Wanted: Miracle -> Result

Well... I haven't been on here in almost 3 weeks... and alot has happened during that time. If you read the previous post, I was quite literally drowning in work from both Architecture and RICE. Luckily for me the Archi final review was formative and I got most of it done, I guess I didn't have enough time to finish my model that I was meant to do for it, but all my drawings were completed which meant that I could still get decent feedback. But this was my own pursuit and for my own earthly future, what really amazed me is that, as you guys know I am part of the RICE design team and I had never used photoshop before (sure I've used fireworks heaps but never for this type of work) and I had no access to any software to create the designs. Even though I had such a short time frame to do the tasks and had to learn how to do everything from scratch, I reckon God did some serious blessing here.

At the start I had no idea what I could possibly do for a theme that was significantly more complex than last year's theme, and I was consistently being bombarded by uni work and was running around in circles in anxiety about what to do and all that. God gave me new insights and new perspective on how to interpret the theme. People began offering software and equipment for me to use, I mean I just randomly got a call to go somewhere to get photoshop elements off a friend. I had no idea how to pull off the concept that was in my head, so I hoped online and i just typed in the style and instantly it came up with tutorials to do all the technical stuff required to get all the effects I needed and gave me links to all the free brushes and tools I needed to do everything. I really hardly moved a finger and everything was provided for me to start working.

In my head, the idea looked fantastic and incredibly cool... But I am in reality a REALY CRAP painter. I cannot paint for the life of me. This design was a digital painting, and a REALLY hard one at that. But things just happened, and it actually looks better in real life now than it did in my head. But while I was making it I was really doubtful about whether it could actually happen, and all the other members of the team were quite doubtful of the idea as well. It could of ended up really good or really bad, and I got quite nervous at one stage when we were showing mocks because I wasn't confident in the idea. But, that didn't really matter because clearly God was confident where I was not. I guess I just really stuck with what God gave me and just did it and it worked out well. So praise God for that haha, cos I don't think I could've done it on my own, especially knowing how great (or lack of great) my art skills are.

But yeah... thats my bit for today...

Wanted: Miracle

Apart from emu gully last year, I don't think I have ever been pushed to the limits before. But that time was a physical strain in the sense of exercise and pushing my body to the limit for the sake of the team. But this time, I think I stand in front of a period that requires more mental strain then I've ever faced.

Just a list of stuff I need to do in the next 2-3 weeks.
- An architectural review to a panel of professional architects (ie. working)
= 6 sections
= 4 floor plans
= Site plans
= 1:100 model of the site and 3 buildings
= all the above arranged for a presentation due by June 1

- RICE design team
= Flyer design
= Poster Design
= Gotta meet the design deadline of June 10... but thank God I'm not working by myself on this one... but I have to learn how to use photoshop properly.

- Church Worship team
= Gotta try and practise songs at least once every 2 days lol... cos one of our members have other commitments and I am filling in for guitar.

- Bible study
= I am the bible study leader for this coming week... So I gotta prepare answers and discussions and stuff for the topic so I need time to do that.
= Also we have a memory verse "pop quiz"... and gotta memorise 4 pretty long passages...

Seriously I doubt I will have enough time to do everything. Such a coincidence that everything should collide on this fortnight... I swear I'm gonna need a miracle to do all these things... and although I know God will provide and make things work... but I think I'm getting pretty darn anxious lol... Just gotta pray that I can do everything. Hope those of you who read this will also pray for me lol... I think I'm gonna need it.

Anyways MUST get back to work...

New Pool Heater

Woot~ They have finally installed the new heater into the pool at work haha... no more freezing my butt off for 4.5 hours in cold water! It's set to 30.8 degrees which is awesomely warm haha. Although I do feel sorry for squad swimmers and lap swimmers as they suffer in the new pool. But I guess in terms of business, LTS is much more profitable than squad... so the little kids get priority :P.

Neways I don't have much more to add.

Work training day...

Yeah, I had a 9 hour training course today at work... Today as in Sunday... I was whinging for about a week and a half away from it because it killed my whole day, and I would miss out of going to church, miss out on the bible study, and miss out on the church worship team training sessions that I was meant to be at...

