Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

The fourth exercise we had yesterday was again about creativity.

First we were asked to draw a shoe. Simple enough. One of my new co-teachers (either Celia or Diane) did that easily. The facilitator just flipped through the common drawings of sneakers and high heels that each group drew. I guess if we had more time there would have been some analysis on the type of shoe drawn, the amount of detail and the perspective used.

Next we were asked to draw a water heater. With only a minute to draw it, I resorted to drawing a very recognizable kettle.

When the facilitator showed the drawings, there were those who drew large tanks found outside roadside inns. There were those who drew the small unit sometimes attached to the showerhead. Also drawn was the tablet that is submerged in a pail of water (which, incidentally, I had to construct in high school for a project).

Lastly, the facilitator asked us to draw a microwave-safe stone cutter that glows in the dark. Stumped, I just drew a box with the product's name, the features with exclamation points ("microwave safe!", "glows in the dark!"), a brand name and a price tag.

It took three guesses before the identified the "artist" as me. They thought it was one of the new English/Literature teachers, because of the similarity to a solution for an analogous drawing task in the book "The Little Prince", which I didn't even think of until it was mentioned.

Afterwards the facilitator admitted that it was an activity he gave to his marketing classes, which actually required them to promote or sell the product they had drawn. Good thing he didn't ask us to do that.

Today one of my standing orders with the purchasing office arrived. The steel measures and the spark timers that are Commission on Higher Education requirements.

The supplier actually apologized that they were only able to provide five meter steel measures instead of three. I said it was better to have an excess than to have a lack or deficiency.

The second thing on the checklist that was required by CHED was five spark timers.

Finally, I said to myself, I get to see what a spark timer looks like.

To my surprise, it is the same tape timer used in the uniform acceleration experiment, which I had, all of these years, known more conveniently as a tape timer.

I realized what it was from the fact that the equipment came with extra rolls of paper and circular pieces of carbon for marking the strips of paper as soon as the trolley started moving down the ramp.

This is something I had been planning to order as soon as the summer break started.

Actually, I was thinking of buying just one set, because that's all that's really needed for even five or eight groups of students in a class. The important thing is that they see the paper being threaded and marked in front of them.

I don't know why the ones in charge of deciding which mechanics experiments are to be considered standard and required thought they needed five. After all, the students would only use it in the first five minutes of the experiment, and deal with the strip/s of paper from that point on.

In any case, I consider it a good sign that my work for the summer is relatively lightened by finding out I have already accomplished one of the things in my checklist, on the first day, without even realizing it.