Tonight we were at Westlake Boys High School for the Equinox Concert.
Ten music groups performed, including the Westlake Symphony Orchestra. Here they are, playing Franz von Suppé's Light Cavalry Overture:
There's a very good reason why the cameraperson focused mostly on the cellos. I was the cameraperson, and Mulan is playing her cello -- she's the one with the blue mask.
It was in the school newsletter here.
Back in January I wrote that Mulan was in the Auckland team for the Under 16/Under18 athletics Interprovincial competition.
Covid meant it was done as a virtual competition rather than the usual weekend away together as a team.
It's all finished for the season, and the results are coming out.
Delightfully, Mulan was part of the Auckland "relay" team that won gold together:
(Mulan's triple jump performance was at the Auckland Senior Champs, where she jumped 9.80m.)
Mulan and I spent most of the weekend at Mt Smart Stadium, doing multi-events athletics.
It was the Auckland Combined Events Champs -- I did a pentathlon on Saturday, while Mulan did a heptathlon over both days.
Predictably, my muscles are still sore today, while surprisingly Mulan is also a little sore this morning.
One of the fun things about multi-events is getting to try out events that we wouldn't normally do. Both of us did javelin (Mulan's first time ever, and my fourth time ever), Mulan did high jump, and we both did longer runs on rubber (hence the soreness).
I earned a gold medal in my age group (45-49) for my efforts. Though full disclosure, I was the only man of my age silly enough to endure the pain of competing in five events.
Mulan came sixth in her age group (Under 16).
The results are here.
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Meanwhile, on Sunday Miya did the North Harbour Gymnastics Gymfest.
Unfortunately I missed it because I can't be in two places at once. But Mama went along and videoed it for us.
Athletes who are masochists run the 400 metres.
It's a sprint. Only the body is not supposed to sprint full speed for that distance.
So by the last 50 metres the legs are wobbling, the throat is burning, and you're just pumping the arms to keep the legs moving. And then once you're over the finish line the sick feeling starts, and builds.
It's even worse when the wind is strong.
I did a 400m yesterday. With a head wind on the final straight gusting up to 6 m/s.
I signed up on Wednesday, so I had a few days of anticipating the pain.
Why did I do it?
Basically, out of curiosity.
It's been over 25 years since I last ran a 400m race on a rubber track. Over the past few years, since getting back into athletics with the children, I've done several on grass. But I hadn't done a best-as-I-can effort on rubber.
So I did. And I'm kinda proud of myself. Yeah it hurt, yeah I was beaten on the line by a 12-year-old, and yeah I vomited afterwards, but I made it.
My time was 60.38 seconds, which was a surprise. I would've been satisfied with anything under 65 seconds. Mulan videoed it:
I was never a 400m runner; I'm not enough of a masochist to do the training. But I did do it occasionally. My best ever time was 29 years ago when I was 17 years old, when I finished in 52.27 seconds.
I'm not sure if I'll do it again. If I consistently did one or two running sessions a week over winter I may drop under 60 seconds, but I'm not sure if the achy joints can handle that sort of regular training. Anyway, we'll see what happens.
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Meanwhile, Mulan did a few runs yesterday, too.
She signed up for the 80m hurdles, 60m and 100m. She was also curious about her times, as she'd never done 100m on rubber and she hadn't done 60m in five years.
Unfortunately the huge head wind made things tough. It also didn't help that she arrived at the track after having done two and a half hours of ballet, so her legs were already pretty fatigued.
But it was a good experience, and a very useful learning opportunity to know how to handle hurdles into a strong head wind. (And at least she bettered her 60m PB she got when she was nine years old.)
The results are here.
I last wrote about Miya's maths nine months ago.
Since then Miya has been steadily working on Khan Academy US 6th Grade maths.
Miya has now completed 6th Grade, and yesterday started on 7th Grade (if she was living in the US she'd be starting as a very young 7th Grade in half a year).
One of the sticking points for Miya is her accuracy. Khan is a mastery-style course, and so it requires students to get everything correct before moving on. That's great in many ways, as it means that students have a solid foundation before attempting the next level. Mastery-style reasons that if a student is still not quite sure about one thing, then it is going to get even less clear if they move on before getting that sorted.
However, a downside of mastery-style is that some students may make occasional mistakes because they jump into it and try to do it speedily all at once and forget to carefully think through each step. They mostly know it, and could probably get it all correct with the occasional suggestion. But it may be hard for them to get 100% entirely independently, and so it will be hard for them to move on to the next level.
I think Miya has been a bit like this, and this is why she has taken longer to get through 6th Grade (she started 6th Grade one year and 10 months ago). Miya also strongly prefers to do it entirely on her own, and doesn't like me to teach/correct her. She doesn't even like me giving her hints/pointers to remind her how to start a problem.
We'll see how 7th Grade progresses, but if it is as slow as 6th Grade we may need to change the way we are doing things.
Our tentative thought for now is that Miya will start school (Westlake Girls) at the beginning of Year 9 in two years. It would be great if Miya could complete (or near complete) US 8th Grade before she starts.
While Mulan was at athletics yesterday, Miya and I were climbing.
Miya completed the new green climb that I did on Monday. It's a jumpy/stretchy one that suits my style, but Miya, being slightly smaller, had to work on each of the parts several times before she put it all together yesterday.
At Mulan's age, athletics in Auckland is a bit like world boxing.
You know how it is, boxing has all those separate world champion titles -- WBA, WBC, IBF and WBO -- and so we can have four different world champions (in each weight division) at any one time.
It seems in Auckland we can often have three simultaneous champions in each athletics event.
A month ago we had the Auckland senior champs, where Mulan competed as an Under 16 Woman (I wrote about it here and here).
