The smart and the not so smart

Something that might astonish you is that I happen to envy people who can talk and talk and constantly yack on about things for ages; a real chatter-box . I think being able to do this fills in silent awkward moments during conversations really well. But anyone who seems to be like this, especially when they're trying to argue about things, becomes all fired up and will go on a verbal rampage about why they are right. People who are able to do this also seem to have more leadership qualities to them as well. But one thing I've noticed is that occasionally, people who are like this are often wrong. (Tho not always. I spose i am thinking of George W Bush). They're so certain about what they're saying is right, that they haven't bothered to go through what they said to check for any flaws in their logic***. I think that people who are 100% certain all the time are idiots since you can never be 100% certain about anything. For example, if someone said that they were 100% certain that an earthquake wouldn't happen within the next ten minutes after reading this, I would think that they were a bit "silly" as how can you be absolutely sure that there would not be an earthquake in the next ten minutes. Cos what if there was a set of ten minutes where an earth quake did happen. (If you have just read this and an earth quake did happen within 10 minutes of reading it... well i'll be damned).

Another example is if you flipped a coin. You can't be 100% certain that if you flip a coin, you will get a heads or a tails. What if as soon as you flipped a coin, the whole world blew up in a nuclear holocaust, and you, along with the coin, were destroyed, and thus...you therefore never got a heads or a tails. Therefore i think it is impossible to be 100% certain about anything. Maybe 99.99999...'% certain about some things but not 100% certain

George W. Bush is a brilliant example of this. He is a good leader, and people follow him, yet he is a pot-head. This also compares to Hitler.
Hitler supposedly was smart AND ambitious, or you could just call him bloody crazy, yet people followed him around like glue, and served his every bidding. Why did everyone do that? Why did the majority of people want to do what Hitler said? Could you just say that everyone in Germany around the late 1930's were complete dumbheads for following some crazy asshole!?... I don't think so.For Hitler trying to conquer all of Europe (and also eventually the rest of the world) and maintaining control over Europe was very ambitious; and I wouldn't call him an asshole for being ambitious. But I would call him an asshole for wanting to accomplish something that would spread so much pain, hunger, distress, famine, and terror upon millions of people... Yet people followed him, and carried out his orders, even though there were probably millions of poeple smarter than he (Hitler) was.

So this is one example of smart people doing what incompetant people tell them to do.

Now I mention George W. Bush. He's also certainly a good leader, but many people question how smart he is. George Bush has said many things that have made us question his intelligence. Typical "Bushisms" include:

"I know that human beings and fish can coexist peacefully."
"It's clearly a budget. It's got a lot of numbers in it."
"They misunderestimated me." ...............................

(George Bush quotes found from http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0743222229/ref=ase_pegasusstarpacif/102-3479214-6080921 .)

So George Bush is evidently not very smart at all. He sounds like someone who can feel 100% certain about some things quite often;) but he is still very good at leading his country.

So, sometimes, we have to ask ourselves this question: if someone was a really really good leader, and was excellent with people, yet could not think logically and did not even know something as basic as 1 + 1 = 2, would people still follow them as a leader?

My guess is that: ha ha, yes they would because people are suckers for people who are leaders who feel certain about themselves and who are able to charm people into doing just about anything. But that's not the point.

My point is that the world is full of really smart brainy people who sit back and do nothing for reasons being they may be too shy or unconfident, meanwhile the people who can't even add 1 and 1 together lead this planet, Earth, into destruction.

***If you have carefully thought about what I wrote and happen to find any flaws in my logical reasoning, i reserve the right to maintain that I am actually indeed very brainy. Thank you.

