Re: High school essay

[Jonathan Lau <jonlau@ozemail.com.au>]

Many years ago, one of my English exams was to write an essay about a Newspaper
article, with a vague topic. The "vague topic" happened to be a long and
journalistic description of a steam engine - 3801!!

The rest of my class left the exam saying "What the hell was all that talking
about?!"

If I recall, I got a good mark for the essay! :)

Jon Lau

Bradley Torr wrote:

> Cleaning out my apartment a few weeks ago, I found an essay that I had to
> write in an exam for Year 11 General English way way back in November 1994.
> You could write an ironic essay on any current issue - and I picked the
> parlous state of Sydney's rail network. Enjoy. :-)
>
> Question 2.
>
> CARS DRIVE ME CRAZY! (AS DO TRAINS)
>
> So, it seems once again that the Great Public Transport Debate (no. 472) has
> started again [sic], with our illustrious State Opposition Leader Bob Carr
> stating that, if he wins the next election, he will build a few more dozen
> rail links throughout Sydney. You know, knock down a few suburbs here and
> there, and just put a pair of tracks through.... simple, really.
>
> But, it seems that our even-more illustrious Great Leader of the Premier
> State, Defender of the Faith, High-Jump Fahey has rejected any plans for
> rail links! Oh, damn! I happen to enjoy a few trains running right past my
> backyard every night, and you let me down, Fahey!
>
> No, no, no, don't get me wrong. I'd rather have giant electric caterpillars
> going through my backyard than a freeway! See, the real reason High-Jump
> Fahey doesn't want railways is because he loves to see us crawling through
> traffic jams at a record speed at eight kilmetres an hour, breathing
> one-hundred per-cent pure smog. I don't know why...... maybe he's a sadist
> or maybe he wants us to drive slow enough for us to see the ubiquitous
> election posters.
>
> But the real reason High-Jump Fahey (named so after his world-recrod
> performance in Monaco last year) wants us to drive instead of ride is
> because he knows most people LIKE getting caught up in the daily jams. Just
> to prove my point, let us look into the miserable like of a poor,
> down-trodden rail commuter (or the few that are left).
>
> He gets up at five o'clock in the morning, gets dressed, quick shave,
> cardboard bits that pass as Corn Flakes for brekkie, then run [sic] out to
> the bus stop at five-fifty-two to catch the bus to the station. But he
> misses the connection, and must wait for the next bus forty minutes later.
> He spends the next twenty minutes smelling a pregnant woman's armpits and at
> the station gets trampled by a horde of schoolkids who were dying on the bus
> from asphyxiation. Arriving at the station, he must join a queue longer than
> those during the recent South African elections to buy his weeklies. He
> arrives at the window to find that you can only buy weeklies from the
> machines. He must read the three-hundred page technical manual before he can
> operate the machine, then finds that he needs correct change. His wallet
> only containing a $20 note and the monthly mint output of five-cent coins,
> he attempts to swap change with the person behind him, who also has no
> change. Furious, he jumps over the ticket gate, but as all the staff have
> been retrenched anyway, no one catches him. While standing on the platform,
> the message that his train has been derailed is broadcast in Swahili over
> the crackling P.A. system. No matter, he can still catch a train on another
> line, he'll just have to make three train changes. After four hours and
> twelve minutes, he disembarks at a City Circle station, where there just
> happens to be the whole ticket inspection squad, congregating for morning
> tea, walking down the concourse asking the poor commuter for his ticket...
> and thus a $50 fine is handed to him. He then arrives at his work, after a
> stress-free, jam-free journey.
>
> With a rail system like that, with a railsystem which has a crime rate twice
> as high as Harlem, NYC on a Friday night, with a rail system whose staff
> strictly speak Arabic and Swahili, who can blame High-Jump Fahey for
> rejecting new rail links? Bob Carr (an apt name, perhaps?) stated that the
> rail system needs an "overhaul". But Transport Minister and Minister for
> Olympic Whingeing, and the Minister for Posh Accents, Bruce Baird, stated
> that the system has been "overhauled". He offered Tangaras as an example.
> What's so great about Tangaras? They look like something you'd find on the
> set of Star Trek, sitting on their seats is like sitting on a jagged rock,
> and the air conditioning is set onto Northern Hemisphere mode - cool in
> winter, warm in summer.
>
> Personally, even though they drive me crazy, I think I'll stick to my car to
> get to work. Even though they turn Sydney into the World's Biggest
> Gas-Chamber, and they add to the concrete jungle, at least they get you from
> A to B. Without the risk of crime, or the smell of armpits.
>
> TEACHERS COMMENTS:
>
> * Are you against pregnancy?
> * The way it stands is racist - you have to soften it.
> * The ending needs a bit more to it. Overall good ironic tone, sustained
> humour.
> * SUGGESTED ENDING: .... or the waiting in queues, or the derailments or the
> fines, or the difficulties in comprehension. Where the commuter controls his
> own destiny in the race to get to work, or home, in the daily scramble for
> commuting space, in search of the all-mighty dollar.
>
> TOTAL MARK: 19.5/20.0