Tales of woe and misadventure...

Confidence....

2011-06-24T21:00:00.000-07:00

I've often been told that I seem to ooze a certain confidence.

Maybe I do maybe I don't... It's hard to be certain of something that you are the soul judge of, especially when it is with regard to your own abilities....

The one thing I can be positive of, is that cats DO have confidence. They will rarely if ever second guess themselves.... have you noticed?

Put it this way... Have you ever walked along a length of 2 x 4 four timber that is laying on the ground?

Easy isn't it?

I mean... even I can manage a couple of flowery pirouettes while prancing down the timbers length

but....

Try lifting that piece of timber and setting it atop a pair of chairs.... shit changes huh..???

Now try putting that same piece of timber atop a pair of 7 foot ladders!!! Shit just got VERY real, right!!!

Cats don't get that.

Yes... Cats fall. I've seen a cat I once owned fall from the roof of my house. Sure he landed on his feet as all cats will... but he was messed up!

I saw an Opossum do the same and that sucker ran sideways for forty feet before he collided with the bottom of the neighbours fence and skimmed off it, to finally vanish out of sight, a giant ball of hissing angry fur.... You can guarantee though that he slept WELL off the ground that night. Somewhere 30 or 40 feet above the ground in a tree!

But cats are not afraid to walk the 2 x 4 even if it is 30 feet from the ground, more sometimes.

Now I don't know about you but 30 feet is NOT the sort of distance I take in my stride when it comes to falling.

That shit will will fuck you up!

So I'm short at 5' 7" and 30 feet feels like a long way up.... how the hell does that feel as a cat!

And yet those little suckers will sleep on that 2 x 4 - 30 feet up in the air.... They'll sleep or wash!!!

That my friends is confidence.

So it leads me to wonder.... What changes in our lives that eventually erodes that confidence we have in ourselves as we get higher from the ground or as we get older?

Is it our ability to calculate odds, is it our ability to calculate the cost of the consequences.. or is it simply fear...

I used to think nothing of having a friend drive a car at me so that I could leap onto the bonnet, roll up the windscreen and land on my feet on the roof..... I simply would not do that now. But WHY? I could do it when I was younger and surely I am a far more able and capable man now... surely...

But I would not attempt the same stunt now as that more able and capable man...

What does that mean...?

All I really know... is that...

I wish I was a cat....

... and direct drive ski boats...

2010-11-09T18:20:00.000-08:00

I was pottering around in the workshop I have under my house the other day when I spied an old, much loved but nonetheless very much abused Holden V8 engine. I had taken it from a vehicle I once owned and it's still perched upon an engine stand and it looks ever so forlorn. It's manifold is carburettor-less and both heads are unbolted and askew, but it reminded me of a most amusing tale that I had long ago forgotten.

I used to work, at one of many stages, with an old guy called Tony. By older I mean I was probably only 20 - 21 and he would have been knocking on the door of 65 I suppose...

Now Tony, despite his age was one of the more active and interesting people I had ever had the pleasure of working with. He was still a certified diver, a qualification I had only just achieved, he actively enjoyed water skiing and he was as skilled an engineer as I had ever come across.

There was nothing Tony could not build or design. He had his own workshop and by that I mean he had several milling machines, several lathes(including a vertical lathe) two very large band saws, a reciprocating hacksaw that frightened me and more wielders (gas, MIG, TIG and arc) than you could shake a stick at!

If you couldn't find, buy or steal it - Tony could make it for you!

One Monday morning Tony arrived for work looking rather smug and I couldn't help but notice. So as we sat chatting over a morning cup of coffee, discussing the weekends highlights he looked at me rather beady eyed and said, "I've got myself a new ski boat".

"Ahhhh" says I. "I wondered what the smug look was all about".

"Yes" he says. "350cu small block Chev in a 14 foot fibreglass Haines".

"Dang!" was the best I had to offer.

"Yup" He says. "Only one problem, she's got no gearbox".

I for one didn't really see any problem with this as there would be plenty of old 2 stage powerglides floating around the place that I was sure would mate up nicely to the Chev bell housing, especially when you considered that Tony was on the job...

So nothing happened for quite some time until one day Tony meandered into my workshop at work, deep in thought and obviously carefully mulling something over.

He finally broke free from his reverie and looked up at me with a ponderous look...

"... whataya ya reckon the boat would go like as a direct drive?" he asked.

To be honest I had never (and still haven't) owned a boat, which he knew, so I was surprised that he had even bothered to ask me.

I had however owned several radio controlled model boats with small nitro powered glow engines and they had been direct drive types.

The first thing that came to my mind was the fact that in a full sized version you would have to crank the engine while the boat was in the water and this would mean that the prop would start to make thrust while cranking and the boat would begin moving forward right from that moment. But as Tony rightfully pointed out, you simply wouldn't crank it into life unless there was nobody in front of you. Simple.

O.k second challenge. Being that the prop would be under constant load at all times including idle, she was going to need the mother of all flywheels. Again, this is "TONY" we're talking about here, so no problem really, just mate something off an old truck motor to the output flange on the ole Chev and Bobs your uncle.

O.k third challenge. No reverse. Hmmmm. This one was solved by my youth and enthusiasm.

"Tony" I said, "who the fuck needs reverse when you've got that much horse power for going forward!"

"Just come in toward your trailer slightly up current and drift down current until your in line with the trailer and give it some herb" I reasoned, altogether enthusiastically (I had never owned a boat but I'd been on more than enough to have seen that technique put into play).

Tony, having owned more than his fair share had also successfully employed the same technique.

And so it was that Tony became the proud owner of a not so new boat with a very near to new and reasonably well worked over motor that could pull a small housing estate through a sea of near dry cement!

As a ski boat it was outstanding, especially when you got more than two people behind it - as this took a bit of the, 'snap' out of it.

I liked it, although it was a bit of a handful on take off and getting it back on the trailer under certain conditions was fraught with peril.

More than once we managed to miss time the exact moment or the motor miss fired when aligning with the trailer and this saw the hull punctured as the beast powered up the trailer over the side and crunched into the trailers tail light brackets. But otherwise... that boat was grunty and the traction was nothing short of spine snapping...

But all good things must come to an end and eventually I guess the novelty wore off and Tony decided that the boat was getting a little bit worse for wear and tear. So he put it up for sale.

To be honest I wasn't entirely surprised by the lack of response.. prop driven, direct drive power boats were not exactly the flavor of the month 20 years ago and it's a brave man that takes one on, even today.

Eventually though he got a good strong bite and one Friday afternoon he asked me if I would be able to give him a hand on Saturday morning to put the boat in the water as he had a... 'would be' buyer.

So we arranged to meet up at a little bay with a launching ramp not far from Hillsborough bay on the Manukau harbour in time for the mornings full tide.

When I arrived Tony and the would be buyer were already there.

The 'mark', for want of a better word, was looking over the boat enthusiastically. He was a young Maori guy and from his car I could tell he was a V8 enthusiast. This became more and more obvious as he simply glazed over the minor defects in the boats hull and the obvious signs of vibration wear and became more and more focused on the gleaming Chevy.

So we got the boat in the water and once we were all seated Tony hit the starter.

At this point I must explain the seating arrangement.

Now Tony may have been a great engineer but he was also British and despite having lived in New Zealand for the past 14 years he had lost none of his frugal mentality. So what he had come up with was a bracket that was bolted and molded/glassed into the floor of the boat. To this he had fitted the bench seat from the front of an HQ Holden utility. His reasoning was pretty sound really. There were thousands of these seats around and when one wore out or the springs got rusty and collapsed he would throw it away and bolt in another which he cheaply obtained from the local automotive wreckers. Brilliant in many ways. They were really very comfortable, they were large and three could sit comfortably on it, they were cheap and they were easily obtainable.

However seeing as how the boat was up for sale the particular seat we found ourselves sitting upon that particular morning was really past it's use by date, but why buy a new one when your about to sell it, right...?

Why indeed...?

Anyway... The three of us are perched happily on this bench seat when Tony keys the starter.

The sound of the engine is beautiful. Extractors to a resonator to a four inch tail pipe about two feet long on each side, deafening is one way of putting it but when it's that beautiful purr it's easy to look past the pain and the blood in your ears...

Tony and I both glanced at the 'mark' and we could tell from the dreamy expression on his face that if the motor performed as per it's usual standard and didn't misfire or run rough we had a taker on our hands. We were already making good wake at idle and the young fella was obviously bursting to see what this thing could do.

So with a knowing nod at me and a devilish smirk Tony slammed the throttle wide open.

With a bellow like a wounded bull the prop bit and the engine note went straight to 4000RPM.

The g force was spectacular!

For an instant...

In the next it was gone!

The back of our seat collapsed and folded backwards!

Only Tony who was gripping the steering wheel remained on the wretched seat but he didn't have the strength to maintain his grip on the wheel and take one hand off to back off the throttle. In the blink of an eye, the 'mark' and I were a tangled, battered, cut and bruised mass, forced cruelly back and pinned to the transom by the amazing g forces that only two hundred horsepower of screaming V8 can apply.

The nose of the boat was still pointing at the sky as we had still nowhere near reached planing speed as yet and the prop was still cavitating. But it was catching up fast and the faster we went the more perilous became our predicament, because now as the nose began to level out our speed was starting to allow the boat to skim and our driver was less steering and more simply hanging on for dear life, staring awestruck and terrified at the sky!!!

Without a steady hand on the wheel or if Tony's strength failed we could quite understandably cut viciously to the left or right which would see us quickly and spectacularly removed from our relatively safe position, glued to the transom.

Myself and the 'mark' had been somewhat shredded by the cowl that ran half the length of the boat and covered the drive shaft. So between fighting the g forces still being applied and slipping on the blood soaked floor our efforts to move toward the accursed throttle were rather thwarted and we tore on madly, completely out of control.

I eventually made it forward inch by inch until I came up behind Tony locked my feet in the gap between the uselessly folded down seat back and the seat itself, wrapped my arms around Tony and also grabbed the wheel. This left him free to take one hand off the wheel and slam the throttle closed!

The resultant lack of forward thrust and the grip of the water on the hull threw the bewildered 'mark' from a cowering position aft, ass over kite to the front of the boat where he landed face down over the seat where our feet would normally have been.

He stayed there for quite awhile... we let him.

Tony killed the ignition.

When he finally hauled himself up and sat himself down Tony began apologizing profusely but our man simply raised one hand and shook his head.

The trip back to shore was a quiet and very low RPM one.

Tony and I decided that it would be wiser perhaps to simply bring the boat in close enough to allow our passenger to disembark rather than risk a dodgy trailer mounting and kill our young friend with a second terror stunt.

Him and I jumped out into the waist deep water and waded to shore, he staggered off towards his car (I suspected it was to check his undies) and I backed Tonys car and the trailer down to the water and dipped the trailer in. To Tony's credit he managed to dock the boat on the trailer without a hint of incident but I could tell from the rueful look on his face that he knew this particular sale was lost.

In honesty I was surprised the young fella hadn't got in his car and vanished in a cloud of dust, smoke and small bouncing stones...

In fact as Tony and I stood beside the trailer fastening the last tie downs, he reappeared.

Tony and I again began pouring forth a rapid string of apologies and the young bloke once again raised his hand in a 'stop' gesture.

With a maniacal glint in in his eye, he looked steadily at the both of us and said,

"Fuck yeah man, I'll take it!!!"

Maori's!

Ya just never really know whats gunna happen...

(In memory of Tony Callum. Merchant Navy man and all around bloody good bloke)

Currently listening to:

Annabel Fay - Annabel Fay

Fresh

2010-09-21T13:00:00.000-07:00

Every now and again I like to get up quite early on a Saturday and head down to the local mall, just a little before it opens.

I like to swing by the Henderson Courthouse.

There's an old homeless guy who sleeps in the Courtroom entrance outside the main doors.

I buy him a pie and a pack of cigarettes.

Over the years we've become somewhat familiar.

I've never quite managed to get his story from him but I'm sure it would be interesting, if I could...

He's a rather grizzled old fellow, not what I would consider tough but certainly hardy and he doesn't smell all that bad really.

He can wolf down a pie faster than anyone I know but it's the cigarettes that have won him over...

I don't usually stay with him long.

I can tell it makes him nervous and uncomfortable but I usually stay to talk with him long enough to ask him a couple of questions about the most topical issues on the news at the time.

At first I started doing it for my own amusement but also I was hoping to see how sane the guy was, mostly because every time I had stopped to chat, offer a cigarette and asked his name he had proffered different ones... I still don't know his real name.

He's usually very gruff and at times can be extraordinarily racist, especially toward Maori people, I guess a lot of the kids that give him a hard time during those cold nights are local Maori kids.

But being that I'm Maori and I most of all know what that entails, what he has to say could never offend me - lets face it there are times when my lot can be pretty bloody useless and even I can feel quilt by association!

But nearly every time what he has to say has me in stitches. I've learnt not to laugh out loud at him now, it seems loud outbursts of sound make him nervous... But some of his responses are absolute gems and I'm certain that under the booze addled exterior there lies a very astute and wonderful mind.

Anyway last Saturday I got the 'go to the mall early thing' (which is what this blog is about really..) and I thought 'go get a pie and some smokes and go pay Dave, Pete, Steve, Gav, Rick a visit'.

So after he'd breathed down his pie, struck up his first cigarette and carefully hidden the pack in his voluminous coat, I asked him what he thought about the state of the Commonwealth Games debarcle in Delhi.

"Arrrrrr well son" he rasped at me (he always calls me son even though I'd only put him at 5 or 6 years older than me)

"Every living thing has an arsehole". "And planet earth... planet earths arsehole is India!"

"Even bloody England didn't want it son!"

Well bowl me over with a feather!!!

Never underestimate that old homeless guy you walk past on the street. He may have a lot more going on in there than you have given him credit for.

****

Anyway what I was meant to be getting to was that I really like being the first or one of the first people into a mall in the morning.

I like the way it's all new, fresh and shiny.

My local Mall always smells like fresh coffee and Jaffle pies and it's always warm...

To me, getting to the mall at this time is much like when somebody rips the cellophane of a new box of assorted chocolates and offers me the first one. I already know everything that is in there but it still feels special to be the first one to look in there and make a choice.

I like to sit in the food hall, sip my hot chocolate and watch the people that come there to eat breakfast at that hour.

I make up stories about them...

That guy over there is a soldier just recently returned from Afghanistan, struggling to fit back into civilian life or sleep later than 5AM. He's crept out of the house while his family still sleeps so he can have breakfast at a time that he's become more accustomed to...

That woman there is sneaking home after spending a night at her lovers house, grabbing a quick coffee before racing home to beat her husbands return from another night shift...

The grandmother there is struggling to control three kids dumped on her by her ingrate children...

It can keep me amused for quite awhile...

It's a nice sensation, however false - of superiority.

I was here before the place was despoiled by the hordes that will soon be pouring through the many doors, jostling and scrambling.

The teenagers in their secretive little groups, the girls giggling and flicking their hair, the boys furtive and so projective of non existent confidence.

The grannies with their hand carts and purple rinses.

The busy moms with two sulking kids in tow.

Yes it is nice, like being first to the Christmas tree on Christmas morning.

Try it one day - I highly recommend it...

.. on being a slow learner

2010-09-12T20:45:00.000-07:00

So... the photo is of one of my favorite T-Shirts - Talk about appropriate but of late I've begun to think I may yet have to hand it on...

I was over at my good buddies house several weeks ago and it was a little beyond cold.

It was the type of biting cold that has cues of brass monkeys lined up outside the local wielders shop... if you know what I mean..?

So he's rummaging around trying to find dry kindling and fire starters and stuff - but all to no avail.

The best he could manage was a pile of semi dry chunks of timber and a bottle of some mysterious fluid called Shell 'Fuel light'.

Really, the lack of any instructions indicating what the product was even meant to be used in, should have been the only warning necessary...!

But having dissuaded him from using 98 octane petrol I figured this, roughly Kerosene smelling fluid was a much safer bet than that and therefore we stood a far greater chance of coming out of this fiasco alive, regardless of what it was.

Petrol! Good grief!

My only advice was simply, "looks to me like it's a fuel you can light".

Talk about the blind leading the blind..!

We trundled back inside the house beers in hand, guffawing loudly and being generally manly.

Both his kids were sitting on the couch, glued to the TV. Two boys, 4 and 2 years.

The fireplace is situated on the wall opposite the couch. It's one of those enclosed types with the glass door at the front. The old fire place was an open type and the new one had been installed recessed into the old one so that the door was now flush with the wall. The old mantelpiece was still in place and it was above this, that a large LCD television was mounted.

My mate threw the armful of wood blocks he had brought up from downstairs into the open fire box and proceeded to pour liberal amounts of 'fuel light' over it. After he spent a few minutes of futile searching I tossed him my lighter and leaning in from his kneeling position he flicked the lighter.

"...chick..."

Bawhooomph!

As far as I am aware flame fronts travel at the speed of sound or faster, approximately 300 metres per second. So if there was any credit I could give my buddy at this point it would have to be that he traveled backwards 1 metre in 3 100th's of a second! Impressive! I think even Usain Bolt would feel threatened. And we wonder why sometimes we wake up the next day after an event like this and our neck is sore or our legs ache or there's a strange twinge in our lower back... Speed of sound movement takes some muscle!!!

Anyway, my mate is still on the floor albeit no longer kneeling, looking for all the world like a possum thats just chewed a high tension power line - theres no hair left on his arms, the bald spot in the middle of his head is, well... balder and his eyes are as round and black as a man who's doctor has just told him, he'll be chopping his cock off today!

I eventually managed to stop laughing and after we assured the two boys that this was all a very normal part of getting a fire started (...we couldn't have them rushing up to mom when she got home and spilling the beans. That sort of shit will have you sleeping on the couch for a week!) I decided it was time to step forth and apply my excellent skills to the task at hand.

"So" I said, somewhat waspishly, whilst snatching rapidly, "gimme that lighter you homo, before someone actually gets hurt!"

To be honest, I was surprised that the front of the television was still intact. The fireball that had belched from the fire box had been quite spectacular and had ballooned outwards at first but had quickly flared upwards as it had died and I had seen the outer membrane of the screen buckle.

"Look" I said, in an altogether far too haughty tone, "It's all rather elementary me old mate, the fuel is obviously... somewhat volatile, so what we need is a wicking effect". "We need an absorbent material that will contain the fluid and not allow too many vapors to gather in the air space within the fire box".

Having not just given myself an 'insta-tan' and having used the same technique on a number of occasions, I was feeling entirely superior at this stage.

I grabbed two paper towelettes from a roll in the kitchen and proceeded to form them into rough ball shapes as I made my way back to the lounge room.

I knelt in front of the fire and placed the balls of paper on the grate. I then proceeded to slowly and carefully apply a trickle of 'fuel light' over them. When I was satisfied that the paper balls were reasonably laden with the solvent I placed the little timber blocks in a small pile on top.

"There" I said brushing my hands on my jeans. "Now we simply light the paper and they will work like a torch or much like the wick of a candle, far less dangerous and likely to hurt the kids" I said, a hint of self righteousness creeping into my tone. "Wheres that lighter...?"

"... chick ..."

Bawhoooomph!

If anything I believe my fireball was bigger... but my air of superiority had lulled me into an altogether false sense of security and alas, I did not move backwards at the speed of sound!

What a pair of fucking muppets!

The kids of course have come out of their television reverie and are wanting to see a repeat of the action filled fire lighting game!

I've now got brown hair and a lot less fringe and arm hair and... much to my chagrin I'm now equipped with the apparently, popular, 'insta-tan'!

Oh the shame.

Pride as always, truly cometh before a fall.

