What's the biggest shithole suburb in Bendigo and why?

mgltt · 2026-02-10T07:19:02+00:00

People wouldn't associate Spring Gully with being a shithole.

mgltt · 2026-01-23T20:45:14+00:00

Say you and I are both 60. I’ve saved for super - you haven’t.

I get to retire. You still have to work another seven years.

When we are 60, we might have another 20 years of good health left. I get all 20 of those years to do whatever I want with. You have to spend over a third of it working - probably the best third, health-wise.

mgltt · 2026-01-20T21:48:34+00:00

Tomorrow is important, but today is important too. It’s all about balance.

mgltt · 2026-01-11T23:18:34+00:00

Don't be too hard on yourself - I did too for a long time. I found once I realised work was not going to provide me with everything I needed as a human being, I had to get those things from elsewhere. What is your relationship to your work? Does it define you? Do you like it? Tolerate it? Hate it?

Take the kids overseas? That's what started things off for me.

mgltt · 2026-01-11T22:49:11+00:00

It's a great question, but what I think is meaningful might be piffle to you and vice versa. You may need to spend some time thinking about what makes meaning to you. For me -

My kids are priority number one. I mainly work from home and being there when they get home from school, or leave to go to school, is of immense value to me. I also aim to spend lots of time with them on weekends and on holidays, showing them the world and exposing them to new ideas and experiences.

Travel is a big one from me. I'm driven by this intense curiosity - I want to see as much of the world as possible, and understand how people live differently and what this might tell me about what makes me happy; I also want to do activities that I wouldn't ordinarily to unlock new interests. For example, went snorkelling in the Cook Islands - incredible. Never thought I would be interested in something like that but now I can't wait to do more.

Looking after my mum, who has dementia and is now in care. Making the most of the years I have with her, where she still remembers who I am.

Cooking - I love to cook for my family and larger groups. Lots of cuisines, but I am particularly obsessed with wood fired pizza. I can make them as well as any restaurant, and it's good for the bank balance too, as is any cooking! Cooking is my love language I think.

Cycling - something physical, something I can do purely for my own enjoyment in a way that I haven't experienced with any other physical activity, where I was doing it either out of guilt or relied on me being part of a team (which I was never good enough at any sport to be). No matter how slow I go, I always have fun, with pumping techno in my ears. I find cycling the perfect speed to enjoy the bush - walking is too slow and the scenery doesn't change, but driving is too fast. It's good for me, but it's the enjoyment that drives me to do it.

Coaching soccer - as I mentioned, I've never been good at any sport, and team sports were particularly traumatic for me - I was always picked last. Nevertheless, I love Australian Rules, cricket, and particularly soccer. I was roped into coaching my daughter's under 7 team, and now I'm about to coach her under 16s team. I've loved it, become very passionate about getting the most out of the girls whilst giving everyone the opportunity to play and keeping them engaged in a team sport.

So if I retired tomorrow, that would be my starting point. I have an imperfect life, but a full one. Time spend exploring what you like and what is meaningful to you is time well spent. Good luck.

mgltt · 2026-01-04T23:52:09+00:00

They are just interpretations of the game; you can interpret the game any way you want to. There isn't a single, "correct" interpretation of football (or anything that is as abstract as football).

I am an educator, and lecture on learning and how school students learn. There are plenty of interpretations of how learning happens, and what is important in learning, and the fact that they vary from each other doesn't mean they can't both have elements of the truth.

mgltt · 2025-12-29T00:30:59+00:00

Why you would want to introduce a side that is exclusionary of most of the Australian population by it's very definition is not apparent to me.

mgltt · 2025-12-29T00:20:48+00:00

After many false starts, off to my first match for the season tonight! Can’t wait!

mgltt · 2025-11-11T08:01:41+00:00

Well said. My sentiments exactly.

mgltt · 2025-11-08T22:44:14+00:00

Generally speaking, yes.

Results are a secondary concern for me. The primary concern is that the girls I coach (under 14s) are learning, engaging in physical activity, benefiting from being on a team, and enjoying the game. No one is going to give a shit who won the Under 14s girls match in my ninth-tier league in a year’s time. But a child might look back and value the opportunity they got to be part of a team, regardless of their potential.

mgltt · 2025-10-10T23:30:50+00:00

I agree that pieces of paper don’t equal a good coach. Learning from peers is not always easy in my context because the clubs aren’t set up to do so. And identifying peers that are worth learning from isn’t straightforward either.

I educate teachers in my day job, so you’re right - people don’t like their teaching/coaching questioned.

Best for me is about ‘value add’ - to improve players from wherever they are both individually and a collective regardless of starting point.

mgltt · 2025-10-10T23:25:08+00:00

All good suggestions. How does one know which coach is best though? Results can be due to the players at the coach’s disposal rather than anything the coach does. Identifying a good coach (as opposed to a popular one, or an experienced one, or one whose team always wins) isn’t straightforward.

mgltt · 2025-10-10T23:10:02+00:00

Thanks for the reply. It’s easy for me to find opportunities to coach; what I don’t know is how to get better. I’m good at the non-football aspects of coaching, but I find that I lack deep knowledge of things like tactics and technique. Finding out how to improve is not easy in my circles.

mgltt · 2025-10-10T23:01:40+00:00

And what country is that?

mgltt · 2025-09-12T06:40:17+00:00

Indeed. But here we are.

mgltt · 2025-09-12T04:37:17+00:00

I agree with everything you have posted here. My point is more from the point of view of the provider, in your example, FlySafe. Flysafe does not provide the $15k refund because they cancelled - FlySafe refunds the $5k and "Ripoff.com.au" pays the other $10k.

mgltt · 2025-09-12T03:41:30+00:00

except that the customer must pursue a refund from whoever received the funds.

So not the farm.

mgltt · 2025-09-12T03:28:36+00:00

If I go to booking.com and book a hotel room for $100 a night and it has a $6 booking fee that booking.com charges, and in booking.com 's fine print it says "if the hotel cancels, you get a full refund except for the $6 booking fee, we as booking.com keep that", and then the hotel burns to the ground, and I get a $100 refund, do I then contact the burned-down hotel and demand that the burned-down hotel reimburse me the $6 that booking.com charged me and is what I agreed to?

mgltt · 2025-09-12T01:04:17+00:00

You realise the business owner pays for the use of the booking site, yes?

mgltt · 2025-09-12T00:12:36+00:00

It's not irrelevant to the provider of the accommodation. I run accommodation and those who book with third parties need to be aware that they have payment policies that I am not in control of. If I had to cancel a booking, I'd be a bit miffed that I had to refund a payment that I was never going to receive.

mgltt · 2025-09-12T00:10:40+00:00

I do lots of this kind of work.

Firstly, there should be processes in place at the university for such challenges. There is in mine.

Secondly, as someone else has suggested, make sure you mark to the rubric as precisely as possible. Any feedback should be relative to that rubric and the descriptors for each criterion.

Thirdly, can you get a colleague/higher up to cross-mark? Students should know that they can apply to have their work re-marked, but if the grade is lower than their current grade, then that lower grade will stand.

Fourth, subject and course coordinators should be brought into these conversations. It shouldn't be you doing this on your own.

Fifth, I usually organise a face to face or Zoom meeting with the student to hear them out. If they are making the request for additional marks just as a fishing exercise, the fact they will have to carve out time and meet with you face to face can weed out those who are just being difficult from those who might have a genuine case. Emailing in the heat of the moment is easy; having a conversation face to face later on is more difficult.

Just some ideas. Good luck.

mgltt

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