This evening I had the second lesson of my 6-week course on Creative Thinking & Problem Solving, with game design as a practical exercise. We did brainstorming, and came up with a bunch of wacky ideas for games. Some examples of the ideas for game themes that the stidents and I came up with:
- A cooking competition
- A doctor examining patients
- Causing trouble in school
- Ruining someone’s wedding
I really like the last one, and kind of hope we end up developing that one into a game, but I’m planning to be guided by what the students think when we come back to the ideas next week.
Today daylight saving began here in New South Wales, by the way, so all my classes are now an hour later – because I’ve kept them the same time for all the students in other countries. I need to go through every class and decide if I want to move it another hour later when the northern hemisphere goes off daylight saving at the end of October. That will be to keep them at the same time for European and American countries that have DST. I think a lot of Asian countries don’t have DST at all, so classes with Asian students won’t need to move. It’s a bit of juggling, and I’m going to have to end up telling some of the students that their classes will be shifting in time, so they might have to move to another class or possibly unenrol if they cant find a suitable timeslot. And then in 6 months I have to go through this all in the other direction.
But I’m happy that sunset is now an hour later (by the clock). I love the long light summer evenings. Speaking of which, it was very warm and summery today, with a temperature of 26°C. I went on another walk with my wife and Scully, just around our local area from home today. There were a lot of people out enjoying the warmth, with dozens of people having picnics in various parks that we walked past. Picnics were only authorised a week or two ago as COVID lockdown restrictions slowly ease here, and plenty of people are taking advantage of it.
I want to make use of the warm weather and evening sunlight to have a picnic dinner with my wife for our wedding anniversary, which is coming up in a few weeks. Not on the exact day, but some time during that week. It’ll be nice to sit in a park, with a view over the harbour, and have a pleasant dinner.
New content today:
I only discovered last year that Australia moves its clocks in the direction opposite to that of northern hemisphere countries. Few revelations in my life have engendered quite the same combination of “Holy s^%&” and “yeah, that makes perfect sense”.