January 2006 Archives

I went to the audition for the choir Saturday. When I showed up, another soprano was already there. We were both early, nobody else were around. "Laaaa!" she tested, dancing around in the room, yawning, stretching, making all those faces "real" singers do. I couldn't quite make up if she was trying to intimidate me or if she was just trying to calm her own nerves.

"Why don't you warm up!" she suggested. Warm up... hmmm. My lips turned into a line. "I'll just start with being in this room," I smiled. "You've got to warm up! Laaa!" she sang. I kept smiling but backed off to a different part of the room. Apparently, she wasn't quite comfortable warming up with me in the room either - she burst out in a few "laa!" sounds now and then but otherwise kept quiet. So I suggested we warm up together. She agreed. Phew! After that, we got along really well.

Can you believe it, there was sun, a beautiful sky, and warm air in Bergen today!

Everything feels so different. I'm beginning to feel better about being here. I finally got an office to work from. The sim card for my cell phone came and although I haven't gotten one call (!), it's still great to have my own cell again!


And I've made friends with the cafeteria lady in the library building. Probably because I'm the only one there at 8 AM:) We had a scary experience yesterday... the sliding glass doors separating the cafeteria from the public area exploded. Just like that! Made me think of the Hancock building in Boston...

Yesterday, I attended a group leader seminar at the university. It was quite excellent! I've got so much teaching experience that I knew most of it, but sometimes, you forget what you learn, or you don't think about it so deeply anymore. Attending seminars like this is great, it refreshes your memory. It would be great if all teaching institutions had a short "prep" seminar for their teaching staff before semester start - to remind everybody about the little simple things about teaching we forget so easily when we get too much into the subject - teaching is actually harder if the subject becomes the focus instead of the students.

I am trying to understand why the commenting feature on weblogs seems to be such a hot topic. Diane argues against them (permalinks please?). I am not sure if I really understand the problem or why some have such a phobia around them. Diane writes:

"Mike takes an interesting position on blog comments, one with which I substantially agree. What he doesn't talk about is how comments perniciously give the appearance of a "dialogue" but in fact are just another vehicle for one person, the commenter, to speak past another in the interest of, in his words, "a tiny spasm of assertion that fails to engage with any other perspective."

Mmm. Where to begin. The appearance of a "dialogue"... just another vehicle for one person... is the problem that people change the original topic, misunderstand the topic, disagrees... or a fear of the other person behind the comment?