Adult Education

So as some of you may know, i had my first round of exams this weekend. I am currently doing a post graduate diploma in project management. Fantastic some say. It seemed like a good idea at the time to go and further my education you know. I had been working for a few years and trying to decide what I actually wanted to do.

I knew that doing anything full time I would not want to do just yet, so that cancelled out most of the options I had. I also knew that enough brain cells had been nuked by too much Playstation and beer. So i had to take something that was in between a masters and a certificate. Bring on the post grad diploma. It sounded like a breeze. Classes on Saturdays and Sundays (so I would lose my weekends), each subject was four lessons (two weeks) and then it was done. Also, a year long course seemed like the perfect length. There is even a dissertation at the end of it all which I am very excited to do, because I am weird like that (I was called weird about four times last week. I have decided to accept that fact that I probably am quiet weird).

Well it started off fine. Or at least i thought it was. I told work i was at school so that immediately meant that i wouldn’t have to deal with coming on weekends and basically working for free (yaay). It did also mean that i had to be normal on Friday AND Saturday nights… so NO weekends actually. Hmmm I was sure there was a light at the end of the tunnel.

So i managed to dig my heels in for the first half of the year long experience. “Bring on the exams I can do it!!!” I thought. Well i had forgotten one basic fact that the last time i studied for exams was sometime in 2007…. My university decided to bump its “pass rate” but taking exams away and making it all totally coursework. Thank you University.

Anyway I started trying to study but a lot wasn’t going in because it was mainly after work. Trying to work after work is something not a lot of us want to even think about. I was tired, and prolly most of the time looking at words and not taking anything in. It was a bit of a struggle. Eventually i decided that the best thing to do would be to take study leave from work. So I took Tuesday till Friday off from work so i could concentrate on just absorbing what i was studying. As like is a part time comedian, it so happens that I caught the flu on the Tuesday. It was all downhill from there. I have learnt one thing, studying while sick is tough. Trying to study when you haven’t done it in a few years is ANOTHER issue.

All in all i survived the weekend onslaught of exams, which i did recovering from flu. Saturday’s exams went fine. Sunday morning’s exam was a bit of a horror movie where the good guy gets killed by the murdering half wolf half Nazi German polar bear cross fire breathing snake. Yeah it was a bit like that. The last exam gave me hope that there are still a few lecturers left on this planet who believe that the human race still has a chance at redemption.

All in all i learnt that sometimes doing the adult education needs to be done as soon as one can do it. Don’t let your brain become mundane and slow and only used to bar jokes, football, slapstick comedies and cartoons. It is a muscle that needs exercise. As the high school refs used to say, use it or lose it

Enders Game – My Biased opinion

 

So I watched this movie over the weekend. I have to say I am not sure exactly where they were going with it. I enjoyed the little twist that they put right at the end of the movie. It was actually quite good and cruel at the same time. For those of you who are yet to watch it and or plan on watching it, please stop reading now. Any abuse directed at me as a result of this writing will NOT be tolerated. I will find you base on Clash of Clans and i will destroy. There will be spoilers… lots of them.

The kid and his father figure

Movie starts off with this sort of weird looking and acting prepubescent boy, who is part of a training program the humans have started to use in the future to fight off an alien race that came once and beat us around like a piñata. So it was decided by the American Army (it’s always the Americans. This is where the aliens go when they attack in like all movies (see Cloverfield, Independence Day), this is where the end of the world starts (See that movie with John Cusack where they end up in Africa),and this is also where all the virus’ that turn people into Zombie start (Resident Evil) that children would be the best mind to fight this invading alien force. All of these must be hidden messages in movies that we need to keep in our minds. From this I can deduce that the Americans have a secret treaty with aliens, the end of the world WILL start in America, and they have been making weaponised zombie virus’ since they first reanimated a dead body probably in the early 1970s during the days when LSD and ecstasy where the norm. But I have digressed. Back to the movie, they set about to train kids, and the brilliant ones go off to some space station where they train a little bit more.