I will never forget my friends sideways stare and singular, scorched raised eyebrow. Cutting...

The house smells like the local hair dressing salon on free hair straightening day and it wont be long before buddies better half will be home...

Fast forward to last weekend -

My mate and I have been standing around in his shed drinking beer and bullshitting each other for most of the afternoon. Most of our hairs grown back and by some degree of luck (and a little bribery) the boys haven't told mom what went on and we haven't been sprung by the good wife for endangering her beloved boys. All is well.

At some stage later in the afternoon the lovely wife ahoy's out, "you guys look after the kids I've got to go to the shops" and, "hey it's cold, can you get the fire started please".

Funny you know - 6 Heineken's down and everything just seems so easy...

We roll upstairs after she's left to check on the boys and light the fire.

Damn all the Metho's used up. Never mind, grab that bottle of fuel light over there mate...

So this time my buddies very careful with the amount of the wretched stuff he applies and makes quite sure there is only a hint on the, this time, dry kindling.

"...chick..."

Bawhooomph

"Roll you fool, roll..!!!"

Turns out the stuff is for use in pressurized lanterns and is volatile PLUS!

I think he deserves my T-Shirt.

Currently listening to:

Slinky Factor 3

Nice n Urlich

..and dumb moments

2010-04-07T17:39:00.000-07:00

Some-days I still manage to be amazed by my own idiocy.

I was at the mall last Saturday trying to get organized before the shops closed for Easter Sunday and Monday.

While I was wandering around I thought I recognized a woman I hadn't seen for many years.

I had spotted her from several yards behind and I called out her name and began trotting after her. It seemed she hadn't heard me so I called out to her even louder and sped up to catch her.

When I was only a couple of feet behind I called out her name again and raised my hand to wave.

She turned around and I realized that this was not the woman I knew!

Rats!

So all I had to do was stop and say, "oh sorry, I thought you were somebody else".

Right?

But no, not I.

Instead, I pretended she was not the focus of my attention and carried on trotting past her calling out the same name and waving like a fool!

I thought to make an escape into the next shop but before I got there another woman turned around and looked at me curiously.

Damn!

A quick calculation of the number of people in front of me meant that this could take some time to resolve...

Still waving like an idiot and running, I carried on past her doing my best to continue with my facade. I shot around the corner of the next annex and dived into a store.

The attendant looked up at me and said, "can I help you?".

"Yeah" I said - "How about you kill me now!!?".

How embarrassing! - What an idiot!

German people rock!

2010-03-24T16:29:00.000-07:00

Far too often I've heard people say German folk have no sense of humor.

Well I beg to differ.

I work with a brilliant German engineer and yesterday he proffered me such an awesome piece of comedic genius that I felt it was my duty to share it with you.

He rides one of those massive Japanese motorcycles designed for long distance cruising - to work most days.

During the course of the day yesterday the back tyre went flat and he came to ask me if I could give him a hand to get it into the motorcycle shops repair van.

Dang! That is a heavy beast. Nearly 400 pounds!

Anyway later that day they came and dropped it off with the repaired tyre fitted and I didn't notice it was there until he fired it up to leave at the end of the day.

I shuffled over and said to him something lame like, "ah, I see they've managed to get the air back down the bottom again". He smirked and I continued, "what did they find in the tyre?".

I wondered if it was a nail, broken glass a screw perhaps?

He looked at me and with perfect timing and in his thick German accent said,

"holes".

..and gawd I hope I cant get in trouble for this one even now...

2010-03-23T01:28:00.000-07:00

My cousin Richard always lived on his parents farm in Waiuku.

He lived with his older brother Peter, his mom Judy and his father Jim

We weren't even real cousins to tell the truth. But you know how it is when your little and your parents have close friends and hang out with them a lot, you called their friends, aunt and uncle and by default their kids became your cousins.

My cousin Richard and his brother Peter had a big farm.

My sister and I used to stay there during school holidays - if we were lucky.

I loved it.

It was a frigg'n huge farm!

We used to roam it.

They had.. waffles, mushrooms, frogs and opossum's, cats and chickens, pigs and gigantic corn fields and cows, calves and goats, puppies, tractors and motorbikes - guns and swearing, tree houses and real bows and arrows, lots of roast dinners and grandfather clocks, a ballroom and an organ...

You never got bored there - you got tired!

.. and when you got tired there - you got fed.

It was uber awesome!

My mom was pretty cruisey when it came to letting kids be kids - but aunt Judy made her look like a strict disciplinarian.

Aunt Judy was way cool.

She had eyes that twinkled at you when she smiled and she was always smiling.

She giggled too.

I didn't know any other grownups that giggled.

And when she laughed she could go from a chortle to a guffaw.

Aunt Judy knew how to laugh out loud.

Uncle Jim, on the other hand, was taciturn and serious.

He was always working on the farm, up before the sun for morning milking and home again about lunch time, then back out on the farm for more maintenance work before afternoon milking.

We never messed with him, he could swear real loud.

There was always little jobs to do like getting eggs from the chicken coop, putting feed out for the cows and feeding the calves, but when that stuff was done we were free to do anything we wanted.

So Richard and I roamed the farm - shooting things and riding things. Talking rubbish and seeing how long we could hold on to the electric fences. Chasing the chickens and seeing if we could tackle them. Cuddling the piglets and trying not to get bitten by the sows. Shooting at the cows from long distance with the .22 cal and subsonic rounds! Boy stuff Hell yeeeeah!

One day during our meanderings in the very furthermost paddocks from the homestead we happened upon a very large, very old tractor wheel, It was laying on it's side covered for the most part with overgrown grass and weeds. The tire was flat and the steel rim was quite rusty but after pulling back the overgrowth it was obvious it was intact.

It had been abandoned I assume by my uncle Jim probably 30 - 40 feet from the top of a ridge on the southwestern side facing towards the farm house but several miles from it.

After several attempts to move it we figured that uncle Jim had most likely fitted a spare one to his tractor when this one went flat and as is the way with farmers, drove off in his repaired tractor and never bothered expending the energy required to go back and get the flat one.

At the top of the ridge and looking down the opposing north eastern side it was clear paddock for four or five hundred yards before a fence line bordered the grazing paddock running parallel to the ridge. On the other side of the fence was what is colloquially known as a "bush block". This consisted of five or six acres of native bush which lined the remaining several hundred yards of the north eastern side of the ridge we stood on top of and ran all the way to the gully and creek at the bottom. The other side of the creek was where the nearest neighbors section met uncle Jim's farm.

Five hundred or maybe more yards yet further down, we could just make out the roofs of several of the neighbors utility sheds and the top of their house but from our position it was much too far away to make out any people.

Richard and I decided that being as we were so far away from any prying eyes it would make great sport to roll the old wheel down the hill and watch it crash into the bush block. We didn't really give much thought to the damage it would obviously do to the fence surrounding the bush block as many of uncle Jim's fence's were in a continuous state of disrepair and one more wouldn't really be noticed.

It took us the better part of the day and all of our combined ingeniousness to release the wheel from the firm grip mother nature had taken hold on it over the many years the wheel had been abandoned. But by prising with old fence posts and propping it with large chunks of concrete we obtained from an unused and crumbling cattle trough we eventually managed to get the wheel to the top of the ridge.

Between the two of us we struggled to stand the beastly heavy bastard upright and attempted to align it so it would obtain maximum speed before crashing as deeply as possible into the bush below us.

It was a no brainer really. The slope on the north eastern side was very much steeper than that on the side where the tyre had lain, so basically all we had to do was point the wheel anywhere at that bush section and it would connect!

So sweating and swearing we gave the behemoth a final shove and watched fascinated as it quickly began to gather speed...

It took us about five seconds to realize that we were much too young to understand the laws of physics, we were nine years old, what do nine year olds know of potential and kinetic energy or about mass, inertia and gravity. What we did understand and what soon became abundantly clear was that we had entirely underestimated the monster we had released!

Our fascination quickly turned to disbelief as we watched the wheel gather ever more speed despite its flat tyre until the speed of the wheels descent completely overcame the handicap of the flat tyre and the whole abominable heap began to bounce, striking the little ridges that cows make when walking across the side of steep hills. Due to the ever increasing pace that the wheel was gathering the bouncing soon turned into leaps and while still at least only half way to the fence the leaps had changed into gigantic bounds!

One particularly evil bounce saw the barbarous brute land awkwardly and to our despair the angle of decent began to change and the hideous monster, now bouncing nearly twice its own height, was given another clear two hundred yards of paddock to roll down and was now beginning to run parallel to the fence instead of directly at it!

It was at about this stage that we realized how far out of our depth we had quickly become and I know that I personally wished we hadn't had the stroke of genius that saw the wheel begin rolling..!!

By now the wheel had reached a truly horrendous speed and wasn't so much bouncing anymore as much as it was flying!

When it finally reached the fence bordering the bush block it was nearly at the very bottom corner of it, where the neighbors fence met uncle Jims.

With a gigantic and spectacular vault it completely hurdled the remaining bush section without even the least of contact and at a guess I would estimate it was probably approaching fifty odd miles per hour and bouncing a good fifteen feet into the air whilst covering more than twice that much ground!

To our discomfort it continued steadily at an ever increasing rate of velocity down the gully towards the neighbors homestead half a mile further down the hill.

It was a strange time from memory, the wheel had become so distant now that it appeared to be going quite slow however as Richard and I were both painfully aware - this was an illusion!

The Gargantua was gaining speed every second and we could easily see that some bounces would have it at least four or five times it's own height above the ground and we, or at least I, wanted to run away, as if not seeing what would happen next, would mean that it didn't...!?

People I shit you not - given the mass of that bastard and taking into account the square of it's acceleration, the amount of energy that it could unleash on ANY stationary object would be dynamic to say the very least!!!

Seriously this thing would smash a house into kindling!

..and so with the clarity that can only occur in the face of inevitable disaster we watched horror struck as the bouncing colossus smashed through a fence surrounding the neighbors buildings of which we could only see the roofs and disappeared. I can only assume that it had jumped/rolled into the main driveway area for the homestead but an instant later we saw it leap clear over one of the half round corrugated iron utility sheds before it vanished from our view altogether. It was much too far away to hear any noise or screaming but we weren't hanging around to listen for any - I can tell you that much!

We scuttled off home like a pair of beaten dogs, ears back and tails tucked firmly between legs! We were pooing ourselves - the power of that wheel had been truly awesome!

We spent the afternoon being very helpful to aunt Judy volunteering to do all the crap chores hoping that when the crunch came aunt Judy might come to our rescue - the whole time crapping our pants waiting for the neighbors car to arrive...

..nothing!

Uncle Jim came in at dinner time and we trembled our way through the meal waiting for the explosion that would signal our discovery and a thorough whipping of our asses - but it just never came...

This is complete conjecture on my part but I can only assume that by some freak chance the Godzilla wheel missed all of the neighbors structures, careened off into their paddocks and came to rest without destroying anything that attracted their attention to it. Lord knows.

I live in hope that two small boys don't come upon it one day and decide it would be fun to watch it roll down a hill...

..and tandem bicycles...

2010-03-17T18:13:00.000-07:00

I would just like to say thank you to everyone who sent me their nightmare recipes.

Thank You.

The concept is still a work in progress (but don't hold your breath) I will get there.

Yes David. B I'm sure LSD, Ecstasy, Morphine, BZP and Pot do create weird dreams, but mate.. I really just wanted to keep on the right side of the law and it was about food my man.. food - you know that stuff you put in your mouth for nourishment... thank you anyway your views were insightful and.. errr, sort of appreciated. (*note to self* - delete Dave's emails and remove his address from address book, clear browsing history and empty cache!)

I don't usually like to put photos with my blogs but not everybody knows the area I'm about to describe so I thought Google maps could come to the party and help for those not familiar with Auckland or the Auckland museum.

View Larger Map

This story came back to me because we needed to borrow a fork hoist from a company down the road the other day and nobody from my workplace except myself was keen to drive it for fear of doing something stupid and damaging it. It's always a bit of a bummer when you borrow somebodys, anything, and take it back damaged. Yes?

This line of thinking reminded me that, this is not always the case.

Some years back myself and my friend Mike were at a loose end early one Saturday morning. We decided it would be fun to take a ride around the Auckland museum on a tandem bicycle which you could rent cheaply from a stand set up outside the main museum entrance.

We headed off into the city keen to have a bit of a peddle, soon enough we found ourselves at the bike rental stall itching to get cracking.

We flipped a coin to see who would be in charge of steerage, (I secretly thought that losing this toss would really enable me to win by virtue of the fact that Mike wouldn't be able to see what was happening in relation to peddling...)

Mike won the toss and happily climbed aboard believing himself the more fortunate to be controlling our direction...

Our instructions from the bikes owners were quite clear, we were free to ride anywhere within the grounds of the museum, but only within the grounds.

This in itself constituted a not unsubstantial amount of area, consisting of many pathways and roads including the botanic gardens and the Wintergarden.

Being sound of body and simple of mind this didn't present much of a challenge to two rapscallion delinquents such that we were.

Lacking any better direction other than that of our own infinite wisdom we decided that nobody would be any the wiser if we trundled off down to Stanley Street.

Either road that leads down to Stanley St would be a pleasant coast, although to this day I'm lost to explain why we would want to go that far downhill, being that it would be a rather hard slog on the return journey.

I am also at a loss to explain why we then decided that rather than take either of the long winding roads to the bottom of the hill, it would be far more clever to ride directly down hill over the grass and through the trees...???

For those of you unfamiliar; the Museum is situated atop a reasonably high point overlooking Auckland harbor and in relation to Stanley St which is almost at sea level, not a long distance separates the two.

This means that the incline towards Stanley St from the museum is reasonably steep, especially in a straight line, unlike the two roads which follow the natural line of the ridges and wend there way gently down to Stanley St.

It didn't take us very long to realize that the hand brakes the bicycle was equipped with were next to useless once the wheel rims became wet from the last of the mornings dew.

It was also not very long before we had picked up a substantial amount of speed.

Application of the foot brake was beginning to become perilous as this more often than not started us on a slide that several times threatened to dismount us both at speed.

I suppose.. in retrospect, that this would have been the paramount moment in which alternative options should have been embraced.

To be honest that moment came and went in a flash of scratchy bushes and dangerously solid looking tree trunks!

Before either of us realized what was happening we were thoroughly out of control and were now haring down the hill at breakneck speed, only able to slow our breathtaking descent by the most minimal of degrees. Several times we crashed painfully through small shrubs, unable to avoid them. Bursting out the other side shredded and lacerated, leaves and twigs in our mouths and hair. It was without doubt, luck, that kept us astride our mount. (.. actually - given a moment to ponder, I think now, that staying astride the cycle was more a case of not wanting to hit the ground at that speed, more than anything else!)

It seems from memory that at no time did the opportunity arise to make a safe dismount before without warning we streaked from the undergrowth and plunged several feet from the grass level, off the cut out embankment and down on to Lovers Lane, one of the roads we had been so clever to avoid at the beginning of our safari.

Lady luck played her part well and although we landed heavily on the tar seal road perpendicular to the traffic flow in either direction no cars were present at that precise moment!

We may have bounced.

Personally I don't recall that particular detail. I do however remember the excruciating pain in my tail bone.

As we had both been standing on the pedals during this whole stunt we were spared the majority of the impact via our knees, nonetheless the impact had of course been significant. We had both, despite our crouched positions landed heavily and slammed hard into our seats greatly bruising our posteriors and in my case snapping one peddle off at the crank.

Next I knew we had shot over the edge of the opposing side of the road and down the grass bank on the other side.

As fortune would have it, the bank on this side of the road was yet again steeper still than that which we had already descended.

We were soon to discover that our heavy landing had in fact done a great deal more damage to the cycle than it had to our bums.

It seemed that apart from my only having one pedal, both wheels had become a little out of shape and were wobbling in a most unsettling manner. Of most concern however was the realization that in the smash to the road the back wheel had now become locked via the chain to the remaining pedals. The front pedals and my singular rear pedal were now being rotated at a fierce rate by the back wheel and neither Mike nor myself were in anyway inclined towards attempting to put our feet near them.

Once again, in retrospect, throwing ourselves to the ground or tipping ourselves deliberately over would have brought forth a far more optimal outcome as that which occurred - but such is retrospect...

We were now both forced to sit on our seats and we no longer had the comparative luxury of standing on our peddles and using our knees as shock absorbers. The jarring our butts were taking was horrendous and did little to help our general stability as once again our downward pace began to increase. Denied what little braking we had managed via the foot brake until now, our headlong dash became evermore menacing.

I know what your thinking - "why didn't you just put your feet down". The truth is that at that speed all of our focus had gone from stopping - to surviving!

While Mike was doing his best to navigate our dumbasses around the obviously more deadly obstacles and through only the softest looking shrubs my focus was entirely put to gauging when I should brace for impact!

Within an instant we came upon the next bank cut out for Lower Domain drive and as we burst through the bushes and flew through the air three feet above the tar seal I was certain that we were about to die a most painful death, if not by colliding with a motor vehicle then certainly death would come from having a bicycle seat rammed brutally up ones anus!

Once again lady luck played her part on the vehicle front, although a car coming downhill but still someway up the road must have received quite the nasty surprise as we appeared without notice and airborne, to land with a jaw breaking crash on the opposing side of the road. Such was our velocity I believe we made the center line before touchdown! The pain in my buttocks was a whole new level of discomfort and I was certain I had heard a tearing noise!

Mike had ended up sitting sideways looking up Lower Domain Drive as my handle bars were welded to his seat and in the last moments before sailing off the embankment I had instinctively, and with the adrenalin strength of ten men, forced my handle bars around in a futile effort to turn us away from the road.

Our luck unfortunately or fortunately, however you would like to look at it didn't hold and as we careened off the edge of the road again our sorrowful ruin of a cycle snapped cleanly in the middle and Mike and I flew inelegantly, limbs akimbo several feet further downhill from the road edge. We both landed heavily and terribly awkwardly in the scrub and shrubs on the very steep side of Lower Domain Drive.

Both Mike and I were most likely concussed, as best I recall at that point, there was a period of darkness.

When I moved next I remember feeling that I was a player in a rather surreal pantomime.

Mike was still on the ground laying on his back with a vacant and rather squirrelly look on his head. I was still holding on to my handlebars, complete with Mike's seat but the rest of the execrable cycle was not to be seen. We were both covered from tip to toe in grazes, scratches and cuts and one of my shoes was rapidly filling with blood that was pouring down my leg from somewhere...???

I only vaguely recall us checking each other over, Mike had a reasonably deep cut on his forehead which was bleeding profusely but I'd had enough cuts on the head playing league to know that it was mostly superficial and probably wouldn't need to be stitched.

Embarrassingly it was while I had the back of my shorts pulled down so he could check my butt to see where all that blood was coming from that I noticed an old fellow standing on the edge of the road gazing down at us shaking his head and tut tutting...

Turns out I had quite a deep cut half way up my back and it was dribbling quite steadily down my back and leg.

We staggered around searching through the undergrowth until we found the tattered remnants of the much abused and miserable cycle and began the long and painful walk back up the hill.

What I can clearly remember, was wondering how we were going to get away with this fiasco and despondently calculating what the replacement cost of a tandem bicycle was...

Unbeknown to me, Mikes expression of disconsolate concern was not due to his having vaguely similar thoughts as I, but was in fact just a case of mild concussion.

I can only imagine the image we must have presented on arriving back at the bike rental stand. Both of us cut, bruised and bleeding and each carrying a half a bicycle and an assortment of ruined parts.

Before I could begin to explain and to my utter disbelief, Mike threw his wreckage on the ground with complete disgust and glared dangerously at the bikes owner, to this day I will never forget his exact words.

