John the Robert has a Kiwi daughter. Her name is Lucy and she is perfect in every way and will one day rule New Zealand. Unless she decides to move to the Gold Coast for the weather and surfers. In that case she will still rule New Zealand from afar because Australia gets lots of attention and, as per the Kiwi media, what goes on in Australia is more important that what happens here in our beautiful islands.
John the Robert has the next 18 years to get Lucy an American passport. We'll get around to it eventually, but I reckon we make the Yanks come here first. Not all of them. Just the good ones who are related or whanau'ed (how do you make a verb out of that?) to me and mine. Out of 300 million Americans, we are inviting 23 of you. After 23 Americans have come here for the specific purpose of visiting Lucy, we will get her a US passport.
Unless of course she demands that Daddy take her to Disneyland. At that point Daddy will use his quiz hosting* connections to fast track a US passport-and-accompanying-taxpayer-funded-credit-card-charged-plane-tickets to get his princess to LA.
*Bailies Irish Bar in the Square, Tuesday nights from September. John the Robert hosts a pub quiz and makes all those who participate feel smart.
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When I visited NZ back in '99, I had an odd experiance at Bailies. I decided to stop in Bailies to kill some time while I waited for friends to get out of work. I grabbed a pint and went in the back and played the pokies.
ReplyDeleteI played for about five minutes and won $30, quitting while I was ahead, I went back to the bar. There I started talking to a Maori guy around my age (mid-late 20's). He had a cast on his hand, so I asked him what happened (construction accident). We were chatting a bit and I decided to grab one more pint before heading out to meet my friends. Right as I got the second pint, a gray haired older gentleman comes up to me and introduces himself as the the owner of the place. I talk to him for a few minutes, tell him I am visiting from the states and have friends in town etc..
After our chat he leaves and comes back with a green courderoy Bailies Bar hat and gives it to me. I was thinking, "wow this is a nice guy", but right after he gave me the hat he said "I'll get you a cab as soon as you finish up your pint". I told him "Thanks for the offer, but I just need to walk three blocks to meet my friends. A cabs not neccesary". But the owner kept insisting and sure enough there was a cab parked right outside waiting.
At this point, I was totally confused and uncomfortable, here I was stone sober having only drank one pint and only a quarter of the way through my secoond, and he was giving me the heave-ho. In my mind I was thinking, does he think I am drunk? Did he hate Americans? I had no idea. Realizing the owner was going keep hovering over me, I decided not to finish the pint, pay my tab and leave. The owner actually walked with me to the cab making sure I got in it, despite my telling him I could walk the three blocks fine on my own. I told the cab to stop at the next block and walked to meet my friends for dinner.
When I told my friends about the incident they laughed and said they bet it was because he thought I was going to get mugged by the Maori guy. I always wanted to go back or ask him what the deal actually was, but never did. I do still have the hat and plan on visiting the place again when I am over there next year.