Flute update

Sometimes the Chinese friend network doesn't work.

You might remember I wrote here about how we bought a flute for Mulan in China.  We got it from a friend of Laolao's friend, who used to make flutes.  At the time we chose to trust him completely with what would be best for Mulan, as we don't know enough about flutes to trust ourselves.

When Mulan tried the flute out before we bought it, she commented that it was hard to play the low notes.  The friend's response at the time was that Mulan has been used to playing a Yamaha, which has larger keys, and it will just take a bit of time for her to get used to this other one.  Fair enough we thought, so we bought it.

When we got back to New Zealand, Gugu, who has played the flute for many years and teaches it part time, had a look at the new flute.  She immediately spotted three problems with it:

• The low notes are hard to play because a key isn't sealing properly, as it is not properly aligned.
• A pad is cracked, and will need replacing soon.
• Another pad is sticky and loose, and will also need replacing soon.

The clear message is that this is an old flute that at the very least needs a good servicing.  And that would cost about half again what we paid for it.  Either the friend should service it or give us a refund.  The friend chose to give a refund.

So, with no one else to trust to help us get a good cheap flute, in the end we went with the tried and trusted and bought a Yamaha.

Mama bought a YFL-212DR online for 2468 Yuan.  It also came with a music stand, which the girls are delighted with.  Hopefully we will have many years of trouble-free playing with this flute.

Maths update

Here's another update to what I wrote four months ago on Mulan and Miya's maths learning.

Both Mulan and Miya are still using Khan Academy, logging in and doing a few problems every day, seven days a week.  Some days this might just be a few minutes each, while other days it may be 30 minutes or so.  But the important thing is that they do something every day.

I sit alongside the girls 90% of the time while they are doing their work.  Even though Khan Academy is theoretically a self-teaching resource, with video lessons, etc, I am still there alongside as the primary teacher.

Both girls have now got to their right level with their learning, both completing all the way from the beginning at US Grade K.  What they are each doing is challenging for them, but still doable.  As of today, Mulan is 92% through US 6th Grade, while Miya is 52% through US 3rd Grade (making them both, as far as I can see, about two years or so above their age level).

Now that the girls are at their right level, we have slowed down with introducing and mastering new skills.  What we now do for both girls is this:

1. We look through the skills at their grade level that they have not yet started, and choose one that looks good.
2. On one day, they complete the "Practice" problems for that skill.  Sometimes they may need me to explain things a bit, possibly working through some problems together before they can do it for themselves.  Occasionally we may watch the video lesson together, to give another perspective on how to do it.
3. For the next two or three days, they then complete "Mastery" problems, one per day.  They level up that skill until it is mastered, while at the same time review other skills that have previously been mastered.
4. When that skill has been mastered, we return to step 1, choosing another skill to work on.

At the rate we are now going, my rough guess is that the girls might complete a grade every eight to ten months.

Mental health

This short and clearly written article explains why mental health is necessarily a moral issue.  Quoting from the article:

The positive conception of mental health is dangerous, because it takes the concept of health, which we usually treat as objective and scientific, and applies it to the questions of how we should think and how we should live. It hides moral and political ideals beneath a veneer of medical inevitability.

Beijing again

Mulan, Miya and I have just got back home from a two and a half week trip to Beijing, China.

We left Mama up there, as once again she is looking after Laolao for a bit.  I'm solo-dadding again until Mama returns home at the end of the month.

While I have been to Beijing many times over the past ten years (eg here and here), usually staying for weeks at a time, this was the first time that I (and the girls) had been there in winter.  The girls and I had been hopeful of even getting to have a first white Christmas, but sadly it wasn't to be.  We just had to content ourselves with a cold, grey Christmas.

But even though the ground was never white during our time there, twice it did snow for a bit, with little flutters of whiteness that melted the moment they touched the ground.

(Yep, those white dots are snowflakes.)

We were up in Beijing for two reasons:

Firstly, it was our yearly back-to-China holiday, to let the girls stay connected with their Chinese side.

Secondly, it was to help out Laolao, who has been having chemo treatment for her cancer, which returned a few months ago.  So far, Laolao is doing okay, though she is very weak with it all.

Pollution:
This time in Beijing, the big thing is pollution:

(From my bedroom window.  That's the morning sun trying to break through the pollution on New Year's Day.)

To fight the PM2.5s in the home, we bought Laolao a machine that supposedly filters out the bad stuff and purifies the air.  The machine lit up with a red PM2.5 light when the pollution at home was bad, and orange when it was just moderate.  We pushed the machine from room to room, clearing each zone in turn, and watching the light eventually changing from red to orange.

Here in New Zealand, before we go out we check the weather for rain.  In Beijing, before we go out we check the pollution.  On really bad days, we stayed inside with the windows sealed shut and our PM2.5-clearing machine busily working.  On moderately bad days, if we had to go out we would wear face masks that (hopefully) filtered out the pollution.  On a few days that we were there, the wind had blown the pollution away temporarily, and there was blue sky; on those days we raced out to the playgrounds and parks.

