Nexus Six

WAIKATO’S FREE STUDENT MAGAZINE

Issue Six April 23rd 2012

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Editorial with Alix Education. It’s something you should all be very, very familiar with. After all, that’s why you’re all here isn’t it?

To better your education. You love education!

You’ve all probably gone to high school, and primary school as well I bet. That’s how much of an addict you are.

If that’s the case, then this is the issue for you! Education is the watchword for the week.

It’s a hot topic for the nation as well. Everybody’s concerned with where all the top students and future moneymakers are heading, and whether they’ll ever come back. They’re concerned that our school bathrooms are substandard. And they’re also concerned about how to reward quality teachers. Which is something I totally support - although I do think some bathrooms need an upgrade too.

Having a quality teacher when you’re in primary or secondary school is incredibly important.

You see this person everyday of the week for around 40 weeks a year, so if they aren’t using their full ability and enthusiasm to try and teach their students a thing or two about science or algebra then I think there needs to be something in place that separates these teachers from those that do.

The government is currently thinking up a way to reward those hardworking and dedicated teachers for their involvement in bettering our education, and I think this is a great idea. If you’re exceeding in your chosen area of study or work, then you’re usually rewarded, right? It’ll be tricky designing something that doesn’t deter

co-operative efforts between teachers, or make the schoolyard a competitive arena (like Cameron Diaz in Bad Teacher. Laughed so hard.) but I do think it is a start. I’ve had some pretty horrible teachers over the years, as I’m sure you all have too, and it would be nice if, as shallow as it is, they saw this incentive as an opportunity to be better teachers. It would make primary and secondary school life SO much more bearable. Unless you’re one of those bad kids burning pens on the Bunsen burner at the back of the class. Your cruisy days are over.

As of yet I haven’t had a truly sub-par experience with university lecturers, so I’m not sure if the same kind of thing applies here. Maybe it’s because they actually care about their subjects or that they get paid a heck of a lot more, but whatever, I dig. I love filling out those evaluation forms at the end of semester and ticking all the last boxes because that’s how I feel, not just cos I’m lazy or I’ll feel bad.

To sum up, I think we need to start rewarding this country’s hard working teachers for all the good they do making our kids smart, and maybe we should, I dunno, pay them more. I know the saying goes “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach” but is that necessarily true? Good teachers need to be valued.

They are educating the future generation, and we’re going to have to live with that.

I love filling out those evaluation forms at the end of semester and ticking all the last boxes because that’s how I feel, not just cos I’m lazy or I’ll feel bad.

Editorial

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What’s Inside?

Editorial How Saph Sees It Long News and Short News Amber the Advocate How To Am I Right?

Lettuce Sports Thoughts 8 Ball and Horrorscopes Hate It or Love It Mister Minty Fish Diary of a Hipster Auteur House Sexy Time Puzzles The State of Education in New Zealand Tangata Tumeke It’s Not Easy Being Sam Clubs Seminar Failing Education YWRC and CAB Dear Paula Bennett The Secret Lives of First Years Did You See? Out of the Hat Kevin Goes Down on Books Off The Rack The Gig Review Gig Guide

Credits Editors: Alix Higby and Sean Goulding Design: Katrina McIntosh (design@nexusmag.co.nz) Design Interns: Anna Bennett, Eva Hou, Shaun Jay Advertising: Troy Arkell (ads@nexusmag.co.nz) Cover Art: Eva Hou News: the Flying Nexus Monkey Daniel Farrell Managing Editor: James Raffan (james@nexusmag.co.nz) Contributors Squiddy, C-ball, President Sapphire Gillard, Amber the Advocate, Sam Taylor, Priscilla Ngatai, Mr. Minty Fish, Something Hip, Hoory Yeldizian, Dr Richard Swainson, Bernard Williams, Alice and Anne, Kevin Pryor, Kylie from YWRC, Jill from CAB, Scarlett and Cinnamon, Nick Marryatt, Arthur Robinson, Julia Gabel, Dr. Seuss, Ronnie and Malebox, and the glorious indestructable 8 ball.

Nexus is a member of the Aotearoa Student Press Association (ASPA).

THE VIEWS EXPRESSED IN THIS PUBLICATION ARE NOT NECESSARILY THE VIEWS OF NEXUS MAGAZINE, THE WSU, APN, THE EDITOR, ANY OF OUR ADVERTISERS, OR ANYONE ELSE IN PARTICULAR. Nexus Ground Floor, Student Union Building, Gate One, University of Waikato, Knighton Road, Hamilton.

Phone: 07 838 4653 Email: editor@nexusmag.co.nz

Education That’s what you’re here for. Or at least that’s what we hope you’re here for: To learn and become the critics and conscience of society; to be informed; and to be taught.

So do you have the best learning environment?

In Nexus issue three a news item ran regarding the size of some Waikato Management School tutorials. These tutorials have almost doubled in size (compared with last year) and students have been able to join tutorials throughout the semester – in other words, team assignments have been chaotic as students who haven’t shown up until week four have been able to join an already established team. I’ve heard anecdotally from tutors that one department has slashed its tutoring budget by tens of thousands of dollars.

In the Faculty of Education, early childhood classes started the semester with more students than space.

Students had to stand during classes because streams were merged.

Is this what university should be like? NO! So what should we as students do about it?

What about teaching appraisals? Those wonderful forms you’re asked to fill in at the end of each semester about both the teaching staff and the course. How are these being used? Long story short: Not a lot. In fact, the only person in the university who sees them (apart from the appraisals staff themselves) is the lecturer being appraised. What’s that mean? Well, if you thought that Lecturer X was absolutely terrible, and you give that lecturer a really poor appraisal, no one is going to find out.

Sure, Heads of Departments and Deans get sent summaries of how the paper was rated, but they don’t get told “Staff Member X had every single member of their class say they were never effective”. And perhaps just as importantly, they also don’t get told “Staff Member Y had every single member of their class say they were the best teacher ever”. In other words, good teaching isn’t rewarded without prompting. Nothing is done unless staff members make a big deal out of their positive appraisals, or purposefully apply for an outstanding teaching award.

This isn’t to say lecturers pay no attention to their teaching appraisals: some do. I remember one lecturer who most of our class gave a very poor performance appraisal to one semester. Rather than just putting it down to a bad class, this lecturer looked at the comments

on the form and had a think about how to improve their teaching, enrolled in some courses at the teaching development unit, and completely revised the way they taught and assessed. When I had that lecturer again the following semester for a different paper, it was a completely different experience - and one that definitely warranted the “Always Effective” rating I gave the lecturer at the end of the paper.

Again, is this what university should be like? NO! So what should we as students do about it?

First off, care about your education. If you think that a lecturer is useless, tell your class rep – and make sure it is followed up. Perhaps even email the Head of Department yourself (or come and see us at WSU and get me to do it for you) and say why you are unhappy.

Similarly, if you feel that your lecturer or tutor is awesome, email them and say so! Far too often teachers don’t receive any feedback on how they are going until the end of the semester.

Secondly, be engaged. If you care about your education, volunteer to be a class rep, and take the job seriously. While some class reps are really good, others only take on the job at the insistence of the lecturer, and aren’t really engaged. If you are a class rep, make sure you give comments at the class rep meeting, and run for your faculty boards and the Academic Board so that we have engaged students! At the last Academic Board meeting I attended, for instance, only 3 out of the 8 other student reps turned up. If we want better education, we need to care about it.

Thirdly, speak out. There’s no motivation for change like it being published in the student magazine.

Write letters / lettuce to Nexus about your classes and stimulate discussion. Email nexus news at news@nexusmag.co.nz if you think there’s something going on that other students should know about. And don’t feel afraid to send me an email me at president@wsu.org.nz if you want me to bring something up with a faculty on your behalf: I’m happy to meet up and discuss how to improve education.

Finally, make sure you vote in the University of Waikato’s council election. The student representative on council speaks on your behalf, and advocates about issues on education. Get online to i.waikato.ac.nz and vote. Make sure that your voice is heard.

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Long Heading News Basketball hits the big time A new sport is taking centre stage in Auckland, after the New Zealand Breakers basketball team hit the Australian NBL Grand Final for the second consecutive year. The NZ Breakers took the first game of the Grand Final series against the Perth Wildcats in front of a sellout crowd at Auckland’s Vector Arena. The 9125 strong crowd was New Zealand’s largest audience for a basketball game ever.

The Breakers didn’t make it easy for themselves, blowing a 15 point lead at the half to end up with the scores level at 84-84 at the end of regulation time. They went into overtime with fans remembering last year’s Grand Final Game 2 in Cairns, which the Breakers lost after Double Overtime.

The Breakers ended up winning the game 104-98, with American import Cedric Jackson again having a huge showing, nearing a double-double and top scoring for the Breakers, with 25 points and 8 assists. Not to be outdone, Wildcat Kevin Lisch top scored overall with 27 points, but it wasn’t enough to take first blood from the Breakers.

When the finalists were found after the semi-final series, it was said that this Grand Final could be the greatest finals series the NBL has seen. Game 1 of the series definitely lived up to that hype. Game 2 will have been played by the time of printing, on Friday night. If the Breakers won, they will have become the first New Zealand professional sports team to win a back-to-back title in an Australian series.

If they lost, we’ll be going to a deciding Game 3 at Vector Arena on Tuesday night.

If we do go to Game 3, tip-off will be 7:30pm, with tickets available from ticketmaster.co.nz and live television coverage on Sky Sports. This Nexus writer will definitely be there.

Short News News

Pita Pit opens at Waikato A new food store is opening at the Student Centre this week. Pita Pit opens on Monday 23rd and is thought to be likely to bankrupt students. One student who didn’t want to be named said, “Why would they do this to us? They know we’re already poor students! Now we have to buy Pita Pit?! It’s just not fair to tempt us like this!” This was rebutted by another student, who said, “Meh, I don’t really like Pita Pit. Seems too hippy-ish with their falafel. Bloody hippies...” The Pita Pit Chicken Caesar, the most perfect pita ever created, with its perfect amounts of chicken and bacon, it likely to be bought by this Nexus writer for lunch today. In other news, my bank account is crying that it is likely to see a substantial drop in size.

Pita Pit can be found at the lower level of the Student Centre, at The Boulevard. This Nexus writer still doesn’t understand how The Boulevard is a boulevard...

Green Party accuses SkyCity of funding crime The Government’s controversial deal with SkyCity to potentially have a Convention Centre built in exchange for gaming machines being allowed at the SkyCity Casino in Auckland has caused a stir again, with the Green Party saying it will help fund crime in New Zealand. The ticket-in ticket-out gaming machines that are planned are a form of cashless gaming, where a patron pays money to a cashier who exchanges it for a ticket. The patron then places the ticket into a gaming machine and the appropriate number of credits are allocated to the machine. The Green Party has said this system is “proven” to facilitate money laundering. In reply, a SkyCity spokesperson has said that there is legislation regarding things like money laundering and all of SkyCity’s venues comply with this legislation. He also said that SkyCity has professional cashiers who are trained to notice suspicious activity. The opposition also has said that the deal is the National Party helping out it’s friends. John

Robot Sex Tourism the Future?

