Somewhat confusingly for many, it has no leaders and no single list of demands or requests. What they do all have in common is that they are “the 99%”, a group of people (which includes you and I) who have financial concerns, largely as a result of the top 1 per cent of society who have amassed large amounts of wealth and aren’t sharing. The protestors are using the Arab Spring tactic, essentially a wave of unrest involving strikes, marches, occupations of land and use of social media to create enough unrest in a region to force extensive change—this tactic has been credited with the overthrow of three governments (Tunisia, Egypt and Libya).

Currently, protestors are occupying Zuccotti Park in Wall St, New York City. They began the occupation on 17 September, and the number of those residing in the park nightly fluctuates around the 200 mark. The occupiers have set up everything from a kitchen and medical booth to a library, have met with local apartment dwellers/owners to ensure their living arrangements don’t clash, and are daily donated enough food for the entire movement. Various websites broadcast requests to ensure the occupiers can remain safe and healthy, for example, use of washing machines and driers after rainy spells. There is talk of how to ensure the occupation doesn’t peter out throughout the fast-arriving New York winter. Occupiers are in for the long haul. Per the Arab Spring process, marches and rallies occur almost daily, and many other groups use the occupation as a springboard for their protests. On September 27, over 700 uniformed pilots protested heavy pay cuts in the wake of the recession, and even the Canadian Postal Union wrote to express full support. Occupy Wall St is a resolutely peaceful occupation, as opposed to a prolonged protest awaiting the city to meet specific demands.

Occupying Wall St was started by the website Adbusters, who per their website are “a global network of culture jammers and creatives working to change the way information flows, the way corporations wield power, and the way meaning is produced in our society.” The aim, in short, is to “end the monied corruption of our [the USA’s] democracy.” So, as the financial centre of New York, Wall St was chosen as a target to occupy. Wall St, an eight-block street, contains the New York Stock Exchange, and has historically housed four other exchanges, such as the New York Board of Trade. John Robb, of the Global Guerillas movement, writes,

“What’s the real goal of this protest? Frankly, it’s probably a recognition that the center of power in the US doesn’t reside in Washington anymore. It’s on Wall Street. This protest dispenses with the middle men (the US Government) and goes straight after the real power.”

Most importantly, Wall St symbolizes the entire financial and banking systems for most Americans. When the corporation Enron was found guilty of fraud, for example, “Wall St” was blamed despite Enron not having any headquarters near the street itself. The occupation of Wall St as a location highlights financial corruption as the thread running through all protestors’ complaints.

So what’s the point? Where is the piece of paper everyone can refer to, to tell you why this is necessary? Everyone protesting has a slightly different cause. While there is a document everyone supposedly agrees on, it isn’t published on the official Occupy Wall St site, nor is it necessarily useful to those trying to summarize the movement, as it simply lists everything from objections about the cleanliness of the water, to wars overseas, to workplace discrimination. To put it in a sentence, the protestors at Wall St are furious with the system—economic and political, which allows wealth and power to be so unevenly distributed, with catastrophic results for humans and the Earth alike. They have been put into situations which they have no control over as a result of the world as it stands. The idea of the slogan “We are the 99%” is to help with the knowledge that few of us choose our situation, and most poor people are not poor as a result of some bad choices, or any choices, they personally have made.

How did poor people get to be so poor, then? Well, in the case of the USA, remove the safety nets we New Zealanders take for granted, and add a few generations of poverty to the family line. As an example, if you get sick, your ability to get medical assistance is largely based on the amount of money which you have—in 2009, individual insurance costs averaged $4,824 annually, or $92 weekly. With no insurance, a hospital visit for a birth, broken bone or similar can cost around the $10,000 mark. The Commonwealth Fund’s 2010 survey found that 33 per cent of American adults went without needed healthcare because they couldn’t afford it, and 20 per cent were struggling to pay existing medical bills. A friend in Wellington recently visited the Accident and Emergency Medical Centre. After the taxi, doctor’s fees and medication, he was out of pocket by $160, because one of the two drugs he needed were unsubsidized. We would consider that an expensive visit, and at that price many of us would be unable to afford such care, while an American would be unsurprised and out of luck for better options. Protestors old and young have no unemployment benefit to fall back on, and left university with debt on their tails to find that previously thriving industries have no job openings.

Westerners often fail to consider the state of the USA to be bleak because we are comparing it to the previous belief that there is a minimum level of poverty in Western society. There is perhaps a minimum level of poverty in New Zealand, but certainly not in most countries. Wealth disparity in the United States of America is the highest in the developed world, so while 13.7 per cent of Americans live on less than $15,000 a year, the top 1 per cent live on $350,000 or more. The money is there, in the country, but not remotely evenly dispersed in one of the wealthiest countries in the developed world. G. William Domhoff writes,

In the United States, wealth is highly concentrated in a relatively few hands. As of 2007, the top 1 per cent of households (the upper class) owned 34.6 per cent of all privately held wealth, and the next 19 per cent (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) had 50.5 per cent, which means that just 20 per cent of the people owned a remarkable 85 per cent, leaving only 15 per cent of the wealth for the bottom 80 per cent (wage and salary workers). In terms of financial wealth (total net worth minus the value of one’s home), the top 1 per cent of households had an even greater share: 42.7 per cent.

Hence, for Occupy Wall St, the cries “We are the 99%” hold meaning beyond income or class level—they reflect the absence of assets, of control, of power, for the 99 per cent of the population who are affected by the economy on a daily basis, and literally do not own the country they live in.

Anyone may successfully argue that Occupy Wall St doesn’t have the answers as to how to fix the problems the movement highlights. No plan of action to change society, and the world, has been released by the movement. There are, by design, no leaders in this movement, so no single person to ask, and no fixed ideology to recommend. While the culture of a leaderless, demand-free movement is incomprehensible to many, its strength lies in these aspects. To pull power out of the hands of the top 1 per cent of society, Wall St has to lose its grip on the Government, and the lives of the bottom 99 per cent. This will require more than a few bills passed in Congress, and significant reforms in most areas of society. To do so, the cry “we are the 99%” must be heard and repeated by most of the 99 per cent, something which can only happen when those occupying Wall St, and various locations in the world, bring enough awareness to the atrocities happening in the financial sector to make our lives so different to those in the top 1 per cent.

Everyone, every single one of us has something which we do not value at all, which another one of us would be eternally grateful for. We can all make a positive difference directly to everyone in our lives in a meaningful way. Be a freegan. It’s easy.

There are layers and layers, and all you need to do is float on top. Ignore anything you’ve previously heard, ignore the label if you are uncomfortable with it. You don’t have to rifle through trash, or re-appropriate others’ possessions. Simply give things you do not need or want to people who will use them. Offer leftover dinner to your flatmate. Offer those shoes that don’t fit to your friend of the same shoe size. Two cheese graters just takes up space, but a flat without a cheese grater is really put out on occasion, so pass it on. You have this amazing potential to make so many lives seem better, easier, more comfortable, at an absolute minimum effort to you. Listen out for comments like, “We don’t have a —-” and assess how quickly and costlessly you can help. If you own something which doesn’t fit you or your lifestyle, quickly assess those around you to see if someone else would cherish it. Anything you own which you don’t actually use is better used by someone else.

If you won’t just give, loan things to people who you know always return them, or only loan things you don’t mind not getting back. If you have it, help others use it, or spend the time to teach them. If you have a friend who you don’t trust with your stuff, come over with the stuff, help them use it, and leave with it. In many cases, they’ll probably be more grateful for the help—and everyone understands nervousness about expensive belongings. Just offer the help in the format you’re comfortable, and it will be accepted or declined—no harm, no foul.

Freeganism also makes you a happier person. Did you know the people who live above me bake for me because I let them use my washing machine? I have never asked for anything in return, but they think of me often enough to turn up with hot delicious baking. At no cost to me, when I’m not using it, my washing machine is used by an entire flat of people. There is no conceivable way that I will stay at this house long enough for this $100 machine to require replacing, so what’s the harm? They’d probably just try to sneakily use it anyway, it’s stored in a communal area, and instead of spending many an hour fretting over washing machine possessiveness, I get cookies.

I think it is important to see each other as friends with a life, thoughts, feelings, and a future. It is important to care about everyone else’s future, because it’s our future too. Giving freely encourages love and empathy on both sides. It also gives us faith in people. Giving freely is a transaction where there is no fear in what is expected of us, and strength in ourselves to only give what we can. It is so rare to receive something you need, simply because someone has observed you need it. It shouldn’t be. Freeganism pulls us further away from a tit-for-tat system where we carefully measure out our love, money, and possessions to ensure we get ‘enough’ back from life. Society does not owe us anything. We are a part of society, and we owe it to ourselves to make society what we want it to be.

Much like sexuality and race, gender is only a sensitive topic for a minority of people—those directly affected by it. Cisgendered people are born identifying with the sex they are born with, so if your genitals naturally match the gender you think you are, you are cisgendered. As an uncomfortable compromise in this article, I will simply refer to cisgendered or non-cisgendered people, avoiding terms like transsexual or genderqueer as they may offend some non-cisgendered! Even the closest friends and relatives of a non-cisgendered person (someone who wasn’t born identifying with the sexual organs they were born with) can find talking gender a veritible minefield, after the long, intense discussions about how to refer to their nearest and dearest. The complaint I frequently heard during research was that every person not only has a preferred way to refer to their gender, but in many cases they pushed their definitions on everyone else—that is, there is no hard and fast rule, at all, when it comes to how, when and where to ask who is what!
Surely, many of you are thinking; gender lines are drawn with males on one side, females on the other, and a hazy gray line in between, just to cover our bases. Well, unfortunately, not at all. John Money, a somewhat controversial expert in the field of gender, writes,

In popularized and scientifically debased usage, sex is what you are biologically; gender is what you become socially; gender identity is your own sense or conviction of maleness or femaleness; and gender role is the cultural stereotype of what is masculine and feminine.

So, your sex is defined by your genitalia and chromosomes, gender is more socially/culturally defined, and one’s gender identity is what the individual feels they are. Even sex can be hotly debated. Some people have ambiguous genitalia, genitals which aren’t definitively male or female. Some people have chromosomes which do not match their genitalia! Some further redefine sex, citing brain chemistry. It’s all quite messy, and irrelevant to what is estimated at 99 out of 100 people. But that one person in a hundred who earns the badge of ‘different,’ well, that one person is in for a hard life, often from birth. It’s not their fault.

cisgendered (physically and mentally, entirely male or female) have to find a way to function in a society where even the toilets tell us we are male, female or physically disabled. Part of this requires fitting into the language of “he” “she” or “it,” and answering the uncomfortable “so what are you” question. Now, there are ways around gendered words. There is a small but relevant movement online to use gender neutral pronouns for not only non-cisgendered, but also objects, online personas, robots and nongendered characters. Normalising gender neutral pronouns, such as ne/nem/nir (ne laughed, I called nem, nir eyes gleam, that is nirs) may make huge inroads into normalising non-cisgendered people. Gender neutral pronouns enable everyone to avoid awkward situations, where no one has to confront the gender question within minutes of meeting (as a cisgendered woman who is regularly attributed masculine descriptors, I’d certainly appreciate it). So, picking a brand of gender neutral pronouns (there are six ‘commonly used’ different sets for English), and integrating them into everyday use may help.

Why is normalising, and finding an appropriate way to approach a noncisgendered person important? If estimates are correct, and around 1 per cent of the population is non-cisgendered, you’re looking at 210 non cisgendered in the Victoria University student population, 5000 in Wellington as a whole. While cisgendered people are the majority, being non-cisgendered is not that unusual, and our language needs to reflect this important minority. If you know how to interact with someone without causing embarassment and anger on one/both sides, then life becomes much easier. Interacting with someone visibly different does not become such an uncomfortable affair, and it is easier to give an otherwise normal conversation some much deserved normality.

At the same time, if a noncisgendered person feels that they are, say, female, they have probably fought so many battles on their sexuality that referring to them in a gender neutral sense may be incredibly hurtful. You simply do not know how someone ideally wants to be treated until stepping out of line. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there is as much genuine confusion, misunderstandings, and arguments within non-cisgendered, non-heterosexual communities as there is within society as a whole.

When it comes down to it, any kind of label, whether accurate in our eyes or not, may offend, even if (as I found out the hard way), the label is ‘cisgendered’ and applied to those who haven’t given their sex a second thought. Perhaps equally unsurprisingly, we all mistakenly mistreat each other in a variety of ways when we first meet them, so pick the path of least resistance, and if you know they are non-cisgendered, don’t be afraid to politely ask. There is an enormous difference between asking someone ‘what’ they are, and asking them how to refer to them. Commonly, the answer will be “call me by my name,” which gramatically can be a bit hard at first but well worth the respect and smiles you get in return. “Labels are strange to me. “Transgender” feels weird enough coming out of my mouth, let alone something as abrasively in-your-face as “genderqueer.” Ultimately, the only label that I’m truly comfortable with is “Me”.”(genderfork.com)

The only truly positive way to move forward, and the most common request, is that non-cisgendered people are just allowed to exist without another battle. Working out how to talk to people is enough to push some people back into angry, intentional ignorance. The joy of being treated as the gender one wishes to be perceived as is great, but when actually engaging in conversation, leaving gender entirely out of it and talking to a non-cisgendered person as a real live, normal, human being who isn’t defined by gender is even better.

Pumpkin, Beetroot, potato and cottage cheese pie

So I had all of the above ingredients, with a hefty helping of pastry from Cafe Mamba, a cafe in the CBD that seem to love me enough to donate rad stuff to the family now and then. I don’t like cottage cheese. I don’t use cottage cheese. It was inexplicably in the fridge, so I figured why not add it to stuff and hope for the best.

• 1 beetroot, cut into 2cm cubes
• ¼ pumpkin, cut into 2cm cubes
• 1tbsp cinnamon
• 1tbsp salt
• 1tbsp ginger
• 2tbsp oil

Toss the above together and roast until fully cooked. Put into a blender with a 250g container of cottage cheese, pepper, and salt to taste. It will taste odd, and rich. Like it would taste good in exceptionally small quantities.

• 5 small potatoes, cut into 2cm cubes
• About 300g savoury pastry (the stuff I get is flaky and not really designed for pies, but tastes so much better)

Boil the potatoes until just tender, and mix into the pumpkin/beet puree. Roll out the pastry to about 3mm thick, and use it to line a pie dish. Save a bit to chuck on top. Add the potato mix on top of the pastry, then the last bit of pastry on top, and cook at 180 degrees until the pastry on top is browned and the sides of the pie pastry are starting to crisp.

The pie filling will be bright red and eating it will mess with your head a bit, because it looks like a sweet pie. Enjoy :)

We’ve all heard the stories of how a business degree didn’t mean that Jimmy had a step ahead in his new job, or how the law graduate still had no working idea of how the law applied. Bachelor of Arts has started to become synonymous with ‘career-less’ to many. On top of this, we have entrepreneurs who barely scraped through primary school, sitting on top of their game—Steve Jobs from Apple dropped out of university, and New Zealand’s second most popular website, TradeMe, was set up entirely by a dropout. So why university at all? Do we need it? Isn’t life, these days, about the connections we have to those already in our chosen lines of business?

Well, frankly, university will only get us so far. Even qualifications which seemingly guaranteed work are failing to deliver—in the United States last year, 87.4 per cent of law graduates had any sort of job nine months after graduation, 11 per cent of which were only part-time. Having university qualifications won’t necessarily protect your job from cuts, nor will it necessarily push you ahead in the field—common feedback from jobseeking graduates is that employers are asking for industry experience, not simply a degree. Most degrees—BA, BSc especially, do not exactly funnel one into a specific, eagerly await jobs.

Once we have a job, having a tertiary qualification will improve our starting rate and average income level. OECD data also shows that holding a tertiary qualification will reduce the income gap between men and women—that is, with a degree, a woman is more likely to earn a similar amount to a similarly qualified man, whereas without tertiary qualifications, women earn on average around 30 per cent less. (To some extent, this disparity is a result of 30-44 year old women working part time.) Women specifically are financially better off with a degree than without, as women in the labour market are typically valued less than men. It seems that the more vulnerable a person is, the more likely they are to be discriminated against, and the better their odds of success with a degree.

New Zealand, however, has some uncomfortable statistics when it comes to jobseekers with tertiary qualifications. In comparison with much of the developed world, our qualified jobseekers start on rates similar to the unqualified, and do not catch up to where they globally should be for quite some time. Many jobseekers feel they are overqualified—their qualifications and experience are much greater than those required for positions advertised. Furthermore, employers can be uncomfortable with hiring someone who will quickly want more money and possibly be trying to hike up the corporate ladder quickly.

But what about the Steve Jobs of the world? Those who have little more than a focus, and drive to succeed? Well, do you have a million dollar idea, and the drive to see it through? Go on, try it. Try to go to university with this passionate idea sitting in the back of your mind, buzzing away while you try to write assignments. Put your spare money towards making it work. Don’t have such an idea? Perhaps you should stay at university. One of the reasons that such a drive to succeed is so important, is that not going to university or having similar mentoring and assistance means that there is a whole lot of learning which needs to be done. One cannot simply buy a license to print money—running a business is potholed with legal obligations, loopholes, and problems. Caring about your business enough to go the extra mile and dot all of the ‘i’s is the difference between the Serepisoses and the Forbeses of this world- cutting corners and ignorance will only get you so far, and a lifetime is a long time to deal with mistakes. Relevant university degrees will ensure that you have a depth and breadth of knowledge about your chosen subject, as opposed to cherrypicking the interesting parts and ignoring others which in reality are rather vital.

As short a time as ten years ago, one could get a bank loan and take the plunge towards developing million-dollar ideas. Today’s economy, when no credit is as bad as bad credit, many people simply cannot afford to take the risk. While University is expensive, you come out of it with something you will hold for the rest of your life—education, and formal qualifications. While repaying your student loan is a daunting task, every figure I could find showed that the increased income from those qualifications translated to about a 10-15 per cent return on the investment of those years and that expense.

If embarking on a trip up an existing corporate ladder, personal connections may mean much more than a degree. But if you don’t have those connections, the best place to make them is at university, where you are studying alongside the new generation’s greats. You are daily crossing paths with hundreds of students, and any one of them may positively impact your world in ten years (best to not piss a lot of people off). Your lecturers and tutors often still have a hold in the professional world, and people talk. You may get just the right foothold, having spent a few years picking the brain of your future employer’s friends—your tutors and lecturers.

All success involves learning. We can’t start with ignorance and succeed without advancing beyond ignorance. Perhaps evaluating how and why we learn is the first step into becoming successful, as university is not the ideal learning structure for many. If university is not your thing, then look for another way to keep improving as a person and supporting yourself. Most entrepreneurs know that they will never work ‘for’ someone, but rather want to succeed on their own terms. Succeeding without a mentor, again, requires a significant amount of self motivated learning—something we can all learn from our university education. There’s no right answer as to what we, individually, should do. But graduating into a supermarket job, to eventually make something of yourself, is still better than dropping out into a supermarket job, and hoping for the future.

It has a large number of variants, but the generalised term is CBT or CT (Cognitive Therapy). This article focuses on this umbrella concept as a whole rather than any one specific variant.

The focus of CBT is on the client’s beliefs, and how they apply those beliefs to events in their life. Essentially, the therapist aims to ensure the client’s actions and beliefs are optimally healthy—the person does not engage in ‘dysfunctional’ thinking. Dysfunctional thinking occurs when the beliefs you hold about the world distort reality, are unsupported by the evidence available to you or cause you to harm yourself/others, or feel distressed and immobilised. Dysfunctional thinking in general is seen to occur as a reaction to events in one’s life, as a part of the ABC model (see insert).

During therapy, which is generally given a static timeframe of 3-12 months, the therapist and client will work together in an attempt to change the client’s beliefs, in the view that those beliefs are the mitigating factor in the client’s problems. The therapist will give the client ‘homework’ and much of the therapy will in fact be self-directed—the client will attempt to address the situations in which they have trouble as they occur, outside of therapy, with the mental/emotional tools given by the therapist.

CBT has similar rates of success as with other forms of therapy. It does not seem to reduce the risk of relapse in psychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. What it does seem, from an outsiders’ perspective, to be useful for is for relatively minor personality problems which may cause anxiety or depression.

It interests me that the perspective of most of those who practise CBT compared to those who practise other forms of therapy, CBT has a unique perspective by focussing on beliefs. Surely other forms of therapy also examine the beliefs underlying events, and discuss how and why the clients acted in a given situation. As a result of the popularity of, and diversion of psychiatric funding into CBT, it has attracted some criticism as there is little data suggesting it is more effective than other forms of therapy. Indeed, there is arguably little data suggesting any one form of therapy is more effective than others, but rather going to therapy is more effective than not going to therapy! Most studies examining CBT compare CBT to taking psychiatric drugs for treatment, and in those cases CBT often will resolve the issue, and much faster than the drugs, when it comes to mood or anxiety disorders. So, while CBT may not be leagues ahead of other forms of therapy, it is still an effective form of therapy.

All in all, CBT does seem to be a very direct method of dealing with personal problems, if those problems are based on one’s beliefs. Because it involves very seemingly cold interpretations of how and why the client acts the way they do, coupled with treating the client’s life as a lesson they can give homework for, it may well be too direct for many people.

The ABC model of Cognitive
Behaviour Therapy

A: Activating event: A friend passed me in the street without acknowledging me
B: Beliefs about A: He’s ignoring me. He doesn’t like me
I am unacceptable as a friend, so must be worthless as a person
For me to be happy and feel worthwhile, people must like me
C: Consequence: Emotionally hurt and depressed. Behaviour changes to avoid people generally
‘A’ does not cause ‘C,’ but triggers off ‘B’ which in turn causes ‘C.’ ‘C’ may also then become the ‘A’ of another ABC model (e.g. the person may infer, from their avoidance of people, that they are weak (‘B’) and put themselves down (‘C’). CBT is heavily focused on intercepting beliefs at point B to affect point C

Dr Sketchy Wellington is monthly and hosted by Mighty Mighty. For $12/$14, anyone can come in and experience a wealth of colour, models and atmosphere with a sketch book in hand. The talented Wellington scene brings a variety to the table, with costumers and dancers doing their thing to avoid mere traditional poses, and some pictures are simply breathtaking. Rachel Rouge began Dr Sketchy Wellington in 2009, and will be retiring in October of this year.