Controlling stuff in a futuristic weird way

This movie is based on a book, and I suspect that the book does it more justice than the pants I watched for almost an hour. The Ender kid is a pale, lanky, socially unaccepted kid, with the mind of a killer. His father figure of Harrison “Indiana Jones” Ford, does a good job of believing in him throughout the whole movie, and then shafting him right at the end and watching as what this poor little kid Ender thinks is a simulation, is actually real as he annihilates a total species and planet. Ender also sacrifices a whole bunch of humans in the attack. Obviously he didn’t know, but good going father figure Ford!

There is also this weird chick that kid of likes the Ender dude, but they are kids, so they can’t really have them making out or anything. There is this very weird sexual tension going on between the kids that i don’t get. It was very weird.

Ender has an older brother who used to also beat him up for fun, which is normal in my opinion. And then his sister who seemed to be the only person  in his whole family who actually gave a flying squirrel about him and his decisions. His mum and dad were passable as bit part characters that could have been left out and i wouldn’t have noticed.

The movie does have a weird ending. It seems that Ender is far more mature than most of us even adults. He goes and has a conversation with the last remaining alien of that species. It convinces him to take the last remaining egg of hers, and asks him to go on a mission of epic proportions to find a planet that they can inhabit, breed, then come back for revenge. At this stage Ender is an admiral so he can pretty much do whatever he likes. He sends his sister one last email from space, and goes off to rebuild the terror that once killed hundreds of millions of people on earth… because his father figure tricked him into killing the alien species.

The conversation that Ender has with the alien is not in English… but at the end of the movie, ender is convinced that is what he needs to do. May God help us when Ender finds a planet for the aliens and they come back for us….

All in all it’s a pretty movie visually, even though I didn’t watch it on the big screen and watched it at home on my PS3, if you have nothing to do for almost two hours it is a very easy movie to follow. Feel free to play poker on your phone/tab while watching, there isn’t much of a surprise in the movie as Ender is tipped to be “the guy” from the very very beginning. No surprises of the brilliant one who saves the human race jumping out of the closet and telling everyone why the aliens had come in the first place.

 

The day the police got a hiding

The Standards “apt” description

On Friday, some riot police, journalists and photographers were subjected to a beating of unparalled comparison. In one of the high density surburbs of Harare, an apostolic sect of a church was confronted by the Archbishop of that church, police and media, with the intention of closing down that sect. It had been accused of horrid abuses on women and children, and the parishioners were also told that things like newspapers, cellphones and TVs were evil and should not be used.

Some of the victims

There are a few issues about this incident that I would like to touch upon. To begin with, it is sad that these women and children when being abused in the manner that they were. Apparently the sect had sanctioned that if you wife isn’t a virgin when you marry her, the man can take the younger sister (if there is one) as a second wife if she herself is pregnant.

The warzone

Shocking behavior…

Also the sect didn’t feel that women and children should have a right to get an education. These are things that are abhorrent and to be honest I do not agree with one bit. It is very backward. Yes Zimbabwe may be a rather backward country, but this is just too much. The last accusation laid against the sect I will not mention as it is something that just upset me when I heard about it. If enough people ask me about it i may mention it in the comments.

Sometimes its better to run for the hills

Anyway what started off as a routine procedure of shutting down a heinous situation that women and children when being put through turned into a fight that the riot police were not expecting. These “men of God” gave some of the police the hiding of their life. It is apparent that the sect was waiting with their breath held for the arrival of the police. It seems that they were prepped on the imminent arrival and were possibly convinced that they had to fight for their right to worship.

Of course after showing the police a little bit of How’s your father, the sect ran to ground, and have since managed to disappear of the face of Harare, with their family members none the wiser as to where exactly these men have gone. A hunt has begun, but ultimately this is a battle that no one can win.

“Men of God”….

This incident has made me think about one thing in particular and I remember saying it the day it happened. I wasn’t aware that the incident was actually going down, but we were talking about a topic loosely related to what happened. I said to some of my work colleagues that “the moment a person becomes bigger that the religion his parishioners are following, that becomes a problem.” I in fact was talking about another self styled prophet we have in this country who has been known to sell face towels to his followers and tell them that if they go and wipe a car they like they will eventually own that car.

I am not saying that I am necessarily smarter than some of these people, or not as desperate as them. It does make me worry that there are some people who can be easily manipulated into believing whatever the person at the front wants you to believe.

Ultimately the police were not going to win any fight against a religion. There are somethings that lose fights. Religion isn’t one