The Uninformant: The Cost of Allowance

There is no more simple pleasure in life than free money. That’s what makes life so great as a student eligible for a living allowance – especially when, due to the earthquake you have yet to take a single class. It’s like being on the benefit without the social shame. For those who aren’t lucky enough to be old or have really poor parents, I sincerely say to you: “Haha”. You have to pay all that money back.

I felt vindicated after finally being eligible for a student allowance. Several years ago I finished my undergraduate degree. My parents were – according to the government – rich, just like all other part-time teachers, so I had a considerable loan to pay back. I went off into the real world (i.e. overseas) with the loan growing fat, and managed to pay it all off. But now that I’m old and the money is free, I came back to study.

However, it hasn’t been all I expected it to be. Who would have thought that they would make it so difficult to claim your free money? It’s hard work, and hard work isn’t why I came back to University. I guess if they made claiming free money a pleasurable experience everyone would be doing it, and where’s the money in that?

First of all, something I am sure every student has had to deal with by now: the Studylink hotline. If you manage to even get through, you will be put on hold for at least 15 minutes. In those 15 minutes, you are pummelled with patronising recorded messages telling you to go online. This is what I call “FAQ service” (pronounced: “Fuck-you service”).

Then you are bombarded by the songs are done justice by being played on a tiny telephone receiver. Forget students, I think the Finn Brothers, Bic Runga and Dave “Kiddyfiddler” Dobbyn are probably the biggest beneficiaries from Studylink, with the royalties they must surely get from the thousands of people being put on hold every day. It took all my willpower to abstain from booing Dave Dobbyn at the Christchurch Earthquake memorial. I never liked these songs much anyway, but now every time I hear them, I just hope that there isn’t a kitten nearby, because if there is, I will strangle it. I predict that Kiwi Music Week this year will be a dark time for kittens all over the country.

Lastly, the most infuriating thing is when you finally get through to the call-centrist, they are polite and helpful, when what you really want to do is defecate into the receiver.

However, maybe there is method to Studylink’s induced madness. First of all, for the time you spend on the phone, or on their website, or posting away signed forms in duplicate, or – god forbid – standing in line, you are paid well. You end up getting stressed for no reason, and you start despising your boss. It is actually great preparation for a university student about to enter the corporate world. You will get your 200 dollars, but before you pass Go, they will make you come to a full halt.

The Uninformant: Week IIII

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The Student Economy

Many students want a part-time job, but between the state of the economy and the fact that the CBD is now little more than a crater, the job market is especially tight right now. Browsing through trademe jobs, Student Job Search and the Saturday edition of The Press Classifieds is always entertaining – particularly where almost every listing invariably says: “Good communication skills essential” and “experience required.”

First of all, why are good communication skills so essential for menial jobs such as cleaning houses? All the home-owner has to do is give you a mop and point to the wet patch. Furthermore, how do you measure communication skills? It doesn’t even say which language. I suspect that “good communication skills” is simply code for “retards need not apply.”

However, even if you have an IQ of more than 70, first of all congratulations, but you still need experience if you want to earn that sweet minimum wage. Basically, this is where you have two equally valid options: tell the truth, or lie.

If you are going to tell the truth, be aware that whatever you say will have the air of desperation. It will sound something like this: “This will be my first time, and I am quite nervous about it, but I think I am ready and I will be very grateful. If given the opportunity, I will do my very best and I won’t stop or rest until you are satisfied with the job I have done.”

Telling a lie about your past experiences, on the other hand, will do you no good either. They’ll somehow know, and then halfway through the job they’ll ask you “this is your first time, isn’t it?”, and you’ll blush profusely and say something like, “No, but it was a long time ago”, and everything will just be awkward until you leave. Then she’ll never call you again.

However, there are some ways to earn money that don’t require experience. I am talking about being a human guinea pig. These have a bad reputation since the film Firestarter, which starred a 9-year old Drew Barrymore who could control fire with her mind. However, there might also be some negative effects from such clinical trials, though it’s best not to ask.

You may have been aware of the kerfuffle surrounding SJS recently for taking down an advertisement for a nude handyman. Then they were also getting criticisms for leaving up an ad for a product test to “test a brand of cigarettes and provide feedback.” Ah, SJS is always looking out for the wellbeing of students, since nudity is obviously more harmful than smoking.

There was an advertisement on campus for a psychological trial. The next line said it was for homosexual men only. I can’t say that I wasn’t a little curious, but it wasn’t enough to make me want to switch teams.

The orientation pack also contained a voucher for getting a Brazilian wax for $38. I went to bargain with them and told them I would let them wax me for $50, but they quite rudely told me to go away.

However, if you are lucky enough to own your own set of boobs, there are always ads for escorts and strippers - no experience necessary! Presumably, communication skills aren’t important either (i.e. retards are free to apply). That’s when I realised how appropriately named Trademe really is. Because to get a student job in this economy, you will on some level have to whore yourself out.

