Head Fakes and Shining Eyes

As a writer, I sometimes get stuck. I know what I want to say, but I can't quite get it right. It helps to walk away and do something else. Oftentimes, in the process of doing something else, the light bulb switches on.

I have been thinking about teachers this past week brought on by Randy Pausch's passing (if you haven't seen it already, his "Last Lecture" is worth an hour of your life) as well as my own run-ins with head fake teachers. I first heard the term head fake learning in Pausch's lecture. It refers to indirect learning. In other words, we don't learn to play football just to learn how to throw a ball. We learn about "teamwork, sportsmanship, perserverance etc. etc.".

Boxing has been a great head fake learning experience. I had an amazingly gratifying boxing session yesterday morning. I remember my first class was such a disaster that I walked away thinking I hated boxing and would never do it again (there it is; never say never!). I was incredibly uncoordinated and definitely looked very silly. But then, the whole point of learning is to become good at something we're not. So I signed up with a trainer, and by the second session, I was hooked. Yesterday, AB said something very enlightening: "I became a much better boxer the moment I stopped trying to block everything." Of course, I didn't understand. Who wants to be hit? But his point was that it's very tiring to block everything. It's much more effective to "turtle-up", let the punches land on the gloves, tire out the opponent and then strike back. And it occurred to me that was a great strategy both in and outside of the ring.

So I had wanted to write a post about head fake teachers and how it's a shame that our classrooms aren't filled with more head fake teachers. I've had the good fortune to have had quite a few such teachers. But most were teachers of gifted programs, and I believe that every student deserves to have the same rich and wonderful learning experience. Because once a student encounters a head fake teacher in the classroom, he will recognise head fake learning opportunities everywhere.

I remember one teacher who posed us the Konigsberg bridge problem and asked us to work out the solution (i.e how to cross all 7 bridges only once, without back-tracking). We weren't in a mathematics class and we were nowhere near learning anything about topology, but the experience was so engaging that I still remember the problem. She wasn't teaching us about mathematics, she was teaching us the value of asking questions and how curiosity about mundane, everyday things (in this case, bridges that the people of Konigsberg crossed every day) could lead to important breakthroughs. And that in looking for the solution to one problem, we might end up answering entirely different questions altogether, questions we didn't even know we had. For many years, I had an excitement for mathematics and science and the possibilities they opened up. There was elegance and beauty as well. But then I met Katrin and Robert Burlin, two wonderful English professors, who opened up another world of wonderful possibilities.

Which brings me back to the beginning of this post. I had written a bit about head fake teachers yesterday, but I felt the post didn't quite convey the passion for life that these head fake teachers actually instill in their students. So I left the post (also because I also had to go to dinner). This morning, on my way to the gym, as I often do, I looked for a TED Talk to watch. Of the 15 or so TED Talks that I could have chosen, I picked one who title started "Classical Music With..." (because the iPhone doesn't show the whole title). I thought it would be a relaxing performance that I could shut my eyes to. Instead of shutting my eyes, I got shining eyes instead:



As with most Asian kids, I was made to take piano lessons. And I suffered through the boredom of practicing scales and pieces that meant nothing to me. If only my piano teachers taught me about one-buttock playing!

Too often, kids are told that they're not good, or good enough at something and they should move on and focus on what they happen to be good at. What they really need, though, is a head fake teacher who can get their eyes to shine. Then, they will learn the most important lesson of all -- they, themselves, possess the ability to create their own world of possibilities.

Nike+ Human Race: Running for UN Refugee Agency

I was inspired to join the human race today. That is, the Nike+ 10K Human Race. I saw a poster for it the other day in Vancouver (one of the official race cities) as I walked past the Nike Shop on Robson, on my way to the Lululemon shop. After a gorgeous, leisurely 10K run along Falls Creek into Stanley Park today, I decided to sign up. While there are official races in 25 cities around the world, any runner (with the Nike+ running gear, of course) can join the race and run the 10K from anywhere around the world. As fate would have it, I will be running somewhere I'm visiting for the first time: Cordoba, Argentina (incidentally, Buenos Aires, New York City, Seoul, Mount Fuji, Shanghai, Singpore and Taipei are a few of the 25 official race cities). No doubt, it'll be a memorable run. The idea was just too cool, and too good, to resist.

Based on runners' charity choice, their training miles run on Nike+ gear and on race day, Nike will determine how much it donates to each of these three charities: The UN Refugee Agency, Lance Armstrong Foundation and WWF. Runners can also ask family and friends to sponsor their training miles, raising more money for their selected charity.

I've pledged to run 100 miles between now and race day on 31 August 2008 in aid of The UN Refugee Agency. Click here to sponsor me and help support their work to ensure that refugee children around the world get access to education, sport and technology!

The Perfect Cuppa

A&D invited me to venture over to Kowloon side for dinner last night at Aspasia (remember Chez Roland? it's the same Chef Roland Schuller here on the first floor of Luxe Manor Hotel). Had a delightful meal that was definitely worth the cross-harbour trek. It was great meeting two other Ds (an amazing coincidence that all three guys at one table had the same first name), where the chatter jumped from Obama & McCain to the merits of Tasmanian black truffle to funny examples of CSIS's ultra-secretiveness and other interesting defense tidbits to which a Jane's subscriber might be privy. While I found the spook talk fascinating, what really inspired me was the story of a business co-founded by Canadian D's brother -- Transcend Coffee in Edmonton.

Oddly enough, the conversation started off about the evils of caffeine since A has given up coffee for more than a year and I had gone without a drop of coffee for nearly a month from when I started my detox. While I've wisened up to the fact that caffeine and sugar are the main culprit for morning sluggishness, afternoon bouts of sleepiness and general energy dips throughout the day, I love the taste and the experience of drinking a well made espresso or latté or cappucino to truly give it up for good. Off the detox, I now limit my coffee intake to less than one a day and I never start the morning with coffee (now, a cup of hot water and lemon juice is the first thing I ingest).

Listening to Canadian D describe his brother's passion for coffee -- finding the best beans, profiling and creating the perfect customised blend for individual clients -- made me lament the fact that Starbucks has lost all that. Starbucks was always a choice of convenience and familiarity rather than the choice made out of love. As D tells it, Transcend has created their own unique brand of perfectionist coffee culture, to the point of telling customers whenever they feel they are incapable of delivering the best, that they have developed a bit of a Canada-wide cult following despite having only one physical store in Edmonton. D's brother, A, is actually the company's "Chief of Culture". They're constantly concocting new coffee blends and drink creations. Reading their blog, I wondered how their business can grow and still keep its passion for and culture of perfection (i.e. when you grow from roasting 50,000 lbs of beans per year to 500,000 lbs per year, or 1 neighborhood store to national or even multi-national chain, culture often gives way to efficency).

About to hop on a plane to sunny Vancouver, and I'm already pining for a latté from cito espresso.