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Showing posts from October, 2013

Auto-eulogy

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A tombstone with a Latin text that means "Life is changed, not taken away." In a few days we shall be celebrating All Souls' Day.  I was thinking that a good exercise could be to write an auto-eulogy. Many have written an autobiography, but I have yet to hear of someone having written an autoeulogy. The exercise could help us purify our motive for and manner of living. What do people remember most about us? How would we want to be best remembered? What legacy will we leave behind?  Those thoughts could be further purified by knowing that eventually and inevitably, we shall be forgotten by those whom we wish to remember us, or at least, that these people will also eventually leave this world.  It is then that we can face the stark reality of death and the afterlife.  And hopefully, from that day onward, we could live our life sub species aeternitatis - from the viewpoint of eternity.    Read more on  From Death to Life

Rewards of Teaching

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Since August this year, I have been going to a public school in Cebu together with some volunteers from a private high school . We give Math and English tutorials to some Grade 4 & 5 students.  Every week is a good experience for me, since, by talking to these kids, I get to practice my elementary Cebuano without fear of committing mistakes. But my experience this Saturday was special. I was tutoring Math. The topic was conversion of decimals, fractions and percent.  I began by tackling the concept of percent in Bisaya to them. Then I thought of translating "percent" to Bisaya so that they can understand it more.  I translated it as "kada gatos". I was overjoyed when I noticed how they immediately got the idea of percent afterwards. Then I wanted to teach them how to convert percent, decimals and fractions. I thought of the table below then began giving them easy drills.  Of course most of them got the correct answers.  They were even racing against each oth