fbpx

Browsing category: Uncategorized

  • November 2, 2008

    my guitar now has three strings.

    it wasn’t so bad the first time the flatties broke a string. i was assured it would be paid for. no rush, seeing as i dont really play anymore, but i figured it would be done sometime. then the other day i noticed another string broken. and then today i walked past it and saw it was down to three strings. FFS! i’m perfectly happy to share but a little respect?

    if i could afford to, i would so live alone. living in a house this big without any help cleaning takes a helluva lot of time. after doing the dishes, gotta clean the stove, which invariably has some kind of unidentifiable gunk caked on, then wipe down all the benches. take out the rubbish and recycling – even after sticking a notice on the bin (PLEASE EMPTY ME WHEN I GET FULL) only the boyfriend has taken any notice of it whatsoever, for which i was ridiculously grateful. there’s the floors to sweep and mop, carpets to vacuum, crap to pick up, oven and microwave to clean, shower, toilet and basin – cleaning alone is almost a fulltime job.

    feeling a bit bad for the boy. signed him up for an Auckland Uni study where they give him party pills, hook him up to a machine and read his brainwaves. or something like that. got paid $60. on the friday night he bounced at a friend’s party and made a fair bit of cash. but being all hopped up on BZP the next day he frittered it all away without hardly knowing where it went. felt quite sorry for him. he was feeling pretty sad and stupid afterwards. although $50 of it he gave to his mum, which was nice if a bit excessive.

    unfortunately in doing a ‘favour’ for those friends before the party involved him driving out to helensville, getting fined $150 for their broken light and $400 for the three of them in the car. he assures me they’ll pay for the light; however they may not pay for all of the $400 which pisses me off. No more fucking favours for them, it’s too expensive.

  • November 2, 2008

    So I got my copy of Verve with my two stories published (although without a byline) last week, along with my cheque. YAY!!

    However – my wharf story was hideously edited and chopped out any mention of opposing viewpoints. I was so proud of managing to get comment from an informed resident who didn’t agree with the proposal. That was ALL edited out. Pretty disappointed. I hope to be able to use the story in full next year for my portfolio, and maybe follow the issue up later as well seeing as it’s going to be an ongoing one. Just goes to show how much business interests affect editorial. I guess they wouldn’t want to piss off one of their big supporters.

    I desperately hope the lady I interviewed does not see the mag, seeing as after all that hassle, everything I wrote about her was cut – and she was so passionate.

  • October 30, 2008

    Bullet points

    • I’ve always dismissed the idea of being a freelancer. Freelancers are flakey, insecure, don’t get benefits. I didn’t think I would have the discipline to get anything done if I didn’t go into an office every day. But writing for Verve and Cafe Philosophy this year has shown me that i could, in fact work from home. It would be really  nice in some ways. No more rushing around in the mornings or waiting for buses that are invariably late.
    • I’ve been finding it hard to draw the line between advertorial and editorial. Writing my Unitec story, for example. But I think an easy way to look at it is to see if there are any news values, ie, writing about Unitec if it was just opening, vs what I wrote about the courses it offers – basically a plug for them
    • I was freaking out not long ago about being 20. Two entire decades. But at some point I realised that I have plenty of time. The general plan is to work for a couple of years, then go overseas once the boy gets qualified (he’d be a couple of years behind me) and then work/travel for a year or two. then, in theory, come home and hopefully be able to buy some sort of place to live in. By then I’d still only be in my late 20s – not even 30. Pleeeenty of time.
  • October 30, 2008

    Bless you New Zealand

    I’m so glad we have ACC and a national health system.

    I would not want to live in a country where you’re terrified to go one week without health insurance and you couldn’t afford it on your own without your employer subsidising it. I would not want to be rushed to hospital and get sent a $7,000 bill a week later.

    I read today in the New York Times about a woman was afraid to get pregnant as it would cost eight grand to have a baby.

    That being said once I get into the workforce I plan to get health insurance, assuming its affordable either thru work or through T’s work (lucky bastard gets free insurance and cheap insurance for family). I’m going to do this way because I want to afford the little extra things, like a coybely pocket doppler during my pregnancy and all the educational toys afterwards. It’s just one of those things it’s good to have, and one of those things you want to get while you’re still healthy and while it’s still cheap.

  • October 30, 2008

    Crappy work situation

    Things are kinda depressing at the moment. The boy has been going to work and regularly getting sent back home (about half the time). There’s just no jobs happening at the moment, and if no one’s contracting them, he’s got no work to do. Having your income almost halved is somewhat inconvenient.

    What can we do? Could try and find another job. It sure wouldn’t be in the same field – it’s dead out there (except possibly in the South). Could spend this time retraining and go into IT or something. the reason we’re trying to stick it out, and have been for months, is he’s due to start his apprenticeship. or he was about four months ago, but with all the upheaval of staff apprenticeships have definitely fallen into the ‘not a priority’ category. Apparently it will right itself after New Year, and things will be back on track and he can start getting accredited, but that’s still a bloody long time away. Another 10 weeks of going in only to be told to go home, and do nothing. Thank Christ Monday was a stat holiday.

    It would be ideal if he could do some kind of odd jobs on the days he has off. Still thinking on that one…

  • October 28, 2008

    The dating scene

    I’m so incredibly glad I don’t have to date. Going through the whole dating process sounds like hell on earth. I just can’t be bothered. Talking about yourself and rehashing the same old stories and facts over and over, pretending to listen to people who really don’t interest you but it’s only the start of the night, getting dressed up and going out on weeknights when you just want to slouch in bed in your robe with a bowl of chili and Outrageous reruns on the telly.

