Archive for January, 2008
January 28 2008: In the harshest place on Earth…love finds a way
Filed under Media & Men with 18 Comments
I have a confession to make. I’m in love with a seventy-year-old man. He has a true patrician air. He has the deepest, most masculine voice. He’s moral and socially progressive.
I love him, I truly do.
January 27 2008: QOTW: High Schooling
Filed under Family & Q.O.T.W. & Uni/Work with 22 Comments
With my brother poised to enter high school next year, I’ve been spending a lot of time recently researching various nearby schools and their academic and extracurricular policies. Seeing my brother have a well-rounded education which caters to his personal strengths is important to me. For two non-high-school-graduates as my parents, just getting an education, any education, is the important part.
Ideally, I think the points that a school must fulfill (to suit my brother’s needs), would be:
- Highly ethnically diversified school community.
- I personally attended a high school comprised primarily of white middle-class kids who had their first cars given to them as a birthday present. I hope my brother will grow up surrounded by all races, learning to see people as who they are, not simply the colour of their skin.
- Strong emphasis on students assuming leadership roles.
- My brother is actually quite shy and withdrawn. I’d like to see him have the chance to join committees and the like, to have opportunities to have his opinions heard by large numbers of people.
- Encouragement of academic extension outside of the classroom (e.g. university-led academic competitions, Tournament of Minds, camping trips examining local botany, etc.).
- He is, by nature, lazy and prefers spending hours (days even!) on his Playstation over doing a spot of reading or anything that might take him ahead of his peers in academic stakes. It’s a bit of a shock for my parents after having a daugther who devours book after book after book. Making him do something outside of what is compulsory is essential.
- Wide selection of subjects in VCE, especially when it comes to choices of second language studies.
- Excellent career guidance and student welfare services.
- My brother is somewhat effeminate, and I can already see him being taunted by more macho members of the male student population. Thus, the school would need to have a good guidance counsellor, and excellent disciplinary strategies.
As you can tell, I have very stringent requirements. Essentially however, all these requirements are aimed at helping my brother do better than I did in high school. To help him score above my 97.35 (top 3% of the state!), to help him be more involved in his school’s extracurriculars (I only played football and soccer, and filmed and edited the school’s musical production), to give him a better idea of what he’d like to do post-high school (instead of dicking about for two years in a course he hates the way I did), and essentially, to be happier (as opposed to my voiceless endurance of the daily grind).
You’ll note that I didn’t include anything regarding the standard of teaching, the facilities and equipment standard, or anything along those lines. I believe (and always have) that ultimately, one’s academic achievements depends on one’s own motivation and willingness to put one’s head down and learn. No number of personal laptops, Bunsen burners, flashy technological equipment, or world-class teachers can replace that simple ingredient for success.
While I know that the majority of the readers here are nowhere near a stage of their lives where they have to assess high schools for their own child, I’d like to know:
Questions of the Week: Did you have any input into the schools that you attended? Were you given the chance to choose a school that catered to your interests? Or was your school chosen for you by your parents?
January 26 2008: Invasion Day
Filed under Politics with 10 Comments
Happy Invasion Day fellow Australians!
Thus far, I’ve celebrated the beginning of the first British colony in Australia by carrying on the traditions of the first settlers by slaughtering numerous Indigenous Australians and doing my best to quash their language and culture! …Oh wait.
Political statement aside, I’ve spent most of today doing quintessentially Australian things. I spent the morning cleaning and washing my life and joy (as bogans would refer to their pimped-up mobiles) with a single bucket of water (which I then used to water the garden, as Australia’s been in a drought for the past few decades) for the first time since I got it in October. It’s now brand-spanking clean, and ready for drag-racing along suburban streets with fellow intoxicated bogan Australians.
The bulk of the afternoon has been spent watching the women’s singles final of the Australian Open with a can of beer in my hand. I also happen to be wearing a singlet and shorts, with a pair of rubber thongs on my feet. Note that it has to be a can of beer. To drink beer out of a bottle is to announce to everyone that you’re not a true blue Aussie, as bottles are much too dignified.
Tonight, I’ll be watching Ratatouille on open-air cinema, then getting crunk on more liquor (hopefully with the Padster), the way real Aussies do.
Now excuse me while I go feed my pet kangaroo.