Homework (Fine! I'll say Home learning)

This blog entry is to talk about the pros and cons of home work. Keep in mind that this is my own opinion, so don't get angry.

Pros

-You can expand your knowledge
-You don't forget the work that you learnt at school
-It teaches time management
-I can't think of any more
-Still can't think
-Thinking. . .
-Thinking. . .
-Nope! I'm lost for ideas so I will move on to the cons

Cons

-It is a hassle. I mean I get home from school and feel like relaxing. But what do you know! I still have a pile of homework to get through! It's not like any of us have a life or anything. We all just feel like doing piles of homework every day (note the sarcasm). They say we are supposed to do at least 30 minutes of home work every day. To be honest, I would rather spend another 30, maybe even 60 minutes a day at school, and not have any homework. Even if the extra time was used to complete extension work to revise what we learnt that day.

-It is stressful. After we come home from school, some of us have extra curricular activities. We might come home at about 9:00 pm and still have a mountain load of homework to do. This has happened to me many times, and I have had to work late into the night to get it all finished. I could get a note, but then I wouldn't be learning anything.

-You get punished if you don't do it. If someone forgets their homework or just simply didn't do it, then they get a detention or something. Our parents are paying to get the best of our learning capabilities, but we need a break as well! We need a break every now and then so our head doesn't explode into a billion tiny little pieces.

I don't believe that home learning is a total waste of time, especially when exams are drawing close. I just think that we are being overloaded a bit, and maybe if someone important is reading this, then maybe they could look over my proposals (Yeah right!). Please leave a comment on this blog entry, and let me know how you feel about the situation.

Also take a look at this link and read some of the comments that people have written.
http://positivesharing.com/2006/08/homework-makes-kids-hate-learning/

Techno Music

The music that really annoys me the most is techno. It just keeps on repeating the same thing over and over (with the occasional robot voice saying something random), and it is full of weird beeps and futuristic noises. I mean it's okay for dancing at night-clubs (so my sister says), but not for just listening to. I bet there are a lot of people out there who disagree with me and that's okay. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions. I prefer rock and heavy metal myself (Green Day, Rage Against the Machine, Avenged Sevenfold, Fall Out Bo, Metallica etc.)

My favourite band at the moment is Rage Against the Machine because I have just learnt a couple of their songs on bass, and my band can play them quite well. My favourite song is Unholy Confessions by Avenged Sevenfold. It's really cool because they have 2 lead guitarists.

Post a comment on this blog entry and tell me how you fell about techno music.

Easter

Easter is one of my favourite times of the year. Why? CHOCOLATE! I really like chocolate. The only creepy thing about Easter is the Eater Bunny. I mean it's actually quite scary that a giant rabbit breaks into my house and lays eggs everywhere. I didn't even know that rabbits laid eggs! What are they trying to teach the children these days? That breaking and entering is okay? And why does he have to come in the middle of the night? That's a bit dodgy. I would have thought that the police would have caught him long ago. He has only been doing it a few hundred years! They should arrest that weirdo and lock him up. Why doesn't he just wait until the morning, and hand the eggs out like a civilized being.

Anyway. . . For Easter I got 2 Moro egg packages. One of the pros of having separated parents is that you get 2 eggs. One from Mum, one from Dad. I have already eaten one Moro package (2 eggs, 2 Moro bars) and I still have one to go.

This weekend, I ate lots of chocolate, went to peoples houses, played PlayStation, ate more chocolate and played basketball. On Monday my basket ball team got into the finals for the Easter tournament. My team is the Under 15 Hibiscus Coast representatives. In the final we played Waikato, but we lost by about 20 points (darn). I thought we played pretty well though, considering that most of their players were about a head taller than me (and I am the tallest in the team). After the game, we went back to my team-mates house and ate pizza, played basketball and table tennis, and had a spa. I enjoyed my 5 day break and I am looking forward to the next set of holidays.

Video Thing

Today in English class wee had to watch a video on web safety. It was pretty freaky and it really opened my eyes to what I should and should not be putting on the internet.

The video was about this girl that had put her information details on the web, and a paedophile pretended to be a girl online, and pretended to be the girl's friend. The paedophile tracked the girl down but she managed to get away, and she also managed to get a photo of the man. The man got arrested and has been sent to jail for 2 years.