But I guess in the end, a part of me missed going to church because I couldn't be with other people... I couldn't be with my friends... And I know that these are wrong reasons to be wanting to go to church. And although I have significant genuine reasons to go to church, I still have this urge to be there just because of friends.

So I had a week of being pissed at work because of these arrangements. Though in hindsight I realise that I probably need to reflect on my priorities for going to church and how it will affect my christian walk. I guess I still have problems at times with letting God be number one in my life... taking priority over everything else... but hey... Nobody is perfect and I'm still "work in progress" I guess...

anyways... 9 hours was pretty crap :P
thats enough for now

Early Morning Work...

Normally, during the semester I only work in the mornings on saturdays. However it is the school clinics right now and they start at 8am in the morning which means I gotta wake up at like 6:50 to get there on time and I'm doing this 5 days a week. I guess that doesn't really agree with my nocturnal sleeping patterns. So I end up getting 6 hours sleep max on most mornings... And I would be REALLY dead. Welcome to the real world I guess... Cos once you get out into the workplace I don't think it gets any better lol... O well... gtg sleep...

Our Weed and Strawberry Garden

heh I disrupted my daily blogging yesterday... too busy playing games... lol... anyways...

Our garden is probably the most overgrown garden in our neighbourhood. Cos the weeds are immensely overgrown and we have in some places really bad planting arrangements. Like 5 mulberry trees grown about 0.5-1m apart, and mulberries grow into massive trees. Under the mulberries are a few rosemary bushes. The hardiest of hardy plants pretty much, but it likes full sun. And its grown under the shade of 5 trees. Naturally the rosemary becomes prostate, and will grow along the ground until it gets to sunlight, then grow upwards. Which means that the lawn in between the garden bed has been almost completely overtaken by rosemary branches. Which in turn kills all the grass that the rosemary branches smother. On the garden bed opposing the rosemary is a weedmatted area that has been infiltrated by a certain type of weed that could grow through the mats. We didn't add wet newspaper underneath the mats so that was the solution to the problem. the be is only half covered with mats, and so the other half is like a low herbaceous field. And throughout that half-matted garden bed that has been absolutely overgrown with weeds is our strawberries. Now some of us may know that strawberry is actually a wild plant, and its a herbaceous plant which means it can grow at incredible speeds. It grows like grass in the sense that it uses runners to sprout more and more plants. So even amongst the incredibly dense weed populations, our strawberries have resilently stood against its oppressors :P. I just harvested some strawberries while I was mowing the lawns. But yeah, since our gardens recieve a lack of attention, it doesn't get weeded and doesn't get fertilised and gets mowed every like... 2 months almost and hardly ever gets trimmed. Our strawberries are rather small in size but have good flavour, but if we weeded out its evil competitors, it would grow like, 3 or 4 fold in population and possibly after a while be dense enough to stop weeds from growing back. Also when you fertilise strawberries they grow a spine and stand to almost knee high rather that ankle height, and also have much better flavour too. lol... enough of my strawberry ravings

O and I also got new glasses today :P It has a magnetic sunglass clip on, perfect for driving :P.

O and about that pay rise, lol, it was a "one week special" cos that week earlier the boss screwed up my pay and put in under my bro's name, so it went into his account. The week after she must've made a mistake and paid me according to my bro's pay, and he's 22 so the $20.95/hr thing was probably he's rates. So unfortunate I'm still on 18/hr so yeah lol. Got my hopes up for a little bit lol...

Weird Dream... About Swimming...

Last night I had a really strange dream... I had the worst possible bunch of kids in the world swimming together in a squad... And I was getting so angry and frustrated while trying to coach them. I would have to dive into the water to make them actually do anything that resembled swimming. But yeah... I was just yelling my lungs out on the side of the pool like a madman. I woke up thinking, "Thank God they aren't real kids!" But yeah... my work has began invading my sleep lol... Which reminds me that one of my fellow workfriends is getting fired over arguements about the manager changing her hours when the time sheets were signed by her and the swim school supervisor. But yeah... My workplace can get pretty bitter at times.