Venus Starr will be taking the reins of Dr Sketchy, with big boots to fill. Starr has over six years of circus performance under her belt from the Circus Trust in Miramar, in addition to lengthy stints teaching and performing worldwide on the burlesque and circus scene. Among her talents, she can do aerial silks, hula, and swinging trapeze, which she enjoys bringing to Burlesque in Wellington. She aims to bring a more circus-style feel to performances in Wellington, avoiding mere ‘striptease’ style shows for full, high calibre burlesque shows, often combining talents such as aerial silks, pole, or hula. In addition to this, in a moment of boredom when pregnant, the high energy Starr formed the monthly event Carousel Cabaret to remain active when unable to perform in the Wellington burlesque scene.

One of the best things about the Wellington burlesque scene, and Venus in particular, is that she knows most performers well enough to push the boundaries. Venus knows her performers’ limits and can tailor each session to each performer, and vice versa. Wellington Dr Sketchy artists are becoming well known for drawing more detailed, beautiful pictures owing to each performer’s ability to hold poses for five to seven minutes, as opposed to one or two. Combining this with a passion for extending the common view of burlesque as simply striptease, shows at Mighty Mighty combine a range of concepts appealing to increasing numbers of Wellingtonians. Rachel Rouge has organised her final Dr Sketchy to be Zombie themed, ending with the symbolic killing of Rouge by Starr, as she takes the spotlight.

Venus’ monthly Burlesque show, Carousel Cabaret, is a work of art combining traditional Burlesque with more circus-style entertainment, with a healthy dose of comedy. It is next held at Garden Bar at 7pm, August 26.

The next Dr Sketchy will be held at Mighty Mighty, from 4-7pm on Friday 12 August 2011.

Firstly, accept that your hair will need bleach. I’d say bleach it about 2 shades lighter than your hair colour, and no more unless going white. Why? Because you have to deal with upkeep and regrowth – if you lighten it any more, it will only take 2 weeks before your hair is obviously in need of dyeing, and dyeing that often is bad for it and completely unnecessary.

If your hair is naturally black, or you don’t take the above advice, consider dyeing patches instead of the whole head – e.g. the middle section in a band from above your ear to just below it, or dyeing your hair a tamer colour all over, then dyeing patches of extreme colour over the top in big sections.

Try to choose colour based on the assumption it will be about two shades darker than it looks in tube. Yes, your hair will lighten to the colour it appears in-tube, but it will do so unevenly and by the time that happens, it’ll need a re-dye. You will need about 1/4 of a tube left over, so if you have a lot of hair, you may need more tubes than initially assumed.

Bleach can be any blonde hair dye. For your extreme dye, I’d recommend one of:

Fudge - my favourite, especially because if you get rained on in town the colour doesn’t run all over your clothes! But their red selection is a bit crap, in my opinion. Also, Fudge doesn’t fade too badly and I’ve used it years at a time with no unpleasantness.
Directions - Stay out of the rain. Really wicked colours and probably best looking if you really keep on top of upkeep. But after 8 months or so of use, the colour didn’t hold well anymore, so I personally won’t touch it. Also, this one will rub off on clothes/bedding.
Special Effects – I’d say avoid rain, but it isn’t too bad. Can be pretty cruel to anything the dye touches in terms of removal. Colours are pretty cool. Fades pretty heavily the first week or so, which can be a pain if you really thought through your colour and got it ‘just right’.

If you have an inside day or can wear a big hat, start the process. You need at least 6hrs with colour dye in your hair. This is a long time. Consider covering your bed in towels and letting it dye overnight. 

1. Bleach hair. Look at shade. Accept your hair colour will not be magically lighter than this shade!

2. Moisturise with an especially oily moisturiser around your hairline, over ears, down back of neck.

3. Apply dye. If doing more than one colour, think through your order of dyeing. I do it all at once, but can only get away with this because I don’t do dissimilar colours.

4. Put hair in a comfortable position and wrap with gladwrap, leave about an hour, then after this unless sleeping you can usually comb and style hair, wipe off excess barrier cream and go about a day which doesn’t involve people touching your hair.

5. After a good 6+ hrs, shower and wash it all out- the water may never run completely clear but make sure as much residue as possible is out of your hair.
 
Upkeep

Don’t wash your hair daily, it’s so bad for it. Try weekly, or every 3-4 days.
When washing hair, use as cool water as you can stand.
When showering and not washing hair, wear a shower cap. This makes an enormous difference.
Add dye to your conditioner bottle. Somewhere between a quarter and a fifth of your conditioner should be dye.
Use leave-in conditioner or do similar lovely things to your hair so it stays healthy.
Look at the back of your head to determine if your hair is fading too much, not the front, as the back/sides fade much faster.
Redye every 3-5 weeks. You should be good enough at looking after your hair because of regrowth, not because of colour fade.
Treat different colour sections separately in everything you do to avoid muddying colours.

Once you know how to do it, it’s easy. It’s just learning how to make small changes.

Justice is actually much easier for students to organise than it may seem. The legal system in New Zealand is set up so as to avoid lawyers and courts wherever possible—the Disputes Tribunal, the Tenancy Tribunal (relating to renting/flatting), and the Employment Relations Authority. All of these hold minimal fees for the applicant—for example, it costs $20.44 for most applications to the Tenancy Tribunal—so many people are able to access those services.

A common complaint from the legal community is that many students haven’t quite realised that life can be unfair. If it isn’t a formal agreement, you may not have a leg to stand on. If it isn’t explicit, there’s wriggle room, and in interactions with landlords or employers, wriggle room will not be found but rather used as a matter of fact—that’s why it’s there. As a student, the best way to ensure financially viable justice is to ensure that you know your rights from the get-go. Enter into contracts fully aware of the consequences—for example, work out exactly what, when and how purchases are to be paid off, and the overall amount of interest you will be paying. Sit on the phone with a calculator and ask for the bank to confirm your calculations. Put bill paying cut-off dates into your cellphone, including credit cards, and learn about minimum repayments.

In an issue involving a contract—be it tenancy, employment or otherwise—the other party is likely to know what is reasonable, what will be considered a breach of contract, and what is fair. If they don’t, it’s likely that they will back down once they do. Importantly, students especially are better able to find success without taking the matter further, by accepting a healthy locus of control over their lives.

Locus of control is a personality variable related to how much people believe their lives are under their own control. Those who are said to possess internal locus of control believe they determine what happens to them and that they can change or influence the course of events. Others said to have external locus of control feel that the cause and control of events in their lives lie outside their abilities, and attribute what happens to them to the external environment. (Pinto et al, 2004.)

This attitude is even more important when it comes to borrowing and spending, as individuals are more likely to take responsibility for their decisions and think about their future in respect of pressing decisions. Students, especially, while readjusting to a new lifestyle, need to see their actions and responses as those intimately affecting the outcome of a tense legal situation. Prior to reaching the courts, it is all down to being gracious, careful and firm with words. Once it reaches the courts, the opposite occurs—anything said right up until the courtroom will be considered, so agreeing to anything or making unnecessarily harsh demands or expectations will not work in your favour unless they really are terms you are willing to stick to.

What we as students are less likely to have access to is the time or advice that will make claims through the courts worth it. Some governmental advisory phone lines are able to provide general advice, but you are unlikely to receive feedback on your specific claim beyond either “it’s worth following up” or “you probably don’t have a claim”. Often disputes are based on technicalities, and those technicalities are unlikely to be covered in such advisory phone calls, so while they are able to tell you parts of the law, they may still be unhelpful.

So, let’s assume that you have contacted the relevant authorities for advice and you wish to take someone to court. How do you know that it’s all worth it, assuming you have the time to invest into this particular cause? Get legal advice. Despite the fact that you will not need a lawyer for any of the initial courses of action, seeking legal advice will make it less likely that you waste your time. There is the law, and then there is how the law is applied. There are key things to mention when attempting to invoke the law, or show that the law is on your side, and unless you have significant experience in those fields, you might omit key facts completely. For instance, one of the key determiners in whether an individual is still an occupant of a house is whether or not they have keys to the house—when flatting, often keys aren’t handed over in the first place, but if an ex-flatmate is still holding a key, they are likely to still be liable for rent. Would
you have mentioned that if you didn’t know to?

There are also specific aspects of how the law is applied that you are unlikely to know unless you have some form of legal knowledge. Informal conversations with lawyers, or anyone who has been in formal situations, may be helpful, but you need to know details specific to your personal circumstances. In conclusion: spend some time with a lawyer, and try to find out how to get legal advice with the smallest amount of cost to you. When it comes to the law, you need to accept that there is a certain amount of either time or money that you will need to spend, and if you have no money, you better have a whole lot of time to spend on your case.

So, how does one get justice as a student? Really, it is more about knowing the world we live in and trying to avoid situations where we are unable to invoke the law. Part of this is ensuring we don’t get into disputes where we have also breached contracts or broken the law—it’s easy to say that something is unfair before considering how we brought it on ourselves. Weigh up the pros and cons of different courses of action, and get as much legal advice as possible—preferably, before it’s really necessary.

Halls of residence, it seems, are great as they give you a safety net so you can’t stray too far, and there are (albeit minor) consequences for your actions. The concept of ‘party free’ floors was laughed at, as well as the idea of studying with the people who lived with you. Maybe halls aren’t the real world just yet, but all in one year many people are leaving home, learning how to feed, clothe and budget for themselves, study relatively unassisted, and act like an adult, so halls overall seem like a good way to test the water. Complaints ranged from terrible food to not fully meshing with the other people, but all times were a hazy warm memory—so it doesn’t seem like anyone really regretted living there.

“Halfway through the year, when things started to get boring, Rory invented this awesome drinking game where we all sat in the dark, not talking, and drinking beer. Once you’d drunk all six beers, you got up and quietly left the room.”

Flatting, especially with people you don’t already know, seems to be a mixed bag. Staying on the same wavelength as one’s flatmates, especially if they aren’t also first year, can be hard during exam time. Also, living with a load of first years that come from relatively privileged backgrounds can be a recipe for disaster.

Also, taking responsibility for bills and bond can be hard—one person compared it to herding cats. In this sense, flatting in first-year and coming out alive seems to be a good achievement, which is likely to lend itself to a better second year.

“I moved into a flat with randoms—living in a flat itself was a positive experience (apart from being broke, but that was fun itself in a way). However, I also failed everything at uni and only went to one of my exams… so maybe I’d change the part where I went “FREEDOM! BOOZING!! FUCK STUDY!!!”… but then again, maybe I wouldn’t.”

The priorities we all set ourselves when pushed out into the big wide world are a bit laughable now. How about the 19-year-old who wanted to live alone, and slept under his jacket in a powerless house to do so? One poor fool choose to buy town shoes instead of furniture, and had not one, but two girls leave his bedroom laughing hysterically at the sleeping bag on the floor.

The first thing I heard about was all the causes my parents had never filled me in on. The worst was the meat industry, and how they treat their animals. So I became a vegetarian, trying to be a vegan, but because I had no idea which foods contained animal products, and which didn’t, I ended up eating kebabs and hot chips for months
Some people never left home at all, and all they needed to do was work out how to lie to StudyLink to ensure they received money to waste. The combination of more free time, clean clothes and hot dinners often meant more free time for depravity. Many who took this option were glad of the ability to actually focus on study, and ease into the adult world, while some felt pushed into the option by parents who may have even moved city to keep them in the family home!

The opposite seemed more common, however, when both StudyLink and parents left some students out in the cold.

“I’m not going to go into details here but suffice to say that taking abandoned, half-eaten burgers that you didn’t buy from BK and giving them to Blanket Man would be offering him more support than I saw from my father for a good long while. But StudyLink, in their ineffable wisdom, felt that I was unworthy of support. I had at this point lost 11 kg because I was eating only free ice cream twice a day.”

The balance between cheering for freedom and accepting an 18-year-old is still a bit immature to be on their own seemed like a hard line for parents to fathom, especially when basic life skills were never fully taught. Budgeting seemed to be something that was done until one reached their last $5, and the choice between alcohol and food on the weekend was a relatively common one.

“If I had tomato sauce and rice, I had a meal. Sometimes I’d even have cheese. If I was too hungry, I’d go to bed early.”

Overall, the best thing we all took from first-year was that no matter how bad it got, it was such an experience that changing it isn’t something we’d want to do. The combination of learning about so many things at once in such a socially different year means that everyone follows such a steep learning curve that the year is inevitably worth it.

“I once went to a party and ended up resting my head on size G boobs while making out with my best friend and watching a bearded man in a dress recite Dr Seuss. It caused a lot of repercussions but that night will forever be in my brain and I will never want it out of there.”

Inter-hostel rivalry, finding that your roommate has stolen all of your green tea, and learning what mould is are nothing compared to being bored and stable in a clean flat when no-one is home.

Pasta? Pfft, what about a rice bake? Cut lots of veges (broccoli, carrot, peas, corn) small, toss in the pan with a bit of olive oil, add any soup (favourite is spiced pumpkin. A bit of spice is good). Boil up some rice, mix together (if very runny consider adding egg, but it shouldn’t need it), cheese on top and bake till the cheese melts.

Gluten free pancake mix is a must, because it makes fantastic muffins (and apparently biscuits, but I haven’t tried this). Make it according to directions on the pack and add any yummy muffin ingredients you have. Our favourite is Whittaker’s Dark Ghana chocolate with berries. Pour into muffin tins and bake for about 20 mins at 180 degrees.

Oven bake chips are a good thing to have on hand for snacks, especially in winter when craving warm, starchy foods.

When the naturally solid GF bread is inedible, make it into bread and butter pudding. For about 8 slices, cut into triangles and laid around a greased baking tin, whisk 3 eggs, a cup of milk, ½ cup sugar, a handful of raisins/frozen berries/chocolate. Pour mixture over each layer of bread as you go and bake at 180 degrees until there are no runny bits! You could also put stale bread into a blender and use breadcrumbs as a base for apple crumble.

Learn to enjoy a wide variety of fruit, so your fruitbowl is full and you can one day say the words, “I am craving an apple and a handful of almonds”. Smoothies and milkshakes are another good snacky food to enjoy.

Mexican food is awesome. Many tacos and nachos are made from corn and you might get lucky with burritos.

Pizza bases can be pretty good. Keep them in the freezer and if you make more than needed for that meal, pizza slices make good snacks or lunch food.

Don’t try to change out gluten-based ingredients with GF ingredients. Just don’t. Use GF recipes if you need recipes. Avoid trying to make food which is naturally bready- with a few exceptions, you will just be disappointed.

Good luck!

Often the arguments for being a vegetarian or vegan are moral ones (some estimates put the number of vegetarians who don’t like meat at about 34 per cent, with the rest citing an ethical or moral decision). I will, at best, gloss over these with the emotional generalisation ‘we have no right to farm and murder animals’. When it comes to the environmental cost of raising livestock for food, as opposed to growing plants for food, direct comparisons are very hard to get. Further, no-one can comfortably compare—rainforest depletion in the lower Americas (for soybean production), and animal manure dumped into rivers (as a result of factory farming). It may come down to personal preference of where one would be more comfortable destroying the planet. As a result, no direct comparisons will be made here, but some good things to think about when purchasing food.

Many people are concerned with the distance travelled from farm to table in terms of greenhouse emissions. The most decisive report I could source on the benefits of consuming locally grown foods ended with a large question mark.

In terms of meat, a Lincoln University study has shown that New Zealand is so efficient at raising cattle and sheep that consuming NZ meat in the UK is less damaging than consuming meat from the UK. Unfortunately, once the meat reaches our supermarket trolley, what we do can account for up to 21 per cent of our greenhouse gas emissions. Unless we really pack up the car on the way home from the supermarket, a significant portion of CO2 and greenhouse gas emissions comes down to how you transport and cook meat. But then again, you can say exactly the same for vegetables. Transporting vegetables once they are in your possession, and cooking them, can account for up to 67 per cent of the overall cost to the planet. Why is this figure so high? Because growing fruit, vegetables and grain is much more efficient than raising animals for meat production—not because the cooking method is different.

In New Zealand, obviously, most of animals raised for meat production eat grass, which requires minimal intervention in terms of chemicals being added to the eco system. In places such as the USA and Europe, however, animals are often fed grain, which has been grown for livestock feed. The amount of grain required for a cow over its lifetime is enormous—one thought experiment estimated that an 8oz steak can feed one person, while the grain required to get that single piece of steak would feed 72 people. Try this comparison: 1kg of potatoes uses 1.3MJ of energy throughout its life cycle, and 215g/100yr Global Warming Potential (in short, CO2 equivalent), compared to 1kg of UK lamb, using 23MJ of energy throughout its life and 17,400g/100yr GWP.

So we can eat meat in New Zealand! Well, not really. To happily eat meat in New Zealand, ignoring the huge methane emissions made by the animals, we need to know that the animals are reared sustainably. Manure needs to be treated well, preferably left in paddocks, and not washed into waterways either intentionally (as can be the case with dairy or factory farms) or unintentionally (with heavy rain, flooding, and badly set out farms). While agriculture has less of a problem with eutrophication—that is, chemicals, especially nitrogen, leaching into waterways—as a rough rule, meat production damages waterways more, and agriculture less—but it depends heavily on the farms. Another discomforting fact is that organic farming methods of either meat or agriculture cause comparable levels of eutrophication and pollution in general.

When it comes down to it, once we take out the amount of waste that the animals themselves produce, and the grain required to feed them, one could almost argue that eating meat is as good or bad for the planet as being vegetarian. Almost. But if you really want to feel better, be careful with your supermarket trip. Walk there regularly, or drive and make it worth it. Cook efficiently and consider your power use. Then feel bad for that 8oz steak.

Don’t open with a pickup line. You shouldn’t need, or use, a pickup line. The aim of a pickup line is to get someone you don’t even know to sleep with you, which is transparent and not particularly classy. If you are genuinely that single minded, try to see a non-sexual conversation as getting to know the person for basic reasons such as where they live, the likelihood that they will have a disease, whether you will be compatible and have the same intentions. Starting out with the implication that sleeping with them is your sole focus is offensive and degrading. Have a conversation. Enjoy casual flirting and the fun of the chase. That’s what people like. Being put on the spot is uncomfortable and intimidating.

Have no expectations. If you spend money or time on someone, you can’t view this as their ‘owing’ you anything. You have chosen to spend that time and money, so unless they have explicitly discussed expectations with you, you cannot place unwelcome expectations on them. For the same reason, be very wary of people expecting you to purchase them a drink early on- they are likely to ‘pay’ for it by spending a short amount of time with you, and then bugger off. Viewing interactions with people as transactions will only bring similarly minded people into your life, as opposed to people who want to see you because they like you.

Watch where your eyes are when conversation lulls. The single most offputting, upsetting thing (as a woman, I don’t know about men) to deal with when in the presence of someone you don’t know well is prolonged eye contact with no conversation. Unless faces are being pulled, prolonged eye contact often leaves your face frozen in a slightly off-putting, uncomfortable expression. Unless the person you’re talking to really likes you in a romantic way, they will glance all over your face, picking up every flaw that they dislike, and then look away. You will make them feel uncomfortable in your presence and they will struggle to understand your intentions. If you aren’t actively talking to someone, don’t stare into their eyes; if you find yourself staring into their eyes and aren’t about to lean in for a kiss, shrug it off by giving a bit of a laugh. This can also force the conversation into avenues you want to pursue, with little compliments when they ask why you’re laughing.

Don’t bounce from one person to another, trying your luck. In any situation, be it a party, lecture theatre, bar or casual hangout, if you are trying to get someone to like you romantically, other people will pick up on the vibes. Upon testing the waters and giving up, the best thing to do is remain the life of the party- you’re there to have some fun, try to at least pretend getting laid is not the end goal. Making it apparent that you are out to find a partner will severely limit your options- noone likes to be second best, or have others looking at them as if they are. Further, people uninvolved in your interactions will quickly label you with concepts which are not enjoyable. I have no objection to people (safely) having as many sexual partners as they please, but being known as the person who will try it on with anyone that will talk to them will quickly erode the likelihood of any genuine connections… or getting laid.

• If you don’t like something, work out why. Is it the texture (too crunchy/soft/firm), awkward to eat, does it remind you of a bad food memory (like the taste reminds you of that time you vomited black bean noodle?), are you aware that there’s something wrong with the food (when preparing it, you dropped a bit on the floor and put it back in, so you keep thinking you can taste hair…), or, a common one – is it too hot or cold?
• Have a fallback for your meals. If you made a crappy pasta sauce, try adding tomato or barbecue sauce to it. If your veggies are too dull and bland, try tossing them in grated cheese, breadcrumbs, a spot of melted butter, salt and pepper, and some crushed garlic (in any combination, but I do all at once and chuck it under the grill for a few minutes). If you bake a cake, think through ways to keep it interesting – like heated with ice-cream for dessert, when it gets a bit dry. In general, if something isn’t tasty enough, try it with something which will add a bit of salt or sugar to it.
• When cooking a meal, ensure that there is at least one vegetable which you know you’ll scoff down. For instance, in a stir fry you can add mushrooms, mini corn cobs (buy them canned), etc.. Or, if a meal is predominantly vegetables, eg baked potatoes, chop up some nuts or meat (something you’ll really enjoy getting to), to motivate your serving size.
• Look at things you can have with your meal that will help you eat the boring bits. Some people always have buttered bread handy (lasagna sandwiches are the best), and if you make sandwiches you can add salad to them and be healthier. Some people like mashed potato, and mix it all up.. it’s about finding what works.
• Mashed potato is great for hiding things in. For every three spoons of potato, you can hide in about one spoon of mashed broccoli. Also, if you hate baked beans and need a cheap protein source, mash baked beans up with potato and it’s delicious.
• Generally, spreads or sauces aren’t the best for you. Hummus, even, is high fat (and often high salt), so really get into reading the packet before you buy. What spreads and sauces are good for, however, is enticing you to eat boring things. This only works if they taste good with whatever you’re eating.
• If you need to eat, but aren’t hungry, get involved with preparing your meal. Get excited about your food. Think about what you’ll drink with it and get that ready too. If possible, cook it in a frying pan and smell it cooking – even reheated food. See if there’s anyone around to share it with. You’ll find yourself snacking on it before it hits the plate.

