Posts by Bart Janssen
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worked largely due to the community/society within which it existed... totally foreign to how it is here...
Nope it's not foreign here at all. GBHS in the 70s may not have had the attention to detail that Dyan describes, but the culture was there alright. Kids who could skateboard well set fashion, fun kids, funny kids, smart kids and sporting kids set fashions. We weren't obsessed with what we wore and I don't know anyone who spent "too long" getting dressed in the morning to learn.
Give the nascent minds the freedom to wear what they want and they end up wearing clothes - just like we do as adults.
The reason you don't see it here as much as in Canada is not many schools have the imagination to get past the "school uniforms were good enough for me so they must be good enough for this generation too" mentality.
cheers
Bart -
Hi Glenn
after years of academic underperformance and financial mis-management
No comment on the financial mismanagement, I had no idea I was only a student.
But on the academic underperformance - that was a matter of perspective. In my year we sent 7 or 8 of us off to University. Which was an astoundingly low number. Except that of those only one dropped out and 5 went on to get PhD level degrees! The rest of the 7th form class had learned that University was NOT where they should go for their careers and so they didn't go.
I can assure you despite all the odds a few of us from PBHS (Mr Hayward included ) turned out OK
I believe you, and I suspect that most of the boys stopped being weird pretty soon after leaving. Just that at that time it was a striking difference.
And wasn't Mr Harward a neat teacher :).
cheers
Bart -
boob-bearers
I can't help it but this just makes me think of very solemn looking men wearing suitably uncomfortable clothes carrying purple cushions. And as the enter the room someone would announce "all rise for the royal boob bearers"
Probably the result of watching too much Monty Python
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Lol. Kudos, even if it was accidental.
I forgot to emphasise it was completely accidental. I had no idea that I was meant to leave my hand in the path of that piece of leather ... that would obviously hurt!
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RB wrote
I am minded now to wonder what would have happened at primary school if I had politely but firmly declined to extend my hand for strapping, explaining that it was wrong.
The first time I was strapped I remember not really knowing what was going on, so when I was told to hold out my hand I did...
Until I saw the leather strap swinging down towards my hand...
At which point I pulled my hand away with all the reflex speed of a 6 year old hyperactive boy...
The strap missed my hand and went on to slap loudly and firmly on the teacher's bare leg leaving the most startling red welt.
And I thought I was in trouble before I pulled my hand away...
cheers
Bart -
Yes I know Paremoremo Boys high quite well. And David you have my deepest sympathy for the horror that was your time there.
I was zoned to go there and my parents fought the education department valiantly to get me into Green Bay High School.
So I went to a school with no streaming, no corporal punishment, where we called our teachers by their first names and played sports with them - and NO rugby team!
Many of my friends from intermediate school went to Paremoremo Boys High. And as the years went by it became increasingly obvious that they were being taught to be thugs and bullies with the most appalling attitudes to girls.
I remember playing basketball for GBHS against PBH (we won) and talking with my old friends afterwards and being just plain amazed at how weird they all were.
Fortunately times have changed a bit and the left wing loonies that ran GBHS have become the norm :).
cheers
Bart -
Sympathies Damien, I hope you get your bags back, but after 10 days it seems unlikely.
My first trip overseas I was at an airport in middle US and watch as my bags were loaded onto one of the two small planes on front of my gate. Only to be quite disturbed to discover I was getting on the other plane. The "friendly skies" folks would not deal with the issue then and insisted that my bags would catch up to me. They did but not before I had to talk with a senior professor wearing my shorts and a smelly T-shirt.
Since then I've lost bags regularly. Every time I have flown into Tucson for some reason my bag goes somewhere else, even when my partners bags made it! So now I always carry clean underwear in my carry on.
The latest trip we lost our bags twice in Mexico, once when we had to run for a connecting flight and we rightly expected that the baggage handlers would be less keen on running. And then again on the way home via LAX where it seems our bags got on the wrong plane and didn't go to LAX at all.
Sigh.
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Why do I have this compulsion to click on links?
Gross David, just gross.
The doctor offered me a look at my knee cartilage and I was still too woozy from the anesthetic to say no. Yet another reason to work on plants.
