As Fi Bows to Peer Pressure

This is my kind of detention and rehabilitation. Meet 1,500 plus CPDRC inmates of the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center, Cebu, Philippines at practice.

Followed by a few days in London and then another week in the country . . . I like trees and grass all around and really blue sky. These are things that London does not do well.

The best thing about my current trip to the English countryside that it is currently something resembling summer. I say something resembling summer because there is flooding and torrential rain in parts of the country, which are not parts of summer that I recognise. Nevertheless it is Summer in Waresley (where I am) because the sun is shining and Fat Freddy’s is on the stereo. Dub makes Summer feel more Summery.

The cool part is coming up here is vaguely like returning home for a bit. I’m staying at a family friend’s house and the father is an expat-Kiwi. The house has heaps of photos and pictures of NZ and their music and dvd collection is Kiwi. YAY! The best bit was yesterday when Diana (mother), who is English, told one son to ensure that he’d packed his togs. Togs! Not swimming costume, trunks or whatever the weird term here is. All of this is keeping me bouyant despite having a dissertation and job applications to do. Ah well . . .

As my flatmate Ritika said, hopefully a week in a country will inspire me 

An inability to sleep at normal hours has got me doing weird things at 2am. Tonight, instead of productively using my time to upload and caption the photos from Lisbon, I decided that would be too boring and made a “video” photo montage of the best shots set to Razorlight “Before I Fall to Pieces”. Photos will be uploaded in the next week for anyone who wants to see the whole set with silly captions to explain what exactly we’re doing but meanwhile . . .

Mark has questioned the spending of $34 million on Team New Zealand, saying it should have been spent on health or education. It got me thinking because while I agree in principle, it seemed a tad more complex than that. Here’s my thinking on it . . .

It is possible for states to spend their entire budget on health and/or education and still not get it right by a long stretch. In the NZ health budget, $34 million would add only 0.0032% to the total, while in the education budget it adds 0.0059%. Such a small amount in relation to the total makes it incredibly difficult to spend effectively and in the right places for the majority.

When making decisions on budget allocations, it’s about maximising welfare and ensuring effective spending. While I agree NZAID could really have done a lot with that $34 million, it appears a huge number of New Zealanders all over the world were keen enough on watching the America’s Cup and seeing us do well that a government injection of cash would benefit the “happiness” of Kiwis worldwide. I know from watching the AC website that there were Kiwis everywhere sending in messages of support. We’re a sporting nation, whether we like it or not, and this event is the oldest active trophy in international sport. We’re a sailing nation and we need to show young sailors that there is something to aspire to.

I guess what I’m saying is that in some ways this was a smart move for a Government that wants to invest in something we do well in (we won the Louis Vuitton Cup after all), in nationalism, and in providing something to aspire to for New Zealand’s young sailors. One can always say “the money should have been spent in x and y”, but it’s more difficult in this case to say that the money could have been spent more effectively in x and y.

We just lost the America’s Cup by 1 second.

What can I say?

1) Exams over

2) Slept 

3) Visited London Zoo and got a panda

4) Threw a Summer Party with BBQ sun fun

5) Slept 

6) Packed

7) Moved out of Passfield

Moved into Sidney Webb House (South of the Thames in concrete-ville)

9) Decorated new room (home for the next 12 weeks) 

10) Going to Portugal on Thursday

More detail soon soon . . .