Robyn’s Secret Passage

He was sitting at the bus stop wearing a pink raincoat and holding a bunch of daffodils. He had agreed to meet her there at 6.30pm. He said he’d wear his pink raincoat so she’d be able to identify him easily.

He’d been there a while and she hadn’t shown up yet. Nervous, fidgety, he started to tell his story to the guy who was studying the bus timetable next to him. He didn’t notice that the guy’s responses soon turned into detached mms.

She was from Thailand. He’d met her via one of those email things. She said she was in her 30s, but he reckoned this probably meant she was about 40, but he wasn’t going to rule out that she was actually 30. It was hard to tell from the one photo he’d seen of her.

Maybe she was waiting for him at one of the other bus stops down the street. He quickly checked, but she wasn’t there.

She wanted to marry him and move with him to China to be with her son and other family. He asked the guy, still looking at the timetable, how big China was. About 1.2 billion, he replied. Right, enough said. A lot bigger than New Zealand, then!

Maybe she got confused and thought he was wearing a white coat instead of a pink one. He’d seen a fella in a white coat walk past. What if this fella had walked off with his lady?

She had a strange surname. He wasn’t sure how to pronounce it. He asked the timetable guy how a name spelt H-U-S would be pronounced. The guy suggested Huss or Hoos. The man asked if he know what country it was from. The guy suggested Europe. The man looked at his cellphone and realised it was actually Hsu. The guy knew that was pronounced Su and that it was probably a Chinese name.

Maybe she was setting him up. Maybe this was all a scam. But she wasn’t really all that late - only half an hour.

A woman came along to the bus stop. The man insisted she take a seat, noting that he didn’t bite. She laughed and sat down. They engaged in pleasentries - how they each were, how their days had been (Hers was not too bad; his could have been better, could have been much better). But soon he started talking at her and she shut down into mm-mming, just like the guy had.

He wasn’t really sure whereabouts Thailand was. He knew it was in Asia somewhere, but he honestly couldn’t even tell you what time it was there. He had seen a photo of her and knew she had slanty eyes, like Chinese or Japanese girls, so she probably was just a normal Oriental.

They were supposed to go to Hamilton together that night to meet her son and the people she was living with in New Zealand.

Then something showed up a little bit late. It was the #274 bus. Within seconds his audience had transplanted themselves onto the bus, leaving him sitting all alone at the bus stop with his daffodils and pink raincoat and without his slanty-eyed Thai lady.

Update 1: The results of the NZ Herald Digipoll survery were in the Herald today. The Maori Party was predicted to get three seats, but this was based upon the assumption they’d keep their electorate members, because they polled lower than the 5% they’d need to get votes the other way. If I get surveyed again, I think I’ll pick another party.

Update 2: Still no sign of a response from my local MP regarding the “vote for Rodney” phone call.

I seem to be getting a lot of sales or political phone calls lately. Last night I had a phone call that went like this:

Me: Hello?
Caller: Hello, is that Mrs Gallagher?
Me: Uh, do you want to speak to my mother?
Caller: Oh, yes please.
Me: She actually doesn’t live with me.
Caller: Oh, Miss Gallagher?
Me: Um, yeah?

He was fund-raising for some children’s hospital radio station thing. They were putting on a production of “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” and he wanted me to buy a ticket to it either for myself or for a sick kiddie.

Well, when I was a non-sick kiddie, the aforementioned Mrs Gallagher read that book to my brother and I, and I found it very upsetting when the lion died. If I was a sick kiddie, seeing a play of it would not make me feel better or indeed “help take away the pain of their daily lives,” as the phone guy claimed it would.

On the weekend a lady from Digipoll phoned me to ask me some questions for a poll they were doing for the Herald about how I was planning to vote.

“OMG!!!! I’m voting for Nik!!! He is sooooo hot. Did you see him on his top 24 programme? He was on fire!!!!”

Imagine my sheer embarrassment when I realised she was asking about the general election, not NZ Idol.

