Another escape to Shanghai

We have a very active Model United Nations Club in Hangzhou this year, largely thanks to the vigorous leadership of Emily Duncan. Last weekend we visited Shanghai again to attend a one-day conference hosted by Dulwich College Shanghai, the inaugural Shanghai International MUN (SHIMUN), organised by two outstanding young Dulwich students - Pan Ling Wan and Johnnie Yu. 

Many thanks and congratulations are owed to Pan Ling and Johnnie and their admin team for setting up such a great event inside the space of barely three months!

Here is another of my slideshows of the expedition. There are also some pictures from Sunday, when we took advantage of some spectacular early summer weather to stroll around the French Concession, ending up at the delightful Garden Books (my favourite place in Shanghai; indeed, just about the only place that currently makes living in China still tolerable for me) - after having a very big lunch at the Southern Barbarian Yunnanese restaurant. The 'Nighthawks at the Diner' shot at the end was taken at a roadside service station just outside Hangzhou (I was still full from that lunch, but these teenagers needed to eat again!).

The music is generic iTunes/iPhoto "slideshow music", so hopefully not infringing anyone's copyright.

Thought for the week

"When you hit a wrong note, it's the next note that makes it good or bad."

Driven to abstraction

I shot so much video during our school's 'Science Fair' the other week that much of it had to end up "on the cutting-room floor" (as we used to say in the good old days). Here's a little montage of some of those clips I couldn't find a use for in the 'official film' of the event, some visually arresting little oddities I got distracted by while out and about with 'Marty' that day. 

[I've recently given all of our cameras the names of famous film directors. The one I usually use with our 'Fig Rig' is named in honour of the legendary Mr Scorsese.]

The music is Surf Rider by The Lively Ones (perhaps best known as the end credit music from Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction).

Thought for the week

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire."

Caught reading!

The Library Committee (which, as my school's Librarian, I chair) launched a fun little competition just before our Easter break, challenging students - and staff - to produce some striking pictures of themselves reading a book in unusual circumstances or location.... something a bit more inventive and amusing than the average 'selfie'!

I hope our kids took advantage of the short holiday to do as much reading as I did (mostly on a trip back to visit friends in Beijing....)

The music here is Hey Now, by jazz pianist Red Garland & his Trio

Thought for the week

"Habits are our refuge from the chore of making choices."

Maths in the wild

Just before our half-term break for Easter, my school took a couple of days "off" for one of our occasional Inter-Disciplinary Experiences. This one was focused on Maths (um, actually, it was pretty exclusively maths; not sure what was so "inter-disciplinary" about it - but who cares!), as students were sent on a 'treasure hunt' to find and solve a number of mathematical conundrums that had been devised for them.

Thursday, spent in the gorgeous Xixi Wetlands Park just south of our school, was splendid, like a balmy foretaste of early summer. Friday, when we ventured down to the far southern end of the city, to Hangzhou's most unusual tourist attraction, the Bagua Tian (a group of fields arranged in the form of Taoism's 八卦, the 'Eight Symbols'). suddenly turned grey and rainy, as if our host city's dreaded 'plum rains' season had descended on us a month early this year. Such is Hangzhou's weather: decidedly changeable.

It is no doubt rather subversive and heretical of me to say so, but I feel that the value of these activities lies more in giving our kids an opportunity to relax for a while (we do drive them very hard most of the time) rather than in providing any very meaningful learning experience.


Here's a photo slideshow I made of our excursions.