Hold your fucking horses people! The lovely Gina from AirNZ just called, and she has managed to get us on a flight on the 27th - 3 days EARLIER than the flight we got bumped from!
Legend!
2020 has still been a bitch, but I'm gonna celebrate one of the small wins tonight
Mods, feel free to delete if innapropriate or unnecessary, but I wondered if it might be worthwhile having somewhere for our little community to ask for or offer help to each other.
People could post requests (advice, favours, whatever) or offer assistance in some way.
For example, it sounds like many people could be becoming unemployed in the near future. Maybe Ferners can assist with CV reviews, job market advice, financial modelling for home budgets etc.
Obviously physical movements are limited so don't any of youse hit me up to help weed your garden...
So in all this chaos, here is a great kiwiana story for youse all.
I'm in Day 2 of iso, and have a Countdown delivery order coming today. I tried to change the address online yesterday because we changed our accommodation after I placed the order, but couldn't do it. I spoke to the local store, and they said to call back this morning.
So I grab the phone this morning and hit the most recently called number. But I'd forgotten that we ordered fish'n'chip delivery for dinner last night, so Anna, the owner of the chippy picks up instead.
At 7am.
Oops
Anyway, I apologise, she asks who I was trying to call, we get chatting. Less than 45 minutes later she has dropped off eggs, bread, butter and
crackers to our driveway for brekkie.
What a fucking legend.
It's good to be home.
I'm aliiiiive!!!!!!!
All went pretty smooth in the end. Up at 4am, easy drive to Akl, 5mins wait with the police at the border.
All the airline staff were awesome, plane totally empty, and the pokice and army at the Sydney end were all great.
Ended up at the Meriton Suites in the CBD - 2 bed, 2 bath, 3 tv apartment on the 29th floor, ocean glimpses west and north, city views south,and a balcony with real fresh air. Really cant complain!
Aside from the fucken NBA being cancelled of course!!!
@Stargazer said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:
I don't see the problem with including this lady's death in the numbers. Even if COVID-19 was the primary cause of her death, it was likely a contributing/secundary factor. If she hadn't had COVID, she might have lived (a bit) longer, even at her age.
Oh come on! She recovered and tested negative twice! You might as well chalk her death up to the chicken pox she had as a 5yr old or the head cold she got when working in the seafood markets as a 30yr old.
I have a 74yr old mother with lung cancer and months to live. If she got Covid now, it would likely be lethal, and of course would be recorded as a Covid death. But even then, I still wouldn't say she died of Covid, she is dying of bloody lung cancer!!!
Its absurd to consider this recovered case as a Covid death if we want to use the figures for any useful analysis of the virus.
Well that was a glorious afternoon / evening.
The pub had a dodgy feed that kept freezing but given the games weren't close it kind of added to the fun - lots of "oohhhhhhh"'s and "yeeeaaaahhhh"'s as we froze then caught up.
There were about 15 kids there for the early game, most wearing Australian / Irish / English supporter kit, each of them glued to phones and iPad's. Most buggered off home after the Australia game.
My lad was decked out in his AB kit and sat at the corner of the bar for both games, watching every second of the footy - didn't ask for his ipad or phone once. He even had a few sips of my beer with the observation "that's quite nice".
Never been so proud.
@Snowy said in RWC: All Blacks vs Namibia Pool B:
@sparky said in RWC: All Blacks vs Namibia Pool B:
Stuff has a second-by-second Countdown clock therefore if you so choose you can watch the seconds until that glorious moment when the team is actually named.
Well that's ruined that then.
Another of the great mysteries in life is just common knowledge.
Completely off topic and absolutely doesn't belong in this thread, but the single greatest mystery in life remains how it can take so long to collect a hire car from the airport no matter how much info you've already provided when booking online.
@hydro11 said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:
@Kirwan said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:
@Godder said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:
Level 3 lets more people go to work, but it's hardly a huge improvement on level 4 in terms of the cage doors opening.
However, in good news, apparently, not only is our curve flattening, it's exponentially reducing - halving every 5 days. At this rate, we are probably looking at a total of 6-8 weeks at levels 3&4 (so another 2-4 weeks) and then back to level 2.