Neways I have a wedding to attend to soon... You can expect another massive blog post later tonight though haha... I have become very outspoken :P You'll see why. Neways gotta go

Freezing at Work

Teaching Learn to Swim is a tough job. You get sick often and your attendance at work has to be consistent with as little interruption as possible since there are significantly low staff numbers. Unlike working at coles, where employees are like ants and are everywhere. Swimming Instructors cause great distress when one of them can't come to work. Today I taught at like 12:30 and was meant to be able to go home by 2:30, and by that time I was already out of my gear. But I was told to do an assessment at 3:15 and then was told to start the squads off because another teacher was outside doing another class and was behind. Then my boss tells me she wants me back in the water for 2 hours because another instructor was sick. So I reluctantly agreed and I hadn't had a chance to eat lunch yet so all I had eaten all day was 2 bowls of cereal and 3 eggs at like 10:30 or something. So my energy levels were rock bottom, and I was absolutely freezing, like struggling to speak coherently cold. My voice was shaking from the coldness... So I was in the water till 5:30... and I was hungry as heck. Unlike other jobs where you can eat on the job, you can't eat in the water (obviously) and even though your surrounded by water, you can't actually drink it. And since you lose energy at more than 4x in air... you just yer... die lol...

If we did chemistry, we know that the heat capacity of air is 1.012. Or if we use the volumetric heat capacity of air, it is 0.001297/ml. The volumetric heat capacity of water is 4.186/ml... The surface area of an average male is 1.9m^2, and if we multiply that by 0.01m just to consider the volume of stuff surrounding us, we have 0.019m^3 of space surrounding our body. If we convert that to cm^3 to make calculations easier, we get 19000cm^3 I think... (I'm just doing this off the top of my head)... so if the energy required for the body to heat up just the water touching your skin which is the 19000cm^3 of water, assuming the water is 28C and the body is 37C would be E=19000*4.186*9 (now I need a calculator) which equals 715.806 kJ. The same equation done with air would be E=19000*0.001297*9=221.787 J

Which means that room temperature water is 3227.44 times colder than room temperature air. Which means that you lose energy 3227.44 times faster when submerged in water than when you are in air. 28C air is quite comfortable as your body does not need to use much energy to maintain core temperature, in fact it's actually quite hot. 28C water is extremely cold if you are not exercising. Also remember that the water around you is constantly moving which means that the water that warms up around you gets washed away and you get cold again and continue losing heat. I had no energy left after not eating since breakfast so I was cold, very cold.

If the water was to be made to the level of comfort as if your in 21C A/C (E=19000*0.001297*16=394.288J) the water temperature would need to be body temperature (36.995C). I haven't done maths and chemistry in ages lol... But I still remember how to calculate this stuff. And water is cold stuff...

Neways... enough from me...

Pleasing People...

Today at work I was given a private class at 12:00... It was of a kid, whom unbeknown to me, had had an accident with large bodies of water before and was pretty much petrified of the pool. I simply assumed he was the typical freaked out kid and simply analysed what he knew and just used one of my regular programs (each instructor is slightly different in how they teach the same skills and different approaches) for a child of his ability. At the level he was at, all we teach is pretty much kicking on their stomach and on their backs and learn how to paddle... But he didn't have goggles for one, and was petrified to go on his back...

One thing I hate about private classes is that parents are watching even closely as the only kids in the class are theirs and they pay like 4 times the price for the same half hour so they make sure they get their "money's worth" and they try to tell you how you should run the friggin class when they have no darn clue what is involved with swimming. And so rather than being bent around the will of the child and not do what he's afraid to do, I try to ease them into the exercises slowly and gently so they aren't as scared... emphasis on the AS, since learning means changing, and as we know, humans don't generally like change and the unfamiliar can be scary. But in swimming sometimes certain skills cannot be... reduced or simplified or stepped down any further for the beginner, such is to kick on your back... you're either on your back or you aren't... And some kids don't like the feeling of facing the roof in an unfamiliar medium not knowing whether he's floating or sinking or where the ground is or where the teacher is or where his parents are or other random crap (although if you were sinking its quite obvious lol...). And so swimming on your back is probably a relatively big step particularly for this little kid that I had today. He had a pool noodle under his back and around his waist and he was holding on to it and he is meant to lie down on it so he's floating on his back on top of the noodle while I held on to him to stabilise and support him cos face it, without certain skills, even a noodle can't hold him up completely (that's why it says "use under competent supervision" on the noodle). But that kid was kind of freaking out a little, making weird whinging noises, telling him that everything is going to be fine and told him that it is easy if he's just tries it (because everything will be ok, and it is actually incredibly easy (remember that video about the limbless guy, he swam on his back! because its easier than on your stomach)if you just brave it and give it a go.)

