A decade in REVIEW…..

 

Well a decade has passed and I'm thinking it might be therapeutic to go through the years to see how things panned out for me….. so I will be breaking it up into 6 categories…… 1) Professionally 2) Socially 3) Main interest 4)  Family and Friends 5) Spiritually 6) Most Memorial moment… then I’ll rank it out of 10 (1 – Crap to 10 – Awesome!)

Year 2000

The new centenary started with the first ever new years mass at St. Mark’s in Preston it also saw what was a roller coaster of a year:

1) Professionally:

This year I surprised even myself by completing my teaching degree by completing 6 intensive subjects at the same time (the maximum is 4 per semester) Also I completed my final teaching round at Pascoe Vale North Primary School. Following that I accepted a role at St. Mary’s Coptic College filling in for the art teacher who left at the end of term 3. This was difficult and showed little to no reward other than being thrown into the deep end teaching in a difficult setting. I graduated from RMIT at the Inaugural graduation at Colonial Stadium (Docklands Stadium) in attendance (other than my family, Fr. Daniel (now Bishop Daniel), Rami Kamel, Mourad Mankarious, Ben Rust.)

6/10

2) Socially:

I spent a far bit of time with the youth of St. Mary’s Church in Kensington I got to know many people and was able to re-establish myself after losing 40 kilos from the previous few years. I met my first real girl friend / fiancée there also, she proposed to me and being inexperienced I accepted, this unfortunately led to disastrous results when the families met each other. I was unceremoniously dumped via SMS! which is quite an achievement in the year 2000 seeing that mobile phones was only a new thing at the time. Due to this relationship I pulled out of my bowling league with my best mate Ben, this was a huge mistake as it had an effect on our friendship for years to come.

4/10

3) Main Interests:

No surprise the St. Kilda Footy club is there for the Whole decade but more on that in the future. I discovered the wonders of the 3 stooges, and was on hunt for everything stooges related!

6/10

4) Family and Friends

I reconnected with Viv Saad who I went to school with, Also George Naguib and Emil Sedra were a huge influence during this year, I will always remember building the bookshop with George at the Coptic Centre in Coburg that year. Also have to acknowledge meeting Claudie Thia that year. I spent the last month of the year with my beloved Grandmother in Cairo.

9/10

5) Spiritually

In the year 2000, I graduated from discipleship studies at St. Mary’s (also being one of the first youth members from St. Mark’s in 15 years to do such a discipleship program) I helped Fr. Victor with the St. Mark’s Magazine, served the youth of the church, helped guide the youth to tie in the spiritual competition that year. Learned parts of the Tasbeha.

7/10

6) Most Memorable moment of 2000 would have to be a tie between the first new year mass at St. Marks and Christmas Mass where His Grace Bishop Suriel prayed his first feast and gave a sermon that will be remembered for his harsh words directed at the Egyptian Government for their constant ignorance towards the issue of religious persecution.

Year 2000 Overall 6 / 10

 

Year 2001

1) Professionally:

First full year of teaching, I taught at St. Mark’s Catholic Primary School in Fawkner teaching Grade 3/4 an average start to my career which didn’t help that I taught through Ganglier fever….. It was a good learning experience.

5/10

2) Socially:

• I spiraled into a deep depression due to the previous year’s break up,
• I purchased my first Saints Membership
• Slowly drifted away from St. Mary’s Church.
• Spent more time with Mourad Mankarious, Tony Bikhit.

3/10

3) Main Interests:

• Rediscovered the Magic of Danny Kaye!
• The Footy (even though it was one of the worst years ever for the Saints!)
• Unsuccessfully attempted to court an amazing girl who went on to become a Nun in Egypt, but got to know an amazing person.

5/10

4) Family and Friends

• Became good friends with Claudia Thia, met Sarah Mikhail,
• Became good mates with John Hanna and Jimmy Morcos.
• Lost Touch with Ben Rust and Trent O’leary.
• Spent the end of the year with my Grandmother in egypt. It would be the last time I would see her.

6/10

5) Spiritually

• Spent plenty of time at the monastery heading up friday night and coming back on the Saturday.
• Started Theological College.

