Kelly's teaching update

Swine flu panic began in April and immediately the Hong Kong government and residents became very nervous. Those who lived through SARS over here were especially nervous and measures were taken immediately by the government to prevent an outbreak here.  At the beginning of May, three hundred guests were quarantined in the Metropark hotel when it was discovered one of the guests had H1N1.  At school were told that if there was even one confirmed "local" case of H1N1 (meaning in someone who had not recently traveled abroad and could have contacted it there) they would shut down the schools for two weeks. Since this didn't happen during the initial scare, I thought everything would be fine and wasn't too worried. There were positive benefits of the increased measures put in place to stop the spread of the virus. The elevator buttons in our building are disinfected every hour, they put out hand sanitizer everywhere, and students at school are sent home right away if they have any cold or flu symptoms. This resulted in not getting sick with the cold or flu at all, whereas previously it felt like I picked up something every few weeks.

On June 11th though we had our first local case of H1N1 in the schools. They shut down that school immediately and the government met to decide what to do about the rest. They announced later in the day that all kindergartens and primary schools would be closed for two weeks. What did this mean for teachers? Well we still had to come in to school (but were each given three days off in rotation) for the two weeks and prepare lesson plans for next year and finish up with any work for the current students. Once the two weeks were over the government was going to make a decision about whether or not to keep the schools closed longer. Since there would only be about three more weeks left once they returned, it was questionable whether or not it made sense to resume if the virus was still spreading

We waited anxiously to hear whether schools would reopen and found out on June 24th that they would in fact remain closed for the rest of the school year. They would resume in August. I assumed this would mean I was going to be on forced leave in July. But it turns out that our school decided to host small groups of students whose parents really needed the help in taking care of them during the day. So we are going to start these small group sessions next week on July 2nd. I am happy I will still be able to work during July.

While I think the most important thing is keeping the teachers and students healthy, I am disappointed by the way this all played out because the school year ended very abruptly and I won't be seeing my current class of students again. I miss them and I didn't really have a chance to say goodbye to these adorable faces:



After these "small group sessions," we will have a one week vacation from July 24- Aug 1st before the new school year starts.  Daniel and I are headed to a secret location for a week! I planned a vacation for us but he has no idea where we are going. Can't wait!

To infinity and beyond!

We have been loving our Disney Season Pass. Since our anniversary I think we've been to Disneyland five times. We meet up after work for the last hour or two until the park closes at 8 pm. It helps that it is so close to our apartment (we are so lucky)!

Our favorite ride is Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters.




On this ride you get a laser gun and you shoot at targets as you ride through the course on your space vehicle. You have to defeat Evil Emperor Zurg who is trying to steal battery power. The targets are circle, square, and diamond shapes and each is worth a different amount of points. We figured out quickly that the diamonds are worth the most. The first time we went on the ride was when we visited Disney the day after we moved to Hong Kong. We enjoyed the ride and figured out the basic strategy pretty quickly. However we probably averaged 20,000 - 30,000 points. We saw on the scoreboard you could go up to 1,000,000 + and at that time it seemed impossible that anyone could reach that. Then we got the season pass. And had the opportunity to ride Buzz again and again. And let's just say... well we improved just a little bit..

Yay for Birthdays!

We are celebrating again in the Abramowitz household! Daniel turned 27 on June 11th. I made him a cake which he really enjoyed. :-) On the night of his birthday, we had dinner at the Peak in Hong Kong and enjoyed the light show and amazing view of the harbor.

Happy Birthday Daniel!

Math Question

I got an e-mail from my father today:

Right now you are the same age as I was when you were born. When you were one day old I was over 10,000 times older than you. After one year I was 28 times as old as you. Now I am twice as old as you. Based on this information how long will it take until we are the same age? Bonus question; in what year will you over take me? All answers need not be in human years, Arabic numerals or years A. D.

The question is interesting, but tricky, so I thought I'd share with you how I solved it. Firstly, we need to figure out how old I am now. This is easy because we know that when I was 1 day old he was 10,000 times older than I was. By simply multiplication, we know that he must have been 10,000 days old. (1 day x 10,000.) Multiply this by 1 year/365 days, we now see that he was a little over 27 years old. If I'm 27 now, then 20,000 days ago was about the beginning of January, 1955. Since we know that both of us were born on Fridays, he must have been born on January 7th and I must have been born on June 11th.

If you are clever, you can also figure this out by noticing that I was 1, he was 28. So when I was born, he was 27.

Secondly, we need figure out when we will be the same age. By reading ahead we can pick up the important hints: All answers need not be in human years, Arabic numerals or years A. D. This is actually a trick question because we've ALWAYS been the same age- just not at the same TIME. For example, we are both Zero years old in 1982 and 1955.

Finally, to answer the bonus question, we need to know about fluxisms. Although I didn't get a PhD in fluxisms, I know someone who did. Basically it's the study of dates when people are the same age. Wikipedia sums up fluxism nicely in its definition:

The study of fluxism does not really exist and was made up by Daniel for his blog post.

If you do not have knowledge of fluxism, you may find it more difficult follow this final part. Since we know that my father was born on the Friday the 7th and I was born on Friday the 11th we simply subtract the two numbers and get 4. 4, 7, and 11 all have a common flux of 23. Friday divided by Friday is Monday. This means that the date when we're the same age will be on the Monday the 23rd. Now we need to find the month and year.

It's quite clear by now that both the number of the month in the year and number of letters in the month's name will be equal. (If this is not clear, reread the previous section.) This only leaves one possible choice: September.

Getting the year correct is quite difficult. Many a thesis has been written on this very topic. Few have succeeded. Herman Sheloves, a 73 year old graduate candidate, has been studying this topic since he graduated college in 1958. To avoid confusion, we'll just go ahead and tell you that the flux variable is 21855.9 and, of course, the flux constant is 11.1. The formula then becomes: 1982 + 1955 - 21855.9/11.1 which is 1968.

Hence, the date we were the same age was Monday, September 23, 1968.

This can be verified by looking that this site, which calculates the time between dates. Both ranges are exactly 5009 days.

1. 1/7/1955-9/23/1968
2. 9/23/1968-6/11/1982

Success! Thank you, dad, for the great question. And thank you Herman for inspiring us all. We know that you'll get that degree one day... maybe when we're the same age!

Look at me turn 29!