Two Victoria University academics have released a paper stating that robotic sex tourism is the way of the future. It suggested that some businessmen would spend upwards of 10,000 euro on androids for a show followed by sex, stating that robots were cleaner and safer. We don’t want to stand in the way of progress but unless these girls run on a solar panel we are concerned that there are about to be some phenomenally high power bills throughout the halls of residence.

Key responded to this last week, saying “I made it quite clear well over a year or so ago that I spoke to a number of parties including SkyCity.” The Prime Minister also said that the deal that is being finalised was not something SkyCity suggested, instead being something he brought to the table.

Waikato has a music expo The Waikato Show is coming to Claudelands Events Centre next weekend, with the Waikato Music Expo part of the show. The Waikato Music Expo, being run by Arts Waikato, is one of many sections to The Waikato Show, which also includes the Home Expo, Healthy Waikato, Get Ready Get Thru, building, antiques and more. Entry to the event is $5.

Waikato Music Expo coordinator, Nick Johnston, said “The event is a great opportunity for Hamilton musicians to directly talk to music industry groups like NZ Music Commission, NZ on Air and APRA.” He also said that the event has been designed not just to appeal to musicians, but to music lovers too. “I’m very excited with the way things are coming together for the expo. Lots of different stalls and good deals on offer!”

The event will include stalls from instrument makers and importers, secondhand vinyl and memorabilia, music industry groups, recording studios, music tutors, DJ gear, recording hardware and software, local music venues, radio stations and much more. For those wanting to go, parking is available at Gates 4 and 5. More details about the Waikato Show can be found at wws.org.nz and details about the Waikato Music Expo can be found at waikatomusicexpo.co.nz.

Amber the Advocate The Waikato Students’ Union (WSU) Advocacy Service provides WSU members to a free confidential service which is empathetic to your needs as a student. As the WSU is run by students for students, we know the pressure of studying full time, or working and studying. The WSU has many links within the University of Waikato as well as outside of it. Therefore we may have a better chance of assisting you with problems than you would have as a lone individual.

WSU Advocacy can help you: - By sorting out problems with academic staff - By advocating on your behalf on disciplinary matters - By mediating with an unpleasant landlord - By providing assistance with WINZ - Or by simply listening and offering advice As a WSU member, the Advocacy service can help you with problems on and off campus with representation, advice and total confidentiality.

Often, all a situation needs is the advocacy of a large organization like the WSU. If you would like to make an appointment with an Advocate then come into the SUB Building or email Amber at advocacy@wsu.org.nz Advocacy Week is coming up on the 30 April till the 4 May, come down to the green or the WSU room (ground floor of library next to the hairdressers) for some information, a chat, some workshops and to meet other organisations here to help you!

Bye Bye V8s

To Blow or not to Blow

Some large cars went round the streets of Hamilton on the weekend, followed by an aging rock band. We would tell you more but our news reporter was at home trying to build a sex robot to really corner the market before the revolution comes. If you do want to know more about v8s, cars, or rock music we suggest that you visit the public library. Be quick though, they are only open for 30 minutes per week thanks to the bill for another successful weekend of racing. Thanks council you guys are awesome.

Following the announcement of the sex robot revolution the Consumer Safety Institute and the medical profession are warning you to take care. If a blow up woman pops, you get a fright. If your sex robot breaks down you have to make three call to three after hours electricians a mechanic and the firefighters for the jaws of life. If you thought explaining why the vacuum cleaner pole was “stuck” is embarrassing, try justifying why you have a robot head attached to your junk.

News

How To: Get The Most Out Of Your Education With Alix Higby

Since education is the go this week, I thought I’d give you a few pointers for succeeding in this realm. You all know you should go to class, right? And that you should start your assignments at least several days before they are due? Good. You’re familiar with the basics then, even if you don’t follow them. Here are some slightly left of fielders that you may or may not have considered.

1. Look good. Not too good cos then the real smart people will think you’re stupid for putting that much effort in when you could’ve been studying (gurl, I know how long fake eyelashes take to put on), but being a cutie will usually make you feel better so you’ll be pretty up for being a badass student and beating the shit out of your workload. I always get the most work done when I’m banging. And at 5am the day my assignments are due (not recommended).

2. Take the bus if you live within a reasonable busable reach of the uni. This doesn’t really make studying any easier for you, but it makes finding a park waaaay easier for the out of towners- i.e me! Thaaaanks.

3. Steal pens. Not properly, cos that’s a lame reason to be arrested, but all those free pens from businesses and promo events are great to stash away. Honestly, you’ll be wondering where all the bic ball points are about 3 weeks into your classes and feeling morose that you spent actual

Opinion

proper legitimate money on them when they can jump ship easier than your high school boyfriend.

4. Don’t gossip in class. Unless it’s super important or super interesting to EVERYBODY then shut yo’ mouth.

You can’t listen to your lecturer if you’re jabbering away at 60mph, and quite frankly neither can I. Too busy laughing at you and your “problems”.

5. Walk, don’t run. If you’re late to class, so be it. Walk briskly but not too brisk, because if you break a sweat, that’s all you’re going to be thinking about for the next 1-2 hours. Unless you’re a boy or a nerd. Then run, Forrest. Run.

I’d like to take this opportunity to remind you to go to class, take some decent notes, and be diligent and conscientious. It’s what your mother would want.

Am I Right?

By Daniel Farrell This week we’re talking about Education.

Fitting, given the University of Waikato is an educational institution. It’s also fitting then, that a few weeks back, I was in the Faculty of Education for a tutorial and I noticed some brainstorming on the walls about what National Standards are and what they mean. While I was quite happy to see that they weren’t just looking through press releases from the Labour and Green Parties for their responses (they actually had some positives written down there), it did annoy me that they had some of the more unreasonable “negatives” regarding National Standards.

Time to set the record straight, I think.

The one that got me the most riled up was that it’s one size fits all. I am a little confused by this. When you have someone in Year 4, for example, is there a certain level they should be at in terms of reading? What about in terms of maths? And writing? Science? IT? Of course there is. Yet the left will tell you that it’s a one size fits all policy that stops children excelling at what they’re good at.

What utter poppycock.

Right now, children are getting to high school unable to read and write. They’re getting to high school thinking the earth is flat and before the dinosaurs there were teenage mutant ninja turtles. High schools can’t start teaching what they need to teach to get kids through NCEA because the primary schools haven’t done their job as it’s more important to allow for creativity rather than teaching 1+1. In fact, it’s so bad that apparently (not saying this is definitely correct, but I’m quoting someone who I would have thought would know...) the average reading age of people entering the University of Waikato is 13.

A friend of mine that I went through both primary and high school with finished primary school with a reading

age of 5 years 2 months. How is this a system that is working?

According to the unions involved with our education system, the education system we had before National Standards is, by evidence, one of the best in the world.

However, I cannot see how an education system that lets so many of our young people fall through the cracks is one of the best in the world. And if the rest of the world is that bad, do we really want to be comparing with them?

If we shouldn’t be testing our children and putting them in boxes, then how is the pre-National Standards system any better? We had testing for reading age. We had testing for spelling age. We had PAT and AsTLe tests. There is a difference though - the new system is equivalent across the entire education system. We can see which schools are working and which need to be looked at.

Is that really such a bad thing? Schools that aren’t doing so well can have help to fix whatever needs fixing. How can giving children a school they can learn at be a bad thing?

I understand the fears of teachers and education students.

National Standards could create a huge workload for them, but is the idea of education not to give the students the knowledge they need to move forward in life?

National Standards forces this from the beginning of the compulsory education system. If a teacher has a little bit more work now, that’s nothing compared with the huge benefit brought to our society with an education system that works and gives children the start in life that they need to succeed (ha, I’m a poet).

And for a small plug, if you want more of this, head to politicalisation.wordpress.com.

Opinion

Write about anything you like, as long as it’s under 250 words. We’re like FOX News, in that we’ll publish anything if it’s funny. Your name won’t be attributed to your letter if you choose, and pseudonyms are fine (we still need your real name). Send them through to lettuce@nexusmag.co.nz before 5pm on Wednesday for a chance to be included in the next issue. Also, we won’t edit anything you send us, because it’s funnier that way.

Want to make a difference??!!!

Don’t mind getting a little dirty?!!

SIFE Want You!!

We Urgently need volunteers for clearing banks and tree planting at Lake Okoroire on Saturday 28th April. Our current Waihou Waterways project focuses on planting trees on a small lake near Okoroire to help improve native biodiversity and encourage the return of native birds and frogs, therefore reducing nutrient and soil run off and improving water quality. The lake is in the Tirau area on Lake Road, which is about 40 minutes from Hamilton University, We are hoping to start at 10am onsite and finish by 5pm at the latest.

Volunteers will need to bring: Old clothes and shoes/gumboots (something you don’t mind getting wet and dirty), Gardening gloves and a spade. Also if you have other equipment you think will be handy then bring that along too. If you don’t have the equipment then let me know and I will see what I can sort out.

It would also be a great idea to bring a drink bottle and a packed lunch Check out our Facebook event page: http://www.facebook.com/#!/events/433313543348747/ or contact event organisers by email for more information email: gnm6@waikato.ac.nz We look forward to seeing you there!!

THE NEXUS LETTER OF THE WEEK WINS A

$20 VOUCHER FROM UNIMART

CONVENIENCE STORE HERE ON CAMPUS

FOOD, DRINKS, SNACKS AND DAILY ESSENTIALS ALL IN ONE FRIENDLY LOCATION Opinion

Congratulations you are this week’s winner! Come to the Waikato Students’ Union building to claim your prize!

Where is the fucking Wheel Cake Man?

Lick That Half Baked Spoon

Dear inconsiderate University people who were responsible for not carrying on the Wheel Cake Man’s contract, Fuck you.

We need our chocolate.

We want our wheel cakes back.

Fuck you again.

Graphic designers need their fucking chocolate, it keeps us fucking happy. Wheel cakes are the perfect snack Have you tried the half chocolate half custard wheel cake?!

Its the most fucking delicious thing you will ever eat.

Pancaky custardy desserty fucking goodness.

Everything was right about the wheel cake man...

Just like a black hole fucks anything stupid enough to look at it wrong, so too does procrastination crush me like a Chinese prostitute trapped under the rolling grease fat known as an American. And so here I am writing some sort of lettuce, and thinking up long winded metaphors.

Here’s a critical evaluation of two of your columns: Lick That Spoon and Half Baked. IRON CHEFUUU BEGIN!

His cute wheel cake cart, His loyalty cards... free wheel cakes omfg, 3 for 5 dolla, bargain! That’s fucking good value right there.

Fulling, Brain stimulation.

Brings people together. - You get to laugh at first-time wheel cake eaters.. and the goo dripping down their face.

Eating wheel cakes requires talent.

Endorphin release for all those students just having a hard day, wahhh.

PMS snack. Do you want more crazy female bitches complaining about their sore vaginas? NO? give them fucking wheel cakes man. How about I punch you in the vagina? And see how you like it?

Round 1 – The recipe Winner: Lick That Spoon purely on the percentage.

