WHAT GOES UP MUST COME DOWN

Having a carpark in a parking garage beneath the apartment block we are living in I'm reminded again how large modern cars are - unnecessarily so.

The allocated carpark spaces are invariably too narrow and short to cater to the behemoths that some people drive. The interesting thing is that the brands of a lot of these behemoths were once considered small or compact cars. Is this an American-influenced thing? I know from experience that many European countries produce smaller and more manoevarable vehicles - metro cars for city driving. I think that it's time that in New Zealand we considered doing the same.

In the wide open spaces where long distance driving is the norm like USA, Australia, Africa etc. big and powerful vehicles make sense. The same trying to get around narrow and windy Wellington streets and to fit in to car parks in buildings that were built when cars were smaller is just ridiculous. Most of these things never get out into the country and are more vanity purchases than essentials.

We have a small car - a 2016 Toyota Corolla which is bigger than the earlier models of Toyota Corollas. The 2025 version of this is way bigger again. Why? When we move in to our new house that has a double garage I can see us parking the car there and very rarely taking it out given that the supermarket and other shops are within easy to medium walks away which is of course one of the reasons for making our move. If we do buy another car in the future we will be checking out all the very small cars but, looking at options today as I walked past a couple of dealers the very small cars are becoming harder to find unless we buy an older model. Maybe one like Richards' Nissan Micropene is the way to go.

In the lawnmower shop next door to our apartment block I looked at motor scooters - electric ones and thought that, when it's time to retire the Corolla, a his and hers pair of motor scooters might be a good idea. What could go wrong?

Not these

Maybe these

CHRISTMAS LETTER

As the other old codgers wrote Christmas Letters I felt obliged to do the same.

Here it is ...

... "NOT" as Richard would say. Are you mad?

Here's some better things instead.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DRVXc7OE6PP/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==

SHIT HAPPENS ...

 ... and generally we hope that it doesn't happen to us.

Friend Rod from up north sent me an email today in which he said:

Those people who bought your house still haven’t been seen. Yesterday there was a major sewage leak near the hall. Swimming banned until 10th December. Today on my walk watched all the rubbish from 3 sacks floating from the wharf towards your place. Going to ring Council. You got out exactly the right time. I have put a clip of the rubbish on Facebook.

I guess that I'm glad too that the sewage overflow didn't occur when we were there and I don't like the idea of the rubbish bags floating from the other direction.

The sewage plant is at the eastern end of the road by the hall that Rod mentioned and the wharf where the rubbish bags have come from is at the western end of the road. Our 'old' house is in the middle. 

I'm glad that the new owners haven't moved in yet and hope that the water quality is improved before they do.

As I said ... shit happens.

 

NEW POST - THE RELIGIOUS CURMUDGEON

Now, The Religious Curmudgeon has been a bit quiet recently - maybe Kierkegaard has had something to do with that but tonight he has surfaced with a a timely reminder of how silly religion, and especially the Catholic version of Christianity is,,.

See Here: SHARING IS CARING

 

ICH BIN EIN WELLINGTONER

 Not this ...

... as I'm not a doughnut. 😉

I've been back in Wellington for a couple of weeks now and already find myself acting like a Wellingtonian. As I walk about everywhere, I find myself jaywalking, 'running' red lights (pedestrian ones) and dodging traffic - all the things that a couple of weeks ago I was complaining about. Maybe I'll get a bike again and annoy Richard when he's bimbling along in his Nissan Pene Minuscolo or whatever he drives now.

The walking will be good for me as it will help me to keep fit and lose some weight which I've recently put on. My broken and sore toe is limiting but I'm still managing at least 5 kms a day. Today I've done over 9 kms because I walked to Thorndon and back.

I revisited the Hobson Street townhouse that we looked at a couple of weeks ago and walked away from because it is a monolithic cladding house. At the time it was on a fixed price basis with the owners looking for offers above the rateable value. As they did not get this (due to it being a monocled house) they have reduced the asking price. Today, after revisiting, talking to the owners and the real estate agent and fortuitously the builder who earlier this year did the recladding on one side of the house and who had arrived to day to do some resealing and paintwork I, after also reading the building inspection report, made an offer below their new asking price. The estate agent will submit that to them and we will wait to see the outcome. They might tell us to bugger off but, if they don't and our lawyer finds nothing to object to we may have a place to live in Wellington - city fringe. It's a really good street with top class schools and some embassies so security is pretty good. If anything we'll be the worst people to live there (I'll have to hide my beaten up old Toyota Corolla).

YOU WILL BE SURPRISED AT THIS ... A GRIPE

I'm getting very annoyed at all of the 'improvements' that banking and retailing technology is bringing my way. Here are just two random ones that have managed to get up my nose recently.

