Up Front: The Up Front Guide to Parenting
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Awww, thanks Danielle! The sad thing is, it was almost all true.
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Dunno about Rob but a number of students in Wales had a friend called jock
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@webweaver. uh, slightly off topic, but I'd dabbled a bit in web design many moons ago (just for myself mind, nothing too exciting), and I always thought the gathering website was very nifty and elegantly executed. just reading a bit of your bio, & now i see why.
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I don't care, because that was really hilarious reading.
Indeed. Although as a keen scholar of Middle Kingdom Egyptian mining techniques I did feel slighted somewhat.
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I got my first real job with a software house on the strength of having been a debating champion at varsity, according to my boss. My minor in Computer Science was considered irrelevant. My major was Philosophy, and I'm sure I rose quickly through the company because people just loved coming in to argue with me about stuff when they were bored with their work. I was a real sucker for it.
I don't think Philosophy did my mind any good at all. But it is very practical - arguing about shit seems to be a key skill when it comes to office politics, especially knowing exactly when and how to judiciously use argumentative fallacies to your advantage. A well timed ad hominem is usually an argument winner. Modus ponens never seems to have the same impact. Years of martial arts have prepared me for the use of Ad baculum, but fortunately it's never come up. Unfortunately I hate office politics and now work alone, as a programmer. The arguments with myself are interminable and heated. I wish I'd never had my first puff of Philosophy.
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Awww thanks James!
Great surname, BTW :)
Um... topic. How about "varsity vs "uni". We always called it "Uni" back when I lived in Blighty, and I noticed that when I moved to EnZed that everyone seemed to call it "Varsity" - so that's what I call it too now. Baaaaaaaaa. I'm such a sheep.
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Varsity was Uni over in Australia. I wonder if it's a creeping Ozzism. Or maybe it just makes more sense.
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Varsity was Uni over in Australia.
I say varsity. And before that, I spent several years at ool.
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I say varsity. And before that, I spent several years at ool.
Uni, which I think was pretty consistent through my social group. Maybe it makes a difference which uni you went to. And before that I went to high school (hi sch?) not college.
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I generally said "Uni" but I think "varsity" has passed my lips a few times too. I went to "college" before that but now refer to it as "high school" for reasons of clarity born of trying to communicate with American internet folk.
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And before that I went to high school (hi sch?) not college.
Hmmm. I think you must mean "igh ool", Emma. Assuming you're following the giovanni tiso method of education establishment shortening.
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Oh and Teachers College was always "T-Coll".
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Does that make polytechnics "P-techs"?
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Well I still call UniTech "Carrington". My parents met there, long before it was either a Uni or a Tech. Locals will know the significance of this.
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I used to give a lecture on nyu zullund inglush.
Referencing, of course Harry Orsman.
Varsity, first used in Dunedin in 1890, at which time it was an English import, but it's not longer in use there.
Uni was first used, I think, in the phrase 'Sydney uni', and was first spotted on these fair shores in 1984 in Auckland. Incidentally, thinking of under-appreciated publishings, I have one out there on NZ's adoption of americanisms, and it seems that Auckland is also the gateway for those (at least relative to Dunedin).
And just to round it out, Scarfie is a thoroughly Dunedin word that has spread.
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So I just happened to be passing Google Scholar and somehow my name got typed into the search box...
This reminds me - about 5 years ago, a friend of mine told me that some of the writing on my website was in the course reading of a first-year English paper his girlfriend was doing at Auckland Uni.
It turns out some lecturer had picked a couple of bits of my writing to use in a paper on "personal biography".
It was then that I decided to give up any idea of getting a proper degree.
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Here's my answer to your question: the engineer can design the plane and go home, and I'll have an entertaining, conversational dinner with the arts graduate. Sorted!
Right.
I'll just be down in the cellar, then. Designing, building and maintaining absolutely everything that enables your feckless, carefree modern lifestyle.
No, really, it's no bother, even though it has been a bit damp down there lately and my chest is playing up something awful. You go out with your sparkling, witty friends. I'll be fine, honestly. I prefer to be alone with my robots, really I do.
I'll do my best to have all that housework done for you by the time you get back, too.
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[Sigh] At this rate I'll never find the time to start mass producing those special violins. -
It turns out some lecturer had picked a couple of bits of my writing to use in a paper on "personal biography".
...and the lecturer didn't think to ask you first, Robyn? How rude!
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Seven years in the hallowed halls of Vic. BA(Hons) in Philosophy and International Relations. Student Loan of approximently one metric fuck-tonne of money.
Only directly marketable skill I can point to from all that was being able to touch type incredibly fast (due to having to finish papers half-an-hour before they were due).
Wouldn't change it for the world!
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It was then that I decided to give up any idea of getting a proper degree.
Ah, but none of you has had the experience of sitting exams solely for the purpose of delaying a call up in the army, right? Right?
I could tell you stories... really, really boring stories about my frustrations with how the humanities are taught at university back home. So it got to the stage where I also figured I wouldn't get a degree and that's that, but Justine kept insisting that we'd come to Wellington and I'd love the system here, and indeed I started from scratch at 27 - with a solid supply of misgivings and doubs - and her favourite lecturer way back then ended up supervising my PhD. So it all worked out for the best.
But speaking of parents and the children's choices, my mother now maintains she was always supportive of my determination to study something I liked, and I humour her for the most part, but at the time of my glacial exam sitting and my moving in with Justine to be poor and not have time to study she even enlisted a dentist cousin to give me a speech. I never wanetd to punch somebody so hard before or since.
(Actually, the same guy decided all on his own to also give me a speech about how I was abandoning my parents before we left to come here, and it ended unforgettably with the phrase "Do you have any idea how far Denmark is?"
Good times.)
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Does that make polytechnics "P-techs"?
When my parents both worked at a Polytech it was "Polly-wolly" sometime with a "doodle" on the end. Work talk was "Polly-speak" and was banned from the dinner table.
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Well I still call UniTech "Carrington". My parents met there, long before it was either a Uni or a Tech. Locals will know the significance of this.
Ah yes but there are more choices - Carrington was the replacement name post-1974 trying to get over the stigma of "Oakley Hospital", which was the new name ditto "Avondale Asylum" from which one of my great-great grandfathers graduated, and further back before all this PC nonsense started with the 1890s Liberals they called it the Whau Lunatic Asylum.
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with a solid supply of misgivings and doubs
The doubts regarded mostly my ability to spell, and were well founded obviously.
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School of hard knocks, canary row...
Does that make polytechnics "P-techs"?
Well dig this, in Christchurch it is known as CPIT, and I guess probably specialises in Middle Kingdom Egyptian mining techniques...
yrs subterraneanly
Mole Manne
shafted again... -
Yes... well... degrees.... I haz sum.
Someone upthread confessed to a BSc without any opprobrium being heaped on hir head, but I'm willing to bet that you will all start throwing things at me now: my first degree was a BCom (Hons) in Accounting and Finance. I don't usually talk about it in polite company.
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