Posts by Jeremy Andrew
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I was about to chip in further on the uniform debate, but then Stephen made most of my points. The only I'd add was that at Fairfield my clique at least had a defacto uniform - jeans and a tee-shirt, preferrably Iron Maiden, or Floyd. Most of the other cliques had their own dress code - the surfies, the bogans, the punks, etc.
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In a depression you mostly make your own fun when you're not trapping possums and wekas
I've got an old family recipe for weka soup: Take a pot of water, and place in it your weka, and a large stone, add vegetables and seasonings to taste. Simmer until the stone goes soft, then chuck the weka away & eat the stone.
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sorry, slightly off topic but...
i think all these state primary schools in AKL requiring all the kids to wear uniforms (bought from a specific shop) is complete bollocks.
adds nothing, detracts a lot.
f-ing crass and a waste of money.I was on the foundation BOT of my kids' primary school, there was a movement amongst some of the parents to introduce a uniform, it went to a referendum, which failed to get enough votes. Almost immediately after the next elections, the new board ran another referendum, which also failed (luckily!).
My official position as a board member was "and how does this improve my (or any) child's learning?"I was horrified to find that my secondary school does not have a wikipedia presence
Ditto, so I just whipped up a stub. If there's any other ex-Faircol (or present) students who have the time to bulk it out, go ahead, it needs it.
I know some may be wondering what happened to the Captain of David's 1st 15. I hired one of Ian Wishart's investigators who found him, have sworn affidavit and a video to prove this.
Don may be tongue-in-cheek there, but one of the first XV from my school years featured in the first episode of Target, getting 'excited' about the lady of the house's knicker drawer. Not long afterwards he moved to Australia, epitomising the famous Muldoon quote.
That bit of info I'm not putting on the Wikipedia page :-) -
I would like to send a shout-out to the owners of my favourite bakery, the little one at Five Cross Roads next to the Lotto shop.
They always have a smile and an actual. genuine "have a nice day". Plus they make damn fine cream donuts, and a very tasty ham bun.
I'm not their most regular customer, or their biggest spender, but when the owner saw me across a crowded carpark at Pak N Save, he recognised me, waved and said hi. Lovely, lovely people. -
What was wrong with Tokoroa North School?!
Nuffin, it just pales in comparison to the educational opportunities my sprogs are getting in the modern primary system.
A friend of mine, after four years at our liberal co-ed school, did his 7th form year at Timaru Boys' High, where they sang Jerusalem in school assemblies. He was appalled by the attitude of his fellow students to girls, and they in turn were appalled that he could talk to boob-bearers as if they were people.
Back at good ol' Faircol (a year or two after Stephen) we had a bunch of guys join us in the sixth form from Boys High. Their mummies and daddies had told them if they were good and got good marks in School C, they could escape to a co-ed school for their last two years.
They spent most of the first term staring gobsmacked at girls. And their attitudes were pretty much the same as in Timaru - some grew out of it, others didn't.
Mind you, we had a couple of girls ship in from Girls High and Sacred Heart, and they weren't much better.
Speaking of Fairfield College, I second Stephen's comments about the place. I don't have any really traumatic memories of the place (not like Tokoroa High in the year and a half I was there). No real bullying, teachers mostly alright, some bordering on inspirational (one of whom turned up working at my company a year or so ago). -
I still reckon though the worst thing they inflicted on me at school was folk dancing. Oh the humanity.
I had reason to think back to my primary school folks dancing days this week when I attended my oldest's class's danceshow at school. The kids were given a theme at the start of the term, they picked a topic relating to the theme, chose music and then coreographed a dance number. Plus their class work was around the same theme, their artwork got pinned up in the hall to accessorise the show, and their science work was related to the theme (Nature/farming) - they built a worm farm.
It was a whole lot more like the stage challenge things the high schoolers get up to than the bad old days of the waltz and the gay gordon (cue snickering). And this was the Year 4 class - Standard 2 in old money. I think back to old Tokoroa North School - which was relatively new and reasonably decilicious at the time - and I'm jealous. -
The scary thing for me was my Milk Run for Mr Miller Upper Riccarton/Wigram/Hornby/Socburn and running on Main South Rd
My milk run went through a fair chunk of Poets' corner here in Hamilton. That's where I learned that the cops actually do that chalk outline thing for some corpses - at least the murdered gang kingpins in Marshall St, which the locals then made permanant with a spray can. So for a long time I was pushing my jogger past that little keepsake.
Looking back, I am surprised that I didn't get harrassed more often than I did, running through a dodgy neighbourhood, after dark, with a bagfull of money. One of the other guys got robbed at knifepoint, but all I had was a few dickheads trying it on, who gave up after I said "nah". I met more weirdos working front counter at McD's. -
I spent my teen years here in Hammo, going to quite a few of those parties Robyn didn't make it to (although not as many as I would have liked at the time). Quite a few of the guys at those parties could quite easily fit into the role of Table or Standard Lamp. Some have grown up to be productive members of society, others, not so much.
These people are some of the reasons that make me wonder why Outrageous Fortune didn't win an award for Best Reality Programming. From where I stand, its more like reality than Mitre 10 Dream home (and I had a walk on role in one series of that). -
I enquired about signal inhibitors for the home today, blank all cellphone signals from any given time (say 10pm on a week night).
Seems such a thing doesn't exist.
They do exist, they just aren't legal. Its against the rules to interfere with a lawfully transmitted radio signal.
The movie theatre people have been trying to get them allowed (for obvious reasons) but, because they have an area effect which is tricky to confine to a room, they aren't allowed in case the person who has a heart attack in the shop next door can't call the ambulance.
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I spent some time recently with an American from California. It was his big dream to come to the clean green New Zealand. It was going to be so different and inspiring.
We had some of the wife's rellies out from Florida and Bermuda for our wedding. We picked them up from Akl airport & drove them down to Hamilton, the uncle spent half the trip leaning out the window with his video camera filming the scenery. We were like "Geez, Duffy, its just farmland", but he was amazed at how green and lush it all looked.
He was even worse when we tripped off down to Taupo, going through the pine forests. It was quite the eye-opener for me, as I grew up in Tokoroa, pine trees are just something that gets in the way of the scenery, but they were all oohs and ahhs over it. These are people from a jewel-like caribbean (not really) island, and Florida, eponymous for its flora, and they were impressed with the farmland and pine forests.