WhatAWeek

Man, that week was crazy. Last Friday I was actually experiencing stress – I don’t get stressed very often – about the coming week and what I needed to get done by when. And it was, indeed, extremely demanding. And I’m not out of the woods yet, I have about twenty crucial emails waiting for replies, a major writing deadline to hit in the next couple days, another only-slightly-less major writing deadline to hit in the same time period, another key sekretproject deadline to hit the same time again, and a bunch of promises to deliver on too. Whew.
Mon thru Thurs I played tourist with visiting Gar and Jackie, which was quite marvellous, but actually very tiring. It was nice to wander through Te Papa yet again and realise that I still haven’t seen all of it, eight years after it opened. And experiencing the many delights of Foxton through foreign eyes was a treat.
I am in Karori now, housesitting again. Getting grumpy with the buses. They are not living up to their hype so far. I hate waiting for buses. It’s broken time, sacrificed waiting for something that might come in twenty seconds or maybe twenty minutes, impossible to relax. Really, really hate it. And there has been entirely too much of it lately. Nor am I excited to see that in a week, the price of the bus journey from where I’m staying to town more than doubles.
The train between Auckland and Wellington is being withdrawn on Sept 30. I am very upset about this. I have used it, and was planning on using it again. The rail system has been systematically run down across a decade of privatization, and now it’s in a serious financial hole. It’s a disaster for our national transport network. We can do better than this. My grandfather would be saddened, but probably not surprised, to see what has become of NZ rail.
NZ’s run in the basketball worlds is amply discussed by learned bodies in the previous post’s comments. Refer there for much insight. We didn’t, in the end, walk away humiliated, going out on our best game of the tourney, but it still wasn’t near our potential and to make it hurt more, Argentina’s performance made the game entirely winnable. Oh well. No point stressing about it. Will try and find time to watch more games, because it’s fun. The US look like they deserve to win, based on how they just played against Australia – which is a radical change from every major international event since the first Dream Team played waaaay back in the day.
I want to see Snakes on a Plane more than United 93.
I have lots of political stuff backing up that I want to blog about but I think it’ll all fade from my head before I get a chance to do so. Count yourselves lucky.

13 thoughts on “WhatAWeek”

  5. “The train between Auckland and Wellington is being withdrawn on Sept 30.”
    Don’t worry, they’ll be back. We’re fast approaching a time when air travel over such a tiny distance as within New Zealand will be considered an extravagant waste of resources, and trains will be re-instated as an alternative to business people falling asleep and dying while driving overnight between Auckland and Wellington.

  7. From a friend’s review of Snakes on a mofo Plane:
    “You really have to check all logic at the
    theatre door, but there were a bunch of funny moments… The cast is mostly competent — the characters serviceable (one actually was a character)… Not nearly enough Samuel L. Jackson… My advice is to drink heavily.”

  9. And now I apologise for hijacking Morgue’s blog for something somewhat off-topic….
    What we need is a BBS ‘peak oil’ board.

  10. And thank you very very much for the week! It rocked. New Zealand, in general, rocks.
    And yes, the days of cheap air travel are numbered. Why do you think I’m blipping around the world now? 🙂

  11. I just can’t see the train between Welly and Auckland being viable/useful. I think it is a massive pity to lose it, but I’ve taken that train and would be extremely loathe to do so again given a choice with flying. I took it 10 years ago overnight, and I think it is cheaper or around the same price to fly today than what it cost me on the train back then. Not that price is the main factor…it took something incredible like 12 hours, and it was friggin uncomfortable. What would be needed is a high speed train between the two, something along the lines of the German ICE or the French TGV. However, the reality is, NZ doesn’t have the population to support it. As much as I think that trains and public transport should not be profit focussed at all, in terms of priorities, how would it make sense to put the sort of money into the Wellington-Auckland train that is required, when both urban and suburban public transport in both Wellington and Auckland is in a much greater need of support and financial capital injection? Fix up the public transport disaster that is Auckland. Toll people who want to drive into both cities like they do in London. Create a high speed rail network between Hamilton and Auckland. Create a metro in Auckland. Deal to the Upper Hutt Wellington line which I thought was embarrassing 20 years ago as a student who commutted with it everyday.

  12. Some of the bus routes in Edinburgh now have electronic signs that tell you how long to the next bus, each bus is fixed with a transmitter so they know exactly where it is.
    It removes so much of the stress of the bus system, have I just missed a bus, when is it due, etc. Much, much better, though there isn’t city wide coverage yet.

  13. Janet: Thanks, interesting! I wasn’t surprised that while it mentions “economic security” and “national security” there’s no mention at all of environmental impact.

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