The biggest hurdle to eating often, well, and healthily, is pressure. Make it a joy to explore your tastes, ignore everything but your health, and you’ll do fine.

There is an implication in the use of ‘modern world’ implying that the world once poisoned us less than it does now, or that everything was somehow more natural one hundred years ago. So let’s clear the air and accept that we all poison ourselves and each other, somehow, regardless of the time period we live in. We may poison the world more, but humans have been doing their thing and destroying themselves for centuries, apparently with fewer ill-effects than supposed. (Apologies to any Zeitgeisters who hold faith in the premise that the modern world did spawn unnaturally, that humans now have traits unnatural to humans. Really—I’m sorry that you’ve talked yourself into such a corner. Please open a peer-reviewed journal before opening one’s mouth.)

So how is the Modern World poisoning us, compared to in the past? Well, we’re all a wee bit too comfortable in our lives. We have a range of solutions to each problem and are perhaps not making the most considerate choices. We know that nuking the garden with pesticide will stop weeds from spreading, while they’re likely to grow back if simply pulled out. If there’s a fly in the lounge, we can spray half a can of flyspray and vacuum up the corpse later; swat it with a flyswat; or just leave it. Understandably, the simplest, cheapest and fastest choices are often the ones taken up. Unfortunately, the simplest, cheapest and fastest choices may have longer-term ramifications, and people everywhere have begun cottoning onto the importance of being ‘eco-friendly’ with trademark human snobbery and short-sightedness.

Isn’t a move toward being eco-friendly a good thing? Well, yes, but eco-friendliness is about being holistically better for the world, as opposed to improving the world in a few minor ways. Take multi-use coffee takeaway cups, such as KeepCups, which claim to reduce the amount of landfill created by single-use takeaway cups. The KeepCup needs to be used a minimum of 17 times to have a smaller carbon footprint than single-use cups. That’s, say, four weeks of using it nearly every weekday—which is great for those who regularly buy coffee, but for many individuals, I’d hazard a guess that the cup would be used five to ten times before being moved permanently to the back of a cupboard.

Perhaps the more mitigating factor is that most people get takeaway coffees for the convenience factor, and it is more likely one will want to throw away single-use packaging than plan ahead. For those drinking a lot of takeaway coffee, a reusable cup is best, but for those who do not drink much, any takeaway method requiring some kind of manufactured cup is unlikely to be used enough comparative to its effect on the environment. Eco-friendly products are only eco-friendly if the way we act is in itself eco-friendly: buying into the hype of a reuseble, but never re-used, object is worse for the environment than the occasional purchase of a single-use product.

Recycling is another example of where the modern world attempts to solve its excess waste by creating further waste. Much of Wellington’s glass is shipped to China for recycling, leaving a hefty carbon footprint in its wake, requiring crude oil for its transportation, and creating chemical waste during processing. Is it better for the environment if we don’t recycle at all? Not really—even if our recycling, right now, comes at a greater cost to the environment than putting everything into landfill, the industry around recycling is constantly changing and getting more efficient. If we don’t recycle, we are not investing in the industry, so neither recycling methods nor our choices are likely to improve. Recycling, even at an initially higher cost, is highly likely to have better effects on the environment over the long term.

Moreover, the biggest impact of our choices affects the people who are manufacturing the goods, working in mostly third world conditions. Most of the time, ‘eco-friendly’ relates to the impact of the final product on the consumer, not the impact on those during the manufacturing process. The best, albeit most time-consuming method to ensure that one doesn’t ingest a swarm of unwanted chemicals is to make as much from scratch as possible. No-one will be impacted by manufacturing methods if we have no need for factories that cause a host of medical problems for their workers. In order to respond to the modern world’s poisoning us, we have to incorporate a wider view of who ‘us’ includes—we have to include people on the manufacturing lines who are unable to make a choice as to the impact of their working conditions on their bodies. Simply refusing to purchase from any company will further worsen factory workers’ situation, as their meagre financial resources will dry up; so will their ability to survive, if we force closure of the only factories they can work in.

But simply absolving from purchases will go back to the same issue as with recycling—if we don’t invest in companies who are trying to innovate and improve manufacturing methods, then the manufacturers may not have the funds available to invest in improving manufacturing methods. (Is it even possible to absolve from purchasing any goods?!) I hesitate to delve deeper into ethical or political discourse, but while our actions seem to reflect our deep-seated moral and political views, they may have little actual effect on how our environment is impacted. Are we, in the modern world, able to make an ethical choice at all, or are we fooling ourselves? Have technology and science developed too fast, with little consideration for wider issues? Have technology and science developed with great consideration for wider issues, but the capitalist pig has no interest outside of its wallet? Is everyone trying as best they can, but are we all just a little too self-involved to make personal sacrifices for the greater good? Everyone has an answer to this, but adequate solution’s are few and far between.

The average follower number on twitter is 125 people, and the average Facebook user has 130 friends. Offline, the number of so-called true friends varies little. Historically, one relied on family for support and friendships, while a 1985 study indicated Americans on average had 3 friends to confide in. More recently, figures from 2006 indicate this number has dropped to two (Lynn Smith-Lovin, 2006), which may raise alarmist bells, but when one compares this to the number of friends we count on Facebook… Well, life may not be as terrible as it seems. The difference between online friends, counted in the tens to hundreds, and offline acquaintances or friends, counted on the fingers and toes, is stark, and not for the reasons we think.

The internet gives us a platform to voice our opinions to complete strangers, and, on social media, a dedicated person can continue to ‘add’ strangers and get at least a word in edgeways. Being interesting, insightful, funny, or caustic may bump up followers. Regular, ‘boring’ communication will do nothing for one’s influence. Compare, for instance, the following tweets:

“Kind of digging soft curls with a side part. A good change from straight with a middle part?” – Demi Moore, A-list actor

with…

“So he likes drugs and hookers. That’s the mustard & mayo on the sandwich of life. Problem is, that’s all he’s got on his fucking sandwich.”- @shitmydadsays (Justin Halpern, unknown American who still lives at home)

…and guess which one ended up with its own TV series. Most internet users spend around a minute on any given internet page. With such short attention spans, one must be, and remain, interesting, or they will simply sink back into the ether to anyone who comes across them. @shitmydadsays, for instance, regularly has upwards 100 people ‘retweeting’ (reposting on their own pages) each post, showing that upwards of 100 people were in some way actually interested or affected by what they have read.

Because page views, friend lists, and follower numbers can be misleading, fame relative to the internet is best measured by influence. Western celebrities may have a completely different type of influence and relationships than mere ‘regular’ people—what they say, how they act, what they wear, can directly influence people who do nothing more than see a picture of them in a magazine. A study completed in 2004 showed two types of celebrity attachment among teenagers, with “peer interaction” being the most important feature of healthy celebrity attachments. That is, most teenagers regularly kept up to date with celebrities lives and actions with their friends. Celebrities quickly become “an extended social network–a group of ‘pseudo-friends’” who have stronger influence on their opinions than their parents or other role models. In this way celebrities become very influential to teen followers regardless of their intentions. It takes a bit more than a high ‘friend’ count on Facebook or Twitter, for one to be well known on the internet without putting in the hard yards.

Stephen Fry, for instance, perhaps less well-known than Demi Moore outside of cyberspace, has over 2 million twitter followers, and regularly causes websites to crash when he directs followers there. Fry talks not only with his followers, but refers to any organisation, film, book or interview he is a part of, while Moore does significantly less. So, Fry’s ability to network and link followers from one group to another not only increases the likelihood his followers will look at other things he is involved in, but also makes it easier for people who are a part of projects, charities or films, to find him online. So, Stephen Fry, although many of his ‘tweets’ are quite dull (“Know anyone web-rubbish? Set up some Internet Buttons for them to make the internet supereasy”), has a large sphere of influence on the internet, as he seemingly could recommend dirt as a salad seasoning and have thousands at least try it.

Is internet fame somehow more legitimate than offline fame? Well, it is probably more measurable, in terms of tracking where one’s words and photos end up. Unless one is already famous, unlike traditional media, Internet fame does require some form of longevity and networking. Depending on the day of the week, or even the mood of 4chan, anyone with anything remotely interesting may get their 15 minutes of fame. It’s keeping the spotlight there, and networking, that brings Internet fame, and it’s a lot harder than we would like to think.

The Department of Social Welfare (now the Ministry of Social Development) was founded in 1972 with the aim of improving “people’s wellbeing, and of enabling communities to determine how they can achieve wellbeing for themselves”. The Welfare Working Group (WWG) has recently completed an exhaustive assessment of the welfare system in New Zealand, charged with making “practical recommendations on how to reduce long-term welfare dependency for people of working age” in April 2010. Through my personal experience in the welfare system, I will be evaluating some of the WWG’s overall recommendations against the system as it currently stands.

In New Zealand, anyone who needs help to “participate in the social and economic life of their communities” may receive assistance. Most healthcare is free, giving the sick help (such as in the form of a Community Services card) to get better. Education for children and teens is free, with the aim of giving all young adults a level playing field when they leave home. Tertiary education is made more accessible with generous financial loans or allowances from Studylink. There is assistance to write a CV, buy work clothes, and find a job while the Government helps you live until you find one. There are free services to help workers deal with any employment issues which may arise. It is very easy to be angry at the welfare system as it now stands, because despite the extensive assistance programs which are supposedly in place, most people rarely receive help in any other form than a dollar amount.

Currently, applicants are classified according to their position or situation—for example, student, single parent, pensioner, unemployed, sick or disabled. Based on this classification, you are entitled to a certain range of weekly financial assistance. You may be entitled to additional support based on circumstance—for instance, if you have encountered hardship (Temporary Additional Support), or have a low income for your location (Accommodation supplement). This is all capped with maximum potential amounts, and Work and Income New Zealand (WINZ) reserves the right to change your payments at any time. Any NZ citizen is able to receive a food grant of up to $100 twice in a six-month period if they provide proof their bank account is empty, but if one is unable to support themselves weekly, $400 a year suddenly seems a lot less useful. Unless you put up your hand and ask for training or other assistance, you are a number and a dollar value—not a person in need of help. Friends on the unemployment benefit have received phone calls and been sent to interviews, but this is the extent of the assistance they have received; as a recipient of the sickness benefit and single parent domestic purposes, I have never been told of or recommended any further assistance, even when receiving TAS for extremely high rent: quoth my case worker, “Well, it’s not like you can’t change where you live.”

As WINZ’s calculations for your entitlement depends on such a large range of factors, it is seemingly impossible to work out exactly how much you will get should you apply. WINZ and Studylink have recently overhauled their websites in an effort to ensure beneficiaries are better placed to know which benefits, and supplements, to apply for. The end result? Everyone has to fill in the same mind-bogglingly vast amounts of information, in a process which takes even the most tech savvy at least 30 minutes, and spits out a list of benefits one might be entitled to receive. If you Google ‘Work and Income Manuals and Procedures’, you will be able to work out how much money you are entitled to, and why. Short of a miracle, this is the only way.

It would be great if the call service were able to train and retain staff so as to ensure a human accessible to the public actually knew this information. It’s worth buying a beneficiary a beer so they can tell you tales which all sound remarkably like a Monty Python sketch, generally involving very angry staff who tell you contradicting things and often end conversations abruptly with the words “I. DON’T. KNOW”. The only way to get what you need from WINZ is to be prepared for every eventuality before it occurs.

So where are the problems in this system? The Welfare Working Group, I feel, has hit the nail on the head. No one is empowered to make a change. The process of asking for help and filling in forms with no idea of the outcome is the first blow to one’s self esteem. Rarely, if ever, when speaking to a case manager or call centre, will one be given anything remotely resembling a choice or explanation of how to empower oneself out of their current situation. Currently, the system is geared to get the ‘right’ amount of money into your bank account. Instead, the WWG has recommended the entire welfare system focus on actively supporting all welfare recipients into paid work, by asking what recipients need to do in order to become more able to work. For example, instead of receiving a medical slip stating an individual is unable to work, the medical slip would state what the individual is able to do, within what limits, and how they could be supported in better improving their ability to work.

This is a matter close to my heart, as in order to revisit any of my previous professions, I need to remain industry-savvy and continue to train and learn. If these changes come into play, I will be actively encouraged to remain work-ready. Another great quote from a friend: “I’m having another baby instead. I can’t go back to work, it’s too different from what I’m used to now.” She is a doctor, who had her child 13 months ago. If being out of the loop for 13 months makes one feel unable to return to a profession they have been a part of for 13 years, I can only imagine how a lesser-skilled mother would feel if they waited until their child hit six years (when they are currently required to find a part time job).
Where I feel the WWG will fail, however, is in its inability to convince the Government to invest in a better functioning system. Focus needs to be on empowering the departments who deal with the public to ensure that case managers actually have the time and training to be able to provide in-depth assistance and support to all clients. The system as it stands may in fact be a worthwhile one, should those employed within it be given the tools required to actually do a good job! No streamlining or change to the structures of our welfare system will help if we do not provide enough funding to allow the system to work.

It should be made abundantly clear that everyone working for the Ministry of Social Development, from managers to call centers to case managers, is overrun with work. This leads not only to errors in approving benefits (consider the amount of benefit fraud we see in the papers), but longer time spent processing and more time required with renewed appointments which would be unnecessary if the benefit were adequately processed the first time! This is not their fault. This is entirely due to the constant funding cuts from one Government to the next. Here is why I have no faith whatsoever in any changes to the welfare system: New Zealand Governments are hardly famed for taking a long-term view, and it’s to our detriment.

I suppose one of the best things about this problem is every single welfare recipient can help make New Zealand a better place. Research possible training or assistance and ask to receive it, remain empowered to change your life for the better, and stop wasting the Government’s time. Nothing is more frustrating than sitting on the phone for hours to be told that your benefit still hasn’t been processed, so don’t be the reason for holdups. Many applicants will provide insufficient information on their application, or insufficient evidence, and WINZ is simply too underfunded to chase applicants for this information. The moment that you apply, you are expected to do everything in your power to get the benefit approved. You have to provide documents as soon as possible, and chase WINZ at every turn in order to be entitled to any backpay.

It is hard to see a benefit as a lifestyle choice when the standard of living one can afford is so low, but if one becomes accustomed to having little constructive to do during the day, one will likely remain in such a position. Aim to be as productive as possible, whether this involves working for money or not. While there seem to be a number of programs to help people into paid work, these schemes’ successes pale in comparison to their failures. The WWG’s concerns centre around the “few incentives and little support for too many welfare dependent people to move into paid work”, with concern for the large numbers of individuals on welfare who seem unable to fill job vacancies at all skill levels in New Zealand as a whole. You have to support yourself, and if you can’t do so, address why whenever possible, and ask for help.

A large concern for me in this respect is the issue of cultural barriers. While some feel ‘cultural difference’ is a meaningless concept regularly thrown around, the figures for reliance on welfare relative to ethnicity are disturbingly disproportionate. Government statistics indicate 31 per cent of Maori are on some type of benefit, despite making up about 14 per cent of the population. 44 per cent of Domestic Purposes beneficiaries (beneficiaries with a child or children, looking after disabled or elderly family) are Maori. The WWG has recommended a complete overhaul of Governmental support for Maori-focused incentives to ensure that Maori are supported and empowered to work productively in any industry. The welfare and schooling system seems unable to curb long-term dependency on benefits in Maori communities. As a result, disproportionate numbers of Maori children are not only growing up in poverty, but also seeing benefit dependency as the norm, maintaining an intergenerational reliance. The future of Maori success, again, unfortunately lies with funding the programs recommended by the WWG. If programmes supporting Maori to be productive members of society are not put in place, the standard of living for Maori as an entire ethnicity will be far below the rest of society, and the cycle of poverty will continue for Maori children.

The WWG only released its final report in February 2011, with a conclusion which recommended a complete overhaul of the entire welfare system. The exhaustive report is yet to be actioned, although John Key has indicated that many recommendations will be taken on board. We need to watch this space to hold our Government accountable for helping the most vulnerable members of society instead of simply cutting their assistance to make room in the budget. Nothing inadequately funded will work and perhaps this is the lesson we will learn, should we expensively overhaul the welfare system then leave it to stagnate.

Let’s start with life, then. We usually know when something is alive. It’s easy enough to know that my dog is still alive—I just prod her. It’s easy enough to know that the fly is still alive—it’s buzzing upside down on the flyswat. It’s easy enough to know when bacteria is still alive—it’s still flagella-ing its way across the petri dish. The Oxford English Dictionary seems to agree that life is:

The condition that distinguishes animals, plants, and other organisms from inorganic or inanimate matter, characterized by continuous metabolic activity and the capacity for functions such as growth, development, reproduction, adaptation to the environment, and response to stimulation; (also) the activities and phenomena by which this is manifested.

That is, any vital organs, whether they are simple tiny bacterial ribosomes or hearty elephant stomachs, work—or at least respond to stimulation. In addition to having functioning vital organs, living things actively use their organs: they consume nutrients, reproduce sexually, and respond to their environment. Consider someone like American woman Terri Schiavo, who was considered to be in a Persistent Vegetative State (PVS) many years before her feeding tube was removed, which in a legal sense ended her life. While in PVS, Terri could sustain her heartbeat and blood pressure unassisted, had impaired vision and could slightly move her limbs. There were claims that her treatment progressed until she was able to say “yes”, “no”, and “stop that”, although for years afterwards, all reports indicated she would never improve from her serious brain damage. She even seemed to be able to communicate and respond to her environment.

Terri’s body was able to fully function except chew and swallow, hence the feeding tube. There was, however, little to no chance Terri would ever recover to the point of conscious use of her body to feed, defecate, or even significantly move. Was Terri alive? Per this definition, no. She could function on a basic level, but had no capacity to do so. Even bacteria with no brain to speak of have the capacity and apparent motivation to function, in terms of moving towards food sources, acting in symbiotic relationships, etc. Are bacteria alive in the same sense a human is? Well, bacteria can die in the same sense as a human.

How about a tree, or algae? Like humans and animals, plants grow; are able to maintain a food supply by growth or minor movement; reproduce; and respond and adapt to their environment. Plantlife can also be considered dead based on when it stops growing and maintaining its cells. Magnifying this back to animal and human life, if ‘thinking’ beings are considered dead once they cease being able to maintain their cells, people with brain damage, or otherwise unable to care for their life or death needs, are just as alive as an uprooted tree left on concrete. Alive—just not for long, without help. Is mental capacity a needless requirement for life? Is our uprooted tree still alive if we have to actively help it maintain all of its vital functions, all the time? Many say yes. Steven Hawking, for one, would very much take exception to the implication that he died years ago.

It’s also worth noting that the ‘right to life’ community views when life begins and ends in the most optimistic of ways. Right to Life New Zealand seemingly even opposes abortifacients. Abortifacients are any ‘contraceptive’ device which stops a zygote—that is, a female’s egg which has successfully accepted sperm and is growing and maintaining cells—from implanting itself in a woman’s uterine wall, so the zygote will not live to become a baby. (In around 50 per cent of pregnancies, the zygote will not absorb into the cell wall regardless; an abortifacient will simply ensure this.) Technically, if an abortifacient kills a living human being, then any pregnancy that miscarries—even an unnoticed one at a few days old—involves the death of a human being. The definition in this case would be that the zygote is alive as its cells are growing and dividing, but the nourishment it requires to continue living is not provided, much as an adult would die without food, water and shelter. Per this definition, a human unable to provide for itself in the most rudimentary of ways is considered alive, so this view usually goes hand in hand with opposition to euthanasia.

Doctors are consistently making breakthroughs to prolong life in humans, or to ensure our bodies recover from previously irrecoverable trauma. Currently, scientists are working on technology that would enable our brain function to fully recover from up to ten minutes without blood flow or oxygen, a feat which in part has led to many differing definitions of death. Death even comes under a number of different guises now: clinical death and legal death, with the most extreme now information-theoretic death. Clinical death is when the body has no breath, heartbeat, or any external proof of life. Legal death may differ from country to country, but generally relates to the point at which a professional decides that an individual is deceased, and thus does not require further medical care. However, both of these definitions may not relate to irretrievable death. Many people can recover from their heart and breathing ceasing, depending on circumstances, and legal death is a legal term as opposed to a medical one. Information-theoretic death, however, is when there is no chance of a cognitive being ever being able to resume cognition, that is, any time after which the entire brain has either started to physically disintegrate or is otherwise destroyed. So, if my brain is stored in a vat for 50 years, after which cognition is resumed a la the Futurama cartoon, I have never undergone information-theoretic death.

Really, what is dead and what is alive comes down to perspective with a hefty chunk of context weighted upon it. Cognition and consciousness will always be problematic, as while we can monitor brain activity, and compare it to brain activity of a thinking/moving person, this gives us only limited insight into how the brain functions. Any view of life and death relative to our ability to function is always problematic, as applying our views to other species, or in light of miraculous recoveries, often seems hypocritical. It does seem that attempting to make life and death black and white only leads to a fight to paint over the grey.

Why do all of the new cellphones seem to come in a particularly garish pink? Well, it seems obvious the moment you think about it but even the most aesthetic of items, such as a painting, has to conform to some basic principles. Designers have to take a lot into consideration, and are the only ones who can make tough choices between how functional, and how attractive, an item is.

