Sideswipe

Spotted on Waiheke - and you thought property prices had gone crazy

With Sydney's angry young men nutting-off across the Tasman, a suburban Pakuranga homeowner shares a unstereotypical experience with a group of local youths: "I heard some commotion outside my property last weekend and found a group of seven teenagers, of all cultures, sitting leaned against my fence. One was very much the "worse for wear". They'd obviously been partying and wouldn't leave their comatose friend. To cut a long story short, I advised them to get off the roadside and bring their buddy into my garden. Having checked that their mate was okay, I gave them a sleeping bag and some garden chairs to sit in. With a message to keep it down and make sure they checked on their friend, I left them. They were gone in the morning, chairs neatly stacked and sleeping bag rolled up and placed by the front door. On Monday night I answered a knock at the door to one of the teens, who presented me with a card and a gift-wrapped box of some size. He thanked me for what I'd done and was very polite. Point is this, we run down our teens and tar them all as drunken hoons, but it seems to me that a little kindness and understanding works better."

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An unmarked police car has parked illegally, twice in two weeks for two hours each time, in a bus-stop outside a building in Quay St. According to a concerned reader, the officer inside appeared to be using a videocamera to capture motorists running red lights by the Ferry building - turning the camera off and on in sync with the lights. The irony is that this revenue-gathering sting is outside the same building that was burgled in August and despite being supplied with full statements, the description of the burglar, the screwdriver he used to gain entry, the make and registration number of his car and a windscreen wiper off the car that was captured by the landlord when the burglar drove off in haste, the police have done nothing about the burglary.

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The New Oxford American Dictionary has selected "podcast" as the Word of the Year for 2005. Podcast, defined as "a digital recording of a radio broadcast or similar programme, made available on the internet for downloading to a personal audio player," will be added to the next online update of the dictionary. Runners-up for the 2005 Word of the Year include: IED (improvised explosive device, such as a car-bomb), squick (cause immediate and thorough revulsion: "Was anyone else squicked by our waiter's piercings?") and trans fat (fat containing trans-fatty acids, considered unhealthier than other dietary fats.) (Source: Yahoo.com)