What Annoyed you today

[Doc Durian]

Be the man, dude

[doppelgaenger]

Aye aye, mate.

[Doc Durian]

No worries, mate.

[vashti]

Well? Did YOU pass?

Who cares what everyone else did? maybe they WERE lazy.

[QueenofCorona]

It really bothers me that my aunt (age 60) and cousins (ages 36, 34, and 32) are using the visits with my grandpa to hit him up for money and lay guilt trips on him. They've always had to have the best of everything...cars, home, clothes. For the longest time they had the funds to support their lifestyles but in the last 2-3 years they've been hit hard (who hasn't)? Anyway, my oldest cousin (who doesn't work, by choice, nor does the 32 year old) was forced to sell her immaculate home and her husband and she cannot afford a home at this point so they and their 2 boys are forced to move in with my aunt and uncle, who live in a very nice large home. Enough room for them to be comfortable. Naturally, they're "poor me's" strike a chord with my grandpa. He worries about his family. Its just so tacky and selfish. Its sickening. Can they let my grandpa have this time with my grandma? He has enough on his plate right now, we don't know how much time my grandma has left or when she won't remember him anymore and they are going to lay this on him? For shame. If I were there I'd literally throw up. Thank god my sister is and has a big, bossy mouth on her.

[Mish]

Anyway, what really annoyed me today... in one of my classes, the majority (80%!!!!) of the students failed an exam. More than half of those who failed were given less than 20%! What really annoyed me though is that the professor totally vindicated herself. It's apparently the lazy students' faults because they didn't study hard enough, LOL. She went on a tangent today, and gave an entire lecture today (50 minutes long) on what kind of work ethic a student have, and how the students in the class (60 of them) are lazy. No, rule of thumb for educators, when the majority fails, the educator has failed. I hate this professor. You ask her a question about something, and she knows the answer all right, it just 'escaped her memory.'

Does that mean they also failed the course? It's quite odd that so many have failed, usually there is a certain fraction of the class that teachers are allowed to fail (e.g. 30% in my last course) and failures are not allowed to go over that. If too many fail they go by the class averages and raise everyone's marks.

[Lipp]

Got a 100ish page long reading pack to edit for "text-to-audio" reading for student within just a few days time, and instead of a paper document that I can use OCR (Optical Character Recognition) scanner software at uni for they sent me a digital copy which I can't do that with (and double-paged it, so printing it off and then scanning means shit quality and thus tons of mistakes), and expect me to find all of the different documents online and copy-paste instead, and as more than half of them can't be found anywhere I have to rewrite them entirely for it to get done.

Wonderful.

[IndiReloaded]

She acted unprofessionally and used her capacity as the bagel dispensing broad to act out whatever mess her mind was in, on me.

Are you saying that I should have simply hung around after completing my bakery purchase in order for her to stand and point atop her female pedestal and say, "he said something inappropriate or wrong to me...e..e!!! I'm a sweet naive little buttercup and can do no wrong so get a posse together and bash his skull into the pavement!!!!!"?

I think not.

A little background info for you though, Indi.

"Mate" isn't used as often as it once was and has connotations dependent on the situation, the same as "Good on ya".

If you were to hand a petrol station attendant a one hundred dollar bill for a three dollar bottle of water (because that's all you had at the time), you would expect a "good on ya" said with a curtness not becoming of chivalry. However, if you were to help an elderly lady cross the street with her shopping bags during rush hour, a random "good on ya' through a passing car window is pretty much assured to be positive in nature.

So in an instance where you wander into a bakery, ask for half a dozen bagels, and witness a half second squinty eye sweep from top to bottom quickly followed by a "mate" by a woman without an ocker bone in her body, and a name tage which states, "Gigi", it's pretty apparent what is being conveyed.

The irony of the matter is that I didn't notice her until that rude quip. Completely oblivious after my work of the day, I was merely fixated on a hot bagel with cream cheese and chillies on top. (and no, I wasn't drooling.. I checked in the rear view mirror after I got out of the bakery)

Had I been in bakery towards Albury Wodonga, Adelaide, or Woolydonga... it wouldn't have been an issue.

But in a capital city of multiculturalism 4 million and strong, we do have service level expectations... even for bagels...

(even if she was checking out my arse and sugar cubes, which I can't fault her for )

If you say so, Doc. I lived in Oz and heard the word 'mate' used frequently. Noone ever got offended and noone ever responded the way you did. It seems a disproportionate response, to me, over a bagel. Certainly, your response doesn't demonstrate behaviour any more evolved than hers, even assuming you are correct. Two wrongs and all that.

[IndiReloaded]

PS, Canadians are still Americans

Nope, sorry. Ask anyone from Urp, Australia, South America. Its apparently quite easy to tell Canadian from American.

[Doc Durian]

If you say so, Doc. I lived in Oz and heard the word 'mate' used frequently. Noone ever got offended and noone ever responded the way you did. It seems a disproportionate response, to me, over a bagel. Certainly, your response doesn't demonstrate behaviour any more evolved than hers, even assuming you are correct. Two wrongs and all that.

A casual jaunt through the country on a short term visa does hardly qualify one to speak of the nuances of a nation or it's vocabulary.

The only certain aspect in all of this is your underlying femi-nazism making a horse's catooty of itself.

But I forgive you.

For all the gains which feminism has brought, it hasn't been able to cast away the innate predilection of women to mount rickety soapbox and speak out of turn about matters they've no understanding of.

Go in peace, woman.

[Doc Durian]

Nope, sorry. Ask anyone from Urp, Australia, South America. Its apparently quite easy to tell Canadian from American.

I believe he was referring to the "North" or "South", "American" aspect relating to "The Americas".

As for Canadian versus US accents, they're often easy to differentiate although there are exceptions to the rule, particularly along US/Canadian border states and territories.

[Mish]

If you say so, Doc. I lived in Oz and heard the word 'mate' used frequently. Noone ever got offended and noone ever responded the way you did. It seems a disproportionate response, to me, over a bagel.

I live here and I agree. That could have been a total misinterprettation of intent.

[Lipp]

I live here and I agree. That could have been a total misinterprettation of intent.

Seconded. Probably had a grudge, otherwise its just plain mean-spirited.

[doppelgaenger]

I believe he was referring to the "North" or "South", "American" aspect relating to "The Americas".

As for Canadian versus US accents, they're often easy to differentiate although there are exceptions to the rule, particularly along US/Canadian border states and territories.

Yep. I don't know how they couldn't figure that one out. America is a continent, not a country. An American could be from Peru or Ontario. The same way a European could be from Novgorod or Glasgow.

I was born and raised quite close to the Canadian border. About an hour or two, actually. People sometimes think I am Canadian, because I say things like "Eh" and I have the strange Canadian pronunciations, but I spell everything according to American standards.. like 'realize' instead of 'realise' and 'behavior' instead of 'behaviour'. It's funny because my mother's accent is different.

[Petit Papillon]

How do You call a person from United States? American, right? You don't call Canadians Americans. Or Brazilians, or Mexicans...