I've not gone missing, real life's just been So Full, there hasn't been any space left to fit in any non-essential internet activity.
And today is to be the day I finally finalise my final Instrument (of DOOM! of DESPAIR!)... of measuring students' perceptions of effective teachers based on characteristics compiled from an extensive literature search?
With Any Luck, say I.
Doing research in education is a mystery to me. It was not immediately obvious, considering that I have been decently educated in the mores and principles of psychological research... and you'd think, well, social science, education, psychology, its all more or less the same, no?
No!
Educational research is HARD. And messy. And HARD.
And not straightforward, and goes nowhere or moves along its stated path only a little bit, and is based on so much talk, theory, language and the interference of politics and the practice of real teaching that what you are trying to find out is inevitably blanketed in the tangled mass of needs to be met and weeds to be tiptoed around.
This is contrary to my personal belief that the best research is straightforward, uncomplicated, clear and well-defined. If the particular topic to be studied doesn't lend itself easily to that, then maybe certain kinds of research styles are not suited to it!
There's nothing wrong with case studies, carefully carried out and reported.
There's nothing wrong with simply collecting and compiling information, nothing wrong with a descriptive study, if that's the best way of doing it.
There's no need to have factor analysis in everything!
*angry*
*sick of my research thing*
Perhaps i'm too proud and supposed that I knew how to go about doing things. Now, for the first time in a long time, or ever i can remember, i am stuck in a rut, genuinely trying to accomplish something i don't really understand, or necessarily agree with, and hardly believe in anymore, all under pressure.
How to do this?
Stop complaining on my bloggything and actually start working on it?
Prrobably.
Tuesday, April 19, 2005
Sunday, April 10, 2005
Too schmall
The world is too damn small man.
Okay, no, Singapore is .. but yes we all knew already,
but yeah. Like Sammie knows Mr Brown, from working at Borders, and Mr Brown knows Mr Miyagi from ACS, and Mr Miyagi knows me from Sydney, and now he knows Sammie too or at least went to look at her bloggything and commented on a photo of Sulin!
Surrealness!
Weirdshit brigade.
Okay, no, Singapore is .. but yes we all knew already,
but yeah. Like Sammie knows Mr Brown, from working at Borders, and Mr Brown knows Mr Miyagi from ACS, and Mr Miyagi knows me from Sydney, and now he knows Sammie too or at least went to look at her bloggything and commented on a photo of Sulin!
Surrealness!
Weirdshit brigade.
Sunday, April 03, 2005
Wretched week
I haven't written much recently.
The week past wasn't much to talk about anyway, filled with disappointment and bits of sheer horribleness, from two major fronts, and then the coping with, which was very angsty and boring.
I had a dream a year or so ago where i'd booked myself into a rather nice hotel and told no one where i was. I can't remember why, but the feeling of utter liberation and joy surprised me, especially since i thought i was happy. Did i long to be freed? and from what? very strange. I know dreams are often just random scrambled eggs from the chicken of life, but i also think that what you think about what you've dreamt can be meaningful, and that thought stuck with me.
On a particularly wretched night last week, whilst reading Jeanette Winterson's latest offering, something occurred to me that i kept forgetting until i picked up the book again and now that i've finished it i'd better write it down somewhere. It's nothing revelatory, but wouldn't it be nice if we could all escape our lives when we had to, just for awhile?
Wouldn't it be nice if we could put little time-outs on our lives, not necessarily stop time exactly, but er.. duck out of it for a bit? and perhaps book into quiet little time-out hotels and stay within quiet walls and walk around quiet beaches/forests/random geography until we felt we could bear to live our lives again? It's no use running away from most things, i imagine... and i suppose there would have to be a time limit of sorts, and the time would have to be borrowed from the end-wards of one's life, with interest perhaps, but I imagine it would help.
And then i think what a ridiculous girl i am, since i have nothing to complain about, really. It's not as if i have 5 hungry children and an alcoholic husband, or am paraplegic, or terminally ill, or sold into slavery, and i suppose one would say well that puts it into perspective, doesn't it? Which is true, but also a little annoying because that's only one perspective, we could also use the perspective that we're just tiny little dots on the surface of one of many tiny little dots in one of many clusters of tiny little dots and so on... and hence everything is unimportant, or, alternatively, we are each of us an entire world, or at least we build our own world with our friends and families, and scale our experiences accordingly.
It's no use being unhappy and feeling guilty about it too.
So there.
The week past wasn't much to talk about anyway, filled with disappointment and bits of sheer horribleness, from two major fronts, and then the coping with, which was very angsty and boring.
I had a dream a year or so ago where i'd booked myself into a rather nice hotel and told no one where i was. I can't remember why, but the feeling of utter liberation and joy surprised me, especially since i thought i was happy. Did i long to be freed? and from what? very strange. I know dreams are often just random scrambled eggs from the chicken of life, but i also think that what you think about what you've dreamt can be meaningful, and that thought stuck with me.
On a particularly wretched night last week, whilst reading Jeanette Winterson's latest offering, something occurred to me that i kept forgetting until i picked up the book again and now that i've finished it i'd better write it down somewhere. It's nothing revelatory, but wouldn't it be nice if we could all escape our lives when we had to, just for awhile?
Wouldn't it be nice if we could put little time-outs on our lives, not necessarily stop time exactly, but er.. duck out of it for a bit? and perhaps book into quiet little time-out hotels and stay within quiet walls and walk around quiet beaches/forests/random geography until we felt we could bear to live our lives again? It's no use running away from most things, i imagine... and i suppose there would have to be a time limit of sorts, and the time would have to be borrowed from the end-wards of one's life, with interest perhaps, but I imagine it would help.
