Sorry people, I need to vent.  This isn’t aimed at anyone in particular (at least, nobody who reads this blog .

I am sick and tired of people telling me I’d be better off getting a different job.   They will usually say something about how I have the skills so I could get a real (i.e. development) job.

Firstly, it’s none of your damn business.  I don’t tell you how to live your life, so don’t tell me how to run mine.

Secondly, just because I can program, why does that mean I must?  I can also operate a checkout or flip burgers, does it mean I have to do those jobs?   I have all the various skills needed to teach IT, why shouldn’t I use them for that purpose?

Thirdly, who passed a law that says teaching is not a valid profession?  Why can anyone not understand that I want to teach.  I enjoy it.  I worked as a programmer and I didn’t like it.  I worked as a lecturer and I did like it.  Why should I give up a job I like, that pays fairly well, and that has good working conditions for a job that may not?

I appreciate that some people I know have left jobs at the uni to do other things and they are happier doing those other things.  And I understand that it’s natural for them to need to rationalise the decision to leave, especially if they are a bit insecure about it.  I know that one way of doing it is to try to invalidate or ridicule the job and employer left behind.  I kept my trap shut when those people belittled my employer and my role (even though it was hard) because I knew it was just their way of making themselves feel better about their decision to leave.

But it does still piss me off when they tell me that I should do what they are doing, because I’d be better off.  The clear implication is that the choice I have made isn’t valid.  

I appreciate that the uni life may not be for them – they have the right to make their own choices about their life.  But they need to recognise that the uni life may be right for me and that I have the right to make my own choices too.

So the next time anyone wants to tell me I should get a different job, don’t.

I had a birthday recently.  Nope, I’m not telling how old, but I’m going to show off my pressies. 

Stephen got me some lovely flowers for my birthday.  The flowers are now two weeks old, and I’m surprised how good they still look.   There are a couple that have wilted badly and that I’ve thrown out, but the bunch is still looking great, even the orchids.

The flower company also included a cute little ladybird on one of the orchids, which gives me a chance to take a photo in close-up mode with my new camera. 

I got myself a lovely little Nikon Coolpix L4, my birthday present to myself.

And finally, my family got me a new MP3 player.  Well, actually I chose it and ordered it online, but they paid for it

My family is good like that. 

Steve and I were driving along Tripoli Road on the way home from Pakuranga  (Steve’s written his account of what happened).  A dark blue station wagon was parked on the side of the road (as were many other cars).  Only, as we passed this one, it began to speed away.  We had to swerve across the centre line to avoid hitting it.

It didn’t slow down and fall in behind us either, as most cars do when they accidentally pull out like that, but kept speeding up and eventually overtook us on the inside.

After it was in front of us, the passenger door opens with what looks like a woman trying to jump out (or maybe being pushed out).  Then she gets back inside (or is pulled back?), the door closes and the car speeds away again.

Unfortunately, a van pulls out between us and them and proceeds to go at 5kms an hour as it slows to park in front of the shops.  "Fucking get out of the way," we yell at it.  After it had pulled off, Steve sped up so we could see what was up with the car.  It was weaving a little bit over the road.  

Then it slows and the door opens again as the woman seems to try to get out again.  Maybe she’s being abducted?  The driver takes off again turning down a side road, and I told Steve to follow it.  SOmething was clearly wrong, and we still don’t have the licence plate number.   
At this point we don’t know what’s going on though — Steve is worred that the guy will see us following and be pissed off.
I’m thinking someone maybe they’re drunk and definitely shouldn’t be driving, so I call *555 on my cellphone but can barely hear the operator and eventually get disconnected.
We followed him on to Riverside Ave.  Steve fishes around in his pants for his phone while I hold the wheel.  Fortunately it’s a straight road with little trafic.

The car heads north and then suddenly screeches to a stop in a cloud of smoke, blocking the road.  We duck down a side road and stop in a cul de sac.  I’m busy try to call *555 on Steve’s phone but it took me a while to figure out the keylock.  I ask Steve if he wants to call, but he says for me to do it.  I finally get the phone unlocked, while Steve turns the car around and we slowly drive past them on Riverside as I reconnect to *555 and start telling the operator the latest story, giving him the car numberplate.