From my perspective, we went to two notable places during our time there.

Olympic Park:
Firstly, like I always do when I am in Beijing these days, I wandered around the Olympic Park area.  It is a great place to get away from it all, and I went three times:

Once with Mama, when we had a date-walk.

Once with the family, with the girls enjoying seeing the frozen lakes, ice and snow.

(That is snow-machine made snow, spilt over from a children's amusement park.)

And once on my own, when I did an 11 km round-trip walk from home, up the dragon's body, around the dragon's head and back home again.  I ate lunch overlooking the dragon's frozen body, and sat near the dragon's head reading.

(For those who don't know, the dragon is the Olympic Park lake, which starts with the tail at the Bird's Nest Stadium and travels about 3 or 4 km past several Olympic buildings and into the forest park area.)

There were skaters in action on the dragon's body, next to one of the many "no skating" signs:

But sadly for this businessperson, the security guards drove up a few minutes later and (slowly) shut his business down, confiscating some of his seat-sleds and herding everyone up onto land.  This was probably wise, as the temperature there at that time was 15 degrees and the ice must have been melting.

National Museum:
The second notable place we visited was the National Museum of China, and it was the first time I had been inside. But sadly I don't have any photos of it, as I discovered when I got there that the camera had no memory card -- Mama had been looking at our photos and the card was still in her computer!

One of Laolao's friends used to work at the National Museum before she retired.  (In her day there were 83 staff, now there are over 1000.)  It is all about who you know in China, and so by going with her we were able to enter via the staff entrance and bypass the long queues of people waiting to go in.  We were also able to eat lunch in the staff buffet-style canteen.  (Apparently, staff pay 1 Yuan for their meals there, which cost the museum 25 Yuan per meal.)

In my opinion, based on a brief half-day visit, the museum is an impressive and fairly awe-inspiring building, but the contents didn't jump out at me and the information signs were unhelpful.  As far as museums go, it was one of the worst I have been to in recent years for displaying its contents in an inspiring and educational way.

The children's section of the museum was closed, as we were there on a Sunday.  But it did not look very interesting anyway -- mostly just classroomish-looking seating facing screens for showing videos.

The most interesting and fun section for us was the display of hundreds of gifts that international politicians have given Chinese politicians over the years.  The display setup itself wasn't that interesting, but we played a fun game of guess-the-country-of-the-gift.  There were lots of elephants from Thailand, wooden animal carvings from various African nations, maple leaves from Canada, a Taj Mahal from India and a picture of Nixon from the USA.  We spotted two Maori-influenced gifts from New Zealand.

Another section we visited was a brightly lit room (all the other areas were quite dimly lit) with pictures commemorating the Liberation of 1949.  Last-supper-style, directly opposite the entrance doorway there was a big picture of Mao and several dozen leaders of the day.  And hung around the other walls there were lots of other inspiring pictures of people struggling and dying under attack from bullets and bombs.

Mama had wanted to see the furniture section, and I had wanted to see the oracle bones section, but Miya had had enough of it all after about five hours so we skipped them.

Music instruments:
Finally, the other noteworthy thing we did while in Beijing was buy Miya a violin and Mulan a flute.

Miya's violin was bought unseen online.  For Miya, we just needed a fairly cheap 1/4 size instrument to start her off in her first year of learning.  At 520 Yuan, it was cheaper to buy than to hire one for 10 months from the music centre.  In our non-expert opinion, it sounds okay, and hopefully it will last her a couple of years until she grows into the next size.

Mulan's flute needed to be something that will last her for at least several years.  We were tossing up whether to go for one of the reliable Yamaha ones (at over 3000 Yuan) or risk it with a no-name brand version for less than half the price.

Fortunately, again, our Chinese social network helped out.  A friend of a friend of Laolao's used to own a wind-instrument manufacturing company, before he retired.  He is also a flute player.  His non-branded instruments got sold to several overseas companies to stamp their brands on and sell to their own local markets.  We bought one of his remaining non-branded flutes for 1500 Yuan.  Being a friend of a friend we are pretty sure we can trust him when he says it will last.

Our musician friend/expert has also got into violins in his retirement, and he showed off his collection of a dozen or so pieces, including some over 400 years old.  Very beautiful, both in look and sound.  Miya was very interested in it all, and said she would like to do that when she is older.

The Little Mermaid

A small part of Mulan and Miya's recent ballet performance, The Little Mermaid, is now up on YouTube here.

Mulan's solo starts at 10 min 27 sec.  Some of both girls' group dances are also there.

Sewing and ukulele/guitar

After music, art, basketball, ballet, swimming and athletics, our next two outside activities to finish for the year were sewing and ukulele/guitar.

