Public Address - Club Politique (Home)

Melting Without Cheese, Please. | Jan 31, 2006 20:19

In keeping with Auckland's reputation as Godzone's multicultural heartland, the flavour of the minute this past weekend was "Japanese". We had walked past an Italian restaurant called Tonys (seriously guys, a less stupid name might be appropriate), and ended up eating at what turned out to be a mediocre place a few doors down on High Street.

Thing is, we should have gone into Tonys. There were heaps of white people in there, and that's always a good indication that the food must be OK, yes? Not to complain mind you, I enjoyed the Katsu Don but just found it a little ordinary.

We had driven up to Auckland on Friday afternoon and attended a wedding out in Riverhead. A grand affair I must say. Guys, a tip, do not let your brother be in charge of the music the Bride appears to. When you're supposed to get a little 'Come Away with Me' by Norah Jones there's every chance you'll end up with 'the Darth Vader music' (the Imperial March for all those nerds out there).

Laugh? Yes, laughed my arse off.

After the formal part of the wedding we stuck around for the free feed at the reception (some habits die hard), and subsequently made our way into the city. We were staying not far from Aotea Square and wandered down to Queen Street to see what's shaking. The Asian theme to the night started with the actually rather lame decorations for Chinese New Year. Nice red lanterns and all, but... lame.

From there we wandered through the crowds of Asian people the white heartland seems to be so freaked out about, and bought tickets to go see 'Memoirs of a Geisha'. Again, lame. Save your money for the DVD people. Nice film but the costuming just didn't really carry it, and your time would be better spent watching the complete lack of dramatic tension and character development on your big screen TV.

I'll have to admit, I did experience a moment of culture shock when I first made it to Aotea Square. It was a similar level of shock I felt when first walking on Victoria Street in Richmond, Melbourne, another multicultural heartland in a white-oriented city. The main difference being that I couldn't find good Vietnamese in central Auckland. Hell, I struggled with Japanese.

Tips for next time from anyone except Tze Ming will be appreciated.

Now, am I right in thinking that Auckland kind of splits into four very general quarters? It's been a number of years since I lived there, but does it kind of split into East, where a number of Asian nationalities live, North, where all the white people hide, the West, where the less affluent white people live with 'the Maoris', and South, where a number of Polynesian nationalities live?

Do you think that's right? Because if it is, it reinforces my opinion that Auckland is a very interesting city.

OK, I'm lying, as a Wellingtonian I don't find Auckland interesting at all, but the idea of a big sprawling melting pot is. Sorry for 'keeping it real'.

Most of our non-white population lives in the cities, and it's there that they are expected to take on, with the assistance of multicultural policies, Kiwiana.

So you get these big general areas of immigrant distinctiveness. But the way in which Kiwiana is taken on kind of gets flavoured in two directions, with immigrants affecting Kiwiana (e.g. the expansion of diets away from meat, staple, and two vege), and Kiwiana setting the parameters of 'normal' that immigrants conform to over time (e.g. immigrant kids looking ethnic but speaking in New Zealand accents).

If I'm even remotely right about the quarters thing, over time each area of the city should produce very different flavours of New Zealand culture?

I don't know about you, but I think that's very fucking cool.

God I'm a nerd...

And on a final note of interest in the interest of stereotypes, we stopped in Taumarunui on the way back down the island looking for a KFC emergency chicken stop.

You'll never guess the nationality of the guy who ran the dairy.

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Smoke Gets in Your Eyes | Jan 24, 2006 20:04

I started out on a description of the Michael King question, but seem to have been pushed towards a story about the good ol' days in the Mount. I'd like to talk about how King and others have established a pattern for self-identification but just can't seem to shake the idea of a great big fire.

You see, we visited a cousin of mine who happens to live up in Ōtaki yesterday and the first thing he mentioned was the marvellous and toxic air in the neighbourhood. It was of course a glorious day of blue sky sans cloud, with all the poison having wafted over the way towards the Wairarapa. Much like the USA does to Canada it would seem.

Damn that must have been a big fire. Plastic not only burns toxic, it also burns hot. As any kid with too much curiosity, a large supply of pegs and a magnifying glass will tell you, very hot.

Anyhow, way back in '87 I was trying to raise money for my student exchange year by working in the local milk factory and was charged with all kinds of crap jobs. You know the kind of stuff, handling huge bins of broken glass, getting constantly cut, using caustic soda to clean the floors and machinery, getting chemical burns, having to chuck out all the bad milk, getting poisoned, all the usuals.

Did you know that when milk gets really old it kind of separates, then goes grey, and eventually turns into a kind of clear liquid with this bunch of weird black/grey plug of gunk at the top of the bottle? Takes weeks for an experiment like that to pan out according to specifications.

The most fun job was of course driving the fork-lift-tractor. This involved bumping into things frequently and at speed. It also involved sticking the forks into things and breaking them. It involved almost falling off the seat and going under the wheels at least once. It never involved lifting someone's car up onto a giant stack of milk crates, but should have.

Ok, fire. The most boring job was the weekly setting fire to all the rubbish. This was of course the days before all that namby-pamby PC nonsense of green responsibility and global warming, so we used to just stack all the crap out in the corner of the yard and torch it. I was encouraged to set a fire at the windward end, and really get that sucker burning, so as to save time and money.

The roster system was pretty standard for those days, and even though I was 16 I was on the old 'three days off, six days on' rotation. This meant that one time I came back from the days off to this freaking massive stack of rubbish. For some reason there had been a bit of a purge of old milk crates, the stack hadn't been burnt, and wasn't due again until the day before my next day off.

Damn that stack was big by the time it got to the end of the week.

I went in to see the foreman and he goes, "Whaddya want Tibby?"
"Boss, that stack out back is pretty huge ay? Should I still burn it?"
"Ay? Stop ya fuckin' whinging boy. Get out there and do ya job."
"Yeah, nah, she's a pretty big stack ay. You sure?"
"Just get on with it for fucks sake will ya, we're busy here."
"Yeah…. But I'm gonna start the fire downwind, so it doesn't get too big, ay?"
"Whatever mate, ya just do your job, and I'll do mine"

Good old Unions. That last phrase pretty much sums it all up really.

I lit the fire at the downwind end and stood back. It was summer. It was a mountain of paper, plastic, rubber and assorted rubbish at least 2m high, maybe 10 or 15m long, and maybe 5m wide. BIG does not begin to describe the flames.

I went back to see the foreman saying, "Fire's lit Boss, but she's going to be a big one, ay."
"What the fuck… look boy, why are ya still here? Shouldn't ya be knocking off?"
"But Boss, she's a BIG fire. See? You can see the smoke through that window up there."
"Ay? Look, piss off will ya, factory to run mate, factory to run."
"But Boss, should I at least stay out there with a hose of something, just in case it gets a bit stroppy?"
"Christssakes… look, piss off will ya? See ya in a few days."

Did I mention it was February in the Bay of Plenty? The fire grew very large indeed in my absence. It jumped over a concrete path to a patch of dried grass and spread quickly, almost setting fire to a pumping station. It almost got my beloved tractor. It spread into the long grass of a neighbouring paddock and pretty quickly got into the timber yards of the local Mitre Ten Placemakers, which were only saved by the timely intervention of a number of Firemen.

Hell, it burned from there all the way to the offices of the senior management, from where it burned all the way back down to the Foreman, and by all accounts singed him pretty badly.

Took me two days to find out why no-one was talking to me after the break.

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