Monthly Archives: April 2022

Everything Everywhere All at Once

I saw this film last night. Funny, dark, and thoroughly enjoyable. It’s hard to describe the humour. I think if Quentin Tarantino, Mell Brooks, and the Monty Python crew all got together and got high, this is the movie they would write and film.

I was driving home and laughed out loud at the origins backstory of hotdog fingers. Yes, you read that correctly.

This movie is an epic journey, and it will gain a cult-like following of fans. It definitely won’t be for everyone, but if you love an action film, filled with dark humour, you won’t want to miss this movie… And don’t wait for it to start streaming, go see it in a theatre to truly appreciate other people laughing at the absurdity of some of the scenes.

I don’t usually enjoy watching movies a second time. It takes a special movie for me to re-watch. This will be one of those movies.

Everything Everywhere All at Once gets a 10/10 from me.

Fun with Math

Take ANY number, subtract the digits in that number, and the answer is divisible by 9.

14… 14 – 1 – 4 = 9

25… 25 – 2 – 5 = 18

36… 36 – 3 – 6 = 27

49… 49 – 4 – 9 = 36

1,234… 1,234 – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 = 1,224

And you don’t need your calculator to figure out if 1224 is divisible by 9, it is. How do I know? Add 1 + 2 + 2 + 4 together and if it’s 9 or divisible by 9, then the number is also divisible by 9.

7,692… 7,692 – 7 – 6 – 9 – 2 = 7,668

And then 7 + 6 + 6 + 8 = 27 which is divisible by 9 so 7,668 is divisible by 9 (= 852).

I love Math.

Culture of change

Connecting with colleagues in the world of online learning, I realize that we live in a unique world of change. If I ask most school principals that work in traditional schools about student funding, and funding policy, few would know much in this area. If I followed up with audit questions, many would know even less. But in over a decade of working in online learning. I’ve dealt with audits and funding policy changes, and constant shifting of expectations and goal posts… and so have my online colleagues in different districts.

Many of them wear several hats (I’ve run 2 schools for years, and 3 schools for a year and a half.) Some are Vice Principals, some are district principals. Some are responsible for alternate students, others adults, still others both. Many got a good dose of ‘other duties as assigned’ especially during the pandemic. Most saw dramatic increases in students because of the pandemic.

Change, change, change.

When I’m around this group, I’m connected to people that know my job better than almost every principal in my district. I hear about the challenges they face and I totally get it. And more than anything I see dedicated educators who face constant changes and are always thinking about the impact of those changes on kids.

It’s really special to spend time with people who understand how to not just cope with change but to strive in it.

Breaking bread

Last night I had dinner with online principals from other districts in the province. We are on the online principals association executive, and this was the first time we met face to face in over 2 years. Yes, we are all comfortable with technology and communicating online. Yes, we’ve connected online several times over the last couple years. But there is something really special about connecting face-to-face and breaking bread.

Maybe in a decade or so we’ll be able to meet virtually online and have a full out of body experience, with avatars sitting next to each other and each of us wearing googles that allow ourselves to see the visited environment from a first person perspective. We might even be able to simulate the experience of shaking hands. At some point in the future we might be able to have an experience that feels just like we are together when we are not.

These virtual world experiences are something I look forward to. I’d love to sit in a room with my parents more than once a year. But I won’t be able to taste my mom’s cooking. I won’t be able to break bread. So while the promise of technology advancing so much that we can better simulate being together in a virtual room when we can’t be together is very promising, it won’t replace actually getting together in every way.

I still want to connect with people face-to-face when I can. Not just to eat with them and to taste good food, but to have that human connection that has been mostly absent for the past couple years. I’m excited about technology being able to get us together in new ways, to improve the opportunities of connecting in more meaningful ways, but not to replace actually getting together when we can.

On the stage

Last night my youngest performed her ‘Set of 5’. Her and 3 other classmates choose 5 songs to sing and do a patter in between them. The songs and stories are personal and raw. They can change the lyrics of songs to better tell their story.

There is something really special about watching aspiring singers and actresses open up and share a part of themselves on stage.

I don’t know how they do it? It’s so far off of what I’d feel capable of doing. First off, I really can’t sing. But beyond that, the idea of getting on a stage and confidently expressing such confidence and candour… it’s all too much for me.

They on the other hand, they shine when on stage. They connect with the audience, incite laughter and tears, and take us on a wonderful journey. All the world may be a stage, but it takes a special kind of person to get up on a stage and give a truly great performance.

Time dilation

Yesterday I experienced a bit of a time warp. My morning went a bit slow, both in my productivity and in how long it felt. After lunch it felt like everything was thrown my way, and I was constantly on my ‘to do’ list, which seemed to be filled with things that took longer than they should.

At one point a package arrived, and I thought I’d take a break and take it to the teacher who ordered it. When I passed my grade 9 classroom it was empty, and I wondered where they were? As I learned, they had left for home. I thought it was about 2:30 in the afternoon and it was actually 3:50. It was almost an hour and a half later than I thought!

I’m always amazed by experiences like this. How can one hour of busy work or fun disappear, and another hour of slow work or boredom feel like an eternity? Just like actual time dilation is about time being different based on relative velocity, it seems as though we can experience this based on the velocity of our thoughts relative to actual time.