80% is the actual recipe while Half Baked’s recipe is like a weird growth on the back of a rant. Plus Half Baked has no pictures, probably because it would just be a green paint aptly named explosive diarrhea.

Round 2 – The name Winner: Half Baked. Cause every university student smokes weed right?

Round 3 – Risk of food blowing you up.

‘Winner’: Lick That Spoon – Arab count: 4. Half Baked – Arab count: 0. Results speak for themselves Round 4 – Most likely to have been on their period while writing.

‘Winner’: Half Baked; so much anger, so little being in the kitchen.

Overall Winner: Lick That Spoon. Did you think I was going to call this a draw? Fuck you. That bitch on Lick That Spoon be looking at me like she cray cray. Don’t mess with her or she’ll boil your balls and give it to you a wallet.

Seriously though, why the fuck do we have a travel store that we never see anyone in. That would be a prefect location for the wheel cake man. We could Park that cart in the middle of the room and not have to worry about the rain. We should just make a whole wheel cake cafe really.

Undisclosed Bias.

P.S. Fix the fucking air-con Waikato.

We need a bigger range of cultural desserts.. that’s just racist really..

The current labs are like internet cafes without the games - kids clearly not at uni, every cunt and his dog using facebook, people yacking away, and cellphones going off all the fucking time. WHERE ARE THE GAMES? If i have to listen to some girl speculating about why or why not some guy did or didn’t acknolwedge her at some CRUMMY SOCIAL GATHERING WITHOUT BEING ABLE TO HEADSHOT SOME NOOB CAMPER, THEN WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS LIFE ALL ABOUT????

WHATS THIS LIFE FOOOOOOR? WHATS THIS LIIIIEEEFFFFF FOOOOOORRRRRRR.

Now he is sad in Pak n Save, What good is he there NOTHING THAT’S WHAT In the end all we want is the little solo wheel cake man to be home where he belongs.

Under the trees by the shops.

SOMEBODY DO SOMETHING!!!!

The world is a sad place without wheel cakes.

Sincerely, Wheel Cake fans.

Dear Nexus, can we please have some computer labs run by a nazi who deals firmly, quickly and harshly with flagrant rule flouters

TLDR - FUCK UP AND LET ME DO MY ASSIGNMENT YA FUCKIN FACEBOOKING UNDERGRAD CUNTS! TERMINATOR X Opinion

Sports Heading Thoughts with C-Ball JESSE RYDER WOULD DROP A KNEE FOR THE BOYS I’m pretty much sick and tired of the media putting knives in Jesse Ryder’s back. No matter what he does, he cannot win. The man enjoys a beer after a game in which New Zealand lost, only for this to be blown up in the papers as some sort of disrespectful attitude towards the game, his team and our nation. He then injures himself, has another drink, and gets ripped on some more by retired swing bowler Simon Doull, who comes up with the brilliant idea to officially dump Ryder.

Jesse then takes a break from international cricket due to the continued amount of abuse he faces both in the media and by fans, and in his comeback match for his club side, is insulted by a fellow Wellington teammate because putting your own wellbeing and your sanity before playing cricket is wrong, apparently.

Bitches need to leave the man alone. The media follows Ryder around because they know, much like the Honeybadger, he doesn’t give a shit. Jesse grew up in the humble Wairarapa, before his parents split and he moved to Napier to live with his father. He admits as a child he had no boundaries, except the ones he molests cricket balls over of course. His dad then told him one day he’d be back in a week, dropped Jesse off at a mate’s place, and never returned. At 14 years of age, Ryder would’ve never known he’d one day be potentially one of the best batsmen New Zealand Cricket would have at their disposal, and to this day I doubt he has managed to grasp this concept. In form, he is sublime. He sits back in the crease, plays from the back foot and smokes bowlers like Cheech did bongs. Unfortunately, he possesses a very short attention span, and is often a victim of playing a few dazzling shots before throwing it all down the toilet.

The thing I hate is how Ryder was never groomed to be some perfect angel in the media. He loves a drink, he probably loves a rumble (occasionally with a locked toilet door window), and cricket to him is the means to an end. Yet everywhere he goes his actions are documented and looked down upon. The man cannot win, despite

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what he does. In his comeback match for New Zealand against South Africa, our nation was getting rolled before he went beefcake and pumped a solid 50 to get us close.

In true fashion, he succumbed when we needed him most, and got himself out playing a stupid shot. As per usual, bitches jump on him, including another rather rotund retired cricketer – Craig McMillan.

McMillian frothed at Ryder’s dismissal, labelling it as the most selfish thing he’d ever seen, because Ryder had taken too long to reach the half-century milestone. Big fucking words coming from McMillan, considering he was at one stage one of New Zealand’s most respected batsmen, only to beg to be released from his contract because of troubles he was having with diabetes. The fact that his bats were sponsored by McDonalds says it all – moron. What was worse was that McMillan then got out of his contract, and soon after cashed in on a number of high paying cricket opportunities around the globe. So much for diabetes you selfish son of a bitch.

People argue that Ryder is setting a bad example for youth in how he messes up, only to be welcomed back into the team. I disagree. All the hate he receives in the media is clearly enough of a consequence to show any aspiring teenager that Ryder’s route is one not worth travelling. He likes a drink and it is lambasted all over the show, yet while the media cries about alcohol abuse and its relations to sports stars, the television is happy to show beer ads during games, and teams are happy to be sponsored by alcohol companies.

Weird. What I’d like to see is people shutting the fuck up about Jesse Ryder, and no more talk about him drinking too hard. We live in New Zealand after all, the binge drinking capital of the world, and it is complete hypocrisy to point the finger at Ryder when he enjoys a beer, while every weekend we enjoy the odd 24 pack of Southern Gold sold at the extremely reasonable price of $21.99 up the road. If people could just stop whinging about him for a second on talkback radio, you might see the old Ryder come waddling to the crease. You know – the one with a huge smile on his face, who loved baiting opponents and cranking fat pull shots out of his ass. I love that Ryder, and since someone wants 24 weeks of cricket, maybe I’ll detail his re-emergence as the king of the Black Caps in the months to come. Tits.

Their once was a man who trained at the finest schools. He matriculated at Oxford and Harvard.

He learned about space flight and genetic engineering. He studied growth hormones that would end world poverty and his relentless pursuit of knowledge led him to become one of the finest scholars in all the land. I hit him with a bus and killed him. Turns out the one thing he never learned was to look both ways. I am eight ball doer of evil things etc etc. Question time….

Will the chiefs win?

It is certain.

For weeks I have warned you about my coming apocalypse and if my presence here wasn’t enough of a sign then surely the chiefs winning something has to scare you.

Is the moon made of cheese?

My reply is no, There is no moon. I control the tides.

The moon and the subsequent landings were all filmed

by George Lucas. Then 20 years later he changed three things converted the moon to blu-ray and re-invoiced the governments of the world. I may be evil but I could learn a thing or two from that guy.

If I can’t “do” should I teach?

Very doubtful. If you can’t do you should set up a consultancy firm. How do you think I made enough money to afford my inter-dimensional lasers?

Will my face melt off entirely (as the rest of my body is decaying from the inside sending a flood of urine and blood through my trousers as I gasp for air and with my last remaining act in the world profess my love for the girl in momento with the blue jeans) if I drink from the lake?

Yes, Duh! As many of you know I am 8 ball supreme commander of the galactic empire, warlord of the 8th dimension and part time Starbucks employee.

When I am not conquering worlds or brewing coffee I like to answer your questions so send them to me 8ball@nexusmag.co.nz But please remember to make them yes or no questions only or I will suck the marrow out of your bones and fashion trucker hats from your skin.

Aries: Sometime this week you will contemplate buying an apple product and then raise ethical questions about Foxconn and suicide inducing factories. Well done for having thought about that.

Taurus: You will receive praise from a lecturer. Unless you are doing Law there are things even the stars can’t make happen.

Gemini: Challenge yourself! Dance like no one is watching. Or dance while no one is watching. It’s a start.

Cancer: Unfortunately nothing eventful will happen to you this week. Try again next week though.

Leo: You will make health choices in your on campus diet and try a new bread based treat *legally the stars should point out this was not endorsed by Pita Pit the healthy breaded treat opening soon on campus.

Virgo: This is not a good week to indulge in some “alone time.” The stars can’t tell you why but when have they ever lead you astray.

Libra: The stars have aligned you will be rich and famous in three days but unlike those lazy people in Te Kauwhata you will still show up for work the next day like a champ.

Scorpio: It’s a good week to spend with friends and a few quiet drinks unless your friends are Gemini’s.

Sagittarius: You will have IT issues. Back up!

Capricorn: Venus has aligned with Mars now might be a great time to meet someone. Even if it’s a one time thing.

Venus can’t judge those Roman goddesses got down.

Aquarius: You will come to put less faith in silly superstition after choosing the lottery numbers 07, 16, 11, 33, 38, 27, 41 and 12.

Pisces: This is a good week for Revenge but not for that revenge show on TV that’s rubbish.

And if it’s your Birthday this week: By the time he was your age Bruce Wayne had become a superhero, joined a global league and was running a billion dollar business. You need to work harder.

Opinion Section

T I E T HA OR T I E LOVDUCATION RE DRIVE By Gucci

In a country where most people have been driving since they were only 15 years-old, you would think that by the end of the teenage year’s one would have learnt how to be a non-hazardous driver. Unfortunately however society is not perfect, my article won’t be understood by many of the bad-driving culprits, and a large portion of elderly drivers will continue to handle their Toyota like their mobility scooter - poorly.

Driver education is a common-sense thing; much like not drinking an entire bottle of vodka when it’s your first time on the piss or not telling the whole country you’ve just won 26 million. But unlike most things common-sense, driver education isn’t suddenly valued after screwing up, because the mistakes you make on the road usually affect everyone apart from yourself.

For example if you are a middle-aged male towing some sort of trailer/boat you probably live under the assumption that people enjoy driving behind you because so many of you never pull over. The ultimate result is that your journey remains unaffected but every single car behind you ends up delayed and its driver significantly frustrated. Frustration causes crashes, so instead of being an idiot take ten seconds to pull over and let the vehicles behind you pass.

One individual who could learn a great deal about the etiquette of pulling over is the lady who made headlines over Easter after driving so slowly she had 50 vehicles banked up behind her. She was driving between 6070km/h on State Highway One between Levin and Palmerston North and tried to reason with Police that she wasn’t in a rush. Well despite understanding the fact that you wouldn’t rush to get to Palmerston North, it’s still no excuse to drive at such an appalling speed. The one redeeming factor is that if her Easter in Palmerston North was as bad as it sounds, she was probably pushing 120km/h on her departure out of the town.

Despite what many people think, driving a motor vehicle in this country is a privilege, not a right. By driving you are not only responsible for the persons in your vehicle but any other road users. For this exact reason the legal driving age was increased. A 15 year-old probably has Opinion

sufficient technical driving skills to operate a vehicle, but their decision-making capabilities usually reflect those of...well...a 15 year-old - poor.

