Relaxing on Raro

I’m taking a few days off. Not so much absolute exhaustion as insomniac weary. I’ll be settling on the beach with a novel or two and checking out the island nightlife in Rarotonga.

A recharge is in order and an opportunity to try out my new HD Hard Disk Camcorder.

This is the before shot - you can tell I need a holiday. I hope to return a little lighter, clean shaven and without too many coral wounds.

I’m not usually one to offer advertorial or shopping advice, but if you’re looking for a new camera and you live in New Zealand Parallel Imports has just about the best prices. I checked out duty free and this style of camera cannot be had there, similar models are more expensive.

My JVC was $1100 below the price advertised as the JVC Online “special”.

It seems like a good semi-professional model and should help me record some vlogs over the next few weeks.

I’ll be using it on my trip to the US, UK and Europe to record some research interviews. I’ve scored a guided tour of the new Newseum in Washington DC and will be shooting some footage inside. The Newseum is a monument to American journalism and it looks quite interesting.

Meanwhile, the sand, sun and sea of the Cook Islands are beckoning. I hear the cocktail umbrellas are “to die for”. We’ll see.

Kite katoa hoa taihoa

EM

South Auckland says “Thanks English rugby pricks”

Whanau across Auckland’s southern suburbs are breathing a collective sigh of relief this Sunday as they return from church - via the bottle shop of course.

Their bad drinking habits have been pushed off the front pages today by the bad drinking and rutting habits of English rugby players.

The good burghers of Counties Manakau can thank the rugby pricks, or at least the rampant penises of a handful of English internationals, who - as we alll now know - were cavorting around the penthouse suites and corridors of the posh Hilton hotel last weekend.

The antics of the English dicks have kept us entertained - at least off the rugby pitch - as we guess which ones were playing hide the sausage with a bevy of pretty Auckland comfort girls.

We found out pretty quickly that one young woman - the appropriately-monikered “Angel” - had enjoyed at least the first part of her dalliance with an English prick. That is until a bunch of other English pricks - no doubt still nursing a whopping binge-blast - came into the room and proceeded to pull the sheets off the bed she was resting in.

Much to the delight of the beleagured residents of Otahuhu and Manuwera, who just wanted to enjoy a quiet bevvy without being bothered by thirsty journos, the Sunday papers have been hot on the tail of Angel and her friends all week.

South Auckland awash with thirsty journos

As you might imagine, the news media is all over the South Auckland = badlands and haven for drunken no-hopers story.

In the Weekend Herald [21 June], reporter Yvonne Tahana has a half-page with two stories under two booze-soaked headlines.

South awash with cheap liquor stores and Manakau alcohol is cola-cheap.

Her language is deliberately poetic under the circumstances:

Cheap alcohol is the result of competition. Pour that into one of the most socio-economically deprived areas in the country and it’s been a cocktail for trouble, community leaders say.

The missing link here is “socio-economically deprived”. The problem is not the alcohol, but the deprivation. Drinking to excess is a symptom, not the cause of the issues.

Luckily I was able to find a shot glass of sense inside the Herald too. John Armstrong’s column was a sober assessment of the situation and it’s worth reading.

This year, vote 1 Laura Norder

Anyone reading this on Mars might not know that it’s election season in New Zealand. According to some recent surveys here, there’s a fair bunch of Kiwis who don’t know either.

I’m not sure, myself, how you could miss it. The stink of hypocrisy is now stronger than the pong from Roto Vegas’ famed sulphur pools. There’s blood in the water too.

The political sharks are circling; any hint of weakness and they’ll surge in to bite you on the ass, or worse.

Perhaps like the feet washing up on the west coast of Canada, body parts will be floating in the Hauraki Gulf and Cook Strait before too long.

That’s why I’m voting for Laura Norder.

Oh alcohol, I sure drink to your health

I don’t mind a Martini now and again and occasionally I’ve even been known to drink more than’s actually good for me. But I don’t blame the booze, it’s usually a conscious decision, or in some cases, my judgement starts to lapse.