Random thoughts

Here's a list of all the random thoughts currently going through my head at the moment:

-Hmm why don't I just write a quick post on my blog
-I'm tired
-I don't feel like doing anything
-I don't want to work tomorrow
-Damn, I don't get to watch the Lions vs All blacks game tomorrow because I am working
-I'm saying "don't" a lot
Yay my sis gave me Spongebob and Patrick boxers for my birthday but i suspect they're too small
-Why is life so demanding
-I'm so busy
-University starts again soon at the same time the school holidays start
-Ow the exzema on my hands is starting to hurt. Better put some cream on my hands soon
-F*** I forgot to ring my mum today about paying my university fees!!! Seriously, I only just remembered now:!!!S... awww, I don't know what to do!:(

It's my Birthday

Wow it's my birthday today! I was born at 12.35am on 30th June 1986!!! Ya see, i was born in the morning, which is funny cos im not a morning person;) But, then again, I am a night person, and 12.35am is at night? hmm i fail to find a way to make that make sense so i'll forget i said that.

Now I will sing happy birthday to myself because I have no friends (just KIDDING) and everyone hates me (*JUST kidding!):

Happy Birthday to me.
Happy Birthday to me.
Happy Birthday dear Samuel Bradley Field.
Happy Birthday to me.

There are so many different versions of Happy Birthday. Here's an old version. (First of all here is my disclaimer: the following has levels of immaturity, lameness and language that may not be suitable for really mature people. I/we strongly advise discretion.)

Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday to you
You're a hundred and two
And you smell like a poo

N.B. I HAVE NEVER SUNG THAT SINCE I WAS ABOUT EIGHT YEARS OLD BECAUSE I FIND IT TO BE VERY IMMATURE and LAME.


Lol, here's another "better" version that i got sent by text:

Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday to you
You smell like a monkey
And you act like one too.

Here's another one I made up:

Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday to you
You're now a year older
Look what you've been through.

UnIfOrM

I have began to sense more than ever now, that wearing a uniform defines how people identify you.

The reason I say this is because ever since I have started working at Domino's, I have felt that I have became "just another Domino's pizza delivery guy". It has gone so far that I feel it has became my second identity: "normal me" by day, and "just another Domino's pizza delivery guy by night".

For example, when i went on my first delivery i ever did, I was delivering to a middle-aged women. When I went to meet her at her door, she said "oh hi, Domino's". She said "Domino's" as if I was the whole Domino's pizza company combined into one person, even though i had only just started working there and was only delivering a pizza. I felt like saying "HelloooOOO, my name's SAMMMM! Read the name tag, lady!", but I didn't because I know it's a common mistake for ppl to make, especially older people (I dunno why), and apart from that, she seemed like a pretty friendly woman.

Also, i fear that if my parents (or anyone else for that matter) see me wearing my work uniform, they will look at me as more of a system, rather than a person. (I always try to hide my uniform around the house, under a big pile of clothes or hidden away in my wardrobe).

I have never experienced this problem on this larger scale before. For instance, I did have to wear school uniform to both Hutt Intermediate and Hutt Valley High School, but the problem wasn't as bad then. I did feel like i was becoming a part of the school by wearing the school uniform, but it wasn't so bad because nearly all my friends had to wear uniform as well. And then, eventually, going to the school (either Hutt Intermediate of HVHS) became a part of my identity, and I began to wear my uniform with pride. Ya see, I was one of those ppl that supported wearing school uniform;)... for a number of reasons because:

1) You don't have to decide what to wear each morning
2) You don't have to worry about what's in good fashion sense to wear
3) You can save all your best clothes up for better occasions
4) School uniforms often make you look smarter

And there are possibily even more reasons that I can't think of right now.

But my point is... that wearing a uniform associates you with the organisation that the uniform portrays, even though it is just a whole lot of clothing, and you assume the identity of the organisation while you are wearing it.

