just because they were assigned a position, or worse, that they invented a title for themselves, that they would automatically be obeyed by those around.

@@ November 2 - Question to Ponder: How can I re-allocate my resources, my time and my energy, to reflect my true values and to move me in the direction I am seeking?

My take on this: it’s something that people should remind themselves of everyday, after taking stock of their lives relative to where they started, where they want to be, where they are now and how far they’ve gone.

@@ November 10 - Never loose [sic] hope. Hope is the rope that swings you through life. – Anonymous

My take on this: Another cute saying, and patently obvious. I guess in one lesson a day there will be clunkers

@@ Apparently a kid can be so engrossed in what he is doing on the computer that for minutes he will not be able to hear a soft spoken girl behind him asking him to move his chair so she can pass along the aisle.

Yes, I’m in a cyber shop right now, not in school. This is the day they get the antenna of our wireless fixed, so no sense in going there when it might take all day to replace the connection, and I do want to compensate for the days without post by writing something for the first Saturday of the month.

And speaking of cybercafés (which my spell checker accepts as one word even though it does not do the same for cyber shop) this is the one that I mentioned before has three rows of computers where the ones in the middle are solo tables. And in fact, since all the units were occupied when I arrived earlier, I had to get the PC at the middle row, facing the door (that is, my screen is facing the door) with people going to the other units having to pass to my left and the right.

Thankfully, flat screen LCD monitors do not reflect the glare from outside, alternately sunny and drizzly.

I did mention in my status to the social networks earlier about the weather roller coaster ride I had.

It was sunny leaving the house, turned gloomy, then torrential, then back to gloomy, partially cloudy and back to sunny.

We’re talking about a commute of about 27 kilometers (thanks wikimapia.org) as the hovering news cameras fly, z shaped otherwise.

@@ Here’s a comment I got from the space of journals: “Wow! What a website. You have a real knack for making a blog readable and easy on the eyes. Some sites look like train wrecks, but not yours - it’s a pleasure to read. I am always interested in reading other sites about religion, they give me a lot to think about. I have a site with daily Bible readings on it. Please bookmark it - it as at <link removed to avoid potential meat loaf offensive to readers>. God’s Peace!”

I’m not even sure I was talking about religion last time, so it looks like a generic complimentary post.

Here’s another one. “Thank you, you answered the question I have been searching for which was whether or not to place keywords when blog commenting. mirc.” The last inexplicable word (I know it’s a chat software popular in the late nineties and early twenty first century) is actually a hyperlink that I removed.

And it’s a link to a commercial site in another language at that, despite the comment being in English

Do they really think that people on the net are so desperate for appreciation that they would fall for these things and allow them to be published for others to be duped? Well, I’d rather not be party to that.

@@ Daily Leadership Lessons will return (like your favorite TV show before free web streaming was invented) next week, when I hang around in the student center again for most of the day.

It was frustrating when every few pages you load would get timed out, and several would not load correctly because it is not text intensive or even just contains one large image or some code.

@@ Today I would like to talk about reliable news. Just earlier I received a text from someone I know from one of the nearby provinces in the south that an earthquake happened there.

But checking all to-the-minute updated net sources, there was no such tremor. The closest they have is last Halloween, and that’s somewhere to the north of the capital. Most recent one is in Alaska.

I do not doubt the word of the person who sent me the notice. It’s just that there might be something more behind the sending of such a message, and that any type of reply would be expected.

@@ Small world: for the second time ever, I just received word that a student of mine has met up with a former classmate of mine, through golf. Before it was a high school chum, now it’s from college.

It speaks of the popularity of golf, at least among the circles that I have found myself in, though I don’t dip myself.

@@ And apparently it’s short topics today. It may be just the quality of the so-called news that I have to report, or it may be reflective of my state of mind that I can’t say anything lengthy about the happenings.

Not that it matters much in the long run. The important thing is to be able to post without resorting to recycled content.

@@ Rumors: it’s a matter of preparing for the worst and at the same time expecting the best. If we let ourselves get affected by everything negative that we hear, can we really still function effectively in this world?

Besides, there is also a reliance to be had on the system that is in place, that if ever there is anything important enough and big enough happening then word would trickle down from official sources to my desk.

@@ So it appears November 27 and 28 are not non-working holidays anymore. Does this mean the school will come out with another revised calendar moving the end of classes for this term back two days?

Well, it seems that the other campuses have not done anything about it, so maybe we won’t. In fact, there’s also the possibility that to ensure no more changing of the calendar, that the schedule as is will go on, with the holidays.

For this, just like everyone else, I’m just waiting for word, and not actively seeking it out or demanding resolution.

@@ Last song syndrome: if it’s really not something that you heard on the radio earlier, analyze it. What thought process led you to remember even slightly related lyrics now stuck in your head? Was it something you saw, or a recalled bit of conversation? It could be interesting to find out.

@@ Still no daily leadership lesson today. I’ll make up for it with three per day for the next entries.

The joke around here is that the howling winds from the most recent typhoon blew over the high-tension wires of the underground cabling and the wireless connections hooking up the school to the outside world.

It’s amazing how much productivity was nearly ground to a screeching halt yesterday; that it almost served as an extension of the three-day vacation, except that we were in the work setting already.

Bad enough that a lot of people were in Monday mode and almost forgot that their classes followed the Tuesday schedule.

It’s also the first day back for the Integrated School students, after having been away for the whole of last week.

Well, for most of them, that is. The athletes who participated in last week’s Sports Camp got fewer rest days.

@@ Things are moving forward in terms of someone who is abusing a position that he shouldn’t be holding anymore in the first place.

There are already some sectors that will be speaking up that this ego-tripping student-activity non-supporter does not represent their interests with what he is doing (or not doing) with the funds given to them.

