the wheels on the bus are skidding on fish

Snapper

Have you got a snapper card yet? Honestly have you tried to buy one? Whatever you do, don’t ask if there isn’t a sign in the window.  I made the mistake of asking at a couple of places where I’ve bought my trusty 10-trips in the past.  I wont be making that mistake again.  I’ve read the news reports that some of the retailers aren’t happy at what it will cost them. Now I’ve heard it from the retailers directly. $2000 to buy the machine to load the cards and those who weren’t part of the early trial are bitter at missing out on getting one free.  I don’t know what they used to make from the 10 trip cards but they tell me they get 20 cents out of the 25 cents the user pays to top up the card – that’s if they don’t top-up online for themselves or set up an automatic payment.  Plus you can top up at $300 a go – that’s a lot of 10-trip tickets so they must be losing out there as well.  The list of grievances doesn’t end there either – I won’t bore you with them all but have you seen how much space the snapper machines take up on the counter?

So I don’t hate the concept but I think the roll out could have been smoother.  I’m used to using an Oyster card and this will be no different.  It is annoying having to keep your card out till the end of the journey though.  Given the lack of bus shelters in the suburbs I’d rather have my umbrella in my hand in winter.  The first time I heard snapper in operation on the buses I found the bubble sound the machines make kind of quirky but a week later it is as annoying as key beeps on a cell phone.  I hope they can turn those off or the drivers will go mental.

it has just got to stop

Torchwood novel

In the last month or so I’ve devoured 3 Doctor Who novels and 4 Torchwood novels.  What was I thinking? I keep telling myself I should be reading something more worthy but you know what, it’s winter, it’s cold and it’s perfect snuggling under the covers with a book kind of weather.

There are six Torchwood novels available and 3 more to be released at the end of November, those can be Christmas holiday reading if I can wait that long.  Every novel so far has been 250 pages but the font sizes vary so they’re not all the same length.  I love that I hear the voices of the characters, Jack Harkness, Gwen Cooper, Owen Harper, Toshiko Santo and Ianto Jones as I read the books. It is a little disconcerting having to think about where they sit in a timeline with the television series.  I think the next three will be odder with Owen and Tosh still featuring.

I’ve enjoyed them all but Slow decay is my favourite.  It brings Gwen’s partner Rhys into the story and the monsters in that story are quite fascinating. Those other more improving books can just wait till I’ve finished my Torchwood stack.

living with passion

Link to Randy Pausch video on Google home page

Randy Pausch died on Friday.  If you haven’t read his book or watched his last lecture, you should. Like many others, I was inspired by his story.

UPDATE Wow, Google have placed a link to the You Tube clip of the Last Lecture on the google.com homepage.  I think that’s a very cool thing to do.

cinders on the frosty stuff

OMG $20 for a programme! Are you serious? Apart from the rip-off cost of the programme, Cinderella on Ice was a magical evening. The Imperial Ice Stars are at the beginning of a 2 year world tour so I am pleased to see it before it has become tired. We were sitting in the heavens and roughly in the middle so it wasn’t a bad view of the chorus numbers.

The costumes were amazing – some of them are worth more than NZ$10,000 – that’s amazing considering the amount of use they are going to get. I suspect some of the cost of that is in the special fabrics, the non-slip ones for some of those throws. There weren’t too many un-planned sitdowns in the show.  Just one I spotted and one hand on the ice.

I was fascinated with how they get an ice stage so quickly. The start the stage off with bags of crushed ice and spray it every 15 mins or so till eventually they have 3 inches of ice.  They keep the stage at minus 15 degrees.  On the way in there were notices to keep your coats with you, but sitting way up high we were still pretty toasty. I think it might have been a little cooler down the bottom. You can check out a video of how it is done. Note the swishing ice skating sound if you use the drop down menus on their site.

kia ora shortland street

How fantastic, Shorty was captioned in Te Reo on Wednesday night. You can view it through TVNZ’s On Demand. A shame they’re not doing it all week but I guess it is expensive. Maybe next year the speech will be in Maori with captions in English.

angry shouty man

I work in a team responsible for a service and this week we’ve had a few technical issues.  We’ve been working like lunatics to get things back to normal and we know we’ve inadvertantly made things tricky for some people this week.  We really really have been trying to fix this.  People have emailed and phoned to complain and we’ve done what we can.  We apologise and offer the same service through another channel.  We know it isn’t ideal but mostly people are understanding. Mostly they realise when they talk to me on the phone that I’m not personally setting out to make their lives a misery.  All except Bob. (That’s not his real name.) Bob works for a government department.  Bob is angry.  Today Bob decided to vent his spleen at me. He’s bloody lucky I didn’t hang up on him, I came very close.

