I hate AZERTY keyboards

Currently, I am in Belgium and this hostel has an AZERTY keyboard as opposed to the usual QWERTY keyboard.

Typing zith this keyboqrd is qzkzqrd: Fortunqtely Iù, stqrting to get used to the zeird locqtion of the A key on this keyboqrd; but perhqps I ,ight be getting too used to it so that I ,ay forget zhen I return home1 Punctuqtion sy,bols qre the zorst becquse they qre in co,pletely sepqrqte plqces: For exq,ple; the usuql locqtion of the M key noz houses the co,,q qnd auestion ,qrk (zhen you press shift) sy,bols: The key beside it houses the se,icolon qnd full stop (zhen you press shift) sy,bols: Qll of this ,qkes typing rqther qnnoying: Once I didnùt hqve enough ti,e so I just typed nor,qlly; qs Iù, doing noz (currently Iù, only typing like this to illustrqte ,y point).

Iùll type ,ore qbout ,y tour zhen Iù, bqck ho,e or so,ezhere zith q keyboqrd zhich qllozs ,e to type everything I zqnt to qt q reqsonqble rqte zithout co,pro,ising reqdqbility:

Four days!

There was a time when it made sense to be afraid of loud noises. From the helium balloon in the stairwell when I was five, right up until last year, I had never thought that it could be otherwise. I knew that the reason I feared things that others did not, such as balloons, was due to loud noises, but I had never dared to question why I feared loud noises until that night last year. It was only then that I accepted that my fear was real, and it was this acceptance which gave me the strength to fight my fear.

There was once a time when my fear made me physically ill, and, waking up, it felt miraculous to have lived another day.

But that time is not any more. With my fear down the toilet (literally and metaphorically), I am now free. In four days' time, I am bound for Europe, and neither loud noise, nor balloon, nor aeroplane toilet will hold me back.

Something I found...

"Eicke used his demented abilities to centralise the [concentration] camp system and lay down a standardised pattern of brutality in accordance with his guiding principle, 'tolerance is weakness.'"

-From Teach Yourself Nazi Germany by Michael Lynch

Oh my gosh, it's NAPLAN! (Obviously, standardised tests such as NAPLAN aren't quite so bad as the concentration camps which killed millions of people. Please don't think that I'm undermining the deaths in the concentration camps, because I'm not. I'm just trying to point out how standardisation isn't always a good thing, and NAPLAN is a standardised test.)

Finally finished the first draft of my song!

Unfortunately, I'm not referring to The Journey: Live Another Day. (I pretty much haven't done any work on that one since my last post about it.) No, this time I'm referring to a protest song I wrote about NAPLAN, titled "NAPLAN" because I'm uber creative.

This was written for English. I'm not joking.

Some things are subject to change, especially dynamics. Voice parts may change if people experience difficulty in singing them. (Yes, I'm going to get real people to sing my song! This is so exciting, since I've never gotten a chance to hear The Singing Magicians or Jei being performed!)

Lyrics:

Little girl walks home from school and

Fights to keep the fear away.

She believes that NAPLAN

Really shows how smart she is.

Yes, we are moving Australia forward

By turning its youths to numbers.

Trees are killed, just so that children

Nationwide can all suffer.

Save the trees, the hypocrites say,

The same ones that give out the tests.

Yes, we are moving Australia forward

By turning its youths to numbers.

NAPLAN, NAPLAN, does its pros outweigh

The num'rous cons that we see every day? Oh!

NAPLAN, NAPLAN, I think that you will find

That the answer to this question is maybe not.

One school wants to look cool on MySchool

By making all the students sit last year's test.

Teachers told to use less paper,

Admin's blind not to realise why.

NAPLAN, NAPLAN, are the many stresses

Justified by the little good they do bring?

NAPLAN, NAPLAN, I think that you will find

That the answer to your question is maybe not.

Teachers drilling facts into their students,

Forcing them to learn only two subjects,

'Cause if time was spent on other subjects,

There wouldn't be time for NAPLAN!

Computer makes a mistake and

Marks twenty papers all wrong.

Students and teachers chastised for

Fault that was not their own.

Yes, we are moving Australia forward

By turning its youth to numbers,

Turning its youth to numbers,

Turning its youth to numbers!