Last week I received a detention from my school for arriving late three times. I had actually been late more like six or seven times, but my school kept changing the late book before I could collect three lates in the one book. Unluckily they hadn’t changed the book between my previous two lates and last week, so I got the detention. Although in my defence, I haven’t been late to a single class all year — only homeroom “team meetings”. And much as my vice-principal protests otherwise, homeroom “team meetings” are complete wastes of time; we never do anything there, and vital information is certainly never “disseminated” like my vice-principal deludes herself into thinking it is.
Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is that this afternoon, I had to attend detention to punish me for my lateness. Not that I minded that much. To be honest, detention isn’t much of a deterrent. I mean, what is it? It’s staying back 40 minutes after school in a relatively comfortable room, laughing in amusement at the disputes between your fellow detainees and the supervising teacher, and when that fails you can do some homework without being distracted by all the wonderful tools of procrastination in your house. I stay back at school later than that willingly on a semi-regular basis. Why would I care about detention?
Unfortunately my school was way ahead of me. For this day, the only day I’ve ever had a detention, the supervising teacher happened to be trialling a new method of punishment for “detention kids”: community service. Read More »
The very last thing the economy needs in this country is an election.
This quote comes from our esteemed treasurer, Wayne Swan, as quoted by this article in The Australian. As soon as I saw this quote I cracked up. In context the quote makes sense — in context he’s trying to blackmail the Opposition into approving a certain piece of legislation. But the quote by itself sounds like democracy is being suspended here until the financial crisis ends. Or perhaps I’ve just been studying the French Revolution too much lately.
The piece of legislation this drama is unfolding thanks to is a tax on alcopops. Read More »
This week I’ve been infuriated by certain teachers’ failure to keep track of their students’ assignments, then blaming me for not doing my assignment and being about to fail me unless I can somehow get my assignment to them (again) by the end of the day. When they’re on the complete other side of the city.
I’m not used to failing subjects and I was furious when I found out I was about to fail this one. Everyone else was astonished, except the senior school coordinator, who was simply furious with me for not doing my assignment (even though I had). I got to break the news to one of my History classmates: “Congratulations! You’re the only one not failing Revolutions right now.” Read More »
In English yesterday, my teacher asked everyone what we did with the $900 a large fraction of the population received recently, as a gift from the government. Most people answered, “I went shopping,” or, “I bought clothes,” and these responses completely infuriated one of my classmates.
“People, you’ve all wasted your money! You bought stuff?? Did you remember to check that everything you bought was Australian-made, to make sure your money stays in Australia? NO! I bet you bought all Chinese-made products, benefiting CHINA’S economy instead of our own! Do we want to benefit CHINA’S economy, or ours? You should have been spending on services — at least then you know the money stays here!”
He wouldn’t listen to reason, and even an explanation of how economies actually work wouldn’t change his mind. He insisted that we were all acting traitorously, supporting China instead of ourselves. Which is crap. Read More »