Now, there is a type of person that absolutely annoys me. And that is the type of person who sees someone wearing a uniform, and then assumes that person to be just a drone/pawn of the organisation the uniform associates with, instead of an individual. This type of person feels that they can demand anything from anyone within an organisation. For example, if this type of person ordered a pizza from a pizza company, and their pizza hadn't arrived after an hour, they would ring up the pizza company and shout, scream and rant at the first person they came into contact with who worked at the pizza place, whining things to them like "where is my pizza?", "what is your problem?", "doesn't your company want to make any profit???"meanwhile the poor person on the other side is thinking or saying things like:"ok, i'm sorry. Relax while i go find out what the problem was", "it's not MY fault!!!", "go away you old rant!" and "doesn't this person see me as an individual. I am only an employee here and it does not affect me how much profit this company makes". (Don't get me wrong. Companies do need to make profit in the long-run.) I have never had this happen to me so far, but i have seen it happen before... because i see my dad as being like this. I love my dad heaps and heaps, but i try to imply my point to him.

Wow, i feel a lot better now, but i wasn't intending on writing this much... I only ment to write a couple of paragraphs. But this is the reason why i like my blog: I can write whatever i like in it!:D

The root of my frustrations

I've been feeling increasingly frustrated recently where this frustration has built up into large quantites over a couple of months.

I feel the root of my frustration has been due to one thing: DRIVING.

I am SICK of driving everywhere. It's becoming so tedious. I feel like i havent had a day in weeks where i havnt had to drive anywhere. Another problem I have with driving is that i feel that the more i drive, the more impatient i become, which means the more likely i am to take risks while driving and so become more likely to be involved in an accident.

This is made worse by the fact that i also often have to drive around for work. (I would have preferred to work instore but they were really insistent that I deliver as well). The problem with delivering is that you have to make sure you can cover petrol costs, you have to use your own car which increases "wear and tear", but the biggest problem is insurance. The excess I have to pay for insurance if i crash is$3, 300, which, in my view, defies the point of having insurance because I am extremely unlikely to be in an accident that will cost more than $3, 300 in repairs or anything else. However, if I was under 21, this insurance excess fee would only be $1,600 which is still a lot, but is much less than the fee I would currently have to pay.

I also always have to drive my sis everywhere and i am getting sick of it and becoming frustrated (with her). Whenever I get a text message from her, i can always guess before i even read the text mesage that she wants to be picked up from somewhere. (I feel guilty when i become frustrated with other ppl as i reason that maybe i am just being really selfish).

So what I would say to someone who has their full license would be:" you should have got your license after everyone else has got theirs because after you get your license, everyone will want you to drive them everywhere"

-My advice to someone with their full license would be "encourage all your family and friends to get their full license as fast as they can.";)

-My advice to someone without their full license would be: "get your full license as fast as you can a.s.a.p.!";)

I'm ok with driving a little, but not too much.

Piiizza and fun-filled market research

I might have got a job at Domino's Pizza... well actually i know iv got a job there, but there's only one complication: they want me to deliver pizza most of the time instead of being a customer representative. The main problem with delivering pizza is insurance: Domino's Pizz is meant to provide insurance but I have not been able to see a copy of their insurance policy yet, so i am not yet sure if i can deliver pizza.

Also, funnily enough, i am participating in some paid market research for some company (forgotten the name) about pizza and sushi! Coincidently they are both my 1st and 2nd favourite food respectively:P And i'm getting paid $50 for it, which will only involve answering about an hours worth of questions. That's equivalent to $50 an HOUR!!:D... but it's only for one hour;) They may even give me lots of pizza to eat while i'm "working"! :P:P:P

No longer classified as bs

ATTENTION:

Due to a majority vote of three people, including myself, Maddox.xmission.com (see link on right-hand side-bar) is no longer considered to be a load of bs, partly due to rational and political reasoning.

Thank you for your attention.

