Nodnarb Online

Illiterate reporters bug the heck out me.

TV3's political reporter Duncan Garner continually gets brought (past tense of bring) and bought (past tense of buy) mixed up. Have some professional pride man!

Exmaple: http://www.3news.co.nz/Investigation-reveals-more-National-MPs-rorting-the-system/tabid/370/articleID/115208/cat/67/Default.aspx

In an amusing tie related anecdote I just remembered...

...when I was 19, I was at university, in Auckland... and I was flatting with my girlfriend. Money was tight, and I saw an advert in the paper that looked good. It was a sales job, no experience necessary, full training provided over 3 days, with lunches and morning and afternoon teas provided blah blah blah.

Well.

It turned out to be Encyclopaedia Britannica..., but, surprisingly, that's not the worst of it. The guy training us was a very short man, of Scottish decent. The first time I saw him I laughed out loud... which was very very embarrassing, but it couldn't be helped. He was wearing a tartan tie - and I don't mean it had tartan patterning, it was made of full blown kilt tartan material, and he had tied what remains to this day the most MASSIVE tie knot I have ever seen. In retrospect it could well have just been a full Windsor made to look gargantuan by the carpet thick material, but I actually thought he had gone for the mythical quadruple Windsor due to his very very small neck and short stature. This tie knot was, I believe around 8 or 9 cm across.

And, that was not even the most amusing part of the whole experience.

This guy was maybe 5'1" at a stretch, 50 odd, with silver hair. A veteran Britannica salesman. With steel capped shoes (seriously - he showed us them) to protect his feet when he literally put his foot in the door to stop it being slammed shut on him. But even that was not the highlight... He also had strongly nicotine stained fore and index fingers on his right hand from chain smoking. And a raspy (I wonder why) thick Scottish accent.

And then he told us about how the first 7 seconds when you meet someone is crucial to forming their impression of you. I immediately thought of how the first thing I saw was his comical tie knot... but anyway. We went on to eulogise about how as a door to door encyclopaedia salesman how you introduced yourself was crucial. With that he leapt up (to his full height), and said:

"I'll demonstrate how I do it.."

He left the room and shut the door behind him, and we all looked at each other in wonderment, amusement and fear as to what was to come next. He then knocked on the door.

Nothing.

He knocked again and we worked out that we were supposed to answer the door.

His foot immediately thrust forward into the door frame and he smiled, exposing his nicotine stained 'pearly whites' and thrust his hand out, shook the guy's hand firmly and said:

"McCook. Hugh McCook!"

and then turned to the room with this "Howzat!?" expression, paused...

...and said:

"Do you see?"

...silence...

"The way I introduced myself... did you notice anything about it?"

I was thinking "Yes, you look like a berk.", but luckily I didn't volunteer that idea.

He said:

"The way I said my surname, then repeated my name first name then surname...?" Does that remind you of anyone?"

...silence...

"Who else introduces themselves like that?"

Someone said "James Bond?"

A look of unbridled pleasure and pride swept across Hugh McCook's face, and he stood up to his full 5'1 1/2"s on elevated heels and tip toes, puffed out his chest and said:

"That's right! And that's what the customer will think too! If you introduce yourself like that they will think they are talking to James Bond!"

I was not the only person who could not contain myself. I literally dissolved in laughter...

Oh dear, oh dear. If I have ever met anyone who reminded me less of James Bond, than Hugh McCook, then I don't remember them.

Blah. A bit of a dark dreary winter's day here today.

*shrug* I guess that's okay... it IS winter afterall.

I wonder if the RPNYC Personality of the year has recovered enough to face food yet? Tottie and Lord Rory are off to the West Island for a week this morning. Wasn't Outrageous Fortune a giggle last night? Graham, Graham, Graham, he's not my boyfriend... Graham. I laughed a lot.

As an experiment, to try and figure out if anyone bothers reading this each day... I have twenty dollars. I am going to give it to any of my regular photo of the day email friends who ask for it. If you email my gmail account today, July 29th, 2009 New Zealand time, and say you've read this, and you want a share of the twenty bucks, you qualify.

However, if you email others and tell them to get in on the act you will be disadvantaging yourself, because I will split the twenty dollars equally-ish between all those who reply.

There's these ads running on tv here... for Telecom's new XT mobile network.

They have their new (sic.) billing system called "To-the-second-billing". Get this... after the first minute, they only bill you for the number of seconds you use! So switch to Telecom's new XT network now!

I seriously thought they were taking the piss...

...Vodafoine started "to-the-second-billing" in the mid 90's. I was going out with Anna FFS!

This guy picked up Royal Port Nicholson Yacht Club Personality Of The Year at the champagne breakfast yesterday.













And it's quite a nice morning too...

Well.

Yesterday was lovely. But things were a bit broken after we had passed through. To start with the batteries on the Circus were flat. Something had been left drawing power off them - I am not sure what, and I wasn't brave enough to ask because Paulie had little grumpy horns on when I got to the boat.

After some effort to bring the Circus back to life we called Fabrice and borrowed an MRX. We motored around to Evans bay in time for grumpy Paul to threaten to RUN from the wharf to the yacht club to register our change of identity before the start. Everyone, including Paulie, I think, was relieved when he didn't actually run, and instead just kinda gracefully tottered up the wharf.

So we entered, sailed to the start line, managed to forget to turn our motor on after the preparatory signal this week ;o)... maybe the multiple heckles from around the bay helped, like when Rowdy (who was sailing his paper tiger) called out just after the preparatory signal "Paul, that means you can't start your motor now...".

It was very light winds, and we were not on our usual steed the circus, and maybe that contributed... but we were late to the line... late enough for Max (who was sailing his laser) and Rowdy to comment to the effect of "Hey Paul, you're really late..." and "Paulie, you're so late, maybe you should start your engine..."

That last one WAS particularly funny.

So we did 3 windward leewards, had a whole lot of fun, and had enough humility to let the locals cross the line in front of us on the Black Mamba. Then we started motoring back to RPNYC.... and then, just before point Jerningham, we stopped....

...rather abrubtly.

Initially thoughts were that we had run out of diesel. Then the engine started hissing, and creaking, and smoking... and Sparkles said "Oh F***". And Paulie fairly RAN downstairs, and we found the fire extinguisher... and Eat My Shorts came alongside and gave us their fire extinguisher too... just in case.

But everything got sorted out. And when we got back to the dock Fabrice gave the engine a 'French Tune Up'.... his theory seemed to be that if you ran it long enough it would discharge all of the oil that had choked it off out the the water intake, and then everything would be okay.

There was extremely hot steam and oil and a little bit of water coming out of the exhaust, but strangely, after a few minutes it did seem to come right, sort of. Our theory was that we had broken a head gasket, but Fabrice just gave a gallic shrug and seemed to think it'd be okay.

I walked off at that point.

So hopefully when we go down to the RPNYC for the champagne breakfast this morning there will be less breakages.

Off sailing at mid day. After two horrible nasty cold windy wet days look at how Saturday has dawned!

I slept in, only getting up at 7.30, and still managed to catch my bus ate 7.48... but it did mean no photos, which was kinda good because it was very rainy and very windy and very cold out on the deck.

Sailing tomorrow. 15 knots and dying according to BGP's forecast.