Avian cohabitation

So I'm chilling in my living room, reading the newspaper after my lunch of Mi Goreng instant noodles, and I notice I have company.

There's a bird just chilling on the floor, hopping about looking for food I guess. I dunno the name of this type of bird but there are tons of them around here and they don't do too much flying - mainly hopping about and walking.

Anyways, so I open the balcony door for him to fly out and I try and encourage him but he isn't the brightest feathered friend. He flies into the windows three times, despite the fact that the door right beside them is open. I should add that our windows are not transparent... there's a permanent film of dirt on them since none of us can be bothered to wash them.

Well anywho, after the third collision the bird took a break for a minute to regain his composure and then hopped around some more, finally realising that the door was open and as he stood on the doorstep I ran at him from behind and he flew out and away.

He took a dump on one of our three couches, but it was on the back of the top... or the top of the back... however you like to call it, the backside of the part you lean on, near the top, because he was standing on the top at the time.

I'm not telling my flatmates about that part. He. He. He.

Ink Art

On the 23rd, three of us went to the tattoo parlour. One of us got a tattoo. It wasn't me, and it wasn't Anna. That leaves Vania.

Anna drove us to Dig A Tattoo, where Vania had an appointment for 330pm.




The dude printed out a copy of her tattoo and went into his 'office' to prepare a stencil (it's really an ink transfer... sort of like a temporary tattoo to guide the tattoo man's needle).




After some waiting, the three of us went in to the room. First Mr Tattoo guy cleaned the foot.




Then he applied the stencil thing.




Then he set up his ink needle.




Then he started tracing those lines very, very carefully.




Anna spent the first half hour holding Vania's hand, and I took the second shift. Turns out I got the worse half of the deal, as the tattoo became more painful toward the end. I tried taking a photo of my hand with the white marks where it was being squeezed, but it didn't turn out.




The finished product:

Happy Birthday Mom!

Today is my Mom's birthday (September 24th, which is the 25th here in New Zealand). She's turning 29, again. She's a good mom.

Reader Input

I believe this comment, a reply to the blog post from two days ago (see below or click here), is worth publishing as a standalone post. So, from the desk of Nik Pinski, formerly employed in a middle management position with the KGB, I present...

Welcome to Western Civilization.

"Back in Soviet Russia", (I love writing sentences that start with that. It automatically catches everyone's attention and makes whatever follows it seem automatically cool and profound. Like - WOW this guy is gonna bring us unique and kooky experiences from behind the Iron Curtain. You know - that place where things do you, and you have to dodge giant tetris blocks falling on you - tossed from the sky by the Party Leadership. Where you own everything and nothing at the exact same time. The land of beatiful paradoxes. And it's usually true. But I clearly digress.)

Back in Soviet Russia, if any food gets WITHIN a month of the expiry date, it's time to toss it no matter how little food you got. Starvation is a painful thing but what's the use of eating anything if you're gonna just throw it all up anyway and get salmonella to boot. This applies to everything. Eat things as fresh as possible, and cook the shit out of everything else. When I came to Canada for the first time, I always ate steak WELL DONE. My parents still do. They want it burnt to a crisp. It took me almost a decade to go all the way down to Blue Rare, and now I know just how delicious animal blood really is. Russia has changed in many ways but if I was a betting man, I'd still put money down that unless you buy food at ridiculously over-priced stores catering to the new Russian oil billionaires, you STILL need to be more careful with food than you would be with radioactive plutonium rods.

Not so in the West. A day overdue? A Month? Even a YEAR (i've eaten food that past overdue). MOST of the time you'll be just fine. Expired food is a-okay. It's an excellent feature of living in democratic capitalism. They should put it in the brochure.

-Nik Pinski

The Student Menu

There are those among you who never break the rules. You don't jay walk, you don't drive 55 in a 50 zone, and you never mix the glossy magazines with the newspapers in the recycling bin.

You probably refrigerate after opening as the label instructs, and when a loaf of bread says "Best Before SEP 10" that loaf is eaten or in the trash by the time the sun rises in the east that day.

Well not me. I like rules, and I follow most of them, but food is a different issue. I was one of those kids who carried candies in his pockets to school, even though we weren't allowed to eat junk food. They weren't wrapped, and I eventually started coughing up furballs like a sugar crazed feline, but where's the harm in that?

Every once in a while (ie twice a year, max) I had to clean the room Jos and I shared as a child. Invariably we would find a couple of pennies here and there, and very often I'd somehow happen upon a jelly bean or a smartie that had somehow been forgotten. I suppose it wasn't forgotten, but lost, considering it would always be in the corner under the bed covered in dust bunnies, but I wasn't one to be worried and after a quick rubbing with my hands I'd pop that candy into my mouth and smile at my luck.

That's how I came to discover the curiously delightful experience of eating year old candy canes - they soften with age, you see.

Well, I still find the occasional candy on the floor (Tom found a piece of a 'Cadbury Fruit and Nut' bar outside a hut on Stewart Island and I quickly managed to get it from him and toss that down into my stomach - it tasted kind of like soap, but that's the nature of the evil yet commercially successful Fruit and Nut member of the Cadbury family, but I digress). I still eat that candy after a quick rub. Recently I had a delicious blue bubblegum jelly bean from the laundry room.

Well, what does any of this have to do with the present, you ask? Yesterday I located an unused 'Welcome Package.' These packages are just big zip lock bags with some brochures, guidebooks, and free food in them. The food consists of a tea bag and instant coffee, some chips, crackers, cream for your tea/coffee, instant noodles, and a juice box. All in miniature form, all in single servings.