Trains and exams

Well... i can tell i need to write something more in my blog as iv been wanting to talk a whole lot of nonsense lately, ranging from conversation topics about snot from ur nose, to the Boogerman and about Upside Down Turtles... Yea, that's right... upside down turtles... Dnt tell me that all sounds random, cos I know it is. (I blame one person for all this, and her name starts with L!... You know who you are!! LOL ;)

On to another topic... On the way home today i accidentally caught the express train to Waterloo again, instead of taking the train that stops off at Ava. This is the second time iv done this, still encounting. I thought about catching a train back from Waterloo to Ava, but all there was were annoying express trains back to Wellington for the next 30 minutes, and i certainly DID NOT want to go back to Wellington. And it was under 30 minutes that i thought i could walk back to Ava anyway. So I walked back to Ava...

As it happened, I got back to Ava station just when the train "i would have caught" arrived. So it would have made hardly any difference in time if i had caught the train. Plus I had a monthly train pass, so it wouldnt have cost me anymore money if I had caught the train.

But I think it was a better idea to walk in order to get exercise and relieve stress, cos walking relieves stress. But i wasnt very stressed anyway, but being less stressed is always better.

Funny im not stressed since I have four exams coming up. I havnt really been studying for them. Im jst relying on me being able to come up with brilliant answers in the exams, hehe.

That's one idea for a Tui ad:

"I'm going to pass my exams without studying ...Yea, right"

You know that saying: "fail to plan, plan to fail."
Well in my case, it's: "fail to plan, plan to suceed."
Sorry, lame.

Dancing and toiletseats

As i write this, on tv at the moment, there is a tv show on that's called something along the lines of Dancing With the Stars. I watched it for a little while, seeing everyone doing all these fancy moves, and then I began to think 'ok, as mildly entertaining as this is watching people dance and perform fancy dance moves, so what? so what if they can jump in the air and do a 360 spin?

Then i remembered the time when i was entertained by someone fitting their whole body through a toilet seat.

So just for comparison, would you prefer to:

Watch people do fancy dance moves OR See someone squeezing whole body through toilet seat

I decided that the toilet seat act was far more entertaining than watching people dance. Am I being immature, or does this make sense? (N.B. This is a rhetorical question. I know i'm not being immature and I know I'm making sense;))

Osama Bin Laden Joke

This is a really smart idea!

"If captured, what should we do with Osama bin Laden?"

"Killing him will only create a martyr. Holding him prisoner will inspire his comrades to take hostages to demand his release. Therefore, how about this alternative?"

"Let the Special Forces, Seals or whatever covertly capture him, fly him to an undisclosed hospital and have surgeons quickly perform a complete sex change operation. Then we return her to Afghanistan to live as a woman under the Taliban regime."

SI Units

I was looking through one of my chemistry textbooks and i found a page that defined the definitions of all the SI units. And so I started wondering things like, "how did they first decide how big a metre was?", or "how did they determine how long a second should last for?". So i read on, and found the definitions to be so interesting that i wanted to put them on my blog. (Only the most interesting ones tho. Cos they are interesting, i think anyway;P)

Metre: the metre is the length of path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/(299 792 458) of a second.

Kilogram: the kilogram is the unit of mass; it is equal to the mass of the international prototype of the kilogram.

Second: the second is the duration of 9 192 631 770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom.

Ampere: the ampere is that constant curren which, if maintained in two straight parallel conductors of equal length, or negligible cross-section, and placed 1 metre apart in vacuum, would produce between these conductors a force equal to 2 x 10^-7 newton per metre of length.

Kelvin: the kelvin, the unit of thermodynamic temperature, is the fraction 1/273.16 of the thermodynamic temperature of the triple point of water.

Candela: the candela is the luminous intensity, in a given direction, of a source that emits monochromatic radiation of frequency 540 x 10^12 hertz and that has a radiant intensity in that direction of (1/683) watt per steradian.

Mole: the mole is the amount of substance of a system which contains as many elementary entities as there are carbon atoms in 0.012 kilogram of carbon-12. The elementary entities must be specified and may be atoms, molecules, ions, electrons, other particles, or specified groups of such particles.

(Source: Awlward and Findlay. SI Chemical Data. John Wiley and Sons Australia Ltd, 2002.)

a

Shortest post ever

/\ /
The above shall be the shortest post i've ever done.

