User Blog The Riverina Pub - The Commute

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  2. Culture
  3. Life
  4. Yarn
  5. Rant
Hi Everyone

Million Thank you's to tajhay tajhay for setting up these blogs. I plan to cover off in this blog series:
1) Various Life Rants and Yarns
2) Random Thoughts about Sports
3) Thoughts about Life
4) Whatever else comes to mind

Why did I choose the name of the Blog? The Riverina Pub was a bit of a dive in Hamilton East in the 1970s and 80s and sadly closed before I got old enough to go there. Mothers and Wives shuddered at the name of the den of inequity whenever it was mentioned. One of my life long dreams will never be fulfilled as will never get to set foot in that terrific establishment. But it lives on in the name of this blog.
You are all invited to grab a seat, get a beer and read the blog entries and hopefully respond positively.
Blog Rules:
Rule 1: There will be no disparaging of John Wright in this blog by the visitors. He is to be regarded as the great player he was.
Rule 2: Some of my views may be controversial. Not many, most will be light hearted, if they are controversial especially about sports, roll with the punches and recognise you are in the Riverina and have another beer !!!


So with that, lets take you to the very first instalment of the blog...

The Commute
thecommute.jpg
I commute to work a couple of times per week and it is a loooong commute. 40 minutes by train plus waiting time for the train to arrive.

In peak hour to go home to Upper Hutt from Wellington, in rush hour, the trains take us tired-from- the-working-the-whole-day-civil-servants back to the Hutt Valley once every twenty minutes.

But wait, to help cater to the extra demand at 5pm an extra train is inserted right at 5:13pm just precisely at the time those who leave at 5 o’clock on the dot from work can catch the train.

I hate the 5:13pm train and everyone associated with it.

If you hop on board the train at 5:10pm or 5:11pm there won’t be any seats and the passengers who already have a seat snigger underneath their breath at you that you will have to stand for 40 minutes while they got their early to secure a seat. They all apparently hurry to the 5:13pm to get a seat and it is full by 5:08 at the latest and the passengers who get a seat think they are superior to any one who didn’t organise themselves well enough to do similar.

The word Supercilious comes to mind “behaving or looking as though one thinks one is superior to others.” The passengers on that train are supercilious.

The passengers on the 5:22pm and 4:57pm train are perfectly normal. It is just those jerks on the 5:13pm train that I take issue with.

I won’t catch the 5:13pm train now and I advise you if you are in Wellington to avoid it also. Even if I have to wait an extra 15 minutes for the 5:22pm to arrive. I mean they must all leave work slightly early and organise their afternoon around getting a seat on the 5:13pm train. How dare they be so organised and so smug about securing a seat.

“Sorry Kath gotta cut this conversation short as my train fills up fast”.
“But we havn’t finished discussing this important issue Steve and you report to me”.
“Gotta go Kath. Nothing personal”.

If you ever here of a train being derailed leaving Wellington it was nothing to do with me. Just saying.
 
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Up to 4 million commuters pass through Shinjuku station every day. I first navigated the Tokyo train system in the days of paper tickets and maps in Japanese with only a few signs in English.
We stayed in Shinjuku last year, can’t wait to go back. Was a bit concerned about how we’d navigate the train system, however was very easy - guessing the Olympics that never saw tourists had a lot to do with that. Shibuya is insane, never seen anything like it in my life!
 
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Given that there are plenty of Civil Servants or as Wrighty Wrighty calls them Supercilious Servants being put on the scrap heap by our Govt (hope your not one of them Wrighty Wrighty) then there will be plenty of seats available on the 5.13 shortly
 
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I had many a beer at the old 'Riv'. I was in Matamata but work had a depot across the road. I would not call it a dive, just An honest working mans pub. Occasionally went there after club rugby, but the Lemington in Cambridge was the favourite watering hole in those days. After the Waikato game was cancelled in 1981 on the Springbok tour the Lemington was full of pissed off fans. Anti tour demonstraters used to blow referee whistles. One drunk bloke walked in and blew a whistle. He sobered up fast. A story for another time is seeing all the violence that day and being mistaken for as an anti tour demonstater.
 
I had many a beer at the old 'Riv'. I was in Matamata but work had a depot across the road. I would not call it a dive, just An honest working mans pub. Occasionally went there after club rugby, but the Lemington in Cambridge was the favourite watering hole in those days. After the Waikato game was cancelled in 1981 on the Springbok tour the Lemington was full of pissed off fans. Anti tour demonstraters used to blow referee whistles. One drunk bloke walked in and blew a whistle. He sobered up fast. A story for another time is seeing all the violence that day and being mistaken for as an anti tour demonstater.
Do you think the pro-tour folk look back on that time with regret?
 
