Wet Wellington

It rained overnight.  Nothing too unusual about that in Wellington.

It was still raining when we loaded the students into the shuttles to take us to Scots College.  Still nothing unusual about that.

After a bit of a wait (we'd arrived early) the conference began, whisking both students and staff quickly into a highly cerebral world.......

On the agenda were topics on 'The Death of Individuality' - how, despite what we all may think, our freedom to 'choose' is being eroded (has it ever existed?)  How our mobile, connected world has us trapped in a 'Big Data' wheel, tracking and analysing our every movement and predicting our next movement.  Fascinating, if more than a little Big Brother-ish.

Then we had 'Thinking About Thinking', the session I think I enjoyed the most!  Again, totally fascinating, absoulely absorbing and something I'd love to explore more with classes in the future.

Amusing to begin with but generating plenty of thought was an Oxbridge interview question 'How would you tell a farmer his cow had died? A question designed to challenge thinking ability, identify 'knowledge', be creative and go beyond the obvious, the 'simple' question was explored for a good 45 minutes.........

It was sometime during these last 2 presentations that we became more aware of the rain - heavier, more persist, occasionally almost deafening and accompanied at times by rolling thunder and the odd flash of lightning.

The presenter did so well to continue through the noise, at one time she asked "Can you hear me?" (we could) - she said she couldn't hear herself.  

It wasn't long before news came to us that things were getting chaotic around the area - road slips, roads closed, rail closed, schools closed, a school struck by lightning.........we were OK but the boys at the school and other local conference attendees were told that transport home was going to be a problem and at 3.30, following the end of the conference the hall would become a holding area for people until suitable arrangements could be made or parents got through to pick people up.  The next presentation was on 'Sex and Civilisation' - a great topic to hold peole's attention whilst the weather continued to play havoc through to the end of the  conference.

Whilst we may have been a little later getting back to our accommodation than planned we were pretty fortunate that that was our only hiccup.  There are apparenlty a lot of extra people staying in the city tonight with no means of getting home.  And those who can travel home are likely to be spending a lot longer travelling than usual.

Yup - a memorable day on many levels.