6) Memorable Moment of 2001

Sleeping through the September 11 attack in New York.

Overall 5/10

Year 2002

1) Professionally:

Second year of teaching at St. Paul’s Primary in Kealba, A NIGHTMARE YEAR!!!!

2/10

2) Socially:

• Spent many nights alone, depressed.
• completely burnt my bridges with the youth of St. Mary’s Church.

3/10

3) Main Interests:

• Bought a Playstation 2 and started my DVD collection!

3/10

4) Family and Friends

• Became good friends with John Hanna.
• My friendship with Mourad was strained.
• Met Angelos Suriel
• Got to know Fr. Mark (formally known as Sam)
• Close friendship developed with Jimmy Morcos.

3/10

5) Spiritually

• helped with conventions for the first time, also organized the pope’s visit to St. Mark’s Church.

3/10

6) Memorable Moment of 2001

The Pope’s Visit.

Overall 3/10

Year 2003

1) Professionally:

Landed an Ongoing position at Aitken College teaching grade 4. An amazing year of teaching at the new school

9/10

2) Socially:

• Got out a little more, went to New Zealand.
• Joined the St. Kilda Cheer Squad. Attended all the games.

5/10

3) Main Interests:

• Started Drawing again
• Purchased My first laptop!

3/10

4) Family and Friends

• Reconnected with Ben Rust.

3/10

5) Spiritually

• helped work on the St. Mark Magazine and organizing the youth conventions.

4/10

6) Memorable Moment of 2003

New Zealand Trip

Overall 5/10

Year 2004

1) Professionally:

Another great year teaching at Aitken College 9/10

2) Socially:

• Went to the cinema on a regular basis.
• Went to all the Saints Games.
• Dated a Greek girl who was double timing me. It ended on New Years Eve.
• Took a trip to Fiji

5/10

3) Main Interests:

• Started an interest in super heroes and drawing them.

3/10

4) Family and Friends.

• Met a great group of Guys and Girls on the Fiji Trip.
• Got to know Fr. Mark as Fr. Mark

4/10

5) Spiritually

• Missionary work in Fiji.

4/10

6) Memorable Moment of 2004

Fiji Trip, The Saints winning 10 in a row!

Overall 5/10

Year 2005

The year I should of died not once but 3 times!!!

heading down to Tasmania to help the church there with christmas mass, I was involved in a serious car accident where I still to this day do not know how I survived. I was T-boned by a truck and broke both my legs. I was in and out of hospital for the whole year and had a total of 14 operations in the year. this also included a staph gold infection which nearly took my life as well…

Memorable Moment:

Fr. Victor coming to visit me in Tasmania.

Overall 1/10

Year 2006

1) Professionally:

Struggled to get back to work and was not fully supported by the college, was forced to resign in September.

0/10

2) Socially:

• Rehab, movies, footy
• other than that deep, deep depression!!!!

2/10

3) Main Interests:

• DC Comics, Frasier

3/10

4) Family and Friends

• I kept to myself that year.
• Volunteered at the 2006 Commonwelth Games
• Mourned the Death of Moneer Abdel-Malek

1/10

5) Spiritually

• Spent the year working on the Church Magazine.

6/10

6) Memorable Moment of 2006

Trip to Perth

Overall 3/10

Year 2007

1) Professionally:

Got back to emergency teaching in September on the road to professional recovery.

4/10

2) Socially:

• Rehab, movies, footy.

3/10

3) Main Interests:

• DC Comics and drawing!

3/10

4) Family and Friends

• Met Denise Irving at The Weird Al Concert!
• Mourned the death of Lewis Wahba and Wadea Mankarious, two men who were very special to me.

3/10

5) Spiritually

• worked with the sunday school kids for the year.

6/10

6) Memorable Moment of 2007

Watching the Saints win in Perth for Robert harvey’s 350th Game!

Meeting Weird Al Yankovic!