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Looking back I certainly do. However I have friends who say, with justification the tour was legal and their rights were infringed. After what I saw the biggest mystery was how no one was killed.
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Not even now? Lol. You've got to have some self reflection when you are clearly on the wrong side of history.
You can get an idea which side those people would have supported at different points in history.
 
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Not even now? Lol. You've got to have some self reflection when you are clearly on the wrong side of history.
You can get an idea which side those people would have supported at different points in history.

When you get into it there were some uncomfortable truths that still resonate today. The Apartheid Government was supported by the Americans and the ANC by the Soviets. We see now that South Africa will not support the Americans on isolating Russia. To call those people Nazis, like you are inferring. Some of those people I referenced were war Veterans, not Nazis. They just believed that if the tour was legally based they wanted to see the games, so take your false outrage and shove it up your arse. In no way were they supporting the Apartheid regime.
 
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False outrage? Lol. It's a massive stain on our collective history. I wasn't accusing them of being Nazi. Just being on the wrong side of history - without regret. You obviously haven't seen the skit the image is from. I should have linked it instead of the image. I apologise for that.

Because something is legal, doesn't mean it's right. By supporting the tour and previous tours to SA, in effect we were supporting the regime. By the 70s - 80s SA was heavily isolated by most of the world, esp in sport - they hadn't been allowed in the Olympics since 1964. But little old NZ still wanted to maintain rugby relations with an apartheid South Africa - it's completely fucked when you look back on it.
And many supporters to this day still think it was all okay?

Anyway - I've derailed the thread, which wasn't my intention.
 
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False outrage? Lol. It's a massive stain on our collective history. I wasn't accusing them of being Nazi. Just being on the wrong side of history - without regret. You obviously haven't seen the skit the image is from. I should have linked it instead of the image. I apologise for that.

Because something is legal, doesn't mean it's right. By supporting the tour and previous tours to SA, in effect we were supporting the regime. By the 70s - 80s SA was heavily isolated by most of the world, esp in sport - they hadn't been allowed in the Olympics since 1964. But little old NZ still wanted to maintain rugby relations with an apartheid South Africa - it's completely fucked when you look back on it.
And many supporters to this day still think it was all okay?

Anyway - I've derailed the thread, which wasn't my intention.
No, it wasn't ok. It divided the country in a bad way in which I think for a small and at the time egalitarian country we never recovered.

I was that soldier baying for blood at rugby park in Hamilton and don't regret it as that was my thinking at the time.

We cannot change the past and seem to never learn from it

Things change as does our idealism and most important, our priorities.

Having spent a number of years in the Republic since the revolution, I'm not convinced it was all worth it today.
 
False outrage? Lol. It's a massive stain on our collective history. I wasn't accusing them of being Nazi. Just being on the wrong side of history - without regret. You obviously haven't seen the skit the image is from. I should have linked it instead of the image. I apologise for that.

Because something is legal, doesn't mean it's right. By supporting the tour and previous tours to SA, in effect we were supporting the regime. By the 70s - 80s SA was heavily isolated by most of the world, esp in sport - they hadn't been allowed in the Olympics since 1964. But little old NZ still wanted to maintain rugby relations with an apartheid South Africa - it's completely fucked when you look back on it.
And many supporters to this day still think it was all okay?

Anyway - I've derailed the thread, which wasn't my intention.

Most look back and see it was not worth it, even the great Springbok Centre Danie Gerber said the same. However your Nazi insinuations were insulting. Your post was meant to shade people as Nazis, just admit it.
 
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Most look back and see it was not worth it, even the great Springbok Centre Danie Gerber said the same. However your Nazi insinuations were insulting. Your post was meant to shade people as Nazis, just admit it.
Well you could compare nazi Germany and south Africa under apartheid and say they are both societies based on holding one race as superior to others.

I remember my dad going to the game, he was totally pissed off that they ruined it with their protests, i reckon he still can't see it was wrong today.
 
When I was a boy of 8 or 9 years old. My mum took me on an anti tour march through the streets of Hamilton. People stood in their front yards yelling things as me and Mum and the crowd as we walked past their houses.
It divided the nation. I also remember chanting things I didn't understand.
A vivid memory is the start of the day. Mum told me to get dressed because we are going on a march.
 
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Muldoon was the only person to blame. He campaigned a whole election victory off the back of allowing a tour.

Some real heroes stood up. John Minto I believe should be knighted.
Marilyn Waring crossed the floor of parliament over it.
Real life is always more dramatic than anything fiction can come up with.
 
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