When designing, many different issues are taken into consideration, depending on why the product is being designed, who it is for, even the structure of the organisation designing it. Cost becomes a very important factor, and something which the designer has little control over. For example, to design a cellphone, a designer may be given an idea of which features it must include (text messaging, a camera, etc.), and how it should look (for example, “we want the thinnest cellphone on the market”). A designer takes all of the specifications given by the company who want the design, and comes up with, say, a cellphone which does absolutely everything the company has asked for.

It is the thinnest cellphone on the market, with all of the usual features required. But to be that thin, the cellphone requires certain expensive components. If the company is unable to make the cellphone as cheaply as budgeted, they will simply go back to the designer and tell them to “make it cheaper.” Something has to give—the cellphone may break easily, or be a bit thicker than it could be. The keypad may have to downgrade to a cheaper, uglier version. If a designer works within a company, they are simply given the specifications, and have to make it work. Unfair? Perhaps.

A problem many fail to see with respect to the design industry is just how much of a hand everyone else has in a design. One must design for someone else—very few designers do something of their own volition purely for themselves. So even on the most basic level, one must design for a client. That’s two different viewpoints, understandings and opinions. The client knows what they want to use something for, perhaps has an idea of how it should look, and has intimate motivations for getting the product. They have to be able to effectively communicate all of these motivations, needs and desires to the designer. The designer then has to apply their technical knowledge and ability to those needs, and see what they come up with. They will have to explain why a toilet can’t literally be made from gold, or why a rooftop can’t be a certain shape, and use that knowledge to suggest the best possible alternative to the client.

Added to the existing needs of the designer and client, often the client will be selling the item designed. The client thus needs to know their target market’s motivations to purchase items. Are they providing an essential item? Will they need to convince the market they need the item? Is it a niche market, or do they need to best the competition somehow? The clients, supposedly, will have done their research and have an idea of the priorities of their target market.

A target market is a beautiful thing if understood well. Designers are taught not to appeal to everyone, but rather maximise the possibilities of who a product will appeal to. A basic example here would be to design a pair of sneakers with more than one colour option, so the market most likely to buy sneakers is more likely to find that particular design aesthetically appealing. If one were to design formal dress shoes, however, making them available in more than one colour is unlikely to maximise appeal, as most people purchasing dress shoes will want them in black. Target markets can aid the client in having a more specific idea of what is needed from a product, and the priority level of each requirement, but this is only useful when the client talks this through with the designer! Furthermore, the needs of the target market may contradict the values or needs of the client themselves- if a client is dead set on producing eco-friendly clothing for male teenagers, they will have to accept that the market (number of people likely to purchase their product) is a small one. Design is a minefield!

So, between the multiple chefs in the kitchen, the designer is responsible simply for making the food. The designer does not have to ensure the food is appealing. The designer does not have to make a great selling soup. The designer doesn’t even have to ensure that the soup will still be hot when it reaches the table. The designer just has to make a soup that their boss, the restaurant owner, is happy with. In theory, the restaurant owner is happy when customers are happy. (But in practise, the restaurant owner may realise pineapple flavoured soup was a bad choice long after the customers spit it out, and blame the designer.) Is this why my cellphone is a garish pink, and Te Papa looks like a squashed robot bug? Not quite.

What we find attractive or unattractive is very subjective. Walking past the Bucket Fountain, you may see a monument to the creativity to Wellington, I may see a vomit-filled, badly painted eyesore. Looking at tattoos, you may see a permanent symbol of lunacy, and I may see a beautiful expression of love for Elmo. Beauty is subjective and designers exploit that subjectivity in a detailed, sociologically fascinating way.

Beauty has been defined by a number of principles since the beginning of time. One such principle is ethics—if an object is ethical, it is beautiful, and vice versa. A sustainably made, fair trade, organic cotton tshirt has a sense of beauty which we ‘see’ regardless of its actual appearance. Anne Galloway, a lecturer at Vic’s Design School, is currently exploring how certain technologies can help consumers see the origin and story of materials used in products, a move which would, for one, endear consumers more to the products.

The outcome of such study is not that clients understand consumers better, but rather that more consumers may begin supporting concepts such as fair trade, because they are better able to understand what such concepts entail.

In a similar way, Meredith Yayanos, Editor- in-Chief of Coilhouse Magazine, notes that the aesthetics of her magazine are considered holistically, as opposed to just nice words and pretty pictures. Beauty is considered from beginning to end, from paper cut and quality (they round the edges and use high quality paper), to order of content, number of pages, and even the costly decision to move from a blog to physical magazine. “Words and images in print just feel good between your fingertips.” Coilhouse are able to take this approach as money is not their primary motivator; so the editors are less concerned with appealing to the masses, and thus rarely compromise their vision. It is this lack of compromise and holistic approach to creating a magazine enjoyed on aesthetic, sensory, and intellectual levels which makes the magazine so seemingly beautiful.

What do we mean when we say something is beautiful? Beauty is an emotionally loaded concept. Situations, emotions, tastes and people can be beautiful. Newborn babies are rarely attractive- but they’re beautiful. Food is beautiful if it tastes and feels good in your mouth, it is likely to seem more so if it is well presented. Actions properly done are referred to as beautiful. Beauty is such a loaded concept that aiming for beauty in design is less about how something looks, and more about how it makes you feel.

There are some fast and easy techniques designers use to keep their products as appealing as possible, for example symmetry, contrast, flow (leading the eye across the surface), scale (making sure components don’t dwarf one another), and unity. Some techniques, however, are fast and easy ways to make the product appeal to a different market. For instance, simplifying colours so the item appeals to children, or adding a QWERTY keyboard to a cellphone so it looks more like a more expensive PDA. Techniques which don’t necessarily add value, but appeal to certain parts of society, enables designers to create items which really appeal to some people, but not at all to others.

Technology, most specifically, is highly valued for its ease of use. Google and the Apple iPod are two technologies which have summoned phenomenal success, in part owing to their simple, clean interface. Neither of the technologies is substantially easier to use than its competitors—the quality of one’s hits on Google is still based in the user’s ability to pick key words, and the iPod has an initially quite confusing keypad—but they appear quite simple, and this simplicity is attractive. Few consider how pretty the Google site is, but its appeal owing to simplicity is obvious.

In a similar vein, anything fit for its purpose has a beauty or irresistability. The classic 2B pencil which we have to sharpen manually, for instance. Te Papa largely looks the way it does because while natural light was preferable, direct sunlight would harm the exhibits. As a result, Te Papa was designed with a large number of windows, but the entire shape of the building was developed to ensure that no sun enters the building, year-round. In this way, Te Papa is an absolute architectural feat, and lauded by many. But, importantly, most of us don’t understand the reasons why Te Papa looks like it does, and many couldn’t care. To us, Te Papa is just one ugly building. The response, of course, is that the various national treasures which Te Papa houses are safe from environmental damage—which is more important.

So, in sum, designing for attractive-ness’ sake is a lot harder than one would think. Notions of beauty are varied, and ensuring an object is fit for purpose is much more important than whether it looks good while doing so. The only way around it is hiring your own designer and beating them mercilessly around the head for failing to adequately balance beauty and utility—something the Vic Design School has assured me won’t
end well.

I love these—have found some new tips since my last post on them, and will blatantly steal from a list my Tumblr threw up..

1. Line the bottom of your refrigerator’s crisper drawer with paper towels. They’ll absorb the excess moisture that causes vegetables to rot.
2. To keep herbs tasting fresh for up to a month, store whole bunches, washed and sealed in plastic bags, in the freezer. When you need them, they’ll be easier to chop, and they’ll defrost the minute they hit a hot pan.
3. A bay leaf slipped into a container of pasta, or rice will help repel bugs. People say to do it for flour as well but I worry how stinky my flour will get.
4. Stop cheese from drying out by putting it in a muslin bag. One of the odder ways of stopping dryout is spreading margarine on the cut sides to seal in moisture. If you’re going to go to that much effort, though, why not just make sure you rewrap it in plastic properly.
5. When radishes, celery, or carrots have lost their crunch, simply pop them in a bowl of iced water along with a slice of raw potato and watch the limp vegetables freshen up right before your eyes.
6. Avoid separating bananas until you plan to eat them – they spoil less quickly in a bunch.
7. Put rice in your saltshaker to stop the salt from hardening. The rice absorbs condensation that can cause clumps.
8. Stock up on butter when it’s on sale – you can store it in the freezer for up to six months. Pack the butter in an airtight container, so it doesn’t take on the flavor of whatever else you’re freezing.
9. In order to make cottage cheese or sour cream last longer, place the container upside down in the fridge. Inverting the tub creates a vacuum that inhibits the growth of bacteria that causes food to spoil.
10. Microwave honey on medium heat, in 30-second increments, to make it clear again- it never goes off.
11. Prevent extra cooked pasta from hardening by stashing it in a sealed plastic bag and refrigerating. When you’re ready to serve, throw the pasta in boiling water for a few seconds to heat and restore moisture.
12. Instead of cutting a lemon in half for a few drops, stab it with a skewer or fork and circle where you stabbed it with vivid. It’ll keep in the fridge much longer. If you have enough ice cube trays, though, squeeze it all out, freeze in ice cube trays, and clearly label.
13. Work out cost per meal/serve and aim to make enough for that meal, then a small amount for a meal you won’t have time to cook for the next day- no more or less.
14. Get a nude food tube, or attractive tupperware-esque food storers, to motivate you into bringing snack food from home.
Good luck!

Wellington Methodist Parish, 75 Taranaki Street

The Wellington Methodist Parish gains the biggest Kumbayah from this author, as it conducts multilingual services—Fijian, English, Samoan, and Tongan—and has a lot to do with the Downtown Community Ministry, which helps the homeless and less fortunate members of society. Most of the original missionaries to this part of the world were Methodist—an offshoot of Anglicanism, which gained its name with its methodical interpretation of the bible—which shows through in the varied Pacific Islands represented by its congregation. If you walk past Friday evenings or Sunday daytime, you’ll see a team of cute kids running around in lavalavas.

ARISE Church, 44 Wigan Street, Te Aro

ARISE Church members are the ones we keep mistaking for cheerleaders. ARISE is a purely NZ phenomenon, with churches in Hamilton, Wellington and Christchurch. It has an active presence anywhere young people are to be found, including on campus. The congregation is young, young, young, and you’d be forgiven for mistaking its Senior Pastors John and Gillian for first-years. There are heaps of services a month, mostly for members under the age of 26; free lunches are a favourite of uni students, while underage raves for high schoolers are also popular. While the free lunch was tempting, they’re so happy and carefree that you do feel bad for turning up in a “JESUS WAS A CUNT” T-shirt.

Vic Muslims, vicmuslims.blogspot.com

Vic Muslims is the club that represents, well, Muslims at Vic. Islam has as many denominations and followers as Christianity, so it’s hard to define such a varied religion when the local community is so small. Vic Muslims have a blog which is well worth a read, as it gives readings from the Qur’an, muses on world events, and keeps you up to date with activities. Aside from Islamic Awareness Week, they hold barbecues and Ramadhan activities. For your reference: “hijab,” pronounced he-zjab, refers to female modest Muslim dress, covering of all but the face and hands in public as per Sharia law. “Burqa/burka” covers all but the eyes; “khimār” is a headscarf and the term used in the Qur’an. Headscarves such as those commonly seen on campus are worn for such a variety of cultural, religious and social reasons that foot-in-mouth syndrome is common.

St Andrews on the Terrace, 30 The Terrace

St Andrews on the Terrace printed “God hates Shrimp” T-shirts for Out in the Square one year, and as such would achieve God-like status if that weren’t sacrilege. St Andrews will love you for who you are: they promise to ignore your “creed, race, class and sexual orientation”. While Presbyterian in origin, St Andrews split from the international body over issues such as women’s roles and homosexuality: its Minister Margaret Mayman is female and gay. One of the more ‘traditional’ but vibrant churches that you could peep in on one lazy Sunday.

Judaism

Considering the relatively small size of the Jewish community in Wellington (it’s estimated at about 1,300 people), the Jews have two synagogues, a kindergarten, day school (Moriah), kosher food shop and modern community centre. There’s also a new liberal Rabbi in town—who began a few days ago, so we can’t tell you too much there. Jews are Jews from birth (or three- to five-year conversion), and most of this community have thus known one another about that long, so chiming in could be a bit uncomfortable. However, the schools are roughly 50/50 Jew/Gentile and it’s worth keeping an eye out for the Klezmer Rebs, a fantastic Jewish music group. Also, who wouldn’t want to gatecrash festivals where you have to drink until legless, and eat until sunrise?

C3 Church, Level 3, 84 Willis Street

C3 Church is about the most constructive church you will ever come across that isn’t a cult or based on a 12-step programme… that I know of. They have seminars aplenty, and support groups for any and all types of people trying to improve themselves. Jesus tags in, of course. The C3 is just an Australasian church for now.

Hare Krishna, the International Society of Krishna Consciousness

Krishna is the name of God, and the hope is that in singing it over and over again, one will achieve a higher state of consciousness. Hare Krishnas are the ones who tell you nice things about yourself in the hopes that you won’t see through their cunning ploy that their books are free for a “donation.” They also have cheap, delicious food, which is surprising because Krishnas will not consume a large number of things, including garlic, meat, fish, eggs, caffeine or any kind of drugs or alcohol. Sing and dance with them on the street one day for fun; remain celibate outside of marital procreation with them too. ‘Alternative’ lifestyles, such as homosexuality, are frowned upon a wee bit. Technically, as their leaders will tell you (regularly) they aren’t a cult. Yet. This author is fond of the Krishnas as they light up Wellington with a bit of visual diversity.

Sorry all, I have not been in the mood to dispense advice lately. One of the strange things about this world is often we aren’t as good as the advice we give.

Strength is not an easy thing to find. The world will only kick you when you’re down, but people will only kick you when you’re strong. Pity those people, and don’t feel guilty for feeling weak when you’re at your weakest.

Sad people do not ask to be sad. Depressed people do not need someone to tell them they need to cheer up. You keep telling people this, so stop fishing for it. Sometimes, we all need another human being to look you in the eyes and tell you they feel bad for your situation- that your feelings are legitimate. But why, out of all of the ups and downs in your life, should you focus on the bad of every situation anyway? Why do we have such a vehement reaction to the words “cheer up,” when we spend our time trying to pull sympathy out of our friends?

Our landlords are reneging on the previous agreement and kicking us out to sell the house. I am broke. I had to smash a window to get into the house last night, rendering myself more broke. But damn, it was great to smash one of my landlord’s windows. If anyone asks how I am, I will begin with the great feeling given by throwing a brick through a window co-owned by myself and a landlord who I would like to hurt. Never smashed a window before. Glad to tick it off the ol’ bucket list.

What is strength, really? When a person is ‘strong,’ what do they have that lesser humans have? They have the ability to keep on living.

Strength is turning up at the same lecture as the girl who just rejected you and feeling miserable the entire hour. But damn, will it feel good to make that girl think asking her out meant nothing to you, that you are the type of person who is open and caring enough to want to get to know her, while she couldn’t see beyond her immediate reaction to want to connect with another human being. (She probably rejected real human contact for facebook. And you feel bad for yourself?) Strength, to others, is seeing you go on although you feel unable to. Strength, to you, is the payoff, the elation you feel when you realise you made it through some tough times and stuck to your guns. Strength is feeling like a confused, quivering mess when people pat you on the back for your strength. The easiest thing to do when you want to give up, is to keep on going- you’re doing it already.

Actively try to find things that will take your mind off the situation. If all else fails, avoid repetitive actions such as checking email or playing simple computer games like solitaire/minesweeper, and don’t walk the streets waiting for a miracle chance meeting to change your life. Find odd things to google on the internet—toilet paper roll art is a good start. And be strong. You don’t have to feel strong, but be strong.

“Where did I hide my daughter this year?”

This is a bit of an encyclopedia of common terms for child care and education, mostly up to 5 years. It’s amazing how confused even parents get.

“My child is at…”

Creche: Where you pay to put your children while you go to work. It will usually not have more than 16 children under 2 years old, by law, and there has to be a minimum of one carer to every 3 children. They will usually have children over the age of 2 as well, in a semi separate part, where there has to be a minimum of 4 children to every carer. Many or most carers will have a university degree in childcare.

Home with the nanny: Nannies will usually come to your home and look after your child, as well as maintain the house- that is, if they make a mess, they will generally clean it up. They will use your food to feed the child and sometimes cook dinner or similar for the family- it depends on the nanny.

An in-home educator’s house: In-home educators have to sit a training course, which is usually about eight weeks part time. You will have dropped the child off at their house, usually provided the food your child will eat, and they will have a maximum of four children- no more than 3 under 2 years old.

A babysitter’s: generally they will come to you, not have a qualification, and may not have regular hours. Usually a babysitter is an informal care arrangement, where the others require registration with the Government. If a ‘babysitter’ is earning over a set amount per week, or has more than a few children regularly who aren’t their own, then they may be reported and have the Government knocking on their door- they are running an illegal creche!

Kindergarten: most kindergartens begin taking children at 2 years old (or when they are mature enough, and steady on their legs- depends on policy). Often they are free or substantially cheaper than other forms of care. They will often separate out into mornings for 2-3 year olds, and afternoons for 3-5 year olds. Kindergarten is optional but highly recommended, and was initially designed to prepare children for primary school. There’s no curriculum as such but a set of formal requirements- eg, they are still Early Childhood Education providers and as such have to include some Maori culture and language, and try to scaffold (assist) learning in ways relevant to each child’s development. Parents are often required to attend with their child at least once a week, and the child may go 2-5 times a week, it depends from place to place.

Preschool: This may be a kindergarten, Montessori, or Rudolf Steiner, (the last two have different learning philosophies and methods) based centre. Parents generally pay for these services, the term itself doesn’t refer to any specific type of learning or centre in New Zealand, but does usually refer to some form of education for children 2-5 years old.

Nursery: Usually in terms of childcare this refers to a place for children legally under the age of 2 but usually under the age of 18 months (usually who don’t speak or walk yet). So, your child may be at the nursery, which is within creche, for example.

SPACE or Playcentre: This is a childcare centre focussed on giving parents the skills to help their child learn from birth. Parents stay with their child, and are taught how to maximise every learning opportunity they have, which supposedly will aid development. It is great for babies under 10 months, in my opinion, because often parents are at a loss as to how to interact with a young baby. You generally pay for this service and it is generally once a week.

Mother’s group: This is a group of stay at home parents who get together, either at a cafe or home, drink coffee, eat biscuits, and let their children run amok I mean play with each other. These are often set up by Plunket or an antenatal class about a month after the child is born, and is great for the parents, as well as important first socialisation for the children. (Yes, I know the term is sexist, but that’s what it’s called and after a year of helping run them- I haven’t seen a man yet. Sorry people.)

Playgroup: Mother’s group usually becomes playgroup once the children reach an age where houses or cafes are destroyed by a bunch of mobile children. Some are set up by organisations but they rarely cost and are just friends meeting. It is more often at a playground, Te Papa, or similar. Again, hugely important for a parent’s sanity- generally a stay at home parent, or parent of a young child, will have a load of “is this normal?” questions, and be quite lonely, hanging out with a child who can’t have adult conversations!

Music and Movement/Rock ‘n’ Rhyme, or similar: Children love, well, music, and movement, from an early age (read: pre-birth!). These are usually organised by church groups or the local library and are a lot of fun for the kids but often quite awkward for the parents, who get to sing loudly and do things they’ve only previously done that one time at El Horno at 2am after a bottle of tequila (this is not a paedophile joke! Dancing and singing, get your mind out of the gutter!).

My personal opinion? Most of us will have fond memories of kindergarten, and it’s often free- out of everything listed, I will firmly recommend that every family try to get their children to one! Creche is great for very social children, in fact, I know some parents who have put their children into one solely to give them more socialisation- but you need to pick one that really suits your child and you, as they will usually have much less adult interaction, and your child needs to be very confident within themselves. In home educators are great for shy children, and are very competitively priced- your child will often get more one-on-one time, but choose a carer who your child likes well, and watch them in action. I have been an in home educator and can vouch that some creches I have looked at on their best day, are worse care than I was on my worst. I have enrolled my daughter at creche, however, and few parents could provide their child with such a wealth of fun experiences in one day than this creche on any given day. Take from that what you will- pre investigation, I had very definite ideas on what is best for children, but now I have some experience, it is clear that each family will have a different perfect situation. <3

How long have you worked in the hospitality industry?

I’ve just chalked up ten years in hospo—I’ve washed dishes, waited tables, poured beers, baked scones. My first five years were predominantly tending bar, then I moved into cooking.  I went back to bar for a year while looking for a site for Shinobi, and we’ve been open since July 2009.

What kind of training was necessary to become a bona fide sushi chef? How did you do it?

I got a working holiday visa to Japan, then went round every sushi bar I could find, begging everyone to teach me.  After a couple of months, I found a guy who was prepared to train me, but who couldn’t afford to pay me at all.  That was fine with me. I worked in the sushi bar for free each day, then went off and worked in a Ramen noodle place in the evenings for wages. Nearly a year of 16-20 hour days later, my body was shattered, but I’d learnt all I was able to in the time the Japanese government granted me.

What did it take to be taken seriously, as a Pakeha working with Japanese food?

Sometimes there’s no way—some people won’t accept a white guy making sushi.  I prefer to let my food speak for me. I find that the people concerned about a Kiwi making Japanese food are often the ones that understand the least about it. The Japanese customers at the counter don’t have any complaints.

Do you have a similar level of experience to, say, another chef in another sushi place in Wellington?

I’m not too sure what everyone else has done, but as far as I know, I’m the only guy in town that’s trained in a real sushi bar in Japan. We’re the only place that offers counter seating in front of the chef, and made-to-order style sushi, as opposed to Kaiten (conveyor belt) or takeout (made in advance) sushi.

Is it easy to find good fish in Wellington? Where are the best places to go?

It’s easy to get good fish, as long as you know what to look out for.  Fish selection is the most important aspect, and takes the longest to learn, so I go to the markets and look for myself so that I can make a decision of what’s going to taste best each day. Wellington Trawling on Cuba Street have a pretty good selection of white fish; otherwise, Solander Maritime (for game fish) and Mount Cook Alpine Salmon have great, consistent products and do online ordering.

