Grrrr. RIGHT. Rant time.

 

For those of you who haven't heard, y'know that 4WD ad that had the little boy driving the 4WD, then pick up the little girl and take her to the beach? It's been banned. Why? Because it was giving a bad role model to young children. Apparently a 2 year old tried to drive his parents' car after seeing the ad. I also heard today (Mum read it to me from the newspaper) that there's an 8 year old kid in the UK who has reached 89kg. His mother claims it isn't her fault that she feeds him junk food, because "He likes processed food... if I try to give him vegetables or fruit, he just refuses to eat it, or spits it out... when a child won't eat anything else, you have to give them what they like." No, you don't!! At the suggestion that she put a lock on the fridge she said "Oh no, I couldn't do that... no, starving him isn't the right way to go about it."

 

Well, let me say sweetheart- your kid is in no danger of starving anytime soon. When Mum first read the thing about the kid refusing to eat healthy food I said "well just starve him!" That's what I'd do to my kids. If they refuse to eat the healthy food I give them, I'll be like "Ok, go without any dinner then. That's all you're getting." Trust me, the kid is not going to starve! Soon enough they will figure out you are not joking and that they do have to eat the food you've given to them- and they WILL eat it. The only reason that 8 year old doesn't eat healthy food is because he knows his Mum will just give him junk food if he makes a fuss.

 

A former British Olympic runner, Roger Black, said that this was an example of why exercise should be important at school. Hold on a second- since when was it the school's responsibility to raise healthy kids? Isn't that what parents are for? Aren't schools just meant to teach reading, writing and 'rithmetic? (I know, with some history, geography etc thrown in :P). Oh, that's right, these days parents don't have to raise their children at all- it's the schools that have to teach them healthy living, exercise, nutrition, sex ed, morals, values, and everything else that comes with being a decent member of society. My mum even has a kid in prep this year- 5 years old- who isn't toilet trained yet. Why does it not surprise me that he gets collected from prep by daycare and not a parent?

 

Which leads me to the 4WD ad. Why does society have to protect your children from themselves? That's the parents' job! If you are irresponsible enough to leave keys in a place where a 2 year old can reach them, it's your own fault if they do something stupid like that. You are meant to protect your child from their immaturity and lack of knowledge, not society! Does this mean we are going to ban Superman or Spiderman in case young children try to jump off buildings? No! Why? Because it is the parents' responsiblity to look after their child.

 

If you have children, YOU raise them. YOU teach them to exercise and eat healthily. YOU teach them sex ed. YOU teach them morals and values. YOU make them a decent member of society, and school will take care of what it was designed to do- teach them academia.

 

Let me finish with a quote from one of Dad's best mates- "Kids are like bikinis. Not everyone who wants one should have one."

 

PS. And I hope that kid in the UK gets taken off his mother. Maybe he'll be given to someone who actually knows how to raise healthy kids.

Well it's back to uni again. O-Week was last week- it was pretty good. O-Day we (CU) had the "Are You Lost" boards again (apparently I was on Channel 9 news AND apparently I'm on the ad for Channel 9 news, wearing the "Are You Lost" sandwhich board... how embarassing... :P) and we had a new quiz, ice blocks (with dry ice in the esky... we had good fun with that at the end of the day, blowing up water bottles), freddo frogs, and the Giant Jenga set. A lot of walking around, but it was still good. Wednesday night was the first years' BBQ (which faculty leaders and exec members also attended) and then Friday was the trip to Crystal Creek (we went up to Little Crystal then to the rockslides.) Etienne cut his foot open on a rock, Michelle A cut her foot too but luckily they were not major incidents which required ambulances! (Like we needed in 2005...)

 

And this week it's back to it. I only have 9 or 10 contact hours (I'm not sure what the go is with my history tute) and I'm also going to be going to a CU Bible Talk, BBQ, bible study, and have 2 or 3 1-on-1s going (I'll be doing one with Michelle Ayres, and hopefully 1 or 2 with some first year girls.) And of course I'm still going to Focus (our church's young adults group) and a leader at Adventure Club (our church's primary school youth group.) I have grade 6 & 7 girls this year- the same girls as last year. Looks like it's going to be a good semester!

 

Oh, and for anyone out there who this may interest: I have some second-hand uni text books & subject readers for sale. They include politics, journalism, communications and tourism text books, so if you are interested, have a look at http://www.jcu.edu.au/archives/undergrad-bulletins/msg00150.shtml to see if any titles you need are there. Contact me if interested!!! Prices are negotiable.

 

Anyway, a short blog is a good one (ok, not necessarily, but you get the picture) I'm going to go do some cleaning now.