I was trying to get him to simply put his legs out straight and get his back straight so he can float... and although he would have whinged he would be able to get used to it and realise its not so hard to float on your back with a floatation device. But the dad interrupts me and starts telling me how I should run my lesson, telling me how I should let him swim on his stomach more first to build up confidence... But the thing is, he didn't even bothered giving his kid some goggles and unless you put your head into the water, you cannot swim by yourself sustainably unless you are remarkably strong (relative to a child's strength). There are some reason's for this, any gymnast, diver, decent swimmer and decent athlete would be able to tell you that the movement of your head determines where your body goes. When you play ball games and you try to evade someone, the first part of your body that moves is your head, then your torso and then your legs. Only cartoon characters can run with their feet in front of their body fast. Your head has to be first. Gymnasts when they do flips and stuff, their heads determine their direction and most of their success, no head movement = painful stacks. Divers will tell you the same as gymnasts. And the same goes for swimming, if you swim with your head up, your feet will naturally sink to the bottom, and unless you have powerful legs, you won't be able to swim with your head up for very far before sinking to the bottom. Without goggles most children refuse to put their face in, and so there was no point for me to teach that kid to swim forwards cos we wouldn't get anywhere and he wouldn't learn anything. So swimming backwards was a good option to teach him something without goggles, and the dad goes and interrupts me and makes me change what I was doing. I wasn't about to rip back at him, so I just changed it and wasted the rest of his $45 bucks on activities his child would not benefit any more from.

The father initially told me why he chose private classes over regular group classes was because his kid didn't seem to be progressing and he wanted him to learn QUICKLY because he was going into primary school next year (which means swimming carnivals). Now, unless you're really keen on learning, you CANNOT learn things quick. Quick learning means quick change, which means BIG steps. And his kid was not about to be able to take big steps. And so when I tried to satisfy the father's desire to get the kid to improve quickly, the kid will naturally be scared, which is reasonable, and my job was to help him get over that initial fear and get him to try the things that would get him improving. But, the father contradicts himself when he sees his kid getting a little uncomfortable with getting on his back and yaps at me. Which is ironic and stupid. I wasn't about to let a 30 min private lesson go to waste and was gonna get that kid moving along quickly as requested.

So I guess you can't please everyone, sometimes you can't please anyone, and sometimes you can't actually please someone. When I finished the lesson, I knew the father wasn't too happy about the lesson, and I saw him debating with my supervisor about the lesson, I would have butted in and explained why I thought it was necessary to progress quickly. But I thought I'd keep my mouth shut and not guilt trip the guy and make him look like an idiot with his inability to comprehend his own desires for his child's rapid progress.

Slllloowww Days...

For some odd reason some days appear much slower than other days... It's particularly noticable at work too. Today was one of those royal sloth days. It seemed that classes would never end, and they just came one after another, after another... Why is that ay? I wasn't particularly tired, and although I've slowly lost enthusiasm as the day went on, it was just so slow... I was at work at 12:30 and I finished my last class at 5:30... and between 2:30 and 3:30 I have nothing and don't get paid, so I only taught for 4 hours today... I'm sure we have all experienced that kind of feeling. But I wonder if it had to do with my food... I've been trying to overload on carbohydrates, which means I've also been eating alot of junk food... Which have an adverse effect on blood glucose levels, which cause an increase in insulin, which result in the slowing down of the body, or making it tired and lethargic... Meh, I dunno... I have eaten about 1000 calories of junk food today tho... but hey...

Work Dinner, Pre-Christmas celebration...

Well, went to a work dinner tonight... It was amusing and had a bit of a laugh, though it seems our work place is incredibly female dominated at all age levels... out of 17 people only 4 of us were guys, and 2 of them were like head coaches of the 40+ age group. The other guy was probably 20+ and I'm the youngest guy there at 18. It's funny how teaching jobs are generally so female dominated too. I'm pretty sure a school teaching staff would be highly female dominated as well, particularly primary levels, which are also the age of children we teach. I guess females supposably have that natural caring role, and most guys don't even want to have to put of with childish behaviour, or to some extent the childish behaviour of others. Meh...

