Today I've mostly bin...

[giraffe]

Everytime I get in my car I find Kingsley has retuned my radio TO Classic FM I thought it was a joke at first, but she actually seems to like it. They won't let me listen to Radio 5.

[Biscuit]

"You should tell him he needs to be glad he doesn't have a mother like me!! I have a whole list of things designed to embarrass teenagers. A favourite is picking them up in the car with the window wound down and classic fm playing as loud as possible"

I am so going to try that. He has this thing that he says his brain is feeling old if I have radio 4 on. Which in my old age I actually like listening to; esp the archers.

Kara also complained but I have caught her out. She listens to radio 4 on the 4 hour journey to uni.

[clvrlad]

well you paid to get them to lean an instrument......

[katsmom]

We went to see the Chinese National Day fireworks on the first. On a boat! Guess what? I embarrassed my daughter then too.

And then I embarrassed her again in the restaurant after the fireworks because my stomach was still moving too much for its own good.

And then again in the taxi going home because the taxi driver made a comment about smelling fish. (The boat was a fishing boat and i decided the safest place for me was on the floor with a bucket between my knees.)

She said I live to embarrass her. And the only reason dad arraigned this trip was so I could do just that

On Saturday night we rode the cable car up and down the MT. in the dark-it's the first time they opened it up at night. Well guess what-I embarrassed her again.

Then on Sunday one more time. It appears that I have the flu and didn't realize it. So even though I was going out of my way to try and embarrass her, I guess there was a reason for it. But funnily enough, on Sunday she was playing with her friends and dad overheard her say that it was so cool that mom puked for 4 days straight

[clvrlad]

well im glad she enjoys her mom being sick

hope you feel better

[Bunnylump]

Oh dear!! You POOR thing! Kids are lovely aren't they?

So were the fireworks good then? And what is "state fireworks" all about?

[katsmom]

I have no idea if the fireworks were good. I was looking at the inside of a bucket that wasn't pretty.

It was the 60th anniversary of "Modern China" 1st of October is National Day-kind of like 4th of July back home. Matt and Katherine loved it. They said it was very nice to be so close up.

[tricia]

Screaming at my computer at work - we have about 8 systems to log onto at work - each with a different password. Today they brought in a A Single Sign on for all - Did it work ? For some Yes But not for me and other members of my team - instead it prevented us signing on!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Tricia

[giraffe]

I hope you had your puzzles handy tricia to keep you busy whilst locked out.

[tricia]

Dont be daft - they moved me elswhere to help others - It a bank,s processing centre I work for!!!!!!!!! - If in doubt get them to fold and put in envelopes
Tricia

[Biscuit]

bank phoned us today - real muck up - last april i had received a cheque in post and promptly paid into the account.

Can anyone explain why it took 6 months for our bank to realise that the cheque was not acutally made out to our company but someone elses?? I know i made a mistake paying it in but how come they did not pick it up- that is their stock in trade.

This from the company who insists on up to date acurate management accounts that are spot on and predict accurately what is going to happen in the future even though the government cannot manage this.

Banks - they are not my fav people at the moment. My husband has tried to change the account details of the company that is set up to manage the shared areas on our estate. It has taken 2.5 years and they still haven't managed it after 4 visits to the office to try and get it sorted. The thing is his position comes to an end soon and it moves to someone else, and the bank still hasn't managed to send the statements through to the right house - these two things make me very worried about the economy. - how can they manage money when they can't manage straight forward admin.

Sorry if this is too political.

Biscuit

[clvrlad]

look at the credit crunch and tell me which bit inspired confidence in the banking system....

to be honest even though i personally partially blame the banks its not the rank and file employees that i blame so much as the swines who decided how and who to give mortgages to...
since the unsafe loans didn't help

[Biscuit]

i agree totally - they shouldn't have lent it but i also think that perhaps we should not have borrowed it on the never never - but it so difficult. Definately the credit crunch is not the responsibility of the rank and file employees - they are just as much a casualty. But i do think that the management should set in place a simple way to change the addresses on hte account.

Biscuit

[Wulfruna]

Phew...!!! At last I have managed to finalise the accounts for a local Charity for which I have taken on the task of being Honorary Treasurer. This was the first time I've had to do the Annual Report and Accounts, and it was massively more complicated than I expected, involving the valuation of a load of shares and having to allocate funds into various different accounts. It is never so easy taking over from someone else who has done it in their own way for years......
Anyway, it was a most glorious feeling when I added it all up in all sorts of different combinations and actually managed to get it to tally with the balance in the bank
So now it is all passed on to the auditor and I can take a bit of time out to get back and relax (????) with some puzzles
So that is why I had disappeared off the map for a bit - sorry about the silence, but real life gets in the way sometimes .

[MBH]

Don't I know it Thought I hadn't seen you for a while - nice to have you back.

[Laura]

Congratulations Wulfruna! Accounts can be horrendous! Well done!

[Bunnylump]

Urgh, accounts, money, maths, banks. YUK. Shudder.

[Bunnylump]

I've had a weird morning.
Period 1 - it being national poetry day, the school had organised for a poet to come in and perform some of his works to the kids. He was of Carribbean descent, and had a man with some bongos to accompany him. His work was absolutely amazing!!! It was a sort of mix of poetry, rapping, and singing to a beat. He had the kids (and me) all joining in and singing / chanting the chorus. It was very amusing to note that the predominantly white kids* we have in general had NO sense of rhythm whatsoever!! They still enjoyed it immensely.

*That's just because of our intake area we have very few ethnic minorities, unlike the school my kids went to where there was a much bigger mix).

But THEN...
Period 2, English, year 8. The class is studying the book "Boy in Striped Pyjamas", which is about a boy whose father works in a concentration camp, who befriends a Jewish lad over the fence. The tricky subject of racism came up. I was HORRIFIED and apalled by the attitudes of some of our young people. One girl was coming out with statements like
"I'M NOT A RACIST BUT"...which in my experience is ALWAYS followed by a racist comment..."why should be allow those asylum seekers into our country, so they can take all our jobs and houses?" She's 13 years old.

The worst part of it was that she was sat NEXT to a lovely lad of mixed race, whose father had come to this country seeking asylum. His grandparents are still in the country in dire straits. UNBELIEVABLE.

It hit me the importance of giving your children a balanced outlook on life. How could those same children enjoy and appreciate the poetry of someone from another culture one hour, and be making statements like that the next?

Sorry, this might be a bit political...

[Laura]

The reason they make statements like that is because they're 13. I know there are exceptions, but in general, at the age of 13, their world revolves around themselves, their family and their friends. I suspect the girl in question would not have actually thought about the comment, but just heard her parents say it, and thought it sounded good. 13 is one of the ages where kids are most insensitive to the feelings of everyone around them, because there's so much going on within them, and that's the most important thing to them.

Fortunately, most of them will have grown out of it by the time they're 25 or so!

[katsmom]

A very serious question Laura, can a perfectly unracist kid become racist when they go through that me phase? A friend of mine and I were talking about this, and I didn't think a child that was "brought up well" (especially here in the international school setting-pretty evenly balanced between races, but slightly heavier weighting on the Chinese side) would become racist as they got older. Especially if the parents weren't like that. He believes that all kids go through a phase of "noticing" differences and acting upon them (or verbalizing them). So who is right? Or is it down to the individual child? Can this be generalized?

Stop working with kids for 5 years and you forget everything you once knew