At this point, the woman is out of the car and walking/running away from the car.  
The operator asks if she’s wearing pajamas.  I say I think so, Steve says that its a brown top.  The operator says they had a report of a guy hitting a woman in pyjamas in Tripoli road, presumably before they pulled out in front of us.  We turn the corner to go around the block.

The operator asks what the street name is.
What road is this?  I ask Steve (should have known it was a pointless question).
"Fucked if I know, he yells, we’re at the intersection of some fucking road and some other fucking road".   I swear the operator actually laughed.

Anyway, even though Steve was shouting and swearing, he did a great job of following the guy without crashing or losing him.

I see the street signs and tell the operator where we are, and I continually narrate what we saw and where we are as we go back around the block.  Steve adds details that I didn’t see while I was trying to get through to the operator, including that the woman was crying.  I tell both Steve and the operator that we should go back around and see if she’s OK.   We get back into Riverside drive and see the woman walking down the road with some other guy, who has his arms around her shoulders.

She seems to be stumbling.  The car is gone from where it was blocking the road before.    I narrate all this to the police operator and then I spot the car, it is across the road from where the woman is walking south.  She is walking southbound on the western footpath, and the guy is slowly creeping his car southbound on the eastern side of the road.  She’s still walking/stumbling with some guy, meanwhile it looks like the car was stalking her.  Every now and then the driver leans out the window towards her, but we can’t hear what he says, if anything.

"She’s fucking in distress", Steve is yelling beside me.  "You need to fucking get a car here now".

By this stage, there are two other cars who are watching this as well, and their drivers/passengers are probably on the phone to the police control centre as well.  The police operator tells me that they have got multiple reports of it now.

I’m still narrating everything I see to the operator.  Then, the man who was escorting the woman turns back, and she continues on.   Immediately, the car pulls across into a driveway in front of her, and the guy jumps out and grabs her.  She twists out of his grip and tries to run away.  He chases her and catches her in the middle of the road.    I’m narrating all this to the operator as it happens.

Steve is yelling his head off: "Holy fuck, he’s chasing her, he’s hurting her.  She’s in mortal danger.  You need to fucking get a fucking police car here right this fucking minute or he’ll fucking kill her.  Where the fuck are all the police, what the fuck are they doing?  Fucking get a police car here right now. Why don’t they fucking do something?"

Throughout this I’m still trying to calmly narrate everything to the operator, and answer his questions about what’s happening.  I keep whacking Steve and telling him to shut up, calm down, the police are coming, they’ve sent a car, shut up, that isn’t helping.

Steve is now yelling, ‘Why don’t they fucking come help her, he’s hitting her, he’s going to kill her’.

During most of this, the girl and the guy were on the road, arguing, he kept trying to grab her arm, and she kept twisting away.  He wasn’t actually punching her or kicking her and she didn’t seem to be in imminent danger of harm.  He was either trying to abduct her, or it was a "domestic".  Hence, I was still happy to stay in the car and wait for the police to deal with it.

At one point, though, they guy grabs her and nearly drags her (on her feet) all the way back to the car.  I narrate this to the operator and ask if we should intervene.

Meanwhile, Steve is even more vocally yelling about how she is in mortal danger and the police need to get there right this minute.

The operator is saying things to me like ‘tell him to be quiet’, ‘tell him to calm down’, ‘there’s more history behind this’ and then says ‘put me on to him’.  He tells Steve that there is a car on the way, and then Steve hands the phone back to me.

When the phone comes back to me the operator says that he advises we don’t get involved but that he can’t tell us what to do.  At this point, the girl has now managed to twist free again, and is across the road from where the car is parked.  The guy and the woman are now standing under a tree the side of the road – he has his arms around her.  There are a couple of people now standing around who came out of neighbouring houses.

I’m feeling helpless, and bad for just watching, but I’m not all that keen on physically intervening myself.  They guy could most certainly kick my ass.  But if he tries to force her into the car again, or starts actually hurting her, I think I would get out and do something.  I think that with the other drivers and neighbours there now we could stop him.

