$7.6b injection into the Wellington Economy expected next month for All Blacks vs Wales Test

A recent study reported in the Dominion Post and later replicated on informative website stuff.co.nz alluded to the fact that $28m will be injected into the Wellington economy when the British and Irish Lions take on the All Blacks next year.

 

This windfall for the capital has now been eclipsed by a further study stating that up to $7.6b will be injected into the region for next month's clash against Wales at Westpac Stadium. Westpac media liaison Jennifer McCurdy was unable to confirm the rumours that the bank was planning on temporarily changing its name back to the Bank of New South Wales to celebrate the momentous occasion.

Self-proclaimed banking expert Martin Sanderson whose knowledge extends to naming the 'big four' banks in alphabetical order in less than 2 seconds backs up that statement. In a recent tweet the currently unemployed road marker claimed that $7.6b could be on the conservative side as he knows a group of guys going down from Auckland for the game were planning on going somewhere flash for dinner the night before.

Joshua Templeton a resident of Belmont a lesser known suburb of Lower Hutt but originally heralding from Palmerston North, therefore any expenditure he incurs in the greater Wellington region is classified as an injection said excluding rent and transport he can on any given day inject $10 - $20 into the economy. This figure fluctuates drastically if he has brought his lunch into work or not. Come All Black test day Joshua said this number could quadruple, especially if he is forced to get a round in.

Craft beer enthusiast Brian Green who is looking forward to visiting some of these craft beer bars he has been told the capital is famous for. I've been told some of these bars stock beers from more than one brewery, he went onto say, obviously showing his disdain for the duopoly stronghold the two big brewers had on the bars north of the Bombay Hills. Friends close to Brian claim that Brian plans to tie one on when he visits the nation's capital next month.

Auckland property magnate Lance Hooper who recently sold a wheelie bin storage vestibule in the Grey Lynn fringe area for $1.51m said when he was coming down for the game he was also planning on buying the whole of Strathmore. This would inject between $3 - $4m into the economy depending if Lance wanted to extend his domination of Strathmore to include the less sort after Strathmore Heights.

Wellington Café owner Mark Richardson, no relation to the Mark Richardson who represented New Zealand in Test cricket in 38 appearances from 2000 to 2004 said he expected turnover to pick up over the weekend of the Wales test. Mark who had recently taken a hit with an investment in Red Peak design inspired memorabilia has changed the name of his café back from Red Peak Café to what it was originally called before September 2015 to Mark's Café is currently in a legal disputed with the NZRFU about the naming of his café to All Black Café. Mark went on to add you can still get Red Peak inspired cupcakes as they proved to be popular with the younger crowd the café attracts on Monday afternoons.

At time of press, Wellington councillor Mary Swanson who commissioned the study into the $ value of injection onto the Wellington economy over the Wales All Black test weekend was not available for comment to validate the $7.6b figure.

McSloppy

The challenge was set to sample McDonald's new Moroccan Lamb Burger. McDonald's have pitched the burger as containing an aromatic sauce with just the right amount of paprika, cinnamon, nutmeg, pepper, turmeric, cumin and a hint of chilli, plus crisp fresh cucumber, tomato and lettuce.

The advertisement

The billboard advertising had already planted the seed with a clever tag line of 'Moorish', but what made the purchase a certainty was when an email containing words such as "superb", "something special", "you won't be disappointed" describing the burger arrived in my inbox, I knew what I was having for lunch.

The trip to Queen Street McDonald's was uneventful, the queue moved relatively swiftly.

The wait time for my order took longer than the allotted 60 section lunch time allocation so I was rewarded with a voucher for a free cheese burger on a return visit.

 

At $11.90 (true cost $12 as I gave the 10 cents to Ronald McDonald House) this was quite a commitment compared to my usual lunch time spend.

 

The meal arrived and I hastily went to find a table. Everything present and accounted for, I shouldn't have ordered the large size, but could not understand what the person serving me was asking when we went through that part of the transaction.

The email

The meal

It was time to open this box up. I have to say I was not impressed with what I saw.



What's in the box?

A lot of the satisfaction of a McDonald's burger is how the burger was prepared. Mine looked like it had been thrown together. Pretty sloppy. I knew I was going to have a lot of difficulty eating this without it ending up on my lap.

Well the truth is in the taste, so I went for my first bite. Carefully picking it up so the contents did not cascade out onto the table I took a bite. Jesus, just the right amount of paprika? I'm not sure about that, that sauce was pretty hot (and now running down my cheek in large globules). Damn I did not grab any napkins. Without been able to put the burger down for fear of it collapsing, I managed to extract a tissue out of my suit pocket to clear my face of the toxic looking bright yellow sauce that was not encasing it.

