Posts by Simon Grigg
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why do folks insist on singling them out? It feels to me that part of it at least is because we need a new bogey man, now that the USSR is no longer
amen
Because there are an awful lot of congressional districts which need that bogey man.
One is that almost two decades of lobbying and logrolling stand behind that $320 billion fighter purchase plan. The fix is in with key congressional committees, and the pork has been elaborately scheduled for division among constituents and congressional districts.The aerospace contracting lobby does not want any change in the copious money flow now authorized for new fighters.
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From the Register via Bob Daktari's blog
Free music has never looked so cheap
For the major record labels, yesterday's deal between EMI and Apple doesn't herald a new beginning, but the beginning of the end.
I'm not sure if I buy all it's logic but I do agree that Apple and EMI have made the online album less viable as a unit.
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And then there is this
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We recently came through KL airport 3 times. What a difference from Auckland (and Sydney).
Bangkok's new one too. And, like KL, the cafes and bars are NOT overpriced. Check in last time on a full Air Asia flight took me about 10 minutes as the six or seven counters pushed the queue through at a good rate.
We transit thru Changi a fair bit, often with a few hours to kill and usually do that by wandering through immigration (which is a breeze and always comes with a smile and free boiled lollies!), getting an MRT train (for $2) into the city...about 25 minutes each way..and spending money in their shops and foodhalls.
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As is The Cook St Market, where Mr Grigg DJ'ed upstairs at Diamond Lil's I believe?
not quite Diamond Lil's...it was the Six Month Club, with messers Urlich & Phillips, but we shared the space, called The Ace of Clubs, owned by Phil Warren, RIP.
The downstairs vinyl place was, I think Vinyl Exchange...Neville's Record Exchange was in St Kevin's Arcade.
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I love the way the airlines offer the elderly non English speaking couple coming to visit their kids, an apple each half an hour from Auckland. The same non-English speaking couple then are snarled at "didn't you read the declaration" by some brutish MAF person in brownshirt and hotpants, and fined $200 as a Welcome to New Zealand.
I guess the airlines must be on a percentage.
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oh...there is a preview button?
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it was air new zealand
I can't put this any other way....ANZ are, as an international airline, shite....I would move mountains to avoid flying with them. They are rude, expensive, understaffed, and, on most flights, the interiors are old (even the "new" upgrades only put them up there with most other airlines circa 1999).
And then we have the Zambesi outfits....
Adam Air offer a more pleasant, if sometimes terminal, experience (at least the pain is quick)
Just woke up, grumpy, got that off my chest, had a coffee, and now I feel much better
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I don't know about that Simon, the most unpleasant experiences I've had have been in the US. Not so much unfriendly per se as just very officially hostile.
and I'll rephrase too....airports "apart from the US". My experience at the moment is mostly Asia I admit, but Auckland could certainly learn quite a thing or two from any in the region. They smile in Changi and you can get good coffee.
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There were only three check-in counters open and, I am not kidding, maybe 350 passengers waiting: it looked like about four aircraft were leaving within the next hour and so the queue -- woven around what I call the Disneyland snake -- stretched right back into the concourse and out to the doors.
time for a bloody moan..why is Auckland Airport the most unfriendly f&%king airport in the world..apart from Brisbane...from traffic people out the front to the check in, and then, only in Auckland, the cabin baggage checkers, before immigration.
Is making ones exit as unpleasant as possible a philosophy to keep people in the country or something?
It's a comment I encounter over and over again when I tell people where I'm from. Americans always seem to want to apologise for their foreign policy, I just have to do it for our airport.