Posts by Robyn Gallagher
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I followed the inauguration proceedings by seeing what my Twitter pals were sharing.
@stephenfry (yes, that Stephen Fry) tweeted "We will raise science to its rightful place". Yes. Yes. Yes!!! and I was very happy.
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I don't really see being a wife (or life-partner or whatever it is I'm identifying as) and being a mother as truly separate roles
And yet there are mothers who aren't wives, and wives who aren't mothers. Perhaps it's because most mothers are also wives (or in a similar relationship to marriage) that we tend to just lump them all in the same category.
For now, I'd rather stick with a series of short-term contracts rather a long-term career.
Oh man, if I apply Tom's metaphor to my life, I'm unemployed with the occasional bout of berry-picking.
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Bang! Bang! Eche! and Clap Clap Riot need to do a show together and fight it out for the right to use the "[Verb] [Verb] [Zany]" band name formula.
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What is Eve's Pantry?
It's a posh bakery/cakery. The original one is on Manukau Road near the Lido.
Actually, I'm not sure how posh it is now, but I remember in the '90s it was a primo destination for eastern suburbs housewives.
Nowadays you'll see the Eve's Pantry logo on boxes out the back of your local cafe, including - if memory serves - Starbucks.
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No, see, I'm in a different time-zone. It's Wednesday night for you, but it's Thursday for me, so…
Once, a few years ago, I checked my email and found some guy in America had emailed me asking a simple question about something I'd written about on my website. I replied and didn't think much about it.
A few hours laters he replied, more or less like this:
"Whoa! That was such a quick reply! And you replied at 4.30am! Do you ever leave the house? Do you have nothing better to do with your time than sit at your computer all night waiting for emails? I don't want to judge you, but I think you need some help!"
I replied with, "Dear Chad. I live in New Zealand. It's lunchtime. The sun is shining."
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O hai. Going back to BenWilson's claim that alcohol tastes awful, Russell briefly mentioned people who are supertasters, and I thought it might help to expand on that a bit.
Wikipedia sez:
A supertaster is a person who experiences the sense of taste with far greater intensity than average. Among individuals of European descent, it is estimated that about 25% of the population are supertasters.
And it also mentions that alcohol is one of the things that supertasters are less likely to enjoy. O RLY?
The BBC has details of a DIY test to see if you're a supertaster.
Anecdotally, one of my favourite drinks at the moment is the Hawthorn Lounge's take on a Zombie. It has five different types of rum, but is also grapefruit based and actually doesn't taste alcoholic . I'd happily drink one with or without booze in it.
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I've texted at gigs and I'm not ashamed.
If it's a personal text, it's going to be more like "[band] is going off. You should have come!" to a friend who's missed out. Otherwise I'll do some twitters as a sort of document of the experience.
For example, at the Breeders concert at the SFBH in August, I sent two twitters (this one and this one) of funny Kim Deal quotes that I wanted to share with others and record in some form.
But I always text between songs. It's impossible to compose a text if you're totally engaged in a performance. You can't text in a mosh pit! Though, like Tom said, if a performance is kinda low-key and hasn't grabbed you, then perhaps the situation lends itself more to texting during a song.
But the one thing I refuse to do is take photos. I'm all for professional and amateur music photography, but I don't get the people who stand at a gig, holding their cellphone up so they can take a shitty, blurry photo of some distant rock star - or worse, they record a video.
Because photography means taking yourself out of the moment for a long time. What you're focussing on isn't the performance on the stage, it's the operation of the photographic equipment.
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I have observed that the young, until about 25, have undeveloped taste buds. They can't discriminate clearly between different kinds of tastes, or the dimensions, or quality of them. Which is why they prefer sweet alcohol RTDs - one dimensional taste sensations. Wine/beer (the crafted sort) is perceived as too sour.
From what I can remember, when we're born, we only like the taste of yummy sweet things as a survival mechanism to ensure that babies will enjoy drinking mother's milk.
This is also why children often don't enjoy eating the same food as their parents.
The sense of taste develops as we get older. Where we previously were revolted by olives, as adults we happily eat them. Oh, and coffee - that's a big one.
So it makes sense that this affects young drinkers too. When I was a teen, I couldn't stand beer; I preferred, uh, Miami wine cooler (out of the cask).
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Many people have tried to fight the trend away from small, local, independent shops towards chains of gargantuan big-box retailers, because it reduces diversity and forces more car use. Shouldn't that apply to liquor stores as well?
I don't have a car, and if I'm buying booze, I don't want to have to walk many blocks grappling with clanking bottles.
I'm not such a fan of the size-based plans as they seems to be applying a template to liquor stores without considering the specific communities they're located in, or indeed what sort of alcohol the shop will be selling.
And now, an anecdote:
any law that gets rid of that little shop in Hillcrest (Hamilton) next to the cycle track is just wrong!
In 1991, I was out on the street with a couple of girls from my 6th form journalism class, trying to sell ads for the end-of-year school magazine. We were down at the block of shops by the cycle track and one of them said to me, "Uh, you'll have to go in the liquor shop -the guy in there thinks me and Kathryn are uni students." I felt so naive.
Also:
This effort from Ms. Gallagher is also a cracking read.
Thanks, Mr Tiso!
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1. Happy.
2. New.
3. Year. (See also, yeah!)