Posts by BenWilson
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some justifiable venting about the lack of coverage in the New Zealand media over the weekend.
Too right. I managed to get a general laugh from some mates abroad last night when I told them NZ's headline for the day:
"Elderly woman's death not suspicious, say police".
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The same is true here, really. There's different stuff open in the city center to what's going on in the 'burbs. I always stayed right in the middle of the old town in Rome.
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Then again, it's entirely possible that I was just subjected to "Opening hours for foreigners", and that natives get a whole different experience.
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I've been to Rome 3 times, for several weeks each. Enough time to work out that the opening hours would probably be harder to learn than the language. At least everyone had the same language.
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Somehow I get the feeling that cutting code on an iPad would be a frustrating experience, as would any kind of creative activity, particularly things that usually involve typing rapidly on a keyboard. But for something to use in the lounge, I can see the point...almost. I already have a very cheap HP netbook, which is smaller than an iPad, has a fixed and nice keyboard, plenty of screen, is quiet, has wifi, webcam, USB ports, card reader, long battery life. and boots from static memory so it's plenty fast (and I haven't crippled it by installing 2000 apps on it). But even still, I can't see the point in shutting down. I just close it. That way, I'm right in the middle of exactly what I was doing last time. It's as close to being as awesome as a pencil and paper as an electronic device has got, yet. I still carry those as backup.
I made the mistake of letting my son play with it, and now he won't leave me alone when I open it. An iPad would probably need to be hidden.
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I went to Barcelona only 3 years ago and the siesta seemed entirely mythical as far as I could see. Which was annoying because I was there for a conference and falling asleep for 3 hours in the middle of the day was exactly what I felt like doing.
In Rome, last time I was there, I was able to buy pizza and coffee on Christmas day. Admittedly no shops appeared to keep what I'd call regular hours - it was extremely difficult in some cases to work out if they were ever open at all. The excuse they made, if I ever did find them open, as to why they were closed the previous day was usually the celebration of some obscure saint or martyr. It didn't tally with the fact that all the other shops were open. It didn't bother me, it was just curious that they felt the need to justify what I would consider should be the norm - the right to work when you felt like it. I loved the fact that Rome seemed to be open all the time, just not necessary open where you thought it would be. You had to search to find the guy who was still fixing shoes as 11pm on a Saturday.
A strange, quirky, cool place, with just the right attitude, except where the rights of women not to be publicly molested were concerned. It's still my favorite place in Europe, but I haven't been to France yet (as an adult).
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Oh, you'd hate living in Europe, with their 5-6 weeks annual leave as standard.
Sounds awesome. They can even manage to keep things open, too. I guess it's because they don't have their timetables dictated by the proletarians of the industrial revolution, who fought nay died! so that everyone, even Muslims, can have Christmas off. Well, OK, the ladies organizing the massive scale dinners don't count, because that's not real work.
I wouldn't get any extra leave myself, being self-employed. But I'd probably like seeing friends on their time off.
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Ummmm, how are "tokens for x days off during the year" any different to annual leave? Did I miss something or are you just arguing for zero public holidays and 5 weeks legislated annual leave?
Something like it. There's only one weeks of stats - I don't know what the basic requirements are today for annual leave. Four weeks sounds like an awful lot, I've never had that much leave since I left University, and even when I was studying, I always worked every week of the "holidays", picking pears or pumping gas, except for the time I took off for annual sporting tournaments. But that week of stats could quite easily be converted to fall under the annual leave requirements. If everyone wanted to still celebrate ANZAC day, nothing would stop them. But I bet they wouldn't, and you do have to ask why. Could it be that taking holidays that mean something to you might be more valuable to most people than constructed social conventions like ANZAC day. If not, if everyone wants to remember the glorious dead on that particular day, then they still can.
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I think the people who don't have anything to do with Christmas will be more likely to have come from somewhere that it is not a tradition, religion or not. People from somewhere Europe dominated will celebrate it.
I don't think there's anything wrong with Christmas, or any of the other stats, in terms of what they celebrate and the effect they have in bringing people together. But I still can't see why it needs laws to make it happen. People celebrate Christmas on Christmas day, because that's the day it's on. Quite a few Euros (my wife's family for instance) actually celebrate it on the day before, which is not a statutory holiday, and the laws make this rather inconvenient, because businesses are often frantic about making sure everything gets done before the enforced break, and they don't cut any slack on leaving early to celebrate the occasion the way that those people actually have traditionally celebrated it for centuries.
Poorer families sometimes actually do the main celebration after Christmas, because they want take advantage of all the sales, and have a merrier event, rather than one where their poverty is rubbed in their faces. But the 27th isn't a guaranteed day off, and you'd have to take precious annual leave out to have that kind of Christmas.
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Simon, do you think that's partially a function of population size? I totally agree, most of my perceptions are colored by various cities I've been to that are lively at all times.
I can understand what people are saying about holidays bringing people together as a society. But my feeling is that there is no need to legislate to enforce some peculiar times that have been chosen rather arbitrarily for this. People are always brought together by the things they love and want to do. Music lovers take a day off for the Big Day Out. Churchgoers will meet on Sundays. Cricket lovers will go to tests. Gamblers go to the big races.
People who aren't into it are drawn in by others who are. It doesn't take a state sanctioned enforced day off to get people to socialize. It takes meaningful events. For me, stats ain't it, except Christmas, and that one only from long tradition. My wife has taught me to love Christmas again. It is a major event, that involves a lot of planning, and I choose to participate. I don't see that requiring everyone else for whom it means nothing to get into it.
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