DOING A DON BRASH AND AN UGLY BAGGAGE

Today was fraught with a few challenges. Firstly was getting to Christchurch because of the snow. We thought we were cunninger than a cunning thing when we booked our flight for 1.15 today - expecting the ground would have thawed enough to land. It was and we did while some colleagues who booked on early morning flights were bounced to fly at the earliest - on Thursday.

We had packed enough stuff for three weeks - we are here for 3 months - so 3 weeks seemed to be a good stint before we went home to the Wairarapa for some R and R.

We got our rental car and then realised with horror that the only bag left on the carousel looked like ours in every detail apart from a padlock and a wispy ribbon on the handle. Someone picked up my bag. Duh.

When we bought the bag we picked the ugliest one we could find. Maroon with an ugly maroon and white tartan front. It looks like something a bottle tanned pom would buy for a week at Butlins holiday Camp

So Airnz says they will hold the bag of the other woman. but we have to go back out to the airport to pick it up as "its not their fault its lost" was the reason given. We have had our bag delivered in the past but it was the Airlines fault so thats fair enough.

- We think the woman who has my bag is Mrs Susan (poss Sue King.) I found that out looking over the shoulder of the nice lady at lost baggage at chch airport.

And i think she had come from overseas via Auckland but it was hard to decipher the abbreviations.

So we are parked up in a nice motel and have had to wash our one set of clothes doing a Don Brash washing them in the handbasin - which leaves us a bit - exposed...

Lucky there is a good heater in the room. So missing in the suitcase are all the expensive potions and lotions that fill in the cracks of our 51 year old face. So tomorrow we reckon our countenance will resemble earthquake damaged Bealey Ave.

And we have no cell charger - so phone is going flat so if Mrs King does come to light I wont get the message until we can charge the phone.

We had to buy a toothbrush, and all the other girly toiletries.

But for the first time since we have been in Christchurch we are praying there will be no quake tonight. If we are forced outside the only thing we will be wearing is a big red coat and we will be commando underneath and its chillier than a Labour caucus after the latest poll result -out there - There is snow still piled up all over the place.

So please - please if anyone knows Susan King, who has seriously crap taste in luggage - tell her to ring airnz urgently.

ICING ON A HOT NZ CAKE.

We reckon that this is the time we really need to sell our place- New Zealand. While Tourism New Zealand does a pretty good job - its time for the rest of New Zealand to start selling our story.

Early this morning we saw a tweet from the Wine Diva, a well known Canuck wine writer and tweeter.

Daenna van Mulligen has been tweeting for the last few weeks as she travelled around NZ chronicling her experiences . If we were writing about Wine full time - she would set the benchmark for use of social media and telling the story of wine in a fun way.

And she is a shining example of how we can get the "story" of New Zealand out through the "new media," online media, social media - what ever you want to call it.

Today we retweeted her wonderful take on NZ. She was glowing in her praise for New Zealand wine and Air New Zealand but she found pineapple lumps hard to swallow...

We have about 630 solid followers on Twitter and have got to the stage where twits with large audiences are following us. We loved what Thewinediva wrote about New Zealand. So we retweeted it. Then we checked on an online tool called Tweetreach later in the morning to see just how many people saw the story. Its a quick and dirty measure of how far your tweet goes. That single tweet went close to reaching 30,000 people in the space of a couple of hours.

We know that it only measures reach and not action and yes we have less than a thousand followers but handled right a tweet like that can suddenly be "heard" by a huge international audience. We know from the #hashtag #nzwine on twitter that it has been retweeted by thousands more people. So the reach of a positive article, if you have the right followers, is exponential.

For anyone who is a bit cynical about twitters ability to spread the word this is an example of how it works. Its like icing on a hot cake.

Thanks theWineDiva- you have showed us a small part of the future.

So New Zealand - get on board - lets sell ourselves to the world- it only takes 140 letters.

QANTAS JOKES

We are watching the investigation into the engine failure incident on the Qantas with interest.

We found some jokes .. seems a timely thing to give them an airing.. They were compiled during the hunt for the Air New Zealand Best Blog.

We particularly like these:

,

Overheard on a Qantas flight into Perth, on a particularly windy and bumpy day: During the final approach, the Captain was really having to fight it. After an extremely hard landing, the Flight Attendant said, "Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to Perth. Please remain in your seats with your seat belts fastened while the Captain taxis what's left of our airplane to the gate!"

Another flight attendant's comment on a less than perfect landing: "We ask you to please remain seated as Captain Kangaroo bounces us to the terminal."

An airline pilot wrote that on this particular flight he had hammered his ship into the runway really hard. The airline had a policy which required the first officer to stand at the door while the Passengers exited, smile, and give them a "Thanks for flying Qantas." He said that, in light of his bad landing, he had a hard time looking the passengers in the eye, thinking that someone would have a smart comment. Finally everyone had gotten off except for a little old lady walking with a cane.

