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TEACHING PHILOSOPHY

Recently I was asked to express my “teaching philosophy”, I found the exercise quite useful and I thought I’d copy and edit the results here on my blog. What I found first and foremost is that I don’t have a teaching ‘philosophy’ because I don’t want to develop a personal dogma toward teaching. Instead I work with a set of general principles and values that constantly change overtime, maybe that is what a philosophy is! Technically I teach animation, design sometimes, most of the time it’s just a pretext to help people seeing more clearly about more than that. I don’t teach methods, procedures or rules. Overall I just teach how to learn because that is what people need most. That is what helped me the most. Here are the points that I identified as guiding my teaching:

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TEACUP & SKULLCUP BOOK REVIEW

One day I searched ‘zen trungpa’ on the internet and the Amazon page for The Teacup and the Skullcup: Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche on Zen and Tantra came up first. So intriguing! I have been a zen student for a while and also read a majority of Chögyam Trungpa’s work. He has been my main ‘book’ teacher. The book was published in 2007. This is not so much a book review but rather a summary of what I discovered in connection with my own experience while reading it.

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sex sin zen book cover

SEX, SIN & ZEN – BOOK REVIEW

I don’t read many buddhist books, I don’t read many buddhist blogs either. I did read Brad Warner’s Hardcore Zen a long time ago and I enjoyed it for it’s freshness and different approach. I bought his latest book, Sex, Sin and Zen: A Buddhist Exploration of Sex from Celibacy to Polyamory and Everything in Between, as a iPhone Kindle book for $7.99 after browsing through it on the shelf at a bookstore. Usually on my iPhone I read books that I don’t really care about, something I can read when I’m standing in line somewhere. At the end of the day I truly enjoyed this one again.

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silverman logo upside down

SILVERMAN 2011

On 11.7.2010 I participated in Silverman for the second time.

Last year I crashed on the bike as my front tire blew out one third into the Government Wash descent, 15 mi into the bike leg. I was grounded for a while maybe 45mn to an hour and miraculously an athlete pulled over and gave me the tube I needed (I had packed the wrong type). Although in a lot of pain I was able to make the 17:00 bike cut-off time and finish the event with a over 5hr marathon.

This year for my third iron event I had fine-tuned the nutrition, preparation and training was what it was considering we moved to a new house one week before the event and that the year 2010 was very stressful on many fronts. I made it to the start pretty rested and ready. The drive from LA to Henderson was pleasant, the venue hotel near the swim start and T1. Perfect weather with 69F water in Lake Las Vegas, 74F air temp with some overcast. This sounds like a dream of a triathlon day!

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tri relay run

TRIATHLON RELAY RUN

The Eurotrashers relay team earned a #2 spot in their age group at  Vineman  in Sonoma, California on July 31, 2010.

Fabian Kremkus did a great time in the 2.4mi swim in the Russian River, Stuart McDougal delivered an efficient 112mi ride and Arno Kroner ran a marathon (26.1 mi) in 83F heat. Good job everyone!

Surfing wetsuits, marshmallows, and speedos do get results! There have been talks of a silver medal with the engraving: “Eurotrashers Are Almost The Best”.

Now what about running in a triathlon relay team? I have done a fair amount of running in triathlon teams, individually and in the Disney Triteam. We did win some medals in relays (we might have to collect an extra medal at Vineman now!). Being a runner in the Disney team at Alcatraz was my first exposure to the fun of triathlon and it got me hooked to the sport.

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