And why do you want flowery language in politics? Do you want politics to be entertaining or have substance? Seems to me the two a pretty much mutually exclusive.
cheers
Bart -
Bart you've made some really good points but I have to disagree with some of what you wrote:
Hi Hadyn thanks and please disagree with me lots – I’m probably wrong about stuff :)
Or cricket during rugby season?
Not sure I know of much cricket played in NZ during Rugby (rainy) weather. The problem I have with Rugby during cricket season is in Feb and March the two best cricket months of the year we have 30 blokes with spikes running all over our best pitches. And seriously I just don’t want to see Rugby in those months. If you mean NZ tours of other countries during Rugby season – um I thought we were talking about local Rugby.
I guess my thesis with this is I think Rugby would benefit from having a shorter more intense season.Play more Rugby. ...
Please Jeebus no!
I cannot imagine anything worse than midweek rugby. Look at how popular Thursday night games are (hint, not at all). And don't say "more rugby" to the NZRU they'll slap an extra couple of weeks on the Super 14 before you can blink.I guess we disagree, I don’t think the odd Thursday game cuts it as a test of the idea.
I’m not so much talking about more games per season but a shorter more intense season. Yes I know the NZRFU only gives a rats arse about revenue from S14 – so let the fans tell them to focus more on the local game which some folks believe is important to “the game” as a whole.
My own reaction is that it seems so long between games that I can’t maintain interest. And even the NPC seems to drag on over a lot of weeks, certainly the S14 does. My personal feeling is play these competitions more intensely in time and I think the public will respond to that intensity OR I could be wrong.I don't think matches are scheduled for the English market, only tests.
And yet matches still start at 7:35 pm – why? Kids are awake and attentive earlier than that and it’s the kids that we have to get excited.
Re firing coaches
What level are you talking about? Because I'm fairly sure they already do that.
All levels. No I think we have an incredibly tolerant attitude to failure for coaches. At the AB level I love our current coaches I think they are brilliant – but they ***ed up and should never have been allowed to excuse that and keep their jobs. Tough yes but that is the lot of a coach.
Just another comment, I think promotion relegation games suck. If you are the bottom of the 1st div you go down end of story. Sure the team coming up will struggle but you know their fans will LOVE that struggle, they deserve to play on Eden Park too (assuming Ak doesn't get relegated :)).
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Just a couple of thoughts.
NZ is a country of 4 million people with a low population density, therefore do not assume solutions that work in other countries (UK, USA, Italy or even Aussie) have relevance. They might but it's not that likely.
I enjoy Rugby more this year with the new rules so better rules help make the game more fun.
DO NOT play Rugby during cricket season. I simply refuse to pay any attention at all to Rugby during cricket season it is just wrong. Play more games per week for fewer weeks (see below).
Play more Rugby. Stop this bollocks about Rugby players not being fit or strong enough to play more than twice every three weeks. Growing up we played a game for the school and a game for the club and about 5 other games for fun. Grown up Rugby should be a twice weekly affair.
Televise midweek NPC games and play them at say 7 pm immediately after the weather has finished. Remember you are televising it for the NZ audience not the sodding English, they can damn well watch a delayed 'cast.
Play weekend games in the afternoon. Play test matches in the afternoon. The response to the latter suggestion is always that TV audiences pay for the game, well sorry but in case you hadn't noticed people don't like Rugby at night and night Rugby is not as good a game it just doesn't work and kids don't get excited about it. As a result they play other sports and Rugby starts/continues to die!
Promotion/relegation is mind numbingly obvious, if the players suffer no consequences for playing like crap then they don't care. And guess what, the supporters don't care either and they go watch some other sport.
If coaches are crap fire their arses. Again if there is no consequence for poor performance then coaches don't care and supporters don't care.
Experiment with new ideas. Seriously try new things. If they work great if they don't ditch them fast. If the union fails to discover a way to get people to watch and play Rugby it will die, doing the same thing you have always done will guarantee failure. Sticking with new ideas that looked good on paper but didn't work in practice is also stupid.
Listen to fans. Listen to NZ fans. They are the one who will go to the game. Don't listen to marketers or TV executives or old Rugby players or the English (unless they have a good idea). It's the fans who you are trying to get to show up to the matches - listen to them.