I think I will make my Bebo site less public now, because I know of the dangers online.

Round the Bays

My legs hurt. Want to know why? It's because I have just finished running 8.4 kilometres on the Round the Bays run. Well o.k I didn't run the whole thing, but I ran at least 6.5 kilometres (or 40 minutes) without stopping which, is quite a lot for me. I only walked once (for 10 minutes though!) and then I ran the rest. My official time was 61minutes and 1 second (I bet my dad), but there were so many people so every one had to walk really slowly for 10 minutes just to get to the starting line. Even then, you always had to find gaps in between people, and you sometimes just had to stop because you couldn't go any further without standing on someone. There were at least 70000 people in the race, and it was amazing to look ahead and see how many people there were.

After I finished, I had to walk another few kilometres to get to the barbeque area. My dad and I met up with some other people from my dad's work and had a barbeque and lots of fizzy.

I think I might do the run again next year, and I recommend it for anyone that likes to run (or brag about running).

Museum

Today our class and some other classes went to the museum. I didn't really enjoy the trip, but I learnt a few things about the wars. I just found it annoying that we had to carry our clipboard around everywhere, and my legs and brain hurt after a while. I still think it was worth going, because I got an insight of what it what it was like in the war, as well as some interesting facts and figures.

Snakes

The one thing that scares me most in the world is snakes! The way they move just sends chills down my spine. Also the fact that some are deadly poisonous, or could strangle you to death. I went to the wildlife museum in Sydney, Australia, and There were some MASSIVE snakes there. Even behind an inch of glass they seemed threatening! There was also the worlds most poisonous snake there. I wouldn't want to meet one of those in a dark alley!

For the same reasons, I also dislike eels and worms. If you ever throw a worm at me, I will NOT be happy. I have lived by a creek all my life, and my siblings had made a sport of fishing for eels in it. I would always half-heartedly take part, by if I ever caught an eel I would end up running off in the opposite direction.

Things didn't help my fear in Year 3 when we had a worm farm, and we were forced to handle worms. I outright refused to take part, much to the dislike of my teacher.

In New Caledonia, there were a lot of sea snakes. It just so happened that the most common was also the most deadly. When I was snorkeling in the crystal clear waters, someone mentioned there was a snake on the sand a few metres to my left. I quickly made towards the shore in a very panicked state. I did not go back into the water for quite a while after that. But even when I did, I was apparently about half a metre away from a snake when I was walking in the shallows (nobody told me until I was safely out of the water, otherwise I probably would have panicked and provoked it). After that I decided I would only stick to the deep water when I went snorkeling.

Lord of the Rings

I have just finished reading The Hobbit by J.R.R Tolkien, and although it wasn't very long, it was very hard to read. The old language used back in 1937 is quite hard to understand, and a few of the words I didn't know. Nonetheless, I finished the book and I am on to reading The Lord of The Rings. It shouldn't be much harder. It;s only about 800 pages longer and with much finer print! I have tried to read the books several times, and I have always failed dismally. I just couldn't get the hang of the old language used. But this time I am determined to read the book that has so far conquered me. I have read the preqeul and I am used to the language. I am going to keep a regular update on this blog of how far I get in the book, starting from now.

I am currently on page 82/1112

Guess how much I got the LOTR book (all three books in one) for. . .
$40? Nope. Less. . .
$30? Still less. . .
$20? Keep going. . .
$10? Nearly there!
$5?! A LITTLE bit less. . .
$2?!!!! CORRECT!!!!

Thats right, I got the book for $2. I got it from a school gala and I think the deal was 5 books for$10. ust by chance I saw the LOTR book under a pile of other books, like someone was trying to hide it! 'Oh well' I thought. I had been meaning to read that book for ages, so I thought I would start it straight away.
That was 3 years ago.
Oh well, I've started now and thats all that matters!

Intro

Well I have finally started my blog! After many complications (e.g. Doing it on the wrong website, not saving it properly etc.) it has finally kicked off. Now for Step 2: Posting things on my blog. I don't really know what I am going to write but I'm sure I will think of someting.
I was actually worried about starting this blog because I have never done it before, and I didn't know what to write. But after looking at some other people's blogs, I have managed to come up with a few ideas, and I have a general Idea of what to put in it.
So I hope you enjoy my blog, and I hope it goes as well as it is in my mind.