She said, "Sonny, mind if I ask you a question?" "Why no Ma'am," said the pilot. "What is it?" The little old lady said, "Did we land or were we shot down?"

The rest can be found here

BLOWING HOT AND COLD WITH AIR NEW ZEALAND

This is a funny, topical, edgy, pisstake, and very very timely in the wake of the Paul Henry debacle.

We see that Michael Laws is now apologising for calling the Gov General a fat bugger.. Well he is.

So are we. So what.


And Air New Zealand - do you dare apologise!

BAN OXYGEN

We as a nation seem to be wallowing in sensitivity these days. And this morning the NZ Herald gives space to another someone who is feeling " sensitive" about something. Its the AirNZ advert for a few cheap seats. The advert ends with the words Woop Woop. The sound of aircraft sirens and a common sound of pleasure. And its also the name of a Aussie Shiraz that is so poular its sold out.

The complaint has come from a family member of one of the victims of the Erebus crash.They reckon that it is insensitive of AirNZ to use the words Woop Woop in the advert as they were the last sounds apparently recorded on the black Box as the plane went down.

At the risk of sounding insensitive, why is more attention paid to the families of victims of high profile accidents than those families whop suffer loss from the run of the mill but no less traumatic events that happen every damn day.

It seems families of high profile accidents need to stay in the limelight and use any excuse they can find to keep the spotlight shining their way. And the media is happy to oblige. A very unhealthy symbiotic relationship.

Sad all round really.

So can we now expect the families of the Erebus victims to call for a ban on oxygen?

After all, its the last thing those on that fateful flight breathed.

FAIRIES ARE REAL!

Well they are at Air New Zealand . Click here for the story of Polly wants her cracker back.

We reckoned we were short changed a cracker or two with our cheese on an air New Zealand Koru hour flight late last year.

The Airpoints Fairy today delivered kapiti port wine, kikorangi blue and egmont cheeses with two big boxes of crackers. We shared them with our workmates and a few more people learned about the Fairy.

Since day one we thought that the Airpoints fairy was a great marketing concept. Its not that she grants really big wishes every day - although she has granted some pretty cool ones - its that every day she grants someone a wish. Ours was to get our cracker back.

We did - well done Air New Zealand.

HOT AIR NEW ZEALAND?

We are not too sure about the new improvements for Air New Zealand. We have travelled all three classes long haul. Biz class lie down was good. We shared the back row premium economy against a bulk head and quite frankly wondered what the difference was from economy as the seat did not fold back much. And as for economy - well we aint twiggy. So it was a drag.

So we like the couch idea - its bloody smart and if you end up in a half full plane - there is a fair chance you could end up with the row all to yourself. What we cant understand is it looks now like you get a better deal in the economy couch aisles than in Premium economy.

So it will be interesting how they ration the economy couches.

However its good to see they are thinking laterally. And all this from a man who sells his used undies for charity.

USED UNDIES FLY HIGH FOR CHICKS WITH MANKY TITS

This is one of the most inspired ways to raise funds we have ever seen. The used pink undies of the chief corporate pilot for Air NZ are up for grabs on Trade me

Apparently they will be drycleaned although we think they would fetch more if they were they were au naturalle. Sort of an interesting twist on the Tom Jones Phenomenon of tired old tarts chucking their undies at the aging crooner.

So we wonder does this mean Rob Fyfe is a committed tit man?


We know the marketing manager of the BCF pretty well but we reckon this is one of her better efforts yet. She will be forever known as the women who managed to get Fyfe to drop his daks. We bow at your feet oh Mistress of Magnificent Marketing.

NBR IS ROARPRAWNS NEW BEST FRIEND

We subscribe to NBR because it is fearless fun and Jock Anderson writes some good yarns and today that nice young man Chris Keall decided to follow up on our quest to get our Cracker back..

AirNZ has answered the call of Mr Keall, apparently it was all a mistake. We have yet to hear from the airpoints fairy

POLLY WOULDN'T FLY AIR NEW ZEALAND

Today on our way back from Auckland on flight 415 tonight we got out favourite " Koru Hour " treat. A couple of chunks of Kapiti cheddar and Camembert, three grapes and three plain water crackers.

Now we have always have a bit of trouble putting the cheese on the crackers - the slices of cheese are big - we estimate 6 crackers worth. So three is not tidy. Its a battle. First a big bite of cheese and then a nibble on the cracker - done delicately so it doesn't disintegrate. It is mildly entertaining to see if you can get thru the lilliputan feast with out getting crumbs everywhere.

