This is my street, Gloucester, in Christchurch, New Zealand, as it looked 24 hours ago, when we were hit by another 6.3 quake.
Photo courtesy to www.stuff.co.nz
Posts Tagged ‘angle’
New Earthquake
Tuesday, June 14th, 2011Travel for Real: How I’m Gonna Go to Europe and Maybe Back – Part 3
Tuesday, November 24th, 2009I don’t read travel blogs. What a bloody stupid idea! Why would you masochistically read one’s joy of traveling when you’re stuck at home with a broken DVD player, a noisy neighbor, your own evening before going back to work next morning plus a mother-in-law and, in at least one documented case I know, with two mothers-in-law, an ex and a current one? And that’s not mentioning religions where you may have more than one current anyway… and that would be fine! Or why would you even read the misfortune of some sponsored guy from Alaska who missed the plane to Barcelona, where he had a connection to Reykjavik for a one-day conference on blogging and ended up at Ibiza instead, all paid off, with no return options for ten days?
Another reason I don’t read travel blogs is that they tend to be on the same page in the local newspaper with the adverts from the main two travel agents in town.
Yet the main reason I would never advise any of you, smart readers of this mockoblog, to ever touch any travel guide (and a travel blog is a travel guide disguised as a nice one way chat, with no responsibility, a bit like a lawyer is almost a kind of a surgeon, just almost, you know) is that when and if you actually come to visit the same places, your experience has nothing to do with what you have been taught by the failed writer who’d been there before. You know they are failed writers when you see their author’s name less than two inches close to the word ‘blog’ and I’m sure this applies to journalists as well, although, with my limited access to the Internet, I couldn’t tell 100% whether this applied to online blogs as well. I’ve heard from a couple of friends that bad stuff may happen on the Net, which may imply that even well-known guys may be tempted to… But I digress!
I meant to tell you about how I went about booking my flight from New Zealand to Europe, but I ended up in some one-eyed polemic with a bunch of chaps I don’t know anyway. So I’d better tell you how useful a famous travel guide was to me when I was travelling to Bangkok a few years back.
I was flying a KLM/Malaysian Boeing 747 from Heathrow to Sydney and, due to my advanced age I had managed to get a seat by the aisle at the top of my compartment (do you call them compartments in planes? I guess not, but who cares) so I could stretch my deep vein thrombosis affected legs. Next to me, on my right, there sat an English girl who must have been on her way to both Miss Universe and Miss Sister Theresa Aspiring Fellowship (if such a union exists, the resemblance here is purely unintentional). She was carrying this Whatever Travel Guide Thailand between the knees on blue jeans, with a long index finger stopped firmly at some page and the rest of her marble-like fingers resting with an abandoned palm upwards on the arm of my seat. At her wrist many woven coloured cotton bracelets were trying to give me a signal I could not quite understand at first.
(To be continued.)
Mockoblog Survival Test
Wednesday, July 29th, 2009Do you think the time of humans as we know them (the hard working guys who mostly die of hunger and the soft flashy rich ones, who die of publicity or overloaded bank accounts) will carry on for much longer?
Do you think petrol is going up and uranium is going down? Do you believe in God as I don’t?
All we now call ‘human society’ could come to an end not by our demise, but by our dismissal. If you are from this planet and if you claim to be human, have you considered the Era of the Machine? We have that machine in place. It is yet spacious, parts of it are being called Google, parts of it are being called Pentagon, parts of it are proud of being called the UN or the Red Cross or the Children’s Found or your sports club. The technology gathered together by all these entities is taking another shape: it is becoming a world wide disease as we speak.
Swine flu? I had it! I am alive. Did I start it? Yes! For the guy next to me who also got it, yes! Do I rip the benefits? Guess who does it on my behalf! A disease with a name needs tests, vaccines and targeted medicine. Do I make them? Do I own the company who makes them? Think about it!
Petrol crisis? Did I make it? It did affect me, it does affect you (and when it doesn’t, fear for worse, as it will come back with a vengeance)!
Recession: uuuups! Did you take any advantage of it? No? I’m so sorry. Anyone you know? No? Sorry again. Somebody is making huge profits. Is it you?
Computers, ipods, cellphones, play consoles, fast foods, space stations, fast Internet, travel tickets, bargains, pre-booked funerals, photo sharing, insurance schemes, pharmaceutical conglomerates, gyms, adopetd kids, DVDs of how to get rich, etc. – do you own any of these? If your answer is ‘yes’ – piss of the mockoblog! If your answer is ‘no’ – welcome to the party of the losers, a.k.a. the human mankind.
If you’re not quite sure, follow these steps:
1. Check your life status: tick 1 for being alive and 0 for being dead;
2. Ask your family how do they feel about it (no family – ask your friends) – score 0 anyway;
3. Are you going to be richer tomorrow? – score 1 if you read this tomorrow;
4. Are you going to be healthier tomorrow? – score 5 as long as you can because this is just a special offer;
5. Add up the previous results (no adding skills? – score 10 points for being able to control a calculator);
6. If your score exceeds mine, I grant you another 2 points;
7. If you don’t know my score, I take 100 points off your total;
8. If you’re still insisting on finding you total or have any other questions, please press ctr+alt+del;
9. Not happy yet? Here’s a 1 point bonus for your loyalty!!!;
10. Ignore the first 9 steps, we all know you’re part of the machine that allows you to take part in our survey. You have been granted another day as a human on this planet, as you know it. It may be your last.
Disclaimer: Due to the rating of mockoblog.com, we are not able to ask the more specific questions that could lead to an exact day of your dismissal from the human species. However, we can assure you taht you have taken the right approach and when the machine will govern alone, your memory will be considered for an upgrade to a happier state. This offer does not extend to siblings, parents or children, unless they have taken the test on their own, which could be highly damaging for your unique future DNA profile, thus we advise to disable their machine account anyway.
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Hey readers!
It’s not such a big deal! You’ll have to die anyway. It doesn’t come like an UFO invasion! This is already here and you are used to it. It’s gonna be smooth stuff, maybe you’ll even get a glimpse of how it’s done. Don’t blame Google or BP or Microsoft or the companies that make drugs and want their manes not to be so easy to remember. Thy are just the big fish that took the big bait first. The engine is running pretty cool for them. When your turn comes, it may be a good idea to think that is just religious stuff, maybe a pandemic or something, or maybe the economy collapsing. Take your pick! The result is the same. And you’re not gonna be part of the ones to see it. Unless you are an alien, of course.
As for me, the only alien I got to know closely is the PC and Internet machine. But what do I know?!
Breaking News for the Normal Generation: Aliens Here!
Monday, July 6th, 2009For the initiated: yes, she’s here. The wee alien lady is slowly adapting to this planet she calls MaBaAa and we call Earth. Future is here.
Please post no comments to this entry unless you are part of the right species.