The rest of the world is rightly envious of that, because they're generally looking at months of the equivalent of level 3+. 4 weeks seems a bit early to be rolling out the civil liberties flag - human rights and civil liberties are critically important to the NZ democracy, but the most important right is the right to life because the rest are not much use to dead people.
And a cratered economy is a damn sight harder on people on the other side.
This is exactly the sort of scare mongering that drove that poll result.
The original justification for this lockdown was not to eliminate the disease but to prevent our health system from being overwhelmed. That has been achieved and over the last four weeks process and capacity has been added to help even more with that.
So let’s move down the levels fast, test appropriately, contain regional reoccurrence, and get back to normalise life.
Even today Cindy was downplaying the huge impact this is having on the economy. “Doing in tough” is not even close to what’s coming IMO.
I think when level 4 started we didn't think it would be as successful as it has been. Now we have a chance to actually eliminate this from New Zealand. The worst thing we could do would be to go down the levels quickly and have it spread. Then you go back to level 4 or have unfettered community transmission and what we have done so far will be for nothing. We have the chance to get back to "normal" in NZ and we should take that if possible.
What a giant leap you make to get from our current 10 cases per day to "unfettered community transmission". We are destroying our economy, and the livelihood of thousands of people, for something that has 18 people in hospital.
It's just absurd.
As it stands, we could return to some semblance of "normal life" in NZ right now. We should be at L3 immediately, where there is next to no extra risk given how tight it is.
L2 should be right around the corner if the data continues on this trajectory.
This BS about elimination and effective contact tracing does my head in. Why do we need to have the "gold standard" / 100% success rate for this? We have no drain on our hospitals. This disease doesn't have some 20% fatality rate on the otherwise-healthy. Do we know where every flu patient has been every year, do we get stressed that they may have visited a rest home or a workplace or a school? Are people asked to keep diaries in case they catch it?
We just dont need to eliminate this thing in NZ. Its a totally unnecessary goal, and it's doing significantly more harm than good right now.
@MN5 said in R.I.P. 2020:
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/nat-music/audio/2018765611/max-merritt-slips-away
I bet ‘journalists’ have been waiting years just to use this line.
Hopefully Jake the Muss is raising a quart bottle as a tribute....
So I listened to this in the car just now for a bit of nostalgia. Still catchy as, just a lovely tune. But I'd never realised that its 5+ minute song that only has 1 verse, repeated 3 times.
3 fricken times!!!
Lazy ass muthas!
Just absurd that a bloke who is 3rd all-time in career minutes played, can simultaneously be the best player in the world right now.
What a performance.
@Snowy said in Stupid shit you see on the internet:
I do wonder why "Americas most prolific gay sex predator" wasn't already confined in some way - like a prison. Maybe it was home detention, certainly was for two of them.
Also seemed odd to describe him as "prolific " rather than notorious or something similar.
And good of the neighbours to wait 5 days to be sure it wasn't just normal action 
@Snowy said in All Blacks Tests 2020:
I'm a bit shocked at the reaction to a religious festival. I had very few Christmas at home when I was flying, like many other jobs. You just don't have any choice. Cook a turkey on boxing day, or New Years eve, whenever. In 20 years I probably had 6 actual Christmas days at home.
I chose a job that involved travel and being away at times...
I'm an atheist but I love Xmas. Xmas Eve is great, then Xmas morning is magic with young kids. For my wife's side of the family, its also one of only 2 days of the year that everyone makes the effort to get together. The kids play with their cousins for hours, you can't replace that with a Boxing Day turkey.
@Machpants just about brought my breakfast back up 
@Rancid-Schnitzel if my kids do even 10% of the shit I did, I'll have a heart attack while they are teenagers.
@MajorRage good luck mate. Completing a mara at any pace is an achievement. How old is the garmin? Have you done a software update recently?
@Rancid-Schnitzel if there is one place in the world that you NEVER have to say sorry for rambling, I think its here!
Damn, having a teenager sounds hard. Yours doesn't sound like he's done/doing anything that half the people round here didn't do as kids, and we all turned out ok.
Ok, that probably didn't help. 
Sounds like life is moving in the right direction generally though, hang in there!