But yeah, it was a good night, and again I overkilled on food, $22.10 got me a garlic bread that was about 25cm long as well as a 300g fillet steak plus an incredible amount of veges. Leagues clubs sell cheap, decent food. But yeah, it was a fun night and our workplace has some pretty crazy people too so it made it all the more funnier. But yeah... Cos some work people are going away early so they decided to celebrate, but then they are gonna do some more stuff closer to christmas... They like their celebrations I guess :P

That was as fun as my day got... Came home to complaints about me forgetting to wheel out the bin yesterday night... Can't help it...

Things I have learnt from teaching swimming...

I think I've learnt many things from becoming a swimming instructor... including somethings that other people don't get a chance to learn until they become parents, which in a way is a good thing. I guess personally, I find great joy in teaching in general, and teaching a life essential skill such as swimming makes it even better. So I guess the first thing I've learnt is how to reinterpret a concept into lots of different analogies and different approaches for people to understand. If a kid doesn't understand what needs to be done with one method of explaining the exercise, you have to reinterpret the exercise or the explanation in another way so that they get it.

The second thing I've learnt would be awareness, and I think I'm still working on it. Being able to monitor all the children in the class and make sure none of them have jumped off and drowned themselves, which proves to be difficult when you are distracted from monitoring because you are trying to explain or correct another kid. It's a real challenge on your peripheral vision as well.

One of the major things you learn is responsibility. In a class you a responsible for the lives of 4-8 other children, and you are also responsible for their swimming "education". So by doing that, you organise your priorities differently, and you learn to put other things aside while you are teaching. No matter how cold I am, when I'm in a class, I've learnt not to care about how cold I am, because there are more important things that I should be concerned about. No matter how I would be feeling on that day, sad, happy, mediocre, depressed, excited, whatever, when I jump into the water, it all goes away and the focus is the kids and their swimming. Which has served as a great distraction I guess, and now that I've said that, I feel like a workaholic... lol...

You learn great endurance, because you learn to be able to do the same thing day after day, teaching the same thing all the time. And although the people change, the stuff stays the same. Like I said before, you learn to ignore your own situations and focus on others, enduring the cold, the heat, the sun, the rain, the wind and whatever else the environment can throw at you. Yer...

One of the major things that you learn is authority. Learning how to lay down the law is important, because face it, water is dangerous if treated wrongly, and you can die from it. You are responsible for their learning so, being able to show authority, and being able to deliver consequences to misbehaviour. You have to be able to command their attention and make sure they do what they need to do so that they can learn.

Gentleness is a major thing as well. You have to be gentle with kids, not in the physical gentle but the way you talk to them and instruct them. You have to be able to show authority and deliver consequences, but gently. Kids have no problems with showing emotions, and often show undue emotions. So gentleness is extra important. Also some kids are scared of the environment or certain skills, like swimming on their back. Without gentleness you would never be able to teach them those skills.

You also learn to multi-task with extreme efficiency as you have to do so many things at once, you gotta monitor the kids, correct their strokes, be yelling at some other kid simultaneously for misbehaving, and the hardest one is to simultaneously run two different programs for the same class if the needs of the individual students are too different. The later happens on a friday, I have 3 6yr old boys and a 10 yr old boy in that class, 1 6yr can swim, 2 6yr olds can barely swim and the 10 yr old can only swim breastroke, which is not the main stroke we teach in Australia but in most asian countries, it's the first stroke. So 3 freestylers, 1 breastroker, and the 10 yr old boy has a fear of water already so he is not capable yet of swimming on his back at all... and so I toss between 2-3 different exercises at one time and keeping an eye on all of them, which can get slightly stressful at times...