I told her that, if an election was held “today”, I would probably vote for the Maori Party. I saw their opening address and was impressed by Pita Sharples’ charisma and enthusiasm. He really nailed it.

Then she asked me what my main election issue was. I didn’t really know, but eventually came up with transport. I now realise I should have clarified that as being public transport, so I’m probably going to end up looking like one of those pro-motorway bitches, which I am, but not as much as I’m a pro-public transport bitch.

Then she asked me if I thought “walyewss” should be taught in New Zealand schools, which turned out to be values with an accent. I said no, because the question didn’t define what these values were (Don’t talk back to yo’ momma? x = 4? Gold is $443 an ounce?)

So if the results of the next Herald poll show pro-Maori party, pro-transport, anti-values, you know it’s all my fault.

I cancelled my gym membership yesterday. The sales guy acted like Hal in 2001 when Dave was trying to unplug him, trying all these little tricks to attempt to get me to reconsider. “If you rejoined, you’d be paying $30 a month more.” Fortunately I was tired and in a somewhat crappy mood, and I just wanted to get the damn thing cancelled. I focussed on his goal, acknowledging but not reacting to his tricks. Finally a piece of paper was signed and I walked away knowing that I had one more excuse to sit on the couch.

Another excuse to never leave the house is the BBC’s newly launched alternate reality game, Jamie Kane. Jamie Kane is a recently deceased pop star, but a small group of his fans suspect something suspicious is behind his death. You, or I, or anyone can join in an help figure out what’s going on in 14 daily instalments.

It’s a very impressive set up. As well as a bunch of websites covering all aspects of his career (embarrassing boy band past, serious solo artiste, “Top of the Pops” coverage, magazine covers, and so on) they’ve actually gone to the effort of producing three albums worth of songs, which are all available to listen to online.

The embarrassing boy band album actually sounds like boy bands did three years ago, the first solo album is complete with an opening track about how horrible his boy band life was, and his second, darker solo album has that melancholic Britpop sound. Some of the songs are really good, much better than a lot of the stuff that many pop artists release. Go, the BBC.

I went to the Food Show yesterday. It was rubbish and I did not get my money’s worth in entertainment value for the $18 entrance fee. There were only two things that stood out.

A company that sold chopped onions in plastic bags displayed their goods on a dinner table, set up with cutlery, plates, glasses. Yet, in a surreal twist, upon each plate was a bag of the chopped onions. I imagined some parallel-universe dinner party, where people sit down and enjoy a bag of onions (and if they’re lucky, there will be a fat-free, sugar-free bag of onions for dessert).

The Guinness stand has giving little-cup samples. It seemed to attracted all the old codgers (and me, ok, shut up). One old codger asked if he could buy a pint, but the barmaid said they weren’t allowed to sell it, but snuck him a bottle. She was also attempting to pimp Guinness as a “dessert beer”, complete with handing out little chocolate squares so that we might see how well Guinness goes with it. Unsurprisingly, all the old codgers (and me) rejected the chocolate.

After the Food Show, I headed into Newmarket, but went via Market Road instead of Manukau Road. I realised that right along side me was Mount St John, and I’d never been up there before.

I found an entrance off Mt St John Ave and headed up the steep path that went straight up the side of the hill for much of the journey. Having made it to the summit, I located what appeared to be the only park bench up there and concluded that Mt St John is much like its neighbour Mt Eden in that:

• it has a big ol’ crater, but with a swampy puddle of water at the bottom and a couple of big trees growing in it.
• there are the holes in the ground from old kumara pits, but without damage from mountain bikers or the need for signs and barriers to prevent subsequent damage.
• there is a footpath up to the summit, but no road full of tour buses.
• the old terraces from Maori fortifications are still visible, but there aren’t any tourists posing on them.
• at the summit there is a path going around the crater, but there isn’t a car park with tour buses and cars fighting for parking spaces.

Yeah, Mt St John has much in common with Mt Eden.