Now I very, very rarely eat at McDonald's and at any of the other shit-food takeaway places but today, after a long walk in the midday heat I was both hungry and in need of a cooling drink. I thought that a small-sized milkshake would cater to both of these requirements and so walked in to a McDonald's 'restaurant' on Manners Street. There didn't seem to be any staff to take an order over the counter and all of the customers were ordering food from big screens. I tried this but found that I was unable to do so unless I scanned the McDonald's app from my phone. I refuse to have a McDonald's app on my phone not only because I will, hopefully, never use it but I don't want yet another information stealing app.

I walked out of the joint without ordering and chose to go home and drink a glass of cold water instead.

Last week I was downtown with the car and wanted to buy something in Lambton Quay. I was short of time and didn't want to go all of the way back to the apartment carpark, walk back to Lambton Quay to make the purchase, walk all the way back to Vivian Street to the apartment carpark and then end up being late to meet up with the Crown removal people. I found a carpark only to discover that to use it I had to use a 'Paywave' card or, if I could find one of the rare machines, use coins. I couldn't find one of these rare machines and if I did I had no coins. Who keeps cans nowadays? I have had Paywave disabled on my debit and credit card as well as, patently it's fucking ridiculous. You might as well get a thousand dollars from a money machine and drop it on the footpath. Sheesh! I then went all of the way back to the apartment carpark, walked back to Lambton Quay to make the purchase, walked all the way back to Vivian Street to the apartment carpark and then ended up being late to meet up with the Crown removal people. Sheesh again!

What the fuck is going on? Have I missed something from having lived out in the sticks for the last 16 years?

I've found, over the last week or so that many Wellington retailers are only using Paywave eftpos machines and that they are not set up for swiping a card. I've walked out of food stores because of this and today, when buying a hat the shop assistant had to scrabble under the counter to find an old fashioned 'swipe' eftpos machine. Sheesh yet again!

While Paywave (contactless payment) is a secure and convenient technology with built-in encryption, its primary "dangers" relate to the financial impact of potential fraud if a card is lost or stolen, and the surcharges often passed on to the consumer by merchants.

Security and Fraud Risks
The main security risk stems from the fact that low-value transactions generally do not require a PIN or signature, making it easier for a thief to use a lost or stolen card. Unauthorized Transactions: A person who finds or steals your card can make multiple small purchases (up to a certain limit, e.g., NZ$200) without needing your PIN.
Accidental Scans (Highly Unlikely): While a concern for some, banks and security experts state that accidental "walk-by" purchases are highly unlikely as the card needs to be very close (within a few centimeters) to a payment terminal to work.
Customer Negligence: If a card is lost or stolen, banks typically cover the losses if you have taken reasonable care of your card and reported the loss promptly. However, if negligence can be proven (e.g., waiting a week to cancel the card), you may not recover all the money.Data Vulnerability (Minor): Contactless transactions use unique, encrypted codes that minimize the risk of data interception or reuse, making them less vulnerable to traditional card skimming than swiping a card. Apple Pay and Google Pay add an extra layer of security by tokenizing the transaction, meaning the merchant never sees your real card number.

Financial Dangers
The other significant "danger" of Paywave is the surcharge often applied by merchants to cover the fees they are charged by banks and card networks (like Visa and Mastercard). Extra Cost to Consumers: These surcharges can sometimes be as high as 4% and mean you pay more for the convenience of tapping your card. You can usually avoid this fee by inserting your card or using a different payment method like standard Eftpos or cash.
Potential for Price Increases: If surcharges are banned by regulation (as is being considered in some regions like New Zealand), businesses may simply increase their overall product prices to cover the costs, meaning all consumers (including those paying with cash or standard Eftpos) end up paying more.

Summary

The technology itself is secure, but the primary dangers lie in the easewith which an unauthorised person can use a physical card for small transactions and the potential for unexpected surcharges. You can protect yourself by treating your card with care and checking for surcharges before you tap.

 

STILL LOOKING

We're still looking for a house to buy in Wellington. A couple of promising prospects turned out to be duds in that they, both being monolithic cladding townhouses, had histories of leaking and having to be reclad at the cost of hundreds of thousands. "All good" you might think - "they've been repaired" - but the research I've done suggests that cladding repairs can only be guaranteed for twenty years and the ones that we looked at were repaired about 2008. We moved on.

A third townhouse we looked at, in Kelburn, has an impeccable record and has cedar cladding with no history of leaking (built in the early 2000s).

This is a very nice house and ticks every box that The Old Girl likes except for an easy walk to her work in downtown Wellington. For this reason we decided to, not rule it out totally, but to put it on the back burner to revisit later. I must admit that I wasn't too concerned at this as I consider the house to be 'an old lady's house' - too tidy and fussy to appeal to blokes. It also has no panoramic views being in a gully (The Glen).

