Productive Bangkok January

Just back from the International Recruitment Center conference in Bangkok, exhausted and reassured -- 10 interviews, 9 different schools, all encouraging and polite.   Most firm offer from Yongsan International (Christian) School of Seoul, Korea. Barb would continue in first grade, and I would teach Grade 9 English.
I am aging out of technology relevance; but in English, age (presumed wisdom) is a benefit.   I came to dread the question "How do you keep up with developments in technology?", as that felt like the undertow of stereotypical gray-haired irrelevance.   What would a 25-year-old respond to that question? or would he be asked the question in the first place?
Yes, I find that many people, including tech types, get mired in expectations borne of past mistakes and find it difficult to shift mentally to new paradigms.    The good Calvinist reminds us that we all are sinners and must be constantly on guard against the human tendency to repeat past mistakes.

Bangkok was delightful, though we were focused on job-hunting. The SilkSuite Hotel was small but pleasant, particularly their roof garden.
Link to photos

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Riding the Bus often

From 201010 Saudi scenes It is ironic that this land of cheap gasoline has so much group transport -- buses. From 201010 Saudi scenes Our housing compound has a Toyota-Coaster bus that takes some to/from school (we usually go earlier and return later, on a similar bus that the school provides). Driver Yahya takes residents on the 90-minute trip down to the Big City shopping every Thursday morning. The above picture shows our group one Thursday, usually going to Ikea or the new Lulu's Hypermarket , or the Dhahran Mall. Coleman rides a different bus every day to and from school -- usually 100 minutes there, 80 minutes back. His bus is evidently an old tourist bus, usually comfortable but a bit dusty. The air-conditioning usually works too well. I've ridden it with him several times, to attend business meetings at the district office. From 201010 Saudi scenes There he is, at 5:45am every morning, at the start of the bus run. Fortunately only about 20 stu...

String Quartet Broken String

We attended a marvelous concert last night, at the Porto Museum of Casa do Infante , a beautifully-renovated 1325 building near the river. At one point it served as a customs house. The government sponsors Portuguese musicians to return from other European orchestras to perform in their homeland. We heard and saw this group play a traditional piece – Haydn string quartet Opus 20 #2. Then the modern Benjamin Britten's Three Divertimenti – the stunning last movement of which they performed as an encore. They performed (and I recorded) the Shostakovich Quartet #9, during which the first-violinist broke a string (it features several strongly-plucked chords!) and had to retreat&repeat!

Música Tunas e Boémia

We attended an unusual concert last night: Música Tunas e Boémia (bands and parties) University student folk-music groups — big groups of 40 and more each! put on a great show of singing, playing, flag-twirling, tambourine-swinging, all at the major (private) concert hall. The most unusual thing about it was that nobody used any electronic device (except for microphone amplification)—no electric guitar or keyboard, no big drum set…every instrument and prop was hand-held. The singing was quite good, given the effort to synchronize 40 voices.

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