Thanking Your Teacher

Teachers' Best Thank You Present

"The best way of making an offering to your teacher is to practise what you have been taught"

- HH The Dalai Lama from "The Essential Dalai Lama"

...you can also thank THIS teacher/me by clicking any Google advert (it costs you 0), or buying my recommendation or anything else you happen to want from amazon.com/amazon.co.uk after following one of my Amazon links!

Thank you! ;-)

The Ideal Student

Lama Tsong Khapa in one of his "Great Exposition" writings stated that the 3 principal qualifications of an ideal student are:

1. An objective and open mind
2. The intelligence to judge between right and wrong
3. The enthusiasm for and interest in the subject

Reveal to others

Dharmakirti said that there is no way that you can reveal to others that which is hidden to yourself...

Studying without the desire

"If you study without the desire to relate what you are learning to your own life through practice, you run the risk of becoming hardened or apathetic"

- HH The Dalai Lama - "The Essential Dalai Lama"

What's Up With All The Cynicism in IT?

At SPA2009, I had a little session titled "What's Up With All The Cynicism in IT?". It was unfortunately quite time reduced from my original plan, but I did manage to impart a little knowledge of Edward De Bono's Six Thinking Hats method to a group of 8 varied participants, who did supply quite a bit of "food for thought".

I've published my presentation, and the outputs of the group work sessions on the SPA2009 wiki: What's Up With All The Cynicism In IT? Outputs

SPA2009

Also known as the British Computing Society Software Practice Advancement Conference, 2009. I attended SPA2009 from Sunday-Wednesday (5-8 April 2009) and was really pleased that I did! There were a lot of new faces, a lot of old faces, great new topics and content on programming, process and people stuff. There were some strong opinions that people were passionate about and argued the merits of - a great learning and networking event!

Best View of London

On 27 March 2009, after living in London for 2 years, I got the best view of London I have had yet!

I was fortunate enough on this day to be flying back to London Heathrow, and arrived over the UK as the sun was beginning to set. I had been napping on the flight until then, and awoke to the plane circling south of the O2 Arena.

Round and round we went ... the green scenery below getting darker and darker. The sun dipped lower, and the City's lights started coming on. Spectacular! The City itself...the tall buildings etc - all I could think was "google maps, with perspectives, eat your heart out!"

And then finally, we were allowed to proceed to Heathrow ... over Picadily Circus, over Hyde Park, South Kensington ... following the Thames River back ... over Kew Gardens ... and then we were landing.

I am now hoping that my next return flight on 17 April will come back at sunset again, which is possible because the clocks went back 1 hour :)