Posts by Paul Campbell
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I'm waiting for them to ban booze - because alcohol is a solvent that might be used to make P ....
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last night's 'expose' was a bit silly - he was buying meths and isopropyl alcohol - they're common solvents for lots of things - he didn't end up buying the one thing that's actually hard to get (a used-to-be-over-the counter cold remedy) that was never sole at your local 4-square
but to be fair he did push the shopkeeper into a somewhat incriminating conversation - one that I would imagine that no vaguely smart drug cook would have engaged in in the first place
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remember the American credit crunch is a bit different - theirs was triggered by mortgage rates going over roughly 6% and their government is worried about stagnation and regularly pushes their interest rates down to keep their economy ticking over (they also don't have to pay income tax on money used to pay mortgage interest - and if they are smart can lock in 30 year mortgages - many who are having problems are doing so because they didn't) - ours have topped 10% and are driven by a reserved bank that's pushing interest rates up to stave off inflation.
The US Fed of course has a lot more leverage than NZRB does and when they stimulate their economy they also make their housing crisis less (they also as a result push up our dollar as the carry trade rushes in) - here the RB with nothing other than inflation on its radar (by statute) doesn't care.
The point I'm trying to make here is that while a credit crunch like in the US can happen here it's less likely to have the soft landing many in the US may see
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I'm old enough to have seen more than one housing boom/bust cycle - in my experience things tend to eventually come right by themselves - in my early 20s I bought s cottage by the beach for $8,500 - saved like crazy for a year and paid off the mortgage then sold it when I went on my OE - in my late 20s in the US (at the end of a boom) I despaired at the thought of buying a house, yet scrimped and eventually bought one - the value went down for a while then back up.
What I'm trying to say is that these things come and go and are to some extent self correcting - that's what the bust part of a boom-bust cycle is for - the problem of course is that in these sorts of markets that run on hype people get in without really understanding what's going on and get burned.
Personally I blame in part the preponderance of "house porn" on TV - those shows where people buy houses, do a quick pain-over-the-cracks and sell them for lots more - they wouldn't make good TV if people didn't usually make a bunch of money - I want to see at least some of the people going through a bankruptcy at the end
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Living in the US there was a point somewhere around 30ish where I got addressed "sir" a lot more .... it was sad, meant I'd grown old
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Everyone in my wife's family has Phds - using formal titles would be confusing
Having a unique name is IMHO a good thing: A few years ago while living in San Francisco my wife started receiving mail for another "Lisa Levitt", we got phone calls too "is that Lisa Levitt? the one who's father is Gene Levitt? the psychologist?" turns out there was another Lisa in town, her dad was also Dr Eugene Levitt, both were psychologists teaching at universities - and both had been getting each others mail for years it's a small world.
Back in the '80s I was the only "Paul Campbell" on the internet now I'm one of 1000s
We gave our kids both our surnames hyphenated - we felt it was a bit of a cop out at the time - but they are, AFAIK, the only "Levitt-Campbell"s on the planet - now I'm very glad we did it
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My wife and I have different last names - telemarketers who address me as "'Mr Levitt?" get the "he doesn't live here any more, I kicked him out when I moved in" response - floors them every time
I too had a friend who talked of his parents by their first names (he still does) as a kid back in the late sixties I was floored by this - My wife and I have deliberately never referred to each other in front of our kids with other than our first names they went through a couple of periods as little kids where they did too, we didn't correct them or complain - eventually we became "Mum" and "Dad" which seems to have stuck
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Simon - true - some places you can top them up I keep a US one alive most of the time - but then we have a US VOIP number at home in NZ - mostly we used roaming to text "I'm staying at <insert hotel number>" and even that can be avoided if they offer free wifi - I'll be picking up an iPhone or whoever else first offers the ability to preferentially talk to my Asterisk box whenever wifi is available
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I don't know about 'Vodaphone price gouging on roaming' - doesn't everyone buy a cheap local SIM card instead? I know I have a nice little collection
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sadly those elves are very long lived .... just be glad he's not doing the Silmarillion