I also wonder about how relative time is based on our age. Five years is half of a lifetime to a 10 year old, but just 1/11th of a lifetime for me. Does my perception of time change with age? Does the importance of events alter because of the relative time of the experience compared to how many more experiences the event is compared to?

And what makes a single day feel both short and long at the same time? It’s early April, and I already know that the school year will be ending before I realize it. I’ll be swept up in all the things that are coming up, like report cards and grad prep, and suddenly I’ll be saying goodbye to a whole group of students. On that journey I’ll have long and short days, but looking back at the end of June, I’ll think the days from now until then just breezed by.

It’s not just a day in time that dilates, but weeks, months, and years too. It just seems strange… We want to fill our time with activities and events that are enjoyable and thus tend to go by faster. So, we are literally speeding up our lives. But the alternative is to spend a perceptually longer life that is less busy and enjoyable. Is one of the goals of life to have it feel like it’s going too fast? Or is this just an outcome of a good life?

One cation I think this brings attention to is that if time is going to race by, we should at least do our best to make it joyful and not just busy. Because time can also race by when we are just busy, but to what end?

The answer doesn’t seem right

Back in December I shared that we really don’t understand exponential growth. Well I’m about to share a question with an answer that will boggle your mind. All I ask is that you make a guess at the answer before looking at it.

Imagine we get every single human being on earth to play a ‘winner play on’ game of rock-paper-scissor. First, let’s round up the population to 8 billion. And let’s assume every one of them can play.

A game of Rock-Paper-Scissors with 8,000,000,000 people.

So the first round will be 4 billion pairs of people, with 4 billion losing, and 4 billion winning and moving on to the next round. The question is:

How many rounds of rock-paper-scissors will the winning person have to win consecutively in order to be the world champion?

Guess.

I’ll give you a hint: it’s less than 100.

What do you think?

Here is the answer.

Well, what if we added another 1/2 billion people? That would be 500 million more players, or 8.5 billion total. The answer would still be the same!

Hard to believe. It’s so difficult to wrap your mind around needing this many games to whittle 8 billion people down to one winner. It just doesn’t seem right… but it is.

A place for everything

There is a saying, “A place for everything and everything in its place.”

Right now that’s not the case in our household. We are moving back onto our main floor after an extensive renovation, and now we have to find a place for everything. When it comes to the kitchen, that’s a real challenge. Our new fridge doesn’t seem as big as our old one, and the shelve sizes don’t seem to work for us. Our new cupboards and drawers are slowing becoming the place where we keep things, but I still find myself going on scavenger hunts to find things I usually find easily.

The good news, I absolutely love the new look. We took out the walls between our living room, dining room and kitchen and have a fully open concept. It looks awesome, and it already feels like home. But for now, we still have a lot of things to put away, and while we might find spots for everything, remembering where everything is kept will take a some time.

Back on track

I ended up only shooting arrows once, last week, for the entire month of March… and I didn’t shoot well. Today I was back on track.

My personal best is a 289. Today I short a 288 in my first round, with no 8’s (all gold):

Then I shot a 287 in my second round with two 8’s, but also my first three X round in a while:

I made a couple minor adjustments since my last outing and they seemed to really work for me. Now I just need to get back to shooting a bit more regularly, and I think very soon I can break into the 290’s. I’m approaching one year (April 25th) since I first hit 289, and so I hope to crack this before my 1 year anniversary.

If I keep shooting this consistently, I’m sure a new personal best is within reach!

Spice it up

I make a pretty good rice stir fry. It’s a simple recipe that I made up one day when I saw we had a lot of veggies and leftover rice. My secret, very little soy and ‘way too much‘ hoisin sauce, sesame oil, garlic, and fresh ground pepper. And, a home made pepper sauce that is a family recipe my sister makes for me. I’m not a great cook, but I do some creative things at times and this is one of those times.

When I say ‘way too much‘ of something, I don’t mean drown in the flavour, but I notice that recipes always seem to be conservative with flavours and they try to find some kind of artistic balance. I say screw that when I’m being creative in the kitchen. Most recipes don’t add nearly enough garlic. Most recipes sprinkle black pepper. Most recipes that use sesame oil measure it in teaspoons or at most a couple table spoons. If you saw how much of these I add, you’d think I was ruining the dish… but none of these tastes are overpowering, and my dish is not boring or bland. It has kick, it has zest, and it sends my family back for seconds.

I make a few family concessions. My wife likes way more cilantro than my daughter, so I use a small amount in the dish, but have more chopped for my wife and I to add to the plate. My wife doesn’t like beef in it so I cook a side pot of beef in a similar sauce for my daughter and I. We each get our own version of the dish.

The point is, I really go crazy with certain ingredients, and I think that is seldom done in recipes you find in books. Some flavours deserve a good overdose, others you have to be careful with. Garlic, go nuts. Rosemary, be gentle. Fresh ground black pepper, double the recipe’s suggestion. Dill, be reserved.

Yes, you can have too much of a good thing, but more often than not a recipe simply won’t give you enough of the good stuff, and that’s how I go ‘off book’ on a recipe. That said, my brother-in-law shared some good advice with me recently. He said that the first time he follows a recipe he does it exactly as it is described. That way he can judge what earned it a place in the recipe book, before he gets creative. Good advice. Don’t try to fix something that isn’t broken. But if you taste a recipe and it needs more garlic, well then the next time you cook it, go a little garlic crazy.