Thanks Richard for asking. Yes. I have something to tell. We have record rainfall during 24 hours in Lahore, breaking previous one day record by more than 60%. Our drainage system is pathetic. Other systems such as telephone, electricity, cable etc. are no better. Poor planning has further been aggravated by extremely mismanaged maintenance and operational bugs. This morning, when I was out for our fajr (morning prayers) in masjid, a neighbor told me that the pole laden with electricity meters was under fire. After that he buzzed off for complaint office. When I returned after prayers, I saw fire reaching cable part after meter; one meter had caught fire and other meters (including ours) was in danger of catching fire. It was still dark. I waited for someone to come out. No one appeared. I came inside and told my wife about and went again out to see if I could find someone to go about extinguishing fire. IT WAS DAM RISKY AS DIGGING WAS DONE BY TELEPHONE COMPANY AND RAINS HAD MADE A MESS ON OUR STREET. No one was seen. My wife came out; brought hose pipe. I managed to use it as water gun and there was some post-extinguishing sparking; fire was put out. I want to add here that hose pipe should only be used when someone knows how to send bursts of water so that electric current cannot build a circuit. Later in day we heard about the most stupid thing; people were inside their houses, watching flames from pole but not knowing what to do. THEY DID NOT EVEN COME OUT TO SHARE THE ACTIVITY. That has happened today. I am going to ask everyone about it one by one. Also, I am still looking for the guy who went to complaint office and was never seen thereafter this morning. That can happen to anybody. What is the narrator's profession? A. not enough information B. A carpenter C. A firefighter D. An architect
A

Once again, I've analysed my year of travel to see if I'm any closer to reducing it year on year. It's an annual habit, and if often kicks off new ideas that might affect my team's next year of work. The good answer is: yes, there is less travel! And not just that, but having reduced the schlepping I do, I've been able to hire more amazing people to lead on our work, and celebrate one of NoTosh's best years ever in terms of the quality, quantity and breadth of work we're doing. Key to traveling less has been a marked increase in the number of folk who see and are now reaping the value of working with us online. I've avoided as many as 20,000 miles of travel thanks to greener clients, who are also many dollars better off having not paid for the airmiles that are wrapped up in our regular fee structure. The quality of our work is better, too, thanks to this. We are doing fewer of those day-long workshops with teachers or leaders, when an hour or even thirty minutes before the day gets started is more worthwhile. We're seeing more school leaders take this up, although it's harder to get teachers into the habit of taking 30 minutes 'me time' to jump into a coaching session on the day or week ahead. But it's starting, and the value to us all is huge. Coaching is very different to 'consulting a Personal Learning Network' on Twitter. It's intense, targeted, focussed and involves a one-on-one discussion that arrives quickly at resolutions to current day challenges that will have a long-term impact. And we come back to measure whether that impact actually happened. I don't think it's a way of working that many are used to in Education, although many corporate clients have had some rare experience with it. Encouraging both groups to take more regular time out for coaching, little and often, is a real challenge, but we're beginning to see some huge impact from relatively little input (and relatively few dollars!). Coaching probably lasts: A. 1 hour B. not enough information C. 1 week D. 1 month
A

Q: One student started packing up at the beginning of a lab exercise. I asked him where he was going. He said "I'm going to fail this class anyway, so I have other things to do." It was true that he wasn't doing well, and we had addressed this previously, but his attitude was completely defeatist. He had given up. So, there, in the middle of class, before he could get away, I said "Well, yeah. You will certainly fail if you don't even try. I thought you were graduating at the end of this semester." "I'm supposed to, but I won't, because I'm going to fail physics. All I need is a D." (He was right; his major didn't require knowing any physics but they put it in the curriculum as a kind of gatekeeper course. Most students took physics much earlier in their studies than he did.) "If you have already decided to fail, I can't stop you; you're an adult. But you can make an appointment with me anytime. You already know that. You can email me. It's my job to help you understand, but you have to come to me. You are an adult. It would be very inappropriate of me to follow you around, inviting you to office hours. And you must do the homework and the labs." He stayed for the lab. I notified his counselor about what was going on, and she called him in and said the same things that I said. Next class he moved from the seat at the edge of my peripheral vision, to the middle, started working his ass off, and he passed. For a while I thought he was closing in on a C, but he got his D and graduated. And I didn't give him anymore of a grading break than I give any of my students. After the end of the story, the student A. got a job B. not enough information C. became homeless D. went drastically into debt
A: A

I thought I might get some good ideas if I went down to the hospital. I always have stayed away from hospitals. People died or were born. But now I thought I might get some idea if I went down to where it was all happening, the being born and the dying. Mostly the dying. It was the dying that interested me. I sat on a bench in a sort of waiting room. I wanted to call it a green room; it wasn't a place where the patients would wait to be called by the doctor; it was a place where the relatives would wait while the patient was in their room. It had a coffee bar, and comfortable couches, with trendy, muted colors on the walls and floor. Everything was clean and modern without being cold, a homogenized balancing act designed to keep everyone calm during their stressful time. It was a green room; patients were "guests"; their families were "guests" as well. Here was where the families would sit and be feted while they waited to be called out to perform, to smile and encourage or to don faces of appropriate mournfulness. The old ones would put on smiles, the young ones would look sad. I think I went there because it seemed to me that it was the place richest in emotional impact. It reeked of spent emotions, and the emotions were made all the stronger, here in the green room, by the efforts at suppression--the muted walls and gourmet coffees and scones, the overstuffed loveseats and couches, as if those in grief should not be permitted to sit on benches or folding chairs. It absolutely reeked of hush and hidden feeling. It was worse than a church. It was worse than a highschool hallway. It was more universal, more basic, something even the children could comprehend. The author probably stayed in the waiting room for: A. several hours B. not enough information C. a few weeks D. several minutes
A