Written by Joshua Drummond, Grant Burns, and Courtney Mellor

Does all the sudden sunlight confuse you? Do you emerge blinking from lectures, your eyes scalded by the nasty natural light? Does your pale skin crisp and darken when exposed to solar rays? Never fear! Learn how to deal with the expected – and unexpected – terrors of the Hot Months, with the ultimate Nexus Guide to Summer!

Many Hamilton students have the option of escaping to their home towns when summer rolls around. But if you’re one of those poor unfortunate souls who has to spend summer stuck in the Tron, we have some suggestions for you:

• Swim, but not in the Waikato River. Hamilton can get very hot. A membership at a swimming pool – the Uni has one – is a brilliant way to keep you and your friends cool. If this can’t be arranged, a simple children’s paddling pool in the yard will help the flatties wet down excess heat, and may also be used for jelly-wrestling. Swimming in the Waikato River will cause you to die, so don’t.
• Play a tonne of video games. One good way to stay cool is not go outside. Fortunately, video games prevent both boredom and sunburn. There are some brilliant games on the way: see the Phat Controller page for some and the Internets for many many more.
• Learn an instrument. A key way to impress the opposite sex is to be able to whip out a gee-tar (or even a jazz flute) while sitting around the campfire, and belting out a tune. Recommended learning: Ben Harper, Jack Johnson, Split End and Crowded House, Sublime, NZ reggae and dub classics, Bob Dylan, Flight of the Conchords. Not recommended: Nickleback, James Blunt, anything you hear on The Edge, and Led Zeppelin (unless you have a really great voice.)
• Create a work of art. Hamilton, as has been pointed out, is a great big grey blank canvas. Come up with some witty street art, and spread the graffiti love. Note: this is probably illegal.
• Get a summer partner. If you’re single in the Hamilton summer… it sucks to be you. Rectify this immediately. Find someone local, single and semi-legal who is also stuck here – the 7th form of the local girl’s and boy’s high schools will suffice – and shack up with them. Once the summer is over, they can be married, or dumped with a minimum of inconvenience.
• Learn Italian. This is very easy. It is a well-kept secret that Italian is not an actual language. All that is required to speak it is a mastery of gesticulation and the ability to add the suffix –eeeya and -a on to every other word you say. All together now: flail wildly while saying “It’s-a meeeya, Mario! Lets-a play!” Now go to an Italian restaurant and place your order.
• Take up a religion. Religion’s big secret? They’re all the same! All they require is suspension of disbelief, and, sometimes, common sense, rather like watching a superhero movie – only the movie is your entire life. Luckily, you can switch religious belief on and off like a light switch. We recommend taking up Roman Catholicism and combining it with Italian, as described above.
• Start a band. It doesn’t matter whether you can actually play an instrument or not. Hamilton is always short of Exponents covers band, and because the Exponents were piss-poor excuses for musicians, their songs are very easy to play. Gather some mates, and pub fame and sing-alongs will soon be yours.
• Dig a hole. Hamilton is not, as some might uncharitably describe it, a hole, but it could certainly do with more of them. Holes provide valuable shade and dirt. Filled with water, they may be swum in, or used for mud-wrestling matches. Filled with sharp faeces-smeared stakes, they may be used as burglar and politician traps. Dig one deep enough, and you might find treasure or a lost kingdom. There are literally tens of uses for holes. Why not dig your own?
• Build an Ark. There is a 1-1 chance that a large meteor will hit the Earth at some point in the future. There is a roughly 3-1 chance that the meteor will strike water. Therefore, we may reason that all the people not building arks in the summer are stupid. Don’t fall into the common trap of not building arks. They mocked Noah, but now he’s universally revered as the Saviour of Earth and all the dinosaurs.
• Turn in a Sociology paper. It can be about absolutely anything and make as much sense as a Dan Brown plot, include any number of made-up words, and no one will care, or even notice. Indeed, it will probably fit right in to the existing sociological academic spectrum, and you’ll soon be flown out to conferences all over the world, lecturing on Feminist Cyborg Post-Marxist Family Guy Theory by way of Focaultian Discourse.
• Start and play an obscure sport. Nexus recommends a number of obscure sports that are yet to see a Waikato following. They are: Bear baiting, Brockian Ultra-Cricket, Calvinball, Quidditch, Dwarf-tossing, and Lacrosse. Quidditch is preferred by wizards, Lacrosse by P-addicts, and Brockian Ultra-Cricket by anyone from the fifth dimension or higher. Calvinball is the easiest sport to start, as there are not actually any rules.
• Eat out. This requires no explanation.
• Go to the beach and/or a summer festival. Possibly the most sensible explanation here. We’ll see you there.