I have been really weak with regards to this space lately. Am still nowhere near done curating Myanmar photos and it feels overwhelming. Have been busy busy (for me) so getting time to sit down and spit stuff out has been elusive. Also have been negligent in writing stuff down and I forget the amusing stuff to relate. If I don't write it down, it vanishes. I sat in on a talk at the school yesterday about concussions and was feeling a bit uncomfortable cause while I make gags about forgetting stuff due to a lot of blows to the head, it is abundantly clear that their is truth in that line of humor.
Here are a couple things I learned at the concussion seminar. The three sports with the highest rates of concussion are: 1 - Martial Arts, 2 - Rugby, 3 - Women's soccer. I wanted to ask the dude in front of the assembled school brass what he thought about them offering rugby as a sport, but we were cut short. My personal opinion is that rugby is all kinds of stupid and if you tell me you're into it, I know all I need to know about you. This guy was well a well credentialed scientist in the field and he said the high rates of girls getting concussed is partially due to the fact that they develop earlier than boys physically with a result of that being their heads are bigger than their necks can support so they "wobble" more. Also, that blood flows to their brains at a higher rate than their male counterparts. I nudge a female friend sitting next to me and say 'duh, boys blood obviously is rushing somewhere else." She nodded knowingly.
As part of his talk on overall health consciousness, he was going on about how much screen time our kids are getting and how turning down the blue light feature on our devices can help combat affects on the brain. I did ask if going grey scale emitted less blue light than just turning it down (knowing it to be true) and he downplayed it. Why don't people advocate more for greyscale? Combats addiction to screens and saves brain cells, and no one says a freakin' peep.
There will be no post next week as I get to travel to Bangkok with the baseball team for the year end tournament. It is a six team round robin with us and international schools from Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Jakarta and Singapore. Handicappers are saying we'd be prohibitive longshots for the title but have an outside shot at the Bronze medal and we'd be very happy with that. There are a couple of schools with a number of quality baseball players where our team offers a bunch of decent athletes that sometimes play baseball. The buzz is that Taipei is the smart kid school, Singapore is the athletic school and Jakarta is the druggy school. Will endeavor to learn what KL, Manila and Bangkok's "thing" is and let you know next time. We also travel with the girls softball team and get to watch/cheer them on. Great kids on both those squads and it should be a hoot.
The other neat thing about going next week is that it is Songkran, which is the Thai New Year. Am unclear on all the rituals and such but do know that one of the features is that there is a multi day country wide water fight. Per that Wikipedia entry. "The holiday is known for its water festival. Major streets are closed to traffic, and are used as arenas for water fights.[25] Celebrants, young and old, participate in this tradition by splashing water on each other.
Oh baby. I know we're there to work but really hope to get out and throw down with the locals and packed a couple of water guns in case we do. Who doesn't love a good water fight?
One of my favorite photos from an all time great day.
In the 'beggar's can't be choosers when seeing live music in Taiwan' file, went to see a band this week called The Soft Moon. I would call them Goth Industrial. It had its moments as it had a driving beat, but was a bit too metronomic for my taste. Good and loud and the crowd was great for people watching as the entire population of Goth chicks and their poseur dudes of Taipei were out for this. That population numbers between 25 to 30. All in all, a good night, but the thing that was supremely annoying is that the band did that thing where they backlight themselves. Drives me (and my sensitive light absorbing green eyes) insane. Whenever an artist pulls this stunt, they typically don't do it for the entire show, but The Soft Moon did. The reds and blues weren't too bad.
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