No umbrella today, and plenty of rain, but my Billabong Blue Jedi top (it has a hood) kept me fairly dry.Strange dreams about tightrope walking, camera crews and familiar faces in unfamiliar cars.
Each day this week all the teachers have been locked in meetings with the director. Less meeting and more lectures. A meeting implies an exchange of information. I'm not part of these, thankfully, but all I hear is one voice, and on the monitors I see plenty of scribbling in notepads. I asked Sharon today, "What are you talking about in these meetings?"
She said, "The director is explaining the rules of this school to all the teachers, and giving his faith to us."
"It takes a week to explain all the rules?"
Tried to sign up for the Peace Marathon, well, the 10km part of it, but it's already reached capacity (at around 11 000 entries. Good news is I feel healthier today, so I definitely see myself swimming on Sunday, and might do an easy run as early as tomorrow. Tonight I'll get down to some Pilates again.
Plans are afoot for a big night to Hongdae. I'm not in the mood, and neither is the weather. Think I will leave that stuff for my last two or three weeks here. Want to concentrate on some writing projects and exercise.
I know I will really miss the awesome internet access I have here, and how inexpensive it is. In some ways it is good, I get to exercise my writing muscles. But it seems to wreak havoc with sleeping patterns, and almost disables me for all other activities. This is in part due to sleep deprivation, but also in large part to conserve the mental patterns that I've built up. It's a sort of addiction.
I remember reading about a scientist, a genius, Crick I think, who gained celebrity despite giving virtually no interviews in his whole career. When they finally got him to agree to an interview, they asked why it was so difficult for him. He explained that he spent hours and hours in painstaking thought. Solving riddles, usually mathematical. He got caught up in this fascination, and the distractions of dullards asking dull questions would crash his rollercoaster.
Someone else, Newton I think, was said to wake up and then spend hours sitting on his bed, trying to figure his way through a problem.
I also have a hard time giving up my paradigms. You get very sharp, very mentally acute, when you spend copious amounts of time applying your mental chisel to the ores of information.
But when you do it can be tremendously refreshing and insightful. Of course, while you're away there's a tremendous yearning to return to your chair, your pen, your pad, which few people probably understand.
I find it incredible how the internet, and tools like Google, provide access to the exploration of every question you can conjure up. Frankly I'm surprised more kids don't stay home and spend hours and weeks just pursuing their curiosity down every rabbit hole. They'd probably learn a lot more.
When I was at school I had a voracious appetite for reading, and the library (school, and public) provided some filling for that. But not enough. With Google and broadband, there's no excuse.
The only snag is letting lazy thoughts rule these journeys, allowing us to surf the gossip and entertainment columns endlessly, instead of something more practical.
I'm doing doing imbedded messages in word puzzles today. Monday is a holiday, so there may be enough time for a rollerblade this weekend. I've been saying that for a while, I know. Isn't that, after all, what people call 'having fun'. If the boulevards around my building are dry by Monday, I promise to put wheels on my feet, and throw words away for a few hours.
No comments:
Post a Comment