Up Front: The British Are Coming
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I'd love to see a pic of your coat, too.
I was shopping Kathmandhu - the city, not the chain store - and I came across a bolt of bright purple wool. Entranced, I immediately purchased four metres and then set about finding a suitable tailor. Fortunately, my girlfriend's mum's bloodsister's daughter is a Sherpa and knew exactly where to go.
So we went to Park Lane Tailors and they duly create a one-of-a-kind full length greatcoat. The proferred a range of buttons and I chose the gold ones with some kind of crest on it.
I was living in London at the time, and a nice warm coat was extremely handy. Mid-90s London coat fashion was quite varied. You could wear black, navy or brown. Oh, and charcoal too. People would stop me in the street telling me how cool my coat was. The bank branch near where I worked even allowed me to use it as ID ("we know you, you're the only one with curly hair and a big purple coat").
One night, I was standing outside New Zealand House* after attending Ngati Ranana kapahaka practice. I was idly inspecting the New Zealand Coat of Arms when I had a feeling I'd seen it before. Turns out I had, on my coat's gold buttons.
* It's quite a defining place.
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I just started giving blood again after meaning to do so for 10 years but never getting around to it.
But I'm O-, so my blood is tremendously useful.
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I learnt not to look at the needle fairly early on - I swear the thing gets bigger as it nears your skin. Looking away, I'm often surprised at how little there is to feel - in one or two cases where the person was a real pro I literally haven't felt a thing. I make it easy by having nice big veins clearly visible on my arms - the guy at the Medlab in Royal Oak used to use the same joke every time I went in: "I could go in with a javelin!" Not an image I needed, but I appreciated the humour.
By brother, on the other hand, was a fainter. The problem was basically that he was holding his breath from nervousness until he passed out. He now concentrates on taking deep, regular breaths and has no trouble.
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If you added together all the aesthetic praise I've received for my cat, my games cabinet and my breasts, it still wouldn't come close
No of course I wasn't looking at your bre...oh look at your cat isn't she cu....You PLAY Puerto Rico!
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I used to be a blood donor too; but having kids in two different plague pits (small person educational institutions) has meant there has never been a time in the past few years when one or more members of the family has not been coming down, or recovering from an illness - which is another no-no for donating blood.
They even used to take blood when I was a malarial risk, they'd plug me into the autopherosis centrifuge whatsit machine that would suck out some blood then split out the white cells and reinject the red stuff.
Between that an being a human test subject for drug trials I've got some fairly dubious looking scar tissue over the sample point on the inside of the elbow.
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Mikaere, your story is beautiful. Rob, your story is really gross.
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I don't have any pictures of my coat.
Screenshot or it didn't happen :P
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I turned up to a winter daytime event in my snowypeak black jersy with the 1/4 zip and my bullet proof black leather jacket only to be redirected to the pimp convention up the road.
Elephant hide (I'm sure), four buttons front (top one missing) and the length is to the mid thigh.
Best worn with an all black natural fiber ensamble. Black boots, jeans, top and sun glasses for those clear blue cold Christchurch days like today.
OK it maynot be bullet proof but stab & tazer proof for sure.
I didn't buy it and my friend who gave it to me didn't either. It has a murky past and I've been warned not to wear it through customs. It was once owned by someone who had to leave in a hurry. My friend has since left the country too. -
It's not that it is unclean - it's about minimisation of risk. I have a friend who got Hep C from a transfusion 20 years ago, and who would have rather liked them to have been more careful back then.
Sure, but I still wonder why it's an unacceptable risk if I've had oral or anal sex in the last five years (with or without a condom) with a man, but not so much if I'd been doing the same with a woman? Personally, I see where the NZBS is coming from but high-risk behaviour isn't "safer" because you're doing it with a woman -- as HIV-poz women can testify.
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Oh hey. I just made an appointment for my daughter to start getting her gardasil vaccinations today, and that made me remember the last time I took her up there for a shot, when the nurse TRIED to give her a needle phobia. She was nearly hysterical trying to stop Rhiana from watching the needle go in even though I was right there saying 'you can look if you want'. I know my kid. She's the one on Disposing of Dead Things duty for our family.
