A Collection of Daily Wisdom by Dennis Sylvester Hurd since September 2003.

A Saturday eJournal entry ends up at the top of a page in the weekly archives. So, this is a good place to put another photo with previous students.



These guys were in the Bahrain Defense Force. I taught as part of a package deal for kickback training funds when Bahrain bought F16 fighters from General Dynamics. The photo was in a classroom at the Muharraq Air Force Base. It was taken in 1990.

Labels: Bahrain, file archives, students

Blogging fits my style. Right now, I have a blank screen before me. I'd never find the energy to plan an accurate autobiography; nor would I have the patience to labour over extended paragraphs filled with colourful details.

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It took a while before the world-wide-web 'became' the Internet in the minds of its users. A web browser started as just one 'application' in an infant Internet. The speed in which people embraced it is rather amazing. When was the last time you heard someone talking about logging on to a gopher server?

The largest excitement of browsing in HTML initially was in the 'links'. In theory it would be possible to write extended non-linear prose with multiple branching. Had there ever existed a type of story-telling without beginning or end? At first it was all about text; media showed up quite late in the game.

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Each day when I'm faced with an empty eJournal entry, I willingly contribute to a large, randomly-organized database. The use of pinpoint searches and linking will allow me to add structure later. I will be able to craft a future message by dipping into a well of personal, online materials.

Until then, to make meaning of any of this, you'll have to follow along day by day.

Labels: Internet, monkeys

I had not intended to plug in the scanner two evenings in a row. If you scroll down a bit, you'll discover that in Wednesday's entry, I included a rather stuffy image of a class I taught at the Royal Saudi Naval Forces (RSNF) School in Dammam.

In that previous blog entry, I stated that I'd selected a class from 1988 rather than my first year of teaching in 1981/82. That was as good as a self-challenge! Saying something like that, virtually ensured I would need to run back to my photo suitcase.



It was with great pleasure that I found this. It was taken at the Al-Bayan Bilingual School in a temporary set of buildings in Safat, Kuwait. The kids were Grade 2 pupils when the shutter clicked in 1982. This would make them a bit more than 30 years old today!

So much has gone on in that country that I have absolutely no idea about any of them. Their whereabouts and current situations are completely unknown to me. Yet, I do get lots of world-wide visitors from search engines. It's possible that someone connected with that place and time will email to fill me in on a few details. That'd be nice.

Labels: Kuwait, students

Today, I'll administer a midterm exam to my current ESL class. As close as I can calculate, this is the twenty-fourth time I've done this at the British Columbia Institute of Technology. I taught my first Burnaby course in the autumn of 1997.

That seems like a lot but it's more frightening for me to think how many students I've taught over the past two-dozen years!

I ran to find a photo of a past class. Rather than going all the way back to 1981, I found one that was taken toward the other end of that decade. The class picture below was taken in Dammam, Saudi Arabia. The group of thirteen students were in the Royal Saudi Naval Forces in 1988.

I spent a year there before heading for a job across the causeway in Bahrain.

Labels: Saudi Arabia, students

Yesterday's big blog photo was only visible if a reader clicked on the thumbnail image. I have, on a few-dozen occasions, added links to larger images from within an eJournal entry. These are visited on the day of posting but seldom after that. Only if a reader were to scour the archives would they be found. I wanted to change all that.

Dennis Hurd's Big Blog ePhotos

Have you got excess bandwidth and time to spare?

Labels: camera

The days have been quite extraordinary weather-wise. My usual idea of 'getting out' means to pull up a chair on the balcony but yesterday afternoon was much too fine to do only that.

Do click on this little picture to get a larger view of New Westminster from a bit down-river. It was taken near the Annacis Channel.

I went to locate GCMTEM: Lulu's Tailbone. My GPS showed a reading of only 1.63 kilometers from the apartment; however, that would've been how the crow flies. Actually, to be more accurate, it would have been how the salmon swims. So, I drove to get across the Queensborough Bridge and onto Lulu island. The cache find was quick and rewarding and gave me enough time to walk aimlessly around both Wal-mart and Best Buy before the return home.

Labels: GPS, New Westminster, Walmart

This morning, the sun is in complete control of the sky again. This February will set weather records on this account. Yet, I'm shockingly uninspired at the moment. It does take a certain amount of fortitude to continue blogging each and every day. It seems as if I've been adding daily entries for a long time! This, just so you'll know, is the beginning of the 78th week of my eJournal and images. What about this weekend though? Have there been any interesting or unusual events so far?

Wait, there is something; we decided to make more than the previous, one-shot donation towards tsunami relief. After a few more months, the world's attention will have turned elsewhere, but some help will still be required. In order to make a more lasting contribution, we signed up to sponsor this little fellow through World Vision. That's worthy of mention, especially if it prompts others to consider sponsorship.

Labels: World Vision