All in the game

Just saw a documentary on the BBC about an African School in Uganda.
It gave an insight into the struggles of education in a provincial Ugandan school. Crippled by debts, the headmistress is forced to ask students who haven’t paid their fees to leave the school. Thus begins a fairly ruthless expulsion of students who haven’t paid the fees. Read the background to the story here. It was fascinating to watch a show where kids were trying to break into the school to achieve an education. As the headmistress says:

The moment you are educated it means a good job - it means everything.

Particularly frustrating was the story of Eddie who was orphaned at five to parents dying of aids and was struggling to pay the fees, when he gets hit by malaria but still tries everything he can to pay the school fees. Puts into perspective how lucky I am to be able to finish my education after having spent the best part of four years bitching about it.

The programme was an excellent insight into a world that would otherwise be unseen but raised a couple of questions in my mind. Who the hell is in charge of programme scheduling at the BBC? Putting it on at half past midnight hardly seems of any use to anyone at all. I thought this was an excellent opportunity to market this as a reality tv show that seem to be a dime a dozen. I believe if it was played in prime time, it would be an excellent counterpoint to programmes like Big Brother that show the boredom and levels of moronity that seems to permeate reality tv shows. This documentary seems a hundred times more real, showing people having to deal with problems greater than the aimless, pointless, worthless, crap they have to do on other shows. Given that they are not showing it at any reasonable hour, why the hell should British people be paying for a set of programme makers travel to Africa to make a tv show for British tv that no Britisher is going to watch. If the attitude is: the public don’t give a flying crap about some African kids school, then why the hell make the show that won’t be seen. If you ain’t going to give the show a decent run, then why bother making it at all. At least they should allow the free downloading of the programme from the net. I have finished ranting for now, but I am tired I may have a second wind in the morning in which case I will post some more.

After the graduation came the inevitable goodbyes. Being one of the friends’ (Sheriff, happy 21st!) birthdays, it provided the perfect opportunity to get together for perhaps the last time (i keep forgetting about the graduation itself). We met at Nando’s, a fine restaurant. It proved the perfect place for discussion of the past and our forthcoming future, ‘huh’? Typically conversation seemed to drift into bizzare directions (mostly by my initiation), with ideas about the writing of a new novel- a heady and exciting story of an Anglo-japanese undergraduate student solving disturbing mysteries of the wierd goings on in the college library - with sexy results (search the page for sexy results). What’s wrong with me, I promise I have no affinity for the college library, oh who am I kiddin’, Library - let’s never fight again.

Of course, being Imperial graduates (though not for a few days yet), every aspect of the course was disected and analysed. Particular delight seemed to be expressed at my nightmare presentation. With all the things done, it seemed as though people were starting to return to their normal selves again, but the long term effects of chronic exam addiction is not known. Damn, that’s a weak joke, sounds like something an extremely boring person, who was just learning English from a language that nothing do with Inglish would write.

Finally, we went to see ‘Batman Begins‘. A thouroughly enjoyable movie, though there was some debate as to why an opera house would be placed in the middle of the run down part of town, if you are taunting the poor by putting down an opera house to show them what they are missing, you deserve to get shot, right?

Above is a photo taken outside the cinema theatre (an important picture of a close friend is missing and will be added when i get the picture of him - I know, its ‘fucked’ up). Click on the link below the photo and go to the flickr site to view notes that I have attached to the faces. For some reason, IE seems to f up, the position of the photos and margins, for best results view in firefox.

Friends

update: received the new pic of the other dude and am adding the picture into it. click pic to visit notes on it.

Zaid included