"So", he spat accusingly. "Are the bloody pedals meant to fall off these fucking things!". "Are they meant to snap completely in half!". "Did we ask to rent two unicycles, NO WE DID NOT". "We were damn near killed today!".

With a final look of absoloute distain at the hapless stall owner he hobbled away in the direction of our car. I quickly followed his lead, throwing my pieces of cycle onto Mikes pile, casting what I hoped to be my most withering look of revulsion at the now completely flummoxed attendant.

- "Are they meant to snap completely in half?"-

- Oh my god! - Now that my friends, is gold.

Currently Listening to:

Good Charlotte - Good Morning Revival.

..with sinus pressure!

2010-02-24T16:34:00.000-08:00

So I've had a bit of an end of summer cold and I thought it best to stay away from work for awhile being as it’s about 30deg C in the work place and the huge array of fans would have sent that bad boy virus racing around the shop faster than a nip slip photo of Angelina Jolie would circulate the Internet!

On the second day away I rang the office and couldn't get hold of anybody so I decided it would be best to ring the boss directly on his cell.

He’s a bloody good sort my boss and we have a brilliant relationship, considering…

(story to follow… one day… maybe...).

While I was talking to him I was struck by a revelation, not quite an epiphany… no… definitely a revelation, but nevertheless engaging.

I had woken up and for whatever reason - either I had slept on one side of my head longer than the other - or the pressure on one of my sinus was greater than the other, I can’t be sure but I'm thinking probably the later, one of my eyes was lower or higher on my head than the opposing one.

I shit you not!

My head/face was all kind of lopsided…???

The first that I noticed of this enigma was that my vision was kind of blurry.

Not so unusual when you've got a cold right?

I went to the bathroom to look in the mirror.

Not a lot of joy there, my vision was so blurry I couldn't really make out my reflection.

It took me awhile but I finally managed to haul in some focus and yeah… my face was all bung!

You know what...?

It didn't bother me in the least.

So when I was talking to the boss on the phone I said to him, “dude I’m just ringing to let you know, today is a ‘no show’ for me”, he laughed and said something like “from the sound of it I’m not surprised, you sound like you've got a head full.”

I explained that my face was all cockeyed into the mix.

I guessed that most people would be horrified.

He wasn't of course because it wasn't happening to him, but… neither was I.

Then it struck me!

I said to him, “You know what mate?”

“The one upside of taking so many drugs when I was young is that when something like waking up with a cockeyed face happens because you've got a massive head cold, you find yourself staring in the mirror saying – oh well... Ive seen you looking much worse Daryl”.

“Nature did this to you and Nature will most likely put it right again”.

And that is the truth! It really is. It wasn't some green or red or purple little pills that did this so unlike those times when one eye was pointing up and one eye was looking left, this mornings little setback was nothing to get even slightly flustered about!

It’s small compensation for what I may have done to my kidneys or liver during those crazy times but heyyy… you wont find me freaking out when I wake up looking like a Scotsman has lost control of his Caber and tossed it straight into the side of my noggin.

WOOT!

Currently listening to:

Bubbles in my sinus and ringing in my ears.

....and nightmares!

2010-02-04T15:01:00.000-08:00

I know this is going to sound a little strange but by now I should imagine your getting rather used to that...

I love a good nightmare.

As I once said to my friend Brigitte. A good nightmare is like the best fun park ride ever, without the queue's, the smell of vomit, candy floss in your hair or the struggle to find parking.

A good nightmare is value for money.

You know how it is when you wake up - panting, sweating, sheets soaked and tangled incomprehensibly around your body like some mystical yogi has come into your bedroom while you were sleeping and practiced his speed turban wrapping techniques and then blasted you with piss. You need a good few minutes to be completely sure that vagina's don't really have teeth or that you didn't fry a friends dog in your moms swimming pool that had mysteriously transformed into a gigantic deep fryer!

..Then comes the feeling of relief - it washes over you like cool waves of wind from an oscillating fan in a hot office - it's a real ride maannnnn!

Anyway, yeah I love it and some time ago I began experimenting with different foods just before going to bed in order to see if there were any foods in particular that would bring about the onset of night terrors.

It turns out that I personally got the best results from Dairy products like cheese and yogurts but high protein foods also scored reasonably well and the sure winner was anything that is extremely hard to digest. Combinations of these foods produced some spectacular results!

I have to be honest at this junction and admit that although I was meant to be experimenting with foods I had noticed that quite often when the sheets ended wrapped around you that this would somehow become a feature of the nightmare. Soooooo... one night I tied my ankles together with a bungee cord. The resultant dreams consisted of many trapped, maimed, unable to run away and drowning themes. The real nightmare was attempting to leap out of bed for a midnight toilet dash...!!!

The reason for these experiments, with the food at least, was to collaboratively put together a small book which I hoped to call "The Little Nightmare Cookbook". Basically it would become a list of recipes for other freaks like myself who enjoy a good 'mare'. And I hoped to present a series of recipes and list the potential themes one might expect from the resultant nightmares.

Weird - I know but hey, the interest at the time of poking the idea out there was surprisingly high!

Well the project has been on the back burner for quite awhile now but I now feel that the time is indeed ripe and I would like to get this project back on the move.

So please, although I have my own material what I really need is as much information from other people as possible. So if your mom or dad ever used to say to you, "you shouldn't eat blah, blah, blah before going to bed, it'll give you nightmares" please, tell me what it was that they believed you should have been avoiding.

Ask your friends, ask your parents and if you would be so kind as to forward your recipes to me at nevereverbloodyanythingever@gmail.com I would truly appreciate it and of course full credit will be given to those who's recipes appear in print.

Just in passing - my mom always said that you should never eat bread, spread with marmite or vegemite toasted with melted cheese on top before bed - to date, this concoction holds the current record for most vivid, terrifying and sustained nightmares... I highly recommend you try it - no really.

Currently listening to:

Dire Straits - Making Movies

Extreme Picnic - Compilation CD from Tanny and Mikes Wedding.

..with spear guns and stingrays.

2010-01-23T14:34:00.000-08:00

My son Luke has become quite the outdoors man much to my delight.

It seems that everything we participated in together while he was growing up, he has taken to, like a duck to water.

Surfing, fishing, hunting, fast cars, excessive alcohol consumption and now diving.

He has become insanely keen on free dive spear fishing, something I have always been enthusiastic about due to the teeming fish life to be found around almost any rock outcrops on any part of our coastline.

When Christmas arrived it seemed obvious that what he really needed was a good quality spear gun and.. despite some very vague misgivings I had about spears in feet, it seemed the choice was a good one.

He has just purchased a new car (new to him). And as is often the way when young men get themselves a new vehicle, the first port of call is dads to get the broken bits fixed!

So while we were pottering around trying to get the headlamp high beam to stop turning on when making a right hand indication, we got to talking about his latest escapades below the waves.

I had noticed he seemed to be limping slightly and appeared uncomfortable when crouching in some positions, when I inquired to the reason he told me it was nothing really and a bit of a long story...

"Excellent.." I replied, "regale me...".

He and a good friend and fellow fisherman had driven some way north of Auckland to a favoured spot and decided to swim quite a way offshore to a small island probably 500 - 600 metres out.

The water was quite murky and after some time in the water Luke was tapped on the arm by his mate who indicated that they should stop to talk.

It seems he had become a little disturbed by rather large shadows he had seen circling them on several occasions. Luke having seen nothing similar and never one to be easily frightened or put off by the threat of danger put his head down and continued swimming towards the targeted island.

They eventually made their way ashore this tiny rock and took the time to catch their breath before Luke flopped back into the water.

The pickings were scarce for some reason... (for those of you who have as much experience under the water as I, you will know there can be several reasons for this but usually one really obvious one...)

So while Lukes friend sat on the rocks of the island Luke continued to slowly circle the water smashing up shellfish and sea urchins in an effort to attract more fish to the area.

Nothing doing...???

In what I can only imagine was an act of frustration borne of late adolescence he decided to launch a spear at a very large sting ray that was cruising the bed. (Once again; experience in this area was quite obviously absent!) He caught it somewhere directly behind the head in the thick fleshy area devoid of any critical organs where it lodged beautifully as per design.

and off they went...

..Luke refusing to relinquish his spear, the ray, probably only barely aware of a slight irritation and a bit of extra drag through the water began to head out into deeper territory.

This action placed Luke in somewhat of a quandary: being that the ray was probably close to his own weight and was well designed for the environment there was every good chance it would be able to drag him below the surface, but to cut the line connecting the spear to the gun would be to lose the spear...hmmmm (once again that much needed experience was sadly lacking).

So kicking frantically he did his best in an attempt to maneuver the beast toward a small mound of partially submerged rocks.

Always so understated; Luke spoke of struggling a little for a small while but did finally manage to get within grabbing distance of the rocks whereupon he wrapped one arm around them and hung on. His snorkel was above the surface and for the moment he took the opportunity to gather his thoughts, re-group his thus far, shattered ego and make some decisions about how best to move forward from his rather sticky predicament.

Well as it turned out it didn't take long for the situation to resolve itself.

With a gigantic heave the ray decided it was done with idling on the spot and it happily snapped the 300 pound break strain line connecting spear to gun and glided off with all the nonchalance of a bear sporting a tooth pick in its fur.

Bugger! No spear.

To be truthful, I was pissing myself the whole time he relayed this to me and finding the fault with the indicator in his car had ground to a virtual stop. I had managed to wipe my eyes and was about to get on with it but no - there was more..!

Having recovered from the disappointment of losing his spear he decided to make his way back to the place where his mate was sitting on the island and was surprised to find that the friend in question was jumping up and down waving fit to burst pointing and shouting at him.

It took him some moments to interpret the impromptu sign language but eventually realized that his mate was not pointing at him - but just slightly past and behind him.

Turning in the water he was confronted by the sight of a rather large tail and dorsal fin slicing through the water coming directly at him. Sore calves or not he reckoned he managed a good 5 knots through the water and his hands barely touched rock as he flew out of the water and stood gratefully on solid ground beside his near hysterical friend.

Together they watched the shark slowly circle their little island.

It's a great leveler the sea.

That kid of mine will fight anyone of any size and he's pretty damn handy, I'd have to give him that, but there was no way he was getting back in the water to swim those 600 metres to the shore.

And so, there they sat...

..luckily its summer and they both had wetsuits on.

After several hours a coastguard boat turned up to tell them that they should be careful swimming around the island because sharks had been sighted in the area...

I nearly wet myself!

...and electrical substations.

2009-12-14T19:39:00.000-08:00

My daughter Alex has been wanting to get a part time job, I'm all for it as most parents are.

I think a lot of us take the entirely professional approach, "It teaches them about responsibility and money management and time management" blah, blah, blah - bollicks!

It reduces the loading on my own wallet if I am to be completely honest.

..that aside, my first job did teach me something about all of those things.

- I learned that I was hopeless at time and money management and, the time spent out from under the watchful gaze of my parents lent me the opportunity to behave in a most irresponsible manner...

My first job was like that of most young lads of the time - a paper route.

In New Zealand at the time there were two newspapers (yes a whole two..). One was a morning edition, and still is, The New Zealand Herald. The other was an evening edition, The Star.

I chose the Herald.

The upside was that the circulation was higher and therefore you got paid more because you had more papers to deliver. The downside was that it had to be in the householders mailbox when they awoke.

This saw me out of bed at about 4:30AM every morning except Sundays and home again at about 6:00AM for breakfast.

I would meet with a friend David who ran a route close to mine and we would smoke cigarettes and make prank phone calls from a public phone outside the local dairy while we waited for our boss to drop our newspapers off.

Every few days we would come armed with several wire coat hooks or hangers stuffed in our carry bags.

The last part of both our runs ended at the top of a long hill and at the top of the hill was a very large substation. This substation supplied power to many surrounding suburbs, suburbs that were all just beginning to awaken and switch on their lights and stoves.

David and I would ready ourselves for a fast getaway down the hill and once prepared would take turns to hurl our coat hangers over the compound fence and into the maze of tall insulators, cables and associated and vulnerable extremely high voltage electrical wizardry!

For David and I it was the sparks and occasional fire that we liked. But every now and again we were also rewarded by seeing the lights in the area shutting down. In fact once we watched as every light in every house we could see went out.

We pedaled like demons down the hill that morning and when I arrived home out of breath and looking as guilty as sin - it was to find, much to my chagrin, that our house was without any power!

What a pair of little shits we were.

Currently listening to:

Ministry of Sound 2010 US edition

A small collection of things one should not do...

2009-12-07T12:37:00.000-08:00

Yes I know most of these will seem like common sense to most people but I had to learn this stuff the hard way and now it is common to me too.

1) Do not adjust your car seat position whilst driving downhill and applying the brake.

2) Never speak badly of anybody without knowing who is standing directly behind you.

3) Never use a cigarette lighter to see how much fuel you have in your motorcycle tank.

4) Never actually eat those edible knickers.

5) An electric hot air paint stripper should never be used as a substitute for a hair dryer.

6) If it looks like poo, treat it like poo - do not be tempted to smell it, under no circumstance taste it.

7) Never attempt to impress your friends with a CO2 fire extinguisher without first being certain that it is not a dry powder type.

8) Although tempting one should not fall asleep naked in the sun.

9) Never shine a red laser pointer at the police helicopter.

10) Never fall asleep when working on an old CRT television set.

11) Don't use a pogo stick on a wooden deck.

12) Think twice before attempting to whiten your teeth with toilet bleach.

..of failed attempts

2009-11-25T18:48:00.000-08:00

I quite often find I am inspired to write, either by a rekindled memory, an experience, a rather heavy dose of red wine or simply because of an epiphany.

However inspiration it would seem, is certainly a fickle friend indeed (so too is red wine..) and of late I have not been able to maintain the necessary inspiration (or sobriety) required to finish some of the pieces I have started.

No big deal I thought. Create a drafts sub folder within my blog documents directory and get back to them when next I’m ‘feeling’ it.

The only problem is that when I re-open these documents I find that I don’t like the mood I’m generating, I’m going nowhere, the syntax is poor or I’ve meandered off and completely sidetracked myself to the point of combining one story with another!

Two of them I can’t even seem to work out why I got started on because nobody, including myself, would be interested in them anyway.

I suppose I should just junk the lot and start afresh but a certain side of me can’t seem to bear the apparent waste of time that this action would equate to.

To date I now have three or maybe even four blog doc’s that I cant seem to finish and I cant seem to dispose of – what a plonker!

Ah well... I guess I’ll procrastinate about it a bit later.

What I need now is a beer or maybe a very large red wine... oh gawd Daryl when will you grow up!!!???

Currently listening to:

The Bloodhound Gang – Hooray for Boobies.

Fall Out Boy – Infinity on High.

Eyes...

2009-11-17T11:23:00.000-08:00

I wrote this some time ago and it should have copied across from my FaceBook Archives but the font was too small so it ended up auto drafting and I've only just realized that it didn't publish.

Anyway, perhaps I have noticed it right at this moment because it is relevant...

Eyes are the gateway to the soul. Of this I have no doubt.

Sometimes sustained eye contact can be almost physical...

have you noticed..?

.. as if the person with whom you made that contact actually reached out and gently brushed the hair back from your face or placed a finger gently to your lips.

Eyes will quite often meet across considerable distance, flitting briefly across each other with only the slightest brush.

But, if contact is made and held, whole conversations can be transferred at light speed across that distance without the speaking of a single word.

Some people have eyes that can hold me captive for hours, as if staring into them wraps me in a form of warm, luxurious blanket that I never want to lose. I like the way you seem to fall forward into those eyes until all else fades to oblivion and only the obsidian black pool of the pupils exists.

Those are the eyes of the gentle and honest.

Those are the eyes I love.

The ghost of Walt Tip

2009-11-15T15:50:00.000-08:00

O.k so those of you that know me well will already be aware that the presence of ghosts in my life are about as likely as pixies and fairies but the other day Walter our very much loved cat of ten years made an ethereal return from the dead...

So yes the passing of Walt was a very sad moment in both Alex's and my life but to be honest it wasn't without its share of humor and being that three weeks has past it seems a reasonable amount of time to wait before bringing forth the truth surrounding the sad event.

Walt was not what you would call a lightweight of the species. Weighing in at a reasonably hefty 11 kilos dry it would be fair to suggest that his little heart was probably under more stress than that of the average hippo.

On two previous occasions we had discovered him lying on the ground, semi catatonic with drool coming from the corner of his mouth and a look on his head vaguely resembling the look you see on the heads of clubbers stumbling out the door of their favorite night spot at 5AM in the morning.

We assumed he might have fallen badly from the handrail of one of our many decks and taken a reasonable knock to the head because given a day to recover he generally came straight back to normal health and showed no sign of carrying any further injury.

In hindsight (and after consulting with a friend trained in Veterinary services) it was probably most likely he had suffered a small heart attack on each of these prior occasions and very likely it was a massive coronary failure that had finished him in the end.

Just so nobody gets me wrong; Walt was not force fed, no, no, no! He had simply developed a love for food and all things food. It was his primary motivation, his life skill, his kung fu, if you will and he had trained long and hard - as such, his kung fu was strong!

Anyway, we discovered his lifeless body lying on his favorite deck beside his beloved barbeque early one morning before leaving for work.

Alex and I both cuddled and patted him before I wrapped him lovingly in an old towel and left him to lie in state in the middle of our dining room table.

At work that day I found a suitable sized cardboard box in which we could bury him along with his well worn food bowls.

Alex and I returned home later that afternoon armed with our impromptu burial casket and began the mournful task of disposing of our much loved 'fatty'.

The first thing we did was to unwrap him for last hugs and it was while we both had our faces buried in his thick fur that we became aware of just exactly how many fleas he was truly lugging around on him; many, would be the understatement of the year!

It seems that although we had never seen a single flea on him while he was alive this was not due to there being none on him, it was mostly due to them never exposing themselves to us and losing the opportunity to live long and comfortable lives housed on a mobile fast food franchise and I don't mean fast food outlet, no way, he was the whole damn franchise! But when the fryers and hotplates went cold those fleas were out of there faster than a streak of weasels piss and because we had a towel wrapped around him it appeared they were somewhat trapped.

They were of course, more than happy to make a hurried escape when offered the altogether tempting new premises that Alex's and my, face and hair offered. It was, to say the least, an altogether most unsatisfying farewell snuggle!

Having had to guess the necessary dimensions of the box while at work I had drastically underestimated the girth of Walt and it soon became obvious that the lid of the casket would in no way remain closed by its own means. This necessitated the application of much sticky tape which on a whole, greatly diminished the decorum and aplomb normally associated with these solemn occasions. It also meant, on a much more selfish but practical note, that the hole I would now have to dig would need to be at least another six inches deeper.

I had decided that Walters final resting place would be in a small and much overgrown garden at the back of the house directly under our bathroom windows, where if we wanted too, we could look down at when having a pee or brushing our teeth.

The topsoil here was as thick as could be found anywhere else on the property and with darkness and rain threatening to close in I set about digging Walters grave.

Now anybody reading this who lives in Auckland will understand that digging any hole deeper than 12 to 14 inches deep is going to mean digging clay. Auckland on a whole is built on clay. In winter it becomes impermeable and so sticky that should you be fortunate enough to get a spade into it you can never get it off the end, in summer it becomes impermeable and something akin to rock. So all in all the Auckland clay is simply impermeable 365 days of the year.

After digging the top 14 inches of top soil away from my roughly 3 foot by 3 foot hole I promptly broke my spade on striking the aforementioned clay. Darkness was by now threatening to beat me to the close so I raced to the neighbors and borrowed the stoutest spade I could.

