For my Saturday Special Speaking class, elementary section, I gave as an absurd debate topic the proposition: "It is better to fight one horse-sized duck than 50 duck-sized horses."
This idea circulated as an internet meme for a while. I have a recollection that even Barack Obama ended up addressing it at some point… yes, he did – in an AMA session on reddit.
This new elementary section of my Special Saturday class, started in December, is a kind of personal challenge to me – I took it on rather deliberately. This is essentially a class specifically targeted at kids who have moderate to good ability, but who are so morbidly shy they can't speak a coherent sentence in class. I'm testing whether this structured debate approach will help them to loosen up and actually get comfortable saying things.
They are hard to understand – most are horribly soft-spoken, and I was having trouble with the new external microphone I've been using, so I had to rely on my camera's built-in mic. The results are frustrating. But… Well, I'm going to keep trying, and meanwhile, this seems to be progress, of a sort.
KarmaPlus Saturday Special Speaking, Panel Debate, January 11, 2014.
Yesterday morning I intended to go to the hospital – I have a standing permission to show up without making a prior appointment to see my oncologist, Dr Ryu, on Mondays at 1 pm. But I procrastinated getting motivated yesterday morning, and 1pm came and went with me still sitting at home. I realized after I'd let the opportunity pass that I was deliberately avoiding going to see the doctor, because I don't look forward to hearing what I'm almost certain he will say: that my eating issues and phlegm issues and mouth pain and all the rest are pretty much par for course, and that I'm still doing better than most patients recovering from similar issues, and that his only advice is to try to keep positive. Keeping positive is something I was doing much better during treatment. This interminable let-down of the post-traumatic denoument is proving depressing.
[daily log (11 pm): walking, 5 km]