So imagine our dismay and the dismay of some close by passengers, when we discovered the three cracker pack had suddenly been hit by the recession and was now a two cracker pack.

"What was the story?" - we asked the gooooorgeous purser Steve.... ( Actually we were delighted we had a reason to talk to him.. bootiful he is and funny. He's our favourite mile high trolly meister)

Well he said the two crackers pack came as a bit of a surprise to him as well.

We can understand if the airline skimped a bit on the cheese - after all its the expensive bit of the uppish market munchies but to deprive us of the third cracker is - so to speak - nuts.

We are going to ask the Airpoints Fairy to look into this mile high canape calamity as well..

We want our cracker back!

FAIRY DUST

OH we have just discovered the airpoints fairy for Air New Zealand ! what a cool idea... We like it lots..

KEY TAKES ONE FOR THE TEAM

Well we had our doubts. John Key's US visit looked a little light on the promotion and heavy on the diplomacy "we want world peace" stuff.

So he fronts David Letterman - it was cringe making in the extreme. But intensely watchable for its cringeworthiness.

And it was probably worth millions in free advert time.

Key took one for the team. shit it musta hurt, and NZ was the winner on the day.

That's our man.

BEST OF THE BLOGS.

Ethical Martini has a very humourous take on some of the hysterical American style media coverage of the Napier shooting here and here

He rightly points out the breathless reporting of rumour as fact in the race to be first with the latest breaking events.

Whale Oil sticks it to David Shearer, the Labour candidate for Mt Albert who thinks that crime isn't a big issue in Mt Albert.

Home Paddock has a roundup on two big philanthropic gifts - one by Eion Edgar for the Olympic committee and the other from New Zealandiophiles Julian and Josie Robertson who have donated a stunning art collection to the Auckland Gallery and finally and most importantly for farmers, some largesse from Ravensdown offering drought ridden farmers some relief.

And Alf Grumble obviously learnt more than stock ratios, wool classing and optimum rates of hop consumption when he was a young tigger at Lincoln University doing his Dip Ag. He does a lovely, almost scholarly dissection of some wankers PHD on the effectiveness of blogging.

And GoNZo does a nice takedown of some crap subbing at the Herald.

And Hat Tip to Cactus for this one - some executive eye candy for all us executive sweet tooths.


And then Adam over at Inquiring Mind has a lovely poem called the Gords prayer. Nice find.

We had the day off - getting hair done, bit of shopping to help support the economy and a wee bit of non blog writing..

COMPETITION IN THE FRIENDLY SKIES

Yee bloody hah! Finally some competition in the skies around the provinces. Pacific Blue is set to fly We have been gobsmacked by the cost of flights to Invercargill and Queenstown over the past year. It means we give all our spare cash to Air New Zealand instead of spending it in local shops. And the planes are pretty cool too -the Brazilian-built 104-seat Embraer 190 E-Jets.
While we love Air New Zealands on the ground service and the cabin crew are tops, they fall woefully short in getting bags off the plane and the snacks are crap.

BEHAVE JOHN!

Lordy, the Aussie Rock, BB's bloke, is always dismayed about the never ending rivalry New Zealand has with Australia and now John Key has gone and made it worse. He has made the equivalent of a Trans Tasman Treaty claim for the rights of such strategic indigenous assets as Pavlova and Phar Lap. We are still bickering with the Rock over who owns what. BB doubts if there will be a thaw in Trans Tasman relations tonight. Thanks John-Not.

WE WISH WE WERE PRIME MINISTER

We fly a lot - BB's, son flys helicopters, There is a flying vet in the family as well, but today we were very very jealous of John Key. The lucky bugger got to ride in the Jump seat of a 737 from Auckland to Wellington. Journos up the front of the bus ( and BB ) were hoping the new PM may end up sitting in one of many empty seats but no - he ended up in the front, front seat with the pilots. We have long harboured a secret desire to fly with the fly boys.

He looked good, fresh and alert. We hope he picks a good fresh alert cabinet as well.

HIJACK

This story about up and coming golfer Danny Lee and his brush with airport security reminded me of a holiday I took a couple of years back with the parents.

We were all good -but I lectured the old boy on airport security and to take everything out of his pockets. He started yapping away to the security men and they were all joshing and having a bit of fun shooting the breeze.

He walks through the security arch and the buzzer goes off - and then he puts his hands in the air and says "so I suppose this is not a good time to say hijack" The silence was long and extremely loud.

I stepped forward grabbed his arm looked the security guy in the eye and said -" You will have to excuse my father he has Alzheimer's ," Dad looked like he was going to kill me and I pinched him really hard and I pushed him in front of me. Mum looked at the security guard and nodded.

The guards looked at each other with sickly smiles and said that's okay we understand...

We had a bloody brilliant holiday in OZ but the story gets an airing from time to time.