Catch up to Sue's (Sat - Tue)
Wow. It's already Wednesday. Sorry for not posting for a while. It's mainly because nothing that interesting happened for a few days. Well, other than how that came to be. On Saturday, after I came back from karate, I was supposed to go to San Francisco, via CalTrain with a friend. His name shall be known as Lama and he has a blog in German!. Anyway, we were supposed to meet up in the train or at the station in San Fran, once we agreed on the time. He assumed we were going at noon and I ended up waiting for an email confirming the time. So nothing happened Saturday.
Then on Sunday, I was supposed to go to Sue's Indian Restaurant with a friend of a friend. On the same day, a bunch of people were going to Santa Cruz to go surfing, but because of their schedule I couldn't go. About an hour before I was supposed to call, Patty (the friend of a friend) left an email asking to reschedule for tomorrow! Yes, it was a woman. No, it wasn't a date, just dinner. So I ended up shooting that day, and I had a feeling something like that was going to happen. That's why I bought Contact for my Nintendo DS. Good game so far. I should hurry up and beat it before Final Fantasy XII comes in.
So on Monday, Patty and I went to Sue's, finally. My verdict is that the food is pretty good, but the service could be better. I don't have pictures now, because I didn't have a camera. However, Patty had a camera phone, so she took some pictures, which I still need to get from her. Anyway, they screwed up my order a little. I had ordered something that comes with naan, but there wasn't any when it came. I happened to order some garlic naan, and I think they gave me a free one with it because of the earlier screw up. I suppose that's good, but it would have been better if I didn't have to ask. That part aside, I would say a 4/5, compared to Saravana's 3.5/5 score that I'm not giving.
Finally yesterday, I went to karate again. We had a mixed group of a lower belt, white, and some brown/black belts. I was expecting a bit more harder training, but it wasn't. For now it's a good thing because I haven't really trained hard for about a week, but I hope it's not always like this. The instructor at the time, who's the head instructors student, seemed to talk a lot. It kind of reminded me of something my sensei in Chicago told me, which was that sometimes I try to teach too much. You need to keep the students excited, moving and active in the beginning to feel like they're doing something. Every once in a while give them a nice treat, with a slightly advanced technique, just so that they get more interested. Kind of like a fishing hook. Once you hook them (i.e. they're getting serious about training) then you teach details, but before then it should be about repetition and building up basics in an interesting/exciting way. It may sound simple, but after you've trained long enough it seems more easy to teach the details at the time hoping that every time after they know how to do the technique correctly. In fact, it's almost tempting to just lecture about it, which was what happened yesterday, kinda. I guess that must be what academia does to you? Where the truth really seems to be closer to, but maybe not exactly that you only teach one detail and repeat over and over the technique with the one detail in mind. Then as you build one detail after another, with fun stuff to do every now and then, you end up refining the individual. Great example my sensei uses is math. You learn on thing about math and you repeat again and again, then you learn the next thing. Then those annoying word problems, where you have to read a story to understand the math problem, were the exciting advanced technique/problem. I didn't like word problems as a child.
Then on Sunday, I was supposed to go to Sue's Indian Restaurant with a friend of a friend. On the same day, a bunch of people were going to Santa Cruz to go surfing, but because of their schedule I couldn't go. About an hour before I was supposed to call, Patty (the friend of a friend) left an email asking to reschedule for tomorrow! Yes, it was a woman. No, it wasn't a date, just dinner. So I ended up shooting that day, and I had a feeling something like that was going to happen. That's why I bought Contact for my Nintendo DS. Good game so far. I should hurry up and beat it before Final Fantasy XII comes in.
So on Monday, Patty and I went to Sue's, finally. My verdict is that the food is pretty good, but the service could be better. I don't have pictures now, because I didn't have a camera. However, Patty had a camera phone, so she took some pictures, which I still need to get from her. Anyway, they screwed up my order a little. I had ordered something that comes with naan, but there wasn't any when it came. I happened to order some garlic naan, and I think they gave me a free one with it because of the earlier screw up. I suppose that's good, but it would have been better if I didn't have to ask. That part aside, I would say a 4/5, compared to Saravana's 3.5/5 score that I'm not giving.
Finally yesterday, I went to karate again. We had a mixed group of a lower belt, white, and some brown/black belts. I was expecting a bit more harder training, but it wasn't. For now it's a good thing because I haven't really trained hard for about a week, but I hope it's not always like this. The instructor at the time, who's the head instructors student, seemed to talk a lot. It kind of reminded me of something my sensei in Chicago told me, which was that sometimes I try to teach too much. You need to keep the students excited, moving and active in the beginning to feel like they're doing something. Every once in a while give them a nice treat, with a slightly advanced technique, just so that they get more interested. Kind of like a fishing hook. Once you hook them (i.e. they're getting serious about training) then you teach details, but before then it should be about repetition and building up basics in an interesting/exciting way. It may sound simple, but after you've trained long enough it seems more easy to teach the details at the time hoping that every time after they know how to do the technique correctly. In fact, it's almost tempting to just lecture about it, which was what happened yesterday, kinda. I guess that must be what academia does to you? Where the truth really seems to be closer to, but maybe not exactly that you only teach one detail and repeat over and over the technique with the one detail in mind. Then as you build one detail after another, with fun stuff to do every now and then, you end up refining the individual. Great example my sensei uses is math. You learn on thing about math and you repeat again and again, then you learn the next thing. Then those annoying word problems, where you have to read a story to understand the math problem, were the exciting advanced technique/problem. I didn't like word problems as a child.
posted by Arun Rao at 7:40 AM
2 Comments:
Go to vic's chaat house in Berkeley. Not the best Indian food you've ever had but good nonetheless. It doubles as an excuse to go visit the campus. You will find that the trip is worth it, if only for the tour of the postcard-pretty campus. Stanford comes in second in my book.
haha, is it a turning point?
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