And then i think what a ridiculous girl i am, since i have nothing to complain about, really. It's not as if i have 5 hungry children and an alcoholic husband, or am paraplegic, or terminally ill, or sold into slavery, and i suppose one would say well that puts it into perspective, doesn't it? Which is true, but also a little annoying because that's only one perspective, we could also use the perspective that we're just tiny little dots on the surface of one of many tiny little dots in one of many clusters of tiny little dots and so on... and hence everything is unimportant, or, alternatively, we are each of us an entire world, or at least we build our own world with our friends and families, and scale our experiences accordingly.
It's no use being unhappy and feeling guilty about it too.
So there.
Random things
Random thing #1: Inspired by Clocky (link via YJ), someone invents Bloggy! The world's first automated blogging robot. Allegedly cuddly and cute. I don't know. It is fluffy though. See its blog here.
Random thing #2: I went with Bear yesterday to watch him set off his latest shooty rocket things, one of which i painted white and black with spunky orange flames for him. Overall, it was a bit exciting when it went swooooosssshh! and went very very high up, and then it was all either exploding into bits or crashing down very fast or coming down slightly more slowly flapping with streamers made of sportsgirl plastic bag (because the colours are nice lah). I suppose it's a bit of fun, and interesting in a physics sort of way, but really, what was that about a whole lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing? ahah. Badly quoted, i know. See Bear's report here.
Random thing #3: I saw the movie Dolls last night by Takeshi Kitano (vcd via the generosity of Ruth), and here is my review of it in five words: slow, gorgeous, meditative, astonishing, and slow. A better review can be found here.
Random thing #4: Bear and i just went grocery shopping, for the express purpose of making spinach and feta pastry triangles. Unexpectedly, we were thwarted several times, with one supermarket distinctly lacking spinach, the second one labelling silverbeet as spinach, and the third,.. well the third had spinach, a rather large bunch of it for $2, and so i thought, Finally! and then bought it. However, after looking at it carefully, am not convinced it is actually spinach. After cooking and eating it, continue to be unconvinced, but have no idea what it could be instead. Should the leaves have sortof curly edges? Not like endive-curly, but more like rocket-curly... oh i don't know. *shrug*
Here is my recipe for Spinach (or random spinach-resembling vegetable), Pine nut and Fetta Triangles (or squares or tarts or whatever you please really):
Large bunch of alleged spinach, chopped and washed and wrung dry
Onion, sliced thinly
Bit of garlic, chopped finely
Pine nuts, toasted
2 or 3 or 4 eggs
Some amount of fetta cheese, crumbled or chopped depending on consistency
Dill
Frozen puff pastry sheets, thawed.
Oven at 200'C
Fry the onions with the garlic and alleged spinach until soft and cooked and wilty, then season with salt and pepper and let cool. Meanwhile, beat eggs together, add dill and fetta and mix about. Add cooked spinach mix to eggs and cheese, and mix mix mix, then add pine nuts in. Mix about somemore, then spoon into puff pastry packets as you like, triangles are the usual style, but whatever keeps the filling in whilst letting a bit of steam out is perfectly fine.
Place on a firm metal baking tray, into the oven at 200'C for about 30mins. Let cool for a little, then eat them all so you won't need dinner later.
Hurrah!
Random thing #2: I went with Bear yesterday to watch him set off his latest shooty rocket things, one of which i painted white and black with spunky orange flames for him. Overall, it was a bit exciting when it went swooooosssshh! and went very very high up, and then it was all either exploding into bits or crashing down very fast or coming down slightly more slowly flapping with streamers made of sportsgirl plastic bag (because the colours are nice lah). I suppose it's a bit of fun, and interesting in a physics sort of way, but really, what was that about a whole lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing? ahah. Badly quoted, i know. See Bear's report here.
Random thing #3: I saw the movie Dolls last night by Takeshi Kitano (vcd via the generosity of Ruth), and here is my review of it in five words: slow, gorgeous, meditative, astonishing, and slow. A better review can be found here.
Random thing #4: Bear and i just went grocery shopping, for the express purpose of making spinach and feta pastry triangles. Unexpectedly, we were thwarted several times, with one supermarket distinctly lacking spinach, the second one labelling silverbeet as spinach, and the third,.. well the third had spinach, a rather large bunch of it for $2, and so i thought, Finally! and then bought it. However, after looking at it carefully, am not convinced it is actually spinach. After cooking and eating it, continue to be unconvinced, but have no idea what it could be instead. Should the leaves have sortof curly edges? Not like endive-curly, but more like rocket-curly... oh i don't know. *shrug*
Here is my recipe for Spinach (or random spinach-resembling vegetable), Pine nut and Fetta Triangles (or squares or tarts or whatever you please really):
Large bunch of alleged spinach, chopped and washed and wrung dry
Onion, sliced thinly
Bit of garlic, chopped finely
Pine nuts, toasted
2 or 3 or 4 eggs
Some amount of fetta cheese, crumbled or chopped depending on consistency
Dill
Frozen puff pastry sheets, thawed.
Oven at 200'C
Fry the onions with the garlic and alleged spinach until soft and cooked and wilty, then season with salt and pepper and let cool. Meanwhile, beat eggs together, add dill and fetta and mix about. Add cooked spinach mix to eggs and cheese, and mix mix mix, then add pine nuts in. Mix about somemore, then spoon into puff pastry packets as you like, triangles are the usual style, but whatever keeps the filling in whilst letting a bit of steam out is perfectly fine.
Place on a firm metal baking tray, into the oven at 200'C for about 30mins. Let cool for a little, then eat them all so you won't need dinner later.
Hurrah!
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