Two hours later after much sweating, swearing and cursing I had managed to get down another 14 inches if I was lucky and ignoring the rather unceremonious bulge in the box this gave me at least 6 inches of soil to cover the box with. Plus I figured, rather lazily I might add, a small mound on top would mean all was in order, the job would be complete and the box would be covered by a good solid foot of soil.

What I hadn't figured on was how hard it would be to put all that clay back into the hole and I quickly decided that covering the box in the easily shifted topsoil would be far more optimal. The only problem with this line of thinking was that the topsoil was quickly swallowed by the pit and I was left to try and fill the remaining space with large chunks of unforgiving clay. By the end however Alex and I were both reasonably satisfied with my efforts and we stood quietly and tearfully over the remains of Walt and said our goodbyes.

Fast forward two weeks to approximately one week ago. We have had rain everyday of the two weeks following Walt's funeral except for the weekends which have been extremely warm.

The mound on top of the grave has sunk - I guess the cardboard box has finally collapsed and the remains have no doubt got rather wet, extremely decomposed and then nicely warmed on the weekends...

Monday morning last week I went into the bathroom and threw open the windows before taking a shower.

The ghost of Walt leaped through the window and smote me directly in the olfactory gland!

Oh my god now that is some very special shit right there and talk about staying power.. The extractor fan in the bathroom had the undesirable effect of spreading the odor throughout the entire roofspace whereby it proceeded to fall in large clumps from every available unused penetration in the ceiling, to slap us rudely about the face!

So it would seem that though he may be gone Walter Tipuna Wawatai has not yet finished extracting his final pound of flesh.

And I have been sagely reminded of two important facts:

1) Dead things stink to high heaven whether once beloved or not.

2) Don't be lazy when burying said dead things.

Currently listening to:

The Prodigy - Baby's got a temper.

Taylor Swift - Fearless. (don't be hating)

...of crappy cars

2009-10-21T18:44:00.000-07:00

I was sitting having a few wines with a friend the other day, she was telling me that her car was a 'piece of shit'.

For my part I tried my best to convince her that a car that started reliably, ran reliably, didn't cost a fortune in fuel bills and didn't cause you to have to walk to work was in my humblest of opinions, a whole load better than having to hoof it!

She was not persuaded to believe me but did eventually concede to it being reliable.

It not only reminded me of another story but made me remember many of the 'pieces of shit' cars I had owned.

There was the '69 Gremlin, the '74 Corolla, the mark 3 Ford Zephyr (three speed column shifter, only second gear was missing so it became a two speed consisting of low gear and high gear - imagine it.. I was either tearing the ass out of it in first or laboring it like a pinky old tractor in third!!! Oh yeah, that's right, and it wouldn't key start so you always had to park on a hill so you could roll start it and you always had to carry a minimum of three passengers, that way if you stalled on the flat you had plenty of push power to get started again), a communal 50cc scooter, a borrowed Honda City and last but not least a Nissan Bluebird 2 litre turbo automatic. Stylish motoring indeed!

There was one thing all of those vehicles had in common. Not only were they ugly in shape and color and entirely embarrassing to be seen driving, but it appeared the designers had also decided that something that disgusting must now last forever so that your shame might continue for many, many years.

To that end it seems they made the motors, gearboxes and running gear indestructible!

I lived with a bunch of guys once, there was about 5 of us living in a big old house in St Lukes and our house transport was the aforementioned 50cc scooter.

We utilized this pathetic excuse for mobility for one reason, namely, pot pickup and delivery. You see, cops hardly ever pull these puss ridden shitters over because generally they are only ever carrying Grannies, Asian university students or homo's so there was every good chance that if you were heading home with the house stash, that you would not get pulled over and possibly sprung.

Eventually over time we came to realize how incredibly tuff this little turd of a motorbike was.

We had a giant front yard approximately the size of the standard rugby field. One half of it was flat and well mowed but the other half had been let go and seemed to be littered with piles of "stuff" that the grass had simply grown over, it appeared that half our lawn was made of lumpy grass hillocks.

It was in this section that we built, 'the track'.

The 'track' was filled with muddy challenges, bone shaking corrugations and gnarly jumps. It soon became the scene for many a drunken 'time challenge' and even the occasional exceptionally drunken night time rally. The biggest of our bunch was a monster of a guy, 6'4 - 200+ pounds called Gary. I'm not shit'n you that poor little bike survived the track with Gary perched tenuously astride it. From memory the worst that befell it was the loss of the rear mudguard due to an overenthusiastic wheel stand attempt by one of the lads.

The crappiest car I have ever had the misfortune to drive was lent to me by a friend.

A red Honda City - oh revel in the glory of its awesomeness!!!

I think the fact that I could lift the back of it off the ground by myself could have been the reason I so despised the little horror. Driving this vehicle on the motorway was frightening, something akin to flying a spacecraft made from balsa wood and cling wrap through a meteor field!

Nonetheless this vehicle was, like all the other shitters of the world - indestructible!

One night, midway between travelling from my mate Johns place to mine I decided to prove the indestructibility of this little vehicle to him.

I bet him that I could drive the remaining five or six kilometers home without lifting my foot from the full throttle position...

...and so we went, stopping at red lights to sit beside our fellow road users with the engine screaming and us, with tears pouring down our faces laughing fit to burst .

Shifts between gears had the same effect on us.

It was during a particularly rough upshift into third, heading up the second to last major hill before home that something went wrong..

By wrong I mean the engine simply stopped - dead!

Oh fuck! Still quite a way to go to get home.

Damnit - I hadn't quite considered this possibility.

Oh well - out we get, up with the bonnet, hmmmmm give her a bit of a crank.

Whooooa sparks everywhere - cooool.

O.k looks like the main lead from the ignition coil has come out the top of the distributor cap. See if you can jam it back in there John and I'll just go and... CRANK THE IGNITION!

Poor John - that shit really hurts.

So we threw away the stupid 'spark booster' which is some sort of magical device that plugs into your distributor cap and mystically makes a more powerful spark (what a load of rubbish) and stuck the lead straight into the dizzy.

What do ya know. One crank and she fired up again.

Foot straight to the floor! Engine screaming - off we go again! Yeehaa look out!

Well we got home and yeah, o.k. so she was running a little warm but honestly, I reckon that little car would have done that all day. Legendary.

So next time your hurling obscenities at your 'piece of shit' car just think about how many times it has let you down and left you to 'foot it' and maybe you might feel a little better about it's color or it's shape.

Currently listening to:

Supergroove - Postage

Cafe De Mar - Dreams

2009-10-21T18:31:00.000-07:00

Alex had her braces fitted today.

Perhaps I'm showing my vintage by saying this but..

When I was at school getting braces was almost unheard of and those that did have them hated that fact and spent most of their day hiding behind one or other of their hands whilst blushing profusely.

The secondary school I attended was one of the largest in Auckland at the time but you could've counted the kids with braces using your toes.

When Alex was informed by the dentist that she would be sporting a mouthful of stainless steel for the next two years I thought she would be mortified - instead she seemed happily overcome with joy???

Turns out that braces have become the 'must have' fashion accessory for teenage girls and Alex was kind of tired of being the odd one out.

Dang - humans are strange critters.

Currently listening to:

The Beat - Industry

Rest in Peace Walter Tipuna Wawatai

2009-10-11T16:25:00.000-07:00

Today marks the loss of a beloved family member. Our cat of 10 years died peacefully in his sleep last night.

I'm truly gutted.

He was my friend and a great source of comfort and peace.

Alex and I will never forget him so I guess in that sense he will never really be gone.

So gutted...

...of large butane bottles

2009-09-22T13:10:00.000-07:00

Is it just me or have others noticed that whenever you attempt to show somebody how excellently awesome you are at something, it all goes pear shaped and lemon smelling.

I'm sure you know what I mean; 'Dad, look how fast I can ride my bike', 'mom, see how high I can climb up this tree'.

You know what I mean?

Well yeah, it happened to me a lot.

It still does.

At my high school we had several art classrooms. One of them was equipped with a large gas fired kiln. It was used for firing and glazing ceramics. It wasn't part of the classroom as much as it was only accessible through the classroom.

This classroom had a set of double French doors that gave the students access to a small courtyard and within this courtyard, the far corner of it, was where the kiln was situated.

Our art teacher was one of those strangely abstract women who seemed to be stuck in a continuous daily cycle of reinventing herself. Don't get me wrong she was a fantastically warm woman and we loved her dearly - it was just that her randomness always had you wondering who she would be when next she stood in front of the class!

The thing I liked best about her was that she held strongly to the belief that everything everyone did was just simply a form of artistic expression struggling to be let free.. To this end she saw the fact that I smoked cigarettes to mean that I was struggling with some sort of artistic self destruction that really only needed to be harnessed.

Anyway, one of the reasons I loved her, more perhaps than most, was that she would let me smoke out by the kiln in the courtyard during our classes with her.

It was during one of these highly irregular 'smoko' breaks and accompanied by one of my friends who also had a propensity for tobacco that I discovered two newly refilled gas bottles that had been delivered earlier that day. It appeared that the two being used to power the kiln were nearing empty and the replacements were ordered before the old ones actually ran out.

These bottles were not unlike the one sitting below your BBQ at home only they stood about 5 or more foot high and didn't have that guard thingy around the valve on the top, so they looked more like gigantic dive cylinders - I'm pretty sure I've seen bottles like this around recently so it must just be the ones for home use that have the guard around the valve - who knows.

I had learnt from experiments I had conducted at home on the gas bottle attached to the front of my parents caravan, that a most spectacular and self sustaining flame could be generated by opening the valve on the top of these bottles and applying a lit match to the valve outlet. In fact the bottle at home when newly refilled had managed a flame a good 7 - 8 foot long and I could only imagine what length flame we could get out of these freshly delivered monster bottles sitting so temptingly available in the art class courtyard...

Having already dealt with gas before I was well aware of the need to strike the match first before opening the valve so after having told my friend to move to one side a little so I could show him something 'excellently awesome' I struck the match.

Now as I said these bottles were quite tall - or at least tall in comparison to us, so I actually had to reach up a little above my own eye level in order to put the match near the valve outlet and I couldn't really see what I was doing exactly.

Nonetheless I turned the valve on hard and waited for the stream of gas to ignite..

- nothing -

Hmmmm.

There was certainly the sound of much gas escaping, plenty of it.

Suddenly it struck me... idiot!

I was holding the match on the wrong side of the valve!

No worries, that side was clear of everything, we both shuffled a little to the left and I moved the match to the other side of the valve...

I still cant really remember the exact sound - it was more like a feeling really, much like the feeling you get from an excessively powerful sub woofer. I think that the ground might have actually shook.

There was a dull blue flash at the same time as the sub woofer feeling and then a very brief sensation of extremely intense heat on my face, neck, ears and hands.

When I opened my eyes I found myself looking at some strange brown fuzzy critter that was standing where my friend had been a couple of seconds ago, not only was this strange beast brown and fuzzy but most alarmingly it was smoking! Every part of it was smoking! The clothes were smoking, the socks were smoking the brown fuzzy head was smoking! There was even smoke coming off the eyebrows!

A little too late I suppose I turned off the gas valve.

Holy sheeeet!

"Man - that happened quick" was all I had.

"Fucking right!" was all my friend had.

His name was Malcombe Jones and he used to be shock blond - now it seemed there was only the shock left. Almost exactly half of his hair from the front to the middle of his head had gone a funny type of ginger and looked markedly shorter than that hair which remained his normal blond. His eyebrows and eye lashes were the same matching ginger brown. Being blond he had very light skin but this was quickly turning a majestic shade of puce. He looked for all the world like a cartoon character who had just had one of those little black round bombs go off in his face. In retrospect I suppose he had just had a bomb go off in and all around his face!

It took Malcombe a few minutes if that, before he started pointing at me and laughing. I suppose it was just the relief of knowing that we had just had a very near miss but we both started roaring with laughter.

As it turned out my hair, and not just half of it but most of it had changed color to rusty brown as well and I was sporting matching eyebrows and lashes all of which were smoking!

The worst of it was yet to come - when we rubbed our newly tinted eyebrows and hair it all fell off!

Inconveniently the wind had blown the smell of burning hair straight through the open French doors and filled the art classroom which, when combined with the explosive thump had brought our beloved art teacher and half the class haring outdoors and into the courtyard where Malcombe and I stood half bald, eyebrow less, scorched red and smoking.

Even more inconveniently another teacher of a less understanding nature had now appeared on the scene and after quickly appraising the situation sent both of our scorched asses off to see the headmaster. The headmaster upon listening to our tale proceeded to cane both of us and inform our parents of our indiscretion.

When I arrived home that afternoon I was treated to a rather sound tongue lashing from my mother and a bloody good hiding from my old man.

So to recap, we both now had hair that made us look like monks from an old fashioned Kung Fu movie, we had no eyebrows or eye lashes and our faces looked like we'd both fallen asleep in a sun bed. The headmaster had caned our bums till we couldn't sit properly and to add further insult to our injuries our dads had kicked our already highly tender and broken butts.

Could always have been worse I suppose but all in all, rather a grim outcome for a bit of "see how awesome I am" I thought.

...of electric fans

2009-09-20T17:57:00.000-07:00

Today is officially the warmest day we’ve experienced this spring.

In my work place the heaters are being put away and the fans are coming out.

Hmmmm fans...

Several years back the company that employs me bought a shipping container to use as a radio resistant chamber. I shan’t bore you with the details, suffice to say after minor modifications we set this behemoth down in a far corner of our workshop and set up an emission measuring laboratory within it.

In order for the chamber to be completely free of any type of radio emissions we decided a refrigerated container would be best because internally they are completely lined with stainless steel. This combined with the outer steel casing provided us with a large room that was immune from even the most powerful of radio transmissions and rendered all cell phones useless if taken within it.

As you may or may not have noticed, refrigerated shipping containers come complete with their very own chiller units (rather like air conditioning units on steroids). The ones fitted to our container needed to be removed before we could put it into use as they allowed openings in the chamber walls that let radio signals in.

We stripped these chillers off and they lay about the shop for sometime before myself and our German design engineer took an interest in them.

The motors were large and completely waterproof and had fitted to them rather large (500mm) extremely dangerous looking, stainless steel fans.

It didn’t take us too long to figure out how to make them run and we were astonished at the absolutely phenomenal amount of air they could shift. They were immediately banned from the work place as the fan blades were completely un-guarded and spun at a ferocious leg chopping 4000rpm! If you cant imagine why 4000rpm of spinning steel is so dangerous try tipping your lawn mower on its side, jamming the throttle at full and grabbing the spinning blade – and it’s doing nowhere near 4000rpm.

I kid you not, the wind coming off these things would have a woman’s skirt off at 50 metres and being that I lived in a small, extremely hot and poorly ventilated house I figured one of these bad boys would be just the ticket at home where Occupational Health and Safety had no jurisdiction.

I clearly remember the day I took it home – I was ever so eager to show my overheated and sweltering flat mates and it would be hard to imagine a better day for a demonstration of my newly acquired ‘mega fan’, it was scorching!

I decided that it would be safest to situate the beast in a corner of the lounge so that nobody could approach it from behind and accidentally lose a leg or foot to the fan blades. It seemed obvious that nobody would be unaware of it when approaching from the front because the wind coming from the bastard nearly took you off your feet!

- Once when I was a small boy my friend and I were throwing sand balls at each other at the beach. Unsatisfied with the impact my sand balls were having on my friends head I decided I could have a much more telling effect if I simply put a big rock inside one.

The minute I threw that sand ball, the instant it left my hand, I wished I could have it back...

..and so it was as I flicked the mains switch on at the wall.

It’s hard to describe the order of catastrophic events that occurred given the degree of chaos that ensued the moment that switch was thrown.

It became obvious to me immediately that running these fans in an extremely large warehouse as opposed to a very small lounge room was an entirely different kettle of fish!

It seemed that in an instant, every ash tray in the room (‘there were many and they were all full’) emptied themselves into the available air space within the room, and I don’t just mean the ash, no - butts and all were being swirled around the room. The dogs howled and made a desperate bid for freedom adding further to the furor by knocking several housemates to the floor.

In the next few moments, while we were all temporarily distracted by the cigarette butts and ash in our eyes, the window drapes, conveniently bunched in the corner behind the monster fan were then drawn into the back of the ghastly monstrosity. The drapes were doomed from the moment the very tip of one touched the fan blade.

Being that the motor itself was very heavy and powerful meant the unfortunate drapes simply wrapped around the fan and motor shaft without unsettling or slowing the fan in the least! And so with a horrendous tearing noise the drapes, mesh curtains and curtain rails were torn from the wall and attempted to wrap themselves around the cursed fan. At this point there was so much shredded curtaining and pieces of curtain rod trying to spin around the fan that the fan had become larger than the motor that spun it and it crashed sideways to the floor and began galloping in frighteningly random circles around the lounge floor space smashing tables and tearing furniture into large chunks!

We fled.

Honestly, I was frightened.

My housemates on the other hand, were livid!

Thankfully the trashing ended reasonably quickly (albeit dramatically) in a burst of sparks when the fan managed to cut through the lead from the motor to the wall.

I was permitted to stay – but sadly my fan was banned (I was certain that with a little more experimentation it could be tamed, but my suggestion was not met with a great deal of enthusiasm).

I gave it to a friend who works as a car painter; he uses it to extract paint vapors from his garage and to this day nobody has suffered any injury,

yet...

Currently listening to:

Blips by http://blip.fm/DirtyUrine

...of thieves

2009-09-05T14:25:00.000-07:00

It was with some degree of amusement that I observed the neighbors dog trashing some sheets and clothes that were hung on her owners washing line whilst downing my hot chocolate this morning.

Amusing because despite my yelling and jumping up and down on my deck and generally looking foolish flailing my hands and gnashing my teeth, the dog seemed only mildly interested but if anything was spurned on to even greater levels of destruction - to the detriment of the unfortunate washing!

I suppose I should have gone over there and made a more sincere attempt to stop the ruinage but the idea of the neighbors returning home for some reason to find me in their back yard with handfuls of their torn washing, running from their dog did not inspire me to act gallantly...

It did however; remind me of a little incident that happened many years ago when I was sharing a house with several friends.

There were fours of us (all guys) living in a lease property, sharing the rent, power, phone etc, etc. We had been living there for several months before we began to notice a sure and steady decline in the number of jeans and T-Shirts that we possessed. We finally twigged that one of us didn’t have a huge pile while the rest of us were in deficit and it was to our bitter disappointment we discovered that we were all less two or three pairs each and many more T-Shirts also.

It took us some time to deduce that our clothes were being filched from our washing line during the night and further investigations revealed that the thieves were coming over our back wall, through the vacant part of the section at the bottom of the yard and up to our washing line situated in the middle of the used part of the yard.

We decided collectively that the first element of our defense would be to clear away some of the vines and climbers that had over many years become greatly overgrown and thickly covered both sides of the back wall. This it seemed, allowed intruders to observe our movements while remaining virtually invisible to us from the house and also from casual onlookers or people in neighboring houses.

After this relatively simple operation we were delighted to find that underneath all of the overgrowth was a three line barbed wire fence at the top of the wall. Which, having now been freed from the entangling vines appeared as an impromptu second line of defense for our washing line.

The other lads however had got to talking about this one day while I was at work and arriving home one afternoon I was approached on masse to offer my opinion on electrifying the barbed wire fence. Being quite a lot younger than I am now the idea of an electric barbed wire fence fascinated and appealed to me...

So, using our combined ingeniousness we set about insulating the wire from the fence strainers using sections of garden hose and I was dispatched to the nearest automobile wreckers to obtain a cheap CDI ignition system from a car.

