Prologue: Sky Dishes On State Houses

In the wake of the academic morass that was the utterly frantic last week or so of Semester Two (Pt. 1), the holidays are here -- at last. And what an epic start it has been indeed, with twenty-four hours straight spent in the company of friends. Gotta love it -- it bodes well for good things ahead in the next two weeks. It's sure looking a lot better than the last "holidays," which turned out to be a down-breaking wage labour-fest bookended by bouts of not-insignificant illness. The worst part was that when I finally got to spend some time with friends at the end, I lost my voice. Such is how things tend to play out.

But enough of the negativity, for now anyway. Welcome to A Hole In The Wall; my blog. For one reason or another, I've been opposed to creating a blog for a long time. In observing the blogging exploits of others, however, I have decided that this activity may be a good addition to my life. I find it substantially difficult to articulate myself and my ideas properly in face-to-face situations. As such, I'm hoping that making A Hole In The Wall will give people more of an insight into who I am, and allow me to express what I am consistently failing to express in other mediums.

The audience with North Shore Labour Party candidate Phil Twyford at Jenni's house on Friday night was thoroughly enjoyable, save for the fact that in the latter stages of the evening I was worrying about the fact that I wouldn't be able to -- and indeed, didn't want to -- make it home in time for the cut-off on my restricted licence. I also became increasingly conscious of the fact that I wasn't contributing anything to the discussion. This wasn't too much of an issue, however, with many of the blanks being filled in by the radical Elam student -- whom I liked but at the same time recognised as possibly quite the elitist -- and that pseudo-fascistic engineer guy who complained that all of the state houses in Manurewa have Sky dishes on them (those bloody bludgers) and that if we have Maori seats in Parliament, why don't we have Korean ones?

I'm sorry. I don't know about you, but I can't stand people who seem entrenched in the belief that somehow, after Britain's brutal invasion of Aotearoa and systematic theft of Maori land, the rest of modern New Zealand doesn't owe them anything. At the very least we owe them an apology, a leg-up given the fact that many are inherently disadvantaged as they are trapped in the poverty cycle, and about forty tonnes more cultural respect than we give them at the moment. You may want to believe that we are relatively kind to our indigenous people, and indeed other cultures in general, than other nations. But do Maori get too much? No, they most certainly don't. In fact they get too little. England ate Aotearoa.

Oh yeah -- Phil Twyford is a good man. I found it really heartening to know that people like him are in the ranks of the Labour Party. Judging by his outwardly-expressed ideology, I thought that he would probably fit better into the Green Party -- it hit me virtually as soon as he began talking and explained that he was a founding member of the New Zealand branch of Oxfam. If I lived in the North Shore electorate, I'm sure that I would vote for him; even if the fact that he's a leftist practically guarantees that he's not going to win that seat. He's quite far down the party list as well, so the chances of him becoming an MP at all at the coming election are remote. Nonetheless he's a great guy and has really increased my confidence in the Labour Party -- not that it was lacking significantly in the first place.

From Jenni's we were to travel to Robbie's, where we watched Anchorman in that room with sofas. I had my direly-needed energy drink confiscated. Hannah couldn't stop laughing heartily at the cat fashion show scene. Richard reminisced to an overly significant extent. When a number of the group had left, we turned out all the lights and listened to Shine On You Crazy Diamond, parts I-V, by Pink Floyd, all the way through without talking, which was a marvellous achievement which I had never thought I would see achieved with a group of friends. On a side note, for an interesting-if-you-are-a-fan dissection of Shine On -- my personal favourite song of all time -- into its separate movements, take a look at the trusty Wiki entry.

Saturday was spent almost exclusively at Robbie's. In the wee hours, when the rest of us went to bed, he played Battlezone. I couldn't quite grasp how he was able to when one takes into account how long he had been awake and how epic a day it had been. But I entertained myself with the concrete floor and the fact that I had no functioning mobile phones. When Saturday got properly into swing, we watched the entertaining film Baseketball, which I felt like I hadn't seen while also remembering every gag in the whole thing. We also watched numerous episodes of Blackadder -- in one, there was a provocative pilot who thrusted his hips and said "woof, woof!" frequently -- and took in some enthralling Red Dwarf, which I hadn't seen in a long time and still succeeds in beckoning forth the laughs that are produced through contractions in the diaphragm.

I think that's about all I had to say! Again, welcome to the blog, and I hope that you decide to continue coming. It's important to me that people hear what I hope to express here. I go now to recover from this weird feeling that I have; I think it may be exhaustion. I think I'll try to get rid of it by going to wage labour this evening, and perhaps by going to see Alison. Good idea, I wisely surmise.