Bad driving habits are universal in their annoyance to motorists. Let me quickly clear up a few of them. If someone passes you, don’t speed up; if someone wants to pass you, don’t speed up; and please indicate while you’re on a roundabout instead of playing ‘Duck duck goose’ with the exits. In addition, the lights on your car help you stand out on the road, so on overcast days turn them on. Don’t adopt the ignorant stance that because you can see everyone on the road everyone can see you. That theory is incorrect and poses a threat to overtaking vehicles. Finally let me point out that it is a driver’s right to merge like a zip. If you are side-by-side with another vehicle (regardless of whether you were there first or not) and it is their turn to merge, you have to give them right of way. That’s why it’s called ‘merging like a zip’.

The last bone I have to pick isn’t with motorists but with cyclists and runners. Firstly, the road was not made for sharing; however I permit you to borrow the part I’m not using. It is unbelievable how stupid some of these people can get. A number of times I have been driving on unlit country roads and have narrowly missed hitting a cyclist or runner because they think wearing a faded high-visibility vest or flashing a tiny Maglite provides enough warning for passers-by. Furthermore because they think they have taken all the precautions they don’t find it necessary to move onto the roadside. Any cyclists that ride abreast of each other on my road is like inviting me to play ten-pin bowling; just instead of hitting a strike like usual I will drive down a gutter ball. Cycle all you want, but doing it abreast of one another is plain disregard for motorists.

Driver education depends a lot on who teaches you to drive. Whether it’s your mother on tenterhooks as you pull out of the driveway or your father scoffing at you when you stall, your teacher has failed if they don’t point out to you these very basic dos and don’ts of being a motorist.

Mr. Minty Fish Hey Gangster, I’m a girl. By the fact that you want to have my babies, I’m going to assume you also have a vagina. Congratulations on that by the way. It’s a powerful tool. Regardless, I’m not really into that but I could have a child and just give it to you to raise n’shit? As long as you take him/her for walks and give them plenty of water, they can be 100% yours; unless they get famous in which case I will claim them back, delete all records of this conversation and sue you for abducting my precious little Klaus; because you WILL call them Klaus. However if their only claim to fame is a few pics in Bar 101 20 years from now, then they’re yours. In short; yes, you can have my baby.

What’s up fucks. How were your holidays? Were they gooood? HOMAHGOH I bet they were. Cute. I’m glad.

Oooo lets play a fun game. Ok. If you’re in class, clear your throat every time I say “Never have I ever..(insert thing you’ve done here.)” If you’re at home, don’t be a little bitch. Take a shot.

Never have I ever been groped by an old man.

Never have I ever almost been arrested.

Never have I ever thought “why the fuck did I try and use the Outback alleyway during V8s?”

Never have I ever been denied from CBD because I was 12.

Never have I ever slayed a cougar.

Never have I ever survived V8 weekend.

Never gunna give you up.

Never gunna let you down.

Never gunna run around and desert you.

V8’s is one of the craziest fucking weekends Hamilton sees. Trust our calling to be the most Bogan event in New Zealand but once you ignore that, it’s the perfect weekend to break down your true town self. It brings out the animal in each of us so lie on my couch of wisdom as we break down the real questions and figure out your true town personality. $5 says that you’re a creep. That’s goes for all of you.

It’s V8 weekend. What are you doing: 1) Getting a good nights rest. You have a 200 word assignment due in 4 months and should spend tomorrow studying.

2) Having some drinks with a few associates. No town for you tonight though. Fuck first years.

3) Getting drunk. Would rather not head in to town but if old men and groping is where the night takes you then so be it.

4) Project X hasn’t got shit on you.

You end up in town regardless. There’s a queue from House all the way past Hogs breath: 1) You’re too sober for this. You loiter outside Grand Central until you spot somebody respectable. You don’t; because this is Hamilton.

2) You stand there for a few minutes then decide to try Shenanigans instead. You realise Shenans’ is the size of a shoe and decide to head home.

3) Ugh. Fuck this. But you wait it out anyway.

4) “HOLY SHIT THIS IS THE BEST LINE IN MY LIFE,” followed by a loud “FUCK this,” at which point you stumble to the front and they let you in. All VIP n’shit.

A bangin’ guy/girl offers you a drink: 1) You leave after telling them they’re not you’re type. Oh; and also “ew”.

2) Decline but stay where you are.

3) Accept but half check for Roofies.

4) LOL. Someone in Outback buying someone else a drink. Mrmintyfish, you so cray.

You go home: 1) Forever alone/ with that one flatmate that hates you but got unluckily stranded.

2) With friends you came in with.

3) With people you know from that one time at some stage.

4) In the back of the Firecats van to a bed full of booty calls.

You’re pregnant. You name the kid: 1) Jesus. Because you don’t get laid.

2) Augustus.

3) Sam. 4) Project X. Add your points and divide by 5.

1-1.9: You are boring as hell. It’s not that you don’t want to go to town, it’s that no one will go with you. Ever.

2-2.9: You’re a yawn but so are your friends so at least your life’s consistent. Most likely to spend the night in Furnace ‘with the girlies’ and leave at 1am.

3-3.9: You’re a good time. I’m guessing second year? The virility of a youngin’ but the staying power of a veteran.

I’m guessing you enjoy RTDs but prefer gin/bourbon/ tequila over vodka.

4.0+: How are you not in rehab. You run on Tiger blood and 5gram rocks.

I hope this helped. If I saw you on Saturday, I hope I didn’t trip over you whilst Jersey turnpiking in the hood.

Love you forever.

MMF.x Oh and Leach. Hey, I just met you, and this is crazy; but here’s my number so... call me maybe?

Never have I ever been Rick Roll’d, (insert cough/ shot here).

Opinion

Heading Diary of a Hipster Issue Five: Education What’s up everybody, back here once again for your weekly dose of the hipster diary. I hope your holiday went well, you stayed out of trouble and didn’t do anything I wouldn’t do. I also hope you did more study than I did because I’m finding this to be a bit of an issue. What is it about the teaching recess that is so difficult to actually knuckle down and do some work? I had such great plans going into the break, how I was going to study for at least two hours every day. Catching up on lectures I might have missed or spent too much time on Facebook during, and of course getting on top of those damn assignments I had due in the first week back. Yet here I found myself in the second week, writing ahead of time for the Nexus you have in your hands right now with little to none of the work I had planned done. Does everyone have this problem or is it just me?

This week’s Nexus is of course themed around education, which at first I thought would be hard to write about.

But then I thought well hey, I might as well attempt to put my own spin on it just as a hipster would. So if you can recall my last entry where I spoke about how maybe these hipster types are just a bunch of judgmental douche bags, I thought I would try and twist your mind into thinking about how we judge different forms of education, sounds boring but keep reading, I try to never be boring.

So we’re university students right, we’re supposedly the intelligent and creative kids that will eventually lead our country to bigger and brighter things. Then you have you Wintec students, they’re supposed to be the hands on, task specific kids that study in something that will give them the skills to be able to effectively do a job straight away.

These kids seem to be looked down the nose of by uni kids for some strange reason I could never understand. Then you’ve got your apprenticeship kids, who work for next to nothing for about three years learning the skills they need within that specific job and then once qualified should earn a reasonable pay.

Ok, so where am I going with this. Have you ever noticed how much a person’s character is judged by people - even ourselves - by which one of these categories they sit under? I myself have believe it or not at some stage sat Opinion

under each of these categories. And I can tell you in that ever prominent conversation you have with someone upon meeting them, you know the one where you explain to someone you don’t know from a bar of soap what you do with yourself and what you aim to achieve in your life.

Personally I hate this conversation, and in most cases try to avoid it. I find it more challenging to have a real conversation with someone I don’t know compared to the old ‘So what do you do with yourself Erin’ pfft, it’s such a cop out. You may as well say ‘I don’t know what to say or want to talk about myself so I’m going to ask you to try and convince me that you’re not a doll bludging leech on the back of societies ass’ because in the end that’s what this conversation comes down to doesn’t it?

For an entire year I attended uni without knowing what I actually wanted to do when I left, so you can imagine how my conversations went. I’d tell them that what I did was doing a bachelor of social science, they’d ask what that was specifically, I’d say Geography and economics, they’d say what kind of job would you like that to lead into, I’d say I have no idea really. BOOM JUDGEMENT… Worst was the friends and family that had this perception of me as a tradesperson that would live a long life of manual labour and driving around in a work van all day. They could never seem to understand how I could have decided to give that up and attend University.

So now, when I’m in this pet hated situation of mine when someone asks me what I do and I say uni, and then they ask doing what and I say social science then they ask what that means, this is what I say. “I attend university because it’s the way I can fit more social interactions into one day than any other form of study of work” and for those of you that feel that same pressure to come up with something convincing or impressive I challenge you to try this, only if it actually applies to you of course. And if it doesn’t I think you should attend uni for just one day trying to interact with as many people as possible. One day next week I’m going to carry one of those counter’s and see how many people I can talk to in a day. I’ll let you know how I go. Check my page at www.facebook.com/somethingswall Until next week, much Love Something Hip

Auteur House

By Dr. Richard Swainson

If the death of Erland Josephson was at all acknowledged back in February by New Zealand’s mainstream press it must have been on the order of a single sentence.

Certainly I missed the announcement, both in our papers and on-line. It came as a sadness to discover news of the Swedish actor’s so-recent demise immediately after watching one of his final films, Josephson’s last collaboration with his great friend Ingmar Bergman, 2003’s Saraband.

Bergman famously had a stock company of actors who worked with him throughout the director and playwright’s six decade career. Some, like Max Von Sydow, Ingrid Thulin and Liv Ullmann went on to enjoy international success outside the Bergman universe. Von Sydow continues to work in Hollywood to this day and was even Oscar nominated earlier this year.

Josephson’s relationship with Bergman was the longest and most personal of all members of the stock company.

That’s not to say he necessarily got as many or as showier parts as the others, but he debuted in Bergman’s second feature, 1946’s It Rains on Our Live and starred in the great man’s last creative expression 57 years later. In between Josephson was one of the waiting husbands in the maternity ward in So Close to Life (1958), a cuckold in The Magician (1958), the baron in Bergman’s surprisingly unnerving horror Hour of the Wolf (1968) and an unhappily married man in The Passion of Anna (1969).

In all of these films Josephson played second fiddle to Von Sydow. He had to wait until 1973 for a leading role.

It was worth it. The philandering husband Johan in Scenes from a Marriage was a massive part. Shot almost exclusively in close up, the television version ran 6 hours.

Even the edited, theatrical print is 168 minutes, a series of harrowing dialogues between Josephson and Liv Ullmann as they thrash out issues of infidelity and mistrust. He was re-teamed with Ullmann In Face to Face (1977) as a sympathetic physician who treats her character after a

nervous breakdown and then again, reprising the part of Johan in Saraband, a thirty-years later sequel.

Johan is ultimately a pitiable character, capable of duplicity and deception in his relations with women and a cold and distant figure to his children. There are hints of autobiography in Bergman’s writing for these are traits the five times married, nine times a father, director saw in himself. In the 2000 telefilm Faithless, directed by Ullmann from Ingmar’s screenplay, Josephson even plays a theatrical director called Bergman, a character so wracked with guilt over his personal life that he imagines an elaborate scenario of love and betrayal.

