KEY POINTS:
A Jafa visiting New Zealand's tourist mecca, Queenstown, didn't find it all that hospitable. First, he telephoned the information centre to ask for the address of the Queenstown Returned Services Association, "usually known as the RSA?" The reply was: "Is it something to do with recycling?" Later that day, the Jafa tourist fronted up at the Loaded Hog and asked: "Do you have fish and chips on the menu, please?" Yes, they did, but they cost $19. He made a hasty retreat to a Taiwanese restaurant, which served fish and chips for $6, with salad. The following night at the Pizza Hut he approached the bar bearing a depleted wine glass. "Sorry, we can't serve any more drinks as our licensee manager is away today. Serving up to now has been our mistake." Thirsty Jafa tourist returns to his seat wondering what overseas folk must think of the dry bar and eatery.
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A 102-year-old has been granted a 25-year, £200,000 ($550,000) mortgage. It will run until he is 127. The pensioner, from East Sussex, is believed to be the oldest person in Britain to be granted a mortgage. He faces repayments of £958 a month on the interest-only loan and intends to pay them from rental income and make money from the property's increase in value over time. He is said to want "to get into buy-to-let" and to become a late-in-life property entrepreneur.
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Ken Syme was earwigging at the Auckland Zoo on Sunday. "We were at the Pridelands enclosure which contains giraffe, zebra and ostrich and I overheard two young men talking to a female companion. "Look at the emu," said one. "That's not an emu, that's a moa - what the Maori used to eat!" said the other. Go, NCEA."
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Jon Addison writes: "Please tell Warwick Thompson of Milford to stop bleating about a couple of small electrical gizmos in his view. His neighbours in Manukau are faced with 70m-high steel pylons in the middle of their views. And they are for electricity he, not they, will use. Now that is visual pollution of the environment in the extreme."
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Aaron Amor of Massey is tempted to wonder if the Guerrilla Poets have ever heard of little known fellow artists called taggers. "They, too, are very enthusiastic in their chosen pastime, and happily display their artistic impressions anywhere the general public may gaze at their work. I'm sure the Guerrilla Poets are passionate about their verse, and rightly so. Poetry is good for the heart, soul and mind. But choosing to write on the fountain in Aotea Square could quite easily have them being mistaken for those other artistic fellows, and we don't want that now, do we?"
