Author: noizyboy

Sevens?

Overheard #45

 via Spleen…

I was on the Mt Vic bus yes­ter­day after­noon, and there were two very loud young men in the back seat behind me.

“Lin­coln was gay you know.”

“No way.”

“Yeah, he fucked men bro.”

“How do you know?”

“It’s know­ledge, bro.”

Conchords season II

Shaker Run!

For those of you who missed the recent screen­ing of Shaker Run at the Wel­ling­tonista Film Fest­iv­al (next up, Carry Me Back on Wed 5 Nov), here’s one of the best bits: a car chase through the streets of mid-80s Wel­ling­ton, then up and over the Rimu­taka Hill Road…

[you­tube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roFmeudE6Sc]

Says Kir­an, in a review over at Tex­ture

The film is like one long, exten­ded stunt scene. End­less car-chases, explo­sions and fancy race­car tricks around the South Island and Wel­ling­ton left me feel­ing exhausted…

The Greens: recyclers extraordinaire

This par­tic­u­lar Wel­ling­tonista was just down at a protest tak­ing place at the Great­er Wel­ling­ton Region­al Coun­cil offices.

Of course, the GWRC trans­port plans (PDF) are well worth protest­ing about: more roads, no light rail? Des­pite the hun­dreds (and the great major­ity) of sub­mis­sions ask­ing for the oppos­ite? 

As Wel­ling­ton City Coun­cil­lor and Greens’ spokes­per­son Iona Pan­nett points out…

The Plan ignores Wel­ling­to­ni­ans’ huge sup­port for more pub­lic trans­port, their oppos­i­tion to new tun­nels and Wel­ling­ton City’s com­mit­ment to car­bon neut­ral­ity … Over 4,500 people made sub­mis­sions on the study the Plan is based on, with 3,750 people sup­port­ing light rail, more buses and walk­ing and cyc­ling options whilst oppos­ing the two tun­nels and fly­over. In con­trast only 480 people sub­mit­ted that the tun­nels should be built. So, by a ratio of nearly 8 to 1 there was huge sup­port for pub­lic trans­port and oppos­i­tion to roads…

Quite.

But, what really caught the eye was the many pro­test­ers plac­ards. Not so much the front of them, but the back. It was heart­en­ing to see the Greens and their allies recyc­ling (pre­sum­ably) dis­carded Real Estate sig­nage upon which to dis­play their protest slo­gans. Nice.

Tae Kwon Do World Champs

Wel­ling­ton has secured the rights to host the 2011 Tae Kwon Do (or Taek­wondo, Taek­wan-Do, or oth­er vari­ations, depend­ing on where you look) World Champs. 

New Zea­l­and fin­ished 3rd at the 2007 World Champs (note, link is to a PDF of the medals table), and, with the sport thriv­ing in NZ, the home team is expec­ted to do well with the next event on home turf.

To cel­eb­rate, the Inter­na­tion­al Taek­won-Do Found­a­tion of New Zea­l­and has organ­ised a Taek­won-Do demon­stra­tion today (Thursday 30 Oct), which will, ahem, kick off at 2:30pm at Civic Square.

Random acts of kindness

This par­tic­u­lar Wel­ling­tonista was sit­ting at the bus-stop last night, when a lad on a motor­bike scooted up, and asked me if I wanted to make use of his now unneeded daytrip­per pass. Of course I did! $2.80 saved (the cost of a click on my 3‑zone ten-trip)! Score!

This led to some dis­cus­sion on the Wel­ling­tonista list as to oth­er acts of kindness/generosity you can per­form for your fel­low cit­izens without any great oppor­tun­ity cost of your own.

The oth­er obvi­ous one is park­ing coupons. Got half an hour left when you go to leave? Just roll the tick­et up and pop it in the coin slot of the vend­ing machine. Next per­son to come along will (hope­fully) real­ise they’ve got a free­bie, and every­one wins (except the coun­cil rev­en­ue depart­ment, I sup­pose).

Might I also remind our read­ers that while the lib­rary does­n’t send out over­due remind­er notices until after your books/cds/dvds/whatever are over­due (and thus already accu­mu­lat­ing late charges), you can use the Lib­rary Elf ser­vice to send you remind­ers before the due date. This has saved my fam­ily lit­er­ally hun­dreds of dol­lars over the last few years.

Any oth­er sug­ges­tions for ways to save people money or, indeed, just to make their lives more pleas­ant, with a min­im­al amount of effort on your own behalf? Pop ’em in the com­ments.

Council e‑Petitions

For those who wer­en’t aware of it, the Coun­cil has a nice online ser­vice that allows people to “peti­tion the Wel­ling­ton City Coun­cil, via the inter­net, on mat­ters rel­ev­ant to the Coun­cil’s busi­ness”.

Any­one can cre­ate one, so, if there’s some­thing bug­ging you that you think the coun­cil should be look­ing into, just go right ahead. (Remem­ber though, if it’s some­thing that needs fix­ing as opposed to some more sub­stan­tial infra­struc­tur­al prob­lem, just use their Fix It ser­vice).

A major­ity of the cur­rent peti­tions cov­er one of Wel­ling­tonista’s favour­ite top­ics, namely urb­an trans­port (they’re remov­ing cycle lanes!?), so, if you’d like to add your weight to those issues, or raise one of your own, rock on over and have your say.

(Note: this ser­vice is bought to you by the excel­lently entitled ‘Demo­crat­ic Ser­vices’ coun­cil depart­ment).

The Phoenix Foundation – Bleaching Sun

Some Fri­day music video view­ing for you. Two of the best things in life – Crick­et and Music – com­bined into one fine music video from Wel­ling­ton’s increas­ingly hir­sute Phoenix Found­a­tion…