I just wish more students would take the initiative in informing their parents about the goings-on, so we could have more voices.

But if there’s ever any accusation of undermining, the question is who really undermined what first?

@@ This, by the way, is already the start of the second half of the term. This means in a few weeks’ time we would have academic advising again. The dean’s office already came out with a list of offerings for next term, and included a copy of the special class form for those whose expected subjects were not on the list.

@@ A few days or weeks ago I was talking about how someone who has extreme shyness may be excused from not being able to open up things or questions face to face, but through text messages.

I have just encountered a case that goes over the line though. This person says nothing when we are in the same place, but after leaving, starts inquiries of an almost embarrassing frankness.

And when given the opportunity to ask the same things face to face with no one else around (the excuse put forward for not speaking up, because someone might overhear) still chooses to text when already seated beside each other.

What’s even stranger about that is that during the course of the conversation, there has been reading between the lines going on as to the answer to the initial question. But even that is not enough.

When time comes to part again, that’s when the text messages start again, expressing impatience (something not usually accompanying the shyness part) for not getting a direct answer to the question posed, which in the first place had the disclaimer “please don’t get mad” which means that it’s already deemed a delicate topic in the first place. Bright side: replies in text can be read over and over.

@@ Besides that, I gave the welcome remarks at the opening of the college sports fest last night.

It was simple. I just looked up “lessons from sports” on the internet and rattled them out to the assembled athletes.

Here they are, edited as I saw fit: Performance under pressure, Organization, Meeting challenges, Handling both success and failure, Acceptance of others’ values and beliefs, Flexibility and success, Patience, Risk taking, Commitment and perseverance, Knowing how to win and how to lose gracefully, Working with people you don’t necessarily like, Respect for others, Self-control, Pushing yourself to the limit, Recognizing limitations, Completing the task without hatred, Accepting responsibility for behavior, Dedication, Accepting feedback and criticism as part of learning, Self-evaluation, Wise decision making, Setting and attaining goals, Communication with others, Ability to learn, Working within the system and last but not the least, Self-motivation.

I would probably spend several posts just exploring each of these. As a whole I don’t think the students were able to absorb these, but I didn’t want to put an emphasis on each one and prolong the speech.

But then I was just a fill in and I had somewhere to be that same evening anyway. So it was speak-and-run.

@@ If you have to tell people that your performance that they missed is great then it wasn’t great.

If you have to quote only one or a handful of people or even your relative especially your parents that your performance was great, then it wasn’t. It’s more pathetic that you disregard how the people who were there when you performed do not want to tell you anything about how you played, rather than be honest.

The problem with people nowadays is that they say one thing when you are face to face with them (admitting their mistakes), but they say something else when they are with the people they want to impress (saying that they have no fault whatsoever and that the system is oppressive).

Yes you have lofty dreams that you have held on to for years, for which you say you have been supposedly preparing, but if you reject all the negative criticisms you receive because it’s stepping on your dreams, well, they you’ll only be great in your own mind and in front of people who would rather not see you break down than tell you the truth about your so-called abilities. Say goodbye to any dreams of a stadium full of people applauding you, because it’s not going to happen.

@@ Preemptive strike! Tomorrow’s DLL today! Well, it is a holiday, and I don’t want to leave hanging the last lesson of the month.

@@ Daily Leadership Lesson October 30 - The reward of a thing well done is to have done it. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

My take on this: finally something different! Not about working for others or working for honor but just working for work’s sake.

@@ October 31 - Enjoy what you do, always!

My take on this: and from there we end up with loving your work as being the bottom line to success.

The closing ceremonies for the sports camp were great. Highlight of the evening was the fireworks from Enchanted Kingdom, which for the first time ever was set off inside the campus. I hope that it would be a regular occurrence now, at least for the graduation ceremonies.

Besides that, two great bands that had played in the previous events of the college (talent quest and the band fest) played for the athletes. I especially appreciate one band learning “We Are the Champions” by Queen.

What the event actually lacked were guest celebrities. We would have enjoyed having one or two there.

I know that there were some in the opening ceremonies, but there should be just as much fervor for the other bookend event.

I guess it was an indication of the success of the event that the participants wanted it to be extended, not realizing that the organizers would have wanted it to end as soon as possible. That the pressure and harassment on the part of those behind the scenes was not felt is a great measure of success.

@@ Personally, I had a lot of fun manning the robotics training part for the students with no more games.

I liked the dedication of the students in wanting to finish their robot even though the dinner bell call already went out.

I also marveled at how they were able to improvise finishing the robot they wanted to make from the start even though other groups had already taken up the parts that were specified in the manual.

@@ I wish there was a better way to measure technical musical skill better than Rock Band and Guitar Hero.

As it is, just because someone you look up to who happened to have spawned you says that you are doing great doesn’t mean that it’s true, especially if you see that there are fewer people around when you finished playing than when you started. It also doesn’t help to hide behind the “artistic appreciation” clause.

If that were true you could go to some deep dark hole and play there where the rats and worms will not boo at your playing, but don’t force yourself into our events where we know what kind of music we want to hear play (the good kind) and our taste will be judged by who we allow to play.

@@ Daily Leadership Lesson October 28 - Do good with no thought of return and gratitude will fill your heart in the joy of service. - Anonymous

@@ October 29 - No person is ever honored for what he received. Honor is the reward for what he gave. – Anonymous

My take on this: well, technically, someone is honored if he takes a bullet for his country, which some might say is actually giving up his life, so it’s still giving rather than receiving. Anyway, I’m just being a bit contrary.

It still ties in with all the previous lessons for this month where it’s all about living your life for others.