Using this piece of equipment as the fence energizer had the combined advantage of being both cheap and our intruders would be spared the need to touch the bare wire as the voltage and available energy from the ignition system would mean, coming to a distance within half an inch of the wire would see an extremely high energy discharge, straight up your ‘tender bits’.

We stashed the whole contraption complete with old car battery in a nail box and concealed it with a pile of the vines we had ripped off the fence and sat about for the better part of the night waiting to see if our efforts would be rewarded.

Nothing.

So I recharged the battery during the next day and set it all up the following evening.

Nothing.

And so it went for the next three nights. By the sixth night everyone had pretty much lost interest and I persevered only because I thought it would be a shame to give up now and have the thieves come back and rob us again the night we didn’t have the battery charged.

Sometime just after midnight on that sixth evening we were alerted by the dog, who until this time had failed to detect our ‘midnight shoppers’. She was whining and clawing at the back door and although we could hear nothing, her interest in getting outside attracted the attention of us all.

We armed ourselves with an assortment of ungainly objects (I had a rock...??? Oh yeah we were hard core!) and after letting the dog go first we made our way across the back yard.

Somewhere around the clothes line we heard the first sounds of a frantic scuffling and heard the dog growl and then howl and we were nearly bowled over as she came scuttling past us heading quickly in the opposite direction, tail tucked firmly between her legs, ears flat down on her head.

Generally speaking, people who take on snarling dogs within the dogs own territory should be approached with a great deal of caution! We needn’t have worried.

Two young men were trapped in the barbed wire fence and every second or so they would twist and writhe like a pair of synchronized monkeys in a tree. We assumed that the dog had attempted to bite the shoe of the guy closest to the ground and had shared a little in the energy that was making such beautiful blue sparks on our two captured crims.

Tempting as it was to leave them both there making funny noises and flexing like a pair of retarded bodybuilders we started to worry that they could end up badly hurt. There was already an odd smell of burnt hair or flesh and also the ozone smell you get after a big electrical storm. I disconnected the battery while my flat mates informed our hapless criminals that if they tried to make a run for it we would light their dumbasses straight back up again.

I guess it was a testament to the pain they must have been through because as soon as I turned the fence off and they could speak properly they started pleading with us to never turn it back on again. They were a little cut around the legs and hands from the barbs in the wire and both seemed to have bitten their tongues or cheeks and were bleeding slightly from their mouths.

Such had been the extent of their writhing and struggling that we had to cut them free and so destroy our beloved fence.

Under the threat of much violence we tied their wrists with sticky tape and dragged their now very sorry asses back up to the house where we gagged them with more sticky tape and applied even more tape to their legs. When we felt that escape would be impossible we heaved them into the bathtub one on top of the other, removed their gags and questioned them about our missing clothes. Having recovered a little by this time they became adamant that this was not their intention and that they had never been over our fence or into our yard before.

Collectively, none of us was convinced; they had attempted to come over the fence in exactly the same place that we had deduced somebody had been over before. I went back down to the bottom of the yard and recovered the nail box with our DIY fence energizer and battery, took it back up to the house and put it down on the bathroom vanity where both of our would be thieves could see it.One of the other lads put the plug in the tub and turned on the tap…

Nobody had said a word during this process but the intention was apparently clear enough and the confessions were readily forthcoming! They admitted to stealing from us on several occasions and had hocked our gear off at one of the local op-shops. Disgusted, we re-gagged them and locked the bathroom door.

For some time we considered calling the cops but I was unsure how we might fear in a legal sense with regard to having installed a barbed wire electric fence which by no means came anywhere near fitting the legal safety requirements that local councils dictate in their by-laws.

What we decided on in the end was the old ‘scare the shit out of em’ approach, so two of us took the ‘good guy’ role while the other two took the ‘badass’ approach and we staged an argument complete with scuffling and apparent pushing and shoving outside the door of the bathroom.

The ‘badasses’ tried to convince us that we should just break a spade over each of their heads and bury the bodies down in the vacant overgrown part of the section where nobody would ever know.

We, the ’good guys’ tried to reason with our counterparts saying that these guys would no doubt be missed, that others were bound to know what they had been up to, inevitably sending trouble our way and that we should just call the cops and be done with it.

We let this to-ing and fro-ing continue all the while knowing our sneaky little friends could hear every word. We culminated the argument with a shouting match that saw the ‘badasses’ storm off, apparently pissed with us for being so soft and leaving the house in a huff.

The two of us remaining went back into the bathroom – un-gagged our pair of thieves and asked them for their names and addresses, the address they gave us was only two streets away from ours so it seemed to add up. We dragged them outside one at a time and released them, telling them that they had 30 mins to get home and make anyone else in their house aware that the police were on their way.

We never called the cops – tempting as it was, common sense prevailed and we figured we would probably be the ones in the most trouble.

But hey, we never lost anything else off the washing line for the remainder of the time we lived there and I always wonder if those two chaps ever stole anything again – EVER!

Currently listening to:

The Black Crowes – Shake your Moneymaker

http://blip.fm/jennyleepenny

...of lessons

2009-09-05T14:09:00.000-07:00

I have meandered through my life gathering qualifications as I go.

To date I am a reasonable mechanic, a trade qualified electrician and a trade qualified television, radio and consumer electronics service person.

By profession I am a reasonably talented electronics engineer.

My trades have taught me a great deal about dealing with other people.

My profession has taught me even more about dealing with myself.

Some of the important lessons have been,

1) Consider - everything

2) Never overlook - anything

3) Allow for outside, above and beyond all that you have considered.

But the most important of these lessons has been:

4) You can never forsee everything!

Sick

2009-09-01T15:41:00.000-07:00

Bah!

I'm crook.

In all honesty; I feel like the crap that some crap, crapped after eating too much crap!

It's nothing really - just a common flu I should imagine. Nothing that a tall glass of 'harden the f**k up' wont cure.

But I got to thinking that if I could just make a powerfull enough magnetic field

... Nah, nah I'm just messing with ya!

Although...

*********

I've decided to take a couple of days off work which was probably wise given that the new flu remedies we're forced to buy if we want some form of relief these days has some quite spectacular side effects! This combined with the facts that I can barely hear, I haven't slept properly, my head feels the size of a planet and I work with high voltage, convinced me to just rest up and get better.

...but I wanted to say something about the side effects I get from these new flu pills.

Firstly there's the bizzaro dreams and secondly there's the, "non drowsy" claim.

The dreams are AWESOME! but really fragmented.

Each one ends in a different type of cliffhanger, it wakes me up sweating with, what I can only imagine, is a startled look on my head - like the one you get when you run blindly across unknown terrain in complete darkness!

Four or five times a night...

..Gnarlyyyyyduuuuuude!

So that makes me tired.

It would also seem, that the 'non drowsy' bit kind of works when your trying to sleep...

About the 'non drowsy' bit.

In some ways it's true; you don't get drowsy in the least - you just get smashed the fuck out!

Yesterday I was trying to remotely log on to my company server so I could send a global email. But there seemed to be some issue with maximum numbers blah, blah, blah, bleh. So I decided to finish a blog I was in the middle of while the connection to the company server happened.

No shit - I got my blog document open.. The next thing I know is it's forty minutes later, my blog doc is several hundred blank pages longer and I drool copiously if I fall asleep face down.

To summarize, it seems that this stuff is 'non drowsy' but only when you want to sleep. And it is 'non drowsy' when your awake but may cause temporary Narcolepsy.

I liked the old flu capsules a lot more. Fall asleep during the day? Not bloody likely!

Man, you could really get some shit done when you had the flu in those days. Not a lot of what you got done was right admittedly but at least at night time you were so exhausted from your massive ephedrine day rush that you crashed out for the entire night!

Better that I think, than waking up four or five times a night looking like a strangled turkey.

I'm off for that tall glass... cya.

Currently listening to:

http://blip.fm/SevenTenths

Morning observations...

2009-08-10T13:52:00.000-07:00

Monday 10th August 2009

So a couple of things came to mind this morning and I thought it best to write them down before they vanished into the depths of my woeful memory.

The first was just an observation; something I had noticed before but didnt really think about.

Alex and I were driving past the gas station on the way to the train station and a police car was stopped there. One of the officers was re-fueling their vehicle, a marked police vehicle. As I said I had seen this before but it suddenly occurred to me that there seemed to be something a little skewed about this. It just seems odd that their vehicles aren’t somehow or other always filled with fuel...

I quite often see police vehicles tearing up the road that this particular gas station is situated at the top of, lights flashing and sirens blaring. And for a moment I imagined the scene inside one of these vehicles:

** Unit 452 responding to the incident logged at 16:42 by Comms central. Incident number 23392. Complainant has witnessed offender’s breaking and entering neighboring property at 415 Gt North Road we will be on site in approximately 2 mins. Awww shit, sorry Comms we’re going to have to stop and get some gas.**

Wait... what?

*****************************

The other thing that came to mind this morning was how much we take for granted the ease of telecommunication these days.

If I could have imagined the ability to carry around a portable communication device that would connect me with the rest of the world and was powered by a battery that would last upwards of a week when I was a boy, I would have considered it only that – imaginary!

I became involved with electronics when I was a very young boy somewhere around 9 or 10 years old.

The Z80 processor was the height of computing technology in those days. Communication with my best buddy who lived next door was restricted to wet strings attached to tin cans and even then we had to go outside to use them in order to keep the string stretched taught and in a straight line so it couldn’t touch anything else. In fact by raising our voice a little more than what was required in order to use the tin can phones we could hear each other anyway!

A year later we had managed to string a four cored wire between his house and mine by utilizing the fence around my family’s swimming pool and the very large back lawn that separated his house from mine.

We then connected several old telephone handsets and some batteries to the cable to form the basis of a very crude telephone. This was entirely more satisfactory and a vast improvement over the tin cans and wet string. Unfortunately it did make us extremely unpopular with my buddy’s father when shortly after the initial installation of this ground breaking cable laying his father decided to mow the lawn... It took him several hours and a great many Dutch cuss words to disentangle the mower blade.

So for me this tiny mobile device I carry in my pocket is still a source of amazement despite understanding the complexity of its operation.

I like that feeling.

I recommend standing back from oneself and looking at that small device and being amazed.

It wasn’t always like this, remember...

Currently listening to:

Nightmares on Wax - Smokers Delight

...ahhhhummmm

2009-08-05T17:22:00.000-07:00

Today, Thursday August 6^th is to be the official first day in my quest to remove “ummm” from my spoken vocabulary.

It need only be removed from my spoken vocabulary because funnily enough it has never been something that I would write. Sure I might use it deliberately if I wanted to but it never pops up in my prose of its own apparent free will, unlike the manner it does whenever I’m speaking.

I tend to use ‘ummm’ as a filler in normal conversation to ‘stop the gap’ in those micro moments of awkward silence between words.

I also use it, embarrassingly, to fool myself into believing that I am improving the continuity of my speech.

Being of a somewhat ‘know it all’ disposition I have also learnt that continuously fitting ‘ummm’ into a conversation at the right time will not allow the person I am speaking to any chance of getting a word in, thereby allowing me to continue on telling them where something is at without fear of distraction by sidetracking interruption or the facts!

By the same token I often get so carried away with myself that my mouth seems to take off at a hundred miles an hour leaving my brain in the dust because it can only muster a piddly forty miles an hour. ‘Ummm’ then gives me the time I need for my brain to catch up with my mouth.

In reality I have no need for ‘stop the gap’ tools as in all honesty I quite enjoy awkward silences, it gives me an opportunity to observe facial expression and read body language so that I can determine honesty, genuine behavior or lack thereof.

As far as improving speech continuity; that is bollicks! From my viewpoint men whose speech involves a lot of ‘ummming’ present themselves as uncertain and lacking in confidence with regard to the topic of conversation they are currently engaged in. And when it comes to using ‘ummm’ as a means to do all the talking in the hope of convincing someone of how right you are – well that is just wrong! Likewise, if your mouth out distance’s your brain whilst talking you could be setting yourself up for a well deserved punch in the face!

So today hopefully will be the beginning of a much improved me and all I have to do is stop saying ‘ummm’

We’ll see...

...of genetic stupidity and corned beef

2009-07-28T16:52:00.000-07:00

I was standing in my best mate’s kitchen the other day while his wife was cooking corned beef and I was reminded about the tale of Brendon and the corned beef of slow and painful death...

I had recently separated from my partner of many years and had moved into an old friends place.

This was pretty much the epitome of 30 year old bachelor pads; grubby, untidy, unkempt, boozy, loud and furnished with mostly tired and decrepit second hand armchairs.

Oh yes and there was the dog, which for the most part had the run of the place and didn't hold much in the way of respect for cleanliness!

One of the blokes that spent a great deal of time with us during this time owned a small farmlet. From time to time he would manage a home kill which saw us all overloading the death out of our freezers in an effort to fit the better part of quarter a butchered cow in them.

So this being the first time Brendon had had to deal with this amount of meat he went about it all wrong and rather than apply any type of intelligence to the sorting and stacking of the different cuts he simply piled it all in a la one humongous lump.

It wasn't until nearly 24 hours later that I thought to ask him if he had remembered to turn it all so that it didn't just become one enormous frozen lump completely locked together and irremovable from the freezer.

Of course he had not.

So we set about trying to separate the bags of assorted cuts from each other. Fortunately the sheer amount of meat involved and the reasonably small size of the freezer meant that most of the meat had not completely frozen solid and with a bit of effort we managed to unlock the bags from each other and the freezer baskets and unload all of it out of the freezer into piles which we stacked on the nearest available armchairs. I then sorted the cuts out and we re-loaded the bags back into the freezer where they could safely continue the freezing process with out fear of becoming locked together.

What neither of us realized was that one of the several corned silversides we had stacked on one armchair had slipped down the back of the chair and being old and tatty had fallen straight down the back, come out the bottom and landed on the floor under the chair. This old chair was one of those rocker types that you would find old men smoking a pipe in at night and had a little type of skirt around the bottom of it that was supposed to hide all the ugly mechanisms that allowed it to rock and swivel. So although the packet of meat had fallen to the floor it was invisible under the skirt of the chair.

I don’t know how it is everywhere else in the world but in New Zealand raw corned meat often comes in vacuum packed bags that contain some of the brine the meat was originally corned in.

These bags are tough so as not to leak at any time and this was proven to be the case as the bag sat undiscovered beneath the chair until discovered by Brendons somewhat eccentric mother several months later when she happened to push the vacuum cleaner head under the chair (cleaning was never high on our list of priorities) and scooped it out.

Now the bag, being of the toughest type, hadn't ruptured (although I can only suppose it must have gone through a ballooning stage) so there had been no leaks on the floor or therefore smells and Brendons mother swears, despite her actually picking it up and carrying it to the kitchen sink, that it didn't smell at close proximity. It did however have a definite green tinge but the foolish old woman neglected to deem that as important and merely considered that this was something Brendon had taken out of the freezer for dinner, she also wrongly assumed that the ill mannered dog had swiped it off the bench and hidden it under the chair for treats later, when able to sneak it from the house.

So having made an ineffectual attempt at cleaning the un-cleanable mess that was Brendons house she buggered off leaving the festering lump of several months old meat to continue its steady decay in the sink.

When Brendon arrived home from work later that Friday afternoon he spied the dubious lump in the sink and dimwittedly assumed that his mom had taken it out of the freezer for him earlier that day. (Yes, yes I know, what was his mother doing in his house cleaning when he wasn't there etc, etc – that’s another story...) Anyways – I wasn't there at the time but I can only assume that during the aforementioned ‘ballooning’ of the bag the smell was contained and the lump had become so fetid that it had gone beyond smelling or that Brendon was just as big of a moron as his mother, because without further ado he put it in a pot with a couple of litres of water and began the process of cooking it.

Again, having not been there at the time I will have to assume that either the water or the boiling process re-energized the smell because when I did return later that evening with our mate John there was a distinct odor to the place. When I questioned the hapless Brendon as to the source he commented rather inconsequentially that it had been a lot worse during the first stage of boiling and had gotten a lot better with subsequent water changes! Hmmmmm.

The friend John who I had been out with also happened to be the supplier of the meat and we were both fairly puzzled as to its distinctly greenish tinge around the outer edge and the curious odor which I thought I might have come across once before whilst working in a morgue. But being young and hungry (and a bit pissed and stoned) and seeing how Brendon had already scoffed nearly half of the chunk, we decided there was nothing to be lost by trying a little bit...

I managed a slice but decided it wasn't anything like the corned silverside I had ever tried and the spicing of it was downright funky. John, who I suspect was acting on guilt managed several slices before giving it away as “a little strange” and declaring that Brendon had added something to it whilst it was cooking and for lack of better words, ‘made a right fuck of it’.

John and I trundled off to his farm a little later on and proceeded to get thoroughly drunk which had the net result of my not heading back to Brendons until much later the following day after making a partial recovery.

Both John and I had noticed a degree of gassiness the previous night but nothing that you wouldn't expect when ‘tipping in’ the amounts of beer we were accustomed to.

When we finally made it back to Brendons it was to find him asleep in the fetal position dressed only in his under shorts on the grimy floor of the toilet.

Strange.

...and a little disturbing.

So of course we left him where he was amongst the dirt scum and pubic hairs and set about having a few beers to settle our hangovers. At some point he must have roused himself and headed off to bed. He emerged many beers later to inform us of the terrible plight that had befallen him, punctuated by his being interrupted every few minutes by a need to rush to the toilet and dry retch in sphincter clenching bursts that made my eyes water.

Well of course John and I nearly laughed our cocks off and spent quite awhile slapping each other on the back and coming to grips with that strange gassiness we had experienced the night before. We then spent several more minutes laughing at poor Brendon until finally he took the easier option and went back to alternating between his bed and the toilet.

We were tempted to clean up some of the vomit around the place but I had a sneaking suspicion that the dog was up to the job anyway because she had promptly developed a nasty dose of the shits and there were definately wet patches around the place that looked like they might have been vomit piles at one stage but now had the distinct appearance they had been cleaned up with a wire brush...

John and I decided to head out again later that evening and just as we were about to leave we heard a weak and frankly, rather pathetic wailing coming from Brendons bedroom.

“John... John”

so we stop and John hollers out a hearty “yeah mate?”

...”could you get me... a glass of water?”

Yeah, yeah I know it’s not all that funny but were all reasonably hard blokes back then so it was pretty amusing to us at the time and it took us both a few seconds to compose ourselves so as to not appear too callous, before John shot through to the kitchen to get the poor bugger a glass of water.

In all fairness as we were getting to the top of the street we did stop and ask each other if we thought he was going to be o.k. – only for a second mind before the lure of beer had us on our way.

We got back to Brendons late Sunday night to find his condition was quite a lot worse!

Luckily his mom had got wind of his illness and decided to come and check on him. One glance at his woeful condition and she whisked him off to the A and E at Auckland hospital where he was diagnosed with a severe bacterial and viral digestion tract infection!

They had kept him over the Saturday night and had released him Sunday after having pumped him full of anti-bacterial drugs and loaded him up with so many pills if you would have shaken him, he would have rattled.

It took him nearly two weeks to come right but to be honest after this episode I could never look at either Brendon or his mother and think they could actually ever be right.

Currently listening to:

del Amitri – Waking Hours

Ben Harper – White Lies for Dark Times

...of Range Rovers and work vans

2009-07-08T16:05:00.000-07:00

I thought it was time that I took a break from being the object of ridicule for awhile.

Yes I did receive a couple of emails saying ‘ohhh do tell the story of the heated handle bar grips’ but that was some fourteen years ago and it will take a little time for me to recall the details exactly.

