lois, you went and got the aa-pposite of what i wanted!
1. The gas guy just came - we've had the same deliverer for ages - and popped in with his customary joke. Its usually 50 bucks or some such thing - thats what my parents left having gone out - and it cost 80 so, pulling out the 30 from my wallet I asked what accounted for the rise. He offered nuclear power as a cheaper alternative. What a clown. One of the great things about singapore - the hilarious gas guy. He puts the gardener in the shade by some distance...the gardener always pops up in the portion of the garden outside my room and murderously digs the soil for whatever reason - i've always been wary of him.
2. So its the time of year again when i open facebook and find my news feed inundated with juniors scribbling on walls left right and centre discussing uni results and future plans and the like. Its all very interesting to observe when removed from the thick of it all but if I knew some people better I might point out something:
That uni really isn't about being taught by famous people who've written popular books or come up with sexy ideas that everything from the new york times to our "local rag" (Sambor, 2009) the new paper fill their review sections with. more often than not, what stays true in uni is that good teachers are people who are simply, for some reason or the other made for the job. The famous people aren't any more likely to be amazing teachers than a Professor who has been around half a century teaching young fools in when not on flights of fancy between researching the Roman influence in North Africa and writing about Polish monasteries and their impact upon the modern educated mind. Even if these people do happen to lecture, they're probably there because they have been unwillingly drawn from very specific interests to talk about something they might not be quite as passionate about. All my tutors so far have been far from household names (except maybe Tze Ern II) but 66.6% of them have given me incredible value for an hour long tute.
i'm not the authority on what uni is about, but i thought i might get this out on this space.
3. Facebook is starting to generally annoy me. I'm quite easily addicted enough such that its the first thing I open when I get on my computer and I definitely check my feed at least once or twice a day. The problem is, when you are forced by this addiction to pay attention to the tripe people post on facebook, you find it increasingly difficult to like these people. 85% or more I daresay fall into "these people". It isn't really pleasant when you realise about 85% of the people you know (to the extent facebook realiably indicates who you know) fundamentally irritate you. You feel like a Curmudgeon (pee-wee's alarms set off, thats the word of the day!) Curmudgeon! There isn't really a way out. As I said - too addicted to close the account, reading irritating facebook posts might possibly be a guilty pleasure, maybe facebook might be there to remind you to be a better person. Also, you always like being able to stalk people!
2. So its the time of year again when i open facebook and find my news feed inundated with juniors scribbling on walls left right and centre discussing uni results and future plans and the like. Its all very interesting to observe when removed from the thick of it all but if I knew some people better I might point out something:
That uni really isn't about being taught by famous people who've written popular books or come up with sexy ideas that everything from the new york times to our "local rag" (Sambor, 2009) the new paper fill their review sections with. more often than not, what stays true in uni is that good teachers are people who are simply, for some reason or the other made for the job. The famous people aren't any more likely to be amazing teachers than a Professor who has been around half a century teaching young fools in when not on flights of fancy between researching the Roman influence in North Africa and writing about Polish monasteries and their impact upon the modern educated mind. Even if these people do happen to lecture, they're probably there because they have been unwillingly drawn from very specific interests to talk about something they might not be quite as passionate about. All my tutors so far have been far from household names (except maybe Tze Ern II) but 66.6% of them have given me incredible value for an hour long tute.
i'm not the authority on what uni is about, but i thought i might get this out on this space.
3. Facebook is starting to generally annoy me. I'm quite easily addicted enough such that its the first thing I open when I get on my computer and I definitely check my feed at least once or twice a day. The problem is, when you are forced by this addiction to pay attention to the tripe people post on facebook, you find it increasingly difficult to like these people. 85% or more I daresay fall into "these people". It isn't really pleasant when you realise about 85% of the people you know (to the extent facebook realiably indicates who you know) fundamentally irritate you. You feel like a Curmudgeon (pee-wee's alarms set off, thats the word of the day!) Curmudgeon! There isn't really a way out. As I said - too addicted to close the account, reading irritating facebook posts might possibly be a guilty pleasure, maybe facebook might be there to remind you to be a better person. Also, you always like being able to stalk people!