The latest news reports say that over 60,000 people are now dead. How incomprehensibly awful. I’ve just made $50 donation to an aid agency helping out with the crisis. I’m tempted to channel the spirit of ye olde Telethons and challenge you to equal or better that, but things are so awful that every little [...]
Ah, thirty. Well, I’m glad to finally have made it here and for it to not be some distant looming menace. My present stash was impressive. A big box from the whanau awaited, filled with such goodies as a keyring with an impressively bright light, a kitchen utility knife, and a hundred-year-old cooking book that [...]
I was going to do some sort of post farewelling my 20s, but I’ve spent most of today with this mild motion sickness and associated feelings of nausea, then I was really bored so I went to the supermarket and engaged in a bit of lite shoplifting, which was genuinely thrilling for about five minutes, [...]
Today’s weather has alternated between bursts of sunshine, and wind and rain. The bits of sun have been nice, but the wind and rain have sucked, as using an umbrella on a windy day requires extreme upper-body strength. Then only a few minutes ago, after having noticed it was rather cold and so turned on [...]
There was a work Christmas do today. Not the Christmas do (for that was last Friday, and surprisingly non-eventful), but just one for my department. It was held at the Balmoral Bowling Club. We discussed how bowling clubs have started to get a bit of hipster chic to them. It’s come about a bit like [...]
I have this idea that somewhere in London right now there is a homesick New Zealander, desperately clinging onto an image of home. Yes, as they layer on their thermal underwear and button up their winter coat, they’ll be keeping in mind how they image things would be if they were back in Auckland. They [...]
The Civic Theatre is celebrating its 75th anniversary and had open days all this weekend. I went along five years ago when it reopened after the massive restoration and I guess I was hoping for something better than that, but, oh no, I was disappointed. Various rooms had displays set up with old photos and [...]
Now that the Civil Unions Bill has been passed, the question isn’t so much who will be the first couple to have a civil union, but who will be the couple to later get the first civil union divorce. And what about all those couples who haven’t got married because one (or both) don’t believe [...]
I’ve just read Anthony Kiedis’s autobiography “Scar Tissue”. There’s a special place in my heart for the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Back in ’92 when I sold my soul to rock ‘n’ roll, it was the Peppers who led me there. And it was around that time that Mr Kiedis was on his newly-sober anti-drugs [...]
In two weeks, that is, Wednesday, December 22, I shall turn 30. Crikey. This comes as something of a surprise because I’m sure that at my last birthday I turned 24 or something like that. I mean, I don’t really feel almost-30. 30 seems so old. 30 is, surely, the age at which I should [...]