NZ Music Month finale –

Like Inventory 2 at Keeping Stock, I realise New Zealand Music month is over, but we were in Wanaka with friends for the weekend and I didn’t have time to do a final round up round the blogs so here they are:

Keeping Stock concluded his Christian Music Sundays with two songs from Brooke Fraser: Lifeline & Albertine.

Inquiring Mind finished with some reggae from Cornerstone Roots

Rob posted three for the final day: Anything Could Happen from The Clean; The Verlaines with Doomsday and In Your Favour from Look Blue Go Purple.

I’ll leave the last word  notes to the Goodnight Kiwi:

Mil y una lenguas dicen “te quiero”

When ever we travel to another country I try to learn a few basic words of their language.

Nothing too taxing, just hello, please, thank you and other little words which show I’m trying to be polite.

I love you, while a very important expression, isn’t one most travellers usually have a need for.

But should you do so, Don Quijote is compiling a list – mil y una lenguas dicen “te quiero” – 1001 languages say “I love you”.

They’re up to 52 and it’s the place to go if you want to learn how to say I love you in any language from Arabic – Ana Bekhekbak (for him) and Ana Bekhekbik (for her) via  Swahili – Ninakupenda – to Vietnamese Anh yêu em (for her) / Em yêu anh (for him).
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Southerly, what southerly?

It was -2.2 degrees when we started the walk up Mount Iron, there was a frost but the southerly forecast for yesterday had passed by.

If Rob Roy (7  posts back) gets my vote for the best day walk in the world, Mount Iron, on the outskirts of Wanaka, is my pick for the best short walk.

We go up the back which starts with a 10 minute walk on the flat, then about 20 minutes steep climb up 250 metres.

The DOC guide says it’s a 1.5 hour walk but that must be at a fairly leisurely pace.

My best time from the carpark to the top is 28 minutes & 2 seconds  and it’s about 20 minutes down; my slowest time  to the top in the last couple of years was 34 minutes. To put that in perspective some people run up & down in under 30 minutes.

But however fast you go the view from the top is worth it:

Monday’s Quiz

1. Name a band and a song it sings which are both palindromes.

2. Who wrote Breakfast at Six?

3. Who said, There’s a hell of a distance between wise-cracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wise-cracking is simply callisthenics with words.?

4. Which language is spoken as a first language in the most countries?

5. It’s Queen’s Birthday today – but when is Queen Elizabeth II’s real birthday?

Word no longer bond

A friend who’s a cropping farmer had signed up deals selling grain for winter feed to dairy farmers which they are now cancelling.

Earlier in the year the Farmers Weekly reports that dairy farmers were walking away from maize deals, leaving contractors with as much as a third of their crop unsold.

The milk payout has fallen and next season’s forecast is lower than this season’s. The price of grain has also fallen, but would these farmers have paid more had the price gone up after they’d signed the deal?

In our area we like to think we can still do business on a handshake, but thses examples show there is a growing number of people for whom their word is no longer their bond.