Assignments and tutorials

The assignments never stop coming. Whenever i finish one, there's always at least another one that i need to do: I do four papers this trimester at university in which I get one chemistry assignment a week, one economics assignment every two weeks, one Commerce and Administration(FCOM) assignment every three weeks, and one Marketing tutorial preparation assignment every two weeks. But together, all this piles up so that it seems that i hardly ever have a free weekend where I don't have to complete any assignments. I guess it's not that bad considering one of my friends from my FCOM tutorial has got 4 assignments to complete in 6 days! That's a lot. I'd have trouble doing that.

Also, i'm really liking my FCOM tutorials now. I always go to them slightly nervous for some reason, but when i'm there, i always have a laugh and get to talk to some interesting people. In fact, i don't ever remember yawning in my FCOM tutorials (I can't compare that to any of my other tutorials). And we do learn things as well. I think we've just got an interesting tutor who knows how to make things interesting (plus I have some interesting people in my group for which we are meant to run an imaginary business in. My group specialises in agriculture and is called "Cows R' us" hehe.

Aww, the shameage

I was walking along the street today, and i walked past an ANZAC person collecting donations for anzac day. My first reaction was to walk straight past without even considering donating any money. Then in a period of a few split seconds, I thought about how horrible WWI and WWII were, and especially about the poor brave soldiers that fought and lost their lives at Gallipoli. It was then that i realised I had to donate some money. So i stopped walking and opened my wallet: I had a $1 coin and a $2 coin... I had to make a decision,

The options I had were either:
1. Forget about it and walk away
2. Donate $1 coin
3. Donate $2 coin
4. Donate both $1 coin and $2 coin.

If i just carried on walking away, i would be able to save some money which could be spent on other 'more important', selfish things like buying bottles of 1.6L coke rather than 1L bottles of coke... and well, money is hard to get when ur a full time student with no constant supply of income.

If i gave the $1 coin, i would have saved $1(or $2) which could be spent on other things like buying lunch when i was at university or to help pay for a train ticket if i was on the train and couldn't find my train pass. (Cos being kicked off the train for not being able to buy a ticket would be very embarassing.)

If I gave the $2 coin, i would feel better about having made at least a decent donation, and would be able to proudly tell myself: 'I am not cheap.'

If i gave the $1 coin and the $2 coin, i would be feeling so much better that i would probably have been on a natural high for the rest of the day.

In about 10 seconds, i had made my choice: I would give my $1 coin. So i walked up to the retired anzac soldier and told him i would like to make a donation. He didn't say anything but he smiled at me. I put the $1 coin into the donation bucket. As i did this, i had a quick look at what other people had given: all i remember seeing was a bloody $10 note. Someone had given a $10 note??! Aww i feel the shameage! (Unless it was just intentionally placed there...)

Then i took the red anzac flower that was implicitly offered to me. Judging by the anzac soldier's facial expressions, i think i might have rudely grabbed the flower out of his hand: Aww im so guttered!

Then i tried to pin the flower onto my t-shirt, and found i cudn't figure out how to pin it on properly. It kept falling off when i started walking. So i started smiling and tried to convey the message to the other people walking behind me, 'don't worry about me guys, i'll get this eventually', in case someone offered to help me pin the flower on. No one did.
But in the end i just stuck the flower in my pocket and marched on. Because to me, making a donation to a charity shouldn't be about getting recognition for it. It's more about having cared and made a donation to it, and in the case of the ANZACs, it is about saying "we shall remember them!"

(Hmm... maybe i shud have given all the money in my wallet... *Jokes*)

Now for something slightly different

Soo... I need something to write about... what can i write about...i don't really know.... quick, I need something random to suddenly POP into my head so i can write about it.... PEANUT BUTTER!... naa, that's too random...ryt, i'm really bored so im going to count to ten: one two three four five six seven eight nine ten... nope, still bored. Ah well... life isnt always fair, ha.
Oh yeah, that reminds me about something i wanted to say.

