#regimented

The man on the radio thumps away on his table top and throws on tune after tune, tucks into sent in treats and slurps away on a large cup of 'tay'. Weatherwise we're just riding the tail of Storm Ernesto ... so no point in grabbing 'the umbrella', best to just hold onto your hat. The traffic lady warns drivers of debris on the roads before kicking back with chocolate and the man on the radio to the strains of Midnight Cowboy.

Today's groaner: What is a sock's favourite sci-fi film? ... The Toe-minator ;-D badoom tish ... here all week!!

Yep, you've guessed it, the shiny metropolis is calling once more. Thought I'd throw up a thrilling picture of one of the car parks I get to sit in. More interesting than some of them, but oh good grief, anything that's planted is done in a line. Regimented evergreens as a nod to the rural.

Very soon there'll be the endless sound of the leafblowers both here and at home as the trees have the temerity to shed their finery. The Emerald Isle is as obsessed with those as lawnmowers. I watch with wry amusement as people struggle up and down with the huge leafblower 'backpack' like strange bumble bees ... performing crazed pattern after crazed pattern as the leaves blow this way and that. Must be the fumes.

There are woodlands nearby and, one day, I fully expect to find these same people, leafblowers strapped on, as they go for their orderly Autumn walks. My childhood memories are of kicking through the leaves, hearing them crackle beneath my feet ... can't help but wonder what memories the leafblower lunatics have.

My Father's Regimented Life Taught Me to be Disciplined

My Father&#39s Regimented Life Taught Me to be Disciplined Outdoors some corporate legal solutions, which I carry out from time to time, my stint in Christaben Group efficiently took me away from mainstream legal work and set me on the path that brought me to exactly where I am today.” Operating Nigerian Machine Tools … Read a lot more on THISDAY Reside

Cornerstone Capital Sources Inc.: Cascabel…

St Bonaventure Girls’ Senior High School (Neihu District 內湖)  student affairs office head Tsai Wan-chen (蔡宛臻)

That first sentence is very revealing. Perhaps it could be interpreted as ...

This is a church school so controlling student bodies and their appearance in order to maintain strict unquestioning respect, discipline, conformity, and identification with, our regimented and authoritarian moral values is something we take very seriously.

... and, well you could put anything in the next sentence ...

That is why we have always required them to swear loyalty to Mother Mary, not touch themselves or have impure thoughts, love and celebrate Dr Sun and his R.O.C, and wear socks measuring exactly 3.5cm above the knee. 

Bonaventure got into the news because it is finally allowing its students to wear trousers during the winter (and in weather like today I'd say that is a long long overdue move).  However, not all schools feel that their female students have the right not to endure freezing gusts of winds up their skirts:

However, Blessed Imelda’s School in Taipei, another all-girls Catholic institution, will keep its traditional uniform: a mid-hemline black skirt, white dress shirt, red sweater-vest and cardigan.

Founded in 1916, the Blessed Imelda’s uniform is a reworking of an earlier version of the outfit that was created by alumni fashion designers in the 1990s.

Principal Ou Yang Tai-ying (歐陽台英) said Blessed Imelda’s students have worn skirts for more than 30 years.

“Female students look more elegant in skirts. Our uniform is based on the habits of Catholic nuns and the skirt tradition perseveres to this day. This is explained to all new students and the information is on the school’s Web site,” she said.

Putting aside the whole 'look more elegant' gender conditioning inanity, I notice that many of these 'traditional schools' a) are religious and b) were founded during the Japanese colonial period.  Many of these same schools actively market themselves to parents citing their strict discipline, conformity, and dress codes as positive values that will 'instill in students a good attitude and academic atmosphere' or some other such nonsense - all stuff Taiwanese parents apparently lap up in their frenzied nervousness that their child won't graduate from a top 5 public university and go on to get the MBA and Doctorate from Harvard if they attend a school which allows girls to wear trousers.