Complaining by the numbers
"Access to Maungarei/Mt Wellington is now blocked to cars belonging to the general public by a huge gate," writes Julie Chambers. "Apparently, the road is available in special circumstances if you call the Maunga Authority who have been 'co-managing' Auckland's volcanic cones for a couple of
years. I recently had to wait over 20 minutes for the authority to answer the phone. So I complained. The gentleman on the phone gave me a 'complaint reference number', something like: 1912091308341R ... What could the number mean? Has the authority had over 1,912,091,308,341 complaints since it took over?"
Midlife rut in life's road
Age, we're told, is just a number. That number, however, can be a key indicator. An economics professor at Dartmouth College studied data from 132 countries to measure the relationship between wellbeing and age. He found mid-life crisis was real, the age of peak misery was 47.2 years and it could be linked to a breakdown in social relations that came with middle age, such as divorce. He added that the 2008 financial crisis triggered the rise of individualism against a backdrop of falling social connectivity. This led to a breakdown with community and made it very hard for the vulnerable undergoing a midlife crisis. (Via The Telegraph)
Words you didn't know you needed