Answer this: Why be normal, when you can be slightly weird, and so appear a lot more interesting?

e.g Pretend you are walking down the street and you see a business man walking down the street, wearing a black suit, a black tie, brown hair, carrying a black suitcase, practically blending in with everyone else and appearing to be ur average working person.
However...(can u see where i'm going with this?)
Now pretend you are walking down the street and you see someone a bit more 'different', such as a business man wearing a yellow suit, a pink tie, green hair, carrying a blue suitcase and standing out completely from everyone else...
Question: What person would you be most interested to know about?(Post ur answer as 'comments' if u want)

ok... and now, for the sake of being a little different, i'm going to write what i just said backwards...and if you like, u can also try reading it out loud... but that's only for really weird people...

)tnaw fi 'stnemmoc' sa rewsna tu tsop(
?tuoba ot detseretni tsom eb uoy dluow nosrep tahw :noitseuQ
...esle enoyreve morf yletelpmoc tuo gnidnats dna esactius eulb a gniyrrac ,riah neerg ,eit knip a ,tius wolley a gniraew nam ssenisub a sa hcus ,'tnereffid'erom tib a enoemos ees uoy dna teerts eht nwod gniklaw era uoy dneterp won
)nac uoy ees erehw m'i gniog htiw siht(...revewoh
ru eb ot gniraeppa dna esle enoyreve htiw ni gnidnelb yllacitcarp ,esactius kcalb a gniyrrac ,riah nworb ,eit kcalb a ,tius kcalb a gniraew ,teerts eht nwod gniklaw nam ssenisub a ees uoy dna teerts eht nwod gniklaw era uoy dneterp g.e

(Have you gone mad yet? Cos on my 'bullshit 'o' meter, that'd rate about a 9/10)

(I don't blame you for skipping over this bit if you did. It is rather pointless to read...)


(27/04/05: I'm thinking about deleting this post because it's absolute nonsense)

Top Fivers/Sevens

My top five favourite food:
1. Pizza
2. Sushi
3. Potatoe top pies
4. chocolate
5. cracker biscuits

My top seven favourite drinks
1. beer
2. burbon
3. fizzy drink(coke etc.)
4. vodka
5. wine
6. chocolate milk
7. natural orange juice

Top five short jokes:
1. Why did the chicken cross the road?
Cos its car was on the other side
2. Why are soccer fields always wet?
Cos the players keep on dribbling
3. What has a bottom at the top?
A leg
4. Why should u never play golf in Wainui?
Cos where ever you hit the ball, it will always go down a hole
5. Knock knock!
Who's there?
I dunno...

Top five favourite colours:
1. royal blue
2. yellow
3. green
4. red
5. "grey-peach beige!!"

Top five things to do when ur drunk:
1. Get more drunk
2. Walk in a straight line
3. Say 'specificity' really fast as many times as you can
4. Tell everyone that u knew someone who was electroencephalographically challenged once.
5. Do things that u wouldn't otherwise be able to do and then excuse yourself for doing it because you were drunk.
6. slur all ur words and put 'sh' in front of every word that u say
7. play drinking games

Top five random numbers that i can think of at the moment:
1. 34746
2. 13
3. 542
4. 667
5. 1, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 001

Tops five pick-up lines for science students (from Vic magzine Salient:
1. Can I help you fill your test tube?
2. You and me have a chemical reaction
3. You wanna see my beta particles?
4. May I fertilise your egg?
5. I'm not wearing anything under my lab coat

Top five useless facts
1. Bill Gates earns $200 a second
2. All polar bears are left handed
3. Pigs can't jump
4. Bats always turn left when exiting a cave
5. Flys taste things with their legs

Top seven ways of saying hello to people:
1. Hey
2. Hello
3. Hi
4. *say hello in another language*
5. g'day mate
6. g'day governor *big aussie accent*
7. Greetings Earth human... muahahaha