Yaaaaay... we have our LCD monitor back!! *dances*

 

Anyways :P

 

If anyone is interested in what Andre and I did on Valentine's Day, go to http://maria87.deviantart.com ... I have it on there and can't be bothered retyping it :P

 

Oh, and cool band of the moment is The View, check them out at http://members.optusnet.com.au/theview/music.html

 

That's all for now. I'm tired and need to sleep. I spent last night at Jessie's painting signs for CU's O-Day activities and for the Bible Talks, with Reuben, Jess and Etienne. Oh and Jako came too. It was lots of fun, we must have ended up painting like close to 10 signs (that includes the double sided A-frame signs for the Bible Talks.) We also did much talking, branching from infant baptism to rugby to the presbyterian church government to the baptist church government to flamingoes to what an evangelical church is and whether certain churches should be considered evangelical to africa to AFES and its real meaning (ie. Australian Fellowship of Evangelical Students VS. Australia's Fastest Engagement Service) to how people cover up unplanned pregnancies (it's not how it sounds)...yup, many, many things. Etienne and Reuben left at about 3:30, I went to bed at about 4:30 at which point Jessie and Jako went to watch the rugby on TV. If you think Etienne is usually crazy and humourous,  you should see him at 3:30am. And then I got up at like 10... and Jacinta came to pick up some of her stuff from Jessie's so she brought me home. Then she came and picked up some of her other stuff from my place this afternoon. So that's my day... and I think I'll go sleep now. Laters ^_^

 

(Heh. I wrote more after "That's all for now" than I did before it :P)

Hmm long time no blog hey. Well, it's been less than 2 weeks, but the last 2 weeks seem like a long time. Well I haven't been up to all that much so I don't know what I have to report. Oh wait. Yeah I suppose there are a few things... :P

 

CU LEADERS' LOCK-IN

Haha. It was meant to be a leaders' retreat on the Atherton Tablelands. But, you know, then it rained... for two weeks. And the roads kind of flooded. And the weathermen said more rain was coming (which it didn't). So we decided it might be safer to stay in Townsville. So instead of going to the tablelands for a 3 days, we went to the Walkers' for 2 days (1 night). It was really good. The people who ended up going were the CU Exec and a few faculty leaders. Liz was awesome and organised our food, but everyone pitched in when it came to preparing it and washing up. Basically we rocked up at the Walkers' a bit before 8 on Thursday morning, had breakfast, then got started on our first meeting. It went through to lunch (with a break in the middle for morning tea). We stopped for an hour and a half for lunch (Sarah, Gum and I crashed in the rumpus room coz we were all pretty tired.) And then it was on to meeting #2, which went through til dinner (with a break for afternoon tea.) Then we had dinner, and the evening was free, with an early night for me and Esther (sometime between 9:30 and 10) with most other people heading to bed between 10:30 and 11, I think. And then the next day, it was a repeat of day #1. With some AWESOME cookies Katrina baked on Thursday night. Which Etienne kept trying to steal a stash of. (Which I ate from, and Reuben hid). When Etienne discovered his cookie stash was missing, he was not impressed. Everyone else thought it was very funny. Muahahaha.

 

But we got a lot organised, so hopefully the Exec won't be so caught up in administerial issues this year. Some things I really want to encourage people to get involved in this year (both old things and new) are O-Week (especially O-Day; see the CU email I sent out to see how you can help), 1 on 1 (both girls and guys!!) and prayer triplets. Prayer triplets aren't quite as daunting as prayer groups, and times are flexible. We are also having a prayer group specifically in support of Missions which Etienne is heading up. And of course, get involved in your faculty groups! Kudos to Keagan and Gum for heading up the Engineering faculty, which usually consists of only them, and to Sam, for taking on my old position of Humanities faculty leader.

 

Also, if you're interested in going in a CU team for the pub trivia night on the Monday of O-Week, let Keagan know. (If you don't know his email for some reason, ask me.) Kick Off Camp is from the 16th- 18th of March, so mark that in your diaries. <distraction>Mmm look, fairy floss. </distraction> Right where was I. Oh yeah. MYC is the 23rd- 27th of July, so mark that in your diaries too.

 

Hmmm, so what else have I been doing. Enjoying the rain. But it ended on Thursday. :( :P Nah it's ok, Townsville is now Greensville and the dam is full, it's excellent, life goes on.

 

Well yeah I don't know what else to say at the moment, so I'll head off now, I might clean my room.

 

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EDIT: If I don't come online for a long time, it's because our internet's been disconnected. Rawnet (our ISP) hasn't paid Telstra their bills yet, so our internet may be disconnected indefinitely as of today. So yeah. If I disappear, you know why.

And Queensland has really bad water management!!

 

Ok, so we all know how badly Queensland (and most of Australia, particularly the eastern states) is in drought at the moment. But, for you southerners who may be reading, North Queensland has been absolutely inundated with rain over the past 2 weeks. It has rained constantly. Particularly this week, we've had hardly any break. It's been brilliant. North Queensland: "Drought? What drought?"

 

Anyway. South Queensland's dams are at about 22% capacity at the moment. You'd think with all the rain we'd been getting that we'd have an awful lot more than 22% in Ross River Dam. However, three days ago, we were only at 22% (levels had gone from 15% to 20% last week). This indicates to me we were somewhat lower on water before the rain than we'd been led to believe. So now, with the even more consistent rain we've had this week, levels have risen to 36% (that's like, 15% in less than a week!!)- the highest we've had in over 2 years. So you'd think Ross Dam is set to keep filling up over the next week (even more, heavier rain is forecast).

 

But no, because Ross Dam has a leak, and they've lowered the spillway to do construction on it. Which means that today, the water was expected to start flowing over the spillway.

 

At only 36% capacity!! Is it just me, or is something wrong here?

 

 

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Facts taken from the NQ Water Website http://www.nqwater.com.au/?page=87 , news reports I've heard and my own observations.