#600. Dr.Dwarika Country:Kathmandu. Nepal. Dr.Dhungel is the Executive Director of the Institute for Integrated Development Studies - Kathmandu based think tank. Read what you would not read in the papers.
#601. Well Travelled !!! Country: Here, there and everywhere. She has been to Argentina (twice); Peru; Boliva; Patagonia. Currently in China; Tibet & Nepal for April/May. She will be in Southeast Asia in June & Australia in July !!!
#602. NEW - Photos of Old Cars Country: ??? (Guessing - Italy) One of the cars is a Fiat 600 model, which I remember one the uncles having one which was yellow & green. You stood at the front of the car - not the side - and opened the door.
(This post was about old cars - one was a dark green 600 fiat model - but now I have a newest BMW bike and a "old post" !!! You can't get good help these days. My fault I suppose - you pay someone "peanuts" and you get monkeys and little men in your head !!! hehe)
#603. NEW - A Great Crochet Blog !!! (This blog seems a.o.k - no problems there !!!)
PLEASE NOTE: The following email somewhere or other ended up on this blog. How, I don't honestly know, but it makes for interesting reading, especially the property dealing !!! Someone lose an email. This blog is not open to anyone, but me !!! I was adding on new blogs as I read about them, so I wouldn't lose them and saving them in draft form. Time is 7.30am 15th and I have been on this computer since 6pm 14th. I had one break when I went to get something to eat around the corner, but I closed everything off like I always do. Yes !!! I'm still working out of internet cafes - having brought or been given a computer of my own - yet !!! Maybe tomorrow, someone will take pity on me and "pigs" will fly !!! It has just turned up in the last 30 minutes. The little man in the computer must of been having a nap - come to think of it, I hear two lots of footsteps in my head, maybe he has joined the little man in my head on a mission to see where the garbage shute ends !!! (hehe) I was thinking of doing a blog and teaching people "basis english" - maybe I was thinking out too loud !!!
I've been teaching beginners for the last 2 and a half weeks, back at the school that's given me the most work so far. A lot of their teachers only work part time cos they're parents or they're 60ish and they are often off sick or on holiday. IT's quite nice working there actually, I like all the other teachers and it has a nice feel to it. I feel comfortable there. only bad thing is they don't have any computers or internet for the teachers!! Teaching beginners is pretty much a new experience for me. At first I didn't like it but I'm actually quite fond of my class now. There's this crazy French Tunisian woman who's a bit mad cos of trauma in her life. She is very hotblooded as you can imagine from a French and Arabic mix with some craziness thrown in!! If she doesn't understand something she starts to panic and gets really angry and starts speaking in rapid French. "Leila non compris. Non compris!"!! Although on the other hand she can be quite fun sometimes too! Then I have 2 Saudi Arabian boys - aged 19 and 22, thankfully they're young enough to not have issues with female teachers. One of them asks to leave the class at 12.30 every day so he can go up to the prayer room to pray to mecca. They both have beards. The younger one is going back to Saudi Arabia in a couple of weeks to get married in an arranged marriage. He refused to play this game we were playing with dice the other day, because apparently dice is a symbol of gambling which they are against. Then the next day I got them to play it again but got them to use coloured rods to pick the numbers instead of a dice hoping that would be ok with him, but he still refused to play! However the other Saudi guy played it without issue...! I also have an old Japanese man who wants to marry me in this class, and a Turkish guy and a Japanese girl and a Taiwanese guy who has the most atrocious pronunciation of any student I've ever had. Trying to get him to say something like "post office" he says "poso" I say no, "post office". He says "pos off" I say "post office"! He says "pos off" I say "post off - iss!!" he says "pos off" I say "off - iss!" He says "off" I say "off iss!!!!" And finally he says "office" then I say "post office" and he says "poso". But they are making good progress. They know basic verbs and nouns now and can say basic sentences and can understand me quite a bit.
