School reunion

Over the weekend Chilton had its 90th birthday/jubilee. Now for those who know me - and you don't even have to know me that well - it won't come as a surprise to know that I was a loner at school, so it wasn't exactly a fun time full of good memories. So when I left my house to head down for the cocktail party on Friday night, I had a rather strange sensation of nervousness that came over me and didn't really go until I saw people I recognised, started talking and realised that after 11 years, people don't really change, but they do.

It's not an exaggeration to say I had no friends at school. Being brainy and a Christian made me an easy target. There was a rumour about me that started in form 2 that took until form 7 before somebody had the decency to ask me if it was true or not. In 6th form, I gave up on trying to fit in in the common room after only a couple of weeks (loud music and people 'borrowing' my homework) - much to the chagrin of the principal, who rang up my parents to ask why I was weird - and relocated myself to the library, where I was allowed to use the office as a locker room. In 7th form I guess people did settle down and start treating each other a bit more civilly - perhaps the responsibility of being on the school council helped with that. I had odd times for study periods so didn't have to compete in the common room so much.

But all that almost washed away like a bad dream at the weekend, as I caught up with people I haven't seen for ages, some of whom I got on with ok at school and others, well, not so ok - but everyone seemed happy to swap stories and hear what everyone else had been doing. It seems there's an unusually high proportion who have become teachers, most of them are married or nearly so, and a few have kids. Most have travelled and/or spent some time overseas.

School days are quite a tender time in a person's life. It's a time when character is developed, attitudes founded about how far you'll compromise just to fit in with the crowd, interests are piqued and self-discipline fostered. For me, being an outcast only made me the more independent. I never really cared what other people thought of me - this is the way I am. In those respects I haven't changed. But I have changed in areas of trying to relate to others; I hope I have become more patient and able to restrain myself from saying hurtful things.

So has my time at school shaped me, or would I have always turned out this way? I don't think it's possible to say. Certainly my faith is the foundation of who I am, and I sure didn't get that from school.

Update, and the election

The last few weeks have been pretty uneventful, hence the lack of posting. I helped out as emcee at Al's birthday party and was coming down with a cold already, so I don't think having to raise my voice helped that any. It's now almost two weeks later and I still have a cough.

Other than that I've been pottering around the house, following the rugby (Wellington is on a roll this year, having won the Ranfurly Shield earlier and on track to the finals - hope they don't choke like last year), trying to do a bit of bike riding in the lead up to the Lake Taupo cycle challenge, and spending way too much time on facebook. Oh, and for a challenge of a different sort I've tried to start learning Dvorak. Although I do run into trouble sometimes and accidentally hit the shortcut to switch keyboards, carry on typing in qwerty and get something like orm.ydcbi nct. ydcov

The election: well, I can't wait until it's over. It's pretty obvious who's going to win.

Now you're wondering if I'm referring to the US or the NZ election... does it matter? Except one of them I can do something about, and one I can't.