Luckily, it doesn’t come to that because at this point, the police car arrives.  Steve flashes the lights and they pull up and the two cops jump out and go over to the couple.  After a very brief encounter, one officer puts the woman’s hands behind her back.   He doesn’t cuff her, but marches her over to the police car and talks to her.  The other officer is talking to the guy.  

One of the three cars that was there watching drives off.  The other pulls up behind the cops and presumably asks if they need him for anything.  The cop shakes his head and motions him to leave, so we do likewise.

After we take a roundabout route back home, we see the cop car again, empty.

Whatever happened, I’m guessing it either wasn’t a big deal, or nobody wanted to press charges.

But still, if I saw the same circumstances again, I’d call the police again.  And I think I’ll might take a self-defense class sometime soon.

I don’t really like experiencing major life uncertainty.   And I’ve been going through some lately, although pretty much vicariously.    The uncertainty I have is only a pale shadow of the uncertainty my flatmate, Stephen, is experiencing, but I’d like to whinge anyway

Last year, Stephen told his company that he would move to Texas if they wanted him to.   They said they’d get back to him.  So at that point, it was about 5 months before he even knew if he might be going to Texas.  Nothing to do but wait. 

Then, in about March, he found out that he might be going, maybe, probably.  But no idea when.  Maybe he’d find out sometime the following month.   Then in April they said yes, he probably would be going, pending security clearances and various other things, and it probably would be sometime later this year, maybe June or July.   So I started seriously contemplating what I would do after he left.  Yeah, yeah, I’ll miss him and all that.  I don’t do soppy stuff, so I started considering the practical aspects.

The problem is that I really have too many choices:

• I could stay where I am and live alone.  I really can’t afford it though, but I maybe could just manage if I scrimped a bit
• I could get another flatmate.  But I’ve been pretty comfortable with Stephen.  I don’t really want to adjust to living with some random stranger.  I think I’m too selfish, so I’d really quite like to live alone for a while.
• I could find another cheaper place to live (alone).  But I don’t really want to be further from the city, in fact I’d rather be closer.  Places closer to the city aren’t that much cheaper. And then I have to decide what to do with the car (cheaper places don’t have carparking – it costs extra) and my furniture (the cheapest shoeboxes are usually furnished).
• I could move back in with my parents.  But this would be the second(!) time.  And anyway, I’d have to pay for the ferry, and I have a problem of what to do with my furniture (storing it costs money, selling it seems wasteful if I am going to find a flat eventually) and car.

I still don’t know what to do.  At the moment, I am leaning towards staying and trying to bear the cost for as long as I can before switching to a skanky shoebox.

Then, at the start of May, Stephen was told he would be leaving on the 22nd of May, about three weeks time.  We have to give 21 days notice if I want to leave this flat, so there really wasn’t any time to decide.   I didn’t give notice just yet.  We got a whole lot of boxes and started sorting things out to pack away.

Just two days after that, he was told that actually he maybe wouldn’t be going at all, because the company he was going to work for cannot hire South Africans.  Now, the only way he will be going is if his citizenship application is completed within the next month.  So, he’s now either leaving within a month, or not going at all, and we don’t even know when we will know!

I wrote the other day about my tension between wanting to respect the beliefs of others, whilst not agreeing with those beliefs and not condoning the actions that arise from those beliefs (although, I’m not sure I explained it so succinctly).  Today I came across ReligiousTolerance.org, which has some very well thought out ideas on this.

Specifically, religious tolerance includes:

• Accepting that followers of various religions consider their own beliefs to be true.
• Allowing others to hold religious beliefs that are different from yours.
• Allowing others to practice their religious faith, within reasonable limits.
• Refusing to discriminate in employment, accommodation etc. on religious grounds.

And significantly, religious tolerance does not include

• Believing that all sets of religious beliefs are equally true.
• Believing that all faiths are equally beneficial and equally harmless to society.
• Believing that all religious groups are equally beneficial and equally harmless to their followers.
• Refraining from criticizing religious practices of others. 

I like this much better than the concept of according ‘respect’ with the definitional implications of having to agree.    I especially like the distinction drawn between allowing others to hold beliefs that maybe harmful, while being opposed to the harmful actions that may have been motivated by those beliefs.

