Education

An ongoing topic of discussion for me, one which had particular relevance with my ex who was a teacher and whom I got into a lot of debates with on the subject. Having just read this article Lesson number six struck me, as it was a better phrased expression of my own belief. Having gone to a selective high school, I was always a bit biased, but it's still my firm belief that putting children in an environment that looks at talent in a positive manner, rather then trying to chop it down ("tall poppy syndrome") is more important then giving then a fully rounded societal upbringing. Of course there is nothing preventing the two, but it seems to be the case that it's normally one or the other, for example the majority of the schools that get the best academic results in Sydney are single sex schools.

Cleanliness is next to ... food?

I was sitting on the tube yesterday vaguely looking at an issue of "The Metro" when I saw an article that got my interest. The headline was about some restaurant fined for sanitation violations, and I saw the word "Ealing Broadway". Upon closer inspection I read that a local restaurant, Chinese / Thai place, was being fined for a number of sanitation violations, apparently having a rat and pigeon infestation. I have eaten at the place a couple of times, but it wasn't a restaurant that I liked so I wasn't feeling too queazy still it occured to me that there was a bigger issue. How would I, as someone that eats out every meal, know if a restaurant I was eating at had a record of bad sanitation? The answer isn't readily apparent. On the one hand some restaurants I've been to have some kind of certificate up on the wall saying that they passed some audit, but most don't do that. On the other hand forcing a restaurant that had failed a sanitation check to put up a notice to that effect would probably hurt the business significantly (rightly so in my opinion) and wouldn't be enforced. I guess there must be some kind of government website around that allows you to look up information on restaurants, but it will make me think before I wander into the next restaurant, well for a second or two at any rate :)

back in the friedrichshain, you don't know how lucky you are babe..

De ja vu, while not German is a fairly good summary of what is going through my head right now. Five years ago I left Australia and went to Berlin to work out what I was going to do with my life after sitting down on my birthday and thinking about what I was doing. I was unhappy with what I'd been doing there and wanted a change. First stop was Berlin and crashing at my friends Benjamin Waters. Fast forward 5 years and here I am, once again at a cross road sitting here in friedrichshain thinking about what I'm going to do with my life couting down the days till my birthday. I wonder what the day will bring this time around, something as radicial as packing up my life and moving to the other side of the world I doubt, but then again, you just never know :)

While Berlin has a lot of issues, it still stands head and shoulders above pretty much every other place I've been in terms of just relaxing and doing nothing in good surroundings. For me what it means is that I'm getting a chance to catch up on sleep and for a change I'm actually reading again. I just picked up Camus's "The Happy Death", which is really starting to freak me out as so far the first few chapters mirror part of the decisions I'm going through right now, work for money or use the money I have to do what I want. In fact the precience of Camus continues to haunt me, in more then just this latest book I feel as though Camus has some kind of insight into my mind, each time I pick up one of his books I learn something about myself, or at least, see that I'm not the only person that thinks like this.

I was going to head off into Poland for a couple of days but the lack of net access at Ben's house put a cramp on my ability to find out the information I needed to plan the trip at short notice. Equally to blame though was the simple fact that I just didn't feel like it and so I'm just using my time to relax and think as well as a touch of reminiscing by walking around the parts of Berlin that I used to live in last time I felt and thought in this way.

I started off the trip by seeing Mahler's 2nd symphony performed by the Berliner Staatsoper conducted by Boulez. Talk about amazing. That piece of music is the most important piece of music I've ever heard (for a variety of reasons that I won't go into here) and to have it performed by an orchestra of that calibre, in Berlin, with Boulez as the conducter and with front row seats was purely awe inspiring. I look forward to the other 3 concerts!