What is the order of service?

There’s no set order to anything at a sushi bar—you can order what you like, when you like. I usually recommend sashimi to start, since it gives people an opportunity to try a range of the days fish, and decide what they like (or don’t like), which can affect what they order later. Wine matches are hard in a sushi bar—you only get one or two mouthfuls of each thing, and so I prefer people to drink whatever they’d like. I personally recommend our Margaritas.

What’s your favourite thing on the menu at the moment?

I got into sushi on the traditional stuff—that’s still my favourite. The more you learn about sushi, the more you appreciate the simplicity of nigiri (hand-formed) sushi and sashimi.  My perennial favourites are tuna and ikura (salmon roe). I’ve been using Mount Cook Alpine Salmon for about a year and it’s absolutely stunning.

One of the joys of having a front of house position, where you deal with more people than you could ever know and for minimum wage, is that everything is blamed on you. You have to coordinate between other floor staff, a maitre’d/manager, the customers and the kitchen. It is not an easy job to do well, so here are some things to keep in mind.

Yes, you are being paid to be happy all of the time. Suck it up and smile. Your personal life is personal, and this is work. Leave your cellphone on silent in your bag, and ignore your personal life completely the moment you start. You’ll feel better.

Always carry a lighter, pen, scrap paper and wine knife. Especially on break, and even out of work.
Be nice, really nice, to the people working in the kitchen. Ask if they have a preference for how dishes are stacked and appreciate that they are busy, stressed, and don’t need ‘hungover waitress #4, who keeps sneaking into the kitchen to text her boyfriend’ to give them any problems. Make sure you know the specials and if there are any menu items that they want you to push. Then, sell them.

If asked a question, do not make up the answer but don’t outright say that you don’t know. Work on a few key sentences which will make you appear proactive and willing to ask for help. If you lie about the ingredients in a dish, even by ignorant omission, chances are it will bite you.

Instead of counting tips in a country where tipping is rare, aim for little things, like making five people laugh in one shift, or having customers talk you up to your boss.

If you have been asked to change the ingredients in a cocktail or food item, ask whoever will make it before agreeing. It is a huge pain for the kitchen and often simply not possible. Keep in mind that all dishes are put together to taste good, and removing/altering ingredients will probably just end with the customer not liking their meal.
Don’t complain to the customers about the business, or people you work with. It will get you into a lot of trouble, and the person that ends up with the worst reputation is always you.

Own up to your mistakes to your boss, and other staff if necessary. Everything else, especially to the customer, should be blamed on someone who won’t come into contact with them.

Flatter your coworkers and compliment them when they do something well. Ask them if they have time to help you if you need it, and vice versa. Keep communication lines clear—communication is very important.

There are no stupid questions, just stupid people. Stupid people need patient, clear, short explanations and your pity, not your angst and stress.

Be patient and ready to learn, your job is not an easy one and you can always improve. You will learn the most amazing things from the least predictable people.

Some nights you will get a customer who simply seems to hate you. The easiest way to deal with this is wonder, as they complain at you, what makes them such a horrible person. In general, the cause is the fact that they haven’t orgasmed for at least 10 years. If you can’t smile every time their nose quivers, smelling sexual satisfaction on you as a pig smells truffles, maybe see if you can switch with another server.

You are not God’s gift to the hospitality world. You can and will be replaced in less than a month. If you aren’t, it reflects on the exceptionally bad business model of the business, not your ability.

Patron

Why is this important? To quote Ryan Reynolds in one of his many barely watchable comedies, “Don’t screw with the people who serve you food”. Keep in mind that any altercation, any ill treatment of the waitstaff, will lead to every single staff member knowing about it before you reach dessert.

Approach everything with humour and a problem-solving attitude.

It is your responsibility to ensure your dietary requirements are fulfilled by your meal. If you are allergic to something, ensure your chosen menu items are okay for you to eat, and explain when you order that you are unable to eat certain things, just in case.

In the same vein, make sure you know what you’re ordering, because its no-one else’s fault if you end up with something you can’t eat/don’t like. The difference between smoked chicken and regular chicken is huge!

Some things which may seem normal to you can really offend staff. If chips aren’t on the menu, don’t ask for them. Vegetarian dishes would not benefit from added meat. A pet hate of many bartenders is the offhand, “Oh, go on, feel free to double that amount.” Drinks are carefully measured and poured, if you want more alcohol, you will be paying for it. Go to venues which suit your tastes and intent. Much as you don’t want to get hammered beside a young family, it is simply offensive to go to an Indian restaurant and scoff at the lack of burgers on the menu.

Appreciate that many people working in hospitality genuinely love their jobs, and have chosen to work as waitstaff. Very few waitstaff are stupid—working in hospitality takes a lot more skill than one would assume. Waitstaff often include the owner/proprietor, who knows what they’re doing. Give them some respect and the benefit of the doubt.
A ‘regular’ customer is someone who visits the venue at least once a week—usually every few days. You are not special. Do not expect to be remembered by staff who probably haven’t seen you for weeks.

Being loud, bossy or strong-willed will not get you better service. You may get more face time with your waitperson, but everything will take as long if not longer—quite deliberately.

If you need attention, don’t click your fingers, wave openly, or whistle. Generally your body language will be obvious enough. If waitstaff catch your eye, then you could raise your eyebrows, smile and even mouth “when you have a minute.” Anything more will signal to all present that you are too impatient to be reasonable.

Make it clear when you’ve finished your meal by putting your cutlery together either in the middle of your plate, or pointing diagonally to the side. It is helpful to say things like, “you can take this too, if you want” with plates/glasses which aren’t empty.

Don’t move the furniture without asking. Tables, chairs, entrances and exits are all carefully placed. (Most tables are also positioned so they don’t rock.)

Don’t take plates, glasses etc directly from waitstaff unless handed to you. Trays are balanced on hands, as are plates, so trying to do a nice thing may colour your shirt wine-red.

Don’t sit at the only dirty table unless you’re just trying to engender hatred from the staff.

Never, ever, threaten to not pay for your meal, or complain about something after a time when it can be rectified. If you are unhappy with something, bring it up at the time. Staff need a chance to fix the problem.

Say thank you and smile. Ask staff how their day is going, they are human beings.

Learn to notice when the place is clearly busy and/or understaffed. Staff are (usually) doing their best and running their asses off, so act accordingly. If you’re in a hurry, ask what the wait time on a meal is, and explain that you have time constraints.

My father and I have a theory, that the most important growing and changing to set the scene for your adult life occurs between the ages of 18 and 23. A lot changes over this time, not least (usually) being turned out of the nest in the hope you will fly away… or at least land on your feet… more often just hitting a branch slightly lower. It is very, very common for people to cycle through different clothing styles, groups of friends, political ideas, gender and sexualities over this time. For you it might be a bit awkward but feel completely natural. Watching your friends do the same, however, is another story. But when do you speak up? When has someone gone too far? When have you gone too far?

Measure everything not by its acceptance within your immediate community, but by its normalcy in the world. I want you to look at your friends and remind yourself of the same- they may be a different ‘type’ of person to you, but if there’s a (legal!) community that they can become a part of, and they are happy with themselves, then power to them.

Don’t make overarching comments and assume that changes are forever. For example, if you become a born again Christian, good for you; if you become a born again Christian and as a result must marry and procreate by December, take a step back. Honesty to yourself is important, and you should be able to honestly tell yourself, with no shame, that you used to be someone else, and you have changed, but you may well change again. This does not mean that you should doubt your sincerity, values, or beliefs, but it does mean that you shouldn’t paint yourself into a corner where you limit your personal growth over this time.

Keep your friends, unless they are damaging you emotionally. I always get very uncomfortable when meeting people who can’t retain friendships, for obvious reasons. You may have outgrown your friends, you may no longer have anything in common, but drift apart—don’t sever and don’t take an opportunity to rub friend’s faces in the mud. Wellington is a small place, and even if you do marry and procreate within the year, it would be great to assume that your friends can see beyond your massive lifestyle/outlook change to support and love you for who you are. It would be even better to avoid ceaselessly judging or criticizing friends who now have different values and beliefs. Tell people off for littering, sure, but going through their garbage while yelling at them about recycling…? Ask them to come to church one day, sure, but telling them they’ll burn in hell…? See things from your friend’s points of view and try to put yourself in their shoes. Work out where the line should be drawn, and if possible, you could even sit down and talk to them about your feelings to clear the air.

Remember, this is a short period in your lives where you can play adulthood without being tied down. Opportunities should be taken with both hands, and if drinking to excess for 6 months is someone’s choice, then keep an eye on them, avoid letting them go too far, and remind yourself that an alcoholic 40 year old who just came out, left their wife, and is now trying to relive an uneventful youth is one of the ugliest, heartbreaking things to see. Identify the difference between an experiment, a lifestyle change, and a personally damaging change. Keep your mind open and your friends and families close. Be safe, be open minded, and be glad to live in a society where we can change with the seasons and not be stoned to death.

Let’s face it: teachers’ training is often negligible. The standard training for a teacher in New Zealand is a Bachelor’s degree, and a one-year Graduate Diploma on top of that. The New Zealand Graduate School of Education, for example, requires a BA minimum for entry, and provides a ‘nominal’ study length of 12 months, with around two-thirds of that time spent teaching in a classroom.

So, little Jimmy graduates in 2014 and begins his first teaching job in 2015, provisionally registered as a teacher until 2018. Jimmy is qualified to teach any subject he received 12 points for at University. So, Jimmy’s BA/BSci major is likely to be the subject he can teach at high school level, while he would still teach every subject at primary school. Teachers are re-registered every three years, with any other monitoring conducted by the school, usually on an annual basis.

Were Jimmy aiming to become a doctor, beginning study in 2011, his study would end six years later in 2016, and he’d spend 2017 working under full supervision before he became a registered doctor. For doctors, roughly 50 per cent of each is spent shadowing qualified professionals in hospitals and clinics. Once he becomes a fully qualified doctor, Jimmy would be allowed to work as a general practitioner (GP). It would take him a further four or five years of on-the-job training to specialise in a field such as oncology, plastic surgery, pediatrics. If Jimmy has a clear idea of where he wants to go in medicine, he will probably be qualified to work in that area in 2022—11 years after beginning his study. Doctors are also required to hold an Annual Practice Certificate, which is only granted if the doctor continues training and updating their skills.

Both doctors and teachers are considered to hold a vital role in society. So how is it that one is given more weight than the other?

Studies show that a teacher’s attitude directly and heavily affects their student’s performance in all subjects. Louise, a teacher of Year 3 (seven-year-old) students, notes that “you have to have so many resources on hand, and so many activities on a daily basis, [that] there’s no chance to change it up. I teach the same things in the same order every year. You’d think new students would keep it interesting [but] the same personalities [do the] same things every year.”

Inversely, doctors have a minor educational capacity: they are expected to fix bodies that are generally the product of mistreatment and ill-education, and are invariably not held to be responsible for results they did not directly provide. A study in America showed that 25 per cent of obese people were never told by their GP—the doctor they pay to help them maintain a good standard of health—that they were overweight.

Closer to home, in September 2007, a well-known Wellington orthopedic surgeon performed a double hip transplant which did not provide ideal results, and the patient contracted a superbug. The patient sued; the surgeon dropped his personal fees; and, although the superbug infected the patient at Wakefield Hospital, as it was not as a result of the surgery, the patient was left to foot a hefty post-operation bill and ongoing medical problems. That’s right: neither the hospital, nor the surgeon were held liable for the post-operative environment, and the continuing hip problems of the patient were largely put down to the patient wanting both hips operated on at once.

While an extreme case, it illustrates the split in perception of liability in the public’s eyes. The expert surgeon acted on the wishes of the patient, knowing the likely result, but did not accept responsibility for his own surgery. What, then, is a doctor responsible for? If they remove every trace of a cancerous mole but the cancer has already spread, is it their fault?

Paradoxically, a teacher is responsible for holistic results. Teachers are measured on how they interact in the classroom, because their manner directly affects student’s willingness to learn, happiness in the classroom, and future success in learning. Teachers are measured on a student’s direct results—that is, how well their students grasp the subject they have been taught. Directly and annually, another teacher from the same school sits in on classes and analyses a teacher’s personality, so school politics play a part in the reported skill of a teacher.

Possibly the most emotionally torturous judgement, however, comes from the beady eyes of 30 children’s parents. Notes Louise, as a private school teacher, “Just once I would like to go to the supermarket without being pinned down by a parent in an aisle asking why so-and-so didn’t get 10 out of 10 for spelling. It’s always my fault!”

And, should any results be called into question, the Ministry of Education teaching guidelines require that lessons help with diverse aspects of life in New Zealand, including culture, Te Reo, technological advances, future learning and equality—in every class. Yes, even in 6th form maths.

This same concept of hauora—one’s entire wellbeing—is also spilling over into medicine. While doctors are obviously expected to respect other aspects of their patient’s lives, cases where patients sue doctors for not helping them maintain an adequate level of health are on the rise. A case study was presented where an overweight diabetic smoker died of sudden cardiac arrest. The jury found for the plaintiff because the doctor wrote in the chart that he intended to refer the patient to a cardiologist, but then failed to do so—never mind that the doctor also told the patient repeatedly, over the course of four years, to stop smoking and to lose weight. The judgment was for $3.5 million (Prof. John Banzaf III, George Washington University).

Unfortunately, at the same time, attemptng to advise or educate patients on anything beyond their specific training is likely to land doctors with a formal complaint. The requirement still stands, without exception, that doctors know at least the ‘basics’ of physiology before specialising. All doctors—even heart surgeons—should be able to tell you the names of the bones in your knee, for example, and how your nervous system works. They are only expected to refer patients to a specialist if symptoms are beyond a basic quick fix.

It’s interesting, then, that the only requirement for teachers, beyond their chosen subject, is basic numeracy and literacy. A teacher is required by law to cater to every aspect of a student’s learning, including Treaty of Waitangi components, although they are only given a crash course in everything except the subject they teach. They are expected to respect cultural boundaries, although they are never taught where those boundaries may be. For example, in Early Childhood Education, many preschools cope with cultural requirements with overarching rules, such as banning all pork products, so teachers do not have to learn the ins and outs of Muslim/Jewish dietary restrictions (note: both are much more detailed than ‘do not eat pork’). It seems that doctors are required to learn much more than they practice, but teachers teach more than they are required to learn.

Teachers’ ability in the classroom does affect their reputation, and may affect their future employment if they change jobs, but firing a teacher is notoriously hard in New Zealand. Further, with staffing shortages, teaching is seen as an easy profession to get into for employment. So, while teachers are monitored relatively heavily by a range of people, these results affect their perception and perhaps future employment, but not their actual jobs. Perhaps this is why doctors are kept on a short leash in terms of accountability and regulation. Their patient numbers reduce immediately and possibly irreparably when they make mistakes with patient care, and many are consultants, who are paid by the number of patients they see per day.

Teachers’ salaries and wages are set by the government (with the exception of the private sector, although private schools’ salaries are comparable), and their pay increases with their time in the profession. Estimates of the length of teaching careers vary widely worldwide, but teaching graduates can be put into three camps: roughly 30 per cent of teaching graduates do not become primary or secondary teachers, while the remainder either leave teaching after five years, or 20+ (i.e., most leave early or continue until retirement). Evidence suggests that after around five years, a teacher has tired of their low pay rate remaining stable as their living expenses (for example, mortgages to pay off) increase.

Almost 60% of all teachers start on about $45,000 a year, with the maximum base salary going up to $68,980, which around 3% of teachers reach in the first five years of their career. In fact, only 8% of teachers in public schools have a base salary above $45,653 (while additional responsibilities generally bring more pay). Overtime is unpaid, with teachers clocking in an average 10 hours overtime a week, with some working up to 36 hours extra a week. On average, one-fifth of teachers working hours are unpaid but required to complete the job.

Most doctors, on the other hand, continue in the profession until at least retirement age, so assuming one begins training straight after high school at 18, they have 40 years of a salary beginning at a minimum of $60,000 and topping out at $230,000 (all before overtime, of course, which can increase income by $30k annually). The average salary of a doctor in New Zealand is between $128,000-$195,000. Once a doctor is registered (unregistered doctors receieve a wage as low as $30,000) a doctor’s average wage is around double that of the highest paid teachers, and triple that of the average teacher.

One may justify a large amount of this difference to training. We really are paying our doctors for the countless hours of study that brought them to the five minutes they take to glance and say, “that’s eczema,” while the policy on teachers wages is unrelated to their actual quality level of work.

Sometimes it feels as if all we hear from the teaching sector is how underpaid and under-appreciated teachers feel. Sometimes we forget that almost any other industry has a pay scale that increases meaningfully over one’s career, and offers reimbursement for going above and beyond the role. While the life of a doctor isn’t as sexy and exciting as House would have us believe, and it does involve years of hard work, any adequate comparison of the two professions must still end with two considerations. Firstly, how did you treat your teachers when you were at school? And secondly, how do you treat your doctor?

This week, a friend of ours completed purchase of one of the best bars in Wellington (this isn’t a plug, I’m not going to name it). That makes two friends owning two bars, plus a host of acquaintances who also own bars. I feel like we’re growing up. It does, however, decrease the likelihood that I’ll get to see him much at all, as he works nights and sleeps days.

My partner is still getting the invites for all kinds of hospo outings. In hospitality (bars and restaurants), you usually get Sunday through Tuesday off work. And what does hospo do on the ‘weekend?’ Drink, mostly. Hence the well known alcoholic/constant partying/crazy lifestyle that hospo is known for (living it is quite another thing, where only a few nights a week are actually partying, a few are pretending to party for punters, and a few are pub quiz/quiet drink/smoke and 6 pack on the beach etc). As neither my partner nor I actually work hospo hours, we’re kept in the loop by dropping by on the weekends. I’m in the loop even less, as I only get out on the rare occasion that I can bully someone into babysitting for me. The outcome is that my partner is invited, or expected, out at least 5 days a week, and there’s no telling which ones. He already works three nights a week so I’m getting quite lonely, typing away on my computer and keeping up all of the psuedo-upbeat emails and facebooks that mean I remain networked into, well, my networks. During the day, when I can get out with bubba strapped to my side or pushed in the pram, I am always out and about, as there are only so many hours in the day, and anything outside of the house has to be done before 5pm when you have a child (dinner, wash, bed… then you are given the unwelcome choice of leaving them alone in the house, commonly known as neglect, or sitting at home alone).

My partner has the choice of leaving me home alone to see his friends outside of work/uni; going out at 10pm, after work, to see friends; or seeing even less of his daughter and going out to see friends on his few days off. The current choice of going out after work has led to his mostly seeing friends who work at, or drink in, bars: this has led to the invites all days of the week. I’m not sure if we thus have the best or the worst of both worlds, as most of our friends are available at times that we can see them, but my partner and I never have any time together where we aren’t choosing between one thing or the other. No one can ever just go out of the house for a few hours without the time police jumping in, and someone getting a wee bit jealous.

How do I deal with this? I feel relief when I look toward the future. In a few years our friends (who are mostly still out partying, not holding down jobs, and unable to understand this crazy ‘stay at home, eat breakfast, be responsible’ nonsense) will ‘settle down’ themselves, my partner will ‘settle down’ more and get a more sociably-houred job, and these invites will stop. That’s right. The only positive outcome short of getting a nanny, is currently the creepy security one feels when encouraging the type of 9 to 5 lifestyle we despise. I want to be able to schedule in brunch before 3pm on the weekends, and squeeze in lunch dates on lunch breaks. I’m done with alcohol being the baseline for human interaction, and night time being standard social hours. I hate myself for this train of thought, but it creeps in every Saturday night when I get the “I’m just going out for a few hours after work” phone call.

Once you have kids, you genuinely want a good night’s sleep because days spent with them are precious, joyful, and exhausting. Do we regret a second of our life? No. Do we want to stay out for one more drink? No. Do we want to go out at night more? No. Do we want to want to go out more? Well…

This blog was brought to you by any company that sells birth control.

So are you in a relationship right now?

Not what I would define as a relationship, no.

What would you define as a relationship?

Something with boundaries and defined. Not necessarily monogamous but with agreed rules of engagement, we’ll meet each other this often and a “this is what we are to each other.” That kind of thing.

And in a relationship you’ll obviously have some kind of romantic…?

Yeah, like watching TV and eating chocolate. If I was in trouble I would phone someone up who I was in a relationship with; whereas with someone I wasn’t in a relationship with, I would not call them, even about normal everyday life stuff.

If you’re not in a relationship, you’re seeing somebody?

Yes.

How do you define these kind of non-relationships?

Seeing somebody is meeting with them on more than one occasion. So it’s more than a basic… one night stand. You meet out of convenience to both of you—rather than making time to meet up. If I was in a relationship with someone I would make time to see them, whereas in a non-relationship I say, I’m free these days, are you free any of those days?

So if someone knocked on your door at 3am, you would be well within your rights to tell them to go away?

I am perfectly within my rights to say nah.

Probably wouldn’t be offended by that?

No, not at all.

How many people are you seeing?

Six. There are two older married guys, late thirties to early fifties, and one unmarried. They’re the type of guys I’d see casually on a semi-regular basis. There are two guys I see who are younger—younger being late thirties. I don’t go for younger than me. Pretty much people who—either they’re married and looking for something out of the relationship, they’re not going to cheat the other person and say they’re going to leave their wives, they want to be honest.

Then there are the younger guys who out of circumstance or choice are single and want a bit of fun. One lady.

Let’s say one of the people you are seeing is, say, a merchant banker, and in your day something hilarious happens specifically relating to merchant banking. Would you call them and say, “oh, this happened today…”?

In a non-relationship, no, I wouldn’t. But the next time I saw them I might say, “oh, this happened”, and if it’s something they know then you’d talk to them about it.

Would you not call them because you didn’t want to?

It just wouldn’t occur to me.

Have you moved to a relationship with someone you were casually seeing?

Yes.