I guess its similar to the free speech idea of defending someone’s right to say whatever they want even if you are completely opposed to what they are saying.

This subject is not easy to write about.  Like most people, I like to think of myself as relatively tolerant and respectful.  And you often hear that we all should be respectful of other people’s religious beliefs.     But I don’t think I really do respect everyone’s beliefs, and I’m not even sure I should.

I don’t think I really even know what it means to respect someone’s religious convictions.  Respect can mean many things.  If respect means "To have a high opinion of" or "To recognize the worth, quality, importance, or magnitude of", well, quite frankly I don’t.  In fact, I have a pretty damn low opinion of most religious beliefs, and certainly don’t recognise their "worth" and "quality".    And most religious people probably don’t recognise the worth and quality of other religion’s beliefs, and probably never will.  So I don’t think that’s what people are asking for when they say to respect the beliefs of others.

I’m guessing that being respectful probably means that I shouldn’t, for instance, loudly proclaim ‘that’s the stupidest thing I’ve heard since the guy at Noel Leemings told us that a Pentium III 900Mhz computer with 128MB of RAM could play all the latest 3D first person shooters’.  Practically speaking, it seems that respect means that I can think their belief is dumb, but I can’t actually say so out loud.

But what about non-religious beliefs?  What if someone thinks that having sex with a virgin cures HIV?  Or that pregnancy only results after female orgasm, so if a rape victim gets pregnant then she must have enjoyed it?   

I certainly don’t "have a high opinion of" those beliefs, and I have a very low opinion of the knowledge of the people who believe this kind of stuff.  Should I "respect" these beliefs by pretending to agree? 

And there’s the reason that I fear that I’m not tolerant enough.  I don’t see why stupid religious beliefs should be accorded any kind of special status over stupid ordinary beliefs.  I usually do keep my opinion to myself, but I just can’t stop my opinion of the belief from influencing my opinion of the person. If I discover that someone holds irrational religious beliefs, my respect for that person’s intellect goes down a notch.   

Most of the time, this isn’t really an issue.  I mean, there are literally thousands of things about a person that influence our respect for them both positively and negatively.  Someone’s religious beliefs are only a very small part of that picture.  And of course, some of my closest friends are religious

Really, the only place I’m conscious of this is if I happen to be talking to an attractive male (attractive to me, that is, not necessarily good looking).   If the guy happens to mention that he’s going to a Christian camp, or church outing or something similar, my attraction vanishes at light speed.   My interest in the guy ends up the same as if he’d just told me he was a 60-year old married grandfather of 15.

Does that make me a bad person?

It turns out that I am an Irish citizen.  Ever since I was born, I have had dual Irish and New Zealand citizenship and I didn’t realize. 

I knew that because Dad was Irish that it was somehow possible for me to get an Irish passport, but for some strange reason I never made the mental connection that to get an Irish passport would require that I was an Irish citizen.

Every country has their own rules on exactly how people become a citizen of the country, but it is generally some combination of these three ways:

1. jus soli (right of soil) means you gain citizenship by virtue of having been born in the country
2. jus sanguinis (right of blood) means you gain citizenship by virtue of being a blood descendent of the citizen of the country
3. naturalization means you gain citizenship sometime after birth by meeting certain requirements laid down by the country

The rules can be quite complicated.  It can depend on whether your descent is via male or female relatives, the marital status of your parents or grandparents, the length of time any of your ancestors spent in the country vs out of it, and all sorts of combinations thereof.   These days many countries don’t allow citizenship through jus soli only.  A baby born in the country will often only get citizenship in the country if one of the parents was a citizen or a permanent resident.

Different countries also have different stances on whether they permit their citizens to simultaneously be citizens of other countries.  Some encourage it, some allow it, many are indifferent and some prohibit it altogether.   In Australia a while back, simply applying for citizenship of another country was considered to constitute you revoking your Australian citizenship.

Luckily for me, Ireland has very simple rules.  Any child of an Irish citizen is automatically an Irish citizen, and Ireland has no problem with multiple citizenships.   If I could have chosen any countries in the world to have citizenship in, I don’t think I could have done better than New Zealand and Ireland.