Go on go on go on go on go on

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • I’ve got an iPod Classic 160Gb, from 2007 I think. Still runs fine, synchs and everything. I hate everything Apple about it - the weird 12-pin connection, having to use iTunes, the fact that it’s been discontinued - but otherwise it’s grand. I got it a wee Bluetooth dongle that fits into the headphone jack so I can listen on my hearing aids.

    I’m almost scared to use it, because it would be hard to replace. I’m often out of phone signal range, and it’s good to have all my music, audio books, podcasts etc still available. What else can do this? The Cloud is useless without a phone signal.



  • Wellington has had a heated property market longer than most places - it’s hilly for a start, so can’t just sprawl like Auckland, and it’s the capital, so a lot of well-heeled bureaucrats who don’t want to commute from the hinterlands. I don’t live there any more, so I don’t know what the rental market is like now.




  • My flat cost £43k in the early 90s, nearly three times my annual income at the time, and all my savings went on the deposit. I had previously lived in a shared house, the only way I could afford to save anything.

    More nostalgia… Looking for a 1br flat to rent in 1980s Wellington (NZ) was a trip. Demand far, far outstripped supply. Among the gems offered to me for top rental (can’t remember how much, but it was crazily high), was a place that stank of damp and had rat-holes chewed in the bathroom wall - which was just soggy softboard against a dirt bank. There were three couples viewing at the same time. Another place I was told was fresh to the market, no-one else had seen it yet. The stove had been dismantled and the toilet was piled high with human shit. When I shouted at the agent she said, You don’t want it then?" and hung up.

    I eventually lucked in with a “granny flat” whose owners, an adorable elderly Polish couple, lived upstairs.



  • Didn’t work for me… in my 1972 bank job interview I was told, “I’d hire you if you were a man, but you’re not. If I hired you, you’d just get pregnant and leave.” It wasn’t against the law for him to say all that.

    And for what it’s worth I didn’t buy a home - a small one-bed flat - until I was in my 40s. Cost me so much I couldn’t afford proper furniture. Yes, my current house is worth a lot more than what I paid for it (mainly because I bought a wreck), but so is any other house I could afford if I sold it.









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