We then looked at other prospects in Mount Victoria, Te Aro, Mount Cook and even, yesterday, in Khandallah. In general we have now eliminated suburbs like Oriental Bay (too expensive), Mount Cook, The Terrace, Brooklyn, Mount Victoria South, Hataitai, Newtown, Berhampore (regardless of the fact that Shelley's uncle and aunt almost bought a house there), Island Bay, Karori, Northland, Miramar, Kilbirnie, Seatoun and, for obvious reasons, Lower Hutt*.

I admit to being 'over it' and basically anything will do. An exascerbating factor is that, at this time of year not a lot of new properties get listed. I really don't think we can stand leaving our search until say, February given that I don't like living in this inner city apartment we are renting.

When discussing the options this morning The Old Girl removed her  major objection to the Kelburn townhouse saying that as she only intends working for another year, the walking to work difficulty would not last long. We've decided to have another look at the property with a view to whether we can live without a seaview. I looked carefully through the property information toady - builder report, LIM, body corporate details etc. and we thought we will make an offer, discounted by lack of a seaview after we have revisited.

Old lady's house here I come.

* To be honest though I floated the idea past The Old Girl today of living in Eastbourne and the bays and 'watchlisted' a property In York Bay that we could afford.

GETTING THE MILES IN

 I walked to the railway station this morning and caught a bus to Island Bay to wander about and to check out whether buying a property there is a good idea. I only walked for about 5kms because my broken toe was sore but I feel that I 'got the miles in'. 'Getting the miles in' is important when wearing an Apple Watch because if you don't the watch beeps and reminds you of the fact. I tell you, it's about as annoying as Richard moaning about posting frequency or correcting grammar in the posts. Sheesh!

On my walk, the water bottle in my backpack leaked and saturated my wallet, my phone, some mail and my book. Bummer. I emptied out the pack and turned it inside out to dry in the sun by laying it and the other items on the Island Bay beach wall that I was sitting on, looking at the view of Taputeranga (Rat Island) and Cook Strait.

Rat Island is reportedly known as that due to an infestation of rats that came from ships in the late 1700s but I prefer to think that it was so named due to its shape...

... where a hunched rat's body can be seen with a long tail.

While sitting for about a quarter of an hour the bag, wallet and phone dried out and, by carefully positioning the book, the warm breeze ruffled the pages in the sunshine and fairy quickly dried that out too.

Job done. I caught a bus back into town and did some shopping.

WHAT GOES ON?

Well, the senior bloggers met yesterday for lunch along with their squeezes.

Lunch was tasty and not at all like Robert reported in his AI inspired blog post this morning. Robert's reports not surprisingly are about as accurate as 'apostles' reporting on the life and times of Jesus more than 300 years later and expecting people to believe it. In that case though hundreds of millions of gullible people do believe it but, unlike with Robert's post though the reports via the New Testament do get read.

Anyway moving on - Richard and Shelley brought the contents of a delicatessen to our place when invited for lunch: wine, chocolates, cheeses (not Jesus) etc. I wonder - when they go to concerts do they take their own music or DVD players when they go to the movies?

It was a great catchup and underscored to me the advantage of moving to Wellington with or without the gratefully received goodies.

Over lunch Richard and I discussed Kierkegaard's notions on individual existence—particularly religious existence—as a constant process of becoming and for his invocation of the associated concepts of authenticity, commitment, responsibility, anxiety, and dread, Existentialism is our forte you see. We also debated whether Rubber Soul was the greatest Beatles album and whether Saint Rita - Patron saint of impossible feats really merited sainthood given that she was not a virgin, which is the most important prerequisite for becoming a nun and that there was a whiff of scandal about her involvement in the murders of her husband, his brothers and half of the congregation in her home village.

After exhausting the topics of philosophy, music and religion and because Richard had to use the toilet we had a natter about Robert and what he's been up to. We all decided that he was about up to his ankles so far, as 'testing the waters' in relationships between devout Catholics is about as stimulating as watching old screenings of the Val Doonigan Show ...

... which signalled the end of the luncheon.

Really though, Richard and Shelley had to go off to do some grandchildren minding - a responsibility that The Old Girl and I have managed to avoid.

The more observant reader will have noticed the highlighted links (orange writing) in the text. This is due to the extremely annoying Google search links function that I, and millions of other people apparently, don't know how to disable.

  

FUCK ME* ...

... GERIATRIC GIMP COMPLAINS.

* As Robert would say but with use of asterisks which makes me think that his spelling would generally improve if he used asterisks in his words more often.

I broke my little toe yesterday and so have been hobbling about.

Today I walked from the Cuba Street apartment to Willis Street (Unity Books) and back but got so pissed off at the slow shuffling bimblers that I returned by walking up Willis Street and down Vivian Street.

Have young people lost their ability to walk, through overplaying video games and sitting on couches (see previous post) or riding on coaches (see previous post)? They shuffle along so that gimpy people with broken toes have to pass them or barge through them. See: BITTER, SWEET F.A. SYMPATHY.

Sh***h!