"A few years ago my friend and I were staying with my parents in the Coromandel over the New Year period," writes Emma. "Cellphone coverage was non-existent, but we desperately wanted to check our NY text messages. My dad kindly offered to drive our phones (while he was getting coffees) to the next town as there was coverage there. This was dutifully done and he returned triumphantly - but with no messages on the phones! He couldn't understand that the message would stay on the phones, so he had diligently noted all the messages down in his notebook and proceeded to delete them!"
What gets schools all riled up
What did you get in big trouble for at school in NZ?
1. My friends got suspended for mooning from a school bus. They had "sexual misconduct" put on their school records.
2. A girl in my year wore a badge that said "f*** authority". When asked to remove it she simply pointed to the badge. Badass!
3. I was threatened with suspension for organising a 7th Form anti-'81 Tour protest.
4. I got suspended for owning up to having had a cigarette at 7th Form school camp, after a bunch of my friends got caught red-handed. Missed the final school ball and everything. Lesson learned. Never be honest.
5. A mate was going to be dux, but even though we left him passed out at home after the ball, he biked into school the next day, went to Stats and puked out the second floor class window. Got suspended. No more dux.
6. I got threatened with expulsion by a deputy principal for selling Coke. Luckily, the principal thought it was entrepreneurial.
7. I got away with a warning from the dean for running a book on the 1990 Football World Cup. Tidy little earner.
8. I plastered then-PM Jim Bolger's campaign bus with 'Keep Left' stickers during a 1996 campaign stop.
My 5-year-old came home and told me he had done gymnastics for the very first time. I asked him what he did and he said he walked along "a big stick" that had a "giant pillow underneath it", in case you fell off and that some girls had "jumped on a spring and flown over a piano".
Beer served with guilt on the side
Guilt-free beer in the US is about to be ruined by a nutrition information panel. Consumers know each swig is a carb grenade, but now they are going to have to read about it. Although the Beer Institute's new nutrition labelling guidelines are voluntary, according to Motherboard, "the six largest brewers in the country, which collectively produce more than 81 per cent of beer sold in America, have all agreed to the new label standards."
