The neurosurgeon attacked at Footscray Hospital was Dr Michael Wong, aged 43. I went to school with a Michael Wong; presumably he'd be 43. Digging around, I haven't found any other detail to confirm or deny it's the same bloke (there are tons of Michael Wongs, even just in Melbourne, and my usual method of trawling social media networks didn't help), though I note he studied with a Professor An
I was 25 when I first had kids. One outcome of this is that my eldest son's education is running 25 years after mine. The dates don't match up completely -- the main event, the English exam, for me was on 7th November 1988. For this year's VCE, it's today. Good luck Isaac, and all of the other 43,000 students sitting the VCE English exam today. (Though if any of you are reading this b
The weather on Friday night wasn't favourable, but I think we all had a good time at the 25th school reunion in any case. Amusingly, it clashed with the year 9+10 social in the main building. When I first arrived (wearing a black suit) I was asked if I was with Security. It was a mixed group of 25 years/1988 and 20 years/1993. I assume the Old Boys Association reckoned that was the best
Tonight I'm going to a school reunion. Almost unbelievably, it's 25 years since year 12 in 1988. To mark this occasion I've dug out something even older than that. Once upon a time, before Facebook and Twitter, we couldn't write on each others' Walls or send a Tweet. On occasion in class, we'd pass a piece of paper around instead and write notes on it. Here is one that survived, from July
With most kids going back to school this week, Andrew was blogging about the first day of school. I don't remember much about my first day either, though I do have a photo that I believe was snapped that morning: Long-haired hippy. It was the 70s though. And I was obviously in a good mood... or it may have been my usual "I'm being photographed" face -- lots of kids have those. What I
Was chatting a while back to a colleague about his kids in high school. One of them ends up carrying an enormous amount of stuff to and from school, including books and sports equipment, but also a notebook (laptop) computer costing a couple of thousand dollars. Giving students laptops makes no sense to me. Compared to desktops, they're damaged more easily, they're more expensive to buy (or les
It's all easy in primary school. You send the money in, you get a box of goodies. There's few textbooks, and almost all are kept at and owned by the school. It gets more complicated and expensive in secondary school. So here's the scenario: Two kids, two years apart. The school has a secondhand book scheme. At the end of the year, books are sold for two-thirds the retail price, with the s
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