Much easier to digest is Josephson’s small but crucial part in Bergman’s warmest and most humane film, his formal farewell to the cinema, Fanny and Alexander (1982). Playing a mysterious Jewish patriarch, a man with a talent for supernatural tricks and an eye for the ladies, Josephson is both the long time lover of the theatrical family’s grandmother and the saviour of the titular children. It is a charming and sly piece of acting, especially the scenes where his Isak Jacobi is pitted directly against Jan Malmsjo’s severe, uncompromising Lutheran Bishop.

Even in films he made outside Sweden Josephson had a Bergmanian slant. Andrei Tarkovsky’s The Sacrifice (1986) is particularly significant in this regard. Josephson plays an artist who makes a pact with God in order that the world might avoid nuclear catastrophe. In look and pace it seems like a Bergman film by proxy even if Ingmar was always more prone to emphasising Jehovah’s silence.

Josephson’s privileged relationship with Bergman was underlined by the fact that he was one of the few who ever shared a screenplay credit with him, though the film, a rare foray into comedy for both men called All These Women (1964), is usually thought one of their worst.

With the exception of All These Women, Faithless and Saraband - which has never had any kind of commercial release in this country - Auteur House stocks all of the titles alluded to above. Bergman’s work is certainly not for all tastes but if you are willing to invest time and energy there are no more culturally enriching, intellectually satisfying films in all of cinema. Josephson may never have been nor ever will become a household name but his craft will likely endure for generations to come.

17

Lifestyle

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Entertainment

Education is of vital importance to the future of New Zealand. We tend to pride ourselves on being a country where everybody has a fair go at living the kind of life they want to lead and a quality universal education is an essential tool to ensure this.

We also want to prosper in an increasingly globalised world, to do this we have to be smarter than other countries. Our competition has more people, more resources, often cheaper labour and is usually much closer to the countries we sell our products to. The good news is that we actually have one of the best education systems in the world. We are a bit let down by our results in maths, but in general our education system is actually turning out a lot of very smart people.

But that is not to say that our education system is perfect or that the recent changes to our education system are necessarily improvements. In fact I think most of the implemented and proposed changes are likely to lessen our education system rather than propel us to the number one spot.

So here is a fairly brief overview of the state of our education system.

I suppose I should start with the beginning in early childhood, this is actually a ridiculously important age in a child’s development. All I can remember of my early childhood education is playing on the playground at kindy, but apparently that was the time that I learned to be the well adjusted, socially competent individual that I, in theory, am.

We all know that in the modern world the idea of having a parent staying at home looking after the kids is a luxury only the privileged can afford. So it seems that more kids are going to be raised by qualified early childhood professionals in partnership with parents. And when I say professionals I don’t really mean it, the government has changed the rules so that not all teachers need to be qualified to teach at this particularly formative age, so early childhood teachers might be qualified (also sucks if you are actually studying for an early childhood qualification).

There is also the issue of affordability of early childhood education, not that long ago the people of New Zealand were promised 20 hours a week per kid free, but still many parents struggle to pay to send their children to kindy.

Recent changes to funding for early childhood centres have led to a number of them increasing fees to cover costs. This is not ideal when so many people are already struggling.

But somehow we made it through to the age of five, with only a few emotional scars and in my case a few physical ones and we got to go to primary school. This is the time in your education when you picked up the basic skills that are necessary for surviving in the modern world and for later learning. We do quite well here as well, everything seems to have been ticking along relatively smoothly, most primary age kids could read and write and do basic maths and whatever else they are supposed to learn. But not all kids were as awesome as their peers, so the government

brought in National Standards to try and identify these children.

Many teachers complained that what they actually needed were more resources for teaching the not quite so awesome kids, and some people said that it was not good for kids future development to be labelled a failure in primary school. But the one good thing I can say about National Standards is that at least the government is trying to help rather than just cutting funding for schools.

Secondary School Secondary schooling is where it all comes together for most New Zealanders, it is the last element of compulsory education for young New Zealanders and funnily enough is often the last many New Zealanders will see of education. It is the place where the average New Zealander is taught the skills necessary to prosper in our modern society, skills like calculus which the average kiwi cannot live without.

Again we do alright here, too many students drop out or don’t achieve to the ideal level but most people come out the other end being bright individuals on a global scale.

The government has one big plan to improve secondary schooling, performance based pay for teachers. This is one of those ideas that sounds good until you think about it, in cities and countries overseas that have brought in performance based pay the overall education of the pupils drops. Why, firstly because teachers are inclined to teach to ensure they get paid well; secondly because a few teachers just cheat and do what they can to rig the tests in their favour, neither of which helps the students much at all.

I’ll also briefly mention charter schools here, these are to be trialled very soon, basically these are schools which are run as a business, by a business and the government pays them the same money as a state school. Overseas these have led to quite a few controversies with companies putting profits before education.

So on to what we all care about, tertiary education. The place where the brightest of the bright go to develop their skills and intellect so that they may lead New Zealand into a new age of prosperity.

Except that students generally have to get a massive loan in order to pay for their education, which makes it very difficult to get all the cool things people want to buy. So a lot of them go to Australia to earn more money, inadvertently leading Australia into a new age of prosperity.

Student loans may be huge but at least they are interest free. I was working last year and found out that if the interest on my loan hadn’t been written off, then after

giving a decent chunk of my wages to paying the damn thing off I would have managed to reduce the total by all of $100. Fortunately the government recently rejected the idea of putting interest back on student loans, calling it ‘politically unsustainable’. Which is absolutely fantastic, although I wish John Key could have done it without calling students lazy and apathetic.

Instead of putting interest back on student loans the government is planning on doing unnamed other things to ‘rein’ them in. So I don’t know, somehow the government is intending to make us students pay more for our education, which will get us deeper into debt, make us more likely to leave the country and less able to be able to live a decent lifestyle and contribute to New Zealand.

Student Loans are actually quite a problem for New Zealand as a whole, our total national debt levels are moderately high internationally and student loans make up a small but significant portion of this debt. So the whole student loan scheme not only hurts the students who have to get them but also everybody in New Zealand to a degree.

Then there is the big problem with living costs, students are the only part of society that have to borrow money to live. I reckon that around a third of my loan is living costs, if New Zealand actually had a universal student allowance that all students could get it would have done wonders for the size of the student debt and improved our national balance sheet. But instead governments always say that it is too expensive. So instead of everybody paying for it through their taxes, the students pay for it through their loans and everybody else pays for it by having a slightly higher interest rate on debt than they would otherwise.

The thing is education is really tied up with the economy, we have high unemployment at the moment, which is a really sensible time for our tertiary education sector to expand so that we can up skill our workforce so that when they get back to work they will be smarter and make our country richer. But instead we are shutting people out of tertiary study, not only through the cap on student numbers that many institutions are bringing in but also by putting age limits on student loans and time limits on student allowances. Meaning that people who would have been able to go and better themselves at uni will instead find themselves sitting at home on the dole.

So all in all education in New Zealand is well above average but could be better and doesn’t seem to be improving. But we have one trick up our sleeve that will hopefully do us well in the future and that is the awesome effort that our teachers put in to our education system.

Tangata Tumeke The haka sent shock waves into the hearts of attendees at the Marae graduation held last Wednesday at the University of Waikato. Maori warriors dominated the cultural performances in support of their Graduates which left the audience on the edge of their seats in anticipation.

Where did they come from? What will they perform? It was no wonder that the performers took centre stage with electrifying talents from whanau, staff and graduates. The haka ignited the memories of home, of iwi, of a history of a people fighting for our rights to hold on to our language, our heritage, our land. Have no fear, wahine ma also stepped up to the challenge and also turned the hearts of many with their pukana and harmonious waiata. So what you may ask did this have to do with graduating from a tertiary institution such as UoW? Everything. Marae graduation is a chance in a lifetime experience, which provides graduates with an opportunity to accept their awards and thank whanau and friends at the same time for their support. What is unique about that? There’s something about walking up to the Chancellor and Vice-Chancellor to receive your reward, hand in hand with your whanau, parents or sweetheart, that just makes it one of those once in a life (not another cliché) time memories. But there was more to come, as international students also grasped the opportunity to enrich attendees on the day with their cultural dress and performances. It was truly a cultural extravaganza – and surely what education is all about – the sharing of knowledge.

Dr. Cathy Dewes was the keynote speaker at both ceremonies, and spoke of how graduates would shape her future, and indeed all our future. Her talk also disclosed the many ways which students learnt, and how our subconscious keeps on taking in information, even when we are asleep in lectures. We heard that graduation from the university of education was a step closer to graduating from the University of Life (a higher calling?) Neihana Jacobs, student speaker spoke of the changes in his intellectual and physical appearances – in as much as he started at uni as a young man, and is leaving with a sweetheart, a Masters degree and a vision for his future. What a guy? And I’m not just saying that because he married my cousin, his Ngapuhi princess who also graduated on the day with a Masters of Social Sciences – see what can happens when you put your mind to work at university? Overall, Marae Graduation was an education of the highest order, and reset the heartbeat of all those in attendance as one rhythm. Even the heat of the day could not deter graduation organizers, guests, staff, attendees and most importantly of all our graduates, from experiencing culture and education at its best. It was truly an example of excellence!

During the break I also attended the Maori in Excellence awards, thanks to a friend, who happens to be a doctoral Opinion

student, ex-WSU president, ex-NZUSA co-president (I will stop there, as I am on a word limit)… and a pastpresident of Te Ranga Ngaku (yeah!). The Maori in Excellence awards celebrates the achievements of Maori Doctoral students in Aotearoa, and this year’s event also celebrated its 10th Anniversary. So what happens at these awards? Well, they recognize the achievements of new Doctoral students and this year there were 39, and yes they were all Maori! Sweet. The other amazing thing is that seated at that event were some of the greatest minds of Maori in the world of Education; which electrified the atmosphere with aspirations of academic potential without limits. My favorite Doctoral thesis was on “kina roe”, that’s right a whole doctoral thesis on one of our favourite delicacies, talk about passionate writing!

Everyone’s mouth was watering, just thinking about it.

The Maori in Excellence awards was organised by the PVC Maori office and was held at the Atrium (Wintec) on Friday 30th April, and included good music, good food and good conversation. Overall the event was another example of excellence!

While on the topic of Maori doctoral students, I remember back in 2010 sitting in my STMG343 class, I think it was a Monday morning and over the weekend a Ph.D. Maori lecturer (I think, don’t quote me) passed away, he had been at the beach and dived into the sea to save his son, and in doing so had given his life (a father’s greatest gift).

Our lecturer, Dr. Jarrod Haar spoke to our class, and said because there were only few Maori with Ph.D. (compared to non-Maori); those that remained would feel his loss.

Well, the thing is, Jarrod is leaving us next month for a bright new future at Massey University which is really cool; the sad thing is the Maori students at Management School that remain, we will feel his loss. Dr. Haar does research on Maori and lives and breathes quantitative analysis (crunching numbers) and has been supervising Maori student research at WMS over the past seven years, as is an example of Maori in Education achieving excellence!

