LOVE defined

Love is not singular except in syllable. ~Marvin Taylor

When love is not madness, it is not love. ~Pedro Calderon de la Barca


Come live in my heart and pay no rent. ~Samuel Lover


Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love. ~Albert Einstein


We are all a little weird and life's a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love. ~Author Unknown


Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs. ~William Shakespeare


Without love, what are we worth? Eighty-nine cents! Eighty-nine cents worth of chemicals walking around lonely. ~M*A*S*H, Hawkeye


Take away love and our earth is a tomb. ~Robert Browning


The eskimos had fifty-two names for snow because it was important to them: there ought to be as many for love. ~Margaret Atwood


adapted -valentines 2009

moving on

let go...live ...and love

face the feared future

yoke not on yester yearns

tomorrow's taciturn times

beckons the backbone of belief

move on, mettlesome MAE!!!

coolbreeze feb 14 /09

haiku

Lead,command respect
accomplishes fast results
Listen, I suggest!

coolbreeze 2/9/2009

Inconsiderate people...are u one of them?

I still am enraged about an incident that happend to me this morn. Earlier this week, I was informed that we ( I and my Chinese colleagues) would be having a marketing / advertisement function today and that we should be in school at 8am on the dot! Since it's still the cold season, getting up early is really a discomfort..even then I dragged myself out of bed to take a shower and prepared for work.
As expected, the metal bars and the main doors of the school building were still locked when I arrived , having no key and having not found the old man who guards the building I got no choice but to wait. I was lucky that it only took me a couple of minutes before one of my co-teachers came, she then asked the old woman nearby to unlock the doors( I never had an idea that ,she's the old man's wife!)
Anyway, we stayed in the lobby and waited, wondering why the others were not yet there. After sometime, my co-worker decided to call the peson in charge and to our surprise, that person is not yet in the city due to some weather interference! WoW! It was almost 8:20 and yet she never thought of calling or texting any of us? to tell us that she'll be late or that we continue the activity without her? HOW INCONSIDERATE !!! So furious was I that I can't even react properly. I just looked at my other colleagues and said.."oh...so what are we going to do now?" One said we wait but we don't know when she'll be in school the other said we go home...With my baffled mind I thought and asked them..."OK, so where are the materials that we're going to use today anyway?" they both said that they don't know!!! and for some reasons we really can't find any flyers around.So at any rate there was no way we could have waited for her nor go to the schools and do the activity by ourselves.
I left the school and went back to the comfort of my apartment.I switched off my phones after I called in sick! I have had similar experiences like this while working in China, and most of the time I just tried to be as passive as I can be, but there are times when it really gets me! and this is one of them.Sometimes I wonder why some people wouldn't act and think like we do? Life could have been more easier but...then again it we wouldn't be called INDIviduals then.
Well,as I write this post I am actually contemplating on what would happen on the morrow. I'm a person who wouldn't want to carry emotional baggages so I need to have them disposed off! I was not even thinking of arguing , I just wanna air out my side! and hopefully, the person concerned would really listen and learn.

Seeking ESL teachers support group

I wanna take this chance to broaden my social network specifically an ESL support group.For when you want to share something, no one listens and more often than not you run out of ideas and before you realize it ..it's 5 mins before your dreaded class! So everyone's invited to join! ESL teaching ideas, games and activities and even ESL school facts are welcome to be shared.
Let me start with some tips for those who are new to ESL teaching , I got these from www.proteacher.com
1. Start a support group, which I'm doing now.We may not be able to meet personally for coffee or lunch but we could still share ideas.
2.Get a pile of catalogs Finding just the right ESL materials for your students can sometimes be a challenge! (and let me stress it's hard to do that in if you're teaching in China.
3.Get a business card Why is it that so few teachers have business cards? Give yourself a self-esteem boost and order some.
4. Enroll in a foreign language class Put yourself in the position of a student and learn what it feels like to struggle with a new language. This experience will improve your teaching in both large and small ways.
5.Keep a private teaching journal This might sound like extra work, but if you keep a record of what works with your students and what doesn't, you'll find it invaluable in future years when looking for ideas.(This exercise will help you prepare for the next day's lesson at the same time, by reflecting on what has happened so far.)
6.Always have a lesson plan There is nothing worse than being unprepared.
7.Always have a backup plan You never know what's going to go wrong and when, especially in adult programs! Always have a spare exercise or language game up your sleeve.
8.Reduce teacher talk Pay attention to the percentage of class time devoted to your speech. Only at the very lowest language levels should you be talking more than your students.
9.Have students write you a letter To find out if students are learning, not getting lost and whether they understand what is going on, institute a regular feedback writing, suggests Susan Simon. Ask the students to write you a letter about what they've learned, what they are confused about, and what they still want to know. Students love getting a personal response, and it is well worth the time.
10.Use "right brain" activities, too Try to incorporate rhythm, music, drawing, imagination and visualization into your lessons.

thoughts

thoughts

when the mind 's weary and the body's worn out
thoughts appear blurry and vague
when time is up
what could be done?
Lay beneath the scrambling heap of my weakness???

coolbreeze 1/15/09

a neophyte amidst veteran bloggers

Drum rolls plz!!!! and...finally I was able to open a blogsite! Yea, it took me a long time (thru the inspiration of my good friend Tax) to finally have one. I have lots of plans and ideas to share to guys out there and I believe thru the help of this virtual world we can have a connection! A successful blogger once wrote: All successful bloggers are surrounded by a strong network of other successful bloggers. ...talking about connection ...we are interrelated ! So co-bloggers and dear readers , I would surely be around.
Blogging would also entail consistent posting.Whew! I really wish I would be that consistent...for work demands much of me.
Now looking back at the title of this post I just wanna give some facts about bloggers. I got excerpts from The Blog Herald: How many blogs are there? Is someone still counting?
First, let’s step back and consider why we’re counting blogs at all. You no longer see articles that attempt to demonstrate the legitimacy of the Web by stating how many Web pages there are. But blogs are still in the process of entering mainstream consciousness, so numerical credibility is important; bloggers themselves cite the statistics a lot.by C. Bailik, Wall Street Journal

Mr. David Sifry an American entrepreneur and a blogshpere icon said that state of the Blogosphere is strong, and is maturing as an influential and important part of the web.
For nearly four years, they've been tracking and enabling the growth of this phenomenon and there is much in their data to indicate that the medium is "growing up".

So, my friends..join me as we grow together with and through this societal phenomena.

I would be glad to hear your side on any issues posted here! Xie xie ...salamat po!