Grey District Athletics recount!!!

This week on Wednesday I, along with about half of the senior area in our school went to the Grey District Athletics. When we got there on the bus, we got in line in our age groups. I made it in for 80 and 100m sprints, 1200m run, high jump and relay. First, we had the 1200m run. I came second out of the year seven girls! I was so lucky that straight after that we had our first break though most of the other runners had to go straight to their things! If there was one thing that annoyed me the most, it would be that in the high jump, I was on my third and last try and I really thought that I could do it. I was about to jump when I slid on the sandy fake grass. Other than that, it was a great day!

S.S.S

Everybody knows that full-on gamers are common and it is not good for you, but do people really know how bad it is? Gaming addiction has actually become known as a small mental health problem. That is pretty bad seeing as it is most likely going to get worse. And it seems even worse when you think of all the starving children in the world that probably haven’t even heard of pocket money when some people are blowing their $10 a week for 10 weeks just to get more addicted! I know someone who wasted $20 on fortnite in a day. But of course, it is not just the money that is an issue. A short time ago, a 9-year-old girl got sent into rehab because of her addiction to fortnite! She was playing for 10 hours a day without taking a break! Just imagine it. Video games are becoming more addictive. People hear of a game, watch it for hours on youtube and eventually get the game, play it day and night and become super lazy. And to think that some people actually get pay heaps more money to play video games and record themselves on youtube than hard working people, who have bought their own house and are doing things for a reason.

And this is why I think gaming addiction is a real and a bad thing.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

Everybody at least knows someone that smokes, and you may think that it is just a normal thing, but it may become a thing of the past. Smoke-free New Zealand may be just around the corner. A.K.A 2025. I hope that people are right about this, because it may just stop a lot of harmful things happening to you and your family. I have listed some of the main things below;

If you do not smoke and you tell your kids that smoking is bad, though if you do smoke and you tell your kids not to smoke, they will probably not listen. And to make matters worse, if they see cigarettes, they might steal one or two, they might get addicted and you will be known as a bad parent.
Around about 500 people in New Zealand die thanks to second-hand smoke.
You will save a lot of money on cigarettes and you can use that money to buy things that you actually need, or if you don’t need it, you can donate it. Think about it, if nobody smokes, lots of people will have more money.
Lung cancer, unhealthy teeth, heart disease and persistent coughing are just some of the many symptoms you could get just by smoking. Do you really want this to happen?

I think that smoking is completely and utterly stupid as you will not gain anything from it other that ugly teeth, smelly hair (true) and a whole lot of other things. Why would you want to waste money on becoming unhealthy?

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

People, of course, have different feelings about the upcoming EV revolution (electric vehicle revolution). Lots of gas station owners and workers are annoyed as they think they might go out of business because soon they will not be selling gas anymore, though that is most likely not true because since they also sell food and other useful stuff, so when people go to charge up their electric vehicles, they will probably by some food and stuff there instead of wasting gas (sorry, electricity). Another thing they could do is charge a dollar or two to charge their cars. Besides, even if some gas/electricity stores do lose some money, it goes towards the greater good. Gas pollution is not very good for the environment and if everybody has an electric car, it could greatly reduce the speed that global warming is coming. Right now, there are 97 rapid-charging stations, one is in Greymouth and 30 more are in construction, so there are a total of 127.  New Zealand nearly has a rapid-charging station every 75km. In 2016, the Government had another goal to have 64,000 electric vehicles on the road in New Zealand by 2021.
I hope that they reach this goal, and then a few years after that manage to double it.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

In my opinion, predator-free New Zealand by 2050 may not work, and if it does, they may have to be quite inhumane. What I mean by this, is that traps will not get rid of all of the pests like stoats, rats and others, so they will have to use other means seeing that though one stoat and one rat will get trapped, heaps more will be born. Once they realize this, they would use means like 1080. 1080 is a terrible way to kill as it can actually kill some animals that we are trying to protect. It is also possible that dogs will eat it and they will die a horrible and painful death. What did the cute doggies ever do to you? At least 65 dogs have been poisoned before thanks to 1080. And even if the dog doesn’t eat the 1080 directly, what kind of dog doesn’t sniff at a body of a dead possum? 1080 is a second-handling poison which means that if a possum dies of 1080 and another animal eats it, that animal dies as well. What if a deer eats some and hasn’t died yet and a human eats it? That’s not good. And what happens to the domesticated and trained rats? The only options that I can think of is to kill all the pet rats and that would be downright heartless, make it illegal to own a rat (what about the people that already own them?), or they could let them live and if they did manage to kill all of the other pests, the domesticated ones will spread like rats (literally).
All in all, I don’t think it would be very nice or easy to get to predator-free 2050.

The run

S.S.S Poll Tax.

During the gold rush of the 19th century in New Zealand, The government thought that too much people were coming into New Zealand, and even though there were people coming from all over the world, they seemed to target Chinese families, they bought in “The Chinese Immigrants Act of 1881” which introduced a “poll tax” of £10, which back then was worth nearly around about $1,700, equal to about 10 years of their hard work. And they even lowered the Chinese people being able to enter even more by restricting the number of people coming each boat ride, about 1 person to every 10 tons of cargo. You would think that that was the worst they would see. It wasn’t. In 1896, this was changed to 1 person to 200 tons, and the tax was increased to £100 (nearly $19,000). They finally ended it in the 1930’s and Helen Clark apologized for it in the 12th February 2001.

Social Study Slam. Teachers Strike.

