Posts by Chris Waugh
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What shocked me about Romney's rant was this:
who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it.
Um, what? Health, nutrition, and shelter from the elements are "entitlements", right up there with McMansion and private jet ownership? Romney would really deny people medical treatment, let them starve, or have them sleep rough because they or their parents had the gall to be poor?
You can dress a salt water crocodile up in a suit, but it's still just as likely to turn around and eat you if it's hungry and you happen to be the closest meat. I hope this does lose him the election.
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The question I'm asking is where the hell did Paula Bennett get those numbers? Was she honestly mistaken in mixing up different sets of figures? Or...?
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Loss, support, understanding, renewal... I like how this thread has developed. Take care everybody.
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Capture: Spring is Like a Perhaps Hand, in reply to Hebe,
Hebe, for many of us devastatiing earthquakes are not mere concepts but very real threats we grew up with and continue to live with. And not just through regular school earthquake drills (and even the farce of a tsunami drill we had at Rongotai College), but through the frequent small, medium and quite large but fortunately deep and/or distant quakes that interrupted every aspect of our lives at random. I've experienced every kind of shaking from the short, sharp, split-second jolt forward that leaves you surprised the floor you're standing on is horizontal and not on a 17 degree lean to the long, rolling motion that has you convinced the flimsy-feeling building on whose ground floor you're squatting is about to collapse under the strain to the moderately strong shaking that has already rather jaded Wellingtonian 16- to 17-year olds looking at each other mentally asking "Is this it?" only to get a few seconds relief that ends with the French teacher uttering the only rude word you'll ever hear leave her lips as we all dive.
I absolutely do not mean in any way to diminish your experience, I'm just saying that far from being a mere concept, what you have gone through the last couple of years is precisely what many of us have been mentally preparing ourselves for for as long as we've been big enough to be conscious of such risks and realities, and that consciousness starts really young in many parts of our country. I would venture to suggest that, judging by its location, the people of Opotiki are just as experienced, jaded and conscious of the reality of that constant threat as us Wellingtonians. Black humour, as distasteful as it is to Cantabs right now for perfectly understandable reasons, is one way to deal with that.
I count myself extremely fortunate that:
1: My whanau in Christchurch have gotten through physically unscathed, and;
2: The Big One has yet to hit my hometown (although the longer it takes about coming... ), and;
3: The faultlines near where I live are relatively quiescent.I'm with you in the ire at NZ On Air, albeit from an obviously different perspective and for different reasons.
If you want to talk about earthquakes as a concept, then I could try and track down a British acquaintance of years back who expressed regret at having left Taiwan just days before a huge earthquake that killed many (details elude me right now, and I'm running out of time to google, let's just say late '90s and devastating). I would've dearly loved to have mashed his head into the nearest rock face for such incredibly dense insensitivity, but I bit my tongue and explained as patiently as I could the nature of what he had wished he could've experienced and that I and the Colombian girl he was blethering at had grown up with the ever-present risk of precisely that happening. He had enough smarts to look contrite, but I doubt he actually learned anything.
Hebe and other Christchurch people, I realise this comment may cause offense, but I am trying hard to avoid that. I do not claim to understand what you have been through. I am simply saying that many of us empathise with Christchurch and its people because what you have experienced the last couple of years is what we have been mentally preparing ourselves for our all our lives, and continue to hope we have the good fortune to not have to experience.
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Relevant to spring by whatever analogy... Today was good, warm, dry, and a very informal, international wedding celebration in an old Beijing courtyard turned cafe.
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Capture: Wellington? Well, I Would., in reply to Hilary Stace,
That's the trouble with expatriation.... especially my kind, in which trips back 'home' are infrequent, to say the least. So I'm responding to a place that essentially no longer exists, even if it is the same building that was the place of my memories. I did take my wife through there in February 2010, catching a train out to Petone to meet an old mate, and found it and the trains to be the same as I remembered, just older. But your description makes it sound much more interesting than I remember. Funny how change sneaks up and changes everything while you're far away.
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Capture: Wellington? Well, I Would., in reply to Lilith __,
I’ve always loved the Welly railway station: the exterior’s so grand and the inside’s so bustling.
It always struck me as being more void than place, a hollow vacancy people rush through on their way elsewhere. I suppose that is the prime function of railway stations, but I think Wellington does spectacularly badly at barren, windswept, grimy, purely utlitarian empty spaces for the loading and unloading of trains. Comparing with railway stations I've used in Dunedin and many Chinese cities just heightens the sense of void.
As for grand, I'll give Wellington a pass mark for effort, but Dunedin wins hands down.
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Capture: Wellington? Well, I Would., in reply to JacksonP,
I don't know how you work such magic with the railway station. It always felt so grimy, rusted out, and ready to crumble at the next Mildly Strong One that I always struggled to see any beauty in it.
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Hard News: Friday Music: Scary Young, in reply to Graham Reid,
a high point was Don McGlashan’s
...brilliant speech. Thanks for posting that.
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Still the wrong season, I know, but these bright little spots of yellow grabbed my attention on the way to work today.
And the sky decided to turn all dramatic this afternoon. This is what greeted me as I stepped out of Teaching Building 1. Not even a tiny breath of wind or drop of drizzle to match the ominous looking clouds, though.
