283 posts tagged “aotearoa”

Ever wandered into a music or video store here and there are sections marked ‘A–Z’, ‘New Zealand’ and ‘Foreign’?
   The biggest section is the first one, and often we have the smallest section.
   Think about it though: shouldn’t everything not in ‘New Zealand’ be under ‘Foreign’?
   The other one I get a kick out of is ‘World’, which Borders uses. Shouldn’t everything be under ‘World’? I mean, if you have this category, there is no need to have any others.

Who knew that there would be an Already Ghosts group right here in Wellington?!

Vox was dead again for the last couple of days. Daisy has been very good and has replied to my messages, though it’s a bit annoying that no one else at Six Apart has. It still seems this problem is unique to me, but it can’t be if I can’t compose messages on Vox on any one of three different computers. (I’ll be trying from another office shortly, too, and we are both on the same ISP.)
   Complaining about Vox interrupts the flow of these posts a bit, especially when I just wanted to share these Wellington images with you. Christchurch seemed to have better weather when I visited.

Looks like Vox has fixed its problem.
   Here are some shots of Christchurch, at ground level, that I wanted to share. It’s quite a charming city to walk during the day, and these were taken one lunch-break.

How odd, the compose screen comes up twice over a short period, despite being out of action for two solid days. Even before those two days, it was only working intermittently (but I could deal with clicking refresh for a few hours—a few days gets boring).
   Before the service goes away again, here are some shots I wanted to share with you of Christchurch from my last visit. These were shot from my suite at the Hotel Grand Chancellor.

For overseas friends who would not have seen it live, here is the link to my TV3 appearance this morning on Sunrise. Props to Helen Baxter, to Ali Ikram and Carly Flynn on the programme itself, to Lars and Frankie at the Wellington studio, to Claudine for my make-up, and to Alison for the contact. Only one quip about the mayoralty; the rest was about Facebook and the dangers of having your photographs uploaded to it.

While I wouldn’t consider myself a “birther” (I am far too left-wing, relatively speaking, for that), there’s a part of me that wishes the American president would show his birth certificate, just to silence a good group of his critics and get them focusing on more important matters. I publicly said so at the time when the matter first came up and yes, it did seem odd, even if his challengers in the courts’ system had fairly ill-prepared cases.
   However, I remember how John Major, then PM of the UK, resisted showing his O levels, which he also had sealed, because he felt they weren’t important. Eventually, he released them, and his marks were unremarkable. They made absolutely no difference to his authority and it was a “nothing” story that the British media were good at pushing. Maybe President Obama is taking a lesson from a conservative politician: showing it would be a waste of time.
   I imagine in the US, things are so divisive politically that if President Obama were to show his (original, long form) birth certificate, there would still be people saying it was faked. I have read some comical criticisms even of his certification of live birth, pointing out the colour differences between ones they had seen and the one on the President’s campaign site. I guess those people have never used more than one scanner, or more than one digital camera.
   The political right, even if its case had merit, kept shooting itself in the foot with some of the less thought-out theories. I admit there is a question that could be easily cleared up, but Obama’s own critics are clouding the issue. While they’re doing that, then the President and his allies can sit back comfortably.
   Still, just to get a bit of closure as I potentially enter local politics, here’s a 37-year-old piece of paper (in fact, it is 37 years today that Dad had my birth registered):

   Queen Elizabeth Hospital is still there, as is 4 Victory Avenue, though we soon moved into the front apartment. Here is how the entry to the building looks these days:     Now, that should all check out, not that local politics gets as nasty as American national politics.

Remember last year when I took the mickey out of these in the City Life newspaper?

   The first one is obvious: Melbourne is misspelt. The second one is also obvious: Circle is misspelt, there’s a missing apostrophe for the possessive, and capitalizing a definite article is technically incorrect. I remember we had a bit of fun with this as they were in huge letters, the former across the top of a tabloid-sized page.
   The question one has to pose is: did they get it right in 2009? Let’s see: Well, that’s a good start. Someone hired a proofreader at long last. Or turned the spellcheck on.
   Let’s see how the second one went: One fewer error, but still two to go. Note the prize money has reduced to a recessionary $150 this time around. The text, which also has a few issues (based around consistency of English usage), remains the same as last year.
   Any bets on the 2010 edition? Will the apostrophe for Winners’ be there? Or is there only one winner, in which case it’s Winner’s? I remain none the wiser.

I saw a bit of this on telly, but didn’t expect it to be passed around the internet as much. Background: ‘Safer communities together’ is the local slogan for the police, much like ‘To protect and serve’ for some American police departments.