What happened?

I realised I’m not a relationship person [laughs]. I don’t have the time or the inclination to spend on a relationship. There are going to be people out there saying that you aren’t naturally like that, that because of something in your past you act like this. There is an aspect of it in my past… However, it’s more the fact that I’m too independent, and currently don’t want to compromise on things in my life. During that two months that I was in a relationship it was very tiring, and I didn’t have the time to invest in the relationship.

If you met the right person would you have qualms about saying, “right, now I’m in a monogamous relationship”?

Yeah, I’m in a relationship and depending on the relationship whether it’s monogamous or not.

How do you meet men?

Mostly on internet sites that are designed for hookups, not relationships. So I won’t go anywhere near something like NZ Dating, because people on there are looking for a relationship, but I will go on other sites such as AdultFriendfinder, as the people on there are much more open and honest. For example, on NZ Dating, there are people who won’t tell you that they’re married, whereas on Friendfinder, there are people who will straight up tell you that they’re married. My condition is that if I don’t get a screaming wife turn up on my doorstep, I don’t mind. I’m not the one cheating, it’s up to them. I do have a rule that if they have kids under 18 I won’t go there, purely because I feel more guilty for the kids rather than the wife. So if they have young kids then I won’t get involved, but if they’re grown up then it’s fine. I always tell them straight up before that I won’t sleep with them on the first meeting, just so there’s no expectations involved. Then if we get along we’ll meet again at a different location. Certainly it’s a good couple of weeks of emailing and texting before I’ll meet up with them.

Is this common?

I think it is. It does seem to be. But just based on the sheer number of emails I get saying, “hey babe, I’m in town, wanna meet up?”, they obviously get some luck from it, so there must be girls out there who do. Generally no-one is surprised about the emails or the first meeting, so it’s pretty common.

Has your lifestyle affected how you feel about other relationships and love in general?

It makes me sad that some people can’t be honest with each other in their relationships. I’m not surprised at the amount of men who cheat, I already knew about that. I did learn that there’s a huge grey area in relationships. It’s not just single and monogamous—there are polygamists, polyamorous even—there’s a lot more out there than you realise. It can work on a long term basis, very well.

There are probably a bunch of 18-year-old guys who are reading this, thinking, yeah, I’m going to get on that train! have any thoughts for them?

It tends not to be younger people and younger people tend not to be very good at it as they don’t know their own boundaries and what they want from life yet—I’m generalising now. I just realised a lot of people know their own lives, but it tends to be late 20s up. They know what they want from it, and have the confidence to say what their boundaries are and what they want from it.

So, more of a lifestyle choice than a sexual choice?

“Hey babe, wanna meet up” tends to be younger people. The messages, “I’m interested in having a casual relationship where we meet on several occasions” tend to be from older people. The younger people tend to be one night stands, and they tend to think it’s better than just going to a bar. They have a ‘never see you again’ point of view. Personally I wouldn’t go anywhere near them. They’re more likely to be unsafe in their practices. I do recognise that the more you get to know someone the better things can be—rather than meet 20 people once, I’d rather meet five people 10 times!

You have to be really upfront and honest about everything, and not scared of asking questions or of talking about things you wouldn’t normally talk about with other people, whether you’re into safe sex or not, into drugs or not—a lot of people have been burned from it. I’m very open and honest with my lifestyle—that’s who I am, and the only place I’m not honest about it is at work where people just don’t need to know. Work is an absolute boundary for me. I’m friends mostly with people with the same lifestyle choice now—they’re easier and just less shockable. Sometimes I mention more than one guy’s name in conversation, and it freaks people out. It’s easier to form friendships with people who don’t get freaked out by it.

“I’ll go,” he cried, desperation in his eyes, “Just please, stop hitting me.” Time stopped for a moment and I saw what he must have seen in me, an ugly person feeling ugly emotions trying to get them all out at once. Shocked, I stopped and walked out. I have never been engaged in a physical confrontation since. I found something ugly inside of myself, and knew it had to go. The worst part was that in his eyes (well, both of our eyes initially), I was still the wronged party. He had done something wrong and took the consequences—my physical abuse. I recovered instantly and never slipped back into a viewpoint where I could ‘punish’ someone, but he took much longer. Coming from a broken home, he felt his role as punching bag was entirely appropriate, and our relationship as relatively normal. We were lucky. It took no longer than six months before the emotional abuse from either side ended, and our relationship ended for different reasons, with neither of us today back in an abusive relationship. But our story is not a typical one, as we were shocked into change, and changed together, without slipping back into another abusive relationship.

In New Zealand, abusive relationships (or domestic violence) involve violence towards anyone who you live with (share/shared a domestic situation with), and the violence itself can be physical, psychological or sexual. So, to broaden that up, if your partner makes unwanted physical contact with you with the intent or outcome to hurt you, that’s physical abuse, and you never deserve to be physically hurt. If your partner makes unwanted sexual contact with you, that’s sexual abuse, and regardless of the relationship, that’s not OK. Rape always ‘counts’, even if you are in a relationship—you can always say no. Psychological abuse is when your partner deliberately acts to control, manipulate, or upset you, and again, it is abuse, and it is not normal or acceptable within any relationship.

Because abuse is about control, the abused feel as if they have no ability to escape—for example, they may be threatened (“if you leave, I’ll kill you,” “Do that again and I’ll give you a hiding,” “if you leave, I’ll tell everyone you’re a slut”), made afraid for others (“tell anyone and I’ll beat up your friends,”), controlled through humiliation (being made to feel worthless), or have their money, time, car, or contact with friends controlled to maintain power over them. A common response to those who are aware of the abuse is that they ‘asked for it,’ or did something to deserve their treatment. Similarly, abuse is often justified by the abuser as a loss of control, or unintentional anger. It is a fantastic coincidence that people who are unable to deal with their frustration always believe they have found a partner who inspires anger at every turn. Anger in an abusive relationship is not treated as an ‘anger problem’ by abusers, as it would be if they treated their peers the same way. Violent abusers control their partners with violence in a cold and calculating way—not with accidental, ‘heat of the moment’ actions. Wounds are inflicted in a certain way, with a certain intent: for example, hits to the face to stop them from going out in public, or hits to the body/back of head to hide the abuse.

Further, there is simply no excuse in terms of why abuse is the chosen method of control. Children can be disciplined more effectively without violence (the American Academy of Pediatrics website has a great summary of the countless studies proving this), and hitting an adult is not only assault but morally reprehensible.

Generally everyone else notices how unhealthy a relationship is before those within it do. Abuse is about control, with one partner trying to maintain a grip over the other, and the controlling one may feel there is nothing wrong with their actions—indeed, the controlling one may feel they are in a healthy relationship! As abuse is generally gradually incremental, that is, it starts small and gets worse, the abused partner may not notice their slide into depression, or that they are adapting to a heavily controlled life, until leaving seems impossible.

The media is unhelpful when it comes to how we should behave. We regularly find scenes of men throwing women up against the wall to kiss them, where surprise and disgust turns to lust; punching the new romantic partner of your ex to show how you feel; and hopefuls never giving up on the object of their affection, who often doesn’t know they even exist, and eventually winning them over. Translated into real life, we can easily terrify and horrify our loved ones. Throwing a woman against the wall to kiss her can amount to sexual assault—acting in a way which assumes that the other partner will simply go along with your wishes is not only dangerous, but disrespectful. If your former partner’s emotion only ignites when they see you act violently, even if you do get back together, how would you resolve problems within your relationship, and how would you keep them interested? Following the object of your affection without making actual face-to-face advances can undoubtedly scare your target—in fact, stalking at American universities is so common that it is rarely reported.

The most frustrating thing about abusive relationships is the seeming lack of change. While leaving the relationship may be preferred, the abused partner has many reasons to stay, and leaving is usually more dangerous than staying- abusers become unpredictable and more violent. Violence across the board, especially murder, increases in severity and likelihood in the first few months after the partner leaves. Most commonly, the abused partner has had their money and social life restricted, giving them few places to go, and little means to support themselves.

Relationships are not like other social connections, where you choose to confront bullies or scuttle out of their way. People in a relationship have feelings, resources, attachments and, indeed, one’s life, intertwined and invested in each other. The first thing to remember is that it isn’t the abused person’s responsibility to leave—it is the abuser’s responsibility to stop abusing their partner, and the abuser needs to be confronted with their actions and options as much as the abused.

The concern with University students, and younger, is that everyone is still finding their feet in terms of what is and isn’t a ‘normal’ relationship. We are still learning the ins and outs of how to treat our intimate partners. It is important to think about what a ‘good’ relationship is to you, and what kind of a partner you are, and what kind of a partner you have. The University counselling service is a great place for talking these things through. Remember, an abusive relationship doesn’t immediately end your quality of life. Beginning a lifetime of abuse, however, will.

Sources

• Most abusive relationships escapate in intensity: http://www.2shine.org.nz /index.php?section=29
• Definitions: http://www.nzfvc.org.nz /Glossary.aspx
• Psychological abuse quote Vachss, Andrew. 1994
• “You Carry the Cure In Your Own Heart.” Parade, 28 August 1994
• Reasons the abused may stay in the relationship—http://www.womensrefuge.org.nz
• Feelings of fear increase attraction: Dutton, D.G and P. A Andarthur, “Some Evidence for Heightened Sexual Attraction Under Conditions of High Anxiety, ” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (1974) Vol. 30, No. 4. pp510-517
• Nearly 80% of girls who have been physically abused in their intimate relationships continue to date their abuser. (Liz Claiborne Inc. study conducted by Teenage Research Unlimited; February 2005.)
• Stalking and University students: http://www.uwpave.com/stalking-behavior-often-creeps-upon-students-stalking-op-ed/
• http://www.helpguide.org/mental/domestic_violence_abuse_types_signs_causes_effects.htm

How to make yourself more attractive quickly and easily without having to stop eating doughnuts.

Remind yourself as often as possible. Every time you think of it, or feel down about how you look, try to do one of these things instantly-

-Sit up straight and roll your shoulders back. Anyone who has seen a graduation ceremony, or any event where a lot of people walk in front of you, will have had an uncomfortable chuckle at a few hunchbacks. Most of us are, unfortunately, varying levels of hunchback (…until we regularly remind ourselves, that is).

-Don’t scratch yourself. No, really. Have you ever seen an attractive scratchmark? How about the scab from those itchy bites? Shaving rash will get worse. Leave. It. Alone.

-In the same vein, don’t touch your face unless you actually need to. This will keep your skin happy, and you will look less nervous/insincere.

-In a more complicated vein, think about how you want to appear to people, and how you can stand/sit to reflect that better. Confident people don’t avoid eye contact and hold handbags against their chests. Here’s a good one, to instantly feel more confident keep your thumb as far from your index finger as possible. I’m not kidding. Try to make it look natural.

-Practise smiling as often as possible, wherever you can. People do love a smiler, and everyone—everyone—looks better when smiling.

-Smile, then say “thank you” whenever possible, and use a tone which implies that the recipient really moved heaven and earth for you.

-Every time it is available, drink a glass of water. I hope I don’t have to explain the benefits of water.

-Check your underwear isn’t showing, and is unlikely to anytime soon. Noone finds accidentally flashed gruts impressive, except creeps.

-When washing your hands in the bathroom, look at yourself in the mirror even if you hate doing so. It’s the basic “there’s no food on my face” check that’s important. If you hate looking at yourself, it’s even more important! Look into your eyes and with a mental “This is who I am, and I look fricken great.”

-Apply lip balm, male or female. Wellington wind takes moisture straight outta them.

-Think about what you look like, and don’t gloss over the bits you hate, reminding yourself that “This is who I am, it looks fricken great.”

-Get your makeup chosen by the in-store experts, or at least ask their advice. You will continue to make the same mistakes otherwise, promise.

-In fact, how about buying any body-related product in a store where you can ask for help about that kind of thing, and ask for help for the best product.

-Apply moisturiser to your hands and feet. If you don’t look better, you’ll feel like you do.

-Be frank about your body when discussing it in a non-deprecating way. Confidence is attractiveness. Always try to act about 10% more confident than you feel. I will always remember the advice, “He isn’t thinking ‘that bra doesn’t match her panties’ or ‘she shaved her armpits badly.’ He’s thinking, ‘holy shit, I get to see this girl naked,’ and trying not to smile so much it looks like a smirk.”

-When you get dressed, prepare for your clothes to be shifted about a whole lot more than you want them to be, and plan accordingly. Prepare for the weather to vary more than you want it to. There’s nothing less attractive than a sweaty butt, or shivering girl. Unless you’re a creep.

-Most importantly, don’t focus on looking attractive just for the people you find attractive, or want to attract. Focus on feeling attractive, happy and confident about your body and within yourself, and it is important to have this attitude with everyone you come across in your day. It’s not a game to get someone to find you attractive, because it’s not about anyone except your lovely self.

Welcome back to Vic, everyone :)

De La Soul, the hip-hop group who have been around for almost 25 years and inspired generations of rappers, are in town for Orientation on the 20th anniversary tour of their second album, De La Soul is Dead. Salient caught up with Vincent Mason (a.k.a. P.A., Pasemaster Mase, Maseo, Plug Three).

You’d think that after touring “for the last 25 years, for six to eight months of the year”, De La Soul would begin to tire of performing much the same material—their previous tour marked the 20th anniversary tour of their debut, 3 Feet High and Rising. But the exact opposite seems to have happened, with Mason feeling that “to come around and actually celebrate the birthday of De La Soul is Dead [is] very admirable on our part, the fans’ parts, the promoters, everybody involved who felt that this was an important record in their lives…

“What’s even really highly interesting, and a great feeling, is to see the new faces out there—people who’ve never maybe even heard of De La Soul, or who probably heard of De La Soul when they were really young, but are now old enough to come out and see us… they feel like they didn’t miss anything. They got exactly what they used to hear, if not better.”

Hip-hop as a genre is still quite fresh—you can clearly chart it from its origins in New York in the mid-1970s. Having formed around 1986, the members of De La Soul have seen hip-hop “go from an infant to a grown-up”, and have been riding the crest of the wave, so to speak, right from their formation. 3 Feet High and Rising is rarely missed from ‘greatest album’ lists, and even embraced by NME magazine, who rarely focus on hip-hop at all. Both 3 Feet and De La Soul is Dead are wholly original within hip-hop, not so much reflective of the musical sound of the time, as its inventiveness and originality. Both albums have skits and spoken word throughout, following a theme throughout the album. The skits and conversations of De La Soul is Dead follow a group of bullies who are criticising a De La Soul album, with many of the songs responding to their attacks. Mason refers to his skits as their “homework”—the result of too much time in the studio, that addressed interpretations of their music in a creative way.

In this way, Mason channels his frustrations into his music.

“In the music business, when they can’t identify with something, they like to give it their own category and new name—but who gave them the right to call what I’m doing ‘alternative hip-hop’? Who gave them the right to call me a hippie of hip-hop, when I don’t know anything about being a hippie, or Woodstock, or anything of that matter. Who gave them that right? How about turning around and asking me what it is? That’s something I had to constantly combat with the record label, and the media, because it helps sell records and magazines.”

From the beginning, De La Soul have been revolutionary in their music, and their image suffered as the industry tried to pigeonhole them. Instead of trying to actively combat the view that they were hippies, or the attitude of the record industry, De La Soul addressed it in their music lightheartedly.

“De La Soul is Dead was really clowning the success of 3 Feet High and Rising… We were just kids acting silly, really… we’re just being creative, and I think a big part of being creative is blocking out everything as an adult, and trying to capture your innocence.”

One could argue, then, that they responded to their critics by refusing to take them seriously. Mason was just 18 when he was catapulted to fame with De La Soul’s first album, and 21 when De La Soul is Dead was released. The band were pegged as hippies just as the hippy movement was ending, prompting them to try to “end this trend before the music business ends it”.

And it worked. De La Soul is Dead blew everyone out of the water and, today, their sound—even their delivery—constantly changes with the blessing of the industry and their fans. For example, De La Soul had a large part in the Gorillaz project (Mason is the booming laugh on the track ‘Feel Good Inc.’), and continue to keep up with technology and the world changing around them. In 2009, De La Soul created the Nike Mixtape, Are You In: over 40 minutes of constant music designed for people to work out to. The project was founded by Nike and iTunes, with the album only available on iTunes; the content and sound for such a commercially driven enterprise would surely be heavily controlled?

Mason admits, “If you want to make a living and have a career, you have to make some sacrifices and do business and compromise at some point, but not where you sacrifice your integrity. I’ve always had creative freedom when I made my music. That was something that will never be compromised.

“When Nike came to us with the idea of doing this workout album, we were actually trying to make a workout album and that’s not what they wanted. They actually said, ‘Yo, we want De La to… be De La. How we got the idea of you being the group to do this project with us is because of what we’ve been listening to already throughout your career. So don’t come in here trying to do a Jane Fonda workout album. Do your thing, De La.’ … The Nike project being something organic, different, unusual, outside the box… that’s what De La is all about.

“So here it is, I’m going in, thinking that I’m getting my opportunity to do my own kind of Billy Blake record, or Jane Fonda record, you know what I mean? And no, they don’t want me to do Billy Blake or Jane Fonda, they don’t want me to do Jane Fonda, and I have to appreciate that. I have to appreciate that because, you know—what can you say when somebody is actually telling you, ‘I want you to be you’? That never came out of this music business,” he says with a laugh.

Despite being an old hand in the music business—someone who openly criticises the way the industry batters its stars to be “all packed up and ready with an image… a sales pitch and everything”—Mason still seems genuinely surprised to receive compliments and support from the industry that has paid his bills for his entire adult life. However, he insists on sticking to his old formula of “seeing where it goes”, instead of “trying to release an album by a certain time so they can be at the Grammys or an American Music Award” (De La Soul has been nominated for two Grammys and one American Music Award).

It is perhaps this love of innovation that cemented both De La Soul and the hip-hop movement at the beginning.

“Everybody had something different to offer to hip-hop, and that was what it was all about—we all came from different walks of life, and it was all about being honest, about who you were, about what you did, and where you come from in your music.

“Nowadays, everybody does the same thing. Everybody’s chart driven… Not even about, ‘oh, let’s try this single, and see where it goes, then try this second single and see where it goes, and then do an album, then let’s put out the album and see what they’re feeling, see what our next single is going to be…’—no. [They] have to have three songs ready to be a single, three videos in the can, dropping them about a month-and-a-half to two months apart based on the success. It’s all contrived by the music business; it’s all corporately controlled, everybody doing the same thing.

“The golden era [of hip-hop] not everybody did the same thing, even the ones who were successful—I didn’t do what LL [Cool J] did, LL didn’t do what I did, and we were on the same stage together. Anybody that did what we did, didn’t have the success.”

Still releasing new material, still filling stadiums with shows from albums released decades ago, De La Soul is still at the forefront of hip hop. Travelling far and wide on this tour cements this for Mason: “The music business for hip-hop culture has grown tremendously. This culture has obviously become a force to be reckoned with.”

De La Soul are playing The Hunter Lounge with support from Alphabethead, Homebrew, Team Dynamite and The Arc on Thursday 24 February. Presales for students of Victoria University $40, door sales $45.

I have deliberately left the most important message for last this year. Everybody that loves you, loves you boots and all. Why do your friends occasionally give you disdainful looks? And why do you get the feeling that the people you work with loathe seeing you? Chances are, you’re being a dick.

Try this:

For a week, assume that every person you come into contact with, including yourself and service staff, is the nicest person you ever could meet. They are mild-mannered and want the best for everyone they come into contact with. Every time you or anyone else acts in a ‘negative’ way (is rude, cuts you off, refuses a request, ignores someone etc), put yourself in their shoes and blame the outside world. Then blame it on yourself somehow. If you get a few different people treating you the same way, or get similar reactions relatively constantly, chances are you’re being a cunt about something, so work out what it is and why.

Cut some slack for those with more on their plate. In a family you coordinate between Mum, kids, and Dad. Kids come first. A child’s life is turned upside down if Uncle Leroy turns up at the last minute (again) and invites you all out for brunch. Families have structure and routine—kids can’t spend the day doing what you want to do. They have immediate needs and it’s the parents’ job to fulfil them. Give your friends with
families some respect—give at least three days notice of changes of plans or visits, ask how long visits should be, don’t expect a tired family towait on you hand and foot and never use the lines “I’m so tired” or “I know how you feel”. You don’t. Accept that Mum and Dad’s life does not revolve around you, or even
them, anymore. Something very similar can be said of people in relationships. Of course their partner is more important than you—that’s why they’re in a committed relationship.

Develop a good work ethic. You’re hungover? You can get through the shift so turn up and get sent home if they feel they can do without you. Stop being a crybaby.

You have (relatively) no worries in the world. You don’t make enough money this week, you can (relatively)
happily get through the weekend with no food, and still find some alcohol. This is not the case in the real world, when your business and/or family depend on you. I’m not saying grow up too soon, I’m saying balls up when you need to, and show some empathy to those living in the real world. Families and business owners
rarely get to shotgun a can of Red Bull and work an extra five hours, because they can’t afford to crash after those five hours. Life is ongoing for them, and doesn’t end after exams or Fridays.

The most important things socially are to treat yourself and those around you well, and to mind your Ps and Qs. Thank people for their help, even if they meant well but failed, even if they didn’t mean well but succeeded. Apologise for lateness or misunderstandings. Ask people how they are, and try to care about the response. Send courtesy texts and emails to confirm receipt and meeting times. Because even if you are a dick, caring about those around you will make you a better-liked one.

Have a great summer everyone. Go and be carefree, just not at anyone else’s expense.

You should have started this, but telling you won’t help anything. I firmly believe that people either study, or they don’t, and unless you are superhuman you can’t really overcome your initial reaction of “I’ll get to it later” or “the first 3/10ths of the exam are highlighted in pink in all five textbooks”. But I do have a few quick potential life savers for those in the “I have half an hour now and will not be bothered ever again, so better make it last” category. Every time you think of exams, take five minutes to do one of the following..