Overall 5/10

Year 2008

1) Professionally:

Found work at Lakeside Seconday College and had an amazing year!9/10

2) Socially:

• Went to the cinema on a regular basis.
• Went to all the Saints Games.
• Got Ovlie, a Aussie Terrier X
• Visited Japan.
• Started the Buffy Challenge http://buffychallenge.blogspot.com

5/10

3) Main Interests:

• DC Comics

8/10

4) Family and Friends.

• Mourned the Loss of Fr. Victor
• Distanced myself from everyone

1/10

5) Spiritually

• Worked on the St. Mark’s Magazine.

4/10

6) Memorable Moment of 2008

The trip to Japan! other than that losing Fr. Victor overshadows everything!!!!!

Overall 6/10

Year 2009

1) Professionally:

Worked at Whittlesea Seconday College, not a great year but not a terrible one either.

5/10

2) Socially:

• kept to myself for most of the year.
• Got Bruno a Silky X (bought him for $150 from Chapel St!)

1/10

3) Main Interests:

• DC Comics

8/10

4) Family and Friends.

• Distanced myself from everyone

1/10

5) Spiritually

0/10

6) Meamorable Moment of 2008

2009 AFL Season where the Saints did everything except win the Premiership.

Overall 5/10

Well there you have it my decade in review, When I type it out there was a lot of heart break, physical and mental anguish over the last 10 years……

Just waiting......

We spent a lot of time in our lives waiting for things (and before you dare say anything, I have already been refered to as captain obvious this week....) be it we wait for the bus on the way to get a car loan or waiting paitently for your students to do the right thing in class, life is one big wait.

Although it can't be concidered the most engrossing of passtimes, and to be honest it can be mighty frustrating, it is important that we savor the wait and realise it's important role it has in our life.

Without the wait there is no contemplation time if you are given everything you want without it. There is no growth either, and you find yourself going nowhere fast, thinking the free ride in life will last forever.

Your most likely by now waiting for me to make my point clear, well without taking up more time it's simple, when your hearts desires are finally met, it is always worth the wait!

Born Choosers….. forever improvers

 

It has been an interesting day at school one where I thought I would have an easy ride as both my classes today were replaced by assemblies of some sort, I was wrong……….

As a teacher you are equipped to deal with many different things in the day and also how you see things and react is paramount to the effectiveness of your teaching. What I experienced today was a similar message been delivered for drastically different responses from the student body. The first message was delivered by a young man with a life time of experiences. He was the Australian youth representative to the united nations, he spoke of his experiences working with the 40 hour famine traveling the world and witnessing the poverty and cruelty of the world, he spoke of the child slave labor trade of some provinces of India, some really powerful experiences that shows how lucky we are to be living in Australia. He moved on to speak about his “Dear Kevin” campaign, where he has been traveling around Australia getting the youth to write a message to our political leaders in Canberra. This was all positive things he was sharing and the opportunity for the student body to express their hopes and dreams to the people who make the decisions on our behalf was a fantastic one. Unfortunately the response he was looking for did not eventuate and no one in the auditorium saw what was coming next.

After showing his video blog taken be different youth around Australia was shown (where a former student of mine popped up to my surprise) He proceeded to inform the students that he will be addressing the UN general assembly in Copenhagen, where he wanted to share the students story of how they handled the Black Saturday Fires that effected so many of them and the aftermath, he wanted to let the world know about the support this community has received and how they were coping with the aftermath of this tragedy. You could of heard a pin drop as an uneasy silence descended on the room.

Then one of the bravest things I have seen from a teenager in a long time happen. A young girl stood up and stated that the trauma of black Saturday still hurt too much and it felt like once they get a chance to move on with their life, someone comes along and opens up old wounds and it hurts too much. The emotion shown was amazing, it was articulated further by another student who let him know that even though she was directly effected, there was an effect on her as she is a part of the community. The spotlight was firmly on these kids in the months that proceeded the fires, then when the media circus left town things became quiet however there was always someone coming to slowly open up the wound, be it a political figure, representatives from another school in the country or even a charity organization giving out things like laptops or bikes to those effected. Each one of them scratching away at the wound.