 

This was going to be a very difficult eat. In an effort to not end up wearing the burger, I had to consume it very quickly. This in turn allowed me less time to construct an in-depth analysis of the burger in question.

I did however have the following observations:

• Sloppy
• Poor construction
• Way too much sauce
• Sauce is very bright yellow, hopefully from the turmeric
• Sauce is very overpowering
• Bun was very average, in fact mine tasted stale
• Cucumber and tomato was fresh
• Cucumber was cut to a decent thickness
• Not sure what the percentage of lamb was in the patty, I suspect low
• The meat patty was quite bland



After a few bites



Almost done

I think the fact that I gave my cheese burger voucher to a homeless person on the way out shows what I think of the new McDonald's Moroccan Lamb Burger. I went into this with very high expectations, I left very disappointed. I won't be back.

Introducing: We Are Augustines

Of six o'clock shadows, six string guitars and singers searching souls......

Nicely done done gentlemen, very, very, very nicely done.....

We live in a world of talentless auto-tuned superficial hacks that pass themselves off as musicians, spending their careers in the revolving door of drug rehab and scandal, boosting their sagging ratings by alighting from limousines sans underwear, giving us eye watering, stomach turning shots of genitals....and then.......every once in a while a rare talent fights its way into the light of day.......much to the pleasure of those desperately seeking honesty and talent.........

Welcome to the light of day gentlemen......      

Text completly lifted from some punter who goes by the name mysweeteventhorizon on the We Are Augustines YouTube page

Outer Touch

It is amazing what a difference a few kilometres makes to a demographic. Utilising my freshly acquired knowledge that the new Maxx Outer Link bus service runs closer to my work than the Inner Link (I looked at a map yesterday), I decided to throw caution to the wind, and used it for my commute this morning.

As I stepped onto the bus and present my Hop card to the electronic reader, my first impression was, where is this bus going? It was like I had stumbled across a mid-week tramping expedition. Gone were the mustard trench coats one sees the inner suburb gentlemen donning to keep out the elements. These bus travellers (see what I did there), were clad head to toe in bright safety first colours of a Kathmandu catalogue. It was like I had stepped into the Gortex vortex.

As I found myself a seat, carefully pushing past the mountainous mass of puffer jackets, back packs and climbing poles, my next thought was where had this bus come from?

A quick scan at the circular map presented on the wall of the bus informed me that it had come from places I have never heard of, Westmere, Mt Albert and Balmoral. No wonder everyone looked so grumpy, how long had they been on this bus?

Suddenly there was a thunderous roar as the sky opened up to a downpour. I made it on the bus just in time I thought to myself. But looking outside the sun was shining. Then the deafening rumble happened again. What was causing this ear-splitting din? Then I realised it was the sound of nylon against nylon as man across the aisle tried to reposition himself in the limited space the bucket shaped seat was providing him.

I did not have a lot of room in my seat either. It must have been the lady sitting next to me turn to provide lunch for the 150 staff at her work. Nothing else could explain the size of the pack bag wedged onto her lap.

As the bus trundled along its route I tried to look around the bus to see what other differences were prominent from the Inner suburb link I has caught previously. There was no glow from the numerous iPhones one sees on the Inner Link as punters update their blog or twitter. This perhaps is not a bad thing, or maybe people's phones were buried too deep in their Mac Packs to be able to get out. I was not the only one without much space due to most seats been occupied by two puffer jacket wearing individuals, where the puff seems to engulf any available space.  

Other observations were the lack of the latest style of glasses, hair and designer beard. These were replaced with goggles, woolly hats and beards that looked like they had not seen civilisation for many months.

Needless to say, I was the only person on the bus in a three piece, and post to my departure the driver would have been the best dressed.

ME & THE KEY

In what can only be explained as a quiet day in news the New Zealand Herald leads with a story informing us where John Key is getting the suit he will be wearing to the Royal Wedding tailored.

Yes apparently there is a Royal Wedding soon, who knew?

Well blow me down with a merino thread if the Prime Minister of New Zealand goes to the same place for his big ticket suits as I do for my hats.

The Herald article reads like an advertorial, which if it was picked up by TV3’s Nightline I would suspect was a publicity stunt placed by PeadPR financed by RJB Design. But The Herald does not sell type face space does it? Or am I being overly negative? Does the public really want to know where the suit John Key is wearing to some Wedding in a couple of weeks was purchased?

