How Communicate Pt Two

This is just a little bit of New Zealand history. This is mostly unrelated to anything else I’m talking about, it’s just local history. The Battle of Manners Street Soldiers and civilians slugged it out on the streets of Wellington during the ‘Battle of Manners Street’, the best-known clash between New Zealanders and American servicemen during the Second World War. Drunk Allied servicemen fighting each other on a Saturday night was not a good look, and news of the brawl was hushed up at the time. One young man who said he was a former member of the Royal New Zealand Air Force was convicted of being drunk and disorderly and fined £2 when he appeared before a magistrate on Monday morning. He was granted name suppression ‘in view of his record’. On any day during the two years after June 1942, between 15,000 and 45,000 American soldiers and sailors were based in New Zealand (see 12 June), either before or immediately after experiencing the horrors of war in the Pacific. The ‘American inva...

Steak at the Tinakori Bistro The nicest steak I ever had was at the Tinakori Bistro. It was with Lesley and Shane. And Amanda. It was a beef eye fillet (filet mignon) with béarnaise sauce. Most of the time I am actually really happy with things like home cooked lamb chops and rice or schnitzel and mashed potatoes or golden roast potatoes and chicken. But that French cooking stuff can actually be really nice. And it does make a difference. Tinakori Bistro is one of the better places in Wellington. Or it was one of the better French kitchens in Wellington for a long, long time. I wouldn't mind visiting a few more places like that someday. Not too often though! It's wasteful and expensive. I also always meant to learn to cook a good béarnaise sauce. I could cook a perfectly nice scotch fillet (medium rare) and top it with a a nice mushroom sauce (made with nutmeg, garlic and shallots). But I never got around to cooking a good béarnaise sauce. I think that it was Char grilled beef ...

 My vaguely held values... which are completely made up... which I don’t commit to… A person's value in the world isn't based on their level of excellence. And it isn't based on their economic value add. And it isn't based on how useful they are to the nation state. Not in my eyes. For example, a man might earn 500k per year as a top engineer or architect building bridges and sky scrapers and tunnels. And a woman might be having babies and raising them well and cooking and cleaning. Well... some people might say that her contribution to the world is massive, because babies are needed by and valuable to the country. And therefore it evens out. My opinion is that it doesn't. Or that a woman "adds value" by providing sexual gratification to all and sundry. The value of the sex they offer. Or maybe men are useful to the nation state by being soldiers and working and women are useful by having babies, raising them and being home makers. Or by providing sexual g...