When the opportunity came for this young man with this world of experiences to express their story to the world the emphatic chorus came out where they asked him not to say anything. There was no words that could be said to express how awkward the whole situation became, they cleared out the auditorium say for a handful of students who stayed behind to share their thoughts on the situation that had arisen. I took my class back and for the last 20 minutes of the session we watched the rest of an episode of Mythbusters.

In the afternoon the students once again gathered in the auditorium to listen to an enigmatic American from New Jersey. His catchphrase was “We’re not born winners, we’re not born losers, we’re born choosers.” He spoke about the choices we make in our lives and how through those choices we guide our lives. Once again he spoke of his life experiences and shared stories of choices made by people in his life and how some chose to be strengthen from the adversity they face and others who choose to give up.

He spoke about how the words we say can make or break others, and how once words are spoken they can not be erased. He injected humor whenever possible and it seemed that having a heavy American accent helped…….

On reflection the choices we make in our lives not only effect us personally but has a wider effect in the community. However before we make a choice I think we need to decide where we want to be heading in our lives. They say that hindsight is a wonderful thing yet wouldn’t it be better to make sure that we didn’t need to think “Oh if only we did this….” or “why didn’t we do that…” rather than think “if this situation arises again how can I improve on it.”

Over the past weekend my beloved St. Kilda Football team lost the Grand Final in an amazing match of football, what made this significant was not the loss but the response to it. Both the Captain and Coach summed it up well when they said that the team was hurting from the loss, but they needed to bottle that feeling, learn from it and Improve… This is a team that nearly went through the regular season undefeated yet because their ultimate goal was not achieved it was perceived as a failure. The point is no matter how good you are, whatever mistakes you make, there is always room to improve and get better.

It is important to make the right choices in life but not only that but to improve and get better with every choice we make, remember how we felt and use that as positive motivation for future choices and endeavors to ultimately better ourselves to reach whatever we are striving for.

Dollhouse - Memory Wipe.......

So the first episode of the highly anticipated show Dollhouse has finally aired. I must say that it was a reasonable pilot episode. It didn't blow me away like "burn notice" or "Lie to me" did when I watched the first episode, it reminded me of the pilot episode of "Heroes" Where it started really slowly and built up and became better the longer it went.

I did like the fact that there was an element of surprise, and that it only gave us a taste of what is really going on. The most interesting factor in the show from my perspective is that the "memories" implanted in the operatives are those of real people and not manufactured out of nothing. That was a nice little twist in the story and I'm sure will be fleshed out in future episodes. The story thread of the agent trying to find the Dollhouse didn't do much for me.

The acting in this show was not overly brilliant but was reasonable, I think a show like this will take a few more episodes to find it's feet. I am looking forward to the next episode as the premise of the show has me intrigued to see more.

Drama around Lakeside!!!!!!

Well this has been an eventful day but why let me tell you when you have the news let you know all about it!

http://www.theage.com.au/national/hundreds-evacuated-after-chemical-spill-20081212-6x65.html


Hundreds evacuated after chemical spill

* Mex Cooper
* December 12, 2008 - 3:58PM

Five hundred people were evacuated and almost 20 treated by paramedics after a chemical spill in Melbourne's north today closed two schools, factories and emptied nearby homes.

Four students from Lakeside Secondary College, 12 workers from the Visy Board factory, an elderly male resident and two truck drivers were taken to hospital after a gas leak at the Visy site in Plateau Street, Reservoir, about 9.30am.

All were in a stable condition after suffering breathing difficulties.

Lakeside College, Fawkner Primary School, the factory and homes were evacuated as 45 firefighters dealt with the leak.

Thirty people were assessed by paramedics at the scene.

Metropolitan Fire Brigade Commander Glenn Brown said a delivery tanker had pumped the wrong chemical into a holding tank, setting off a chemical reaction at the paper factory.

He said 2500 litres of sodium hyperchloride, a bleaching product, had been mixed with aluminium chlorate, causing gas to leak from the tank.

Mr Brown said police had evacuated the area 1.5 kilometres downwind and 400 metres upwind of the factory, and 35 officers cordoned off the area's perimeter.

Intensive care paramedic Lindsay Bent said paramedics arrived to find a number of people suffering breathing problems and irritation. A police spokeswoman said hundreds of people had been asked to leave the area.

