Posts by Chris Waugh
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Hard News: When "common sense" isn't, in reply to Maz,
In my experience, it IS the worst, i.e. I have never felt more unsafe anywhere else.
Alright, fair enough. But I don't find that particularly useful for figuring out what's wrong and how to fix it. Hard evidence strikes me as being a lot more useful than anecdata.
Given Mali is in a state of civil war, and the front line is not too far from Timbuktu, and the rebels seem to be switching to terrorist tactics like suicide bombs and IEDs, I imagine driving in Timbuktu would be rather exciting.
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Hard News: When "common sense" isn't, in reply to Maz,
No Maz, no sentimental claptrap, no defensiveness, no desire to stop any necessary change. Just asking some, including yourself, to calm down. NZ is not the worst in the world. It's not the best, either, and there's plenty to fix, but you're not going to get things fixed by pretending it's the worst in the world.
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Hard News: When "common sense" isn't, in reply to Maz,
Having driven and or cycled in Europe, Asia, South America, North America, Australia and NZ I can safely say that standards here are the worst I’ve seen.
I find this quite amusing. It's amazing how expats all over the world tend to say such similar things about their host country. If the 'here' in your sentence were referring to China, then I've certainly heard near-identical complaints about the standard of driving here in China more than once. I've also had fun with Chinese recently returned from working in oilfields in Sudan complaining about how the Sudanese are so lazy by pointing out that I've heard foreign businesspeople here in China have said exactly the same thing about Chinese workers.
And all the other comments about NZ driver training and standards of driving being so atrocious. Really, Fred Dagg was right: We don't know how lucky we are. When I was last in NZ (Feb 2010) I had to spend a couple of days in Auckland. Yes, the traffic was heavy, especially on the motorways, but I was impressed by how smoothly it flowed and the signs saying "Merge like a zip" (oh please, somebody come up with a good Chinese translation and start posting it around Beijing's motorway network) and onramp traffic lights that actually controlled the volume of traffic entering the motorway network. It was quite a few years ago that I first heard the complaint that Beijing's traffic police had to cope with 10 - 11 hours of rush hour each day.
And you know what I didn't see as we drove down State Highway 1 to Wellington or back up to Hamilton and then Auckland? Large numbers of cars driving at waaaaaay over the speed limit. Not saying speeding doesn't happen in NZ, but never in NZ have I felt the shockwave of a another car passing me, a shockwave similar to that you get from a truck in high winds. That's happened to me here. I also didn't see trucks approaching a red light move into the opposite lane, giving a quick blast of the horn, then barrelling straight through without so much as a glance for possible oncoming traffic - I've seen that more than once on rural Chinese roads.
As for driver training, my brother in law has a perfectly valid drivers licence, but if you ask him to open the boot, bonnet or petrol cap, he'll just look at you blankly. He has no idea where to even begin looking for the appropriate levers. I could go on about his non-existent driving skills. And yet, he is licenced.
Yeah, NZ has its problems, and I suspect those problems are as much cultural, as in entitlement to drive and attitudes to other road users, as infrastructural. And no, I'm not trying to start some silly expat pissing contest about who has to cope with the worst traffic, but come on people, can we get a bit of perspective here?
ETA: Forgot to add: Getting your licence from a packet of cornflakes? When I was growing up, that was a snarky way to vent our frustrations at somebody driving badly, and most certainly not considered an accurate or fair description of entire generations of drivers.
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Hard News: Media3: Bad News for the Force, in reply to "chris",
…for the Thought Police.
I would agree that there are situations when the authorities are so tyrannical and oppressive that violent rebellion is justified. Syria, for example. But I would argue that New Zealand, for all its faults and abuses of Police power, is very far from that. Therefore I do not consider advocating for people to douse cops in petrol and set them on fire. Advocating laying a complaint with the IPCA or peacefully protesting outside the relevant police station or going to the media or writing to MPs, fine, because in New Zealand there are ways to call abusive cops and other authority figures to account, and those ways are not perfect, but they are there and do sometimes work.
Richard Prosser found himself in trouble not for advocating violence against Muslims, but for banning them from airlines. So how is advocating violence against cops acceptable?
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Hard News: Media3: Bad News for the Force, in reply to Matthew Poole,
Yes, but so were some of the other posts.
All of which I would've deleted.
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Hard News: Media3: Bad News for the Force, in reply to Matthew Poole,
Still advocating violence.
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Capture: Two Tales of a City, in reply to Islander,
Absolutely! Especially when winter hits and you've got a nice, steaming bowl of 拉面 or 刀削面 warming you up.
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Capture: Someone, Somewhere, In Summertime, in reply to Nora Leggs,
And their tails!
Gareth Morgan is hiding out on Rangitoto?
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Capture: Two Tales of a City, in reply to Gudrun Gisela,
Hard to tell from only two photos, but the first one looks like 拉面/lāmiàn/pulled noodles - he stretches them out, flicks them up and down with them smacking the board with an almighty thud, folds them back together, rinses and repeats and somehow turns a bundle of dough into noodles without having obviously shredded the dough, right? Second one looks like 刀削面/dāoxiāomiàn/"knife shaved noodles", a speciality of 山西/Shānxī Province, home of the world's most awesomest noodles and vinegar, and, unfortunately, a shitload of coal.
I hope you got to taste some. If you want good noodles, it's hard to beat northern and northwestern China.
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Capture: Two Tales of a City, in reply to Gudrun Gisela,
Excellent, Gudrun, great to see your CNY photos. Makes me feel a little less terrified of moving my family back to NZ. Thanks.