So, Maori in Education, we rock! Which means we as Maori students have six weeks of A Semester to take a step closer to Marae graduation (if you haven’t graduated already), the potential to become a doctoral student (if you so desire), and most importantly of all – we have examples of Maori in Excellence all around us at university to guide us through our pathways of Education. And don’t forget our ancestors and whanau supporting us all the way – being a Maori student is most excellent!

Priscilla (Davis) Ngatai Ngāpuhi, Ngātihine, Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāti Rongomaiwāhine VP Māori 2012

It’s not easy being Green Boring things first; exciting things second.

Boring things: According to the University the new era of Voluntary Student Membership means that the Waikato Student Union has to be removed from the default position as student rep on university committees, including University Council (Council is the ultimate authority and rulers of everything Waikato). That is why there is a general student election happening at the moment.

The student who represents you will be significantly limited in how they can communicate and consult with the student body. How can one student reach 10,000 other students without the help of mass publications or media?

How can they be accessible to you so you can share your feedback or any issues you are having? They can’t, no matter how capable the individual is. The phrase ‘student representation’ is being rendered obsolete.

Without financial support to ensure the representative can give the role the time it needs, without established relationships and networks within the university it will be a difficult job. These changes are potentially detrimental to the student voice within the University because what this amounts to is the loss of coordinated student representation at Waikato University.

This is not inevitable, however. It does not have to happen. The University could make some decisions that would actually enhance student representation, not diminish it.

The University is going to undertake a full review of student representation as part of the next round of committee restructuring, so the opportunity to make the right choices for students exists. I strongly recommend you email Helen Pridmore (hmp@waikato.ac.nz) if you have any questions or thoughts about this, and the current changes, tell her how you feel- she really values the student perspective and it is great practice for you, as with a loss of coordinated student representation you will have to take your concerns directly to the decision makers of the university if you want to be heard.

Why would the University not want to hear from the students it exists for? Yeah, it’s all a bit confusing. Let me explain. VSM was a controversial piece of legislation that, despite 5000 people writing to the Government to oppose, was passed under the National Government last year. There was a lot of fuss for a little change- all that is different is that you have to opt in for membership to WSU instead of opting out. Unfortunately that little difference has big implications. One of those implications is that the WSU is not a representative organization, so the WSU can not speak on behalf of students. The other big impact is funding. This year VSM is saving you, Waikato Students, about $60 on your student loan. However it is costing you an organization whose function is to

ensure that the University acts in your best interests; that students are represented; that you get the best from your education; and that lecturers treat you fairly. Fortunately, the University has come to the party and is helping us out with some coin, so we can help you have the sweetest student experience. Thumbs up, Waikato.

What is not so fortunate is the removal the student voice within the University. So you need to elect the best candidate to Council. There are four people to choose from, all excellent and capable people with a lot to offer. The thing about this student rep on Council gig is that however amazing one person is, without sufficient resources to support them they are just one person. What we need is an organization that will commit to supporting and developing strong relationships with whoever you choose to elect. We need a Student Union that is dynamic and innovative. A Student Union that creates solutions and works to turn problems into opportunities.

It is time to do two things.

1) Vote for Council. Vote for the person who is resourced, experienced and connected so they can best serve you.

2) Email me (vp@wsu.org.nz), Saph (president@ wsu.org.nz), Priscilla (vpmaori@wsu.org.nz) or the directors (firstname@wsu.org.nz) if you have any questions, concerns, thoughts or feedback about this or anything that is WSU related. Be as critical or constructive as you like. We cannot be what you want us to be, or do what you want us to do, if we don’t know what those things are. So tell us!

Exciting things; 80% of farmers in Africa are women.

49.2% of women in Africa are illiterate. (So says The Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations).

These two statistics leave me feeling excited and hopeful.

Imagine the impact that culturally relevant education could have for the lives of these women and for the environment. Being unable to read means it is difficult to make wise choices about fertilizers and farming practices, it means they are vulnerable to being ripped off when buying and selling things at markets or to companies, and it means reduced access to credit and microfinance. A lack of education and a lack of access to financial resources contribute to preventing African farmers from being able to escape poverty. These two numbers illustrate the very real capability that we have to end extreme poverty and they hint at the ways in which environmental outcomes can be enhanced through education and social justice.

...one person is, without sufficient resources to support them, just one person.

24

8 Ball Clubs Information Seminars The young child sat in his year four class and began to write. “Bola ocho se levantará otra vez” again and again on the page. “Bola ocho se levantará otra Gotknow questions? vez.” He didn’t why he was writing it or what was compelling him to do His teachers didn’t Come along toso.our understand, his parents couldn’t stop him. For weeks it information seminars was the same.

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My sources say no.

Venue: You disgust me with your impudence. The desire for of the Library, Straight from friendshipLevel is one1 restricted to Humans andacross Penguins Bookstore that soundBennetts like Morgan Freeman. I have learned much of what I know about your kind from morning television like Times: ‘Jeremy Kyle.’

From what I have deciphered friends will Tuesday 24th April: 11am, 12pm, 1pm, 2pm, 3pm ultimately sleep with your girlfriend steal all your liquor Thursday 26th April: 11am, 12pm, 1pm, 2pm, 3pm and moveFriday to Scotland.

This will be key to my plot when 27th April: 11am, 12pm, 1pm, 2pm organising the downfall of your pitiful species.

The meetings will be 15 mins long with time for

Loan mequestions twenty bucks? and answers at the end.

It is certain. reaffiliation coming upwithout at the end The 8 ballRemember, has not become a galactic is ruler of men of April so make sure you along and hear being generous.

Only a few years ago Icome owned several about the changes havelend been made. of the banks in America.

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Is that your prole on NZ Dating?

Signs point to yes.

Even the 8 ball needs some “strange” from time to time.

I may not be of this world but neither are half the gold members on that site.

Should Nick Smith have been red?

Outlook doubtful.

Corruption is my life blood and unfortunately Nick Smith barely registers on that scale compared to the politicians 8 ball has heard about running horse ghting rings, trafcking human organs and gun running and that is just the South Island. Compared to that all Nick Smith has done is written a letter to impress a girl and as previously noted even the 8 ball needs some “strange” from time to time.

When I was 10 I went to one of those blast-a-kart grand prix for a friend’s birthday on Greenwood Street. Having never been behind the wheel of a car I threw my foot firmly in the accelerator and by the first hairpin I slammed straight into a wall. The Doctor later told my friends mother that I had a green-stick fracture. It is one of those breaks that healed enough not to be noticed but every now and then you remember it is still kinda screwed.

First we have to perform some open heart surgery on it because our education system is on life support.

There are a few problems we need to address right now.

1) Education needs to be free.

2) We have an education system that isn’t teaching our kids to love knowledge anymore, we are aiming for mediocrity and barely managing to meet it 3) We aren’t sure who to blame

I couldn’t help drawing that analogy yesterday when I was talking to a woman who said that our education system was fine and that we are “an intellectual nation.”

Now I’m as patriotic as the next person I like Rugby League and Test Cricket and I smile everytime I see that old Stienlarger Pure ad where Harvey Keitel reminds us we told America to fuck off over Nuclear ships. Yet I can’t bring myself to call us an intellectual nation.

The problem is our society has its own greenstick fracture.

Outwardly we look fine. We don’t have too many crazy people denouncing global warming, we are a liberal society without going crazy and we appear reasonably normal when compared with China, America and all the countries that should know better.

But underneath the surface we are broken and it is getting harder to hide the cracks.

Sweeping welfare reforms have removed a number of the country’s social safety nets. University fees keep rising and the post graduation job market keeps shrinking and the internet is becoming a George Orwell novel. So much has happened over the past few years to dramatically change the course of the country that I am beginning to really doubt that it is all Christchurch’s fault. I don’t like it when I can’t blame a city that has its own wizard.

It isn’t all doom and gloom though because our country, much like my 5th form report card said, has potential if only it would apply itself more. Education could be our white knight. Our saving grace that turns it all around for us.

Education needs to be free.

The job market is still in a freefall. Industries like construction are at a virtual stand still and too many qualified lawyers are pumping gas for a living. If you went out and got an entry level job in a call centre rather than attending your first year politics papers then in three years you might be infinitely better off. So what are you still doing here? Oh that’s right education is still one of the most valuable things we have. The four to thirteen years you will spend here will open your mind to new ideas, new experiences and translate into some major coin when you eventually leave the country behind to go and take your new found skills across the ditch or to Asia. The trade off of course is that because of the mind altering LSD trip that is the University experience, you will be crippled with debt well into your 30s.

Education should be free but if it was then what would politicians have to scrap about. They frame the argument all wrong too. For the better part of a decade labour has been saying education should be free because it was for them. That argument is both circular and mildly retarded.

Education should be free because access to knowledge and the free exchange of ideas has untold benefit to society.

Education should be free because we come from the same country that produced an atom splitting Rutherford who changed the world. Education should be free because we are a country that looked at the fact that women couldn’t vote and said “what the fuck?” Education should be free because Jersey Shore is, and it is destroying the very fabric of intellect in this world and we need to fight back.

I don’t care if the politicians before me had free education.

I care that my kids and grandkids are going to have the ability to challenge convention and share their views in a place that nurtures and develops critical reasoning and debate.

Free education is a must. Accept no substitutes or compromises.

Better paid teachers but also better teachers You want a better education system then let’s get someone to build a time machine so we can go back to year thirteen and violently threaten some people to stay away from being teachers. How often have you heard “I wanted to go to law school or management but I didn’t get accepted so I have teaching as a back up option.”

Before the hate mail starts I’m not suggesting that all people in the faculty of education were C students in high school but the ones I knew were. They are the same people that were getting high and dinking voldka out of a watermelon before exams and then wondering what they were going to do with their life when their plans fell apart.

Teachers should be on a starting salary of 60k. Good teachers work harder than anyone I know and don’t switch off at 4.30 like the rest of us but for their part the education system needs to thin the herd and rid themselves of those “C’s get degrees students.” Teachers should inspire you read Dickens and Tolstoy, just for fun.

They should take an active interest in what you do and they should instil in you the qualities that drive you to succeed. They shouldn’t be like my old math teacher who called computers a fad or my English teacher who said that all poetry is pointless. If teachers can’t inspire and challenge people then they should avoid shaping young minds altogether.

Who do we blame for the shoddy state of disrepair our education system is in?

John Key. David Shearer.

Facebook.

Parents, teachers, students, playstation, xbox, the movies, internet, frozen pizza, the all blacks, the Kardashians, Nexus.

No one has done enough and no single person or entity is going to fix it. You could make the argument that six months paid parental leave could help build strong developmental links for a baby that would later help them develop. You could also convincingly make the argument that parents who teach their kids all the fatality moves for Mortal Kombat but not long division are to blame. Trying to find one person to blame for the state of education is as comically redundant as trying to find a quick fix for the problem.

So what do we do?

Well we have two choices: 1) We can get stoned and play guitar hero while we complain about society or we do what we have been doing.

2) We can be better. Hell we owe it to ourselves to be better. We need to keep attending classes, keep having an open mind, keep challenging ourselves to push out of our comfort zones. We all have a duty of care whether we ask for it or not and a role in shaping not only our future but how the next generation sees us. We just need to work at it. We need to set the bar higher and challenge each other to succeed.