In the meantime I thought to recount the unfortunate tale that befell a friend of mine who shall, in the interest of discretion remain nameless.

O.k – So let me set the scene, because that for me is the true essence of this particular fail/tale.

My friend; lets call him, “friend X” just to make things easy, had lived all of his life, along with myself and most of our other mutual friends in the area commonly referred to as West Auckland.

Auckland is divided along the four points of the compass and by being extremely and rudely stereotypical can be surmised thus: North Auckland is home to the more professional people of Auckland with large expensive homes, harbor views and rates to match. East Auckland has a wealthy Asian population also sporting expansive new homes and rates to suit. South Auckland houses the lower socioeconomic groups, mostly Maori and Polynesian and is sometimes, perhaps unfairly, described as the violent crime quarter of Auckland. West Auckland is seen, to a greater degree by the other quarters as the fast car, loud party, hard drinking, drug centre of Auckland. (I did say it was going to be stereotypical and rude!)

As with any area in which you spend most of your life it becomes, ‘home’ with most of the downsides minimized so that you become reasonably attached, in a territorial kind of way regardless.

Not so for friend X.

He had decided that he was tired of the loutishness and ‘hoonism’ that in my opinion adds a degree of charm and interest to the area. And so he decided to make the move upwards to the north of Auckland and so be free of cars doing burnouts in the middle of his street in the dead of the night or waking up to find somebody had lost control of their vehicle in the early hours and taken out the better part of the front fence and accompanying shrubberies.

Fair enough I suppose. But somewhere in the back of my mind a little voice kept saying “good one, I wonder how your new neighbors are going to feel about you moving in and completely lowering the tone”.

Anyway; a week after moving in and friend X is quick to extol upon us the virtues of living in his more up market place of residence. “No more loud cars, reckless drivers, roaming dogs etc, etc blah, blah, blah" - whatever!

Now friend X was the owner of several vehicles one of which was a rather grumpy looking Range Rover powered by a 400cu Chevy big block which had been ‘uglied’ up by having a Series 2 Land Rover body perched upon it and a roll cage thrown in for good measure. He was also a tradesman and had a long wheelbase van for use in the day to day running of his business.

One evening in that first week of moving in, he returned home from work in the dim light of early dusk and still being a little inexperienced with the steep driveway of the new house, misjudged the width of the driveway and ended up with two wheels off the edge.

Given the speed of the descending darkness he made the decision to leave the van where it was until the morning when he could, with some assistance from his housemates haul the vehicle back onto the driveway proper.

He awoke reasonably late in the morning to find that while he had slept his housemates who needed to be at work much earlier that same morning - had left. Not wishing to face his ferocious waking temper (or breath) they had chosen to let him sleep on. The grounds for this decision being fairly based upon the premise that he knew they had to leave early and if he required assistance he would ensure he was ready when they were.

By keeping to the very far left of the driveway they had squeezed past his trapped vehicle and merrily headed off to their respective workplaces.

Now, being a reasonably practical sort of chap, friend x took it upon himself to recover from this predicament unassisted.

He went about it thus: He backed the Rangie down the driveway from the house and parked it within towing rope distance from the front of the work van. He then attached a stout 4WD recovery strap to the back of the Rangie and the front of the van.

I know what your thinking – how does one person tow two vehicles? Put that to one side for a moment because that is really only half of the picture – we’ll come back to that.

Let me attempt to paint you a picture of this driveway.

Not only is it very steep but at the bottom of it and running perfectly perpendicular to it was a fairly busy road. This road merely divided the steep hill that friend x’s house was situated on the top half of. Directly across this road was another driveway which was equally steep but of course was headed down the hill. At the bottom of that driveway was what you would call “the neighbor across the roads” house. Hopefully you get the picture – steep hill, road running across it, some houses up from the road, some houses down from the road.

Now where was I... Ah yes – so how does one person tow two vehicles? Or more appropriately, why would one person want to tow two vehicles on their own given the circumstance!

Well lets face it we’re men and we may all be brave under pressure but you would be foolish to say we were the smartest of the sexes... Enough said.

So friend x piles himself into the four wheel drive from hell and figures that just a gentle yank ought to do it as he has no intention of attempting to pull the van anyfurther than simply back on to the concrete.

Well this proves to be a little tougher than at first expected due to the rut the vans spinning tires have created multiplied by the thickness of the driveway concrete.

Thus begins the real tale of woe.

Having unsuccessfully given the van several light tugs (if such a thing is really possible with 400cubes and a low range gearbox suited for climbing vertical glaciers) friend x not known for his tireless patience makes the foolhardy decision to bury the go pedal.

Yay! - The van pops magically out of its ruts, one more small yank and she will be on the driveway completely.

Funny isn’t it, how disaster always strikes when success is so close you can taste it.

With a sickening lurch the Rangie leapt forward just as friend x had suspected it would when the van finally rolled up on to the driveway – but no.

The van had in actuality made it up on to the driveway but at almost the precise same moment the towing rope came undone at the van end!

Unlike most stories where in situations like this, time seems to slow and everything else slows with it, this was not so for the van and its phantom driver.

Being that it was rolling backwards down a very steep driveway and the steering wheels were at the back it simply followed the contours of the driveway picking up speed at an altogether alarming rate.

By the time friend x had clambered from the Rangie and begun to run frantically after the fast retreating van it had accelerated to a frightening 50 – 60km/h. Not daunted by the fast approaching end of the driveway the van appeared to gather even greater speed before launching itself out of the driveway and tearing blindly across the road where as fate would have it, the neighbor’s driveway lay in wait with welcoming arms.

A horrified friend x had sprinted to the bottom of his driveway and across the street in time to see the accursed van gather ever more speed on the neighbors driveway only an instant before burying itself with a horrendous smashing of glass, crashing and tearing noise, half of it’s own length deep into the neighbors house.

As he stood there wringing his hands in woe and wondering which emergency service to call first two things happened.

One was the recalling of a vague memory to do with the parking brake in the Rangie, the second was a strange rattling noise coming from his driveway.

And so, just when friend x thought things could hardly get worse, they did.

Hello! – here comes the fucking Rangie.

In his haste to abandon the 4WD upon seeing the van making an escape from the towing rope friend x had failed to adequately engage the parking brake and now the 4WD too was hurtling down the driveway apparently intent on rejoining its escaped companion.

In a frustratingly inconvenient display of arrogance time now choose this exact moment to slow down. And with agonizing clarity and a painful feeling of impending doom friend x watch the behemoth of a 4WD sail across the road, down the neighbors driveway to plant itself with a sickening crunch two feet deep into the only remaining undamaged panels and windows in the front of the luckless van. This also had the undesirable effect of pushing the van the rest of the way into the bedroom on suite that had taken the brunt of its impact, ripping the bathroom vanity from the wall, rupturing the associated hot and cold water pipes from the taps to send showers of water over the whole rotten mess.

I suppose if there can be an upside it would have to be that through the whole debacle nobody was injured in the least, so long as injured pride is not taken into the equation.

But what will forever remain ingrained in my memory are my friend’s initial reasons to move out of west Auckland...

Currently listening to:

Pitbull – The Boatlift

SuperGroove - Postage

Of Electric Socks...

2009-06-24T19:00:00.001-07:00

Entry for June 23, 2009

We are currently experiencing a bit of a cold snap in Auckland and across the country in general to be accurate.

The workshop that I spend the better part of my days in is rather large and the air conditioning still hasn’t been installed so it closely resembles the cool store in the local bottle shop until about one o’clock in the afternoon. By three in the afternoon the temperature begins a rapid decline back towards perfect beer temp again.

Being that our primary business is the manufacture of battery charging system for industry there is no shortage of energy available in the form of batteries and surprise, surprise, chargers in my immediate vicinity.
That, coupled with the cold got me to thinking that some electric socks would be just the ticket for keeping my feet warm while sitting at my desk.

I figured they didn’t have to be too flashy as they would spend most of the day under my desk inside shoes with my jeans or overalls over the top.
So Monday night just gone I sat myself down on the floor in my lab at home and proceeded to weave some thin nichrome wire through a pair of long woolen footy socks I had selected for the job.

It was quite a lot more work than I had envisaged but eventually, after multiple foot stabbings I managed to get the wire fairly evenly distributed around the feet and half way up the leg section of both socks. I super glued a couple of ceramic connectors just below the top of the socks to connect my power wires to and was reasonably happy that by folding the top of the socks down over the connectors the whole shebang would stay in position so long as I didn’t decide to move around too much.

I had spent a few hours that day designing and building a simple adjustment device that by my best reckoning would give more than enough control over the elements now woven into the socks. I then wasted little time connecting this to a battery of a type I knew we had plenty of at work.

Eureka!

Success is mine
Or so it did at first appear...

Because I had to weave the element through the socks the nichrome wire came into direct contact with my skin in places and although I could have simply put the electric socks over the top of another pair of ordinary socks to overcome this problem I felt that in some ways that was inefficient and to some degree defeated the point of electric socks on the whole. I figured that I should be able to adjust the power into the elements to a point where the wire was not uncomfortable against my bare skin, yet still produced enough heat to be of benefit.

It was during that adjustment that things went horribly awry!

For no apparently good reason my controller decided that it would choose that very moment to lose all semblance of control and go from near minimum to flat out!

I gauge myself as a reasonably adept electronics engineer but for some reason when it comes to experiments I conduct upon myself I show a frightening lack of foresight or consideration for potential failure and the associated consequences.

If you feel so inclined see how long it takes you to completely remove a pair of reasonably snug fitting, long footy socks...

The flurry of activity that took place on the floor of my lab was dynamic to say the least!

The socks went from comfortably warm to suitable for the cremation of rhinoceros in the blink of a now watering eye. To further add to the ensuing chaos, my cat Walt had come into the lab while I was weaving the wire into the socks and settled himself on top of a pile of magazines in one corner and at my first bellow had levitated a good two feet from the ground, doubled in size and lit out for the door, legs peddling at the speed of light.

Alas, his escape was not to be so easily executed for as soon as his frantically scrabbling legs hit the ground they came into claw contact with the pile of magazines he had been sitting upon and they proceeded to shoot out from under him like so many cards dealt from the hand of an experienced croupier and in his effort to correct his lack of forward motion he misjudged the gap in the door and collided heavily with the door frame. The impact of the collision was enough to knock him backwards and off his feet – for a Pico second!
In almost the same movement he was back on his feet and headed in my direction.
The look in his eyes was unnerving to say the least and for a moment I felt a touch of panic, only for a moment mind because within the next, he was in my lap all 11 kilo’s of him.
Despite the pain in my feet I felt every claw.
Caught between my overwhelming desire to throw him from my lap and through the half open door and the need to get the twin induction furnace’s off of my feet, I failed abysmally at both.
Sure, Walt sailed through the door but not before managing to just barely hook a single claw under the tip of one of my nostrils and drag the other outstretched paw down my arm.

I hit the floor, writhing in agony, screaming a foul torrent of cuss words and tore at the socks that now had the similar feeling I would imagine you could expect if you were wearing wasp nests as shoes.
All of this occurred in a matter of seconds and the several seconds longer it took to remove the socks seemed to be drawn out by some strange bend in the time space continuum giving me ample time to not only receive multiple small burns on my feet but a fairly decent number to my fingers in to the bargain.

I ran through the bi-fold doors that separate my lab from the bathroom and turned the shower on my feet and hands and despite my panic was relieved to find that the damage was pretty minimal with only a couple of tiny burns around my heels and several more on the top of my feet and toes.
It was while I was still standing in the shower looking wistfully at my scorched thumbs that the socks caught fire.

Shit!
Shit, shit, shit!

Get the wet flannel - back into the lab.

Shit! Sore feet!

Damnit not woolen socks after all - wool and nylon mix

SHIT!

Smoke alarms gone off!

Fuck!

YES WALT - I want to be outside too!

Oh for fucks sake the nylons melted and stuck to the floor!

FML!

...so the socks have joined the homemade electrolysis machine in the junk pile and will not be revisited.
As I said to a friend; I really should have learned my lesson from the motorcycle heated handgrip exercise because that too was an exceptional catastrophe.

– It is also, another story...

Currently listening to:

Cold War Kids - We Used To Vacation.
Sheryl Crow - Detours

Of mice and men...

2009-06-24T18:48:00.000-07:00

Entry for June 09, 2009

Its been awhile but to be honest the busyness has been nothing more than mundane.

O.k, so this is one of those logs I am kind of hoping my daughter doesn’t come across until enough time has past that she might be able to see the funny side of it.

Alex has been looking after (if that’s really the right word for it, because it seems more to me like, held captive) two pet mice for the past two years.

She got them when they were very small and for quite some time they seemed more than happy to stay within the safe confines of their cozy wee cage. However as time came to pass and they became more adventurous they began to make nighttime forays out into the house to peruse the contents of the various rubbish bins situated throughout.

It was not uncommon for me to wake to the sound of Alex returning one or both of the wayward explorers back to their cage in the middle of the night having found that she was in fact sharing a bed with one or other or both!. Often we would notice them near one of the bedrooms and several hours later they would have returned themselves back into their cage, they seemed to come and go entirely as they pleased and in the end we gave up worrying too much as so long as they could get back in the cage we reasoned that they would at least be able to find plentiful food and water.

At first I was concerned about the possibility of interbreeding with locals who would often turn up from the fields out back whenever the weather started to turn cold. I was also concerned that mouse pee, no matter the miniscule size had a tendency to cause a powerful and long lasting odor that was extremely difficult to hunt down to source and certainly did nothing to make a house more welcoming.

This went on for quite sometime and I was pleased to find that neither of my fears were realized and although both Alex and I lived in constant fear that our cat would be found one morning proudly displaying the sad remains of Honey or Bella this too proved not to be the case. In all honesty I found it quite cute to discover one of these brave little ladies trotting around my feet in the kitchen, quite unperturbed by my presence. In some ways they were like really, really small cats.

Eventually one of the large field rats from outside decided to take up residence in the floor space below our dishwasher and before I had a chance to feed him the deadly green barley of horrible and intense thirst I believe he met with Honey and Bella because from that day to this, the two mice have never again left their cage under their own steam.

That was nearly a year ago and since that time Alex has grown and changed quite a great deal and the mice are not as attractive to her as they once were. As such they receive, in my belief the most frugal of attentions. Yes, she still feeds and waters them regularly but that is about the limit of interaction they have with their master these days.

So... last weekend I looked at these two (who I believed were looking at me pleadingly) and decided that their lives had more worth than old and forgotten toys and they simply deserved better than to be locked in a small cage never to be played with caressed or stroked and.... I took it upon myself to release them back to the wild.

Well it was the proper thing to do right?

I took them out into the back garden and found them a nice warm, dry and sheltered little spot up beside the house where the rain never gets to. There was plenty of dried grass for them to use as nesting material and lots of grass and flower seeds down by the soil for them to eat. There was also a large pile of old firewood that had been stacked right there but never used and it looked nothing short of perfect as a new lodging.

Sweet!

Problem solved.

Fast forward to today, Wednesday.

I hear Alex going into the spare room where the mice cage is... There’s the rattling noise of the mouse food container as food is poured into the bowl and then she emerges holding the water bottle. She fills it and returns to the spare room. I’m sitting in the kitchen, the hairs on the back of my neck all stood up and my sphincter drawn up to somewhere just below my neck, waiting, waiting... Next minute she appears at the door, flashes me her usual smile and heads off to her room to finish getting ready for school.

See – I thought to myself. You did the right thing; she didn’t even take the time to look for/at them and realize they aren’t there. So it was with a certain degree of relief that I went to shut the door to the room and pass a cursory glance at the now redundant cage...

Fuck me!
The little bastards had found their way back! And got back into the cage again!

Daryl. W

Currently listening to:
Blips via Blip.FM

Of policemen and speeding...

2009-06-24T18:30:00.000-07:00

Entry for March 17, 2009

I was stopped by the Police while driving down country yesterday. Yeah o.k so admittedly I was getting along a little quickly but only a touch over 120. As soon as I saw him, way off in the distance I got off the go button pretty smartly but damn those automatic’s for just cruising along and not offering any engine braking!

There's something that really annoys me about getting speeding tickets on virtually empty roads that are quite safe in my humblest of opinions, for twice the speed they are rated for!

So... screeching u turn and flashing blue lights.

I pulled over to the shoulder as soon as I saw his indicator go on and already had my license out by the time he finally sauntered up to my window.

“Morning sir” he greets me in the most annoyingly supreme manner, knowing full well it is certainly not going to be a good morning for me at all.

“Are you aware how fast you were traveling back there sir” he offers (still looking far too superior for my liking).

“Well given that this is a highway and taking into account the way the lamp posts were flashing past the side windows I was indeed aware it was most unlikely that I was out for a stroll, so yes” I replied, hoping for all the world that I sounded half as sublime as he and all the while proffering my most placating benign smile. (...was that a twitch I saw in the corner of his mouth, couldn’t be, this is a Policeman, everybody knows the Police have no sense of humor).

“Sir, do you understand why I have asked you to stop”

“Well” I replied feeling my ‘please just fuck off and let me go smile beginning to slip’ “I suppose it would be too much to expect that you have pulled me over to compliment me on my exemplary driving skills – yes?”

I have never, ever in my life got away with anything when the Police are standing next to my window like this guy was. But he laughed! And I mean he really laughed.

“Look” he said, trying ineffectually to stifle his grin. “The reason I’ve asked you to stop is that the speed limit through this area is 100Km/h and you were a little in excess of that”.

“Ah yes, I did surmise as much” I offered, “Perhaps I was just being somewhat over zealous on the whole”.

“The truth is” he continued, “I clocked you doing 119 and you are quite welcome to come over to my vehicle and see the display for yourself”.

“No, no not at all” I gushed knowing I was completely defeated.

“So... all I wanted to say sir was, please, just slow it down a bit o.k, I know it’s only 19km over the limit but that seems to be where a lot of crashes are happening these days, 100 is the limit sir, not the target”. "So please watch your speed and have a nice day sir".

And with that he was gone.

No ticket!

There is a god!

Maybe he used to wear a blue uniform?

Gobsmacked does not come anywhere near it.

So yay! to the Police, or should I say yay! to that Policeman – I don’t even know your name but you have restored my faith in Policekind.

Currently listening to:

Violent Femmes - Violent Femmes
The Black Crowes - Shake your Money Maker

Of Christmas trees and toilet rolls...

2009-06-24T18:29:00.000-07:00

Entry for March 04, 2009

It seems that Alex and I are a little unconventional when it comes to the day to day activities that most people perform by convention!

Now, where was I meaning to go with this... Ah yes - Last night I took down our Christmas tree... A bit late you say, honestly we just don’t give a sideways toss about that sort of shit.

I think last year we got it down just after Easter – which I thought was reasonably appropriate despite the odd looks and scornful comments from others.
The year before didn’t see the Christmas tree out of the lounge until about August! And then it really only happened because I bowed to pressure from my mom who insisted that she felt a little creeped out by it.

Alex and I just liked the pretty lights –

I think we find it so easy to live with each other because we live under a common premise – ‘Worry about the big things, the little things will take care of themselves’.

We worry about making sure that we are both as happy as possible, the fridge is full, school uniforms are washed, the car works, the internet works and the bills are paid, oh yeah and our family and friends are safe and happy – the rest can wait in our book.

Some families have arguments generated by the most smallest of “things” not the least of which is due to the monotonously repeated suggestions by parents, that a child’s certain behaviors change or be modified.

Alex and I consider most of these things fall into the “little things” category and rather than allow them to become a bone of contention we often choose to take the piss out of them.