     

  • October 25, 2008

    Thoughts about Twilight

    it really bites to have a book you love continue, as a series, and watch it go downhill.

    i heard about the twilight series pretty late, long after they’d been rereleased with their pretty new covers and stephenie meyer’s name was getting big. i remember loading a story about her from the HoS and the name vaguely sticking with me. then one day i was in whitcoulls browsing, waiting for the hour when my bus would come. i spotted a book with a black cover, a girl’s hands holding a red apple, titled twilight.

    so i picked it up, realising it was the book from the article, and flipped through…read a few pages, not particularly expecting much, and was hooked. not that that says much, everyone who knows me knows i have somewhat unsophisticated literary tastes. but from that day anytime i had a spare half hour or so i popped into the store and read a bit of the book. i made it all the way through to breaking dawn, which i’ve nearly finished.

    the series has its faults. the description is at times laborious and unoriginal. but as i’m a skimreader i normally glide over those parts anyway. her writing from other viewpoints isn’t all that great. i really didn’t like the sections told by jacob, ie, a huge chunk of breaking dawn.

    as the series got more fantastical and far fetched, i started to like it less, but i had to keep reading. knowing there were more books meant i had to read them ALL, no matter what.

    i’m not sure what it is exactly about the series. i guess i’m just a hopeless romantic. although personally i would have gone with jacob, the much more earthy, fierce choice. i could never understand exactly why bella liked the whole cold, hard, pale thing in edward.

    for a couple who were mean to have this deep undying love for each other, it seemed pretty shallow at times. all she ever said was about how impossibly beautiful he was. that and the fact that he was far far too good for her, and she could never understand why he was with her.

    the secondary characters are really something, i’m envious of their powers. that’s probably the other thing – they seem to be the family i would love to have, freakishly enough.

    as for my other favourite books, new jess darling book out soon! we shall see what happens with her and marcus.

  • October 24, 2008

    Thoughts on Austin Hemmings

    it’s really interesting for me as a comms student to observe the different viewpoints of us, studying the media, and then seeing the other side of issues at work.

    key example: austin hemmings. people were outraged and flooded the paper with emails about how disgusting and disgraceful it was to print a front page pic of the sheet covering his body with his shoes still visible. cold and harsh as it may sound, i didn’t feel a whole lot about it either way . i figured they were illustrating the story, it wasn’t a closeup, it’s all in the pursuit of truth, getting all the facts out and telling a story. of course i could understand why people were upset, i just didn’t particularly share their opinion.

    then our tutor explained, in her unimitably intense way, that it was done because it was such a hideous, heinous crime – yes, it was there to shock, it was meant to make us feel ill to drive home the fact that this was random, unplanned and totally shocking.

    i’ve tried, i’ve really tried to imagine how i would feel if it was a relative of mine who had been the body in that picture. how would i have felt? i honestly did not have a problem with it. i tried to imagine it under different circumstances. having been run over by a bus? shot in a robbery? murdered in cold blood? yes, in those situations i started to not feel so okay about it.

    i think for me it was the fact that he would have died trying to help someone. that element of heroism. that made all the difference and was why i couldn’t quite agree with everyone who was completely outraged at the publication of that picture. like it or not.

  • October 23, 2008

    College in America

    Online learning is certainly the more effective option for students, but it’s also better for the environment.The Open University in Britain have found that online courses equate to an average of 90% less energy and 85% fewer CO2 emissions per student than traditional in person courses.

    I’m really glad that I didn’t have to go to uni in America and I was educated by Trilogy Education services. The whole college selection/application process sounds so soul destroying. Being the high stress, low tolerance for rejection type of person I am I don’t think I could have handled it. Plus, it’s just so frickin competitive. I so couldn’t have matched up.

    Online schools have been set up to allow students to study and pursue their academic goals without having to be physical present in a campus. This mode of education is more convenient, affordable, and effective.

  • October 23, 2008

    The R word

    Yay, recession.

    It bugs me that over the last few months as interest rates soared, the rates on loans soared in kind. Yet now they’re starting to fall, I’m not seeing a corresponding drop. Surely it has to come sometime. And yet the rate on my Fastsaver plunged, literally a day or two after the OCR cut announcement.

    Things are going bad at the boy’s company. He’s getting sent home every week because there’s no work for them. Which is all fun and games since he gets heaps of downtime to mess around in, until the week after when his pay packet’s a helluva lot thinner. especially considering that he’s paying down debt at the moment, every dollar counts. we really need his full pay, more preferably. everything extra helps. and with the car needing a warrant this week, god knows how much repairs are going to cost. bloody money suckers. I know how it bores him to stay at work cleaning and doing crap stuff, but as long as he can stand it, as long as he can wring something out of it, it’s gotta be done. But when he’s got to stand around waiting for a “possible” job to crop up, all the while unpaid (they have to allocate their timesheets by jobs so the company can bill their clients) he may as well go home and chill out, hang out with people, clean and do chores (ha, yeah right).

    We had the joy of having a meeting today about “cutbacks” (first time I’ve ever seen the editor in persn). I now know how many staff we have too, and it’s fewer than we think. Soon to be a few less, with a handful of redundancies on the cards (not in our department fortunately). I guess getting laid off happens to a lot of people, but it’s never really hit close to home before.

    Guess it’s not the best time to ask for a raise…

    • Previous
    Next