Mr Brown said the chemical reaction had stopped after the tank was flooded with water and a neutralising agent.

The site was deemed safe just after 2.30pm. WorkSafe investigators are at the scene.

Also here is the Channel 9 news report where yours truly is shown in one of his more weaker states check it here!

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/video.aspx?videoid=94b60c38-c8d3-4bfa-bd90-7354fa470a1e&tab=1

news.com.au

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,,24789435-2862,00.html



AAP

December 12, 2008 11:46am

SCHOOL students in Melbourne's north were evacuated and people were treated for breathing problems after a factory chemical leak today.
A Metropolitan Fire Brigade (MFB) spokesman said crews were called to the Visy paper factory in Reservoir, about 9.40am, after a report of a delivery truck leaking sodium hypochlorite, believed to be a bleaching product.

Students and staff at the Lakeside Secondary College, opposite the factory, were evacuated and some students complained of headaches, the MBF spokesman said.

Twelve factory workers suffered breathing problems and were treated at the scene by paramedics, a Metropolitan Ambulance Service spokeswoman said.

She said they were in a stable condition and was not aware if anyone had been taken to hospital.

The BUFFY CHALLENGE *SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT!*

 

 

 

Well people power has spoken, from the countless letters, the discussion on talk back radio and the numerous treats towards my own well being have finally been heard. BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND (OF 2 PEOPLE!) THE BUFFY CHALLENGE IS BACK!!!!

And has a new home! You can now find all future challenge entrances at the new web address:

 http://buffychallenge.blogspot.com

as soon as I figure out how to transfer the older posts to the new address the previous posts will still be found at "I'm getting to old for this"

So what are you waiting for? click the link and lets get started!!!!!

-Mr. Sidhom

Tournament of Minds Australasian and Pacific Finals 2008

With the stunning victory in August in the State final of Tournament of Minds, the social science champions of Victoria were off to the Australasian and Pacific championships to represent their state proudly against the best from around the country last Friday and Saturday. The event started with the opening ceremony at the majestic town hall where the students of Lakeside were formally introduced as the Victorian representatives. The students were then off on the great Melbourne discovery where they were given a list of different challenges to complete around Melbourne racing against the clock. After an intense and tiring work the Lakeside crew completed the race in style with slurpees in hand.

On the Saturday, they found themselves back at the familiar surroundings of La Trobe University, where they were set another difficult social science challenge entitled Dream On. The students went on and demonstrated a highly intellectual solution to the problem which dramatized the world where there was no equality and the struggle we face to gain basic human rights. People were judged and classified by the letter their surnames began with. They highlighted the oppression and discrimination still found in the world by substituting race, creed, financial status or religious discrimination with the letter classification. The performance from all 7 members was outstanding. Jack Tran and Jess Johnson were magnificent and the oppressive "Z's" continually demoting Chris Lewis' character of "Aa". Chris' stunning performance was well supported by Jack Aqualina whose depiction of "Bb" highlighted the class system in work and that those who are a little better off still have a difficult life. Kathryn Norris-King's portal of the wife of "Aa" gave a real sense of the peril faced in the lives of the oppressed "Aa", she also was well supported by a rising star at lakeside in the form of Paige Fararas who as the sick daughter of "Aa" was able to fulfill the dream that her father had gave up his life for. This was all topped up by another entertaining performance from the very witty Jeffery Mann who represented the middle class as "K" showing how difficult it is for the middle class to support those less fortunate than them while trying to appease those who hold the power in society.

The completion of the presentations highlighted why out of 30,000 schools from around the country who participated in Tournament of Minds why these schools were the cream of the crop. Lakeside Secondary College may not have gained a medal in this competition but what they did do was make their school and their state proud. A special acknowledgement needs to go out to Mr. Paul McDonald for his tireless effort over the years in organizing the T.O.M participation from Lakeside.

From all of the Lakeside family we would like to congratulate the magnificent 7 T.O.M's on this herculean effort they took on the whole country and even though they didn't win they will forever be known as champions in the corridors of Lakeside Secondary College.