Chill, man, chill...

Thanks for the kind messages, guys (or "ladies", I should say). Even though we've never met, you're all so sweet and kind.

The throat's getting better and the rest of me is as well. I think I was just hungry and cold yesterday. The weather's turned quite a bit this week and we're starting to see the first signs of winter in Pom-land. Isn't that just [sarcasm] Excellent! [/sarcasm]

Later on I'm going on the stepper, probably for 20 minutes - a simple workout interspersed with some weights and static exercises.

Yesterday I saw a flyer about an impending book launch at one of the schools I teach. The book is on how mainstream schools are failing a particular ethnic group. It badgered me to an extent. I can understand it if people blame schools for failing students - and there are such schools - because the teachers give students work that is not challenging; meaningless work whose sole purpose is to just occupy students for the hour so they don't create problems. That I can accept. But to blame the schools for institutional racism seems more like a transference of blame to me. In every school you will find kids from various backgrounds, and in each ethnic group you will have the high achievers, who are they are motivated to work hard, and the low achievers, who cannot be bothered. I can't believe that people would blame schools for the low achievers of a particular ethnicity. They are low-achieving because they don't work hard.

The Mrs suggested the possibility that, perhaps, in subjects like history, certain groups might be disadvantaged because the history they study in school is not of their own. Tough luck. Other people have to study a different history to their own as well. Turkish kids have to read about Churchill. Korean kids have to study about the Third Reich. And the history I studied was American and South-east Asian history. Cuban-missile Crisis? Mongkut? The Great Society? Chulalongkorn? At one stage we even briefly read Egyptian history. And as you can probably tell, I ain't no Tutankhamen. In any case, there are students within the afore-mentioned group that do well, and students that don't. You can't really blame the school for what is an individual's lack of responsibility. It just happens that this lack of responsibility is quite widespread.

I'd like to go and see what happens at the book launch, but it's on an evening, and I don't really want to waste my time.

An article in the paper today was about how young adults aged 16-24 were going to go on courses to learn life skills such as ... getting up on time. It amazes me how this can count as a life skill, as if it's something you go on a training course to learn. Then again, if you can't be bothered to get up on time, would you be on time for a course like this?

To veer away from all this education talk, something with a sports theme - there's this guy that has the ability to raise his body temperature and is aiming to swim in the Antarctic in just Speedos and cap. I've placed the article as a post below. Where did he get this brrrright idea?

Tomorrow the Pom-land forecast is for "sunny intervals", and I was planning to go out and run, but it's going to be 5C, which - to a fragile weenie like me - is the cesspit (or the "colon", haha). I'm thinking of going out and doing a long run, but I don't know if that exposure to cold is going to make me feel yuck again. If it does then I should consider it not worth it. Exercise is supposed to be good for you - LSD shouldn't stand for Lousy Sick Disease, should it?

So, to my brave friends across the Atlantic, who are so much braver and made of sterner stuff than me, I defer to you for your words of wisdom on the following:

Does anyone ever go running with a scarf around their mouth?
What other ways can you protect yourself while running in the cold (specifically, against breathing in all that cold air)?
Or should I just stop being a baby and suck it up?

If you could kindly offer me some advice, that would be very, very, very much appreciated.