What year is it again?
May. 18th, 2006 11:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
todayiamadaisyI had to read something about forecasting future city council budgets today, and I was struck by an anomaly. I always say the year as "two thousand and six", but then I got to a drainage upgrade program that is planned for 2012 and I said "twenty twelve". So Bernie, my co-reader today, asked why I don't say this year is "twenty oh six" like he does, and I had to explain that I think it sounds odd, even though I happily describe one hundred years ago as "nineteen oh six". This made Bernie harrumph. What do you say?
*****
I sometimes wish charities would just ask for money - just say, "Look, this is what we want to do, why don't you give us money to do it?" Then I could give them money and they'd be happy and I'd be happy and that would be the end of it. Honestly, charity PR types, I don't want a ribbon or a badge, but I might be willing to kick in five dollars (although the Red Nose people had excellent pens a few years ago. I bought one as a Good Deed and liked it so much I bought several more and was saddened the following year to find they had changed the design). I particularly dislike the ones where I give money then have to do something as well. There's a cancer research fundraiser here called Relay for Life, for which teams of participants must raise the minimum amount of money before they enter, in order to spend twenty-four hours running around a sports ground... and that makes me wonder, why not just raise the money? What does the run add to it? It would be different if the run itself was sponsored, but it's the reward, which is antithetical to my entire belief system. :-)
Anyway, I've just signed up for the Australian Readers' Challenge, which is raising money to improve literacy in Aboriginal communities. I've made my donation, so the charity running it should be happy, but they want me to do something pointless as well, of course. They've got a book list and if I read ten whole books off it by September (they call this a "challenge"!), I'll get a certificate signed by champion swimmer Ian Thorpe. Good on Ian Thorpe, I suppose - there are worse things he could be doing - but I really don't need that as an incentive.
My incentive is that the book list contains a number of books that I own but haven't read. This might be push I need to finally finish Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy, of which I managed about three chapters before deciding I just didn't care. Sadly, the list contains a number of books that I've already read (and one, The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón, that I read - and enjoyed, thank you! - quite recently at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
das_ketzchen's suggestion). It really wouldn't be right to count books I'd already finished, would it?
I sometimes wish charities would just ask for money - just say, "Look, this is what we want to do, why don't you give us money to do it?" Then I could give them money and they'd be happy and I'd be happy and that would be the end of it. Honestly, charity PR types, I don't want a ribbon or a badge, but I might be willing to kick in five dollars (although the Red Nose people had excellent pens a few years ago. I bought one as a Good Deed and liked it so much I bought several more and was saddened the following year to find they had changed the design). I particularly dislike the ones where I give money then have to do something as well. There's a cancer research fundraiser here called Relay for Life, for which teams of participants must raise the minimum amount of money before they enter, in order to spend twenty-four hours running around a sports ground... and that makes me wonder, why not just raise the money? What does the run add to it? It would be different if the run itself was sponsored, but it's the reward, which is antithetical to my entire belief system. :-)
Anyway, I've just signed up for the Australian Readers' Challenge, which is raising money to improve literacy in Aboriginal communities. I've made my donation, so the charity running it should be happy, but they want me to do something pointless as well, of course. They've got a book list and if I read ten whole books off it by September (they call this a "challenge"!), I'll get a certificate signed by champion swimmer Ian Thorpe. Good on Ian Thorpe, I suppose - there are worse things he could be doing - but I really don't need that as an incentive.
My incentive is that the book list contains a number of books that I own but haven't read. This might be push I need to finally finish Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy, of which I managed about three chapters before deciding I just didn't care. Sadly, the list contains a number of books that I've already read (and one, The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón, that I read - and enjoyed, thank you! - quite recently at
das_ketzchen's suggestion). It really wouldn't be right to count books I'd already finished, would it?