KEY POINTS:
"Rangitoto was looking quite 'active' on Friday," says Jo Anderson of Milford.
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A reader forwarded a lovely email from a senior manager at his company, obviously grateful to the generous person who provided morning tea today. It reads: "Subject: Attention pigs. Would the 'person' who brought in the muffin box and just left it with a knife inside in a mess on the kitchen table remove it and clean the mess immediately before I find out who is responsible."
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A Russian tank crashed through a villager's house in the Ural Mountains after the crew stopped to buy more vodka at a nearby shop. Images from a mobile phone camera showed the tank hitting a corner of the house and a laughing, and apparently drunk, driver awkwardly trying to clamber aboard with two bottles of vodka. The Army promised to pay compensation and said the tank must have been broken and must have fallen behind a column heading to a test site for exercises. Earlier it said the vehicle slid on melting ice. (Source: Reuters)
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Many Aucklanders have been brought up with the keep left rule (we drive on the left, so we walk on the left) and say there used to be a line painted on Queen St footpaths to enforce it. "It was so much easier when our mayor Robbie had a line painted down the middle of the footpath, everyone kept to the left and the foot traffic flowed beautifully," says one reader. Another claiming that Queen St was much busier back in the 50s and 60s, recalls: "In my youth, the police on the beat in Queen St always moved us to the left or the kerb if talking to someone." A few insightful readers say the failure of this rule to reach the greater Auckland population manifests itself in shopping trolley carnage every weekend at Pack 'n Save, Mt Albert.
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John Lewis says keeping left is pure Darwinian evolution. "The Grim Reaper employs a fleet of wide trucks and buses with protruding side-mirrors plus the occasional DIY carpenter with lengths of 4x2 timber sticking out of the passenger window. Pedestrians foolish enough to walk on the right have their backs to these weapons of mass destruction and are removed from the gene pool, leaving those who walk on the left, facing such hazards, able to see and avoid them and thus survive to breed."
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Michael Wright, however, reckons the real footpath hazard is not a matter of left or right, but "people moving at about 1km an hour, or even stopping suddenly while they gaze into their 'phobile moans' at their latest urgent txt. But while I'm slagging off at the young, cities vary very much in how alert peds are to other peds but, alas, I think the alertness is declining. I often get held up behind groups of young people, fatter even than me, sauntering side by side without a thought that other people might, possibly, want to move fast. And get off my lawn, while you're at it."
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A good reason to stick to the left on Queen St: "Can anyone tell me why the council installs such dangerous temporary sign bases?" asks Mark Hancock. "If you searched Wikipedia for "trip hazard" the same photo would surely appear."
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Today's Webpick: A Japanese game show does an interesting version of 80s anthem 'We Are The World' with their top celebrity impersonators. One word. Hilarious. Watch it here.
These are the very best online videos from Ana's online magazine Spare Room.
