A letter to today's Dominion Post (see what I mean?) talks of the exhorbitant cost of living here if you are on a minimun wage. The same food, for example, sourced from Utah in the US cost $92, for which here one pays $200. It is twice as expensive, and I believe, one third more expensive than in Australia. And the cost of living does play a big part in where one lives. For example I couldn't affford to live in Sydney frankly, it is too expensive, but OK for a visit.
Another example on the front page today, is of an old persons' residence, newly rebuilt, which has installed fibre cables for all residents to use their broadband, costing an extra $85 a month, whether you have a computer or not. Most of the pensioners there don't have any idea how to use a cell phone, let alone the internet. But the directions were the same, everyone has to pay. How damn silly is a city which demands that unwanted impost on its Senior Citizens? Bloody silly, and it is typical of other archaic red-tape issues that pervade this sometimes infuriating democratic system. I think you just gotta be born a Kiwi to understand and accept their unique situation.
And then you have the Memphis, this beautiful, friendly, good-coffee cafe right on the main strip of Courtenay Place. How can I leave this place? I will miss the Memphis very much, as I will equally miss my Maori cohort of friends I am singing with tonight to celebrate a ten year wedding anniversary of a couple of wonderful role-model Kiwi men, Des and John. The latter with his two daughters and many grandchildren should make it an interesting night. Such is the anomaly of these windy isles.
A victim of bureaucratic bungling..
The Kiwi religion - Sport
Sun on the Memphis
..and on me.
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