Monthly Archives: August 2005

At the bus stop

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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.

A response

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A reponse from the executive assistant to Richard Worth, my local MP, in response to my query about the mysterious phone call I received from the person who was trying to convince me that National wanted me to vote for the ACT candidate in Epsom:

MESSAGE FROM RICHARD WORTH
MP for Epsom and Shadow Minister for Justice & Attorney General

Robyn
The short answer is don’t split your vote. The reasons are:
* In Epsom the ACT candidate was polling 14.8% of the candidate vote on 17 July. That has now dropped. Voting for the ACT candidate simply divides the centre-right vote.
* ACT is polling well below the 5% threshold to secure a place in Parliament. If ACT fails to get 5% of the party vote the votes are redistributed in the proportion of the parties which are successful. So some of the redistributed votes go to Labour.
* Voters are asked to TICK NATIONAL TWICE to change the Government.

The ACT candidate is running an argument that National needs him to win Epsom. That is wrong and is part of a campaign of mischief.

Thank you very much for bringing this phone call to my notice – Richard

Judy Young
Executive Assistant
Dr Richard Worth MP for Epsom

Ok, I have a headache.

Phone hex

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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.

Tell it like it is

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I’ve just emailed my local MP. I’ve never done this before, but I just received a phone call from a strange lady who was very strongly suggesting that National wanted Epsom voters to not vote for the Epsom candidate and instead vote for ACT candidate (and leader) Rodney Hide so that ACT could join National in government.

At the start of the phone call she said she represented a group of people who wanted to see National elected government, but after the “vote Rodney” bit I got a bit suspicious and asked if she was really an ACT supporter. She sounded fake surprised when I reminded her she’d originally said she was pro-National.

She wanted me to answer some questions, but I told her that I didn’t trust her and didn’t feel comfortable answering her questions.

It probably helps that I had recently had the phone call from the nice Digipoll lady who was completely upfront about everything, so I knew that this strange woman’s evasiveness was a sign that she was hiding something.

So I’ve emailed my local MP asking him if National wants people to vote for ACT, or if that woman was insane in the membrane.

It wasn’t like this at the last election.

Askew

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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-public-transport, anti-values, you know it’s all my fault.