Posts by Dinah Dunavan
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I could really do with some socks, so I'm going to try my very best to think of a good customer service story, in amongst the usual horror ones.
Oh, Telecom - hard to believe but this is true.
They wrote to me and said that if I'd signed up for Freedom I would have saved up to $30 on average each month over the preceding six months. Turned out they were right! In fact if I hadn't been recuperating from surgery in January, and not gone to town during that month, the average saving would have been closer to $50.
Signed up for Freedom immediately and spent the savings on other phone calls.And - I once took my phone to America and made a call, or texted, or something. So when Australia (a country I have never taken a cell phone to) changed their network and my old phone would no longer work there, I got a free phone. It's a lot fancier and more complicated than the old one and has a couple of very annoying faults. But who cares, it was free! and my old one needed a new battery, which was going to cost $50.
Oh, and they have paid for maintenance on the road, which they also use, to our very remote house.
Almost makes up for the staggering amount of money we hand over to them each month and their inability to understand that when you live somewhere (most of the time) with no landline and make a lot of calls to America, you really do want to know the international rates for cell phones, no, I'm not interested in how much cheaper it would be if I made the call from a landline, just tell me the rates that your various plans have for international calls, please!
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Russell you silly billy, you obvioulsy had a misspent youth. Jolisa clearly isn't.
Giovanni, you don't have to do everything your ancestors did. I'm planning on making it beyond half of my grandparents and at least as far as the other two. Of course I could always get struck down by a jelly fish while snorkling on my 70th, or choke on an olive on my 80th.
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40 was easy. I had the second best party ever. (Actually maybe the best, but I have to count the one where I met my husband as the best.) We went to Bodega California, partied for several days with 30+ friends and relations, swam in the pool, walked on the beach, drank the local wine, ate the local food... I'd turn 40 all over again for that.
I'm hoping the global economy has picked up enough and air travel is still affordable when I hit 50, this time I feel Europe beckoning. Sun drenched wine dark seas. It's great having a birthday in July, that way I can insist on traveling north for summer warmth.
Live life, enjoy life. Drink good wine, eat great food, talk to people, travel. Love youself and others. I can't get enough of this life but I'm not trying to stop the clock. (It does help that the hair is still grey free - haha.)
Remember that at 30 you're still only a third of the way through your probable life. Under half way through the good times. At 30 your best adult years are just beginning. Imagine being as gorgeous and happy as you are now and having pots of dough because you were sensible all through your 20s and 30s and saved and invested sensibly. That's what being 40-50-60+ can mean. Woohoo!
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but now whenever it transpires with somebody back home that I live in New Zealand the response is invariably a variation on "you lucky bastard"
If I had a dollar for every american that had said that to me over the last 16 years... I'd have ...$2.49
I'm always amazed that there are any liberals still living in the USofA, I'd have fled screaming years ago. -
I am hopeless at names. I try all the sales tricks, repeating the name, using it frequently (if I can recall it 2 seconds later,) but nope, it's gone. Same with a lot of nouns. I'll be chatting away quite boisterously and suddenly forget the name of something ... like you know that thing you put garden waste in with a wheel and we used to play it as kids when someone took your legs and you had to ... a wheellbarrow!
But I can recall a whole lot of minute detail about events. Where, when, who (that tall guy who always wears a hat). My family marvel at my recall of events.
There's an interesting woman out in the world who can recall everything that ever happened to her. I read about her once. Some of the researchers studying her made the comment that what she recalled was not information about the world but stuff that had happened to her. So she could recall detail of an event only to the extent that it affected or involved her. A kind of self absorbtion.
So my pet theory is that I am (partly) self absorbed. I can remember a lot of stuff that I was involved in but not your name, because, frankly, you're not me. I'll remember it if you're important to me or if you're very interesting. I think the social gregariousness fits with this. We socialites are a teensy bit self centred.
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Ansett would still be my favourite airline, if they hadn't gone bust.
Several years ago my grandfather died. I called Ansett and booked a flight from Dunedin to Auckland for the next day. Next day I called a shuttle service so I could get to the airport. They told me they'd collect me a 1pm and I'd be at the airport by 1:30pm to catch my 2:30pm flight. All good. Except of course they didn't show up until 2pm!!! I called Ansett about 1:45pm and said "I'm going to be late". They said "no problem, with no bags to check we'll get you on the plane, as long as you're here before the flight takes off". Despite the shuttle being late, and then taking the most bizarre wrong turns on the way to the airport, I made it.
I ran into the airport at 2:28pm, the woman at the departure gate had my boarding pass in her hand and I kept running. Plane took off on time, everyone was happy.( Except me, who had paid the driver despite everything just so as to get off the shuttle and into the airport with no fuss.)
Moral: NEVER NEVER have checked luggage. (This moral fits earlier tales too, I'm in favour of economising.)
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Or addicts then missionaries. That seemed to be the order of things in my extended circle.
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Carry-on only from now on. My SO recently had two weeks in his home country and took one carry-on bag. He complained that it was too full and then came home with it twice as full (presents for me, of course) and it still had room in it. You can always buy more shirts/socks/underwear/shoes etc. My experience of arriving on Christmas eve sans suitcase with ALL MY KNICKERS in it (oh, and the presents) was a very salutory lesson.
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This could be one of the most replied to posts I've read in while. Interesting that. I haven't managed to read through all the replies so I apologise if this ODT opinion piece is already out there. I think it is worth reading.
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Pity they couldn't invent an alternative to frying all their food.
Ah, deep fried pizza! My enduring memory of Edinburgh.