Hey!

[starr]

Welcome Fifi

[Xamonas Chegwé]

You gave your cheese to Rum!!!

Don't give it to him! He has no authoritah here - give it to someone with a red name - we are the important ones - we have the power of life and cheese here!!1!

That is not a very auspicious start, young lady. But welcome anyway. You'll just have to work very hard indeed to replace that cheese and deliver it to its rightful... err... theives!

[charlou]

Hello!

[Psi Wavefunction]

Welcome back! Don't mind the chaos, if you can...

[JimC]

G'day!

I remember you from RDF!

Welcome!

[Faithfree]

Hey fifi! Great to meet you again!
Stick around and enjoy the fun.

[Calilasseia]

School is brilliant - well apart from the whole Leaving Cert in June thing.
Doing every science possible, + history, and they're all so interesting. European history especially.
I'm in the middle of applying for a Computer Science course at a University in Dublin, and at a couple of Uni's in the UK. So it's all good

Oh that should be fun. If you ever find out how to help yourself to Bill Gates' bank account for five minutes, please pass on the details ...

The weirdest thing is, barely any of my class is religious. Maybe it's because I go to a fairly small, international school, but there's only a couple of people that show any interest in religion at all.

So you're reasonably free of god bothering? Good ...

Most are agnostic, maybe three or four other atheists. There is one creationist - biology is...interesting with him. Ripped up the worksheet on evolution and Darwin.

I hope you told him he was a fucktard. Because that's what I'd have told him to his face if he'd done that with me alongside him in the class. And I'd then have proceeded to tell him all the reasons why he was a fucktard, leading him by the nose through ALL 1,489 scientific papers on evolutionary biology on my hard drive. By the time I'd finished with him, he'd be fucking catatonic. :twisted:

And one guy who told me his aim is to convert me by the end of the year.

If that's his chat up line, tell him your kid sister's Barbie doll has a bigger one than he does.

But really, the image the rest of the world has of Ireland - which, at least where I was from, was of a very religious society - just isn't accurate at all.

After Father Ted, I think people got the message loud and clear.

Although religion is compulsory, our teacher is absolutely hopeless. Bit of a gullible fool.

You expected something different here?

Actually, I have an interesting anecdote to relate with respect to my own Religious Education lessons. When I went to school, RE was the only subject that was legally compulsory in the Education Act (i.e., the only subject that was stated as having to be taught[/i]). Presumably on the basis that this was the only way that the subject would stand a chance of surviving in the average secondary or grammar school circa 1973. The impression I was left with was that RE was regarded as a poisoned chalice by those required to teach it, that the teachers in question taught it only because someone had to teach it, and they'd drawn the short straw, and that most of the teachers thereof regarded the whole subject as a waste of time.

Indeed, one of the teachers of RE in my school was a bona fide ordained Roman Catholic priest. Who was, not to put too fine a point on it, singularly incompetent at promoting Catholic doctrine. Watching him trying to do so, on the very rare occasions that he actually tried, was rather like watching someone trying to nail a blancmange to the ceiling. With respect to religious matters, I'd have learned more about Catholic doctrine from a fucking Ladybird book. However, he appeared to know rather more about sex than I thought, naively at the age of 11, a Catholic priest should know. No reports of him messing about with altar boys (which would have spiced up the classes no end!), and later in my school career, there were one or two rumours that his particular fancy was what is termed 'rough trade', though these rumours were highly likely to have been febrile schoolboy invention rather than verifiable fact.

Most of the other teachers of RE in my school, though they were slightly more competent, still emitted a distinct air of ennui during the whole process, and frankly, it's no wonder the Church of England is regarded as being moribund, if this was the best it could muster in the way of enthusiasm for its teachings. Mind you, having said that, I'd sooner have as the endemic religion in my country something like the Church of England, which is regarded in much the same light here as an ancient family pet labrador - now partially blind, partially deaf and resigned to spending much of its time sleeping in front of the fire, occasionally punctuating this with the odd meal and visit to the back yard for a dump - that its owners can't bring themselves to put down because despite its younger indiscretions as a puppy, it still manages to elicit some affection. I regard this as infinitely preferable to the sort of religion they have in the USA, which is more akin to a rabid pit bull on acid.

Lessons are normally spent laughing and making fun of whatever new-age crap he's buying into this week.

*hands over all the cheese I own to Rumertron*

Oh we never had any of the happy-clappy brigade in my school. We either had resolutely secular teachers who were taking these classes in a manner highly suggestive of having been forced to at gunpoint, or (the aforementioned Catholic priest being the notable exception) positively ancient figures in cap and gown who looked as thought their ages were determined by carbon dating, some of whom looked as if they needed to be wheeled about on castors, and who, in some instances, were even less intelligible when they spoke than Rowley Birkin QC from The Fast Show. These were lessons that were regarded as safe to fall asleep in.

[Trolldor]

Hi everyone : ) I'm Fifi, a 17 year old Aussie living in Ireland. I was on the RDF forums (under Drugged Tea), then TAF....but I never posted much and kind of lost interest with all the drama going on. But I saw an old forumite over at the xkcd forums, followed the link in his sig to here and thought....why not : )

How all regret begins.

And oh shi--- you're 17? I thought you were a year younger than me.
I feel so old.

[maiforpeace]

I don't believe I said hello - how unwelcoming of me! Hello!

[normal]

Welcome! I'm Normal!

[CJ]

Welcome! I'm Normal!

But only by a very abnormal measure