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Oh hey. I just made an appointment for my daughter to start getting her gardasil vaccinations today, and that made me remember the last time I took her up there for a shot, when the nurse TRIED to give her a needle phobia. She was nearly hysterical trying to stop Rhiana from watching the needle go in even though I was right there saying 'you can look if you want'. I know my kid. She's the one on Disposing of Dead Things duty for our family.
Heh... and surely the child-related petty neurosis is something you don't need to outsource? :) Hell, one thing I love about kids is the streak of fearless ghoulishness most of them, sadly, lose as they get older. "Needles? Kewl!"
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3410,
She's the one on Disposing of Dead Things duty for our family.
Very gracious of you.
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She's the one on Disposing of Dead Things duty for our family
I've just been reading the history of the zombie war WWZ, kind of puts an odd persepective on comments like this
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My daughter would totally rock the Zombie Apocalypse.
Very gracious of you.
Thank you. She thrives on responsibility and recognition of her strengths. She also once brought me the dessicated gutless corpse of a guinea pig for inspection, which was somewhat startling.
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Bunch of tattoos and yet I still can't get over the needles for giving blood. Can't they just scrape it off my arm when I'm getting my new tat and screen out the ink?
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I always find a spot on the ceiling and concentrate really hard on it.
Same here. Discovered my aversion to blood during a 4th form first aid film (yes film not video), apparently the pretty yellow stars were not part of the film.
I like it when there is enough dirt of the ceiling for me to focus on something. I also once had a dentist who had a really nice photo of Auckland Harbour on his ceiling.
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I've just been reading the history of the zombie war WWZ, kind of puts an odd persepective on comments like this
Ah, squee! I'm surprised Max Brooks and his father weren't the first out of the gate with a black (and bloody) comedy about the usual nubile suspects being chew toys for Nazi zombies.
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O rh d negative here which is, as the GP in the family said, "Ooo! Hot collector's item!"*
Problem: I have veins that actively retreat from needles...it took a very experienced district nurse 4 goes to harpoon one-
(*I've been looking warily over my shoulder ever since, for eager obstetricians creeping up.)
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Needless to add, link to trailer is of marginal workplace safety -- unless you have headphones and great peripheral vision.
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Zombie nazis on snow! How do we get to see that here?
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Needless to add, link to trailer is of marginal workplace safety -- unless you have headphones and great peripheral vision
Squee!
Did you spot the Braindead tee shirt?In the wikilink there is mention of a film version
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Zombie nazis on snow! How do we get to see that here?
Because Ant Timpson is a sick and twisted bastard (Lord love the sweet little pixie), its doing the Film Festival circuit but it looks like you'll have to do a road trip to Christchurch. Sorry.
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Mikaere, your story is beautiful.
And thanks too for the link back to the 2005 one from Slack and you, on significant dates in NZ history and the unveiling by the Queen Mother of Inia Te Wiata's pouihi at New Zealand House, London.
As a complimentary complement to that story on the other side of the world, may I nominate Tuesday 11 August 1914, when the Poverty Bay Herald included in its Editor's miscellany at this time six days after the outbreak of the First World War: "The usual meeting of the Gisborne Shakespeare Club will not be held on Wednesday evening, owing to the patriotic korero."
Yeah, WW1 not WWZ, but seems to encapsulate rather nicely an earlier point in the cultural linkage of British settler-descendants and Maori. (From the latest update of the National Library's digitised newspapers searchable on-line, where the Povery Bay Herald is one of the better ones for later coverage up to 1920.)
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Ah, squee! I'm surprised Max Brooks and his father weren't the first out of the gate with a black (and bloody) comedy about the usual nubile suspects being chew toys for Nazi zombies.
Zombie nazis on snow! How do we get to see that here?
You fly up to Auckland for the film festival? :)
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Bunch of tattoos and yet I still can't get over the needles for giving blood.
Need to wait six months after tattoos for blood donation. Tatts much riskier.
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