On the internet? Your biggest problem is a five second attention span.

How about:

• Open Blackboard and find slideshows from classes.

Now watch the slideshows in fullscreen mode, so you’re less likely to click back onto Facebook. If you’re feeling enthusiastic, click out of fullscreen mode every time you come across a term or idea that you don’t understand, and go through your notes to find more info. Can’t be bothered? Google or Wikipedia the terms. Then go back into the slideshow. This will bring to mind a whole lot of information, on a very low quality basis, unless you know all terms already, in which case you may not need to study them in depth anyway.

• Wikipedia-surf. Look up one person important to your studies, and every time you come across an unknown term or idea used by them, check out its related page, and so on. This keeps interest for a surprisingly long amount of time as your screen keeps changing.
• Chat with someone from your class on Facebook.
• Open up the document listing any essay topics, and write paragraph-long answers. You can even blatantly copy paste entire sections from other documents/notes—it’s all being re-read, which is the important bit.
• Write your lecturer/tutor an email asking about something you really don’t understand. They HAVE to reply, so they are a great resource—use them.

At home or at the library?

Here your biggest problems are distractions. You suddenly need food, drink, friends etc. Fulfil as many possible issues as possible first—go to Unistop or the kitchen before even sitting down.

How about:

• Pull up as many relevant books as you can, find a possy, and flick through them.
• Organise your notes.
• Flash cards, unless you’re learning a language, take more time to set up than actually use. I’d recommend either lists or just not bothering. Coloured paper is fun too.
• Reading over essay questions and answering (out loud, if you can—helps with memory retention).
• Practice writing and sitting still! Copy out notes, answer textbook questions… Get used to sitting, writing, for long periods. Start with five minutes, then add five minutes each time, until you can make 45 minutes without finding an excuse to get up.

On the bus?

Read a book! Always carry one with you. A ten minute bus ride twice a day adds up fast. Like you have anything better to do on it.

Good luck!

So, you want to end your relationship. As complicated as it must seem, that sentence nicely summarises how to treat the situation—don’t make it any more complex than it needs to be.

Before approaching your partner, turn off your “how will they take it?” filter. Your partner is a human being, with thoughts and feelings, and they will spend weeks dissecting these next few days. You felt they were special enough to enter into a relationship with, don’t demonise them. But this is your breakup—own it. How do you feel? Why do you want it? Give yourself a pep talk. You’ve made your decision, but nobody should know about this until you have done the deed. It’s only fair.

How can you ensure they know that this breakup is final? Evaluate your reasons and think over which will be rubbished/misunderstood/ignored. Do you have a compelling reason which will make them sit back and agree that your relationship wasn’t cupcakes and rainbows for you? Use that; avoid listing or drawing them into an argument. Think about the words and phrases you want to use.

Organise to meet them, but don’t use the “we need to talk” line. Think about logistics: At your place, and potentially have to kick them out? In public, so they don’t make a scene (this is cruel)? At their house, so you can recover your stuff in one fell swoop? Think about timing. Allow an hour for the breakup. Ensure they know you have to leave at x time, and see if you can ensure they have a few hours to recover alone. But, if you know you’ll end up skipping your appointment, make sure they have to be somewhere an hour after you meet, so you don’t draw it out.

Meet them. Blurt it out as quickly as possible so you don’t lose your nerve. They will argue, get upset, they may shout and become abusive. Justifiably! You are a catch and they just lost you. Stick to your guns. Don’t lie, as it can bite you later. Don’t get drawn into an argument. This is about YOU. DON’T make promises about being friends, and DON’T physically comfort them. Physical contact will make it harder for everyone, so be physically distant, emotionally present, but not upset—or they may get hopes of a reunion. Explain gently, calmly, and clearly. Keep your cool. Let them blow a bit of steam about why you sucked as a partner. Say something along the lines of, “look, I have to go to [important appointment]. Thank you for sharing part of your life with me,” or similar, with no promises to keep talking later.

Now cut contact for at least a month. Spend your time thinking about how this relationship will improve your next one, and learn from your mistakes. Think about yourself, not them, and not the next potential relationship. No texts, Facebook, emails, talking to their friends about them. Delete them as a friend on Facebook and avoid hearing about them. Avoid sex or starting a new relationship for at least two weeks. And no breakup sex. Ease into being a romantic/sexual being again. And get on with your life.

If you have a story, I’d love to hear it. Letters page, buddy. <3

When I was growing up, I wasn’t allowed to wear anything white because I, without fail, would permanently stain it. Most importantly, I have learned the hard way that there’s no point in paying for knives that actually cut, for leather that you will scuff, and for porterhouse steak that will be eaten blackened and solid.

So, if you’re going to bother shopping anywhere beyond The Warehouse, Farmers, or the $2 Shop, you better make sure you deserve it.

Before buying anything, think about what you want to use the item for and when you’re in the shop, define what the potential purchase is designed for. For example, scissors from the $2 Shop can cut anything, roughly and bluntly; while nail scissors from Farmers cut hair, fabric and nails very well. If you want a good steak, tofu, or piece of chicken, then find out what type or cut you need, and look up the best way to cook it! Yes, you will need to do some research, but the best part about doing things right is that you can make the most of the advice of those who know what they’re talking about. Still not convinced? Imagine buying an iPhone when you just need to use it for cellphone calls, or a $180 electric grill that still won’t make you a nice toasted sandwich.

When you acquire something new, get the whole kit and caboodle. Nice knives need nice sharpening blocks, and you need to learn to use them so you get the most out of them. Read the instruction manuals and keep them. Find out how long the warranties on your products are, and keep your receipts! The best one for me here is that some glass (as in, for your beverage) companies have a guarantee on their products, so if you break your wine glass (as I do regularly), they will unconditionally replace it for free. Work out how long things are likely to last, and their replacement cost. I use overly complicated classical logic for this:

• Improvement to my life versus inconvenience of not having the money.
• Resale value.
• Cost of maintenance.
• Time spent maintaining item, or paying for its use (with food think about preparation time and effort you may not have).

If you already have nice things, learn how to maintain them. Buy a $4 tin of polish and some good brushes, and polish those leather boots so they’ll last years longer. Use waterproofing spray on your schoolbag. These are all basic, cheap ways to extend the use of items you shelled out megabucks for. How long since you tuned up your laptop to free up disk space and improve performance? Look after your stuff so you deserve to have it.

Oh, and apply these rules to your romantic life for a very cut and dried way of avoiding heartbreak.

All year our flat has debated which recipes we regularly use are actually suited to students. Our pantry is stocked, with two shelves just for spices. At this time of year it’s getting more and more important to spend time on Facebook pretending to study, so we settled on these quick, fast, healthy-ish and filling recipes.

Katie’s noodle

Ingredients
One pack of Mi Goreng blue noodles
A few handfuls of frozen veges
One egg, or leftover meat chopped thinly (optional)

Method
Make the noodles per packet directions. If you don’t have Mi Goreng noodles, instead of adding the flavour to the water, put it in a bowl with a bit of soya sauce and 1/4tsp oil. Stir the flavouring, soya sauce and oil.

Put the noodles into boiling water with the veges and microwave 3-5 minutes. Fry the egg, if using, and leave the yolk runny. Once the noodles are cooked, drain, and put into the flavoured bowl, add the fried egg or chopped meat, and give it an almighty stir until everything is coated. Nomnomnomnom.

Cheesy tuna pasta

There are no real measurements as it depends on taste, but a good amount would be:

Ingredients
2 cups of uncooked pasta spirals
1 tin flaked dolphin friendly tuna—flavoured is really good, like the tomato chilli or lemon pepper
1/2 cup grated cheese
A bit of salt and pepper

Method
Cook pasta, drain and put back into the saucepan. Add everything else and give it a big stir until everything’s coated. This sounds like a lot of food, but it usually will serve two people, who will still be licking the bowls and wondering if there’s any left in the saucepan.

Oh crap, veges!

Take all of the veges in the fridge, for example: capsicum, onion, carrot, celery, mushroom, parsnip, kumara, potato, broccoli, cauliflower (careful with the last two as the edges may crisp before the middle cooks)

Peel anything in need of peeling, and chop roughly. If the vegetable in question cooks quickly (mushroom, broccoli, celery, courgette, capsicum), then cut it into big pieces. If it cooks slowly, cut into smaller pieces. Put them all in a lidded ovenproof pot (or a tray with tinfoil on top), and make sure they’re all a little spread out, but touching one another nonetheless. Add about 2 tablespoons of olive oil, a bit of salt and pepper, give it a big stir, and chuck in the oven for about 45 minutes, or until the veges are cooked.

This is really good with mashed potato, a side of meat, etc, but is also good on its own as a way to eat all those veges which are about to go off!

Before you reach for the anti-ageing cream or spend more money on more moisturisers to sit next to all of your other moisturisers, before you slather yourself in soap every day, before you see bags under your eyes and crows feet beside them, and cry because you’re 21—have a think about all of the trash you put onto your skin.

Most people who care about their skin have probably heard all this before, so I’ll do the usual stuff quickly. Bad for your skin: caffeine, alcohol, late nights/no sleep, dehydration, stress, bad diet, lack of B vitamins, no sunscreen (even on a cloudy day), not taking off makeup at night. Basically anything remotely bad for your body will show up first on your skin—it’s the largest organ in the body and you can’t really expect any less. Good for your skin: lots of fluids, sunscreen, moisturiser, eight hours sleep, meditation/relaxation, good diet.

Firstly, moisturiser is great daily if you get one matched to your needs, and your skin! Some have nasty ingredients which, as they soak into your skin, may do more harm than good. Be logical—it needs to soak into your skin, not sit on top of it—using more than you need is a common skin sin. Perfumes, glitter, and other trash often have ingredients which dry out you skin—your skin isn’t only absorbing the moisturiser bits, it’s absorbing all of it. Using stuff recommended for pregnancy (or most LUSH cosmetics) is great because they’ve thought hard about every single ingredient.

Soap is not necessary every day! Suds and lather do not represent cleanliness—they are extra ingredients. Use what you need to get clean, and no more. If you can bear it, only use soap once every few days. There are some great products out there that are not technically soap, or have a lower soap content, for example body milk, which cleans you but doesn’t strip your skin as badly. This goes for facial cleansers too. Your body likes having a bit of dead skin and fluff on it as it protects the tender new skin, so avoid anything with much exfoliator in it, or don’t use an exfoliant cleanser every day. Most importantly, after cleansing, use toner and moisturiser. Toner will neutralise any leftover soap, so your skin’s PH is back to normal. If you don’t use toner, your body will freak out and produce oil to compensate. Moisturiser puts back into your skin what needed to be there in the first place, as well as compensating for the drying cleanser.

Whatever you do to your face, do to your neck. This includes washing, toning, moisturising, use facial products there, not body ones, and do it every time. This avoids creepy old person neck waddle. Pay attention to the back of your neck as much as the front here. We’ve all had to sit behind creepy oily pimply neck-backs before.

If you must pop your pimples, use a needle and gently push the grossness out. Popping them with fingers and nails does much more damage to the skin and you’ll get a huge amount of redness.

Under your eyes is a good representation of your immediate wellbeing, so to perk up your eyes immediately, shotgun a glass of water. Seriously. Also, that skin is among the most delicate in your body, so be careful what you stick on it, like cheap makeup, and you shouldn’t use exfoliant anywhere near your eyes!

Firstly, if at all possible, buy from the supermarket or dairy. For the same amount of money you’d spend on an entire meal, you can get a drink or dessert as well. Dairies have TV dinners in the freezer, and they are usually of the comfort food variety, so could hit the spot. TV dinners are usually about $7, which means you can get a full meal for $15 with drink and dessert.

The supermarket has a massive range of options for dinner. You can get TV dinners for $5-12, and they take 3 minutes in the microwave. The frozens area is also good for ovenbake chips and even fatty-ish food which is still much better for you than takeaways. An entire bag of chips can cost $5 and will take ten minutes to cook. Rotisserie chicken or supermarket-Brownies and Banana Cake prepared deli food is also a great cheap option. The most important thing is an attitude shift—if you would otherwise spend $50 on Hell pizza, compare this to $50 of supermarket or dairy food, and you’ll realise just how far your money stretches.

Chinese food can be really great, but it’s a mixed bag depending on where you get it. Fisherman’s Plate on Bond Street is fantastic for healthy and cheap Vietnamese food and healthy-ish fish and chips; Aunty Mena’s (Cuba Street), or Tong’s Takeaways (Kilbirnie) are delicious but not so good for you. Aim for a meal with lean meat and tons of veg and rice, which would make for a balanced meal.

Pizza is also a mixed bag. We all love Hell, but it is expensive and you can often eat a whole one without blinking. Beware of idiot-aimed advertising—Pizza Hut, for example, has just released a “huge 14-inch pizza” which is only a fraction larger than their competitors’ regular size, so this is essentially a campaign to encourage us to spend more on a regular sized pizza. Think realistically about your order. Will it hit the spot? Can you actually afford it? Will it fill you up? I always crave Coca Cola and ice cream after pizza, so when I get pizza I often end up either broke or dissatisfied.

Fish and chips is great for filling you up but incredibly bad for you. If you can bear it, get a burger or grilled fish instead of deep fried battered fish. Burgers are often really good from fish and chip shops. Buy chips that are a chunkier cut, as they’ll have absorbed less fat in the deep frier. Aro Chips (Te Aro) deserves a mention! On the upside, fish and chips
are relatively cheap and you will feel full faster and probably eat less. But is it worth feeling ill afterwards?

Meals packed with additives/salt/ MSG/fat will glisten or be unnaturally coloured (e.g., dark brown stir fry, pink ginger, bright orange sweet and sour sauce). If you can’t tell what kind of meat it is, how it was made or the veges are unrecognisable, you could have done better. The best rule of thumb: the yummier it sounds when stoned, the worse it is for you!

Here’s something commonly complained about: Someone wants to lose weight/gain muscle/eat healthily/not have an asshole boyfriend/be funny/be better liked… but doesn’t know how to do it. Things suddenly seem insurmountable, or you only seem to think of what you need to do at a time that you can’t do it. So how do you actually tackle it?

You take baby steps.

You want to be nicer? Always ask yourself what the nicer action to take would be, whenever you need to make a choice. You want to do an assignment? Think about what you need to write down while walking out of your tutorial. Open a tab on your web browser and start looking up sources when Facebook has stopped churning out interesting updates.

Standing in a supermarket aisle, you realise you want to eat better but don’t know how? Take out one junk food item and replace with one healthier item in this shopping basket. In the next shopping basket, well, we’ll see.

It’s usually easier on the fly, but if you didn’t think of what you wanted to change until it’s too late (on the way home from the supermarket, for instance), plan out one thing which you know you actually will achieve, and realistically plan to do it as quickly as possible. Every time you think of your goal, commit to doing one thing towards it as quickly as possible—decide when you will do it then and there.

For example:
While walking to class I realise I haven’t started on my assignment. I don’t even know which question I want to answer, but if I go onto Wikipedia and look up both topics I should get a feel for both questions. My next class always starts late, so straight after this class I’m going to jump onto the computer outside my next class and look up one, or both if I have time, topics.

How about:
On Sunday I woke up feeling terrible about the night before. I guess I want to be less psychotic when I drink, but don’t know how to tone it down. I couldn’t change last night’s drinking but I could text Sarah and apologise for pulling down her top in the middle of Maya. On Friday night, if I can’t mellow out I’ll at least try to say “I’m a bit drunk. I didn’t mean to … Sorry” at least once. I want to work up to identifying my action as psychotic BEFORE I do it.

So, verbalise to yourself what you want to change. Once you’ve done that, just keep identifying small actions throughout your day that will reflect your new mindset. Keep your eyes on the prize—you are being the change you want to see. Do this process as often as you think of it, but make every step a baby step. It might be helpful to try to think of your goal once a day, for example, when travelling to uni, but do not give yourself any expectation of consistent, regular events and changes—or you will get depressed if you don’t do anything for a week. Every time you make a small change, you’re much further on your way than you ever wanted to admit.

We all need to be weaned off the habit of just ‘ducking in’ to the supermarket because, you know, there’s no food at all for dinner and tonight (for once) you will actually be cooking and eating dinner at home. So I’ve put together a few tips—this is what we did when we decided to do a monthly supermarket shop instead of an ‘every few days’ shop. Keep in mind that if you shop frequently, you’re likely to be spending about 50 per cent of your bill on things you don’t need.

The first thing we did was a shop with the aim of not returning to the store for a month—that includes bread and milk. Because the aim was to feed ourselves for ages, we purchased far fewer ‘one offs’ that sit in the cupboard for ages—or so we thought. Three cans of chilli beans went untouched for two weeks, then suddenly we had to use them and ended up on chilli bean overload—we had to—we weren’t going back. Then we identified food we just don’t buy enough of, the food that usually got us going back a few days later. Meat, bread and cereal are big here. For the next shop we doubled these items and simply did not buy the items that we turned to as a last resort.

So, if you like creamed corn toasted sandwiches once every few months, sure, buy a can. But don’t replace it until the next big shop, and don’t buy more unless you actually used it! If you went through eggs in a hurry, balls up and buy a tray. This is much cheaper in the long run.

Also try your absolute hardest to use everything you bought. If you bought flour and vanilla essence, bake a cake. If you ran out of eggs but still have those ingredients, google an eggless cake recipe.

Save up your money—put aside a set amount every week for the monthly shop. And put aside the amount you used to spend on groceries! This means that when you inevitably dip into the fund before supermarket day, for candy bars and milk at the dairy, your shopping list won’t suffer. The usual amount is about $75 a week (if you’re employed!). But even $5 a week will make a difference.

Write a shopping list. The easiest way to do this is to stick a piece of paper on your kitchen wall and write it as you go. Put more on the shopping list than you intend to buy. When you go to the supermarket, use your phone as a calculator and keep to budget. You may find that you can reduce your shopping list by 25 per cent when you have to make the choice between four different bags of potato chips and an extra three meals worth of food.

Don’t be afraid to buy more when your favourite items are on special, but be very cautious with the speed you use them. And, as always, bring a backpack or reuseable bags. At New World you’ll save a hefty 5 cents per bag you bring to the shop. Good luck troopers!

It was so important to make sure I had 5+—especially while preganant—and the same with the flatties (because they’re always at risk of eating a meat-only diet), so I developed these ‘ere ideas to squeeze them into everything…

• Use fruit creatively while baking. Muffins are a good way to start, but there are cake recipes calling for beetroot, instead of eggs and milk; how about mashed banana instead of eggs?
• Grate carrot into EVERYTHING. Mince, soup, casserole, stir fry, EVERYTHING.
• Base your pasta sauces with canned tomato.
• Keep mushrooms on hand. Yes, they can get expensive, but cooking mushrooms just feels so easy (and tasty), so you’re more likely to have ‘em for breakfast or dinner, instead of a bag of chips.
• Buy apples/pears. If you don’t eat them during the week, at the end of the week chop them up and put them into a casserole dish with a bit of water and sugar. Top with mixed butter, oats, flour and sugar, and bake to have nummy crumble. This way you never waste.
• If you’re a fan of dried fruit, put some in a jar in your bag, so when you’re famished you have something to nosh on.
• Every time you eat eggs, cook up spinach or mushrooms with them.
• Develop a foolproof potato recipe. No one turns down wedges. And wedges are good for you! Potatoes are tops. Baked potato is easy and yum, for example.
• When cooking with meat or tofu, only choose recipes which require at least two veges to be cooked with them. It’s easier when everything is all cooked together.
• It’s easy to steam broccoli or cauli above your boiling rice/potato/pasta. Breadcrumbs + garlic + butter tossed with cooked broccoli is amazing.
• Be comfortable to admit that you just don’t like some veggies. Don’t buy what you won’t eat, and don’t feel bad for it. Having a good buzz about healthy food is half the battle.
• Explore curry—it’s not that hard to cook and you can easily smuggle capsicum, potato, tomato, mushroom, and carrot in there.
• Replace rice or pasta with mashed potato. Mash some cauliflower, carrot, kumara or pumpkin into it—explore what tastes good. Kumara and feta mash is a solid favourite in café culture, usually with salmon or eggs.
• Aim to have three meat-free dinners, and one egg and dairy free day a week. This will force you to explore your options, and keep your bills down.

Good luck! Let me know how y’all get on, this is a hard one for many, but so worthwhile. Your body will love you.

Beetroot chocolate cake

1 large beetroot
Unsweetened apple sauce, or cooked blended apple
1 tsp. vanilla essence
1 tsp. apple cider vinegar (or normal vinegar)
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup white flour
1/2 cup cocoa
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 tbsp cornstarch/corn powder
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp cinnamon
Chocolate chunks or frozen berries (optional)

Peel and dice beetroot. Place the pieces in a saucepan with water to cover. Boil until soft, then drain and cool (or use 1 tin drained beetroot).

Put the drained beets into the food processor with 1/4 cup (clear) water, and process until pureed.

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees. Oil or spray your cooking pan(s).

Put the pureed beets into a 2-cup measure. Add enough apple sauce to reach the 2-cup line—if you have 2 cups of beetroot then you don’t need the apple. Add 2 tablespoons water, vanilla extract and apple cider to the beets and mix well.

Mix the dry ingredients together, then add the beet mixture and stir until well-mixed. Stir in berries and/or chocolate if you like.

Bake for 35 minutes in two shallow pans, and you’re looking at a 30min cooking time. Test by inserting a toothpick into the center; it’s done when the toothpick comes out clean.

Allow to cool completely before cutting and serving. Ice with chocolate icing and stack it so it’s double layered.

The biggest problem we all usually have with our bedroom, kitchen and living areas is that even when they’re spotless, it takes no time at all for them to become a mess so large you just can’t be bothered dealing with it (and are likely to lay blame with everyone else you live with). A lot of people think that they are ‘good’ flatmates, but can’t quite quantify why, or use the (incorrect!) phrase “because I’m never home/don’t use the kitchen/lounge…”. So, for you, my Cleo-inspired “Are you a good flatmate?” Quiz…

When I get home I…
1. Come into the common area and say hello to everyone.
2. Go straight to my room.
3. Put my shoes and jacket (and anything else I won’t need now that I’m home) where I store them, then say hello to anyone in the common area regardless of whether I intend to use that space or not.