Last but probably the most important one, Patience. My patience level has gone through the roof since I've become a swimming teacher. Some kids learn like bricks, they never get it and no matter how hard you try to reinterpret things, they just don't seem to be able to coordinate themselves in any beneficial manner. But they come back to you week after week, and you have to keep trying, and trying... and trying... and hope that one of these days they might understand and be able to coordinate. It can be frustrating when they don't seem to understand and you've changed people several times in the classes yet one extra stubborn child remains while everyone else has come and gone to higher levels. You also have to be patient with their behaviour, you tell them not to do something but they keep doing it, and you keep telling them not to do it but they keep doing them. One of my instructors told me that what they would do if a child refuses to listen to instructions to stay seated for their own safety, you let them put themselves in a haarrdd place... A place where they struggle for air... Just enough to instill enough fear to not muck around anymore without drowning them... Which sounds extremely cruel... But, pain teaches lessons and we learn from pain I guess... I haven't myself tried that one out on live subjects yet and I'll avoid the need to...

I thought I might also include tolerance as a main thing. I have this one child... Who is extremely bad behaved... If you have seen worse, then you deserve a prize, If you managed to teach and make them learn, I will give you a medal. Because this kid and his little brother are hellish. Other children when they are bad behaved, you command them to stop and most will stop, and worse case you yell at them once or twice and they won't do it again. But this kid... The whole complex would be able to hear this class, generally he is by himself in this class too. He will not listen, he always wants to muck around and to wreckless things but he can barely swim. He will scream and cry unless he gets his way, and he will attempt to pinch and bite you should he get to that point. And he's also not afraid of running away by jumping out of the pool and running out. You haven't seen my commanding voice until you've watched this class, because it is hell unleashed. He will backchat every sentence you say. I have pretty darn good patience, and I have pretty darn good tolerance too... but I absolutely dread this class, every saturday. If I was that kid's parent, he'd get owned from slaps ay... I dunno how they were raised but they are monsters. Normally I could make sure he doesn't run away, because he's the only one... and no way I'd let a 4? year old kid get away from me, and I also have the necessary strength to control him as well. You'd be suprised how strong a kid can be when they are desperate, and this kid is desperate to do the wrong thing. Today, I upgraded one of my best students to another level which was to the level of this monster of a child. The good student was an indian kid and would keenly and obediently do everything I told him to do. And he improved so fast and he absolutely loved swimming and he would give it everything he had and he would have been absolutely smashed after his first lesson earlier in the morning with me. Some odd reason he had a make up lesson in his new level later that morning... same class as the hellkid. The absolute best and the absolute worse placed in teh same class... It was a waste of a make up lesson as I had to spend much of the lesson controlling the other kid and could only spare half of my attention and one arm to teach him. The kid ran off once, and almost ran out of the pool centre, though my boss prevented him from exiting, which allowed me to corner him (which meant leaving a child unsupervised which I really shouldn't have done but had no choice, but I knew the good kid wouldn't do anything and he didn't he sat and watched and waited, fantastic kid to teach). I then had to pick him up off the ground and pry him from the door frame which he was holding unto in hopes of not getting back in (not because he hated the water, but because he didn't want to do as I told him to and all I told him to do was to swim with a frigggin kickboard...)... Obviously he wouldn't stand a chance as I pulled him straight off by walking with him, he then started to pinch me, but I was wearing 3 layers of clothing so no chance there either :P... and I saw his head move towards my forearm, and in the most evil tone I could muster, I whispered into his ear "Don't you even DARE think about biting me, Don't you even DARE..." I think that scared him enough to not bite me but still he was a pain... I spent the rest of the lesson teaching the good kid with one arm while I constricted the other kid with my right arm to stop him from moving, which meant I used a fair amount of strength, but the more he struggled the harder I had to squeeze to keep my grip... Not my loss... (There is a time and place for everything, and that was not the time to be gentle... seeing I do have some legal responsibilities as well as moral and occupational responsibilities). But yeah... There was no other way to handle such a kid... I had the most heavy split personality in that class... I would have a cheery soft voice talking to the good kid and correcting him and laughing, and turn into heavy, loud, angry and hoarse commanding yells the next second with the hellkid... While I was constricting him I simply ignored his screaming and crying (fake) and tantrums... but meh... I simply took all the necessary steps in the gentlest way possible, because I generally reason with bad behaviour giving them a chance to change before I pulled out my angry voice/face to stand it down. But that doesn't work with this kid... So I took it to the next level lol... Physical "imprisonment" with a strong arm...