For example: How many times have you heard the battle cry – “put the empty roll in the rubbish bin and put a new roll in the holder damnit – how many times do I have to tell you!”, when mom or dad have been in the loo for a few minutes?
Alex and I attempt to amuse each other by... not disposing of the empty toilet roll in the laziest way possible. My best to date, according to Alex was to leave the empty roll on the dispenser and plonk the new roll on top of it. She on the other hand took the cake in my view by storing the empty rolls on the handle of the toilet brush, although admittedly, throwing several empty rolls into the hand basin and leaving one on the floor beside the rubbish bin was a nice touch as well!
Sometimes we wear socks in the kitchen when we’re making dinner because neither of us can be bothered mopping the floor and it just seems a whole heap easier to throw dirty socks into the washing machine than get out the floor mop and bucket and argue over who’s going to do it.

Lazy? Maybe.

Efficient? Definitely!

So anyway the Christmas tree is no longer in the lounge – it’s now in the spare room, we leave it up and fully decorated, it saves going through all the hassle of re-decorating it and untangling all those lights next year.

...I know I deserve a bloody good clap round the head.

Much Love.

Currently listening to:

Fallen - Evanescence

Sucky dreams and work fails

2009-06-24T18:28:00.000-07:00

Entry for March 03, 2009

I only had one dream last night – best I can recall it went on all night because it was the only one I remember having both times that I woke during the night and I was still dreaming the same dream when woke up this morning - fretting and struggling frantically around the entire surface of my bed.

I dreamt I was at work and it was as hectic in my dream as work is in reality at the moment.

Man, now that really, really sucks!

So having spent eight hours dreaming about toiling through a hard day at work I had to get up and feel enthusiastic about a hard day at work... And that’s what I would have to call a nightmare – I really need to cut out the hot chocolate cake and ice cream right before bed – this shit is making me tired.

The netball season is upon us and every afternoon this week has found me watching Alex either trialing or playing. It’s no real hardship to be honest, everywhere I look I see young women running around in extremely short skirts, it is far from an unpleasant prospect...

It seems to me that Netballers in general have great legs, a bit like cyclists

***sigh***

My vehicle remains unwarranted – enough said about that particular Fail

Ahh, speaking of Fail. I had my first work Fail the other day. A customer had phoned me and asked me to identify a particular product for him based on size and color. Given that we produce approximately thirty different products that are the same size and color this was quite laughable. I asked if it was possible for him to photograph the product in question and email it to me. His response was that it would be difficult as it was installed somewhere in Whangamata and my counter response was that, that made it even more difficult for me!
Long story short, he jumped in his car and lit out for Whanga armed with his digital camera. Four hours later I received an email from him. Attached was an out of focus and blurred photo of the corner of the device which showed the approximate size and the color with all the critical parts like the model and serial label just outside of the frame.
Unbelievable! Four hours for nothing – FAIL!

At least I got to laugh a lot that afternoon and I suppose it’s nice to know that at any given time in the world there is somebody out there who is a bigger plonker than me.

My Birthday has come and gone again for another year. I think the best part about the day is I get to take the day off from work and given that this year it fell on a Monday the three day weekend was a hoot and allowed me to get to work on Tuesday under the influence of a reasonable hangover.

Currently listening to:

The Eminem Show – Eminem
Hip Hop Party – House of Pain
The Best Of – George Harrison

Of the benefits of red wine...

2009-06-24T18:27:00.001-07:00

Entry for February 23, 2009

I have decided that white T-Shirts are actually magnets for red wine!

I think the equation would be something like:

Any persons ability to keep a white T-Shirt white is inversely proportional to the number of red wines consumed at any one sitting.

Rats!

So February has indeed, as predicted by many, turned out to be a month filled with turmoil. However having had many discussions about said turmoils I find very little need to write anything more about the whole torrid affair and instead feel the need to move forward swiftly in order to leave the entire unsavory episode in the dust where it belongs.

The warrant on my vehicle has expired and I seem to be too damn lazy to do anything about it. I have a feeling that this is going to bite me with great pressure in the softest parts of my butt and I still cant seem to gather the chi to get off my ass and do anything about it - sheesh! when will I learn?

Still on the topic of red wine:- I noticed that my motivation to write seems greatly stimulated by the application of several (read - many) red wines and in conclusion I noted that one of the many advantages of the written word over the spoken word was
- at least when you write you cant slur!

My parting thought for this entry ran thus:

"Is it too much to ask, that people just be smart enough to know when they are being stupid"?

Also; I have become involved with the "Disclosure Project" but still have much more research to do before I tear into this with my usual enthusiasm or write here about it.

Currently listening to:

Past, Present, Future - Tiki Tane
Love Over Gold - Dire Straits

Of the run stop phenomenomenomenom

2009-06-24T18:25:00.000-07:00

Entry for February 19, 2009

Well it seems the super hot weather has passed.

It made me laugh the other day; I think it was Thursday 12/02/09. The hottest day in 120 odd years! And then Saturday rolled around and the temperature plummeted by 50% WTF!

Imagine the tourist that came to New Zealand during those three days. They’re on the plane on Saturday flying out of the southern hemisphere and they’re told ‘prep for hot weather’, New Zealand is having the hottest weather for 120 years and then they step out of the airport terminal (still on the Saturday) and fuck me its bloody 14 degrees Celsius!

Mind you it could be worse I suppose you could be somewhere in Victoria or Brisbane...

Which reminds me; I’ve been watching a lot of Community Channels videos on Youtube lately ( http://www.youtube.com/communitychannel ) partly because Natalie uses high definition and its nice to be able to watch a full screen Youtube video, partly because she is rather nice to look at and mostly because she presents some of the best observational humor on the internet these days IMO. Anyway in a recent clip she was talking about the run stop phenomenon you see occurring whenever a bus pulls up at a stop and some poor soul is not quite there yet. ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPjlJjeZWe0 )
It became pertinent to me yesterday while I was stopped at the lights and a middle aged woman did the run stop thingy. It seems so wrong but... she slipped and went ass over kite during one of the ‘run’ phases and the people in the car in front of me and those in the car behind laughed as hard as I did. It didn’t look all that painful but the ultimate insult was that as her handbag skidded to a halt halfway out on the road a large 4WD on the inside lane, which had a green arrow to turn left but had braked heavily for the handbag skidded to a halt on top of it and its contents. Realizing that they were not going to hit the stricken woman and obviously unaware of the handbags plight they drove off. They hadn’t, as it turned out driven over the bag itself, but of the many contents they had, including what looked like a cell phone one was a little blue plastic case which had either burst open or had been crushed by the behemoths tires and had poured forth an altogether alarming number of tampons.
So as the vehicle turned the corner away from all of us, waiting for our turn at the lights, we were greatly amused to see a little shower of tampons flinging off both the front and rear passenger side tires and one or two stuck firmly between the treads. And I thought looking foolish run stop running for a bus was bad enough.

Poor thing.

Currently listening to:

The Fame – Lady Gaga
The Lemon Parade - Tonic

Love

2009-06-24T18:24:00.000-07:00

Entry for February 18, 2009

Funny isn’t it how people can reach out to you over distance –
I personally, never believed it possible.

Yes; those that I have remained close to over these many years have become ever closer, but some I have never physically touched, have become as close. I suspect only from my perspective but that, is real to me.

To those few I speak of; I love you -

You know who you are, you know I speak of you – and yet, although we never touch each other’s hands, nor feel each other’s hearts as we embrace in greeting or parting, we feel each other’s pulse and we soar with our success’s and revel in the moments that endear us to each other.

Currently listening to:

When The World Comes Down - All American Rejects.
Now...Us - No Angels.
Relics - Pink Floyd

Christmas log

2009-06-24T18:23:00.000-07:00

Entry for February 10, 2009

This feels a little ... meh. Probably because I still feel a little ... bleh, but here we go :-

So... it’s been a rather long hiatus but with the return of the work routine it seems now is as good a time as ever to quickly catch up with the events of the past few months.

Christmas came and went in a whir of color, sound and beautiful weather.

Alex and I were fortunate enough to be invited to stay with Julian, Kelly and the boys up at Bayleys beach.
Darik and Ange were there also with their children Lucan and Alexsis, while Jeff and Krista showed up later, arriving on the afternoon of New Years eve.

For posterity’s sake I will write an account of the night of New Years eve and of New Years night itself but that will be somewhat of an undertaking and will require a lot more thought...

For both Alex and my part, the time we spent there this year will only further reinforce the already more than fond memories we have of this particular area of the country.

Good times.

We spent the following week at Whangamata. Alex took her friend Tasha.

It must have been one of the hottest years there on record. We woke up to 24 deg C and then it got hotter. We went to the beach, got in the water and stayed there!

It’s always nice to spend time with my mum and dad down there and it was one of the very few times that when time came to leave, I didn’t really want to.

Back to work for one week and I’m nailed by an intestinal virus, more on that next time...

Currently Listening to:

The Warning - Hot Chip
Get Your Ya Ya's Out - The Rolling Stones
Jan 2009 - Ministry Of House

Of turtles and failed rescues...

2009-06-24T18:22:00.000-07:00

Entry for September 17, 2008

14/09/2008

Daryl.W

I went for a drive up Muriwai beach today with my daughter and a good mate.

We came upon a turtle.

My friend thought it was a tortoise but as it turns out a tortoise is a chelonian that lives in dry conditions and has flippers suitable for moving them through sand rather than water – there you go, now don’t say I never offer any insight into the animal world.

Anyhuuuuu :-

We thought we would be clever and assist the poor creature back into deeper water as it was washed up on a stretch of typically rough west coast beach with nearly 100 meters of extremely broken surf before clear water.

I posted the video on my YouTube channel and I’ve put the link in the comments section.

When we got home Alex and I got to talking about our foray into wildlife rescue and it suddenly dawned on us – What if the poor bastard had just spent the whole day struggling and fighting its way ashore for a bit of a rest, only to find the inhospitable humans it first encountered turned him on his ass and put him back in the thick of it!

Shit! Shit, shit, shit.

What if it was a female and she had used up the very last of her energy coming ashore to lay fucking eggs!

Alex and I have decided that there is probably a damn good reason why the people who take care of these types of occurrences are called experts...

Douh!!!

http://nz.youtube.com/watch?v=3JZz9akt9xo

Of pet peeves...

2009-06-24T18:20:00.000-07:00

Entry for September 17, 2008

15/09/2008

Daryl.W

So hurricanes Gustav, Hanna and Ike have all but passed and again I‘m left wondering about the manner in which these events are reported.

Wind speeds and rainfall are always of interest to me but one of the measurements nearly always presented to us, is the estimated cost of the damage.

Why?

Why is it so important? Who the hell cares about the dollar cost?

What – am I supposed to be angry at the nasty hurricane for costing the insurance community a whole truck load of money?

Am I supposed to feel guilty that it didn’t cost me a thing?

No single individual is going to be getting their wallet out to pay for it are they?

Let’s face it, the number of zeros attached to the figures that get quoted, put the number straight into the “I can’t even imagine that many - anything’s, let alone dollars” category which means I forget it almost instantly anyway!

Guess it’s just me and one of those ‘pet peeves’ things.

Of Snot and moustaches...

2009-06-24T18:19:00.000-07:00

Entry for September 17, 2008

09/09/2008

Daryl.W

Im sporting a new and fresh faced look right now.

I had to shave off my pornstache and goatee.

The goatee had to go because of a slip with the clippers during a tidyup but the mo had to go for a reason I had never before considered.

I have been under the weather with a cold and a bout of flu.

A moustache is in no way conducive to efficient blowing and wiping of the nose.

Nuff said!

Of electricity and hair removal...

2009-06-24T18:18:00.000-07:00

Entry for September 17, 2008

27/08/2008

Daryl.W

Yesterday wasn’t what I would call a good day.

Alex had come to tell me that she was having her eyebrows waxed somewhere or other and an idea I had been brewing for sometime suddenly gained a lot more momentum.

Having to shave everyday pisses me off and for many years I had been toying with the idea of designing and building an electrolysis tool.

I sat and explained the theory to Alex but she seemed a little hesitant to let me experiment on her eyebrows.

So once again the job of test dummy fell to me...

Now the theory is quite simple; apply the prerequisite voltage across your skin and the tip of the hair you wish to remove – hey presto a current flows through the hair tip into your skin and fries the root – simplicity itself.

Armed with little to no research I moved immediately into experimental mode.

Problem: How much voltage would I need to apply across the skin/hair to create enough current flow to burn the root?

I reasoned that it would not take a lot of energy to burn the root, but it would take a reasonable amount of voltage to get any current to flow through hair.

Building the device I required to generate the voltage I needed was elementary enough and by designing it with a large range of adjustability it meant that I could – hopefully - gently increase the output until I achieved the desired result.

If I had of bothered to do a little more research I would have discovered that the small units already available to the consumer make it quite clear that a salt solution needs to be applied directly to the skin, both at the treatment area and where the other probe makes contact with the skin. The effect of the salt solution is of course to increase the conductivity meaning dangerously high voltages are not necessary in order to create the required current flow.

However, I had not bothered to do a little more research!

And so - somewhere around the 30,000 volt mark a small blue spark completely ignored the hair I was attempting to destroy and leapt from the probe tip directly to my skin.

It wasn’t so bad as electric shocks go. But it was very hot and it did kind of catch me by surprise and given that I had one probe sticky taped to my right hand and the spark had touched down on my left arm I was left feeling like an unwilling participant in a de-fibrillation demonstration.

The worst of it was that during my natural reaction to pull away from the diabolical contraption I managed to yank it off the bench in front of me and into my lap whereupon multiple sparks began to leap from the un-insulated terminations of the circuit board through my jeans and into my crotch!

Oh it burns, it burns.

Thankfully it all came to a close when, kicking and convulsing violently I fell heavily to the floor and most of the damned wires attached to both myself and the dastardly device ripped out.

Suffice to say the project has been binned. And if Alex ever wants to travel down that road I’ll recommend the device below.

http://www.folica.com/Vector_Electrol_d1790.html

**Note to self**

Never let an electric fence come anywhere near your testicles.

Of boredom...

2009-06-24T18:17:00.001-07:00

Entry for September 17, 2008

20/08/08

Daryl.W

I find myself in a very strange place at the moment.

It seems like nothing exciting is happening around me.

The kids are settled and doing well.

My parents are in good health and neither I nor any of my friends is in trouble with the law.

It’s a little bit boring.

I know it’s wrong but I could quite happily do with something dramatic to happen.

You know, like a building fire or a multi car pile up.

In a strange way it would almost be a relief if an airplane fell out of the sky, crashed through the workshop roof and blew my workplace to bits!

At least something would have happened!

I suppose the seven weeks of rain we’ve had doesn’t help.

I’ve had nothing better to do on the weekends but drink myself into a stupor and stare stupidly out the window wondering when the rain will stop and what I should drink next.

It’s an awful cycle really – I look outside and think; raining again, nothing for it but to get monked and then of course once I’m inebriated I start to hope it keeps raining so I have an excuse for getting completely wrecked. Once wrecked, I fall asleep and when I wake up the next day it’s raining again...

About the only small degree of excitement I’ve experienced in the last few weeks has been at the hands of my youngest daughter who I’m in the process of teaching to drive.

However unlike the hair raising and frankly dangerous episodes I was subjected to during her older brothers driving lessons, hers are much calmer and subdued efforts.

Perhaps this weekend will prove to be more interesting when I get her out amongst the other traffic. Hopefully we don’t end up at the bottom of the ‘multi car pile up’ I am so keen to witness.

Airplanes and tears

2009-06-24T18:16:00.001-07:00

Entry for July 29, 2008

24/07/08

Daryl.W

I had to fly to Christchurch to work today. It wasn’t too much of an unpleasant prospect really, except that the weather was pretty much crap. The weather forecast was for extremely high wind and torrential rain - hmmmm pleasant flying conditions ahoy.

So yeah, it was a pretty bumpy take off and it’s always made a touch more unpleasant when small children scream at the slightest hint of turbulence. But on the whole it was reasonably smooth once we got up to 32 thousand.

The day was unremarkable as work days go. Successful but all the same, unremarkable.

The flight home was the tricky bit.

Mundane as the day had been, I was tired.

I was up at 5AM in order to get to the airport on time and the flight home was delayed by an hour and a half due to high wind. I finally managed to board my substitute flight at about 10:30PM and wasn’t exactly feeling like the brightest lamp in the house.

Several things conspired to make it a little unpleasant on the flight home.

Firstly, I was sat next to the emergency hatch and the hostess took exception to the fact that I couldn’t give a rats ass about the delivery of her pox ridden safety spiel. And the situation only got worse when I informed her so.

I fly reasonably often so I am aware that as the person seated next to the emergency exit I am expected to remove the hatch if required and assist in the evacuation of other passengers. I also know that the life jackets are under the seat, the oxygen masks will drop from above if need be and I know the recommended position to take up if I need to brace for impact, enough already!

The second challenge for the flight home was the young girl seated beside me. Believe me, on the whole I have no problem with young women (I am sure those of you who know me well enough are more than aware...) She would have been about 18 or 19 years old and I would have said, a pretty wee thing except... From the moment we sat down she cried!

The flight is only an hour or so but this girl cried for the entire flight!

So what would you do in this situation?

Do you reach out and get told that everything is o.k? – annoying!

Do you reach out and then spend an hour listening to a sob story? – really annoying!!

Or do you do what I did and put your earphones in, turn up your MP3 player and bury your nose in your book. Really, what would you do?

Alex

2009-06-24T18:14:00.001-07:00

Entry for July 29, 2008

Daryl.W

22/07/08

My youngest daughter has been living with me for some time now. We share a fairly close relationship as you would expect with a 13 year old and her father. And given that I am the primary caregiver and have to buy and discuss feminine hygiene products and take her to do her own underwear shopping etc, we don’t have a lot of secrets.

However – today, something happened.

It started in the morning when her cell phone couldn’t be found. It was discovered missing at the last moment before leaving for the train station and due to the timing we couldn’t mount a very thorough search. Being that she had netball training in the afternoon we decided the best thing to do was for her to borrow a friend’s phone on the train journey home and she would message me to let me know when to pick her up. 4:30 rolled around and I still hadn’t heard from her and decided it might be best to head to the train station in case there were no friends on the train who could lend her a phone.

At 5:30 I was starting to wonder if we had failed to communicate and I decided to message her netball coach to see what time they finished training. I was still waiting for an answer at 5:45 when a message from Alex’s phone comes through explaining how the phone was in her school bag the whole time yay, yay and all that.

Sweet - a) She’s o.k.

b) She’s found her phone.

c) She’s 5 min’s away.

So we head our way off home and at the first set of lights I get a message from the netball coach.

“No trayn’n 2day, 2 wet, had a quick meeting & all finishd @ 3:30”

Hmmmmm.

So I figured – it takes approximately 20 min’s to get from school to the station where I pick her up.

So something went on for two hours.

I decided that I wouldn’t ask any questions or tell her I had spoken to the coach, if she didn’t want to be up front with me she must have a good reason and I wasn’t about to cause her any embarrassment.

I think its boys – I hope its boys.

The curiosity is killing me.

Of cavities and super glue pt3

2009-06-24T18:07:00.001-07:00

Entry for July 08, 2008

I would have to say that today was a particularly good day.

As per my last post, today was foremost ‘dentist day’.

I decided that seeing as the day was going to be cut reasonably short anyway it would be a good idea to book my truck in for a warrant of fitness in the morning, that way I could walk back to my house from the testing workshop and spend the morning lounging around waiting for my vehicle to be tested and trying to calm myself in the face of the slowly rising sense of dread for the afternoons coming events.

