Posts by Heather Gaye
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Was there a teeny one yesterday early afternoon as well, like 3pm? I thought I felt a shudder, but I wasn't sure whether it was a quake or a truck passing.
Used to have 'em all the time in Whakatane when I was a kid.
Ha, snap. Were you around for the big one in '87?
Quite. Auckland would get a new mountain. Taupo gets a very large hole in the earth.
..and the jury's still out on whether Wellington would get more real estate, or fall into the sea.
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I like the way the author states "you can believe in God any way you want", but her list of examples includes christian denominations only.
Utopia required its inhabitants to believe in a god (any god), but somehow I doubt the letter's author would be particularly enamoured with some of Thomas More's other dictates.
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waffles on demand
That phrase totally deserves its own political party.
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Sichuan pepper... zing!
OH! OH! OH! That's what they were! The first day of my holiday in Beijing, I had a fishy soupy thing, chewed on one of those blighters and spent the rest of my meal feeling like I'd stuck my tongue on a lemon-flavoured battery. Traumatic, but perversely fascinating.
The soup itself was pretty impressive, it was like they'd caught the fish in a bucket, hacked it to bits, boiled it then served it up, bucket of river water and all.
Aahh, good times..(runs out to find Sichuan cookbook)
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I concur with rodgerd above, Labyrinth has come through the years more kindly than The Dark Crystal which seemed much much longer than I remembered.
I CONCUR. My sister got me the DVD for Christmas, and it's still a great watch. Also, I never really noticed before how Hoggle's shortness considerably increases the amount of screentime Jareth's crotch gets.
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This is a serious question -- I had a similar experience when I came to Christchurch (although I would describe my reaction as surprised rather than perturbed). Why should different faces provoke this response? Why are some people perturbed by sameness, and others by differentness? And should we feel offended by other people's reactions (which presumably they can't help)?
I have a theory that I wrote up a couple of years back after the London bombings. It's just culture shock. WRT to immigration, that (perfectly normal) discomfort over a changing environment only really turns into racism when it's affirmed and justified into an external problem - by informal community consensus or political candidates - and fault is transferred to the object of difference (that is, an emerging immigrant population).
I guess it's not cool to comment on the number of (insert ethnic minority here) because they've already been made the scapegoats before. Could be an unnecessary kneejerk reaction from the person that's offended, or racism on the part of the offender, having grown up in a place that foreigners were demonised. I'd imagine most westerners that comment on the whiteness of a town are simply commenting on the whiteness of a town. Those commenting on the brownness of a town could fall either way.
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Urban girl - I'd be surprised if I ate breakfast more than a handful of times throughout high school. I preferred to sleep in the mornings than eat. I'd get up at 8:20 and be at school at 8:35. Actually, come to think of it not much has changed, except i can get away with being later to work, and I'll either force myself to have a bowl of muesli in front of my computer or *coff* get a doughnut for morning tea.
If it becomes about positive steps like helping families have enough money to provide breakfast, and helping educate families about positive parenting and giving parents who are struggling support and skills, then it's not a bad thing.
I think this is a crucial point. I have to say I liked Key's original speech - mainly the idea of making philanthropy cool. There are already many individuals & businesses doing great stuff in their communities, but it's dogwhistles that sell papers and as a result we just read more and more about "issues" that we feel powerless to control. I liked being reminded that we can make a difference, rather than hearing more about how the government is failing to fix everything.
BUT, I think the biggest problems lie with families in which intergenerational poverty has become stubborn perpetuation. Cool, get a business to sponsor a sports team so that poor kids can participate, but the kids that most need it often won't last long - primarily because their parents are indifferent at best, and at worst will actively stonewall their efforts: "we don't need charity", "staying out late all the time, you should be at home doing your chores", "waste of time, you'll never be good at anything", etc.
Any parent would insist they want the best opportunities for their kids, but when push come to shove, there are some pretty troubled parents out there who would subconsciously prefer that their kids end up as unhappy as they are. To save their kids you have to save them first & it's probably going to take something other than business sponsorship.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go have breakfast.
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Kiwiblog? worthwhile read? I'm not so sure.
I find it worthwhile in the following circumstance: whenever DPF and Russell agree on something, then it must be the absolute truth.
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Pakari
Or perhaps buggered = pakaru?
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Passing as a Pakeha is quite revealing, almost as revealing as being party to what Maori say to each other about about their 'others', particularly the non-white ones.
Yeah, I had no idea! This Christmas my mum mentioned that a Fijian teacher at her school was having a lot of trouble with her predominantly Maori class. I never encountered any racism growing up; something I attributed to living in an area with a 50/50 split; but immigrants are a relatively new phenomenon, and mum was saying that the Maori kids (and by extension their parents) are generally the ones making racist remarks.
Granted, there's a reasonable correlation of poverty to skin colour in my home town as well, so I can't be sure of causes vs effects.