But in case you were wondering how we can afford to pay for so many classes, these ones were free, taught by the grandparents, Nainai and Yeye.  On Saturday, at our family Christmas party, they showed us all what they have been doing.

This term, Nainai has been teaching the girls hand sewing for an hour each week.  They have been making table mats, cutting and edging the material and then sewing designs.  It is still a work in progress, and they will continue with it next year.  I hear terms thrown around like blanket stitch, cross stitch, chain stitch, and so on, and it is all coming together very nicely.  Mulan is putting her name in each corner (English and Chinese), and will do some more designs in the middle.  Miya is working on a picture of our cat, Kitty, and will also add a picture of our other cat, Maggie.

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In addition to their weekly music lessons at Belmont Music Centre, the girls are also learning ukulele and guitar from Yeye.

Both Mulan and Miya did some introductory ukulele at Belmont, but once they got beyond what was being taught there Yeye took over.  This term, Yeye has been giving them each a 30-minute individual lesson once a week.

At our Christmas party, the three of them played some songs together.  Very nice!

Swimming and athletics

And the next activity to finish for the year was swimming.  (After music, art, basketball and ballet.)

Mulan and Miya have both, for the past two years, been having weekly 30-minute lessons at Swim Lovers' Swim School in Belmont.  The owner and main teacher, Jean, is awesome with the kids.  She is the main reason that we go there.

When we first started two years ago, Mulan was able to float and bob around and put her head under the water, but that was about it.  Now, she has a beautiful freestyle stroke, can confidently do backstroke and breaststroke, and is improving well with butterfly.

As for Miya, two years ago she was a complete beginner who wasn't even putting her face under the water.  Now, she can do a few breaths with her freestyle, and has almost clicked with being able to keep going.  Her backstroke is very good, and she is working on dolphin kick.

I think swimming is one of those essentials that all children should learn when they are young.  It is such an important skill to have in life.

I also think it is important to learn swimming in a steady, long-term way.  I noticed in China that many Chinese parents send their children to swimming lessons in a short intensive burst, such as daily over a single school holiday.  Then they treat it as if they don't need to keep going after that, as the child seemingly then knows how to swim.  I think that is a mistake, as I think only with the steady, long-term learning can a child truly pick up how to swim properly.

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Mulan, Miya and I are all members of Takapuna Athletics Club.  This is the girls' second season there, while I have been there on and off since I was ten.

Clubnights are on Wednesday evenings.  Occasionally we also do athletics training sessions (Mondays with the club or Tuesdays as a family), though this season we have done very little extra training as we have been too busy with other things.

I had thought that we had one more clubnight next Wednesday 21st (with fun, non-points events), but it seems that sadly they have stopped doing the fun end-of-year special evening this season.  The final clubnight was this week, though we didn't attend it as it was the evening of the girls' ballet performance.

As I say, I started athletics when I was ten.  It was my main sport as a child, and I used to train for it for a couple of hours every day as a teenager.  I got to the point where I was competing at a national level, and I got three New Zealand national championship medals in the triple jump.  But then injuries, which I still have today, forced me to stop competing when I was 22.

These days, I still hobble around the track as best I can, trying to be a good role model for the kids (and reliving my youth!).  Last year I broke the club long jump record for veteran (over 40s) men, jumping 5.57 metres.  Not bad considering it was done with almost no training and having not seriously competed in almost 20 years!  This year I have had even more aches and pains, and haven't been able to do as much as I would like.

Athletics is the sort of sport where it is easy to compare people with each other, with exact times, distances and rankings.  So, it is easy to see how Mulan and Miya compare with others their ages.  It is also the sort of sport where natural talent plays a big part, and for many children, no amount of training, with either fitness or technique work, will jump them up to the top ranks.

But I emphasise to the girls that athletics is just as much about personal achievement as it is about comparing ourselves to others.  While it is nice to think about placings, if the children are doing the best they can at each moment, and making regular improvements in their times/distances, then that is the most important thing (and that they are enjoying it!).  So, each week we write down our times and distances after our events, putting them on the computer to see how they improve over time.  (It also works as a good computing and maths lesson!)

Having said that, outside of club athletics, Mulan and Miya aren't bad runners, seeming to be faster than most their age.  At our local club, they both come about in the middle of their grades for all the running events.

Field events are more about technique, and both girls have been working on getting the right movements.  Mulan's discus is starting to look very smooth, and she is generally in about the top three at the club.  She is also doing pretty well in the long jump, with the occasional win and in the top three or so.  Miya, at Grade 6, isn't officially doing any field events, but with our family practices she is beginning to get the hang of the field event movements.

While it is clear that athletics is unlikely to be the girls' main sport, I think it is a good sport to keep doing.  I think the sorts of body movement skills taught, for both track and field events, are extremely useful for many areas of life.  Equally importantly, we are all enjoying it.