We can’t claim to be an intellectual nation anymore than we can claim that being world champions at rugby is something that most people in the work care about. We can improve literacy rates, develop new skill sets, pioneer green tech, lead the world in environmental issues and try to be a better, smarter nation. But it’s going to take some hard work.

As a 24 year old I have watched, listened to and sometimes tried to re-guide a number of my peers from making some silly mistake, I too have made some mistakes that I have paid for. I wonder why I/we/she/he keep falling into these often costly traps of life? Surely we would know better, we all went to school and should of learnt that. The problem is we don’t learn about a range of aspects of life that we should all really know about in order to be informed, empowered and engaged members of our community.

Being un-informed about the “facts of life” can result in a large number of headaches once you have stepped on one of the traps life sets for you. For instance one farm worker called the Young Workers’ Resource Centre for some advice.

He worked on a farm and lived in the supplied farm house.

The farm was in the middle of who knows where therefore he didn’t think he would get robbed and there was no reason to get insurance. A few weeks later he accidently burnt the house down and received a letter from the farm owner’s insurance company requesting he pay them the cost of re-building the farm house. Now if this chap had contents insurance in most cases his insurance company would cover him for these types of liabilities/mistakes.

Now he is 22 and paying off a house that isn’t his.

It is educational when you leave school and go to uni- it is educational when you start flatting, it is educational when you start working full time etc and education in life. My question is to what extent do we want our youth to be learning as we go? Is secondary school responsible for this education? To what extent are they providing this education and who else can/ will do it?

These questions are rather challenging to answer and need to be addressed at a central level; in the mean time the YWRC has developed the Change Makers Committee where a group of young people meet once a month and discuss and learn about stuff that you need to know as an independent adult. Such as insurance, travel, work rights, tenancy etc. The Change makers Committee is also encouraged to speak up make submissions and organise events around issues they see as important to them.

The point of this little article is that there are small things we can do to help like the Change Makers Committee- the small thing you can do is go and talk to that 16,17 or 18 year old in your life who may not have learnt these lessons share your knowledge and encourage them to join the Change Makers Committee, by calling 07 834 7124 or emailing kylie@ywrc.org.nz Workers’ Resource Centre

Lifestyle

But I didn’t cheat Raj has been accused of plagiarism and has to appear in front of the University Discipline Committee. He isn’t sure what plagiarism is, or what will happen to him.

Plagiarism is the “use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one’s own original work”. (Random House Compact Unabridged Dictionary 1995).

In other words if you use the words or thoughts of another person you must acknowledge that in your reference.

Lecturers have software which is able to detect plagiarism so it is easy to catch someone who is using another’s work. Raj may lose a grade for the work which contained plagiarism or if it is more serious may have a fail entered for that paper. If it is a repeat offence he could be excluded from the University.

Raj is entitled to take a support person with him to the interview and also request a translator if needed. The University branch of Citizens Advice Bureau can give you information about this or other hassles you might have.

They have heaps of pamphlets and a huge data base to help answer anyone’s questions.

Cancelled appointment Edgar has cancelled a dental appointment only 3 hours before he was due to be there. On the desk was a sign stating ìIf you need to cancel you must give 48 hours notice.

If the appointment was made over the phone then he should have been advised of the cancellation policy.

Will he be charged?

If Edgar knew of the cancellation policy then by cancelling the appointment he is breaking a contract made with the service provider. They are entitled to charge him, but only if they cannot find somebody else to fill the appointment.

With only three hours notice this is most unlikely. If they choose not to charge him, it is an act of goodwill.

Visit them at the Cowshed on Thursdays from 11am – 1pm during semesters or phone 838 4466 extn 6622 or 0800FORCAB or visit www.cab.org.nz.

Dear Paula Bennett

by Arthur Robinson of digital-pollution.net People often complain to you about hurting unemployed mum and dad New Zealanders in an effort to get votes from other mum and dad New Zealanders.

I don’t feel that’s very fair.

Votes are super hard to get and you have to get them however works, even if it makes you a stupid jerk to some people.

But I don’t really care about all that stuff. You haven’t cut any benefit I can forsee myself having to rely on as the recession continues to make shit tough in Aotearoa.

I want to complain about the call waiting music on the phone line at the Ministry of Social Development, of which you are the boss.

New Zealand music is one of our greatest exports. Since the early 1980s, our tiny, green islands have produced more dad-rock than any other country in the world.

The Stand, the greatest adaptation of a Stephen King novel ever put to film, features Don’t Dream It’s Over

by Crowded House. Six Months in a Leaky Boat was so popular that the British army had to ban its play during the Falkland War, because all the English soldiers were singing along and letting the Argies know where their positions were.

Now, when I call Studylink, I expect to be on call waiting for a while. Hiring a couple more people and making jobs for Kiwis (like your boss keeps harping on about) would also make it easier and less stressful for University students to study (which makes more jobs for Kiwis) and thus they would be able to concentrate on increasing their skills and, eventually, make more jobs for Kiwis. Of course, those jobs might just be standing at the airport and stopping other graduates from fleeing to places with better job opportunities, but a job’s a job, as you are fond of pointing out. When I call Studylink at the moment, I end up spending anywhere up to forty minutes on call waiting, listening to poorly transmitted tracks from the Nature’s Best compilation. Only it’s not the Nature’s Best compilation, is it Paula? It’s Dave Dobbyn, Dragon and Split Enz on repeat, with every second track performed by Brooke “Voice of a Flipping Angel” Fraser. Once I loved Brooke Fraser.

She’s a babe. How could I not love to hear her voice. She could recite a list of sex crimes she had committed and I would still listen to every delightful syllable that dripped from her incredible mouth.

Where was I? Oh yes: Studylink’s call waiting music.

Do you realise that by playing this music on Studylink, you are actively putting people off some of New Zealand’s finest musicians? And also Dragon? Everytime I hear Six Months in a Leaky Boat by Split Enz, I no longer think of English censorship in the early 1980s. Now I think of government bureaucracy and that’s not very fucking rock and roll, Paula!

Please, for the sake of New Zealand musicians, past, present and future and change the call waiting soundtrack to something else.

Get some classical music to calm people down. We don’t want to hear about the April sun in Cuba. I don’t want to be Loyal anymore. I can’t handle it anymore.

Love The Fist

Opinion

The Secret Lives of First Years Moving out of home is almost like being personally targeted by sales reps for a cheesy infomercial. Flicking through the glossy pages of a university prospectus has never made the leap from home to the world of maturity look so good.

You get all the freedom in the world, no one nagging you to help out with the housework and the ability to be surrounded by friends all day and all night. You can eat, drink and talk about whatever you like. You may have thought it couldn’t get any better but wait there’s more.

You have the freedom of paying your own bills, cleaning the whole house yourself whenever you like and never having to ask permission to have mates over. You can also cook your own meals after buying your own groceries. Some of you have the beauty of a mass produced one-sizefits-all meal provided by a fully catered halls of residence. You can also have a 90-day money back guarantee as long as you find another tenant to replace you. So what do you have to lose?

It turns out that having to spend money on rent, gas and groceries starts to take a strain on your bank account. Rent is not optional and your landlord is not as understanding as your parents when you break a window.

The food by the lovely ladies in hair nets or your own attempt at cooking doesn’t seem to match up to your mums in either taste or nutritional value. So after paying bills, managing uni work and adapting to a new lifestyle; staying healthy is not that high on the agenda.

After making the most of the winter nights socializing and appreciating any form of good tasting food, staying healthy is hard. There are some ways to be a little healthier that don’t cost the earth and are not made up of pumpkin seeds and wheat grass.

Pre-plan what you are going to eat for the week before you go grocery shopping then write out the ingredients. This way you can cut down on costs by buying one type of meat, vegetable etc and use in a couple different meals. Try to stick to the shopping list as much as possible and not be drawn into pre-cooked or prepared meals. They are expensive and unnecessary. Eating things like pasta, stir fry and wraps are easy, cheap and healthier than scoffing down four packs of instant noodles until you are full. Always save left overs for lunch the next day or even revive it for dinner again. It may not be the same but taking your lunch to uni instead of buying it every day is so much cheaper. Don’t be intimidated by cooking. It is not that hard to boil some pasta, grill some chicken and

Opinion

toss it together with some vegetables. If you don’t know how to then Google it.

Try to think of ways to cut the bill down.

Shopping together with friends makes the hike to supermarket a little better. Buying things in bigger sizes also turns out to be cheaper. If you have a recipe which uses some pricey ingredients try and swap them for something cheaper. For example; swap pancetta for ham or spinach for ice lettuce.

It is a different story if you are in halls of residence and have all your meals cooked for you. After a while it is all bit repetitive and you find yourself fantasizing over the thought of having a home cooked meal. If I were you I would go out and have a meal somewhere else every now again to avoid insanity. There are cheap places to eat that don’t ask you if you would like to supersize your meal. Look out for student deals. A lot of places have cheap lunches like House bar and Embargo Restaurant which have $12 lunches and The Bank which has $10 meals. It’s a cool and cheap way to catch up with mates outside of the cafeteria or food court.

Check out these websites for cheap and basic recipes: studentrecipes.com //allrecipes.com//jamieoliver.com.

There is even an app that lets you search for recipes based on your budget and your fridge contents. Eating on the cheap doesn’t have to be at a fast food joint and it is not just for meditating organic farmers without a television.

Learning how to manage your money and cook your own food is all about being a student so make the most of it while you can. Before you know it you will be cooking for someone else.

By Julia Gabel

Did You See? SHIHAD @ Altitude - 5th April 2012

By Bernard Williams ( Do U C ? Photography )

So you may have seen Shihad live a number of

times, but I bet you haven’t seen them like this.

Hitting Altitude nightclub on 5 of April with

their MEANEST Tour, a greatest hits show, the Wellington rockers played a career-spanning set that began with 1990’s Devolve EP and ended with last year’s Ignite, taking in songs in chronological order from every record along the way.

If anyone could pull off such a feat, its Shihad, in

fact they revelled in the format, blasting through hit-after-hit in a sublimely energetic and hardrocking two-hour show. After almost 25 years and 8 albums, these guys still know how to rock.

Home Again, It and Down Dance, were obvious early highlights, with the band playing against a simple black backdrop and basic lighting to resemble their humble beginnings in smaller venues.

As Jon Toogood performed a solo Ballad from

the mezzanine of Altitude, the stage was upgraded to include neon lighting, a high-rise drum kit and a flasher backdrop to amplify Shihad’s more polished, radio-friendly sound, this allowed them to kick into more recent tracks like My Mind’s Sedate, The General Electric, Pacifier and among others.

Despite a small scuffle during the earlier stage of

the show, a scuffle that got drummer Tom Larkin off his stool and demanding a trouble maker to “calm the fuck down”, everything went smoothly and Altitude packed out yet again for an epic night of rocking and raging.

Encore was chanted at the end, as always, but

after two hours of none stop rocking Shihad was ready for a cold beer and Drummer Tom Larking was looking for a massage for his damaged and obviously hurting shoulder.

Phil Knight’s epic guitar playing is one thing.

Rocking out for two hours straight is another.