I had given my truck the once over and figured I was up for at least a couple of hundred dollars worth of remedial maintenance work that I simply couldn’t be assed doing myself before it would be given the o.k. So you can imagine my utter disbelief when I front up to the testing workshop to have the mechanic say “sweet as bro, she’s all good and that’ll be $40” – Stoked! So far so good, let’s just hope the dentist’s appointment goes half as well.

Yesterday, I decided, being that I could now open my mouth wide enough to get my fingers in there, that I should check the offending tooth for looseness. This was a decision I soon came to regret – I can’t be certain but I believe at the first touch I may have gone into shock and passed out for several moments because apart from a return of that obnoxiously loud gong and the lightening I can’t really remember a great deal. I resurfaced still atop my seat (thankfully) at the dining table but the left hand side of my face had been repeatedly bashed by some mysterious invisible assailant armed with a mallet. Was it wiggly? I had no idea and was not soon about to check again!

So back to today - at about 2.00PM I made my way over to Titirangi to meet my new dentist. His name is Rashid and I’m starting to dread even his name. I kept thinking to myself ‘gawd don’t let him be one of those officious little Indian bastards that comes off all – ‘you are velly, velly silly man’ because at this point I am a silly man with a very sore tooth, no patience and my nerves are pretty well shot as well.

Fuck with me now bastard and Im going to punch someone, mostly YOU!

Turns out I couldn’t have got it more wrong. Rashid is a young guy who greets me with a completely kiwi accent and a flippant sort of “gidday mate, hows that bloody tooth”.

You can’t begin to imagine the degree of relief that I was feeling about then.

So he gets me into the chair of great pain and death and he’s so casual and friendly that I’m starting to feel a bit guilty about the sort of mess I’ve made with all the super glue and Iodine and Janola that this really nice guy is going to have to now deal with. So I start to confess to my multiple sins before he has to have a look in there and he stops and listens while explain that it might be a little difficult to see exactly what’s going on due to my having to temporarily fill the cavity because the pain was a little intense.

Now - I’m expecting his attitude to go from amicable to scolding but no – third nice surprise for the day, he puts his tools back down and with a look I couldn’t really read having just met him, asks me to explain to him again the process for filling tooth cavities with liquid acrylic.

He laughed so hard it was a bit frightening and when he realized I hadn’t convinced somebody to drip the glue in the cavity but had managed to get it in there by myself with only minor inconvenience, I thought he was going to wet himself.

He finally composed himself and started to examine my teeth and asked me why I had not filled out my doctor’s name and the date of my last doctor’s visit on the questionnaire I had filled out in reception earlier. When I had made my appointment last week I had mentioned the infection that was ravaging my gum and jaw and he assumed I must have done a course of anti-biotics for that to have been cleared up.

Again he put down his tools and listened to my method of infection containment and once again he laughed so hard when I told him about the Janola and Iodine rinse that he had a little coughing fit and had to get himself a small glass of water.

Anyway he looks at the bastard tooth and without a moments hesitation says to me “yup, it’s got to go”.

Sweet no shitty root canal for Daryl.

So – a quick x-ray and two injections later and we’re good to go.

A bit of grunting, a couple of slip off’s, some weird creaking noises and the cursed tooth is gone.

Bliss.

After he cleaned the tooth up a bit he got out his camera and a little note book and started to examine it taking photos and writing notes in his book. He took the time to show me where the glue had run into the tooth and rather than fill the entire cavity it had instead made it’s way around the inside of the cavity and sealed the nerve endings into their canals. I guess it’s hard or illegal to find guinea pigs in this field to try these things out on so they gather what information they can from fools like me who try things out on themselves. The bottom line was he felt that really I should be applauded for being innovative in the face of a desperate situation and that Iodine rinses work extremely well on mouth infections, so no harm was really done. 4th nice surprise for the day.

It is only fair to admit at this stage that he was not impressed when I told him, in answer to his question, that the reason my teeth were so very white at the front in comparison to the back was most likely due to my discovery that, Jiff works really well on teeth. And despite my protestations that the labeling gave strong indications that it would not damage enamel and did not operate by harsh scratching he would not be convinced

Ah well two out of three aint bad.

Rashid likes me and he is my friend.

It was a good day.

Of cavities and super glue pt2

2009-06-24T18:06:00.001-07:00

Entry for July 08, 2008

So, to the events following my last post -:

Well eventually the fantastic cyanoacrylate filler I had managed to administer to the cavity in my wisdom tooth fell out. Having had such an enormous degree of success with the first application it only seemed sensible to proceed immediately with a repeat effort. And although I did finally triumph over the various obstacles this procedure offers it wasn’t without its mishaps - the least of which found my fingers thoroughly adhered to my goatee and a reasonable sized blob of acrylic stuck firmly to the hair and skin on the inside of my left nostril.

Nonetheless I was once again free from the agony that wisdom teeth can bring, or so it seemed...

As it turned out the gum directly around and below the tooth had become infected and despite pouring ever more glue into my mouth a small but certain level of pain persisted and continued to increase over the following days.

Having had some degree of success in the past with a Janola gargle I decided the time for a new attempt was indeed ripe.

Let it now be said – do not try this at home kids! Janola is truly the household cleaner that keeps on giving. Over the following hours my attempts to rinse the ghastly stuff from my mouth seemed only to regenerate its flavor! And so, with gums steaming, eyes streaming and the inside of my cheeks closely resembling the bottom of a budgie cage I staggered to my car and blundered recklessly to the chemist and bought myself a bottle of Iodine solution – the effects of which, when diluted correctly were far more optimal than the nasty old Janola rinse, although truth be told the initial reaction between the two was quite spectacular!

Four days later and I had managed to get hold of the infection to such a degree that I could now open my maw wide enough to shovel teaspoonfuls of food in and with the food came the eventual return of my sense of humor.

It was probably two days later when the letter from my daughter’s dentist turned up in the mail to remind me that her yearly checkup was due.

I took it as a sign and made the decision to make an appointment for myself at the same time as making one for her.

The infection has cleared up completely now so next week when I hear those dreaded words “open wide now” it won’t be necessary to strike the poor man in the scrotum.

Of cavities and super glue pt1

2009-06-24T17:56:00.001-07:00

Entry for July 08, 2008

Confession time.

I haven’t been to the dentist for 25 years, I haven’t had to.

I brush morning and night and any other time I think I should.

Funny enough I was only recently bragging about the virtues of my invulnerable pearly whites and lo several weeks later whilst picking my teeth with a small thumbtack - I discovered a cavity!

JESUS WEPT!

Now that shit hurts.

Having only had three cavities in my life and all but one of them at primary school, I can’t remember what tooth pain feels like. The way it wraps itself around the top of your head and makes one eye water. The way you lose any sense of which tooth hurts because it feels like your whole jaw has just been smashed by a hammer. Special.

Anyway, after the initial discovery I tried my best to put it out of mind. And basically for about 6 months my cavity and I shared a reasonably peaceful co-existence.

That time is now over.

The pain sort of comes and goes. But the other day, the pain stayed.

I called a dentist I was recommended and asked if he would pull that big ole bad boy out. He advised me to visit the hygienist for a couple of appointments and then he would have a look at what could be done with the tooth. Frightening how short tempered you become with a tooth ache.

An idea had been brewing in the back of my mind ever since I first discovered this cavity. I probably shouldn’t even be talking about this but… I wondered what would happen if I bunged up the hole with super glue. It seemed to me that the problem was that the tender little nervy bits inside the tooth were a little exposed now that the tooth around them had gone. Soooo if instead of tooth there was a thick layer of acrylic stopping the tender bits from feeling cold wind or fluid a great deal of pain might be avoided.

I’ve been using the stuff for years on the kids and my own wounds and it seemed to be quite safe and a whole heap more efficient than sticky plasters.

I got to work yesterday and after my morning cup of tea collapsed into a state of shock as the sugar smote me directly in the cavity. My god that is outstanding!

So with one hand clapped across my head and the other held out in front of me so as to avoid stumbling into anything while I floundered blindly across the workshop I struggled my way to the nearest desk I knew had a bottle of Loctite 406.

Now despite the blinding pain and the deafening crashing in my ears the voice of reason did manage to make itself heard and I admit for an instant I felt some degree of trepidation. The damn stuff is so viscous and so quickly heated by body temp that it’s virtually impossible to tell that you’ve got it on your skin – what if I fill my whole mouth with the sticky shit and glue my whole mouth shut.

Several more lightening flashes of bright light and the striking of a very large and ancient gong that seems to want to split my head from ear to ear and I’ve got the tip of the bottle jammed into the cursed cavity. I tilted my head to one side and gave a gentle squeeze.

There was no taste, no smell, no feeling whatsoever, until suddenly the back of my throat set. Gawd! Then my cheek stuck to my teeth and my tongue set to the bottom of my mouth faaaaarrrrkkkkk. I tried desperately not to panic and interestingly the lightening and the gong had vanished from existence in that single moment.

As it turns out (I did quite a bit of research – later) cyanoacrylate sets instantly on contact with water and although I had quite a bit of it stuck to my cheeks and tongue because they were wet when I applied the stuff it didn’t really bond. So effectively I ended up with a mouthful of harmless thin plastic and after a couple of minutes my cheeks and tongue came undone.

Yeah, yeah it wasn’t all that great an experience and it took another five minutes or so to get rid of most of the excess but...

The glue flowed nicely into the cavity on both sides and the bottom and went off like cement. The relief was almost instantaneous I would have to say from a pain level of 8 out of 10 to a barely noticeable 2 out of 10. Twenty minutes later I would say 0 out of 10 and apart from the rough edges here and there and the odd bit of plastic stuck under my tongue I could drink chilled water and breath air over the tooth again. Magic!

As I mentioned earlier I have done a lot of research into this field since and although nobody recommends this practice as opposed to proper dental treatment it is common practice in many emergency wards and has been used as a temporary fix by many expedition medics involved in climbing, trekking and hunting safaris. It is very low in toxicity and although originally designed for use in making rifle sights it didn’t really become a hit until the early 70’s when it was first used by surgeons to stitch together a human liver.

So if you ever wake up in the early hours of the morning with you ears ringing and the feeling of a very large vice being slowly tightened around your jaw remember, if your very careful not to get the shit in your eyes or better still you have a partner who is as adventurous as you are incapacitated bust out the super glue and fill that sucker with acrylic.

Revenge

2009-06-24T17:55:00.001-07:00

Entry for April 08, 2008 Revenge

Revenge is a dish best - ordered!

Have you noticed that most queues move slowest when it’s your lunch break?

It’s probably just that you’re somewhat more conscious of the time but it’s frustrating nonetheless.

Today I found myself in a queue at the McDonalds in the local mall. It wasn’t as long as it sometimes can be, but it was moving about as fast as the queue on vasectomy day at the local doctor’s surgery.

I know it sounds impatient of me, but I have obviously been laboring under the delusion that fast food - was fast! So waiting in a queue for five minutes during your lunch break is much like pulling teeth with a pair of very powerful yet small tweezers.

I waited another two minutes so I could say to myself I had given them a fair try and then I spat the proverbial dummy.

I was just frumping away when a young lady armed with a P.E.T finished with the pair a ways from me and shuffled toward me and asked if I would like to place my order.

Given my level of dissatisfaction at this point the opportunity she offered me was irresistible…

“Ahhhh, yes” I responded.

With that, I proceeded to order most of the items for sale that would require making, entirely to order and also require the most expensive condiments. I figured approximately $70 – $80 worth.

She handed me a little slip of yellow paper and blithely wandered off to the next unfortunate.

I took this as my cue to slip away un-noticed - and proceeded immediately to the nearest Burger King.

Ah… how satisfying.

Filet o fish be damned.

Daryl W.

08/04/2008

Dreams

2009-06-24T17:54:00.000-07:00

Entry for April 07, 2008

Have you ever had a dream you could fly?

Did you wake up with the memory so vivid that you still believed you could!

Isn’t that so cool!

It stays with you sometimes until you try again and then realize that the wondrous light feeling you felt in the dream isn’t with you in wakey time.

Quite often when I’m just about to fall asleep or awaken, my dreams become most lucid.

I flicker, somewhere between what is and - what might be. Details that flash across my mind seem to have originated from a single moment and become part of who I am and what I am - almost like a memory, even though that moment only just, came to exist.

Hmmmmmm…

I love this experience.

I go to bed at night wishing for another. Every night - another…

In these moments everything – anything is possible!

Sure it’s not really what some around us might call - real. But for just that small moment it is… and money or anything for that matter could never put you closer.

Isn’t being human fantastic!

I love it!

(Never believe for one instant – that thoughts that exists in your mind are not real)

Daryl W.

07/04/2008

Of Trains...

2009-06-24T17:52:00.002-07:00

Trains

With my daughter Alex starting a new school this year a review was needed in the area of transportation.

The options where reasonably simple: catch the bus, catch the train or the least reliable of them all – catch a ride with dad. The bus was ruled out almost immediately as that would require more than one and catching a ride with dad was less than optimal, due to the time we would have to rise in the morning in order to make the trip time less than an hour due to rush hour traffic. It was agreed then that the train was in fact the best option.

Admission time –

I had, until this time, never ridden on a train.

Worked on them – yes, traveled as a passenger - no.

Why, well to be honest, it has always seemed fundamentally wrong to me that an object weighing several hundred ton and packed with human lives is propelled down a steel track at pace and the “driver” doesn’t have a steering wheel! I know, I know naïve and foolish but it just never seemed right.

I feel like a bit of a baby now having said that.

Anyway, we made our way to the train station in Henderson where I was to discover the first surprise of the day, trains come every fifteen min’s – what! Not randomly and unpredictably with timetables that change daily and without notice like the bus, but every fifteen min’s, I’m impressed. Further to that, the train we are wanting to catch is early, yes that’s right early and unlike the bus has not simply carried on to the next stop so the smirking driver can ignore the people running desperately towards the stop, no it is stopped and waiting. We board to find the coaches well lit, tidy and air conditioned; this only seems to be getting better!

There’s a strange feeling of superiority attached to riding a train I discovered. It comes from watching everything from pedestrians to Kenworth trucks stopping and waiting as you sail serenely past at a level crossing.
Lovely

So twenty five minutes later we rock our way into Baldwin Ave stop, some, oh I don’t know, twenty five minutes faster than I could have managed it in the car!

Suffice to say; I am now a huge train convert, not only is the train prompt, predictable and reliable, it’s cheap! It costs me twenty dollars a week to send my daughter to school and wouldn’t you know it there’s a train station at the bottom of the street my work is situated on.

All I can say is if you haven’t taken a train ride lately through your local area try it, you may be as pleasantly surprised as me.

Daryl W.
19/03/2008

Mystery

2009-06-24T17:52:00.001-07:00

Mystery

A good friend asked me to explain the phenomenon of gravity to him the other day.

It got me to thinking.

In these days of science and with the Internet and the plethora of knowledge that is now available to us via that medium, there is not much left to our imagination. The mysteries of the world appear to be dwindling.

Fear thee not. If ever you begin to believe that mystery will soon belong only within the realm of fiction, just think “Gravity”

Right at this very moment some of the greatest minds of the world, perhaps of all time, are arguing, theorizing, postulating and experimenting in an effort to understand the miracle of gravity and still it remains a mystery.

Myself – I will always have three mysteries to carry me through those times when it feels that another question that need not be answered, has been.

1) Where did we come from and why?
2) What happens when we leave?
3) How the hell does gravity work?

Okay, I know as much as the next 7th form physics student: Big things attract small things but, WHY???

So for all of you who like myself, believe some things should just be left well enough alone, rejoice in the knowledge that smarty pants man is not quite as clever as he would like to think he is and mystery will still exist on this planet for what I hope to be many years into the future.

Daryl W.

28/11/2007

Its hot!

2009-06-24T17:51:00.001-07:00

It's hot!

O.k so it’s officially hot in Auckland.
I’m not going to complain mind you; I mean really, I’ve been waiting all winter for this! Thirty degrees centigrade is a lovely temperature for the beach it’s just a bit of a prick when you’re stuck inside at work and you don’t have air conditioning.
Everybody around me seems to be somewhat lethargic and at the same time a little scratchy. Funny that my nose seems to become fifty per cent more acute at this temperature which is quite unfortunate given that everybody is perspiring one hundred percent more!
You’ve got to laugh though; as I’m writing this it is twenty five degrees, it’s 9.00AM and we have just had the second deluge for the day – Auckland! Three types of weather here, raining, just rained or about to rain!

What really bites about working in this heat is that health and safety regulations dictate that footwear other than jandals need to be worn in our workplace and I lose a large percentage of my heat through my feet. So I’m sitting here barefooted at my computer pretending to be working so I can cool down to the point of not falling asleep at my desk and face planting the display. And all the while a little voice in my head keeps saying “pull a sick day – you need beer – beer will make everything o.k – real men don’t work in this heat, they drink cold beer by the pool – beer – beer – beer – beer”....

Ah well, better just man up, roll a smoke and get my black ass back to work, although you know, a person could end up real sick with the humidity this high and all...

Daryl W.
22/01/08

Of mobility scooters...

2009-06-24T17:50:00.000-07:00

Entry for March 31, 2008 Danger Don

I was involved a few years back with a company that manufactured mobility scooters and a friend of mine developed the speed control system for these wee beasties.

To put it simply, when these scooters went out to the public we set all the power controls to ½ ie speed to ½, torque to ½, I.R correction to ½ etc, etc. with this setting they were easily capable of pulling aircraft out of hangers and that was where we sold a lot of the evil little bastards.

Anyway one Friday we got on the piss at the factory where they were made and needless to say, boys being boys, eventually (read: when completely liquored) we got one of the scooters that was waiting to be dispatched out and cranked all the controls to max.

The chap who owned the business was a lovely old guy Called Don. Now Don was no spring chicken at 75 and by no means a fly-weight at about 100 and some odd kilograms but bolstered by the numerous beers he’d managed to slip under his belt he felt it was his responsibility, nay – duty, to test out the ability of his product in “Hyper Mode”.

Behind the factory was a substantially steep incline, comprised mostly of loose clay, scrub and gorse. He started out well. Approaching cautiously and picking a good line.

But not to be denied our fair share of blood we stood below shouting entirely sensible advice and encouragement like “feed it the fat you old fool”, “give it some you poofta” and “give us a go and I’ll show you how it’s done you wanker”, you know, good kiwi stuff. Well poor old Don finally bows to increasing pressure and at three quarters of the way up the bank (a good twenty five feet above us) throws the throttle wide open.

Well, bugger me sideways, the infernal contraption stood up on its back wheels, throwing Don from his perch and into a 15 foot free fall almost to the bottom of the hill where he came to a tangled, twisted stop, and in his unconscious state - started snoring!

Not to be put off by having lost its pilot the wretched machine, still at the top of the hill, flipped over itself and proceeded to roll end over end back down the hill smashing the throttle lever on one particularly spectacular bounce. It finally came to rest on top of the long suffering and unconscious Don with the back wheels spinning at a fierce rate. The demon machine then took a firm grip on poor Don’s trousers and tore over the top of his unconscious form to go careering into the back wall of the factory where thankfully, it dissembled itself with a ferocious bang.

Don as it turned out suffered a moderate concussion, a broken arm, two broken ribs a torn scrotum and had all but four teeth in his top plate ripped out by the scooter running over him, the torn scrotum came from the high speed wheel tearing up his trousers while he was unconscious on the ground. Of course being that we were unaware of the extent of Don’s injuries we spent quite awhile rolling around on the ground pissing ourselves before we realized that he hadn’t moved.

Suffice to say, Don developed a renewed sense of respect for his machines, unfortunately - I can’t say he felt the same way about us.