I had dinner with friends tonight and we talked about how we deal with angry people.  We all came to the conclusion that we wait too long before we hang up. It is hard to challenge bad behaviour in complete strangers and harder when they’re not there in front of you. If Bob had been in the same room I think it would have been quite threatening, I would have walked away – so why didn’t I hang up today?

coffee and allah

More film festival movies today.  Six NZ short films this time. Three were brilliant and three were ho-hum so I just won’t mention those. Roseanne Liang’s Take 3 sees three young Asian actresses auditioning for parts.  There are a couple of classic moments when they are asked to speak with Asian accents and perform Kung Fu moves.

This is her begins with conception and ends with childbirth. During the birth the mother to be flashes back to “that bitch” Kylie, the 6 year old who in twenty years will steal her husband. Directed by Katie Wolfe, this is a black tale of love.

Coffee & Allah

The movie I liked best is Coffee & Allah.  I’d expect to enjoy anything to do with coffee but if you’d told me I’d be raving about a movie featuring badminton, I’d have told you you were nuts. A movie where the dialogue was almost incidental and coffee forged friendships. In fact I wondered what it would be like to watch it with no dialogue and no subtitles.

an accent to make you melt

Stone Rose audio book cover.

It is fair to say I’m a bit of a David Tennant fan. It can also be said that I simply adore a scottish accent.  I can listen to such an accent for hours on end. I’ve just spent a most enjoyable afternoon listening to The stone Rose a Doctor Who audio book.

It was released in 2006 so isn’t new, it is just that I’ve only acquired it recently. 

It is written by Jacqueline Rayner and the story is set, well, mostly set in ancient Rome. Of course with the usual and expected dollops of time travel you spend some time in the modern day and and 2375.  The tender moments between Rose and the Doctor warm your heart though the story is one of those you can almost see coming.  The title does that for a start. There were some cringe making moments as you just knew what was coming next and some “appropriated” themes for the sub stories – the midas touch, aladdin and the magic lamp.  At least the GENIE didn’t only grant 3 wishes, but the fact I was waiting for it sort of spoiled it.

Plot issues aside the thing that makes this a must listen to book is the narrator.  David Tennant read the book doing all voices.  It is a most lovely experience. He narrates in his own scottish accent which also adds to the experience. He has the intonation and speech patterns of Rose done perfectly. The accent I love the most is Rose’s mother Jackie’s. He doesn’t make the voices farcical but captures the character of each person in the story brilliantly.  I wish I’d had David to read me bedtime stories as a kid.

awww, poor little broken veitchy

Okay, so I have no personal knowledge of any part of the Veitch fracas and “lashing out” and am just another blogger adding to the noise but I just can’t help myself on this one. Honestly, having your friend come out and complain that Veitch is being trialled by the media is just ridiculous. Does he actually think that’s going to garner any sympathy?

The man works in the media and made statements to the media.  Now I know the big mean Dominion broke the story but if even half of what’s been said is true he has some questions to answer.  And for someone who worked in the industry, to think he could deliver a statement of euphemisms, crying privacy and think he could leave it at that – it wasn’t very bright really.

Maybe he’ll think twice about “lashing out” in the future.

a complete history of my sexual failures

There are some topics not everyone could make a movie about.  Chris Waitt reviews his past loves on a quest to find out what went wrong.  He seeks out former girlfriends to ask why they dumped him.  Not surprisingly many don’t want to revisit these parts of his life. One of the few women who will speak to him is his Mum and she manages to line up a few reunions for him. Most helpfully she’s retained the love letter he received. His Mum loves him but she’s not blind to his faults and points them out to him.

Having exhausted any avenues for insight from those in his past he sets out to gain new experiences.  It transpires he regularly fails to get an erection so pops a dozen or so viagra.  Initially he thinks they’re not working, but he should have waited. He finds himself then desperate to find anyone to have sex with.  Drunkenly and with a painful erection is lurches from street to street asking every women if they’ll sleep with him. One lass takes his number but is in a rush.  Another tell him he’ll have to buy her lots of drinks, “just like everyone else”.  Eventually he mistakenly asks a policeman.

His quest for self-realisation takes him to a Dominatrix. Chris does not enjoy the experience of having his genitals whipped. Nor did any man in the audience.  The guy before me crossed his legs and protected his own appendage with his hands.  I’m sure most men in the audience were doing the same while all around them insensitive women laughed.

The movie has a happy ending when he realises he has a text from the lass who took his number.  She doesn’t seem to find him the lazy, always late jerk which the majority of his girlfriends did. A very funny documentary, well worth seeing if you get the chance.