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Infrequent But Delicious - The Mike Blog

On flying



Flying to Johannesburg the other day, I had my first aborted take-off ever – and it happened to be also the first time I was capturing the take-off on film (sorry, I ended up wiping the footage to capture more photos instead!)

It got me thinking, though, about my own experience with flying and my relatively newfound passion for the experience. I don't think I'd say I was ever terrified of flying, but I wouldn't hesitate to categorize myself as scared whenever some bumps would come about during my journey.

When we arrived back at a stand to have the engineers check out the indication warning (which had since cleared), the pilot popped down to introduce himself and have a chat about the problem (a sensor that detected that a access door to the belly of our 747 was open, even though it wasn’t). And in my mind, I found myself remembering the first moment when I was amazed by these machines, and it was in a company of a captain just like the one shaking my hand...

My dad, you see, was an avid collector of points during his own travels. My rabid fascination with loyalty programs today would make him proud, I'm sure, and the experiences I've been able to have thanks to the many points accumulated from my busy travel schedule are something I'm thankful for every day. He saved up points from dozens of business trips to Atlanta, where his company was headquartered, and conferences all over the continent that he visited in his marketing and sales position for NCR, a major retail technology company. Enough points that we were able to take a family vacation to Vancouver on a massive 747-400, in business class, and from my vague recollection, we were amongst the only guests seated in the upper deck that day. Once we were in flight, he arranged for us to visit the flight deck, where the captain enthusiastically gave us a tour of the cockpit and showed us all the levers and switches and dials that controlled the powerful machine. With me on his lap, came the moment I’ll never forget: He held my hand in his and reached for a dial that adjusted the level of the aircraft, and slowly turned it a few notches to the right – we immediately observed the plane gracefully veer right, ever so gently, and then we adjusted it back. Wow! I was entranced by this amazing machine, but it was time to go back to our seats and let the pilot and first officer get us to the west coast. Someday soon, I'll be ready to take a course and try my hand at flying for the fun of it - but until then, I'll trust the pilots to do that for me.

From 32,000 feet,

Mike

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Getting my genes mapped...

Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

We all know I'm a big fan of technologies and gadgets... so when I read last week in the New York Times that one of the more innovative genetic mapping companies (23andme) had reduced the price of its Genetic Mapping service (which many companies sell for up to $2-3,000) from $999 to only a few hundred dollars, I decided it was an amazing amount of information and education to be able to get access to for that amount, so I took the plunge and signed up.

A day later, FedEx delivered a Spit Kit to my house, which requires about 10 minutes of spitting into and mixing together with a solution, and your DNA sample is ready to send back! And off it went to Los Angeles, California to a laboratory today. Funny enough, the FedEx Pak they provide specifically says "do not send liquids" on it :)

So in 6-8 weeks, I'll know where my ancestors are from, whether I'm genetically lactose intolerant, whether or not I love broccoli because I can't taste the bitterness in it, and whether or not I'm a bit more likely than average to get certain diseases or be susceptible to certain conditions in my lifetime, along with dozens of other interesting facts. For less than the price of a university course in genetics, I can view and learn much of the world's most up-to-date knowledge on the relationships between genes and personal/medical conditions personalized to my specific genetic data. How cool is that?

You can make a case against "messing with your life" this way (I had an interesting discussion about this with someone just the other night), but I think that given the great power we have as humans to be intelligent and understand life in a way that no other species can, we then have a responsibility to use it to maximize the potential of our lives. Right? I guess it's also just a bit of an extra motivation knowing that you're slightly more at risk than average to do something about it! (from 1-2 times more or less likely than the generally population, in most cases)

I'll check back in with the results in a few months!

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The Second Half: TIG in Australia

Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

I headed off in the morning to the Australian Science and Math School, hosted at Flinders University. The school is only a few years old, and is built with an open concept -- no classrooms, but instead a number of large spaces with desks and chairs that reconfigured in many different ways to foster teamwork and collaboration. We had a large group - about 50 teachers and school leaders, and had a really interesting day -- when I showed the "Are you listening?" video, a whole bunch of students gathered upstairs in the area overlooking where I was speaking to watch - I think they were really curious that so many teachers were learning about their way of using technology!

After a fantastic dinner by the water with a group of curriculum developers, I headed to sleep -- because I had to catch a 6:40am flight to Canberra!

I made it to the nation's capital early in the morning, and it was freezing! 0 degrees but it warmed up as the sun rose... I had a few hours to fit the gym and have lunch before heading to Canberra University -- the group in Canberra decided to have an evening workshop (4-9pm) with dinner. Although everyone had a full day of work before showing up, we still had a lot of active participation, and after wrapping up at 9 and getting back to the hotel around 10, it was time for sleep for another 6:45am flight back to Sydney for the last workshop of the trip!

Arriving in Sydney in the morning, with my 32kg on-the-dot bag faithfully appearing on the carousel, I headed off to Parramatta right on time, and arrived 3 minutes before the workshop was to begin! We had the biggest crowd of any session -- around 60 people, and so a lot of the interactive sections took a lot longer than usual, but they had great ideas and a large group of schools approached me after and wants to deeply engage their entire district with TIGed, which is exciting! After wrapping up and chatting with a bunch of the attendees, I was off to one of my favourite hotels in the world -- the Westin Sydney, to relax, enjoy their great gym, and have dinner with Jenny, who had the whole series of workshops organized, to debrief on the experience (yum, Tasmanian lamb!). After that, I met up with Jarra and Nick, and headed to Micky's for dessert (Banana Pancakes and Ice Cream!) to catch up and for me to celebrate the completion of 10 sessions in 11 days in 5 cities!

I'm writing this now on the flight to Vancouver -- I managed to get right to sleep after lunch on the 10am flight, which will hopefully mean I can work through the North American day and head to sleep at a proper time tonight. Saturday, we head to Quebec City for the World Youth Congress to meet TIG members from all over the world. I've also agreed to head to Brisbane on the 19th to speak at the Queenland Government's e-learning summit, and after that, I'll be ready to just settle down at home and enjoy the rest of the summer in Toronto :)

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