Ady – Auckland 

“Over the last few years me and this other guy, we’ve been catching the bus around the same time every day,

and a few weeks ago his hop card had run out of money and he was going on before me, and the driver was obviously going to kick him off. So I tagged him on with my hop card and he was very thankful. So the next day he got me chocolate as a thank you present, but yeah it was a small thing, just getting him to work on time.

I moved from India to New Zealand when I was nine years old and I couldn’t speak any English, and the best thing I like about Auckland, New Zealand is that they took me out of class to just learn the English language. So now, the fact that I can speak English is because New Zealand, Auckland has invested so much time and effort into my educational upbringing, and something like that just shows how good of a country we live in where people actually care about other people’s progress and what they’re doing.

When I used to ride a cycle I really had a dweebie-as helmet and once this kid just kept hitting my helmet on top, and I don’t know if it was racial discrimination or not, but I was one of the only people in the cycle gang that got bullied. It was a long time ago. Initially as most kids do, you give up cycling for a bit, and you just walk to school, but over a period things move on and then you slowly start embracing life, and then it’s not all too bad and then you start cycling again, and also my parents helped, and they got me a less dweebie helmet. So, I guess that helped.

One thing I’m actually really passionate about is the way my school raised us, and that’s from our counselling services are really phenomenal and the support students get there. Peer mediation or peer support was really good, and if we could have something that’s Auckland-wide and not just in school that would be really good for people who just need to talk. I’m sure that these things exist -it’s just most people might not know about them and where to get help. So, if there was more emphasis on help is out there then yeah, we could make New Zealand, Auckland a better place.

In Year 11 I became a mediator and I followed until Year 13 to becoming a senior mediator.  You learn how to talk to people; helps you become a better person as well, because when you’re trying to help people, a lot of the time you end up helping yourself because you realise, oh I should be doing these things and you’re more aware of your actions that can affect other people.

If you are in a confrontational state with someone else, you obviously wouldn’t want to look down at them. So if they’re sitting down, you just talk to them while you’re seated down, and simple things like that can resolve matter, rather than turning this issue, something so small, into something much bigger and worse. I guess it’s just being able to follow basic humanity and treating others how you would want to be treated, because everyone makes mistake. I make lots of mistakes, but if you can tell someone they’ve made a mistake in a nicer way, and work with in what they can do better, that way we can avoid making mistakes, and learn from those mistakes, rather than get angry and have resentments towards other people and the actions we’ve done.

The reason we moved from India to New Zealand was for a better life, and New Zealand definitely has provided a much better life. So I feel like my quality of life is a lot better here than it would be there, but I’d want to try improving back home as well, but yeah Auckland definitely has improved my living conditions and life style.”

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