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Tekapo




Last week I finally escaped Christchurch for a couple of days - the first time since January that I've left the city. Tekapo is a small touristy place famed for its lake. It is a glacial lake, and certain minerals give it the unreal-blue colour. I was sitting on a parkbench overlooking the lake while writing, and I saw the clouds trying to spill over the mountains. It was really quite magnificent, so I decided to take photos every 20 seconds or so. I put them together in the video below. The 2nd set from about the 55-second is really spectacular, as you can see the wind changes and sweeps a bright blue all the way across the lake. The song is an instrumental from my musical director. (More on this in the future)



My friend will start working tours at the observatory. Apparently, due to the mountains keeping the clouds from entering, Tekapo has the clearest skies in New Zealand. So, I spent an entire night on top of the hill under the milky way and shooting stars. It was pretty amazing.

However, it was also a time of sadness. As we were driving down a 100kmph road near Mt. Cook, there was a noise on the car bonnet. I turned around and looked through the back window to see a small black object bouncing on the road. My heart sunk because I knew exactly what it was: my camera. I had left it on the car during a lunch-break. That was a trusty camera ever since I accidentally went to England. It's the end of an era.

However, all up, the trip was very much worth it. There was also a night's camping, a beautiful walk up a hill overlooking the lake, and a wind-down in a hotspring. Who would have thought that leaving a devastated city would be such an uplifting experience?

The Uninformant Week III: Veni Vedi Faece

This is an unusual column for me as there is a serious issue here (somewhere). However, it still covers one of my favourite topics of conversation - poop - so it all balances out. It came about during my volunteering for the Student Volunteer Army, and I somehow became known as the "composting toilet guy". Soon I'll write a proper posting about what I'm doing with my life (hint: not much), but until then, enjoy. (Images of the article as it appeared in Canta is reporoduced below).

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Veni, Vedi, Faece

I wish more people would ask me how I became involved with composting human faeces, because I would reply: “Oh, I just fell into it.” Last year, I read the hilariously and appropriately named The Humanure Handbook out of an unhealthy fascination with toilet humour. However while my childish sense of humour remains, it does all make a lot of sense. Especially now when many Cantabrians are using expensive portaloos, harmful chemical toilets, making long-drops and burying their crap as a kind of time-capsule, or crapping into buckets and leaving it in the red bins because the garbage-men of the world don’t have a shitty-enough job as it is. People are already pooping in less-than-optimal conditions, so they may as well learn how to do it right.

The Humanure Handbook, by Joseph Jenkins lays out a simple, cheap, non-wasteful and a sustainable way of dealing with your human waste which is not only ideal in times of need, but an alternative to regular toilets. I’m not going to give a book review, but I do encourage people to read it. You have nothing to lose. At the very worst it is worth a laugh, but otherwise it shows a new way for a more sustainable future.

I got involved with the Humanure Project Christchurch while volunteering for the Student Volunteer Army and a series of chance meetings with people who compost their own shit. Yes, at the moment it takes a certain type of person to do it – namely hippies and/or idealists. These people have big ideas to phase out all the portaloos and chemical toilets in Christchurch, and hopefully many people will see the advantages and continue to use them even after the infrastructure gets back up and running. Unfortunately, people generally aren’t too enthusiastic about big ideas, as you will know if you’ve ever been asked “Hey! What’s the big idea?” Most people seem averse to pooping in a bucket, composting it, and using it as fertiliser to make juicy tomatoes, but this is an objection based on social conditioning, not on pragmatic terms. They don’t see themselves as the kind of people who wear tie-dye shirts and list their hobbies as “climbing trees”, but there is no reason why people whose houses don’t look and smell like a fortune teller’s tent can’t also compost their own crap. That’s why we need to at least start a conversation and weighing up the pros and cons. Wilbur Wright famously said, “It is possible to fly without wings, but not with knowledge”, and this could apply with humanure.

Over the duration of a week, I had conversations about humanure with countless people (*note: apparently I can’t count much past a few hundred) till the point that my flatmates would say: “Do you mind? We’re eating.” I spoke with regular people, and non-regular people (community leaders and local politicians), and everyone who listens for long enough agrees that this is a good idea, but maybe not for them. There is something so satisfying at an animal-level about taking a dump into 12 gallons of fresh bottled-water-grade drinking water. It’s like stuffing your face full of KFC in front of a hungry Rwandan family, and you don’t even like KFC that much.

However, there are pockets of people all around the world who swear by composting toilets, and hopefully with the aid of some media coverage the concept will become less alternative, and will become considered as a viable alternative for people who simply want to save about 20% of their water usage and who want to save on buying fertiliser. If it’s true that people put their money where their mouth is, then many people will be talking shit. Not to mention that this knowledge could help out many people should another disaster hit.

Composting toilets may not be ideal for students. Landlords and R.A.s might not be too enthused about having a pile of shit in the garden, and students often won’t stay in one place long enough to benefit from the fertiliser – and probably won’t be lugging their faeces to their next flat, but nevertheless, I recommend The Humanure Handbook as a good and important read. You can read or download the ebook for free (http://www.weblife.org/humanure/), and hopefully many libraries will soon start stocking it too. For those who are converted there may even be workshops around the city later this year. At the very least, keep it in mind, and maybe one day you too will proudly say “I came, I saw, I composted”.

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