The roads and public transport in Auckland are just horrendous. It's like being in London, it's so bad. If there is any problem, any roadworks or anything, the bus just crawls all the way into town. And it's so expensive too, and they've just put petrol up. I read a fascinating article in the paper that explained everything I've been wanting to know about how Auckland's transport is so bad. Cos a friend of my was in Uzbekistan recently where everyting is super super cheap including their public transport system, (trains) which is extremely efficient and gets you wherever you want to go. It's a third world country except for it's train system which is super advanced compared to Auckland. Anyway, it's because Auckland governement has put about 90% of their money into the roads instead of into public transport from the 1950s until the 1990s. In 1950 58% of AUcklanders used public transport. By 1991 on 7% used public transport! The article also said that Auckland is probably the worst city in the world for too many cars and bad public transport, worse even than Los Angeles which is famous for having too many cars and bad public transport. In L.A. there are 1.4 cars per household, in Auckland there are 1.6 cars per household!!! I remember before I left N.Z., we actually had 6 cars and a yacht at our house. My mum's car, my dad's 2 vans, my brother's car that he drove and his mustang that he was playing with, and my car.
You remember how we used to go to the movies in Staples corner and we hated it, it was dirty adn full of irritating kids? And then we went to that cinema in Kilburn and it was just great, it was full of mature adults, no kids, and it was so much more sophisticated and there was a bar. Well I went to a cinema in Auckland that reminded me of that. It was in Newmarket and it shows more alternative movies instead of just the mainstream ones and it had a bar and was a really nice refreshing change to the normal village cinemas everyone goes to. We saw this really weird kiwi movie that was really irritating. It had these spies in Auckland but it was just so funny hearing spies with Kiwi accents, we just totally couldn't take them seriously, and they were dumb and got themselves all killed really quickly anyway.
Well I've done one property trade and got $9000 from it, although it was my property coach that did all that actually. Did I tell you I've got a property coach? HE's really helping me a lot although I'm a bit annoyed with him sometimes, cos he's really hard to get hold of and I would prefer someone who would sit down with me each week and write weekly goals together and then sit down with me the next week and see how well I've achieved them. But anyway what I'm trying to do is do some property trading to make money for a deposit - and in so doing become an expert in property hunting. IT works like this - I find a good property, get it under contract (ie. get the vendor to agree to the price), but I have 10 working days then to find someone who wants to buy the property - I give them the contract to buy it and they give me a fee for it. If I don't find someone I have an out clause put into the contract so I can get out of it. So I found one great property that was a bit of a fluke, and my coach went and looked at it with me and I put in the first offer of a price, but then he sort of took over and did all the rest of the negociation and all the rest of it. But he did get me $9000 which has more than paid for the cost of this course ($2000)!! But my goal for the next 2 months until I leave is to do at least another 5 of these trades and hopefully buy at least 2 properties myself too.
I'm going to london on the 29th of June, I'm really looking forward to it I'm fed up with Auckland actually. I need a change! I'm going to travel with Tiffany for a month hopefully, if we can afford it, and I'm going to Morroco with STef. I'm coming back to NZ to carry on the property investing in October.
#604. NEW - Woman Thirst For Knowledge ??? Country: Canada. Saw that on a "mug" at the bottom of the bog - blog !!! Very interesting photos and posts, including one post where he was spraying dog doo's with a can of "poop freeze". I kid you not !!! You spray the poop, which freezes, then you pick it up !!!
#605. NEW - Great Photos Country:USA. A great selection of photos - I loved the monkey best !!!
#606. NEW - Great Photos Warning - Some pictures may offend !!! Have a look-see at the post for 03/19/2006 - the "eyes" really do have it !!! (I should of listed it on that other blog, but what the heck !!!)
#607 NEW - The World Through My Eyes Country: Israel. Well, not through my eyes of course, but the eyes of the person, whose blog it is - he serves in the Israeli Army.
#608 NEW - Mountainbiking !!! Country: United Kingdom. Great mountainbiking photos.
#609. NEW - Great Photos Country:Turkey. I cannot understand ther language, but there is a few words of english. Click on the photos for a larger image.
