Posts by Hebe
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Legal Beagle: Council Elections: STV Q&A, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
getting screwed over with car-parking costs
At a minimum here: the shakes took out the main parking building, the tunnel access underneath the very busy intersection, and contractors repairing huge swathes of the hospital of necessity have closed many parks for the public and staff. Frigging nightmare is the least I can say.
If Parker or Sutton had been in my position at any time in the last two years, replacing the carpark building, or opening up some adjacent empty sections for relatives of acute cases would become a priority . God nows there are plenty of vacant bits of land everywhere in Christchurch!
I had no way of knowing how long I needed to park, no change to pay for the machines (that otherwise only accept credit cards not eftpos). I admit to being disorganised for the first few hours, but most people are when you have to drop everything and go with your child and have no-one else at that half-hour for back-up. I could not leave the boy alone in AACU, writhing in pain while I searched for a change, a metered long-term parking spot (non-existent; max is two hours) and walked back.
Am I pissed about this: hell yeah. It was a layer of stress that was crushing on top of everything else. And contributed negatively to the experience of patients, staff and families.
The rider to this moan: The staff and medical care the boy received were Absolutely Awesomely Amazing though. The care was great -- even from the only Paediatric Registrar in the whole hospital on Tuesday (I have no idea why that was the case but he was excellent). And this is from someone who was reared in the private health system (my mother was a long-term hospital chief). We can't thank them all enough.
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Health Board elections are stupid
They are. And weird. Until this week. In the hours of staying with my very-unwell son in public hospital I got to thinking thinks like: why have awful food in hospitals when good food can be cheaper, easier to serve and produce (answer: corporate contracted catering complete with Mission statement: "Designed To Piss You Off In Your 4.30am Hour Of Need"). Good food -- ie Vogel's rather than McBread; fresh fruit not canned doused in syrup -- will speed recovery by helping people want to eat so shorten hospital stays, and will cheer up everyone including the staff. And many other thinks were had about the place, the parking (oh fuck, the parking), the institution and the clientele.
Hospitals are only important when you or yours are using them.
That is why Health Board elections are important; and often I admit to at best giving the candidate bios a cursory glance, ranking those I know of and leaving the rest. Thus I hang my head in shame at having helped elect Aaron Keowan to the Canterbury DHB by only ranking five candidates last time. This year I will do better. -
Hard News: Friday Music: Summer Time, in reply to Peter Darlington,
$15 from the Uni Bookshop though, sucker didn’t come cheap!
Someone I knew paid $40 for a Clash new release in 1979; I thought they were mad or Rockefeller-rich.
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Endless Summer was great. I shall recommend it to my teens, who are rekkid nerds. The LP was a casualty of OE: my former mother-in-law decided the pile of old records we left in her garage should go to the dump. Actually they were the favourites, well-played and over-loved, lovingly picked from the large collection, and included many indie NZ singles from the late 70s early 80s when I had to save up to buy them. Many of the tossed were bought from Peake at the University Bookshop, that one in Colombo St, or the Mousetrap so they carried the memories of place.
I never felt the same about the MiL after that.
Virginity was a good compilation too.
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Capture: Upside Down, Inside Out, in reply to Chris Waugh,
Good. I have been diving into Capture this week for amazement and inspiration while on hospital breaks myself. The photographs are incroyable - you all post shot after shot that stun and amaze me. From today life is a little freer, I will be getting out the camera, finding the charger and playing!
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Hard News: Who else forgot to get married?, in reply to Lucy Telfar Barnard,
What about “The Right Awesome Keri Hulme”, or similar? I mean, if people can be “Right Honorable” and/or “Very Reverend”, I don’t see why we can’t invent other complimentary honorifics.
"Your Awesomeness": what a greeting!
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I'd like a nice mayor who can also be a shit-kicker. A strategic mayor. Someone who connects with people rather than a camera. Someone who can run a business, and who understands the relationship between elected members and staff. Someone who listens. Someone who can plan. Someone people trust. Someone who has huge energy, huge networks and a personality that can carry people with them. And lots more.
So many qualities and so much time is needed for the job at this time in Christchurch that I think it needs two people to do it justice: co-mayors.
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Hard News: Who else forgot to get married?, in reply to Matthew Poole,
I know a couple who kept their own names and blended them for their children's surnames. Great idea .
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We didn’t have time to get married this time before the 31-week twins, and have never found the time since. Maybe one day, maybe not.
We decided to use their father’s surname for the twins to help their older brother (son of father and his second wife) blend into a sibling relationship. This was driven by having known families where all the children had different surnames due to various forms of blending the mother’s and father’s names. That gave rise to petty but time-consuming challenges every time officialdom became involved.
To offset the surname, we used forenames of significance to my family: one’s first name is that of his great-uncle, the other’s second name is my father’s name. We felt it kept everything fair – and we liked the names.
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Capture: Two Tales of a City, in reply to Stephen Judd,
the A team of the council deserve a savaging
Yup.