Top five most commonly said things in a conversation:
1. lol
2. yea
3. ok
4. na
5. ...*snort*

Top seven ways of saying goodbye to people:
1. bye
2. c ya later
3. toodle-doo
4. *say good bye in another language*
5. fuck off
6. hasta la vista, baby!
7. G2g 2 bed now, bye

Why do i have to do a poem?... cos i can

I actually feel like writing a poem today. This would be the first time ever that i have written a poem on my own free will. (I love living in a free country). All the other times i have been forced to write poems at primary school...

Like a flock of sheep, they follow;
The dog barks at them.
The grey coloured pigeons,
that eat the bread thrown to them.
One grey pigeon, tried to choke down;
a piece of bread, too big for it to swollow.
And spat it back out for the rest of them.

The rats, that live inside the walls of a house;
eat the crumbs left over lying on the floor.
They are apart of a race:
A race for the big cheese.
The piece of cheese never comes to them;
and they wonder:"if we stay in one place,
the cheese will find us eventually."
- And these rats, that keep racing.
Still never move.

The cheetah:
Who strides like the wind,
though it may be fast,
creeps up on its potential meal.
But the meal is aware,
and springs away before death.
What? Isn't it fair that one dies, so another can live?
Is it not the law of the jungle?
Perhaps, the cheetah thinks:
Has it just been cheated?

20/04/2005
There is a big blue clock downstairs.
It goes tick tock tick.
I stare at it.
It stares back.
Tick tock tick.
It seems to be mocking me;
telling me i will run out of time eventually.
Tick tock tick.
For when i do,
that might be the end.

Diets...

Who needs to go on diets. No one really. Like, many dieting programs are absolutely nonsense. In fact, dieting companies probably want you to stay fat so that you can try their next break-through dieting program. 'Lose 10 kilograms for $10' or something like that. In my opinion, the most likely way to get fit and stay fit is not particularly to go on diets, but do get exercise. And what's the best and most fun way to get exercise? By taking up a sport such as tennis, rugby, judo, karate etc. These not only provide some means to get fit, but they are constantly every week or so(when you do practice for them, and play games with clubs or friends) and they are fun. And not only would these help make you fit, but they would also have a practical purpose to them. Such as if you played lots of tennis, you would become very good at it. Or if you practiced karate, you could defend yourself when your being attacked by some bastards up a dark alley.(Hit them with a 'Judo chop', or a 'Karate Deathlock'), when initially your only motivation was to get fit and stay fit and fit into those new clothes you might like to buy which you saw in the shop the other day.

Not me tho. I don't usually like clothes shopping. I already have all the clothes I need. Normally, i prefer looking for that latest release computer game that people are rating as a five-star "must have", "kicks ass" computer game... I got a really good deal the other day in fact: I got two games that together would be worth $160, and i got them both for $60. That's not even half price!:P I thought this was stealing and that i might get arrested when i left the shop, but the shop assistant said that's what the price was (so in other words, if the police had arrested me, i would have said "it wasn't me, it was the guy in the shop's fault". Then i can imagine the police saying "umm that guy doesnt even work here...")... Anyway, that didnt happen fortunately and I got them both. WoOt, yyaay... And now... I ask myself... does that mean i'm cheap? Am I a cheap bastard? Well, the answer to that is probably not. And that is because it was a sale. And we all happen to take advantage of sales when they happen. In fact you're probably not smart if u've never been to a sale. It is part of being human that we all go to our favourite shop's sales isnt it? In fact, it is a human right to go to all the sales we like. So now, since you have just about finished reading this post(don't start reading the others either yet), go look in the newspaper for the next coming sale so you can go and buy loads of cheap stuff.