And then a couple of weeks later we had the Auckland children's champs, where Mulan competed as a Grade 14 Girl (I wrote about it here and here).
Yesterday was the start of the three-day Auckland secondary schools champs, where Mulan competed as an Intermediate Girl.
And in the intermediate girls triple jump Mulan is now reigning champion! (We're still waiting for her oversized belt.)
Mulan's jump of 9.63m earned her first place, edging out the girl who beat her in the Auckland senior champs. (The children's section doesn't do triple jump.)
Mulan also competed in the long jump, but it didn't work out quite so well for her this time. Her 4.12m was less than usual, and placed her 13th. That's the fun of competitions; each event is a new and fresh opportunity, and sometimes it works while sometimes it doesn't.
The results are here.
UPDATE 30/3/2022: Mulan is mentioned in the Westlake school newsletter here.
Today's climbing session was all about videoing recently completed climbs. There's five videos of Miya and two of me. Shows who's been doing more work in the gym.
Here's Miya completing a yellow:
And a pink:
And three greens:
Here's a new green by me:
And finally, Miya challenged me to repeat last time's green, but use only five holds:
Final day, final event at the Auckland Children's Athletics Champs.
Last week both Mulan and Miya competed at the champs. This week it was just Miya competing in her final event, the high jump.
No need to build up the suspense, Miya had a great day. A new PB of 1.27m and a silver medal!
Here she is getting over 1.27m:
She was so close to 1.30m. Unfortunately, on her third attempt just after I stopped the video to celebrate, the bar wobbled off:
UPDATE 7/3/2022: The results have just come out and they are here.
Here's an update about what the girls are doing for their music:
So, in January Mulan and Miya attended the West City Youth Concert Band Camp. It was so much fun that we asked about the girls joining the band itself.
The answer was yes, and the first band practice of the year was on Monday evening. We'll go every week, and there'll be playouts throughout the year. Mulan plays her flute, while Miya plays her clarinet.
Miya has fortnightly private clarinet lessons, and is preparing for the Grade 5 exam later in the year. For now she has dropped her other instruments (trumpet, saxophone, keyboard, violin, recorder) to focus on clarinet.
Mulan has also joined the Westlake Symphony Orchestra, playing cello. This is the main Westlake school orchestra, and combines both the boys and girls schools. They also practice once a week and will have a camp and performances/competitions during the year.
We weren't planning that Mulan would join this orchestra. But when Mulan asked about the other school orchestras/bands, she found that this year their practices all clash with her other scheduled activities. Fortunately this orchestra practices during one of Mulan's few timetable gaps, and they were in need of more cellos. So they invited her to come along.
Suddenly, we were overwhelmed with emails to read and Google forms to sign. It's all taken very seriously by the school, and we're required to sign that Mulan will follow their rules, promising in writing that she will be there for every session throughout the year.
Prior to joining the orchestra, Mulan had signed up to her usual swimming lessons at NZL Swim. The orchestra practice just squeezes in before the swimming lessons. Since the orchestra is from 3:30pm to 5:15pm (and the swimming lesson starts at 5:30pm), it would be ideal if Mulan could leave orchestra practice five minutes early to get to swimming.
We thought Mulan may as well ask the orchestra leaders if she could leave early. Before asking, Mulan observed to me that if it was any other activity it would be no problem, but being school ...
Sure enough, the orchestra leaders declined to allow Mulan to leave early. For the past couple of weeks Mulan has been jumping into the pool a few minutes after the swim lesson has started. (She then leaves swimming early to get to dance lessons.)
As a requirement of joining this orchestra, Mulan also has weekly private cello lessons during school hours. At today's lesson the teacher raised the idea of Mulan sitting the Grade 6 exam this year.
Despite playing both flute and cello in these groups, up until now we've still treated the recorder as Mulan's number one music instrument. For now she is continuing with her private recorder lessons every fortnight with Kevin Kim. Mulan is now at the playing level where Kevin is recommending that Mulan practice every day with, at least, a few longer sessions of 45 minutes and the other sessions about 15 minutes. We're a little concerned that there are not enough hours in the day for Mulan to fit everything in; it would be a shame to stop the recorder, but Mulan does need to think seriously about her activities and timetabling if she is not able to put the time into practicing.
Finally, Mulan is sitting NCEA 1 Music this year at school. I think I am right to say that there are eight girls in this class. Delightfully, four of them have joined together to form a string quartet for some of their assessment work. A couple weekends ago the four met at our home (with one of the girls' private teachers) for a practice session. It's sounding really nice and very promising.
Currently, two or three times a week I'm walking with Mulan to and from school, carrying her cello while she carries her bag and computer. I'm not sure what we would've done if we had lived more that the 5-10min walk from school.
Yesterday, I asked Mulan to compare and contrast West City Youth Concert Band and Westlake Symphony Orchestra.
She said the Concert Band is more fun, with an interactive jokiness amongst everyone. There's a different atmosphere in the school Orchestra; while the conductor makes jokes, the musicians don't.
My opinionated interpretation to date: this is typical school subtle authoritarianism in action. While I have no doubt the school orchestra is excellent, and Mulan will learn lot, I suspect there is an added unnecessary layer of teacheryness to the proceedings, which long-term may possibly reduce the inspiration and self-motivation levels of the learners.
As usual, I watched YouTube while eating lunch today.
It was a good one. I highly recommend Abigail Thorn's new Vaccines and Freedom video:
There's a little bit of overlap with what I said in my Covid and Freedom post back in November (that's to be expected with anyone who has studied the topic from a philosophical perspective). Again, trust, freedom and harms are central issues. But Abigail gives more detail, and much more style.
As she says in reply to one of the comments, she deliberately tries to make the learning non-competitive. In my opinion, that's philosophy at its best, and what we should all be aiming for.
