Thursday 4 December 2008

Things I Should Have Done Before I Came Here, Part One

1) Apply for residency straight off. Rather naively, I thought that one could just serve their work visa time, rock up to Wellington, pay a token sum and then get residency, sweet as, bro. Unfortunately, it doesn't quite work like that, and I have to get a copy of my degree, and a medical, and a letter off my boss stating that I'm not employed as a pimp, and a chest X-ray to prove that I don't (hopefully) have TB, and a police certificate, and never mind the fact that you've been paying taxes for the last seven months without actually getting the fucking right to vote, or even to live outside of Northland.

Frankly, I'm just glad I'm doing it on my tod, and, unlike the Bewildered Scouser, don't have to fork out for it five times. All I've had out of him all week is "Stevie G, Stevie G, Stevie G, perhaps I could just sell them a fucking kidney, Stevie G, aye?"

Wednesday 3 December 2008

Chthulu + Holmes = Awesome.

Neil Gaiman. More than just Sandman

Go and read A Study In Emerald

British National Pharmacist.

I'm a pharmacist. Or a chemist. I don't, personally, care if people address me as a chemist or not. I often introduce myself as " I'm the pharmacist, you know, like from the chemist's shop". It seems to work, and patients seem to listen. Either that, or they're intimidated by the wild-eyed unshaven Welsh bloke who can barely speak English, and who is getting far more excited by benzene rings than any man should be, and then patients are scared to say anything in case I start ranting about the scientific method. Bro.

Since I've been here, I have been conscious that I am an outsider, that I am not of this place. I don't mean that in a bad way, I love this beautiful, pristine country. It is a civilised, wonderful, curious land. A land where no-one had to threaten hunger strikes to get a television channel broadcasting in the language of the indigenous people. A place where, despite a tricky first few months, I have felt a sense of acceptance that I have never felt anywhere else.

Since I've been here, I've spoken to Maori, Tongans, Kiwis, Welsh, Scots, Irish, Americans, and a beautiful Zimbabwean nurse who had to spend six weeks in the hospital with an infectious disease. I've tried my best to treat all these people as equals, regardless of how white or Jewish they may or may not be. This is important, because this is my job, and because we're all fucking Kiwis, at the end of the day, we're not niggers, or pakis, or any of the other ugly insults used by those brain-dead vermin who would happily ship off all non-whites back to wherever the hell it is they're supposed to come from. Regardless of whether they were born here, or if their parents or grandparents were born here.

You would think that pharmacists would treat all patients (NOT CUSTOMERS) equally. It's probably in the Code of Ethics or something (not that anyone ever reads that after the first year of university). Unfortunately, membership of the BNP would seem to be incompatible with treating patients equally. The BNP is a collection of cockroaches that would quite happily deport all non-whites and Jews. It's always about the Jews. God knows why.

It should be incompatible for pharmacists, and nurses, and doctors, and social workers, and everyone else who has direct contact with patients, to be a member of the BNP. Being a member is an admission that you judge people by how white they are. This is against every single code of ethics.

There's a UK registered pharmacist on the BNP membership list. Thankfully, there's just the one. I suppose he could have a reasonable excuse-he could have joined for "research purposes", I suppose. Or he could be keeping an eye on the enemy, in the same way that I have a look at Stormfront (DO NOT LOOK AT THIS IN WORK) every now and then.

Anyway, the guy's from Birmingham. He's got the same surname as a former Nottingham Forest "pineapple on his head" striker, and the same first name as the most famous basketball player in history. Or you could just google Wikileaks, and look for the spreadsheet. It doesn't take long at all.

Click by here

Tuesday 2 December 2008

Things I Miss From Back Home:Part Two.

1) Soccer Saturday, when it was too cold and wet and raining and hailing and snowing and dinosaury to go outside.

2) Barbers. Where you could get a haircut for a fiver. Reading a car magazine while waiting for your turn. Cardiff City photos on the wall. No conversation whatsoever.

3) S4C.

4) Big squeezy bottles of HP sauce.

5) Rugby internationals kicking off at 2ish in the afternoon, instead of 3ish in the morning.

Monday 1 December 2008

He said it better than I could, part 94.

Ever get wound up by ignorant fuckwits that think that brown people can't be Kiwis?

Read this