What!? Time for another rant already? NCEA sucks

NCEA sucks. If ur an NCEA noob, NCEA stands for National Certificate of Educational Achievement. In every subject, the topics that you study are called 'Achievement Standards'. Each Achievement standard (AS) is worth a certain amount of credits, usually ranging from 2-4 credits each, but you can get the odd achievement standard that is worth 5 or 6 credits. When you do a test for an AS, you are given a final mark for that AS which can be either Not Achieved(this is the fail grade), Achievement(Achievement or beyond is a 'pass the AS grade'), Achievement with Merit or Achievement with Excellence. No matter what grade you get as long as it is a passing grade, you still get the same number of credits. For example someone with Excellence will still get the same number of credits as someone who Achieved.

Now, something i dont get about the grades is why dont they just give you a (0 being not achieved)0, 1, 2 or 3(3 being Excellence) rather than introducing gimicky names for these grades like Achievement, etc.. with all this crap going on, you might as well invent some of ur own grades like Achievement with Awesomeness or Achievement with Distinction or Achievement with Brilliance or Achievement with Utter Nonsense. It's probably true that NCEA likes to say what people with each grade can do. For example in many ASs, the criteria for Achieved is often 'Describe', Merit is often 'Explain' and Excellence is often 'Discuss'. However NCEA tests never account for the fact that if you had one more night to finish your work, you might have been able to 'Discuss' your topic, rather than 'Explain' it, and therefore achieve with Excellence. Or when you do an NCEA test. Lets say you screwed the test up with one little mistake and thus got Not Achieved, but you know that if you could sit that test just one more time again, you would be able to get Excellence. In fact that nearly happened to me once. In a Level 2 physics internal, i was going to get Not achieved because i wrote a right answer, scribbled it out, then wrote a wrong answer right next to it. This little error was enough to make me fail the whole test, but since the teachers felt sorry for me, they gave me one more chance to correct my error (which I sucessfully did) and so got Excellence. But I can't help wondering how many other people have actually been screwed over by this 'one mistake, fail the whole test' thing. This is yet another reason why NCEA SUCKS BIG `#$@!^ %&^* *&(^($#@. Also not to mention that fact that if u fail an AS, you get shit-all for doing it. In other words, if you spent a whole weekend of your precious spare time finishing an NCEA Achievement Standard, and you failed it just because of some technicality(e.g. indented paragraphs rather than leaving spaces between ur paragraphs) then you get absolutely nothing for it. No recognition for trying to do it at ALL!!! Just like getting a 0% mark for it. But if your worried that ur spend ages working on an internal and fail it, then there’s a solution that someone I know did(AND IM NOT GOING TO SAY NAMES). For a physics internal, they just copied and pasted information off the internet for their work, then just gave a different web site as their reference so none of the markers/moderators could tell. Now believe it or not, they got a Merit. Which would be exactly the same as someone who spent their whole weekend trying to get Excellence, and got a Merit instead because their work wasn’t quite up to an excellence ‘standard’. Percentage marks are better because they give a much fairer, more detailed and clearer, indication of the persons abilities.

However, a problem that I have with all grading systems, not only NCEA, but Bursary, School certificate, Sixth form certificate etc., is that they intentionally discrimate against dumb people. I mean, if you were someone really dumb, how would you like it if someone came and rubbed it in your face that you are the dumbest person in your class, or possibly the whole school... (dumb sounds a too harsher word so i will say 'not smart')... if you weren't smart, you probably would have left school at an early age because you can not stand this grading discrimination crap being rubbed in ur face that everyone else is better than you... So what is this world coming to?. First, we discriminated women, then we discovered black skinned people so we discriminated black skinned people too. And now with all these fundamentlist hard-core Islamic terrorists around, we start suspecting every Islamic person to be a terrorist, thus discriminating peace-loving Islams as well. And, now, we have moved on to 'dumb' people: people who just aren't good at learning things. Is this fair? NO! So in these grading systems that every school around the world is guilty of using, every school is guilty of discrimination against these sorts of people, and so are 100% guilty of Human Rights violations.