O well... I'm tired from work... I only had 5 hours sleep last night... I worked at reception for 2-3 months before I got my license to teach, and reception is getting busier and busier so my boss is thinking of switching me to reception because I know the computer system stuff and everything else... and thats for saturdays specifically... which means I won't get hellkid.. but that might mean I also lose teaching the awesome kid whom I want to teach cos he's friggin brilliant... so it's a toss up... lol... but given the choice I'll probably do reception... unless the awesome kid comes another day orrr I somehow get rid of hellkid and give his curse upon another unfortunate soul :P

*edit* What was ironic was that the hellkid called me "Bad"... for commanding, yelling, and punishing him for his appalling behaviour that no other kid apart from his little brother can show. Which means that hellkid here, thinks that what he is doing is RIGHT... and that he should be allowed to disobey instructions at his free leisure... And I wasn't about to have my authority undermined by some maniacal child... So I enforced it, with mercy and reason... but then with force when I had no other option... lol... but meh... My brother used to teach hellkid... but he was too lenient, never got him to do anything that he didn't like or didn't want to do... And pretty much just played with him... So the kid is always saying "I want Daniel, I hate you!" or other crap that I don't care about... Different approach I guess... I put learning first and use fun as a medium or reward... And since the kid never wanted to listen and learn, he lost all his rewards. I let my students muck around and have fun... but too a point... and only if they continue to do as I ask when I ask them to do it. So in the time that I'm not getting them to do things, they can do whatever they please within certain safety limits... so most kids like my classes as I am least strict on "free play"... At school, we always got told that whatever things we wanted to do that they let us do was a privilege and if we step over the lines, we lose it (like trip mines, you step over, you get your legs blown off)... I'm simply applying what I know is effective...

Weak Immune System...

I think working as a swimming instructor makes your immune system incredibly weak... I say that because you are constantly being frozen so your bodily functions are impaired and you are also constant exposed to viruses and bacteria from the hundreds of kids every week. I swear that our (my colleagues and I) bodies are just barely able to hold off the endless waves of crap, and the ones that work for longer hours are almost constantly sick. Which means that chances are that when your body's immune system is pushed at any other time, your screwed and your bound to get sick... which is the case now... bleh... Only the second day and I know I'm going down big time...

Wetsuits!

Woot! I finally got a wetsuit today... which means I will hopefully no longer freeze to death every day at work now haha... though those things are bloody darn expensive... a long sleeved upper body shirt costed me $99.95... good thing I had a $20 discount... What WAS rather amusing was when I told my mum that I was gonna go buy a wetsuit, she told me to buy it in 2 pieces. So I thought for a minute, why 2 pieces when I can just buy a full suit which will probably be warmer and cheaper than seperate pieces?... When I enquired, the reply I got back was one I (if you know me well) should have considered the very second she said buy in 2 pieces, but it didn't occur to me until she told me... and it was "Don't you think you need to go to the toilet?" And truth be told going to the toilet with a full wetsuit would be a big pain in the ass seeing how the zipper is on your back below your neck... and you'd need to practically take the whole thing off lol, and when you haven't been to the toilet in 5 or so hours... you don't want to waste that much time on getting the thing off :P... Kinda amusing my mum thought of toilet stuff before I did though... considering me and my brother's reputations... haha



O and about updating this thing everyday or sometimes even less?... It'll probably die down soon... lol... we'll see how persistent I am :P haha... and it kinda is the holidays so I guess I have more than enough time to blog :P

You know you are a swimming instructor when...

You know you are a swimming instructor when:

• Your skin smells like chlorine constantly
• Your tears smell like pool water
• You constantly have spare towels in your car
• You have 3 pairs of goggles in your swimming bag
• You have 2 pairs of togs in case you lose a pair somehow
• The boot of your car smells like pool water
• When you remember the names of every single student of the approximately 75 students you have
  
• When you walk past a pool and can see inside and you see crappy swimming you have the urge to correct them. And last but definitely not least;
• When you freeze to death for 8 hours in a giant puddle through the cold wind and rain survivng on a hot chocolate, a muffin and 2 nutella sandwiches.
• *EDIT* (I forgot the most important one.. silly me...) When you gain superhuman homeostatic abilities... ie working 6 hours without going to the toilet
• *EDIT2* (thanks for reminding me!) When your skin becomes so bloated and wrinked that the crevices and ravines in the skin begin to quite literally crack open.
  

All in a day's work... Chlorine makes you sleepy and tired...