Posts by BenWilson
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Oh, and don't forget Manukau has the Tech, quite a few fantastic markets, an airport, a sea port, NZ's most exclusive high school, and just about every car I've ever wanted to buy second hand. OK, the mall is just a mall, but at least it's a mall.
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That is a suburb which happens to have had local government concentrated there.
LOL, sounds like the definition of a city. And Wellington is a suburb that happens to have the state government concentrated there. But I'm not knocking it. I've never had anything but a good time in Wellington, except once when I got caught outside without any money, and nearly died of exposure.
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A collection of tubes?
?
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Coz Auckland isn't really a city, it's a collection of suburbs
Or a collection of cities perhaps. Central, Manukau, WestieLand, North Shore, and the Far East. Which means that you get to work in one city and live in another!
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Can't believe I'm defending homework (my 14 y/o self is hating me right now) but I think it's more about "working/learning/investigating things for yourself"
I don't know any kids who would do homework if it wasn't set. Those who are inclined to "working/learning/investigating things for themselves" already do. The rest aren't doing it "for themselves", they're doing it so as to get grades, not get detention etc.
I have no doubt that homework adds something to what kids learn. But I think the value returned for the time spent is really poor. I spent a hell of a lot of time after school programming my home computer. This was not at all related to any school work, and school work got in the way of it quite often. OK, I learned 'wider' things than what I was naturally inclined to, since there's no way I'd have been doing hundreds of maths exercises if I followed natural inclinations. Instead, I was learning the maths that I actually used, in great detail. Often it was maths that doesn't ever get taught, like logic.
Also, relaxing is important to me. Knowing how to separate work and home life is part of that. The divide was getting pretty blurry in 6th form when I'd be doing homework for hours at night instead of sleeping (because that was the only time available), then getting up at the crack of dawn to train for the school sports team, and yawning all day through classes. It couldn't last, and it didn't.
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But just who to vote for instead? That's the issue.
Sure is. Your choices on the left are slim if you rule out Labour and the Greens :-)
And which big city doesn't have people drinking and drugging too much? Not denying what he's seen, but you know, isn't this sort of worldwide?
Bali, maybe? Don't know, but that's where Simon's Avatar says he is. That's why I asked him about the drug scene there. But maybe it's something you don't talk about on the net under a real name when you live in Indonesia.
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And yet in Standard 4 (in the 70s) I distinctly remember being told in Social Studies that in the future (ie when I was an adult) we would all be working only 20 hours a week because machines would do so much work for us and we would have increased leisure time.
So much depends on the definition. Is making dinner work? Is driving to work work? Is lunch break at work work? Is studying also work?
I've been shooting for the 20 hour week forever, but my compromise has been that I do 20 quality hours. My output seems to have remained constant from when I kidded myself that I did 50 quality hours of work.
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Re: Homework. Prior to working from home, I never did any homework for any employer, ever. So I'm not sure what all that homework at school was training me for. My Mum is a teacher, and she was always marking homework at home. I often wondered if it was some kind of grudge feedback loop, that teachers were bitter on working longer hours than the kids so they did something about that.
I recall my final years at school being extremely grueling in a way that nothing has ever been since, being heavily into sports and shooting for good grades. I was in a state of constant mental and physical exhaustion and it is no wonder that I had no desire to continue living like that the moment I had a choice in the matter.
Personally today, I'm not good for extended periods of heavy mental activity. I'm really productive for about 4 hours a day. Outside of that, I'm good only for brainless chores or entertainment. I suspect I was always like that, but the 8 hour day forced on us by school was simply a way of compensating for the fact that the official 6 hours simply wouldn't go in, and the last 2 hours of school basically needed to be repeated in the evening. At least 2 hours every day were just muck around time, and the trick was to pick which 2. I tended to choose PE (since I was already doing far too much sport), and whatever subject I was doing poorly in. Or 'study break', which I took literally.
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Is it another case of the media people perversely believing that they themselves are typical ?
No, it's just that bad news sells. So even good news has to be spun into bad. Higher interest rates also have a lot of winners via the higher dollar, but that news always has to focus on exporters. Which I find strange being an exporter myself, and having innoculated myself to currency movement by setting my prices in NZ dollars.
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steven, ah well, each to their own preferences. You're not wrong, but it wouldn't be my choice to give up the view - surely a veggie garden is not totally incompatible with outlook.
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