... but I was asleep when it happened... One of my students was awake at 7:30 this morning and said it was snowing, but only for around 10 minutes. CURSES!! I missed it!!
Anywho, since I'm creating a whole new post, I may as well tell you about the rest of my day. I joined a gym! So I went for the first time tonight - so confusing! You have to take your shoes off before going up to the change rooms, and finding the pool is like trying to find your way through a labyrinth. But I eventually found it (with a little help from the staff and a map on the wall - it's amazing, when you think everything is in Japanese you start not to notice English and things like maps).
Also had my first sento (a type of communal bathhouse) experience at the gym - they have showers for rinsing off after your workout, but they also have a large bath, along with a sauna and cold bath for after the sauna. So before you enter the bath you're supposed to wash using the soap and taps provided, along with the little stools provided. That way you're all clean when you enter the bath, and so the water stays clean. I really wasn't sure on how things were done, so I showered first, while watching (okay, not TOO closely haha) what other people were doing, then decided to give it a try. It's so relaxing after you've been working/-out, so I imagine I will make use of this facility even if I don't do a proper swim/workout. So then I tried the sauna, but only spent a couple of minutes in there (the clock was doing weird things - was the heat affecting me already?) before showering again and testing the other bath... which before that moment I hadn't known was cold. So I stepped into 18 degree water, and I'm fairly sure let out an audible gasp. Then just so I didn't look like a complete wimp I hopped all the way in, up to my neck, decided I'd been in there just enough time to look manly and hopped back into the warm pool.... much better.
So yeah, back to being active - I feel much better now. I joined the gym at the same place as my work - I was going to join one closer to home (which is only 10 mins from work haha, but still), but decided to go with the one at work, as if I move out of this place (which I would like to do sometime in the next two months) at least I won't have to travel any further to get to the gym. The only problem is, apparently quite a lot of the students from our school go to that gym... so there is a chance I will run into one of them whilst one of us is naked in the change rooms or shower... which would be awkward.
Listening to: Ariane Moffatt - Bien dans rien
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3 comments:
Hi Ty, this is Sam. Great to see you having a good time, i just thought I'd show you this garbage from the Australian, to make sure you don't get homesick.
IT is strange indeed that gay marriage - largely forgotten on the Left, eschewed by the ALP in most places outside the ACT and vastly unpopular in the US - should receive a fresh hearing in Australian conservative circles.
I'm not talking about Malcolm Turnbull or those other Liberal politicians who'd like to see superannuation rules reformed and other minor injustices cleared away. I'm talking about what appears to be an undeclared pro-gay marriage push operating out of the offices of the Institute of Public Affairs, one of the most respected conservative think tanks in Australia. I'm sure the Prime Minister and not a few donors would be surprised.
First, there was a pro-gay marriage piece featured in the December edition of the IPA Review. This did not stand alone. On these pages last week Tim Wilson, a researcher with the IPA, also argued for equal recognition for same-sex couples. That is shorthand for gay marriage.
Then, an anti-gay-marriage piece I'd drafted, and later extended at the editor's request, was dumped at the very last minute from the IPA Review because it was apparently too long.
Are Australian conservatives ready to support something not even the Greens will champion outright?
Contrary to what left-wing activists have been invited to claim, no serious conservative should argue for gay marriage. To start with, private arrangements regarding shared resources and property should not be surrendered to a nanny state. Despite the window-dressing, ostensibly right-wing arguments for gay marriage usually reveal a big government, welfare-state bias.
So homo-activists shift to tax. Conservatives hate tax, right? So they claim that childcare rebates are a kind of tax on being gay. More nonsense.
Most people recognise that, unlike male and female coupling, male-on-male unions are not obviously likely to produce children. This is a biological and empirical fact.
They are not directly taxed. Rather, the childcare rebate operates to encourage those who can produce children to do so. Regardless of your position on the sagacity or otherwise of such encouragements, it is irrational to extend a rebate to those who will never need it.
That didn't stop the IPA from publishing the idea before reinforcing it in Wilson's opinion piece.
Such rebates, however, also have the effect of making it easier for families after child acquisition, whether via natural birth or adoption. Some people ask why we don't extend those benefits to homosexuals who do acquire and raise children.
A "homo-con" like me would likely look at how many people are being affected by the apparent injustice and which wider goals are served by the same.
If the net result is a gain for the common good, then the discrimination is, far from an injustice, rather a boon for families and an exercise in good government.
Such thinking operates when we restrict drivers' licences to over-16s and drinking to certain licensed venues.
So how many same-sex attracted individuals want to get married and raise children? Homo-activists regularly suggest that all of the 40,000 people who identified as same-sex attracted or homosexually paired in the census were actually in homosexual relationships and, indeed, actually same-sex attracted individuals.
Regardless, 40,000 homosexuals living together still does not equal 20,000 proto-marriages.
It is certainly irrational to leave unchallenged any claim that all of these couples would also want to acquire children.
This is especially true because focused studies have found otherwise. The Private Lives survey (LaTrobe University, 2006), the only rigorous study of the intentions of homosexuals in Australia, found that the vast majority of respondents were not in any kind of relationship and of those few who were, only one-third indicated that they wanted to formalise their relationships.
The numbers are only slightly higher when lesbians are taken into account. Those discriminated masses are actually a fringe subset.
No study has asked how many of the few homosexuals who want to get married also want to acquire children, but even if it is as high as 100per cent and one assumes that 100 per cent of homosexual couples do acquire children (which is highly unlikely) the most reliable evidence suggests that only 6666 homosexual partnerships would be "disadvantaged" by maintaining the existing marriage regime.
A real conservative - indeed any person schooled in the need to distribute finite resources equitably among various worthy but competing potential beneficiaries - must ask then what impact the interests of those 6666 couples might have on a population of 20 million.
Most people are convinced - and consistent social and developmental research suggests - that millions of Australian families would be worse off if marriage laws were further diluted.
Indeed, gay marriage creates a perverse incentive for heterosexual couples to either reject marriage outright or dissolve a marriage already contracted.
What incentive to get married would government policy provide if Joseph and John down the road get all the benefits and have none of the setbacks (school fees, increased shopping costs and so on) that marriage often brings?
Finally, gay marriage supporters often elide the fact that marriages are naturally productive of children. There is no separating the legal institution from the biological or human reality.
Thus, rather than removing what few consider unjust discrimination against a tiny number of same-sex couples, gay marriage legislation, or ACT-style backdoor unions that give equal recognition but leave the term marriage aside, would rather levy a tax on being fertile. This would negatively affect most Australians.
It would be a peculiarly old Left attempt at coercing by force of state fiat what biology will not admit.
It is not the kind of idea to excite or convince serious conservatives. It is certainly not a plan that should sway cabinet.
John Heard is a Melbourne writer.
Thanks Sam, worked like a charm ;)
Loving the blog and it's so well laid out and written,
Give my love to Beaker and I'm so pleased you are having a ball!
See you on the forum ....
hugs
V.x
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