MUL1TT

Driving in Mordor is an eye opening and rectum closing experience. For the most laid back people outside of Jamaica, the Kiwis seem to be totally different behind the wheel and each and every one of them seems to turn into Steve McQueen when the engine fires up. There doesn’t seem to be any malice, they simply want to get from A to B in record time and have no patience when it comes to cautious foreigners. Most cars seem to have a few dents and it probably goes a long way to explaining why the majority of them don’t have insurance. Also, I've noticed that as a universal rule in any English speaking nation, nothing says "fat chavvy slapper driving" better than a pink fluffy steering wheel cover and a "Princess on Board" sticker. Horrific.

Number plates in Auckland are quite interesting, though, in that there are a lot of personalised ones. The five or six character alphanumeric plates are often used for business purposes (for example MUMS2B is the plate of a midwife agency not a couple of lasses who are up the duff) or to describe personal attributes. This week I have seen 1RISH, KOSOVA and SAMOAN as well as the rather more disturbing HUMMER (on a Humvee and hopefully nothing to do with the sexual practice enjoyed by the huge Pacific Islander driving it), MASTER (I’m assuming a Dr Who fan rather than an S&M fetishist) and COWLDY (which I’m not even going to speculate on).

The other amazing thing about Auckland is that the mullet appears to be alive and well here and have seen a couple of stunning examples being sported by different creeds and ages. I saw one the other day that was down to the waist.

I really need to get one or two captured on film but they seem to be like Bigfoot or UFOs in that you only see them when you don’t have a camera.

Arrest Me

About a week back, we bought some wooden furniture off Trade Me, which is a local equivalent of Ebay.
We travelled to a lock up garage down the road and after meeting the bloke, his partner and his several offspring we headed home with the furniture where it sat in the garage awaiting my attention.

Today was the day I had set aside for staining the scuffed wood so I duly emptied the drawers only to find a whole host of paper info about the seller. Interestingly, all of this info consisted of police reports and court summons for non payment of rent. Whilst leafing through the small rainforest worth of police reports over lunch it became clear that the seller’s main peccadillo of late appeared to be stealing stuff and then selling it on Trade Me. As the stuff didn't feel "hot" I haven't rung 5-0. his favourite trick was the frankly genius move of contacting someone selling a car, finding out when they were available to let him view it and then throwing in some probing questions to discover when they weren’t around. So, he’d arrange to go see it at 6pm, he’d turn up at 3pm while they were at work and make off with the wheels. Unfortunately, the Napoleon of crime failed to show up for the viewing later in the day thereby alerting the suspicions of the seller.

But that wasn’t all, his list of offences include multiple counts of contravention of protection orders (domestic violence), wilful damage, burglary, trespass, dangerous driving, assault, breaching community work, dangerous driving, driving while disqualified, fraud, drunk driving, obtaining money by deception, failure to answer police bail and of course the theft of motor vehicles. There were some questions about overdue library books too.

Now, having the kind of family and friends I do, none of this is shocking but for one bloke it’s quite a CV, even with his multiple aliases (5 according to his rap sheet).

He’s left NZ now for a job in Australia, where I understand they used to deport criminals to back in the day. It’s funny how things go in circles…

Xenu is a b*stard...

Two observations over the last couple of days. Firstly...news reporting.

The wife has recently decided to extend our feline family by a factor of two and now the three strays who inhabit our back yard are being cared for, fed and watered until such time that sense or the SPCA can prevail. So, it was with some dread that I listened to the afternoon news whilst wiring some sockets in which it was revealed that the stray moggy population of Hobbiton has soared to 150,000 mews and rising. As such the SPCA is quite unable to cope with the numbers and will only rehome/collect cats if it qualifies as an emergency involving serious illness, injury or if the mouser is a member of a known terrorist organisation. After this news report, the afternoon DJ said that giving a cat for Christmas was laudable, but "if you abandon it, you're a bit of a bastard."
Apparently this type of language is perfectly acceptable for the airwaves over here and it won't be too long before unsuspecting callers are addressed as "f*ckstick" and "c*ntface" on a regular basis. They might even make a drinking game out of it. Assuming they haven’t already.

Secondly, we passed the Church of Scientology yesterday and though I am usually quite tolerant of religions (even though they are all made up to stop humans going mad with the pointlessness of it all), I have decided to make my New Year resolution early and promote these freaks to the top of my shit-list. I’ll give ‘em Battlefield Earth.
As luck would have it, the "Church" is actually situated right next door to an Irish bar called McGinty's, so my first task will be arranging for the clientele to be mixed up. I'm sure it will go down a storm when they mix up L.Ron's birthday (March 13th) with Paddy's Day.
I'll post the casualty reports when they come in.

The Blade of MAF

Picture the scene...Brit contacts courier agency to ship a box of files to Middle Earth. After weighing the package, sufficiently padding it and insuring it against theft, loss and Balrog terrorism, Brit waits in all day for DHL to collect the item, missing out on valuable social gatherings and a mobility scooter fair in Crossgates. The package is eventually picked up and arrives in NZ and as luck would have it is held up by customs arm MAF. Cue emails and calls to the couriers who confess that they are powerless in such circumstances but will do all they can to help. Which is very little as it transpires.

The couriers have outsourced to DHL NZ who say they will clear it with customs for a further 168 Hobbit dollars, which is jolly decent of them. The alternative is that we sort it ourselves, but if we don't do it in 5 working days (hello rapidly approaching Christmas, when the Kiwis effectively shut down for 2 weeks) then they'll charge us a storage fee. Probably $167.50 or something.

Anyway, by a stunning coincidence, we had a MAF officer here today looking at our imported items for traces of cocaine and catnip. The two boxes he had to examine were actually in the garage. Pickfords had dropped the entire amount off a few days before telling us we could unpack everything except those two boxes as MAF wanted to check them. So, they left the boxes with us to show to MAF. Really. Had we actually been smuggling stuff in we could have just taken out the contraband and resealed them. MAF and customs would have been none the wiser. As we are honest folk we were justly rewarded when the MAF officer said the couriers are “a bunch of bastards” and gave us some good info on how to get it sorted for no extra cost.

In other news, I can heartily recommend the knife range Forever Sharp. After enduring a 10 minute presentation at The Warehouse where the salesman chopped up veg, a wood block and a steel hammer (no lie) I was given a free sample blade which I have used for several days on various food items, wiring and packing boxes. The surgical stainless steel blade even remained razor sharp and untarnished after I buried it a quarter of an inch into my thumb earlier this afternoon.

Should Frodo Baggins ever lose Sting, the people at Forever Sharp have his back.

Mission Bay Shorts

Shorts. The Kiwis seem to live in them. They wear them for work, they wear them to the beach, they wear them about the house and they probably wear them for sport too, the maniacs.

Mission Bay is a busy local hotspot for short activity. I say "busy" in its broadest possible sense, because as you can see by these here snapshots, it gets about as busy as a weapons amnesty at Killingbeck Police Station.

They have the beach shorts, the jean shorts and the going out shorts. They have the surfer shorts, the tennis shorts and the khaki shorts. Even the women wear the damn things, which is all very confusing.

I'm sorely tempted to buy a Roger Moore style safari suit to show these bozos how to dress in the tropics.