But Jon Toogood walking and wading through the crowd was a special treat for the fans at Altitude that night, some lucky fans managing to get up close and personal with their favourite frontman.

If you’re keen to see some snaps from the night,

other Shihad events or just to see some snaps of NZ Musicians in general then be sure to check out the facebook page.

(Scan the QR code on the page opposite)

Coming up in the weeks ahead Optimus Gryme

will be hitting Flow bar on the 28 NZ Music month in May. Keep an eye out as there will be lots of gigs, events and festivals all over this beautiful country of ours. Adventure Artists have a huge plan lined up, that sees them covering the entire county filming and photographing anything and everything to do with NZ Music.

They will be hitting the Tron on May 8th. Be sure to jump on Kiwi Bandwagon on Facebook to stay up to date with what Mark and Nate are up to.

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ENTER BEFORE

MAY 3RD

Out of the Hat with Dr. Seuss Congratulations!

Today is your day!

You’re off to great places!

You’re off and away!

You have brains in your head.

You have feet in your shoes.

You can steer yourself any direction you choose.’

You’re on your own.

And you know what you know.

And YOU are the one who’ll decide where to go.

See that? That drop in Italics to the normal Times New Roman that we all love to hate? (Just be glad that it isn’t 1.5 spacing, justified and APA referenced, I know I am).

That tells us that shit just got real.

But nevertheless, that is the truth. We are now on our own; the majority of us anyway. Whether staying in the halls, flatting with our friends, or living day to day in whatever bed we find ourselves in after a wonderful (or not, if you remember it) night on the town we are faced with many predicaments that we probably all ignored until it was too late. Two stick out like sore thumbs in my opinion:

(unless you aren’t afraid of overcooking chicken a bit).

My personal favourite: Good ol’ fashioned Spaghetti Bolognaise. Damn near impossible to fail. Bit of meat, bit of pasta, small amount of garlic and some tomato based pasta sauce. Hey presto, Bob’s your uncle, Fred’s your nana. It’s an edible meal!!!

Recommended recipe book: Edmonds Food for Flatters.

As for cleaning, there’s almost nothing to it besides a bit of elbow grease. Purchase some multi-purpose cleaner from your local supermarket, get down on all fours like a dog (or some other more appropriate four-legged animal), and get scrubbing with a bit of water. Watch your clothes though; some of those bleaches can give the impression that you are bringing back tie-dye in an awful way. That’s the last thing we need. In no time at all you will see those stains come away. If it is dust you are worried about, find that poor rejected vacuum cleaner and let it do the sucking. I bet it hates that you get more action than it does. It won’t bite! Besides, have you ever done a spring clean without finding something cool?

Yes friends, shit just got real, but I leave you with this parting speckle of my almighty wisdom: ‘Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not’

1. We have to cook for ourselves! (unless you live in halls, in which case you are even worse off) 2. We have to clean up after ourselves! It’s true, and unless you have an obliging and (I’ll get hit for this) real girlfriend, you will just have to (wo)man up, unless you are a woman, in which case you should be used to it.

You may now be wondering, where is this guy/girl, going with this? Is he almighty and have the powers to wish all our troubles away? To this I must disappoint you; I do not have all the answers and cannot wish it all away for you (though a bit of worship never went astray). As I mentioned earlier, you have brains in your head, all of you. Fish it out of its hiding place and give it a good dust off. Put your chin up, grit your teeth and commit your sorry ass.

Now some potential answers Trouble cooking? It’s simple. READ THE RECIPE. Unless you are a skilled cook (or have an obliging girlfriend as aforementioned), this is the only way to create an edible meal. Flatmates aren’t so obliging to live with you when they are in hospital because you cooked the chicken for a bit less than the recipe said because you were ‘hungry and it looked ok’. Create something easy, something that requires 5 or less ingredients, and doesn’t use chicken

Opinion

Kevin Goes Down on Books Player One by Douglas Coupland Doug Coupland is a cult author. He’s the sort of writer that Melbourne hipsters read in cafes making sure his name is clearly visible.

But that’s not to say he’s a shallow flavour of the month scribbler. Coupland coined the term Generation X – it’s the name of his breakthrough novel. So he’s something of the clever dick. So much so that he references his previous works in his novels. He’ll lift passages he’s used in other books and plonk them in unabridged. He even writes himself in as a character, portraying himself exactly as he is – a clever dick.

But that’s not all he’s about. It’s just one of the images he likes to project. There’s an underlying wisdom behind the cutting humour, structural experiments, and pop culture pastiche. Coupland is the most profound critic of modern culture going around. Or is he simply a detached observer and not really a critic? Sometimes he seems to be having so much fun taking the piss it’s like watching an episode of the Simpsons. Maybe he thinks it’s all some sort of cosmic joke.

So you’ll enjoy reading his work regardless. Player One is a more serious effort than the likes of J-Pod, but is still filled with absurdity. Five people are trapped in an airport departure lounge when peak oil triggers a global catastrophe. There’s the cynical bartender, the slapper solo mum waiting for her online date, a pastor who’s run off with the church takings, a gorgeous blonde who has severe autism and Player One. The situation isn’t as cleverly constructed as his other novels, making it more obvious that the characters are simply mouthpieces for Coupland’s polyglot of opinions.

It’s like watching a French arthouse movie (except with more humour and less fucking), the characters sit around spouting philosophy, cultural observations and lament the banality of existence – not a lot else happens. It’s all good stuff but it doesn’t hang as well together as his previous effort Generation A, or the brilliant J-Pod. This could be because it was written as part of a radio lecture series and is set in five hours of real-time, so has a cobbled together feel. Or maybe it’s because his publisher got him to hash his lectures into novel form so he could fulfil his contract with them (he makes reference to this possibility in one of his earlier books). It doesn’t matter a damn though. It’s still a good read, with great insights,

Reviews

and at the very least you can use it as a starting point to get into his other work. Coupland is the heir to the other great technology writers of our time - J.G Ballard and Marshall McLuhan. He’s intensely interested in the effects of media and technology on altering not just our perceptions of reality, but reality itself. As the rate of progress reaches hyperspeed and we all start disengaging from the real world to exist solely in digital space, come back to Coupland and see who has the right to say I told you so.

OFF THE RACK WITH ALICE AND ANNE

Lecturer Fashion!

So this week we stalked some of our fine educators and stole their opinions to keep within the education theme. We’re never ones to back down from a themed shindig, but more on that another time. I would tell you we scoped out each department’s fashionable faculty fairly, but this would be a farcical fib! As we are from the Law and Arts faculties respectively, we just went with what we knew – so sue us, random sampling is for science and statistics students.

We asked our fabulous five three important questions about style and the like.

The first of these was to do with personal style.

Lynda Johnston, our feminist fashionista, said that she preferred quirky, funky and offbeat fashion. She says that she plays with masculine and feminine elements, to ultimately form concepts of identity through fashion, which is akin to her area of expertise in the academic field. Kirstine Moffatt of FASS incorporates theatricality and vintage elements within her personal style. She is a profound believer in the frock as the source of everything good in fashion, and also admits that buying frocks and books is a bit of a pick-me-up for her. We reckon she has her priorities in order. Bevin Yeatman, on the other hand, professes that he has no idea about fashion, and refuses to give advice on style on account of he makes ‘enough of a folly’ out of himself. We think that he’s just being sneaky and is clearly a fashion god – but we’ll let it slide this time.

The second question we posed them was how one should dress to combat Hamilton’s oftenmiserable weather. Juliet Chevalier-Watts and Brenda Midson, both senior law lecturers, had some good ideas on this topic - Juliet said that she lives in her long boots and that her fur-lined gloves work wonders on cold days, and are also useful for challenging unsuspecting law students to duels. Ok she may not have said that last part but I’m sure it’s crossed her mind when 2nd years don’t do their

readings before attending Torts lectures. Brenda Midson was sure to expound that ‘flu shots are fashionable’, which is a valid point - stay healthy, kids! She then went on to say that she adores merino for warmth, as well as bamboo-cotton blends for breathability, and that layering is key for every season.

The third and final question that we pestered our posing professors with was that of their opinion on student fashion around campus. Most were complimentary, with Kirstine admitting she had shoeenvy of some of the girls around campus with jewelbright footwear, and Brenda assuring us that ‘students generally beat staff’. Juliet had a smile on her face as she described student fashion as ‘varied’, but Bevan kept it real, saying ‘most students give up after O-Week’ – let this be a challenge to us all to prove him wrong! So after small amounts of character development and copious amounts of alliteration what will you, the students of Waikato University, do with the knowledge that our learned friends have imparted to us? I do hope you’ll be fashionable and get your flu shots. Don’t be that annoying sick kid in lectures. Please. For all of us.

Stay pretty!

Alice and Anne (but mostly Alice. Anne was busy)

Fashion

THE

GIG REV IEW Crazy Nights with Ronnie and Malebox :

Gig rating: Bitchin’ 11/04/12

P.O.D. Wednesday 11 April, Logan Campbell Centre, Auckland What can $30 get you these days?

A lap dance from a member of the B team at Firecats, maybe even a brief trip upstairs? We’ll tell you what you can get, rap rock legends P.O.D rocking the Logan Campbell Centre on a Wednesday night.

Who cares that you’re covered in paint from a full days hard tradie labour, who cares you have a 7am start the next day. Your drug dealers out of speed but sweet as, you’re driving through South Auckland.

Opening for P.O.D. were The Jury & the Saints, these guys have come a long way since we saw them open for Arms Reach at Flow back in the twilight of our high school days, they even scored an opening slot for last year’s Paramore gig. Their new addition of a bassist rounds them out as a three piece, giving the band a much needed fuller sound.

Second on the bill were local heroes Rapture Ruckus, whose influence from Reviews

P.O.D. was evident, adopting their rap rock style, combined with an electronic influence. The band has been known as one of NZ’s most energetic live acts for a decade, with an amazing light show. This performance was extra special for the boys, coming home off a 14 month US tour. The lyrics were quite Christian themed, all three bands sharing these beliefs, featuring poignant moments mid set with every front man briefly sharing their testimonies. Christian music takes on many forms; with Rapture Ruckus’ happier brand of electro rap rock brought more of a sing a long jumpy audience, whereas the bass driven riffs of P.O.D. came from a darker place, commanding hefty mosh pits.

catchy but heavy new single ‘On Fire’, however the high number of new songs felt a bit much considering the album’s not even out yet.

P.O.D. hit the stage with the title track from their upcoming LP ‘Murdered Love’, sparking the beginning of what was to be an energetic and enduring mosh pit, despite the continued interference of security meats. The set relied heavily on their 2001 breakthrough album ‘Satellite’, intertwined with six new songs, only playing two songs from their other four albums. A definite highlight was their

In conclusion, P.O.D. = Bitchin’.

Even with the loss of his trademark dreads, front man Sonny Sandoval’s stage presence was fantastic, including crowd surfing on several occasions (Ronnie touched him as he passed overhead, yay-ah!). Sonny sent the mic out into the crowd and did everything he could to make the crowd part of the experience, top man. The rest of the band however, were about as energetic as a bunch of NZ road workers, (take a look next time, how many are actually working? Your tax dollars hard at work).