Accidental Anthropologist

My wife wants to give the City Mission $1,000 towards food and bedding for people on the street.  She’s on the phone. My first response ‘A Thousand Bucks ! That’s heaps … jeepers, it could come out of the tax account, but a thousand bucks ?? !!’ I did the maths on how long that’d take to make up in work hours.   Then I thought back a few years, when I was working for a few weeks in the States. We stayed in a hotel across the road from Santa Monica pier, a comfortable beachside suburb in LA. Days I spent on work, nights I spent out on the street observing scores of homeless people living rough. I was intrigued. One of my kiwi colleagues dismissed the situation with ‘it’s their choice…‘  Ohh Kaay. Scarce by day, prolific by night, they rolled into downtown at dusk to settle for the evening.  Most had supermarket trolleys for their possessions, at least half of them flew the stars and stripes. Like saying ‘I belong too.’  Cardboard on the grou...

It's like once every 3 yrs the country politically menstruates – moods tip, blood flows, then realizing we’re not pregnant, we pick up the pieces and move on. I’m intrigued by our individual story’s. The events in our lives that shape our beliefs, the tribe we feel most represents us, the things that decide how we vote. So here’s a bit of mine. My wife and I have four kids. We live on Waiheke where I base my business making videos. We’re lucky living here, no small thanks to both our parents giving us a leg up.   I’m probably your middle class white guy. Growing up, my dad built power stations and roads for the Ministry of Works, a government department, while mum worked as a nurse in public health. By the time I was 16 we’d lived in Wanganui, Otematata, Alexandra, Greymouth, Tauranga, New Plymouth and Hamilton. Dad’d be 95 today if he was still around. He went to war, doing tours though Alamein and Casino, kept a cool head and had a pretty mean rugby sides...