Lapses like the time I stole a bottle of vodka from a friend’s wedding party. I returned it once I’d come round and realised what a prick I’d been. Luckily my pals saw the funny side of the story and I’m not ashamed to re-tell it for a laugh now and again.

However, I am a bit upset about the political reactions to the death of Navtej Singh last weekend after a robbery-gone-horribly-wrong in his Manuwera liquor store.

Gopalan Nair - a new charge and a tight chain

Singapore blogger, lawyer and general pain in the ass of the Singapore government, Gopalan Nair was back in court Monday. He is now facing new charges and his bail conditions mean that he has to report to the police station every morning at 9am and can be held there all day.

His life is on hold, but there is virtual silence from the blogosphere. What’s happened to all of the hype about freedom of expression.

Turn your back until it’s your turn to be persecuted, then wonder why you’re alone.

Do not forget the case of Gopalan Nair. Singapore today, where next?

Chia Ti Lik’s update 17 June 2008

Eric Blair - 50 y.o. Latino moderate - genius, but not to be trusted

So, I finally got a face up on Facestat. As I mentioned previously, I decided to only experiment on dead friends, or in this case, someone I’ve never met, but always admired.

What do the raters and haters of Facestat think of Eric Blair?

So far, about an hour in [and past my bed time], not much.

Picture info

ethnicity: Hispanic / Latino

political affiliation: moderate

gender: male

trustworthy: not to be trusted

age:50

intelligence: genius

I guess you could argue they got it half right at this point. Eric Blair is male, he was 49 when he died tragically of tuberculosis and he was a genius.

Facestat - evil is as evil does

Does my face look fat in that?

OK, so I had a little bit of fun.

Facestat - evil is as evil does

I admit it, I’ve been slutting away on Facestat to get enough points to load up some faces. I really want to see what the Facestaters think of some of my dead friends.

I’m keeping it to dead friends because you have to keep this evil stuff well away from fleshlife.

For the past half-hour I’ve been rating people, but I couldn’t actually see their faces - for some reason they’re not loading.

Never mind. The questions are inane and if you really want me to judge your sexual appetite from a picture [the choices are "frigid" to "whore"], then you really don’t care.

So, I had some fun.

Does my face look fat in that?

Ah the mundanity of the web. I’ve begun a theme on this which you can backtrack to.

[Visit "Web of mundanity" post.]

This installment looks at the latest fad - public humiliation on the Facestat website. What a fcuking glorious idea and what a startling and innovative use of bandwidth.

If you’re considering plastic surgery; facial reconstruction, a nose job, or a “lift” perhaps, why not post your “before” shot and get your peers, or even perfect strangers to judge you.

Does your face look fat in this? “Absolutely you two-bit loser, why not just jump off a bridge now.”

Oops, sorry, ‘LOL’.

I’m sure this will be a roaring success, you can even upload your profile pic from Farcebook. It’s as easy as “one-click-three”.

In the interests of research Sean Plambeck of the news.com.au technology site uploaded his image to test the potential of the site.

[Sean Plambeck's news.com story]

Better you than me buddy. Another innovative use: why not upload pictures of your enemies and get them down-rated. Ha, revenge is a dish best served online.

[update] I just went back to Facestat, you actually have to rate people in order to earn points to put your own pictures up. [I'll be back once I've earned enough points to put a pic up, that could be fun].

Second chance, not second life

I promise not to bore regular readers with glowing accounts of my own fantastic willpower-driven attempt to quit smoking (not much). But I do want to give a plug to the Quit Me Mutu Online programme.

I’ve been using it now for a week and I’ve just subscribed to the 32 week email assistance package.

It’s interesting how much help you can get from a website: there’s a blog function, but it doesn’t have an option to post comments, which is a little unfortunate; then there’s the email tips and the savngs calculator.

The calculator shows how much money you’ve saved and how many cigarettes you haven’t smoked. That’s a motivator. This week I didn’t smoke 180 B&H and can bank $100 thanks to not smoking - that’s four bottles of duty free gin!

BTW: I’m not visiting Second Life at all, it seems a bit pointless right now. I am,however, giving myself a good chance of enjoying a longer fleshlife.