Mr Key’s bespoke suit will have Greenstone “washed into the weave”. I put that in quotation marks as that is how it was presented in the Herald. Also it makes it look like a euphemism for something else.

Since I wrote about the great service I received from Ronald at RJB Design I have been back, toyed about getting a suit (ended up getting one from Murray Crane (also excellent service)) but have purchased a pair of brown socks. You would be fascinated to know how difficult it is to obtain brown socks in Auckland.

I might be back soon as I have had the unfortunate occurrence of having two pairs of cuff links break on me on consecutive days. What are the odds in that?

I hope the store is not mobbed by John Key groupies when I go.

Wash that into your weave.

DID I BELIEVE IT?

Last week I was offered my first professional blogging gig. Remuneration was not in any form that would feed the mouths I have waiting at home for me each evening, but more in the comp variety. I was offered four free tickets to Silo Theatres’ latest production ‘Did I Believe It?’ in return to mentioning it on this here blog. Well, no I couldn’t Adam & Eve it. I didn’t have the heart to inform the bearer of this offer that although this blog does average over 84 hits a day*, most of them are less than a second (yes most of you have stopped reading this now), and quite a number of those ‘hits’ are from Europe, who I imagine wouldn’t be heading down to New Zealand on the backing of reading this entry. They might, stranger things have happened.

I’m no corporate whore, but four free tickets are four free tickets. I accepted the offer and in my mind already started making the potent references to what I already new about this production.

The play is co written by that tall guy who used to be on breakfast TV who is friends with that short guy from breakfast radio. I know as I have seen them at the Golden Dawn. I see said tall person at my local Nosh from time to time. He is very tall.

Loosely based on that somewhat underrated BBC mock science educational television show Look Around You (from the comic genius who brought you Lee Titt’s Markets of Britain), Did I Believe It? puts you in the studio audience while the presenters and researchers propagate the inane and the momentous facts about all there is to know about vodka. This is where the sponsoring vodka brand steps in, but as I mentioned I am no corporate whore, so will mention them no more.

Imagine my dismay when I found out that said comp tickets were only for the Sunday matinee show. I don’t do matinees for reasons I can’t go into here. But end result, no matinee, no attendance, no review of the play.

Since I am a little short of material this week, I have decided to refer to it anyway.

A friend of mine went however and she enjoyed it so much she was compelled to mention it not only on Twitter but also on her Facebook wall. I know, people still use Facebook. Her restricted Twitter admission was:

Did I Believe It? @vodka sponsor’s name. Seriously hilarious. Go and see it. She does not mince her words my friend. Her next tweet went on to mention that the quality of my tweets has plummeted. Hey get off my back, it was a Monday, I was having a bad day, and I had a stone in my shoe. OK!

Any way, I hear Did I Believe It? is very good. If you are in Auckland it is showing at 1885 (yes that is a little unique isn’t it a play in a bar) from NOW till 30^th April. It then moves to Wellington

The link to the Silo Threate is here

The link to purchase tickets is here

The link to Look Around You is here

And here is an interesting link all about Lap Giraffes

*based on the one day average of yesterday

Update: Apparently the naughty folk from Did I Believe It? Are refusing to admit that inspiration from this format came from the BBC TV show Look Around You, and are in fact citing the same influences as the TV had as documented in Wikipedia. The Gall!

Needless to say this has engulfed a flame war between the two sides (albeit one sided) which Wellingtonista has picked up on.

Time is like a broken watch. I make money like Fred Astaire.

I have being meaning to get back on the blog for some time, and recent pressures from Mr Blomdini threatening to freeze my account, and the sudden arrival of Desmond Wolf from the deep dark forest has spurred me to make this entry.

Motivated by events that almost made me contribute to the blog over recent months, here is a brief run down in bullet point, almost in twitter format as it were.

 In no particular order

 

I brought a new album. This fellow blogspotter review is much better than anything I could write.

As usual the bFM Summer Series at Albert Park this year was very good. Kody & Bic were a personal highlight.

I didn't go to MGMT and I should have.

In fact I have not been to an indoor gig this year. I was seriously thinking about seeing the Black Keys when they were in Wellington, but then they cancelled on me.

The Hopgarden has poor acoustics, but an incognito Morris Dance Troupe does make for interesting dinner table conversation 

One person's view of interesting dinner table conversation is not necessary your wife's.

Listening to old people talk about eating baked beans on toast is almost as disgusting as having to watch them eat baked beans on toast.

Ever had a George Costanza moment?

I finally got myself an iPhone and am now addicted to twitter.