It started at Ali’s cafe, town square, to Damien O’Conner’s office, and all the way back into town. The aim was for a few different reasons. Part of it was for a pay rise for teachers, as they deserve it and more experienced teachers to a less amount of kids. In some schools and classes, there are 60 kids to only 2 teachers. I think that they deserve much more than they have. We are lucky at our school, because the biggest classroom in our school only has about 25-26 students, though now that our classroom teachers are leaving, we couldn’t find a suitable replacement. In my opinion, teachers deserve everything that they striked for.

The Vietnam war.

The war went from 1955-1975. During the Vietnam war, only about ⅓ of soldiers in America were hand picked to fight, and about ⅔ volunteered. The average age of soldiers were only 21. Over 3,000 New Zealanders military and civilian people served in Vietnam between 1963 and 1975. About 3 million people died in this war. the Vietnam War started because of the U.S.’s way of “containment” during the Cold War, which aimed to stop the spread of communism throughout the world. This was the first war that New Zealand did not fight with its traditional ally, England. In the end, it turned out that it was nearly completely useless and no one really won. You can thank the former President John F. Kennedy for that. President Kennedy approves sending 400 Special Forces troops and 100 other U.S. military advisers to South Vietnam. This war was also known as the second Indochina war. The US never really declared war against Vietnam, it should really be called the Vietnam conflict instead of the Vietnam war. During world war 2, there were reportedly 40 days of combat in 4 years, though in the Vietnam war, there were 240 days of combat in one year on average.

Using basic python syntax

We are learning to compare and contrast 2 different programming languages- JavaScript and Python. For JavaScript I used Codecombat and I solved quite a few challenges and screencastified my work. I understand that JavaScript uses case sensitive letters and I need to be very specific when I use the commands I have to use semicolons and parentheses at the end of the line. The curly brackets are written at the start and the end of a code to loop it if I can't be bothered writing it over and over again.
I have just started to learn to use Python today. I used python trinket to change the colour. I learn't how to move the circles that were there and how to change the colour. I also found out how to repeat the code so I made 6 circles instead of 3.

Handwriting

We had handwriting today for the first time in years in class. I think you can already tell how it went. Not good and boring.

Opinion piece.

Shared lunch, a Gods meal, but for us. While I stuff face my with food, some others can’t.

Kia ora.  As most people know celiac disease is a thing and you can grow out of it … MYTH! If you don’t know was it is, this is it: Celiac disease is basically where you react to gluten. Some people get it worse than others. When I mean that, basically, for some people, their throat swells up and their lips and tongue expand so it can be deadly. For others, their immune system plays up and they get sick a lot. Do you not know what gluten is? It is basically two components of wheat. And the worst thing is, that a lot of people are allergic to it.

Something else, that only gluten free people realize, is that the “mistakes”  those big food companies make. Lots of them just write MAY CONTAIN GLUTEN. They just do that so they don’t get sued if they add a bit in. But what they either don’t care about or they can’t be bothered thinking about it, it that this can be very bad for the celiac person eating it. Talk about false advertising! There is another thing that they sometimes write on food packets, though this one isn’t as bad. They tend to write “MAY CONTAIN TRACES OF GLUTEN. This basically means that the food is made in the same building as foods with gluten. You might be thinking, this won’t make a difference. What’s the chance of some gluten getting into it anyway?! Most likely, the chance is bigger than you thought. And what if someone that eats it, is really, really allergic to it?

Another annoying thing for people with celiac disease is the price differences. Just about all of the things you can by at the supermarket, is more expensive if it is gluten free. Don’t believe me? See for yourself. At the supermarket, a simple pack of 200g gluten biscuits is $2.00 but a gluten free 145g pack of biscuits is $4.00! Something else that can be not the best for gluten free people. If you go to the supermarket or somewhere and take out all of the gluten food and all the gluten free food and put them in two different piles, the pile with gluten free stuff is much smaller. And if you take a closer look at the gluten pile, you will see some foods and you will be very surprised by what you will find some simple things that have gluten in it. Some types of coffee, lots of types of sausages, Even some salt! About 1% of the population is celiac but 95% percent of gluten free people are undiagnosed. To people with this disease, or people that know a lot about it, this is a lot of people.

Though there is a solution. If food companies just made there gluten free food a bit cheaper and better quality, it will be fair for everyone.

Cave Stream.

My feet were freezing, my hands cold from testing the coldness of the clear liquid that I would spend over an hour in. I gathered up my courage to jump into the water. SPLASH! It was, so, so, so... not too cold actually. Just you wait, I said to myself. A couple of minutes and I'll be as cold as the Yetis freezer.

I started wondering myself up the stream. I hear a splash and a scream I look behind me, but I don't have to. I already know what has happened, somebody fell in! It's not the first time, and it won't be the last! I look around, and I see a large dark circle on the wall, darker than the surrounding space. I look closely and realize that it is a side cave! In no time at all, I had scurried up there. I felt my legs, or at least I tried to. As soon as I had got up, everybody else has to. We then would all get back down again, though every few minutes, we would find another one. In one of these, we all had to turn our lights off. I remember that darkness still. I was so peaceful... Until someone just had to yell out BOO! UUUGGGHH!

When we all heard the rushing water getting louder, we knew we had encountered yet another waterfall. I would trie a few times to get up. Sometimes I would succeed, sometime, a couple of adults would have to drag me up. The water would be so strong that I would never touch the rocks, as the water would keep pushing me away. We kept on moving until we didn't have to rely on the light given by our torches. I remember, climbing up the last little, though fast flowing waterfall, running up to a big great rock and lying down.

A great experience to say the least. A view to last a life lime. The best adventure around. A memory to never forget. Whatever you want to say, that day will stick in my mind for my whole life. From my legs being numb just about the whole time to climbing/being dragged up a waterfall, to the thrill of having to crawl ten metres, fifteen metres of the ground, on a less than a metre wide ledge, holding nothing but a chain. It was a real adventure.