Today marks the first full day of Spring and the first day of the Persian year. After all the occupational therapy and physiotherapy sessions these past few weeks, a retail therapy session is in order. I head to Eaton Centre with its geese sculpture. This is not my favourite Michael Snow piece. That would be "The Audience" outside the stadium formerly known as the Skydome.
I have to see for myself what all the hullabaloo is about. I pick up Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. I compare my life to the book. Yes, my brother and I were encouraged to excel, straight A’s being the goal. My brother was a child prodigy as a pianist. I learned my multiplication tables by age 5. But then all that learning really did not feel like a chore. Growing up (on college campuses) was filled with many happy memories of traipsing through college classes--cookies from Yvonne in home economics class, peering into strange bottled specimens in biology lab, working at my first ‘paid’ job helping my mother staple papers, carrying around math books instead of dolls. My mother's method of instruction involves heaps of positive reinforcement. Not all Chinese mothers are as described in the book, nor would I consider Amy Chua’s child-rearing “the Chinese method”. In fact, I think she impose what I would consider as verbal abuse on her children.
I have homework--300 pages of very dry reading before next week’s advanced cardiac life responder recertification course. This time, the manual is just a compilation of articles--even drier than the usual. All I want is a set of concise diagrams to cue me through a “code”.
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