When I cook, I…
1. I don’t. Our kitchen is an overfilled scum bucket.
2. Clean all of my cooking stuff and the benchtops before I even eat my meal.
3. Often/occasionally do my flatmates’ dishes at the same time as mine, preferably after I’ve eaten but always before other people need to use the kitchen, because I’m not an anal retentive ass and would prefer to pay it forward.

Number 1, it is just as much your responsibility to make a change on as anyone else’s. Number 2 isn’t correct, unless you have a dishwasher, because you’re more likely to waste time doing two sets of dishes (when cleaning what you just ate off), or not do all of your dishes at all. The more you do for your flatmates when it’s convenient for you, the more likely they’ll do the same when you need it, and the less likely you will be nagged…

In the bathroom, I…
1. Check out the shower floor to see if it’s fuzzy or discoloured, so I can go nuts at whoever should clean it this week.
2. Often shave in the sink, but wouldn’t know where the cloths to clean the sink are. (You suck. How would you feel about dealing with someone else’s hairs when you wash your hands? Not even knowing which part of the body they came from? Gross. Get a cloth stashed behind the sink so you can always wipe it down, filthwizard.)
3. Give the bathroom a once over every now and then—it’s easy to clean while waiting for my shaving cream/face mask to be done, and I scam an extra ten minutes in the shower by cleaning it while in there.

Yes, the answer is 3. If you care enough to check the state of the shower floor, odds are that it’s more you that got it that way anyway.

When I’m done with my books/papers/jerseys/clothes I…
1. Put it in an easy place to deal with later.
2. Will deal with it after this other important thing.
3. Put it away because I know that otherwise I’ll have to do a big tidy up later, and having to go back to it will take about three times the amount of time and really piss off everyone else over time.

Don’t be a douchebag. Make your life easier by keeping it tidier and everyone will love ya. Welcome back to uni folks.

:)

It is notoriously hard for people to sleep well their first year out of home, and easy to think you’re suffering from insomnia (and bugging the hell out of all of your friends by constantly complaining about it). So here are a few tips to help you drift off…

Get a bedtime ritual. This isn’t as big as it sounds. It could be drinking a glass of water, brushing your teeth and going to the toilet. It could be waltzing around in your bathrobe and wearing PJs and all kinds of things you don’t intend on actually sleeping in. It could be reading five pages of your book. Mine is putting water by the bed, going to the bathroom and watching cartoons in bed. Easy. Whatever it is, make sure it isn’t too exciting and does become a routine. This means your brain drifts off instead of perking up, and the actual time that you go to bed becomes less of a big deal for your body. Keep in mind, however, that your body would really like to go to bed and get up at the same time each day.

Try something warm and milky before bed. My favourite is rice pudding, but more commonly now I have a milo after dinner (much cheaper than dessert.)

Rice Pudding

Ingredients:
1tsp butter
1C milk
1T sugar
2T rice
Sprinkle of nutmeg

Method:
Put all ingredients, in that order, into a pot on the stove on medium. Stir occasionally, until it starts to bubble, then give it one big stir and turn the heat to really low. Keep an eye on it and stir occasionally, until the rice is cooked (1/2 an hour or so). If you have the time, it’s much better to double the ingredients and use the oven instead of the stove top (180o for 1 1/2 hours, stirring after the first 1/2hr and hour). Nom nom nom. Nutmeg and milk are both great at helping you drift off, especially when you’re a bit of a lactard like myself.

Remove all non-sleep associations from your bedroom. Don’t watch TV or use your computer in bed, because the screen flicker is stimulating and your brain has to process the information, keeping it more active. Reading in bed can help you drift off, but make sure it isn’t a really interesting book! Your bedroom should be slightly cool, dark and quiet. If you have noisy flatmates, or a room which is too bright, you might have to just get used to it as best you can. I used to play music a wee bit too loud, because while it was noisy, it was constant noise, instead of the sudden noises from my flatmates. You can even get white noise CDs, or just flick on the dehumidifier.

When you’re lying in bed, and still can’t get off, take long, deep breaths, and aim to relax more with each breath. Think about each body part as you relax it, starting at your toes and working up, or whatever. You’ll be amazed at how tense you were.

To clarify, in keeping with the views of the Polynesian Panthers themselves, Maori are included under the term ‘Pacific Islanders’. Unless stated otherwise, all references to Pacific Islanders in this text includes Maori. In the words of Tigi Ness, “We are living on the biggest Pacific Island.”

While many of you may not have heard of the Polynesian Panthers, hopefully you will have heard of the Black Panthers, a now (arguably) disbanded African American revolutionary left-wing organisation that worked for the self-defence of black people. Over time, the Black Panthers’ initial stand against police brutality in black neighbourhoods became a call for staunch black nationalism for all African Americans. The strength of the movement spawned generations of strong African Americans, to whom the Panthers provided basic human rights—such as their free breakfasts and education for children programmes—and, importantly, personal strength and pride in their heritage.

The Polynesian Panthers group was founded on 16 June 1971, borne from a large mix of Pacific Islanders, including Samoans, Tongans, Niueans and Maori. Tigi Ness, a New Zealand-born Niuean, describes the founders as “former gang members and students”, mere “teenagers in response to the racism we were experiencing in Auckland”. The majority of the founders were high school students, not university students or adults; most were from working class families and inspired by Black Panther founder Huey Newton’s concept of black unity.

The Panthers were mostly first generation New Zealanders. Their parents reaped some of the benefits of New Zealand’s economic boom in the 1960s, when they were encouraged to migrate to New Zealand to provide cheap labour. The government turned a blind eye to expired working visas and illegal migrant workers until the production boom dwindled in the mid-1970s. Although wages were higher, living conditions were often poor and Pacific Islanders were often subject to racism and police harrassment. The fortunes of many Pacific Islanders, who had uprooted their families and lives to work for wages less than the average New Zealander, took a turn for the worse as the economy started on a downward spiral. The government aggressively targeted overstayers—that is, people who illegally remained in the country past their work visa, or failed to get one in the first place—and these first generation New Zealanders were at risk of being sent back to a country, and society, they never knew. The problems many Pacific Islanders already faced in New Zealand were only compounded by this episode in New Zealand history.

On top of fears for their families, many Pacific Islanders lived in dangerous neighbourhoods, with many young people feeling their only options for survival were to join a gang or simply hide at home. The Panthers formed to provide the young with another option. They were searching for something positive—the life their families moved to New Zealand to create, as opposed to the oppressive policies and poverty keeping their cultures and communities downtrodden.

The reasons for joining the Panthers were relatively diverse. Some, like Will Ilolahia, were looking for a better way. Will remembers being a member of the gang ‘Nigs’ (because they were often called ‘niggers’), but he was trying to find something more meaningful in life. He began reading American books about the Black Panthers and soon “woke up”. Some chose the Panthers initially for its more aesthetic appeal—as Tigi Ness did—with “black leather, berets, Island shoes, raising their fist”. Once initially formed, the Panthers knocked on doors of people they felt had the same ideals.

The Polynesian Panthers challenged discriminatory practices in areas such as unequal pay, unsatisfactory working and housing conditions, education, police harassment, legal rights and prison visits for families. The extent to which the Pacific Island communities felt these injustices is shocking. Before the Panthers, it was often the norm for Pacific Islander houses to have only cold water. In addition to minimal pay, they were expected to work through all breaks, including unpaid lunch breaks, to keep their jobs.

Police harassment of Pacific Islanders was common from 1974 to the late 1980s. Some were picked up by police and those who weren’t holding papers showing their legal status in New Zealand were arrested. The extent of police harassment was such that Pacific Islanders made up 86 per cent of all prosecutions for overstaying. Police began ‘dawn raids’, knocking down Pacific Islanders’ doors in the early hours of the morning, demanding passports from all occupants. In response, the Polynesian Panthers began “dawn raids” of politicians’ houses by banging on the door with floodlights, demanding to see passports, and running away as politicians came to the door. It only took a few weeks before the Polynesian Panthers effectively stopped all dawn raids on Pacific Islander communities.

Much of the Polynesian Panthers’ work was in empowering the Polynesian community to raise their quality of life. The Panthers organised strikes in factories with substandard working conditions, and the Tenants Aid Brigade (TAB) boycotted and protested outside sub-standard housing. To combat failing grades at school, the Panthers organised homework centres—locations simply with tables, chairs and a quiet space so students could do their homework. Many Pacific Islander families simply did not know their rights or entitlements, and the Panthers ensured that knowledge was passed on and utilised.

The Panthers provided much needed assistance to Polynesians caught up in legal wrangles. Pamphlets were distributed advising individuals of their rights, such as being able to ask police whether they were being arrested, and what for. Legal aid was often provided to individuals needing court representation. One of the most successful initiatives was organising buses to prisons, so families could visit, and further support was provided to prisoners who had no family on the outside. While this was a free service, prisoners gifted the Panthers substantial amounts of the money earned in prison to show their gratitude.

The Panthers, along with many Pacific Island youth, also supported Maori causes and political events, such as the 1975 Land March and Bastion Point occupation. The Panthers became adept at political lobbying, which became apparent during the dawn raids in the 1970s, and the Springbok Tour of 1981. Tigi Ness was jailed for his actions during the tour, but was eventually released without charge. Will Ilolahia, along with Hone Harawira and others, was on trial for two years, only getting off the charge after Bishop Desmond Tutu flew in to be a character witness.

Many of the Panthers voiced concern that the government’s way of control was to divide and conquer the minorities, and as a result they banded together to fight the threat to their cultures and communities. Miriama Rauhihi-Ness remembers a time when being Maori and embracing Maori culture was “literally… cut out of you at school, all of it”. She cites the 1975 Land March as a turning point, where New Zealand society began to be more accepting of Maori culture, both within Maoridom and in Pakeha society. Nowadays, all Panthers encourage Maori and Pacific Islanders to remain strongly banded together as whanau, with pride in their heritage.

Lessons for today

The Polynesian Panthers are adamant that everything they fought for over the past 30 years is just as relevant now. Pacific Islanders are still significantly over represented in school dropout and prison admission rates. As the reoffending rate is so high, the Panthers feel the only point of the current prison system seems to be to provide jobs for guards. Now that there is talk of privatising prisons, their concern is greatly increased.

Will Ilolahia points to “complacency” as “the real battle”. We perceive there to be less racism from individuals, yet we are failing to address institutional racism—racism within the government and other institutions. Another related concern is that we are simultaneously more and less connected, talking to many people online and over text message daily, yet we no longer say hello to people we walk past on the street.

The Polynesian Panthers are still empowering generations of Polynesians. Records company Dawn Raid, Che Fu and Scribe all cite the Panthers as an empowering influence. The Panthers’ take home advice to wannabe movers and shakers at Victoria? Stay at uni, get your degree, and get into a position to make change—their experience, knowledge and passion are here to help, as strong as 30 years ago.

While we all may get a bit of the blues over winter, many of us seem to slip a bit further into depression. Seasonally Affective Disorder (SAD) is more widespread than we may otherwise think, and can be mistaken for exam stress. This disorder comes but once a year, over winter, as we get less sun and a whole lot more rain, wind, and general weather-beaten-ness. As summer comes around, the veil lifts, and we don’t worry about it… until next year.

The best thing to do over winter is to make sure you get sun when you can, directly onto your skin. Doing this will ensure your body is getting a good hit of vitamin D, which is best absorbed by the skin, and cannot be absorbed through glass—so sitting in the window won’t get you that hit. To make sure you do enjoy your time in the sun, why not exercise? Go for a run, as the exercise will do you good as well. Exercising gives you endorphins, which also help keep you happy. Hate exercising? Next time you walk up the Kelburn campus, take your jacket off and try to walk faster. Easy!

Also make sure you do get enough exercise. A good tip is to see if you can get the same amount as you did in summer. If you can’t walk the entire journey, why not buy yourself something from the dairy two stops away, and get on the bus from there? If the weather is terrible, mission to a city market on Sunday and spend the rest of the day cooking a big pot of soup in your nice snuggly kitchen. At the very least, I don’t want to see any of you spending the entire day in bed unless you have the flu. Fresh air and exercise.

Set yourself a threshold for the maximum length of time you’re willing to spend without hanging out with your friends. Try to see someone enjoy talking to, face to face, at least once a week. Just talking and enjoying company are good mood elevators. Do this for yourself, and do this for your friends. Talk about anything and everything.

Make the point to ensure your uni work is as stress-free as possible. Get a big calendar from VUWSA and write all your deadlines on it, so nothing sneaks up on you. Make the most of your lecturers’ contact hours to get clarification on those assignments, and you’ll feel much better.

And finally, mix it up a little. Try to do something different every day, even if its walking home a different way, or splurging that extra $4 and getting a giant meringue for lunch. Enjoy your opportunities and make the most of life, even cold icy winter life.

The moment you’ve given notice you need to put yourself in the packing mindset. Every cardboard box and plastic bag (especially big black sacks) needs to be accumulated—you’ll need about three more than you thought you did.

Whenever you have a spare moment, either pack some stuff you won’t use till after you move, or tidy your room. Ideally, clean the house and do your jobs as well, so you don’t get stuck with a “but the bathroom and kitchen are still dirty!” as you move your last box out the door.

Before the big day, check out your new flat before you move the stuff in and get a bit of an action plan going. What should be put where? Can you write locations on your boxes, so everyone knows where to put them when unloading? Make sure everyone in both flats is in the loop about when you’ll move. Make sure you are fully packed before the night before.

Movers can be great, but sometimes even taxiing is cheaper. Work out their minimum fee and time, and budget accordingly—generally it’s about $160, which is an hour and a half, so is this two trips or one? How much can you fit in the truck? Is it worth it? Will they pack for you? If you and a friend help them load and unload, you might be able to get all of your stuff moved in one or two truckloads, for the minimum price. Get the most out of them! They don’t need to move your soft toy collection, but they do need to move the fridge. Be explicit about this.

Friends are awesome, but make it worth their while. Petrol vouchers, beer and the all-important free dinner are all great motivators. In this case, do the opposite from the movers—how will moving be most convenient for them? Five loads and three cars? Who’s the strongest? They need to move your soft toy collection, YOU need to move the fridge.

Make sure all the heavy stuff is moved first. People get tired, lazy, and are likely to leave before it’s all done. What’s more, it’s easier to set up your new place when your bed goes in first, as opposed to outside the door because all the boxes have been dumped in the middle of the room.

Don’t be an asshole. Vacuum your room when you leave and make sure it’s clean. Most importantly, give back your keys (legally they can often keep charging you rent if you have keys), say goodbye and give flatmates chocolates/pizza/invites to your flatwarming. Leave on a good note, even if that note is “I now know that we should never live together again, but the pressure is off and it’s over now for both of us.” Regardless of why you moved out, Wellington is a small place, it takes two to argue, and only one to spread rumours to ensure you never find a nice flat again.

It never ceases to amaze me how people really have no idea about how they come off. Even worse, I still fall for the ol’ male version of battered eyelashes and end up believing everything someone says, because they’re new to me and I don’t understand their body language yet. Hopefully this will help you remain smarter than this mama.

Positive/negative body language is fun to manipulate. If you cross your legs or arms, you’ll come off as negative or hard to approach—this is the same as if you are sitting directly across from someone, I assume, because the eye doesn’t quite know what it’s supposed to be focusing on. A good way to avoid this for many people is to check out how you’re holding your hands. If your thumb is consistently touching your forefinger, you’re probably feeling, and coming off, as pretty shy, so if you want to appear more positive and keep going back to a negative stance, hold a pen. Another interesting point to be made here is that if you hide your hands, you’ll be hard to read and may come off as aggressive, especially if you have your hands in your pockets but your thumb sticking out.

When trying to get someone to like you, or at least not feel threatened, keep your body diagonal from them, or face the same way as them. Keep your limbs away from your chest literally as you would expect someone to when they’re showing they’re not interested in a fight. I always talk with my palms facing up and gesturing outward, as if I’m shrugging without my shoulders. This implies that I’m not particularly passionate about whatever I’m saying, and so people are less likely to take offense when I contradict them. Also try to keep at their level, so make sure you’re both sitting/standing/lying down, and never stoop over someone. It’s actually better to puff out your chest than stand over someone—the former shows you’re confident in yourself, the latter shows you feel confident in your strength over the other person.

Absolutely, most utterly importantly, is to speak positively regardless of your beliefs about the idea. If a flatmate suggests that you demolish the house, and you can’t find any good in the idea, ask them why they want to do it (in good humour—with the tone as if there’s a 50 per cent chance they’re making a joke). Always explore reasons and ideas with people, to see their side—why did they say it? Remember we all, deep down, want to be loved and understood as equals, so keep this in mind in your everyday life and you’ll be ahead of the social curve, with more room to move.

Twisted, because it has the traditional ginger cake ingredients, but is completely different in taste from my experience. Ginger is great for soothing your tummy and all the nuts and seeds give you protein and calcium—smothered with chocolate icing it makes you feel amazing.

2 big dollops margarine
1/2 cup sugar
3 tablespoons golden syrup
1/4 cup chopped walnuts
1/4 cup sultanas
2 cups plain flour
1tsp baking soda
1tsp baking powder
1tsp ground ginger
1tsp nutmeg
1tsp cloves
1/2 cup soya milk
1 large banana (either food processed or mashed)
A sprinkling of sesame seeds

• Preheat oven to 180 degrees.
• Cream butter, sugar and golden syrup. It’s important to get this light and fluffy—I use a food processor on colder days so the golden syrup gets moving.
• Add banana and fold in.
• Sift flour, baking powder and spices and fold in. Don’t add more liquid, it should look like it desperately needs it!
• Add walnuts and sultanas and stir in. They are likely to stick to the wetter parts of the mix, which means that in the finished cake they come out a bit like pecans in pecan pie (wrapped in caramel). If you don’t want this, then don’t add them till after the soya milk.
• Dissolve baking soda in soya milk. Make sure it’s fully dissolved, not just sitting on the bottom, and fold into the mixture until you’re sure there are no flourey pockets.
• Pour into a large, square, greased tin, it should sit at about 2–3cm high, and put in the oven.
• It only takes about 15–30 minutes, check with a knife.
• Take out and leave to cool, cut the cake in half, ice one side with chocolate icing and put the other half on top, ice the new top of the cake, and sprinkle with sesame seeds.

Tea Cake:

Literally. Raspberry leaf stimulates the uterus and it’s believed that, taken regularly, it solves almost all girly problems!

2 big dollops margarine
1/2 cup sugar
3 tablespoons golden syrup
2 cups plain flour
1tsp baking soda
2tsp baking powder
2 cups of raspberry leaf herbal tea
Big handful of mint
1/4 to 1/2 cup cocoa

• Preheat oven to 180 degrees.
• Cream butter, sugar, golden syrup and the mint, chopping the mint quite fine. I use a food processor. Try to get it light and fluffy.
• Add about ¾ cup of herbal tea, it will look like vomit but mix it all up till its well mixed.
• Sift flour, baking powder, and cocoa and fold in. Don’t add more liquid, it should look like it desperately needs it!
• Dissolve baking soda in ½ cup of tea. Make sure it’s fully dissolved, not just sitting on the bottom, and fold into the mixture until you’re sure there are no flourey pockets. (White pockets of wet mix are desireable. Not dry pockets of flour.)
• Pour into some form of greased cake tin, it should sit at about 2–3cm high, and put in the oven.
• It only takes about 15–30 minutes, check with a knife and leave it about 10 minutes longer than the knife suggests.
• Take out and leave to cool, cut the cake in half, ice one side with chocolate icing and put the other half on top, ice the new top of the cake, and sprinkle with something pretty looking.

So I assume that diabetics live like this, so I have no right to complain, but going from eating as much sugar as possible (my tiny frame lives in constant fear of collapsing in on itself), to only eating it when a certain boyfriend is out of the house, nearly drove me mental.

FYI:
‘Raw’ sugar is more refined than white sugar—it’s white sugar mixed with molasses. Brown sugar is the same, but with more molasses. In fact, white sugar is among the least refined/processed of all your sugary sources—sugar cane is separated directly into molasses and white sugar, the white sugar is often packed to be sold in the same plant receiving the sugar cane crop.

Many sources argue that there are no scientifically designed sugar replacements that are okay to put into your body—they all carry some risk of cancer, etc.

Agave nectar is a natural, sweeter, lower calorie sugar replacement, from the people bringing us tequila and illegal drugs! Yay!

Soya milk is packed with added sugar. It’s not the best for you at all, and terrible for the environment. Suck it up and support our dairy farmers.

Lemons have more sugar in them than strawberries.

Honey has 64 calories per tablespoon; granulated (white) sugar has just 46 calories. But am I allowed to bake with it? No. I must use honey.

Sugar does not cause hyperactivity—any highly sugared product contains caffeine in some form, and it’s the caffeine which has us bouncing off the walls.

The best way to cut down on your sugar intake is to consciously cut out any snack food with high amounts of sugar. As you eat less sugar in your food, you won’t need to add as much to coffee, etc.

Crunchy Lemon Muffins :
2 cups flour
4 heaped tsp baking powder
1/2 cup real maple syrup, if my pro-sugar rantings have gone unheeded (1/2 cup white sugar is fine)
Zest of one large lemon
1 cup milk
75g Olivani or other vegan marg
Juice of 1 large lemon
Another spot of maple syrup, let’s say 2tbsp
 
Easy to make!
Sift flour and baking powder together in a big bowl and make sure it’s well mixed. Melt Olivani in another bowl, add milk, maple syrup and lemon zest, then stir gently into flour mixture until there’s no obvious floury bits, i.e., as little mixing as possible. Spoon into a greased muffin tray, and cook at 200oC for 10–15 minutes. Drizzle lemon juice and the extra spot of maple syrup all over the muffins as they cool on a wire rack. Enjoy!