Papal Surry Hills July 2008

Residents in Surry Hills — World Youth Day Co-ordination Authority: the map (PDF) and details arrived in our letter boxes this morning. I am thinking of setting up a stall for my holy relics…

Which reminds me of an earlier Papal Visit in 1986, a scene from which you may see here:

australian daily: Such a disappointing day for High today

Is this what Delenio had in mind with that question at Yum Cha?

The Mine and the Islamists: cause for concern?

This back link to last year is vital background to what follows. Naturally the links therein to Diary-X no longer work, but I will shortly post the relevant items on my Angelfire blog and reset the links.* The gist: the article above discusses the visit by some interesting people to my former place of work. See also another August 2005 entry, Indigo Jo Blogs Patrick Sookhdeo on moderate Islam.. I have been able to correct the links on that one.

I urge you to read those articles, and also not to jump to conclusions when you read what follows. I do not feel threatened, but I do feel concerned.

Unfortunately, in my opinion, the Islamic Students Society at The Mine has made some connection with clearly Islamist groups. I have just read a Wikipedia article, currently being considered for deletion, written by some of the students themselves.

Mardi Gras

Too old and tired to bother much this year, so let’s recycle a bit of the “lost” diaries:

February 10 2001: Mardi Gras Reflections Part 1

Last night Mardi Gras was launched at the Sydney Opera House. I did not go myself, but many did. In Chinatown today I could not help noticing the tourist wave has begun to arrive: a young couple (male) very much in love hand in hand down Hay Street, for example. In past Mardi Gras seasons I have met interesting people from various parts of the world, especially the US.

Yet I have never been to a Mardi Gras Party (or a Sleaze Ball)–and don’t really want to; it is not my chosen mode of enjoyment, and I have always deplored (perhaps hypocritically as a smoker) the druggy/out-of-it side of the event. Nor have I ever participated in an orgy. (Some will think me terribly deprived, or insufficiently depraved!) Mind you the drugginess is also part of nightclubbing in general, to be fair. But delight for me is in the company of some loved and loving friend rather than in bacchanalia: but then maybe I am tight-arsed…

Mitchell Seow

There are still people coming here looking for information about the Sydney High student Mitchell Seow who died suddenly on 14 January 2006: see my January 2006 archive. Mitchell was in the debating team I supervised in Years 7 and 8. High Notes that reprinted a lovely article that appeared a short while ago, though not online, in the Sydney Morning Herald:

Today Tonight on 7: Shock Crisis Scumbag Betrayal of OUR Kids Horror

The Shock Crisis Scumbag Betrayal of OUR Kids Horror of the moment on this flagship of manifestly declined standards in Australian television “journalism” — the mix of microstories tonight was as bizarre as anything on Frontline — is an education panic story tantamount to an infomercial (is that the correct spelling of this nonce-word?) on behalf of coaching colleges; for a little while at least, until they get bored with it, as they will, and move on to some new “outrage”, perhaps zoo keepers into bestiality with gorillas while rorting tax payers and diddling pensioners of their life savings.

(I really shouldn’t complain, I suppose, as I get a little return myself in the tuition market. Not enough, mind you.)

NSW Department of Education and Training Home Page

So you search “retirement” and you find “11 Separation from the Service 1 11.1 Resignation or Retirement 1 11.1.1 Notice of Resignation or Retirement (Separation) 1 11.1.2 Effective Date of Resignation or Retirement 2 11.1.3 Resignation or Retirement During a Term 2 11.1.4 Vacation Pay 2 11.1.4.1 Election of Vacation Payment 2 11.1.4.2 Advantages and Disadvantages of Electing Lump Sum Payment 2 11.1.4.3 Vacation Payment Entitlement 3 11.1.5 Reason for Separation from the Service 3 11.1.6 Long Service Leave - Payment of Monetary …” And you find “Last modified: 2003/09/17 23:30:07″: and of course the document tells you that Casual Teacher Pay is in Blacktown, but it isn’t any more, because now it is in Wollongong. Well, you have sent your yellow retirement form to Wollongong. To the payroll office, and they send the separation certificate to the superannuation office, which is also in Wollongong. Except they haven’t.

So you ring the payroll office.

In Wollongong.

And the phone picks up and the computer voice says “Goodbye” and hangs up. So you ring the Head Office in Sydney, and they try Wollongong, with the same result.

Mitchell Andrew Seow Funeral Notice - Notices - smh.com.au

Lines from a Floating Life: wishes of a misguided void: from dust to man, and to dust we return

You may recall this sad news a couple of weeks ago. I called in at The Mine yesterday even though school does not go back until Monday. There were a few people there. I found that Mitchell Seow, the 18-year-old ex-student, had been in the city with friends the Saturday before last and simply collapsed and died. There has been no funeral yet because there has had to be an inquest, as with all sudden and unexplained deaths.

wishes of a misguided void: from dust to man, and to dust we return

Not the sort of thing I would have ever wanted to blog: a tribute to an ex-student who died suddenly on Saturday. He was one of my debating team in Years 7-8 in 2000 to 2001 and did the HSC in 2005. So young.

NSW Department of Education and Training Home Page

I find I have some bureaucratic hoops to go through before I am officially retired. I was in fact misinformed about this at The Mine because my employment has been a touch odd: I resigned in fact in the early 1980s and have been “casual” and lately (in part) “temporary teacher ESL”. I now find I must fill in a “separation form” — the above is my search for that. Guess what? They do not have the form online! You can only get them in schools. So I must report to The Mine on day one next year to get the form.

Actually I was going in anyway to tidy up a few things…

Well that’s that at The Mine

Just back from my last end-of-term drinks (at the Bat and Ball)as a staff member at The Mine, though it is likely I will reappear there in various casual and consultative guises. It’s a more inclusive place and much less macho than it was twenty years ago, and that is all to the good.

Not culture but colonial madness in the method - Opinion - smh.com.au :: Clive Kessler

Here is a very measured opinion from a classmate (Class of 1959) from The Mine.

IT IS some time since we have been addressed by the Singaporean and Malaysian leadership about Asian values. But the subject was of lively interest, there and here, a decade or so ago.

As the issue was then framed by regional leaders, the Asian values challenge combined and confused several related but distinct notions. The proponents of the Asian values thesis insisted that others recognise, in everyday action, the principle of national sovereignty, the right of the nations of Asia to manage their own affairs independently.

This insistence they combined with, and justified on the basis of, a second principle: the obligation of outsiders to acknowledge and respect cultural pluralism…

Is it Education Week in the papers this morning?

FIVE-YEAR-OLD children will be tested for basic reading skills twice a year under a national plan to help struggling students.

Describing the current state of early childhood and kindergarten education as “a mess”, Education Minister Brendan Nelson said the literacy tests would provide parents with results while their children were still identifying words and developing reading skills.

Pre-empting a national literacy report to be released soon, Dr Nelson backed the investigation’s recommendation of a national testing regime for under-8s.

“When a child comes into the system, you have got to have some idea of what their reading skills may be,” he told The Weekend Australian. “How is a teacher to know who to concentrate on? You worry about them all but you’ve surely got to identify the ones you have got to start from scratch on.”

This is insane stuff, really, and could only come out of the mouth of an anally retentive bureaucrat/politician with a mechanistic industrial model of education like Brendan Nelson. Mister Gradgrind, eat your heart out! It is also insulting to every early education teacher in Australia, who are trained and experienced to recognise what is happening with their charges and what their potential/problems might be in ways far more accurate and sensitive than any test Brendan-babe might think appropriate.