John Tillman
This and That
G'day Warriors,
I am off to New Castle tomorrow to visit my eldest daughter and family for a few days, about a 10- 11 hour drive. New Castle is about 1 hour this side of Sydney. In that drive I will go through one fair size town. The rest is country side with the occasional small town.
My wife is currently in Tasmania with her sister visiting friends. She flies into Briso tomorrow afternoon and then flies back to New Castle where I will pick her up at the airport.
Coronavirus
Queensland just had it's 7th death from coronavirus, the first in about a year, and the first coronavirus death in Australia this year. This was an 80 year old man who had just returned from the Philippines and was in hotel quarantine. He tested positive for coronavirus on his 5th day of quarantine and died last night in hospital.
There is currently no coronavirus in the community and everyone is living virtually normal lives. All state borders are open.
There was a scare in Queensland a few weeks ago which resulted in a snap three day lock down for Brisbane and requiring everyone else in Queensland to wear masks when in public. The mask requirement will end on the 15th assuming there continues to be no further community transmission.
Drivers Ed
Last week, for the first time in 7½ years, I found it necessary to terminate a drive half way through, swap seats with the driver and drive the car back to the office myself. He had 5 hours total driving time and had driven with me on 2 other occasions. For some reason he decided he was not going to do what I said. I have no idea what was going through his mind. After I took over the car, he spent the next 20 minutes while we drove back into town playing on his phone.
An hour after the supervisor sent him home he sent her a text asked if he could have a drive the following day because he wants to get his license. He is no longer on the program.
I spend a lot of time driving with the kids in the country side. It is a relaxed time and they become accustomed to driving. You learn how to drive by driving.
I am often amazed at what the kids do not know.
For instance, I recently spent a huge amount of time driving with one girl who had just graduated #3 in her class at “Our Lady”. The reason she was only #3 was because she did not take the “hard” *maths class, so that affected her overall position. Anyway, while talking about something or other with her during a drive, I discovered she does not know her times tables. She is a very intelligent girl and I said to her with a bit of a shocked tone, “You don't know your times tables!”. I think she was a little embarrassed and said that she wasn't really into school work that much when she was in primary school.
The next day while driving with her I suggested I should make a tape and she could learn her times tables while we were driving. I didn't do that though. I did explain to her the method of quickly figuring out the 9's table and she thought that was pretty clever.
I am sure you can get through life without knowing your times tables, but they do come in handy some times.
I have also realised that while explaining something to people, you have to be sure they actually understand the meaning of the words you are using. For instance I now say “Do you know what perpendicular means?” or, “Do you know what parallel means?” “Do you know what right angle means?” “Do you know what 45 degrees means?” The more I do this, the more I realize that if I use a word that is more than 5 or 6 letters long I need to make sure they actually understand what the word means.
It is starting to get cool in the morning. This morning I had breakfast before going out on my ride to let it warm up a bit. It was down to 6 deg C last night.
Hooroo, John
*In Australia the word Maths is commonly used instead of Math. They are interchangeable.
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