Well, this treasure trove happened to be a bit antiquated... after all, the school year started in late February. However, that's no reason (according to me) not to eat all the free stuff. I used to buy chips from the convenience store dude near my house for half price once they were a week past their date, cuz otherwise he'd have to return them to the chips company.


I present to you my findings of yesterday's study:

Just Juice orange juice with apple base. "Best before" April 2005 --> 5 months past due.








Le Snak cheese dip with crispbread. "Best before" April 16 2005 --> 5 months past due.












Meadow Fresh ultra pasteurized milk. "Use by" June 16 2005 --> 3 months past due.










Ripples salt and vinegar chips. "Best before" May 25 2005 --> 4 months past due.










What did I learn from my experiment? I learned that food expiration dates (or 'best before' dates) should be completely ignored. They mean nothing. I felt great after eating all that delicious antique food. Just look at the contented expression on my face:




Just kiddin' - I was actually quite content. See?




The moral of the story: "waste not, want not."

If you don't waste, the way I don't waste, you can complain as much as you like about eating food off the floor and, in the eternally echoing words of Bob Dylan, "scrounging for your next meal." Now I'm off to search for a snack under the couch cushions.

Hijacking in Auckland

Some crazy man stole a small plane last night and threatened to crash it into the tallest building in the Southern Hemisphere (SkyTower in Auckland, New Zealand). SkyTower was evacuated, and the guy then crashed the plane into the harbour.

As far as I know, he was just a crazy guy, not related to any terrorist organisations or anything, and Auckland is very far away from safe little Dunedin so don't worry about my safety.

Permission from the boss

For anyone who didn't see it, here's a low res copy of the photo taken at the UN World Leadership Summit of George Bush asking Condoleeza Rice if he can go to the loo.



I can understand a guy's need to go use the gents room, particularly in a long meeting in which he probably drank lots of that free water (who DOESN'T drink all the free water they can get at special events?) but I'm a bit curious as to why he feels the need to ask permission... or is he just seeking advice?

Either way, I think it highlights the president's reliance on others for making decisions - the problem with George isn't that he's a total jerk (though he may be, who knows...); the problem is that he makes his decisions based on advice from a bunch of stupid-heads.

Bacteria

I hate food poisoning. I rarely get sick, and when I do it's rarely serious enough to bother me... I don't have allergies, I only get one or two very minor colds a year, and when a bout of flu spreads like wildfire through university populations, I'm one of the few who never gets it but sometimes somehow pass it on to other people.

But food poisoning is a different story. You really can't do much about it if you accidentally eat something you shouldn't have. The more good bacteria you have in your digestive system before you get hit with a stomach bug of whatever type, the less severe the symptoms will be... so people who eat lots of live culture yoghurt for instance, will generally not get as sick.

I dunno how my good bacteria levels were before I got sick, but someone else arrived in my stomach a couple days ago and launched a surprise offensive, blitzkrieg-style. Like Poland, my horse-mounted soldiers were no match for the invading panzer division, and soon my system had crumbled.

At this point, the WWII analogy stops working so well.

The civil war in my stomach was a violent one and, despite numerous attempts at ceasefire negotiations and guerilla-style resistance, no progress was made until late yesterday, when a UN Peacebuilding operation operating under Chapter VII guidelines was sent in to force the peace (Acidophilus tablets).

Currently I'm a bit like East Timor... the situation is stable compared to past events, but the effects still linger and sporadic violence, corruption, and bureaucratic ineffectiveness is the norm.

If only the leaders gathering at the UN World Summit could solve the issue of food poisoning in my stomach...

My first half marathon

So, I watched my first half marathon yesterday morning. I wouldn't even consider running one, so for me this fills my fitness quota for the month.

Yesterday morning, I woke up bright and early at 9-ish AM. After breakfast, myself, Vania, and Tom got into his car, and Marcos, Egbert, and Jeff got into theirs and we drove off to find Anna (Tom's sister, Vania's flatmate) and her dad. Them two were running the half marathon to Port Chalmers, and we went to support them. Sure enough we found them running along the coast and stopped to take a pic as they ran by.




Then we drove to near the finish line, where there was space in the New World (supermarket) parking lot for us. There's a loop in the course there, so we waited about 20 minutes or so there until they came by, but before that we saw Mark, the Toroa maintenance/gardening/administration dude, run by.






After that, we walked a couple blocks to the finish line and waited another 30 mins or so for them to cross the finish line.

Mark came running by around the 2 hour mark




Then at the 2:24 mark, Anna and her dad came round.






We convinced Anna to allow me to take a pic of her with Vania.




And of course, Anna's dad asked for a photo with his daughter - who wouldn't?




And Tom wanted to share in the glory too...




All in all it was a good morning. Tom, Anna, and their dad went their own way to spend some family time together, and Vania and I jumped into the guys' car.

It took us about 20 mins to move one block in traffic after returning to the cars, but the nice weather and good company, as well as Marcos's interesting renditions of several songs and the possibility of Jeff eating an ancient mouldy crusty pickle from a McDonald's Quarter Pounder made the drive home quite pleasant really (Jeff didn't end up eating the pickle, to my chagrin).

Tribute to Fidel

A sad farewell.

Fidel, our trustworthy, reliable, slightly-aging-but-still-going-strong wheeled comrade, has had his last run. The good people at Thrifty Rentals have sent him to a better place after years of serving his passengers selflessly. Here I present to you a Tribute to Fidel. I only wish I could express in words what Fidel meant to us all. But alas, I am speechless. Instead, let these photos speak fourteen thousand words.





























Goodbye old friend, goodbye.